AN: For the record, I do know where this is going (for once). I also have lofty goals of it being rather long and, if I'm really lucky, maybe even finished one day in the next decade.
I'm trying a few new things here. Firstly, I usually write character-driven fanfiction. I take what people I'm given and play with them. This 'writing off the back of a world' is rather new to me. Secondly, I don't ever write first person. It's quite ... illuminating.
For those of you who are wondering, this is set in modern-day New Zealand. Explanations to follow much later as the story progresses. I'm also sacrificing topography and land ownership for plot, at least in this chapter. The rest of it will be more-or-less on point.
And lastly, I forgot to mention, this will involve none of the Dragon Age folks we have come to know and love. Since I'm rampantly hormonal over Cullen, this is a major concession on my part.
Disclaimer:
I own nothing you recognise. This is all completely un-beta'd and totally fresh off the top of my brain!
To this day I will tell anyone who cares to listen, and even those who don't, that it was the horses that saved our lives at the start. They had been restless the entire week, but on that day, not even Bailando would stand for tacking. Even the hounds were baying, their usual quiet nature set aside by the sense of impending storm.
We had, being smart and forward-thinking women, set up a Zombie Apocalypse plan. Well, when I said we'd set one up, I mean we'd read about ebola and, while drinking and watching Archer, discussed that we'd all meet up at my house, pack up the horses, and head to the holiday home my parents had left me out in the Coromandel. Incredibly remote, it was a four hour drive by car. By horseback? Who bloody well knew, especially given our unfit asses.
The day Hamilton went dark was the day we 'enacted' our plan. Daisy and Josephine drove over to my house, boots full to the brim of anything they could think of. We'd unpacked it all into my house, a little two bedroom cottage on a swathe of farmland big enough for my 'furry entourage' as I called them. Four hounds and five horses – because no one could stop at just one gaited horse, and I of all people certainly couldn't. Once my parents died (and their sensible, restraining presences no longer there), I'd consoled myself with acquiring three more horses (on top of my two) and two more borzoi.
What could I say, I acquired animals like most women acquired shoes. Turns out it wasn't such a dumb idea after all.
So we holed up at my house for a while. Listened to the news, watched it where we could. The TVs were the first to go dark. It seemed the more technologically advanced an object was, the sooner it died. It took another week for the radios to kick the bucket.
That was three days ago.
We had made the decision to start sorting out what we were taking (and how) then. Packed up the Sako rifles, Daisy's bows and arrows, every knife we could find in the house and under it, even the box cutters. Stuffed all the desiccated meats and fruits into saddlebags. Packed vitamin tablets on top of that. Antibiotics, methylated spirits, Daisy's deluxe first aid kit went into another.
We'd raided a camping store once the looting started. Most people went for the supermarkets, or hit the stores with products of financial worth – every store-held TV in Auckland was taken within a matter of days – but we were at least smart enough to go for what we'd actually need should this be the zombie apocalypse.
In went waterproofs, merino under-layers, all the socks and underpants we could find. Water filters, tinder packs, a couple of pots. A couple of new, super-light-weight (incredibly expensive, although inevitably free) tents and three sleeping bags. The kind that managed to disappear into these tiny little bags and weighed almost as much as your average phone. Not that we packed those.
It was a frenzy. Our spines tingled, a sense of lurking doom overcoming us. The horses were picketed out the front, ready to be saddled and strapped down with bags.
Far off in the distance, we heard a roar.
I have never tacked up two horses so fast in my life. The last saddlebag went onto Kinder barely four minutes after we began, and I threw Daisy up onto Dom before releasing the tumbling, terrified, baying hounds from their run.
Bless them and their furry wee paws, not one of the four shagpile rugs even ran away, rather crowded against Perignon as I mounted.
"Jo?" I yelled back into the house. There was a scuff and she came tumbling from the house in her haste, throwing herself onto Katja's back.
"We need to go, no-" The roar was deafening and the horses stampeded. Hooves churned the dirt and careened out of the gate, heedless of the direction they were going only away, away, far away from whatever made that noise. Paws scrabbled and hounds leapt, keeping pace with the thundering mounts, and it was all we could do to cling to their manes and hold on for dear life. Pasture careened by, hills disappearing behind us as we continued our desperate race.
It felt like hours before they finally slowed, feet stumbling and legs quaking beneath their heaving sides. It was even longer before Perignon finally stopped, and I could slide from his back. My own knees wouldn't hold me and I landed with a jolt on my ass in the grass, Peri too exhausted to even flick his ear at me. The hounds piled onto me as first Daisy, and then Jo, slid from their own mounts.
"Sweet baby Jesus," Jo breathed, leaning against Katja. Daisy slid down Dom's front legs to drop her forehead against the ground.
"I think I'm going to be sick," she moaned into the greenery. I pushed a canine nose out of my face, only for it to push itself at my ear.
"Did you..." I began. Jo nodded. "What..?"
"Think evil cave troll with big horns," she gulped out, one hand pressed to her racing heart and eyes wide.
"The fuck," Daisy hissed at the grass.
"Sweet baby Jesus," I agreed, and wrapped both arms around my cream-and-honey hound. "I think," I began. My breath was still clawing down my throat. "We need to rest."
Jo, practical and strong Jo, slumped to the ground herself. "I think so, too." Katja wheezed and Perignon sneezed. Dom just stood there with his head dropped and his sides heaving. We'd even managed to retain Kinder and Bailando through sheer force of the herd dynamic. They stood off to one side, eyes still rolling but legs rooted to the spot.
Nothing was going to move those horses until they'd caught their breath.
I heaved myself to my hands and knees and then slowly, carefully, to my feet. My legs protested as I waddled around, loosening girths and unclipping reins. We left the hackamores on, lead ropes clipped to their halters. The hounds collapsed into a pile of curly fleece-like fur and gangly legs off to one side, well out of the way of the horses. We sat, holding lead ropes and staring numbly into the distance. Where we'd come from.
We couldn't see the farm, of course. We'd fled too fast and too far for that. If I were to hazard a guess I'd say we were somewhere in the sprawling section opposite – to the right it looked like a patch of native bush which could possibly have been the 'token green patch' in the middle of the section (because these days 'all' developers were about saving the environment, and having a 'token green patch' of native bush was the easiest and most cost-effective way of saying 'look! I'm doing my bit for the environment!'). The property was just in the early stages of being subdivided into luxury lots of sprawling hectares and stunning views overlooking the coastal inlet of the Firth of Thames, although we were still maybe ten kilometres off that view.
It was a ridiculously massive section. I still don't know why it took so long to be developed, or even farmed. Hell, it wasn't even farmed. It was to be turned into those dinky little 'lifestyle sections' with multi-million-dollar houses on them and maybe a couple of sheep.
In truth, I was only on this track because my brain was refusing to think about what we fled from. Jo was still ashen, hands stuffed between her knees to stop their shaking. I did not want to think about what could have made that noise, or what that meant. Because that meant admitting that there was something going on, rather than a failure in technology preventing people from contacting one another and letting them know they're okay.
That was something I was so far away from being ready to contemplate.
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