A/N) This is an au that has literally nothing to do with anything. Seriously. I just couldn't get black leather fingerless gloves out of my head and this random thing was born.
Don't ask.
My thought process is weird.
On the other hand - Zombie apocalypse AU? UM - Fun? Probably...
Enjoy?
Motivation is your Superpower - unless you don't like this than . . . yah.
There used to be a city here. But looking at the fallen husks of what once was there, you'd never know it.
Giant pillars of mans achievements, just crumpled broken bits and chunks strew about a cracked, dry and barren crater that used to be home to thousands. Now?
There were only a few tens . . . most don't know there are others besides themselves.
A young boy - perhaps around the age of fourteen or so, he was one of the unlucky children who were present for the beginning - he can't remember before though, he doesn't remember fun and fresh air, and school and parks and games and families and friends. He only knows this. The past is more a dream than anything and that is fading too.
He's here though - adapted, like he was meant to be in this time. Like there never was a better time. Young, blond and blue.
He's out here, he shouldn't be, but in order to survive he needs to be out here. He walks, naturally silent and swift, picking his way through rubble and underneath collided concrete that fell into a cavern shape. A plastic bag held tight in his grip, fingers white underneath black fingerless gloves, his blue hoodie getting a little small for his growing, although under average, body.
He needs to get back. The red sun was setting, the haze was crawling in like a turtle - it's almost soothing as it calmly covers everything in grey and blurriness. But he knows better - that calm was what happens before the storm.
Before they come out - to haunt, to feed, to scavenge... And he needs his brain thank you.
He climbs up a cracked piece of asphalt that used to be a street, but now blocked, with the help of other huge chunks of buildings, the other side of the city - the slightly less infested side. The side where he and his only companions lived, survived. Whatever.
He crawls - than the 'screetch screetch' sound of dry skin scrubbing against broken debris startles him stiff, half way up the climb. He does the dumbest thing he could and turns to glance behind him.
A hideous twisted, dripping face moans back at him, mouth toothless and grey, what used to be it's tongue just a chewed up mesh of dead flesh and his one eye that seems to work is glowing a cracked yellow.
His heart's in his throat. The boy refrains from screaming - that draws them in, and scrabbles up the wall as hard as he can, his fingertips cold and scrapped of skin now. It almost - almost gets his ankle.
He throws himself, in one last unthinking movement, over the wall, misses the foothold and goes tumbling down the harsh surface with a yelp and cry of pain until he lands in a shuddering heap at the bottom.
He, unwisely, throws another glance up at the rim of the wall. His heart the only sound for miles - he waits, cold sweat pooling down his neck, he half expects it to make it over the wall - they never do but . . . but this one might.
Half a minute or an hour later- he doesn't know . . . but it doesn't make it.
He lets out a wheezy breath and scrambles to his feet, his black boots scrapped, his face hurts. Whatever. He has the bag - his heart is thumping like those - what where they again? Those furry jumping things . . . Bunny! Bunnies . . . yah, there used to be bunnies around here, maybe - he can't really remember. But they were soft and cute and . . . the suns almost down.
He needs to go.
He grips the bag, thankful for still having his brain inside his skull, and runs for the entrance to their underground makeshift home. It used to be a basement for some company - he heard one of his brothers say that.
The last ray of depressing red sunlight disappears just as he slips inside, the cold grey air making him shudder one more time as he closes the heavy door against it.
Safe.
Inside is dark. But his eyes adjust quickly.
"Hey, hey, I'm back!" The blond boy calls out, his maturing voice cracking.
A sudden, startling, blur of black and green shoots past him with a whoop and snatches the bag out of his grip.
"All right! Hey, Brick, Boomer brought lunch. Finally - I was beginning to think a Zombie ate your slow brain or something."
"Give it back Butch! I worked hard on that!" Boomer, smaller build, shorter and as blond as Butch was black, gives the bigger boy an offended look.
"You want it?" Butch needles and waves the canned beef at his brothers face. "Get it." He raises his hand up higher. Boomer growls and jumps for it.
A sealed navy door scrapes open and a tall, elegantly build, red haired boy walks in, eyes trained on a stack of papers in his hand. "Cut it out, Morons." He doesn't even look up as he snatches the can out of Butch's hands much to the other two boys chagrin.
"Show off." Butch snorts and proceeds in digging through the bag again. Boomer lungs for it, misses, and ends up smacking face first into the wall.
Butch promptly burst out in obnoxious laughter.
Brick sighs irritated and slides into a wheelie chair, pushes off with one foot and turns towards a large desk filled with stacks of bleeping computer consoles and radios. Nothing with a screen, just wires attached to heavy old monitors and dials and buttons and things that make Boomer dizzy to look at. Brick on the other hand knows what everything does and he does it every day.
"Buuuutch, cut it out! I almost got eaten on the way here ya know!" He tries the pity card.
Butch rolls his eyes, foot planted firmly in the center of Boomer's chest as he holds him at - legs? - length. "You ain't dead, so stop whining."
Brick blinks up, looking at them now - "You ran into one of them? Now?" He turns towards one of the monitors and taps an old sticky key. "But they shouldn't be out - it's too early and - " He starts muttering in that way he does when he goes into 'hot nerd mode', Butch calls it that. Boomer doesn't know what should be weirder, that Butch called Brick a hot nerd or that Brick accepted it.
Either way -
"Chill out Brick . . . It was probably a straggler." Butch placates as he chews the rubbery meat from a can he pried open.
Boomer shudders, remembering those hollow eyes and how those groans sounded, all husky and brittle and - yuck.
Brick ignores them both and takes a pair of clunky head phones, he pushes one to his ear and reaches for a piece of gross nourishment, clenching the piece of beef between his teeth, he reaches with meaty fingers for a dial that Boomer thinks fixes the static sound Brick is always listening too. What he listens for is anyone's guess.
"Hey, where'd you get these?" Butch asks suddenly, holding up two wrinkly sticks of dried meat.
Boomer makes to snatch them, but the dark haired boy laughs and holds the items out of reach. "C'mon, it was really hard to find thoooose." The blond boy whines and lungs, landing on Butches chest. He straddles the bigger boy and attempts to push him down so his grip loosens.
Butch finds this hilarious. Boomer huff angrily - they always pick on him. Wait - Butch always picks on him, Brick usually ignores him.
Speaking of ignoring. That's exactly what the red head is doing. His crimson eyes glazed over as he glares at nothing, Beef hanging limply between his teeth, fingers rolling the dial between them, back and forth and back and forth.
Suddenly, it's like someone put a live wire on him, that's how fast he shoots up, stick straight, eyes wide as the sun and beef forgotten, half bitten on the desk.
"Holy - "
Butch jumps up and drags Boomer with him, shoving both of them onto Bricks shoulders. "What? What? What's wrong!?"
Brick shakes his head as if trying to dislodge a dream, his eyes narrow and he shrugs his brothers off, reaching for the port where the bulky headphones were plugged into. "Listen to this."
Boomer feels electricity go up his spine - his neck hairs prickle and his arms feel like a hundred small bugs are biting the skin. What's going on -
Brick turns that dial juuuuuust right and -
Holy what?
It blares to life - with static but - but - but there's something else there, something behind the static mess.
"If anyone can hear me - bzzzt - this message - bzzzt - to follow the shadows - bzzzt - safety and may be a way to - bzzzt - the Zombies - bzzzt - help - bzzzt - only hope - bzzzzt - " It was broken, crackly, faint and the voice is thin and high . . .
Boomer feels like his heart was yanked out, watered and shoved back in. It's overflowing with fear and hope and horror and he doesn't know what the hell to do with himself so he - cries.
"Does this mean what I think it means?" Butch whispers, he obviously doesn't know what to do either. He's never quiet.
Brick chews his bottom lip - face taught. "Could be old. The frequency is too broken to tell - but -"
"It's a possibility?" Boomer quivers out, dragging a fist across the annoying tears staining his dust covered face.
"Yah." Brick breaths after a tight moment, gloveless fingers tight and white on the desk rim. "Yah -"
"You think?" Butch looks like someone sucker punched him.
Brick turns to them both.
"There might be other people out there. We might not be alone after all."
It sounds like a dream come true.
A/N) Um - I don't think this is going to be more than a one shot.
Unless enough of you care about it. If not - well, thanks for reading this piece at least!