A/N: 'Ello, my darlings! So this fic is going to be formatted a little bit differently than most. Each chapter will follow one set of characters. Obviously Tate and Violet are the main attraction, but this way we can see what the other MH residents are getting up to.
Hayden and Travis
"Where are we going?" Travis only thinks to ask after he and Hayden have hijacked a car from a middle-aged couple bustling down their driveway, and are merging onto I-5 North. He'd volunteered to drive, but she'd levelled him with one look and slipped in behind the wheel.
She cranes her neck to change lanes. "I want to go home."
The Escalade Hayden cuts off blares its horn. The woman riding shotgun makes an obscene gesture from behind the windshield, a gesture that Hayden matches with a wicked grin.
Not even strapped in while she's doing an easy 90, Travis rifles through the glove compartment of their lifted Audi. Driver's manual aside, inside is a pair of aviators, chapstick, and two travel-sized bottles of sanitizer.
"Before you ask," she presses, eyeing him when he leans across the center console to fit the mirror-lensed sunnies over her ears, "home is Boston."
"Okay," Travis shrugs happily enough, fiddling with the heat and the radio and anything else he can get his hands on. The airwaves are dead except for the one looped message, but there's a Best of Johnny Cash CD that gets them halfway to Nevada.
They stop for the night when the gas gauge levers dangerously close to E. The tiny desert town they pull into offers a few dusty roads to nowhere, a boarded up shopping center, and two stop lights.
Zombies have been a reality for two weeks, but with all the time they've spent on the freeway and in the middle of nowhere, Hayden and Travis can count the ones they've seen without using their toes.
"Worst apocalypse ever," Hayden deadpans around a swig of warm beer; Travis had looted a mom-and-pop convenience store while Hayden stood watch. Locked in the backroom, he pushes the plastic basket he'd filled towards her with his foot, mouth full with a pre-made turkey sandwich.
"It is pretty quiet, huh."
Hayden twists off the cap of a second beer with her hand and passes it over. "Yup."
They eat and drink in silence, the flickering halogen above them their only light source. The steel doors barred with a broom handle have been spray painted. A wibbly, THE END IS NIGH, stares at them in cherry red.
Travis breaks the silence after his third Kit-Kat. "What do you think everybody else is doing right now?"
Hayden scoffs. "Who cares."
"You think Violet went with her parents or with him? I hope Lorraine and the girls are okay..." The emergency bulb fizzles out, but Hayden can hear the sadness in Travis' voice. He's thinking he should have stayed to look after them. She feels for her pack and digs out a flashlight, pops the button on.
"What did you bring?" The change of topic is obvious, but Travis just smiles and hands over his bag. She sweeps their mess out from between them and holds the flashlight with her mouth.
It hits the floor a moment later. "Are you shitting me?"
Spilled out in the cone-shaped light is a set of binoculars - okay, smart - a cereal bowl, two spoons, and eight rolls of toilet paper.
"Really? Hayden balks, grabbing at the Charmin wildly. "Really?"
Travis just looks at her with wide, innocent eyes, and unzips the front pouch of his bag. "I got toothpaste and a pair of pj pants too."
"The world is ending and you're worried about two-ply versus one? This isn't a sleepover, Travis, what the hell?" When he continues watching her and looking increasingly guilty, Hayden just exhales long-suffering and points at the double doors. "Go."
Cautiously accepting the flashlight she waves at him, he slinks over to unbar the door with his empty bag, looking like a dog with its tail between its legs.
"Compass, clean underwear, a Zippo..." She rattles off a number of more suitable items, voice rising to an incredulous shriek when the door clangs shut.
When he's gone and she's quietly stuffed a roll of Charmin into her pack, Hayden unrolls her thin blanket throw and scoots to sit back against the wall. "I'm going to die with Michael Kelso," she laments dramatically to the empty stockroom. Predictably, the stacked boxes of soda have no sympathetic words for her.
Travis is back far too soon. He barrells into the back room, and lit momentarily by the light of outside, Hayden can see that he's shaken.
As quickly and as quietly as he can, he drops his partially-filled bag and slides the broom handle back into place, fitting in the metal pole from a broken mop after.
"Hey what's - "Hayden starts, but then Travis is crouched beside her with a sweaty palm over her mouth.
"Someone's here," he breathes right against her ear, placing himself between Hayden and the door. She pries at his fingers, gapes for breath, but the inevitable so what dies on her tongue when she hears them.
Past the steel doors there are voices, muffled and distorted; they're arguing over whether they've heard something.
"Okay, I fucking swear it. There's somebody here," one of them says, to which the other just laughs. "Sure. We're in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, I wouldn't even piss here."
There's nothing inherently threatening about the voices, but Hayden's seen enough end of the world shows to know what's in store for girls like her if found by a clusterfuck of dudes. It rhymes with grape, and while she knows down to her bones that Travis, stupid loyal Travis, would die protecting her, that's too likely an outcome to go investigating.
After a few minutes, the voices taper off and Travis drops his hand altogether, but then there's a violent push at the steel doors to their right.
"Hey, c'mere. Help me with this," potential rapist A says. Hayden unsheathes the hunting knife at her hip and holds it out where Travis isn't huddled next to her.
There's another push, with more intent this time, but then rapist B chimes in. "Fuck it, let's go." After that, it's just silence and the stifled in-out of Travis' breathing.
Hayden disentangles herself from Travis and stows her knife, then slips down the wall to employ her pack as a pillow. She hears shuffling beside her but tries to close her eyes and shut out the unwelcome prickles of adrenaline under her skin.
"Get over here," she growls when he doesn't settle, and holds open her blanket in the dark. "It's fucking freezing." Travis drops whatever it was he'd been doing and scuttles over. Ordinarily, holding Hayden would earn him a ruptured kidney or worse, but tonight he is bold and drapes an arm over her side. She makes a weak sound of protest that he'd ignore, but then realizes his back is to the door. It doesn't feel right. After a minute or two, he gives in and rolls over to face the exit. What surprises him is how Hayden rolls with him, puts her hands under his shirt and presses her cheek between his shoulderblades with the thin excuse of, "'s cold."
They sleep until mid-morning and no one tries the door again.