A/N: Uh... so this was supposed to be kind of fluffy and now it's turned kind of dark. Oneshot (unless wild inspiration strikes)
"I don't see why we can't just call them zombies." Dutchy protests, warming his hands against the fire they had burning in the empty oil drum. Outside, daybreak is just dawning, the birds chattering and the pale blue sky giving the impression of peace and tranquillity. "After all, they're trying to bite us?"
Kate rolls her eyes and punctuates her thoughts by putting her foot through a pallet, grateful for her steel-capped combat boots as the wood splinters. "But they're not zombies! It's not a brain-eating thing! It's a let's-kill-people thing!" She pokes a few more pieces of broken wood into the drum to feed the fire before tossing the rest aside and settling herself cross-legged on the concrete, her breath still rising in misty clouds. "Calling them zombies makes me feel I'm in some dumb computer game."
"They're trying to kill us with their teeth!" Dutchy points out, and his voice echoes slightly in the abandoned warehouse, despite their low voices. "That's a zombie thing."
"It's a virus. And the infected aren't dead!" She points out, rummaging through her pockets and withdrawing two muesli bars they'd managed to liberate, amongst a few other precious non-perishables, from an abandoned supermarket. She tosses one to Dutchy and he catches it easily.
"They might as well be." Dutchy mutters darkly, throwing a glance over at his austeyr for a moment as though reassuring himself it's still there. She'd almost make fun of him, except that her gaze flickers towards her own weapons, the two pistols she'd managed to break out of the armoury on Hammersley before they'd made their mistake. She was running low on bullets, despite having stuffed her pockets with as many rounds as she could. Almost unconsciously, she touches a hand to her hip, where she's tucked her knife. Sooner or later, it would be her only weapon. "Half the government is infected and the rest is in lockdown. It'll wipe out the rest of the country before there's a cure. Kinder to put them out of their misery now."
"You don't need to do that." Kate murmurs quietly, scratching at a mosquito bite on her wrist.
"Do what?" Kate turns a challenging gaze towards Dutchy, but he ducks his gaze away from hers.
"Try to make me feel justified in..." Her voice breaks off as she glances towards the spot where her pistol is once more. She can still hear the bang. "I know I had to do it."
"You didn't have a choice."
"I know." Kate repeats, feeling herself speaking through gritted teeth. "That's... what I just said."
"Whatever made him... Mike... it was gone." It's the first time either of them have said his name since he turned, since she'd...
"It was three weeks ago. I don't..." She shakes her head. She can't dwell on that now. Can't keep closing her eyes and seeing his hair matted with blood. "What about just calling them 'the infected'?" Her change of subject is greatly forced, and she's glad Dutchy clings to it.
"That's what we used to call the public transport system." He shakes his head, shifting his body slightly closer to the heat of the fire. He too is shivering, although she suspects his is purely from the cold, whereas hers... "What about the undead?"
"They're not zombies!" But she can't help a small smile.
"Fine." His mouth twitches. "The bitees?"
"Sounds like what Swain used to say when Chloe was teething." Kate smirks, but her smile fades quickly. She liked to imagine that all her friends had gotten out, had escaped being one of the yet-to-be-named, but the practical part of her brain told her it was highly unlikely. She and Dutchy had barely escaped themselves. Dutchy seems to know the dark way her mind is going, because he keeps talking.
"Deadheads?"
"Hmmm..." Kate stretches out her feet to postpone the inevitable pins and needles. "The pitbulls?"
"What about just... fuckers?"
Kate lets out a snort of laughter, but quickly stifles it as she looks to her left. "Not in front of the kid." They both turn to the girl, who's sleeping beside them, her head resting on Kate's bag. They'd not managed to get anything out of her, but had found her bloody and alone, seemingly the only survivor of... "The damned?"
"I don't know. I still like zombies!" He smiles at her, though his gaze still flicks over to the kid. They had no name to give her, no toys to entertain. Hell, they'd just managed to get her out of the house, wrapped in a tatty blanket in Kate's arms while Dutchy covered them. They'd guessed her to be no more than three, but it was always hard to tell these days, with food so scarce. Her presence would only slow them down, but neither of them had the heart to even consider leaving her. Dutchy folds down the rest of his muesli bar and pockets it. "I'll save it for the kid."
Kate has barely touched her own muesli bar. She finds it's hard to stomach food these days. "We need to find somewhere safe for her."
"We've been trying to find somewhere safe for years." Dutchy points out, and once again she flinches at his pessimism.
"We just need to get to the coast and get a boat-"
"Kate, we fled the coast! We fled inland! We fled the country towns and the cities. Nowhere is safe! The zombies are everywhere."
"They're not zombies!" Kate repeats, tearing her eyes away from the girl. "And... I know. But... we need to try."
They both watch as the girl snuffles in her sleep, but she doesn't wake. "Lame brains?" Dutchy muses with a wry grin.
"Like you, you mean?" She quips, wrapping her jacket tighter around her.
"Hey, one of these days you might have to repopulate the earth with a lame brain like me." He flashes a wink in her direction, but once again her smile is short lived, and he knows it's because they weren't together, and hadn't been when they left, and their group of seven had dwindled down until there were three. And then... two. They were the only ones that remained. Them and the kid. "I was... it was..." He stumbles over his words.
"I know." She whispers, turning her head away from the fire so that he can't see her tears. "We'll move towards the coast tomorrow." She says, more to cover up the awkward moment. "Even if I'm getting really sick of bikini-clad coastal zombies."
End