They Left Four Dying - Chapter 6

"Ergad!"

The foursome simultaneously jumped at the sound of a yelp from behind them, all four instinctively reaching for their guns either by their sides or on their laps as they sat in their little circle. Only after a mild heart attack on all their parts did they realise that it was only Tweek, who had felt panicky about sitting in the circle and who had decided to isolate himself a short distance away in the already tiny supermarket staff room, twitching to himself and mumbling under his breath. Craig hadn't even flinched at Tweek's outburst, apparently already used to his friend's idiosyncrasy. Cartman, being their resident asshole, predictably did the scolding.

"God dammit, Tweek. Try and control yourself, God knows we're all jittery as fuck already."

"Nyargh! I'm sorry!"

Stan pursed his lips as he observed the blond silently, taking in every twitch and shake. He hadn't spoken to Tweek for the longest time, the last time he remembered having a proper conversation with the boy (and even that was with the other three of his friends at his side) was all the way back in fourth grade. The only other times he saw Tweek in the context of school in the present day was when he trailed behind Craig, sometimes spotting him on one of the spectator stands of the football field waiting for the brash teenager to finish practice. Stan had never given him much thought, aside from the passing suspicion that Craig might be more than just "friends" with Tweek.

But now that both him and Craig had apparently joined their survival group, it might be a good idea to start learning more about them. How had they survived thus far? What had they learned about the zombies that maybe they could share? As much as Cartman wanted to mock Kyle for his nerdiness, Stan knew his super best friend was right about their survival depending heavily on information.

"Craig...what happened to you guys? How did you get here, anyway?"

Craig didn't respond immediately, instead fingering his blue chullo on his lap whilst appearing deep in thought. This was perhaps a good indication that they had experienced some serious shit. Stan had known Craig when he was angry, or sullen, or irate, or some other synonym that matched that emotional profile, but he had never seen Craig at a loss for words before. The blood caked in his black hair also really helped that serious-shit vibe.

"...they came in through the window."

All eyes turned to Craig, with the exception of Tweek's. He had apparently hear d this story before.

"I was just finishing off that stupid math homework that Garrison gave us when one of those fucking things broke my window and crawled into my room. I didn't know what it was, or what was happening, but when the thing nipped at my ankles I crushed its skull in with one of the legs of my chair. Ran out of my room and down the stairs. I couldn't see my dad anywhere...but my mom was on the floor, being chewed on by one of the fuckers. I looked at her face once and knew she was gone."

Kyle's breath hitched in his throat. He didn't know what was worse at that moment; the thought that Craig had actually witnessed his mom being eaten by one of the zombies, or the fact that Craig's voice sounded so hollow and lost that he didn't even sound alive himself.

"I don't even remember what happened next, just...flashes of rage and fear. The next thing that I remember is being at Tweek's doorstep. Broke down the door after I didn't get a response, ran up to his room, and saw him under his bed, terrified the fuck out of his mind, screaming about death and how his parents had tried to kill him and how everyone we knew was dead and how we were going to die too..."

The boys' heads turned at the sound of a stifled sob from behind them, watching as the blond kid with the chaotic hair wept into his hands, shaking even more violently than before. The scene would have been even more heartbreaking if it weren't on the fact that everyone was permanently on edge, and had been for the past few days. Kyle stood up, walked to Tweek's side, sat down and placed an arm around the boy's shoulders and drew him wordlessly into his chest, looking like he was trying not to cry himself. Kenny cast a furtive glance at the pitiful sight and turned back to Craig.

"It's fine, Craig. We get it...we don't need to hear the rest of it. We just want to know how you guys survive thus far...stuff you've learnt about the zombies."

"We headed in the direction of the supermarket. I know the movies say not to head there cause they're fucking deathtraps in a zombie apocalypse, but it made sense that most people would have fled South Park already. Once in a while we raided some of the houses in the area for supplies and weapons. We've got a few handguns, but nothing more than that."

Craig suddenly stood, somehow looking even more drained than he did before.

"If you jerks don't mind, I'm gonna take a nap. Tweek and I have been taking turns to stand guard around this place, but Tweek's not very good at it, so I'm fucking exhausted."

Stan shot Cartman a look before he could give an affronted rebuttal to the "jerks" comment.

"Go ahead. We'll look out for you guys for the next few hours."

"Thanks, Stan."

Kenny prodded Tweek's shaking form as he continued to bury his face into Kyle's shirt. The boy had stopped crying, but it didn't take a genius to know that he was clearly exhausted from the endless days of fear. The bags under his eyes were a pretty clear indication of his fatigue, and despite all the caffeine that they knew Tweek inhaled on an hourly basis, his favorite over-the-counter drug apparently hadn't been working for a while.

"You should get some rest too, Tweekers. Get some sleep...God knows you need it."

The jittery boy mumbled some incoherent, intelligible line of thanks to Kyle and Kenny before raising shakily to his feet and retreating to the back of the staff room, rambling quietly under his breath the whole way. Kenny watched him go, shaking his head in pity.

"Damn...as if Tweek wasn't having a hard enough time with his crappy parents, this had to happen-ow!"

"Don't talk about his mom and dad that way!"

Kenny threw Kyle a scowl as he rubbed the area on his head where the redhead had cuffed him, Kyle looking back at him with that familiar self-righteous gleam in his eye. It brought a sense of relief to Kenny. It appeared that the one in their quartet that he thought would have required a little more babysitting had been slowly finding some of his old mojo back, and this haughty, mildly arrogant attitude is exactly what he wanted to see. The old Kyle. Kyle thenyelped as Kenny wrapped his head under his arm and roughed up his scalp with his fist. Old Kyle or not, Kenny had to keep the redhead's ego in check once in a while (Stan was way too much of a goody-goody to take on that role), and there was no better way to do that than a nice noogie. The pair continued to struggle in each other's grip for a bit before the other two walked up to them, Stan throwing careful glances at Craig and Tweek on the ground a short distance away.

"If you two pussies could get a room, that'd be great."

"Fuck off, fatass. God dammit, Kenny. That actually hurt."

"You know I can't resist pounding on my favourite Jew a little, in more ways than one if you know what I mean."

"...God dammit, Kenny."

"Guys, lower your voices. Let's talk about Craig and Tweek."

"Geez, fine. Jealous much, Stan?"

"We need-" Stan interrupted himself as he realised he was talking too loudly in his attempt to turn the mood back to seriousness. "We need a plan, guys. We've got two other people with us now. We need a way forward."

"You're making having two extra people with us sound like a bad thing."

"I'm not saying that..."

Kenny raised an eyebrow at Stan's tone. There was an underlying elephant-in-the-room that had inevitably trumpeted its way into all their minds the moment they laid eyes on their classmates, but that none of them even wanted to call out. Even Cartman, as tactless as he usually was, didn't say a word about it. As the four boys simultaneously turned to look at Craig, exhausted and already asleep on the ground and audibly snoring, and Tweek, who was watching his friend silently, with an occasional hiccup or flinch that shook his little body, there was no doubt in their mind that they might actually be in for a harder time from this point on.

"I don't want to be the one to say this, but-"

"Then don't."

Kyle cut Stan off with a biting tone of exasperation and desperation. Stan looked straight into his best friend's eyes and saw the same look that Kyle always had when they got into trouble and knew there was no way out of their predicament, and that all there was left to do was to face it. It was a look of resignation, but also steely-eyed resolve.

"Don't say anything."

Stan nodded, biting his tongue.


The sextet of scrappy kids ended up spending more time in the abandoned supermarket than they had expected. Some perusing around the otherwise empty building led the boys to a room that Craig and Tweek had previously missed. After breaking their way in (which involves smashing the lock open with the butt of a rifle), the boys found an assortment of tinned food and bread in the little pantry, which had probably been where the supermarket staff went to relax before the undead descended on South Park and ended their jobs and possibly their lives. After eating their fill (Kenny had to smack food out of Cartman's indignant hands when he reached for one too many twinkies) and stuffing their jackets with as much food as they could carry without severely encumbering themselves, they were off.

Craig had accepted their plan to head for Denver without argument or question. It became abundantly clear to the four boys that Craig and Tweek didn't actually have a survival plan beyond the supermarket; who knows what would have happened to them if they hadn't be found. The boys had shared some ammunition with the newcomers in their team, and while they were pretty sure Craig knew how to fire a gun, Kenny's first task had been to try and teach Tweek how to properly fire one.

"Ngagd! I don't like this! What if I end up shooting my own fingers off! Then the zombies will just pull me in and I won't be able to grab onto anything! Oh gawd!"

Stan would have burst out laughing if their situation hadn't been so absolutely unfunny. After a few miserable and hilarious minutes of Kenny trying to teach Tweek some firearm technique and quickly losing all of his patience, Craig finally spoke up in his usual nasal monotone.

"Don't worry about him."

Kenny quirked an exasperated eyebrow at the boy in the blue chullo hat.

"He'll need to be able to defend himself, at least. What if we get separated?"

"Seriously. He'll be fine. Just give him a few rounds and leave him to it."

Kenny seriously doubted what Craig was telling him, but decided that it wasn't worth pursing the matter any further. Tweek was already looking so fidgety with the impromptu lesson that he doubted anything he was saying was entering his head anyway. Kenny passed his single Magnum to the twitchy boy and softly shook his head as Tweek nearly instantly dropped it as though he had been burned by the metal, before slipping it shakily into his pocket. Literally nothing the blond kid was doing was reassuring Kenny in the least.

And to think he was worried Kyle would be the problem.

Walking a little ahead of the rest of the group was said redhead, who was in the middle of a quiet argument with Cartman about where they had to go next. Stan and Craig walked silently behind them, taking in what the argumentative pair were saying. As they continued walking and arguing their quiet argument became less and less so, until they were both screaming at each other at the top of their voices without abandon, completely forgetting whatever they had discussed about silence before.

"That doesn't make sens!."

"What doesn't make sense, Jew?!"

"Your plan! Why the fuck are we taking a path through the corn field, for fuck's sake?"

"It's the perfect plan! The corn field should be quite abandoned cause no one in their right mind on an ordinary day goes there anyway besides farmers, so there'll be huge, safe areas where we can cross to get to the high school to take shelter and look for supplies!"

"The corn field is a fucking nightmare, Cartman! The corn field are taller than us at this time of the year. What if there are zombies? That's a disaster waiting to happen! And it's getting dark, so we should not be heading into a place with nearly zero visibility at this hour anyway! We should just walk around it to get to the school!"

"Um, hello? What were you just saying about it getting dark? If we take the long path we won't get to the school until the sun has completely set! Now who's not making any sense?"

"Stan! Back me up here!"

"Yeah, Stan! Tell your little Jew boyfriend that he's being an idiot!"

"I'll fucking kill you, Cartman!"

The two angsty teens then proceeded to pounce onto each other, scratching and squabbling on the ground, firearms strewn to the side, fists flying. Stan scratched the back of his head and looked at Craig with a sheepish expression. Craig seemed marginally surprised that Kyle and Cartman had erupted into a full-on fight right in front of their eyes, and looked otherwise unaffected by the tussle, merely stopping in his tracks and staring down at the fuming, fighting pair as emotionlessly as a human feasibly could.

"Sorry bout that...I guess this feels just like back in fourth grade, huh?"

Craig shrugged.

"Hn. I don't mind it much. We should get going soon, though. It's really about to get dark. And we should really keep our voices-"

Stan looked straight at Craig, confused as to why he had stopped in the middle of his sentence. Then, a movement. Stan thought he had imagined it at first, but when the sight of a gnarly thing with a massive right appendage emerged in his line of sight from above Craig's shoulder, Stan found himself instinctively snatching at the AK47 strapped around his torso. In his peripheral vision, he saw that Craig also had his M16 in his hands and was casting a steely glare at something that he could see above his shoulder.

"OI! YOU TWO! STAND THE FUCK UP!"

Stan completely blocked out Kenny's furious yell and looked down his weapon's sight, aimed straight at the abnormally large zombie and fired a burst of rounds. At the exact same time, Craig rested his left hand, which was holding his rifle's stock, on Stan's shoulder for stability and fired. The sound of the weapon unloading next to his ear was truly deafening and was accompanied by the sound of a muffled "sploosh", as though a massive water balloon had somehow exploded from behind him. Stan thought he felt some liquid splash onto his back and prayed that he had imagined it.

Kyle and Cartman are on their feet, scrambling for their weapons like headless chickens. Kenny had one hand on his sniper rifle and the other on Tweek's shoulder, as though holding him back from harm. The human jitterbug was pulling little hairs out from his scalp in an anxious panic, fighting the urge to scream.

"STAN!"

Kenny's second yell shook Stan out of his hyper-sensitized stupor. Before he even realised that the zombie he had just fired at was not yet felled, the sound of a rhinoceros trumpeting alerted him to the fact that the massive zombie was facing both him and Craig down. His brain instantly tossed out the logical fact that zombies were not rhinoceroses in exchange for the much-more-useful fight or flight reflex. In an instant, the zombie moved quicker than was humanly possible. Stan continued his firing, but it kept coming. And coming. And coming.

Stan's eyes widened in sheer terror at what was to come. He attempted to push Craig out of the way. But it was too-

With a sickening crunch, the charger smashed its body into Craig and Stan, charging with such strength that it didn't stop upon impact, merely taking two teenage bodies along with it in its singular, straight path. Stan yelled as his senses were disorientated by the speed at which he was traveling and the pain erupting from his chest at the impact of the zombie's massive right arm against his ribcage. He heard a massive thud, but the charger kept going, seemingly unaware that one of its prey had fallen to the ground away from its grasp. Stan could barely even breath as the charger skidded to a halt an imperceptible distance away from where his friends were just a second ago.

Its arm, clenched in a vice grip around his torso, felt like steel.

Stan screamed as he was slammed unceremoniously and without restraint against the ground once. Twice. Three times. Every impact felt like being crushed against a brick wall. He could feel himself slipping into and out of consciousness. He had never felt pain like this in his life. A particularly violent slam and Stan lost all strength to even yell. The last thing he saw before falling into darkness was the charger's dead, unforgiving eyes staring aimlessly into his soul.


Author's Note - Yeah. Sorry about that.

When was the last time I updated this? 2015? Well shit.

Finally found some free time. Hopefully this chapter didn't decline too much in quality from the others thus far. At this point I don't want to make any promises...who knows when I'll find the time to write for this story again? Might be in two days, or might be longer...I'll do my best.

~SUITELIFEFAN