Content Waring: It's a zombie fic folks so expect blood and gore...oh and character death, not in this chapter but most likely later on, it is the apocalypse.
Beca quietly hummed to herself as she drove cautiously through the wrecked cars that littered the road. She had to be careful, she had no idea what could be hiding behind the various vehicles. One wrong move could very well mean the death of her. And she couldn't die, not yet. She had to make it home, had to see if the person she cared about the most was still alive.
She couldn't believe that it had only been two months since the outbreak. Two short months for the entire world to go to hell. It was almost pathetic how quickly humanity fell victim to its own hubris. She didn't know which mad scientist was responsible for all this but if she ever met him she was going to have a very short but painful conversation with the man. Or a woman, for all she knew some girl broke the glass ceiling in the crazy department. It sounded like something Stacie would do by accident.
Beca was currently in southern Vermont working her way south back to Georgia after visiting her mother in Maine for winter break. It was there that she first heard the news. Beca and her mother had been sitting on the couch watching the news when an emergency broadcast declaring a national emergency came on and that some sort of virus had started infecting people. Very little information was given, just that the virus had started in India and had spread at an almost impossible rate across the entire world. The major cities fell first, a veritable shmorgishborg for the newly infected. Beca was lucky that her mom lived on the outskirts of Portland and that Maine had one of the lowest population densities in the US. She was also lucky that she was more prepared than most for the apocalypse. Beca's mother was a police officer and as such made sure that her slightly diminutive daughter knew how to defend herself, either with a gun or hand to hand. Beca's mom also taught her various survival techniques like starting a fire without matches or how to sleep in a tree. It sounds weird but that info had saved her several times already.
For the first week Beca and her mother had bunkerd down in their house, waiting and hoping that the military would come in and mop up the infected. Help never came. By week three they were starting to run low on supplies and decided to head out to look for food. They thought they had struck gold when they found an unlooted grocery store but their luck quickly turned sour as they were overrun by dozens of zombies. They had managed to trap themselves in a corner of the store and in a desperate escape attempt Beca's mother sacrificed herself so that Beca could escape out the door and back to their car. After that Beca returned to her mother's house and gave herself a day, one day to grieve and plan what to do next. Deciding that there was nothing left for her there she quickly packed up whatever food there was left and an assortment of weapons that her mother kept around the house. Beca quickly loaded as much as she could onto her mother's police issued motorcycle and started the long drive to the only family she had left.
"Well shit" she whispered quietly to herself. As she slowly maneuvered her motorcycle around an overturned semi-truck she saw what appeared to be six zombies all huddled around what looked like a dead cow. Judging by the look of them they were regular zombies, if there was such a thing. 'Well at least they're not hunters' she thought to herself. On the short drive she had discovered that there were in fact two types of zombies. Normies, which were relatively harmless unless they were in large groups, and hunters, zombies who could move at ridiculous speeds and had enhanced senses. The first time she had encountered hunters they had almost managed to catch her while she was driving thirty miles an hour. If she hadn't been on the open road she would almost certainly be dead right now.
The six undead hadn't noticed her yet but all it would take was the slightest noise or a shift in the wind. She had noticed that zombies were practically blind and that they relied on hearing and smell to hunt. She also noticed that low constant noises, like the sound of her idle motorcycle, were less likely to be noticed. So she took a second to look for a way around the dead when she heard the soft sound of pounding feet behind her. Without even needing to look she gunned her bike and shot forward, startling the six in front of her as she raced past them desperate to escape. A quick glance over her shoulder showed that there were two hunters sprinting flat out trying to catch up to her. She was in a bad situation, the crowded road meant that she couldn't go full speed and the zombies were closing fast. She quickly zig-zaged through the debris and couldn't believe her luck when she saw she was in the clear. Or at least that's what she thought until she heard a growl come from behind her. Grabbing the sawed off shotgun from its holster near her leg, she turned around and fired point blank into the screaming face of what could have once been a beautiful young woman. Not even bothering to check her work, Beca turned back around and pushed the bike to its limits to get away as fast as possible, leaving the other hunter in the dust.
Beca continued driving for a couple hours, slowly making the hop from Vermont to New York. What would usually be considered lovely countryside was now marred by car wrecks and the occasional undead. When the sun started getting low in the sky she started looking for a place to rest since going out at night was basically asking to be eaten. She breathed a small sigh of relief when she saw the abandoned gas station. Maybe tonight she could sleep with a roof over her head and use a working toilet. As she pulled into the gas station she killed the engine and listened intently for any sound that would signal danger.
"Dead quiet...great Mitchell, excellent choice of words." she had taken to talking to herself in order to fill the void that had surrounded her since her mother died. It had been weeks since she had met another person and that person had just stared at her as she drove past.
She approached the gas station door and placed her ear on it to determine if the place was really as abandoned as it looked. After a solid minute of nothing she gave a quick kick to the door, letting the sound attract any zombie hiding inside. After another minute of nothing she decided to slowly open the door and take a look. Inside the shelves were almost bare, clearly someone had already looted the place. She made a slow counterclockwise rotation of the room, checking every aisle and behind the front desk before making her way to the bathrooms. If asked she would never admit it but she was grateful to Jesse for making her watch Zombieland with him at least a dozen times. If there was one thing that movie got right it was to beware of bathrooms. She gently searched one bathroom then the other, finding nothing she let herself drop her guard and relax for a second. She made her way back to the main room where she stopped dead in her tracks. Standing in front of the exit was a very large man. He must have been at least six feet tall and weighed at least three hundred pounds. He had a long, unkept beard and the smell coming off of him was something horrendous. Beca wasn't sure if the guy knew what a shower was, even before the fall.
"Well, well, well aren't you a pretty little thing?" he sneered. Beca meanwhile was mentally berating herself, where had this guy come from? Movement out of the corner of her eye showed the open door of what appeared to be a supply closet. 'Well shit'.
"Look dude I don't want any trouble just let me go and no one has to get hurt." Beca was desperate to avoid a fight. Despite the fact that this guy was giving off some seriously creepy vibes she didn't want to have to kill him.
"Oh I don't think you're going anywhere" with that he lunged toward Beca. For such a large dude he moved surprisingly fast. But Beca was faster, she ducked out of his reach and scampered into one of the aisles trying to make it to the door. "Where do you think you're going?" he mocked as he grabbed the hood of her leather jacket. He reached around her neck and tried to put her in a stranglehold. Beca tried not to retch as the bastard's smell invaded her nose. Instead the self defence training her mom gave her kicked in. She lifted her right foot and slammed it down as hard as she could onto the guy's foot. When he screamed in pain she followed up her attack with a quick elbow to the ribs. She had a grim smirk on her face when she heard a rib snap. Once he released her she pivoted and slammed the heel of her wrist into the jerk's nose, blinding him with involuntary tears. Finally, she gave him a swift kick to the groin hoping he would learn his lesson. But unfortunately the dude was a moron and kept advancing.
"You stupid little bitch, I'll make you pay for that!" he yelled as he started lurching towards her again. Reaching behind her back she drew a large combat knife from her belt and threw it straight into the would-be rapist's throat. He gave her a startled and uncomprehending look as he landed with a large thud, blood began to pool around him in an ever widening circle. Meanwhile, Beca keeled over and promptly emptied her stomach onto the floor. She took a minute to compose herself after the reality of what just happened sank in. She had just killed a person, sure she had killed plenty of zombies but now she had killed an actual person, she was a murderer.
"No, you can't think like that, even in the old world that was self defense and justified, besides he kind of asked for it." She was still rather shaken up by what just happened but she bent and retrieved her knife from the body, cleaning it off on the guy's shirt.
After catching her breath she made a quick check of the supply closet and allowed a soft smile. Inside there was a commodity that she could have barely hoped for, she had toilet paper again. A deep groaning sound came from the body that lay behind her. Horrified, she spun around and stared as the man who she had just killed slowly started to get back up, his eyes dead to the world and throat still seeping blood. He began to lurch towards her once more, only this time more slowly and there was a bit of a shamble to his walk.
"What the actual fuck?!" she reached behind her once again for her knife, this time aiming for his head. She silently thanked Lilly for the knife throwing lessons that she offered the Bellas. It had seemed weird at the time but Beca was starting to think that Lilly could see the future and knew that this was coming. The quiet girl always freaked the other Bellas out but there was no denying that if anyone was going to survive this, it would be Lilly.
Beca quickly reversed her grip on her knife, holding it by the blade, and hurtled it towards the new zombie. The blade flew straight and true, spinning end over end until it struck straight into the zombie's eye, killing it permanently. She knew that in order to kill the undead, the irony was not lost on her, you had to kill the brain, otherwise they would just keep going. What she did not know was that any human could become a zombie, she had been working under the assumption that you had to be bitten in order to become one. Turns out she was wrong which meant she was going to have to be extra careful from here on out. She retrieved her knife once again, proud of herself for not wasting any bullets, and cleaned it before returning to the closet and grabbing as much toilet paper as she could carry.
Exiting the store she quickly fueled her bike, slightly shocked that the pumps were still working, and started driving south. Even if she could have removed the body there was no way she was going to stay in that place for longer than she had to. The smell alone would drive her insane but it would also attract other undead to her location and she had met her quota on zombies for the day. After several more miles she slowed down when she spotted a tree that looked decent enough in which to spend the night. It looked to be an old oak tree with branches low enough for her to climb but high enough that the zombies couldn't reach her. Not like they could climb trees anyway but she liked to err on the side of caution. She quickly covered her motorcycle with branches to hide it from anyone who might stumble upon her campsite and started a small fire to heat up a can of beans. When she was finished with supper she doused the fire and grabbed her sleeping bag. After a few attempts, 'Why do I have to be so short', she managed to grab the lowest limb and made her way to a larger, sturdier branch she could sleep on. She carefully arranged her sleeping bag and crawled inside, thankful to have something to combat the cold with. She then took a long rope and whipped it around the branch to tie herself to the tree so that she didn't roll over and kill herself in her sleep, because that would just be embarrassing.
As she lay there trying to fall asleep she looked up at the stars through the branches and quietly started to hum to herself, "I got my ticket for the long way round, two bottle a whiskey for the way. And I sure would like some sweet company, and I'm leavin tomorrow what do ya say." as she finished the verse a slow tear made its way down her cheek. "Hang on Chloe, I'm coming home."
Also this is my first fic so feel free to be as harsh as you want, I feed off the negativity. But that being said constructive criticism is better.