Running Terrors

by Zia Bernard

I don't own IZ, it belongs to Jhonen Vasqez

Prologue

My heart was in my throat; it's beat in my head, drumming against my skull and trying to tear its way out of me. My shoes slapped against the pavement. Red and yellow and purple mushroom clouds rose above the neighborhood, and I knew somewhere, deep down, I was already too late. But I pushed down these feelings and burst into His house. He wasn't anywhere in sight and I forced my way down into His lab, tearing everything in my path apart, including his robot GIR.

"Zim!" I screamed at him, his back turned away from me. His antennae barely twitched at the sound of my voice, or at the quiet buzz from my plasma gun that easily found the niche in the back of his head. Only then did he turn.

I'd never seen eyes so empty. "Dib-thing?" he asked, reached out an ungloved, clawed hand, searching the air for something concrete. Something solid. Flesh.

My fingers caught his and tangled with them, my other hand wrapping around him and pulling him closer. "Jesus. They blinded you."

His large, blank eyes were moist. "Zim never meant... not for this..." he gestured wildly, absently, and I knew he was talking about the invasion happening just above our heads. A shudder ran through him and his voice trailed off. He was in pain.

My jaw set in determination. "There's gotta be a way outta this." I touched his cheek gently and watched with fascination as he leaned into the contact, craving it now that his world was dark.

"Dib-thing..." he whispered hoarsely. I realized how rough his voice sounded with a start. He sounded like he'd been screaming and screaming with no relief, and oozing wounds swam into my vision like horrors from some sick nightmare. Only it was real. The Irken blood on my skin was real, and I could feel it. He laughed bitterly.

"By the tallest,"I whispered before I could stop it. His bitterness rose up and crashed down, swallowing me along with it. An inky blackness that was his despair.

I swallowed the stone in my throat. My heart failed to go down with it, but I hauled him up. "Come on Zim. We've gotta go. Now."

If he was shaking his head at me, my suggestion, or some figment his shattered mind conjured for him, I'm still not sure. All I know was that his head whipped up at the last second and he let out a guttural scream unlike anything I'd ever heard in my life. Standing before us, blocking the exit, was Tallest Purple. My heart stopped beating for a second.

"Tallest..." Zim whispered, "...you cannot hide. Zim can see you." his lips curled at some unspoken joke. Something like pity was in Purple's eyes. He reached out his claws to Zim but stopped just before touching him, hesitating, then drawing back.

"Zim." he whispered. "Invader Zim."

A sardonic smile curled the little alien's lips. He turned his head and buried it in the crook of my neck, sagging with something I might have named relief if it had been anyone else, other than Gaz.

"Zim." I told him sharply. "Stay with me." I glared at Purple, "Get the fuck outta the way," I hissed, pulling up my plasma and letting the dot center on his forehead. There was no resistance. He shrugged haplessly and stood aside for Zim and I, making me hesitate. There were always strings, but his eyes were cold. Apathetic and pitying. He knew, as I did, Zim wouldn't make it. Blind, fatally wounded, and aided by a human in a world quickly falling to an alien race? Zim and I would die, if not by his hand, by his soldiers' hands.

I growled at him as we limped past, turning my attention to the whimpering alien in my grasp. "Zim," I whispered, "just hold on. It's gonna be okay, we're gonna be okay..." my words fell hollow. Convictionless. He grinned but I could tell: he didn't believe a word.

Zim was always smarter than they gave him credit for.

"Dib-filth, stop your senseless noise." he commanded weakly. "Zim knows we are fighting a losing battle." he paused then amended, "A lost battle."

"But!" I shook him as hard as I dared, which, I admitted, wasn't all that hard. "I have to fight! This is my home!" my shoulders were slouched as we leaned against his couch, watching the world burn just outside his friendly neighbor windows. "Your home. This is your home now too Zim!"

He was surprised, stilling in my arms. "Dib-filth...?"

I clutched him tightly, fighting the tears. Another lost battle. "So, you can't die! You have to help me fight for our home!"

He laughed then. A genuine sound--or as genuine as a dying alien could sound, and told me, "You and I are outcasts, Dib-thing. A human who would rather be an Irken, and an Irken who would rather be human. We were never accepted. It was not meant to be."

I shook him again. "No! I refuse to believe that!"

Tallest Purple was in the doorway's shadows, Tallest Red in the other door, opposite his co-ruler. They watched us with morbid curiosity. I trembled as I held my little alien.

He smiled up blankly at me, fuzzy eyes searching his darkness. "Dib-thing... I loved you."

My heart fell through me to past my knees like lead. My stomach too, dropped. Dread filled me. "Zim...?"

He chuckled, coughing up his lilac colored acidic blood. "I loved you, for a long time."

"I..." my voice died. "...I loved you too. I still do! So stay with me!" I begged, pulling him close and crushing our bodies together. Zim's already cool skin was turning icy. "No, nononono..." I whispered, shaking my head. The two tallest watched, something like compassion filling their large, shiny eyes.

I ignored them for all I was worth. Without Zim, it wasn't much. A buck fifty maybe. Maybe.

"Good-bye... Dib..."

"No--Zim!" my eyes widened, "ZIM!" but he was gone. Colder than ice, and stiffer than a block of cement. The tallest crept in then. They wrapped their claws around us, words hissing in the language I wouldn't understand even if I was in my right senses. All I could focus on was Zim's empty shell of a body. His pack still glowed, but faintly.

Zim would come back to me... someday... but by then, I'd probably be dead already. Dust in the wind.

Until then... I broke out of the Tallest's grip, fleeing out the door, evading the guards, and broke out into a breathless run. Zim's body was farther and farther away.

The terror that had engulfed me was fading slowly. Someday I'd come back with a horde of humans, beat back the Tallest, reclaim the planet, and maybe then, when peace reigned, I could surrender to my own inner demons. Maybe then I could let the anguish in.

Maybe then I would visit Zim's human-style grave and say my final good-byes to the only and first alien I'd ever loved.

To be continued...

Well... here it is. My first new story post. Invader Zim rules my universe, along with several unmentionable things.

Ah yes. I am a shameless ZADR fan, and I have a special thing for Irkens. Shush. It's a secret that you didn't hear from me.

Future spaceport time in the next chapter, and a time where humans and many different alien species all co-exist, sort of. Tensions run high, and irkens, a dying race, do their best to lie low... until a reincarnation of a bumbling defect is suddenly put back in the gene stream.

A supposedly long dead human holds the key to saving his own race, as well as the irken one.

A crew of young people searching for their purpose in life, unable to find their own way, have banded together as them against the world. But when they pick up a young couple, a human and an irken, are the loops they're thrown for too dizzying to recover from?