Summary:

In a world where zombies have taken control, there's a boy and a girl. The boy refuses to give up on the world, and the girl already has.

Percy Jackson flees New York with three other survivors after the zombies take control of the city he had once grown up in. He regrets leaving without making sure his parents were still alive, and still holds that guilt two months later.

Percy and his friends drive across the world to Portland, Oregan in search of a new home. Along the way, they face trouble as hundreds of thousands of zombies chase after their car. The four teenagers say their goodbyes as their car is completely surrounded. They didn't expect to be saved by the cold blonde and her band of misfits.

Annabeth Chase has seen hell and back. She refuses to show any emotion of any sort after multiple traumatic experiences before and after the outbreak.

Will Percy be able to save her from both herself and the flesh-eating monsters attacking them, or will he die trying to save them both?

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"Nothing is impossible to kill. It's just that sometimes after you kill something you have to keep shooting it until it stops moving." ― Mira Grant.

Never take the ones you love for granted. One second they could be in your arms and the next they could be laying on the floor in a pool of their own blood. You'd watch as they would stare deeply into your eyes as they take their final breath. Tears would silently fall down your face as your forced to watch your loved one turn from a corpse into a zombie. In a split second, you're forced to make a heartbreaking choice. Do you have the guts to kill the person you love before they kill you?

Most people emotionally shatter and let their knees fall to the ground in defeat. They would rather turn into a monster than kill someone who cannot be saved. Others will mutter a sorry before pulling the trigger, and watch as black blood would seep out of the dead zombie they once called family. Every kill takes away a piece of their soul.

In this type of world, it's kill or be killed. I learned that the hard way. You cannot let emotions hold you back from doing what needs to be done. Zombies are ruthless, they hold no emotions. Over the years I have learned many things, but none as important as concealing your humanity to kill those who want you dead.

Love is weakness, and someday it will get you killed. In a world like ours, you cannot fall in love, and you cannot love anyone without the fear of losing them. That fear will cause hesitation, and hesitation only ends in death.

You might ask yourself, "who would want to live in a world without love?" You don't need love nor humanity to survive. Bravery and strength are rewarded in a world like ours. Survival is the goal above everything, but the real question is - who will be strong enough to survive?

My past haunts me every day, but it also keeps me moving forward. The faces of those I've lost along the way are what urges me to continue to fight. They are the reason I refuse to give up, but they are also the reason I refuse to ever love again.

Their deaths destroyed me inside and out. I lost a part of myself every time I watched someone I loved drop dead and turn into something I could barely recognize. It took me a while to accept the fact that things will never be normal again, that I will never feel true happiness and love ever again.

Some people don't deserve happiness, and I guess the gods decided I was one of them.

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Monday, March 22nd, 2021

(the day of the outbreak)

Percy Jackson coward in fear behind a group of students as he watched his human biology teacher get torn into pieces by several teenage zombies. Blood and flesh were everywhere. Percy could do nothing but watch as the kids he grew up with were eaten alive by the flesh-eating monsters.

Blood was smeared against every wall of the school. Detached limbs and clumps of hair covered the school floors.

Percy was in the seventh period when suddenly two teenagers stumbled into the room like they were on drugs. His human biology teacher screamed at them for interrupting his lesson, but instead of apologizing or explaining why they were in the classroom - they ate him.

The two teenagers turned zombies blared their bloody, yellow teeth at the students, and growled in an animalistic way before all of the students began to stand up and run around in fear. In that moment, Percy made eye contact with another student. Her eyes held tears and her hands were visibly shaking. She made no plan to stand up like the others, she stayed in her seat quietly. It was as if she was waiting for the zombies to eat her alive. She was killed two minutes later. Seven students were able to make it out of the classroom without being turned while the rest of them were either turned into a zombie or eaten alive.

Percy counted eleven zombies.

Percy shook his head in disbelief and grabbed a baseball bat from one of the nearby sports bags. He slammed the baseball bat into the stomach of one of the zombies pretending its stomach was a baseball. The force of the hit didn't seem to affect the monster - therefore Percy slammed the bat as hard as he could onto the top of its head. The zombie slumped onto the floor as the wound on his head gushed out a dark, gooey type of blood.

Percy shook in fear as he continued to swing at any monster coming his way. All he saw was blood and lots of it. The zombies were slow, their normal walking pace had to be equal to shuffling for humans. That seemed to be the only advantage humans had against this new species.

Zombies came at him from every side. He barely even had time to acknowledge the fact that he was indeed smashing zombies' heads with a baseball bat instead of learning about organelles or the cell cycle.

Percy stared down at the dead bodies in horror. He was devastated. Tears began to appear in his eyes. Just under fifteen minutes, all of his classmates were dead and he had just become a murderer. He dropped the bat with a clang and swiftly moved across the room to quietly shut the door.

He looked out of the small window and winced as he watched zombies tear apart bodies like they were nothing. He wanted nothing more than to be the hero and open the door to save everyone - but with what? His tiny baseball bat and non-existent brain? He wasn't smart enough to survive a zombie apocalypse.

In that moment he suddenly started to think about his family. His mind quickly wandered to the memory of his mother. Is she alive or did the zombies get to her as well? He makes an impulsive decision and pulls out his phone. He dials her number and quickly holds it to his ear. He can hear zombies moaning from outside of the door. He was quickly redirected to voicemail.

He looked outside the window before grabbing his baseball bat. He put the bat in a defensive position before opening the doorway to at least half a dozen zombies. He shook his head and chuckled to himself. "Of course, of course, zombies would attack two days before prom."

He ran hallway to hallway in search of his step-father, Paul Blofis. Paul and his mother had met when Percy was twelve years old and got married several months after his fourteenth birthday. Percy was hesitant to accept Paul into their tiny family at first. He had a traumatic experience with Sally's first husband, Gabe Uglino, therefore he had always taken pride in interrogating Sally's boyfriends. He had never genuinely liked any of the men she brought home before, until one night she had introduced him to the man that saved her from several muggers on Broadway Street.

Percy was grateful Paul was there to save her from the thieves, but grateful doesn't equal trust. It took lots of time and hard work, but in the end - Paul became Percy's first father figure. Percy's biological father had died at sea during a storm before Percy was born, therefore he had no idea the seventeen-year-old boy existed.

Percy struggled to breathe as he ran down the hallway, dodging several nasty zombies on the way. He couldn't help but study the zombie's movements as he continued to run for his life. They weren't anything like how they were described in action movies. In most movies, they were portrayed as speedy and intelligent creatures, instead, they moved at a slower pace and were even smellier in person.

Fear was the only emotion Percy felt as his whole body was suddenly slammed against a locker. His eyes widened as he watched a little over half a dozen zombies hurtle themselves down the hall, their eyes and teeth blaring at him. He gripped the baseball bat tighter and mentally prepared himself for the fight he would soon be fighting.

The zombies looked straight out of something from a horror movie. Their eyes were a hazy white color, and the sides of the pupils were permanently bloodshot. Their arms stayed limp at their sides while their legs would forcibly drag their whole body to chase their prey. It looked as though their jaw muscles refused to work considering slobber was coming out of their open mouths at every second. Their teeth were yellow and most were stained with blood and other substances.

Percy was at the end of a hallway with no escape. He considered moving into one of the empty classrooms, but it wasn't a good idea considering all of the glass was made bulletproof after the school shooting at Goode High a little over six years ago.

The first zombie that was close enough to bite Percy immediately got his head smashed by the baseball bat. Percy couldn't help but chuckle as he watched the zombie fall to the ground without a sound. He ignored the fimilar faces of the zombies and kept pretending his friends and family weren't (possibly) a part of the zombie population in order to mentally get himself through the crisis.

Another zombie came at him from the left. He jumped back before the zombie could begin to bite through the skin on his neck. He swung the bat at the neck of his victim. The zombie made a growling noise before laying limp on the ground. Its body would twitch every single or so but Percy was certain the creature was dead.

"Nope . . . not dead," Percy stated with widened eyes as the zombie began to crawl on his knees. Percy hit it in the head as hard as he could. Black blood spilled all over his face as the baseball bat made contact with the zombie's skull.

Two more zombies came at him with an unexpected force. Their bodies slammed into Percys, sending all three of them to the ground. Percy froze in shock as one of the zombies straddled him. Its mouth began to bite the air as Percy struggled to keep its mouth away from his skin as he grabbed the zombie by the waist and threw it back onto the ground.

He quickly hopped up as both of the zombies slowly began to stand up. They were too wobbly to stand straight up, therefore Percy saw this as his chance to escape. The other three zombies seemed to disappear down a different hallway - maybe they found another student to feast upon?

"You stupid, ugly, smelly, looking monsters need to fuck off . . ." Percy mumbled as he hit both of the barely moving zombies with the butt of his baseball bat. He could see their chests moving up and down - indicating they were still alive. He didn't have enough time to completely kill the two zombies, he needed to find his stepfather.

He ignored the two zombies on the floor and began to quietly run across the hallway in search of any human life. He threw his back against a nearby wall and poked his head to the side to see the clearing of the other hallway. He counted four zombies in total - and one of them was looking a lot like his freshman English teacher.

He wanted to make sure his family was alive. Scratch that - he doesn't want to know, he needs to know. He doesn't know how to handle the heartbreak of losing a loved one to something as scary as death (and zombies). Without his family - what else does he have left?

Just as Percy was about to make noise to alert the zombies of his presence, a loud horn was sound. Percy covered his ears and hid behind the nearby trashcan as he watched the four zombies he was watching stumble over each other as they ran down the hallway in search of the source of the loud sound.

He ducked his head once again and decided it would be pretty stupid to follow the zombies.

Curiosity got the best of him and five minutes later he was silently following a herd of zombies to the school parking lot.

Percy watched as a Mercedes colored in blood and grime smashed into the herd of angry zombies as if the car was going bowling and the zombies were the pins. A crowd of zombies surrounded the car as soon as the driver hit the breaks. Percy winced as he watched a female zombie willingly knock her head into the passenger window, smashing the window into pieces.

Percy stood up at once and took in his surroundings. Nearby shops and fast-food restaurants were burnt to pieces. Zombies could be spotted from the nearby Amish fields as they chased cows and crying pigs. The sky was an unusual gray color, yet no sign of any rain nor thunder.

He looked down at his hands. One hand crushed into a fist and the other held his zombie killer baseball bat. He howled a battle cry and slammed his baseball bat on the railway. The attacking zombies took their attention off of the minivan and slowly made their way over to the raven-haired boy. Percy backed away slowly as they made their way closer. He tilted his eyes and made eye contact with the driver in the minivan.

Charlie Beckendorf winked gratefully at his savior before turning his attention to the road. In front of him stood several dozen zombies waiting for another brain to munch into. Several zombies made their way over to Percy but Charlie could tell he had it by the way he gripped the baseball bat in his hand as if it was a sword.

Percy watched as his fellow swim teammate continued to run over zombies recklessly as if they were characters in the video game GTA they were both madly obsessed with. Percy shook off his sadness as he watched his sophomore Algebra teacher crumble to the ground covered in black goo (blood).

The boys worked together as one in order to kill every single zombie that stood in their way. After fifteen minutes of zombie killing, both boys stumbled out of their positions in happiness and laughter.

"Who knew you were so good at driving over zombies?" Percy joked as they gave each other an epic bro hug.

". . . And who knew you were so good at smashing zombies," Charlie laughed as they both turned their attention to the steaming engine on the blue minivan and the many dead zombies next to their feet.

"Never thought id say this," Percy paused as he pulled a piece of bloody skin off Charlie's bloody sweatshirt. ". . . But I'm really missing biology class right now," he muttered as he continued to search their clothes for any zombie or human parts.

Charlie looked Percy in the eyes and titled his head to get a good look at the school behind them. "Do you think anyone else survived?"

Percy looked up at the school in worry. His mind was somewhere else. His mind flashed with memories from his childhood. He saw his first sleepover, tenth birthday party, first kiss, and many other sentimental memories he hadn't thought about in years.

"No," Percy responded with complete honesty. He didn't expect to see Charlie Beckendorf break down into tears next to him. Charlie was always known to be the tough guy - he never backs down from a challenge and Percy respects that about him.

Charlie wiped away his tears as soon as he saw Percys worried glances. "You know Silena, right?"

"Silena Beauregard, the Junior class president?" Percy asked in confusion. He was curious as to what a guy as anti-social and awkward as Beckendorf would want with the popular, preppy girl? He has had multiple conversations with the perky blonde. She had always been kind to him and thankfully she was never flirty and suggestive like the other girls were (and he appreciates that) towards Percy. She genuinely liked him for his personality and not his amazing looks.

Charlie nodded his head back and forth like a bobblehead. "Yeah. . ." He coughed and wiped at his runny nose. "We started talking during the summer before this year, and we got pretty close," Charlie paused and smiled as he felt nostalgia overcome him as he thought about the memories before continuing. "She didn't want to make our relationship public because she knew our parents would never approve of his dating," Charlie shrugged like it was nothing.

". . . And?" Percy urged him to continue.

"And. . . We've officially been secretly dating since late July. Charlie beamed like the sun. He was relieved and happy to finally get his dirty dark secret of having a girlfriend off of his chest, even if it was to a simple acquaintance. He looked back at the building in panic. "We were torn apart as we were running out the building. One second we were holding hands - and the next second I was running out the door alone."

They remained quiet for a moment. Percy feels his pain, he's going through the same situation at the moment. "My uh - my stepfather was in there also," Percy sucked in a deep breath and nervously chuckled as he shook his head. He had never been one to express his feelings, especially to someone as unknown to him as Charlie Beckendorf. Sure, the two boys had been on the same swim team since they were kids, but they never truly became friends.

"Maybe, just maybe they made it out alive," Charlie hoped as he took a large stride towards the school. As soon as he realized Percy wasn't following behind him he paused.

"Where are you going?" Percy asked as he took a hesitant step forward.

Charlie turned his body in order to face Percy. He pulled two small daggers out of the waistline in his pants and smiled at his teammate. "Where do you think I'm going?" Charlie asked as he examined the entrance of the school. "We're going to go look for more survivors."