Stick With Me, Kid, and We'll Go Places
HP x TWD
Characters: TWD cast + Harry
Summary: Harry Potter knew very little about America, so of course his 'family' had to take a vacation there right when the zombie apocalypse hit. He's only ten and he's already fighting for his life. Joy.
Disclaimer: I do not own The Walking Dead, Harry Potter, or ANY of the brand name products mentioned in this chapter.
Chapter 2 Word Count: ~3,421
"Kid, grab as many of the vegetables and beans as you can. Protein and fiber will be precious since we aren't able to get fresh produce, and beans will definitely fill you up, even if they make you gassy. Also, grab any spam or similar canned meat that you can - it'll be a Godsend whenever prey starts to become scarce."
Harry followed Glenn's directions as best as he could, listening to the scratchy voice on the other side of the walkie-talkie. Thankfully, while searching the security station for any type of weapon, they had found the old and blocky communication devices with plenty of juice in them. Glenn had been confident in the safety of the building, which was more of a glorified one-level mall than anything else, so the two had split up once communication was secure. That didn't help Harry's nervousness, though, so he regularly talked to the older boy.
Because of his relatives' neglect, he had hardly any knowledge of what could be considered healthy or not. Arguably more important and unfortunate, however, was the fact that his aunt had been a staunch rival of canned vegetables, preferring to buy them fresh. Oh, but she was more than willing to give him the slightly wilted leftovers her 'boys' refused. Bleh.
Therefore, Harry was stuck to following Glenn's advice on food. Apparently, the boy had been a pizza delivery man and, having been working in the food business since he was sixteen, and he had a vast knowledge of nutrition.
As Glenn had said, "Sometimes, you have to pick between the cheap and the healthy food. But if you're smart, you can do both. I was smart. Not smart enough to find a job besides being a pizza delivery guy, but smart enough to survive while doing so."
Harry didn't really get all of what he meant by all that, but he trusted the teen's advice anyway.
"M' name's Harry," he grumbled under his breath for probably the fifteenth time, reaching both of his small hands up to grab a large can, bringing it in his arms to reveal the label: Green Giant - Green Beans and Potatoes. Currently, he was scavenging the small canned goods section in a small Dollar General, and he couldn't remember a time where he was so glad for his age and height. When others had ravaged the shelves, they had mostly just grabbed what was at adult-height, so he had full reign of anything below three feet, although the stuff on the top shelf tended to be a pain even though it was available as well. "What about potatoes? Aren't they high in carbo-whatevers?"
"Ah, yes!" Glenn's voice crackled loudly in the otherwise silent shop. "Potatoes are a staple food, and they are rich in carbohydrates and calories. They are also delicious, and a favorite of many people. Grab them too."
"Okay!"
Harry continued to search the shelves, stuffing the duffel at his feet with numerous goods. When he ran out of cans to pack, he switched to other packaged foods that would be good for the long-haul.
"Hey… Glenn?"
"Yeah?"
"How long do you think this stuff will last?" By stuff, he didn't mean the food, and Glenn knew that too.
The voice on the other end didn't respond for a while, so Harry shuffled around and grabbed several boxes of pasta while he waited, ripping open their tops and snatching the plastic-wrapped goods within. Boxes took up more room than they had, after all.
"I'm not sure, Harry," Glenn finally said, his voice soft and his tone hesitant. "Could be a few more weeks, but I think it'll be a lot longer than that."
"Why do you think that?" he inquired, shifting the goods in his duffel around so that none of the items would get smashed when it was carried.
"... You saw a lot from outside your hotel window, right?"
"Uh-huh. I got a really good view because I was on the third floor. There was lots of undead, and a lot of people... uh… died…" Oh, okay, now he did feel really bad about making jokes while he was locked up in the hotel room.
"Well… um… This stuff is happening all over the world. At least, that's what we suspect, from all the rumors and news reports before the official outbreak. If it's anywhere as bad out there as it is here, in Atlanta, then a lot of people have died. And I mean a lot."
"How many?" Harry moved on to rice after running to grab some large ziplock bags, starting a process similar to the pasta. Rip open the top, grab a bag, pour, zip, and put in the duffel. An almost methodical rhythm hummed through his skin, and for a moment, he could almost forget all the carnage he had witnessed the last two weeks. Almost.
"I… I don't know? Definitely somewhere in the upper millions range, but I'm betting that whatever this is, it's probably wiped out over half of the human population by now, so probably almost 4 billion."
"Oh. That is a lot…"
"Yeah…"
The conversation dropped like a hot rock after Glenn's words, and Harry continued his gathering, a little more somber than before. About ten minutes later, he finally threw in the last package of rice he could fit within the duffel and tested its weight. Harry sighed and resigned himself to some hard work.
"Hey… Glenn?"
"... Yeah?"
"I'm glad I found you."
The walkie talkie crackled loudly at his hip, almost as if it had been dropped.
"I… I'm glad, too."
Harry allowed a small, private smile to creep across his face. Grunting slightly, he heaved the stuffed duffel with as much power as he could manage and left the store, heading towards the stairs. According to their plans, Glenn should be in the clothing store upstairs.
Oh… the stairs…
The first things that caught Harry's eyes once he caught up to Glenn had been a pair of shoes. A pair of thick, rubber-soled tennis shoes. They were a bit big on his feet, but Harry didn't mind. Their price tag spelled out a three digit number, and they came in three very distinctive colors: grey, black, and green. They were soft and comfortable and when he showed them to Glenn, the older boy had smiled and told him that they would be really helpful on tough terrain.
Immediately, Harry had tossed away his own worn tennis shoes with their grimy exterior and rubbed thin soles.
Unfortunately, Glenn couldn't convince Harry to get anything else after that, so enamored by the shoes the boy was. Instead, he decided that they might as well stop for a break. When he had found the boy, it had been around eleven am, so it must have been closing in around lunch.
Glenn inwardly winced when he remembered the state the boy was in, and how long it must have been since he had eaten… and he was so thin in the first place…
"Hey, Harry."
"Yeah, Glenn?" And lord almighty were Harry eyes able to shine. Given a few years to grow and gain some actual muscle and fat, this boy was going to be a lady killer, Glenn was betting on it.
"Let's eat."
If Harry's eyes had shined before, they practically glowed now, and Glenn couldn't keep his heart from aching at the thought of what his home situation had been before. He made a silent vow to himself to make sure this boy survived this shit hole.
It had both been hilarious and sad how excited Harry was each time Glenn introduced him to something he hadn't tried before, especially when they were items like Kraft Mac and Cheese, which he still eats sometimes, even as an adult.
Yeah, if anyone deserved to survive, it was Harry.
Maybe Glenn should have been more careful. Maybe he should have taken a detour. Maybe he should have scouted ahead before bringing Harry and the supplies along. He should have used his brain. Hindsight is twenty-twenty, everyone said.
As it was, Glenn had just dashed past a rather slow smattering of zombies only to run into a blockade made of army jeeps and a singular tank. There was also a rather large and suspicious sinkhole in the pavement that housed several undead stupid enough to fall over the edge. If he was lucky, that might work into his favor on another run.
No, the problem happened to be what was behind those military vehicles. Yes, his camp was along the road ahead, but what he didn't think of was the possibility of there being a zombie pile-up—a living, rotting, the pile of undead feasting on a corpse that had been living maybe only an hour ago—which there was.
When he had come through this area just earlier that morning, the streets were filled with walkers, but without something to eat, they were rather scattered and overall harmless to him as long as he moved fast enough. Two things had changed in the five hours he had been in Atlanta that now caused his previous plan to scatter in the breeze.
One: he now had one other person to look out for, so he couldn't just grab the bags and make a mad dash. Well, he could, but then he'd be leaving an innocent, probably abused ten-year-old boy alone in a zombie infested city with no means of survival. He would never forgive himself if he broke a promise so quickly, no matter if it had been promised aloud or not.
Two; someone else (possibly more than one, if the massive pileup was to be believed) had come to Atlanta for probably the same reason as him, and they had been taken down. Right now, they were providing an adequate distraction, but one wrong move in this situation could cause a nasty mob of undead attackers to descend on them like a flurry of wasps. He had a couple of knives strapped to his hips, but that would not protect them from more than an occasional wanderer.
Therefore, once they squeezed past the wandering loners that littered the streets, they had been forced to duck between two closely parked vehicles to avoid being spotted. Harry had objected at the harsh tug on his sleeve, but Glenn slapped a hand over his mouth, effectively silencing him. Those bright green orbs had narrowed on him in indignation but quickly looked down when Glenn quietly told him what was ahead.
"We need to be quiet and quick. Here, you hold the bag of clothes - it's the lightest - here, carry it like this. Now, when I tell you to go, you go."
Harry's eyes widened when Glenn slipped a knife free from its holder and held it out, handle first, to him.
"Use this if you have to. Aim for the brain. Just try to be quick and not get caught. If we get separated, find somewhere safe and contact me with the walkie-talkie, okay?"
Harry tentatively accepted the knife and gripped it with his right hand, fingering the leather handle with reverent awe. After a second where he marveled at the weapon given to him, the raven-haired boy nodded his head, locking emerald orbs with dark chocolate.
Glenn nodded as well and took another peek around the vehicle. "Okay… three… two… one… go!" he whispered, hissing the last word. With his left hand gripping his own blade, Glenn grabbed Harry's left hand with his right and propelled both of them forward into the mess ahead.
He regretted his choice almost immediately after making it. Not even a few feet from the vehicle, there lay a corpse which for all intents and purposes had seemed to be well and truly dead to his eye, with half of its jaw caved in and its lower half mauled beyond recognition. Unlike its brethren swarming a few meters away, this one had decided to be sneaky. Well, as sneaky as a foul-smelling, rotting creature could be.
Upon getting close enough to the corpse, its eyes opened and revealed sickly yellow irises. A haunting gurgling scream tore from its mangled throat, and without proper warning, its only arm lashed out to snatch its idiotic meal. Torn, yellow fingernails attached to rotting fingers snagged a far-too baggy pants leg, and with emaciated muscles, it pulled.
Harry screamed when the monstrosity seized the fabric sagging around his right leg. The walker had unbalanced Harry with its efforts, and before Glenn could truly latch onto the boy, Harry fell to the ground, kicking his legs blindly. The small dagger flew out of his hands and skittered across the pavement, coming to a stop only a foot away from the closest zombie, who slowly turned in their direction. A low groan rattled past its teeth as it eyed them with only one good eye (the other had been torn out, swinging nauseatingly from a hollow socket by a thin strand of connective tissue).
Several more groans responded to Harry's cry, and Glenn cursed under his breath. Shit. Shit, shit, shiiiiit!
With his own dagger, Glenn doubled back and stabbed the walker through one of its lifeless eyes. While the corpse had been able to cause Harry's fall, it, unfortunately, did not have the energy to bring the boy closer to his mouth, so it had only been able to gnaw on the fistful of fabric it had snagged. It had really looked pitiful if he was being honest with himself.
Glenn then jerked Harry to his feet and readjusted the bags on his back. Food. Hygiene products and Medicine. Clothes…
While making this decision, at least ten more of the piled up undead had turned their heads in their direction, each one rattling off a groan that echoed in his ears.
Glenn shoved off one of his two duffels and with a decisive slice, cut off Harry's. While medicine and hygienics were important, food had to be salvaged above all. Therefore, he removed the unnecessary weight and without the two extra duffel bags slowing him down, he reached down to grab Harry and slung him over the shoulder unburdened by food.
They had to get out of here as soon as possible.
Harry was all but sobbing on Glenn's shoulder as they fled back into Atlanta proper, letting out a gasp every time Glenn had to hop over a car or swerve out of a grasping limb or hungry jaw. The undead who had turned their way now begun to chase them with fever, their gurgling rattles and pathetic groans stirring a frenzy in the other walkers. Before Glenn could figure out a good escape strategy, several dozen walkers had already started culminating into a mob. Their decaying visages and frenzied movements, so uncoordinated as they were, stirred a boiling pot of panic in his gut.
Several swerves and ducks into side streets or alleys only dwindled the numbers by a few each, as the zombies were far too hungry and desperate to be as slow as they usually were, and those that fell were only trampled by the next two undead, like some perverted form of the hydra.
Glenn felt his legs try to tremble, but he forced himself to keep going. Harry had his hands fisted into the older boy's shirt, and if Glenn hadn't been working up such a sweat, he might have even thought that Harry was well and truly crying. Heck, he probably ways, but his mind could only focus on escaping. Getting out. Finding safety. Protecting Harry.
This was Harry's first day up close to walkers. This was Harry's first day trying peanut butter (and hadn't that been funny, watching him try and unstick the butter glued to the roof of his mouth). This was Harry's first day with brand new shoes that didn't fall apart or come as hand-me-downs. If he was believed, this was Harry's first day of true freedom from his relatives.
Harry was his responsibility now. It didn't matter that he had only met Harry maybe five hours ago, or that this kid has caused more trouble than he was expecting when he came into Atlanta. It didn't matter that this kid wasn't his little brother, because sometimes during those few, precious hours, he had begun to felt like one. Someone he could connect to and joke with, someone who didn't judge him for his race or his job or his nerdiness (well, he hadn't exactly let that shine yet, so he wasn't too sure on that point). Harry was Harry, and he knew too well how it felt to be hurt and judged, and that made him all the more precious to keep alive.
If anyone deserved to survive this world, it was the small raven-haired boy with bright green eyes and glasses too big for his face, a curious scar hidden under his untidy bangs, and a smile that could light up a city.
With determination, Glenn kicked up his speed, ever so slowly outpacing the mob behind him. A few blocks down, there was an apartment building with its front caved in. If luck was with him, the fire escape would be operational. Oh please let luck be on his side!
Three blocks…
Two blocks…
One block…
A series of shots rang out from a nearby building, and Glenn dropped to the ground and crawled behind a dumpster, wielding his knife with a shaking grip. When he peeked out from behind his hidey hole, the shots were still ringing, but the undead were dropping! Like dead flies, no less. In each and every fallen zombie's heads, a bullet hole leaked rotten and coagulated blood and brains.
The best part was that, since the shot was coming from so far away, the undead were not flocking to him! Instead, their focuses seemed to be set towards the north, where he could just barely make out a figure on a run-down shopping mall.
Glenn felt his heart stutter in his chest, and he carefully lowered Harry from his shoulders, setting the boy on the ground as gently as he could manage with his trembling limbs.
"Are you alright?" he whispered, grasping the boy's arms. Harry shakily nodded, biting his lips and altogether trembling like a leaf caught in a storm. "Hey… hey… look at me," he softly commanded, catching the boy's eyes. "We are alright. We are okay. Someone has saved us." He repeated those words over and over very quietly until Harry slowly relaxed.
"Yo, el burro!"
Aaaand Harry tensed up again. Great.
He slowly moved his eyes from Harry's face and focused on the man backed by two others standing several feet from them. The man looked Hispanic, and while Glenn didn't speak Spanish, the accent told him enough to confirm that he probably was. He carried himself proudly and wore a few pieces of jewelry that were only slightly gaudy. Did the guy not get the memo that it was the end of the world? The two men behind him were less identifiable by race, but still rather intimidating with their size and biker-gang-esque looks.
He eyed them up and down once more before finally replying. "Yeah?"
"What the hell you thinkin', man? Draggin' a kid through all that?"
Glenn didn't deign to answer him, but he did force himself off the pavement so that he was in a standing position. He then looked Harry over once more, making sure that none of the walkers managed to bite him. He even double checked his leg, but like he thought, the walker hadn't gotten anything but his pants leg, which had been torn down the side. Now the kid definitely couldn't object to grabbing some actual clothes.
He still needed to get the kid to cough up his family life, but that could be saved for another day.
The man coughed rather loudly and gestured them into the slightly safer alleyway. With reluctant footsteps, he followed, keeping Harry behind him. When they were situated in the small but walker free alley, the men turned back around and leveled him with a glare.
"What's your name, el burro? Yo soy Guillermo. "
"My name's Glenn, and this is... Kid."
For just a moment, Harry perked up, if only to slap Glenn's leg and say, "It's Harry! How many times do I have to tell you? It' H, a, r, r, y! Harry!"
Glenn smiled at Harry before refocusing on Guillermo.
"So, what's your story, boy-o?"
A/N: Omishinigami, I was not expecting for all the attention I got with this story! This honestly was more of a fic I wanted to write for personal enjoyment, but I am so, so, so glad that you guys are enjoying it, too! At the time of writing this A/N (less than twenty-four hours after CH 1's posting) I have received 30 Favs, 55 Followers, and 6 reviews, not to mention that TWO of you wonderful people put me on your communities! ... I kind of feel like crying out of happiness! =TwT=
This chapter was already worked out ahead of time, so I quickly wrote it up (about eight hours or so) and therefore it's a little hot off the plate, so expect a couple typos (I'll fix them soon, I promise)! Also, I kinda just added Guillermo into the plot to A) spice it up a bit, and B) because I really, really wanted to write some Guillermo, because I think he's precious, and he's fun to write (I'll really have to exercise my Spanish skills for him, but bring it on!).
Happy Writing~!
_-*Doodling Shadows
EDITED 2/17/2019