A/N -Ok, a couple things actually relevant to the story (although not integral, you can skip if you want). First, Chloe's stutter. I know last chapter it seemed as if she had it still, but I figure hey, she's lived through a zombie apocalypse. So for this story the stutter will only be appearing when she's under a huge amount of stress. If you look at the last chapter you'll notice it only really appears when she's talking about thinking she has the virus or when Derek is freaking her out.
I now have a slight idea where the story is going, I figure it'll be around five chapters. That's it, hope you enjoy the chapter!
Chloe felt as if the air was being squeezed out of her. She had spent the last several hours hanging around the camp waiting for the others to finish their blood tests, her mask was stifling but she had resisted the urge to take it off in case she hadn't yet been infected.
She could hear nothing but a strange high pitched screeching noise that reverberated in her ears. After she had finally considered it safe to go into the waiting room she had been met by Aunt Lauren in her hazmat suit. She had heard from the others that Chloe might be infected (although she hadn't really been that close to Liz, but the others didn't know that), and she came back every few minutes to hover awkwardly and try to comfort Chloe. Unfortunately she only seemed to make it worse by reminding Chloe of the predicament she was in every few minutes.
Chloe had been leaning back, eyes closed, trying to breathe evenly, avoid panic, when a large snap made her sit upright in her seat. The door had burst open and a white and blonde blur had charged forwards and practically mauled her, making high pitched noises and muttering about how she was so worried and how she had promised to protect her and how Chloe was never leaving town again – she would find another runner for her research.
"Aunt Lauren, calm down!" Chloe said, trying to extract herself from her Aunt who was slowly squeezing the life out of her. "I can't breathe!"
"I am never letting you go again!"
Chloe walked into her house as quietly as possible. By the time she had gotten cleared it was already the middle of the night and she didn't want to wake up Tori. Families had had to double up in houses; it used to be Chloe, her father, Aunt Lauren, Liz, and Tori, but with Liz gone the house just seemed empty. Aunt Lauren had slowly been growing obsessed with her work and both Chloe's dad (Steve Saunders), and Tori had been moping in their rooms.
No one could really blame Tori – she had just lost one of the only people she considered a friend. On the other hand, whenever Lauren caught sight of Steve she scoffed and muttered something about a 'waste of space'. He hadn't handled the transition from travelling businessman to purposeless apocalypse survivor very well.
For once, the empty, quiet house was a relief and Chloe collapsed on her bed.
"Milos!"
"Chloe! You're OK?"
"Yep! I'm clean!" Chloe liked talking to Milos; he was their neighbour and still the tiniest bit rusty at English. The two of them walked through the twisting paths between houses; whoever had designed the town definitely didn't do so with convenience in mind, houses were crammed into the space and sometimes you just had to set off in the right direction and hope you got where you wanted eventually.
"Do you know the movie for today?"
"Uhh, I think it's-"
"Chloe!"
"Kari! Hey!"
"We heard you were out hunting for brains!"
"Uh, no, all clea-"
"You're looking surprisingly lively for a zombie."
"Miranda, I'm f-"
"Hey Chloe," more and more of the 'teenager faction' of the town started to crowd around them on their way to the bi-monthly movie day and Chloe and Milos were quickly forgotten in the hubbub. They exchanged a sheepish smile and a half a shrug as the disorganized swarm of people filtered through the city. The group travelled down well-worn dusty dirt streets which merged into other dirt streets carved straight into the earth. When their path merged with another road they followed after another group of upper middle agers.
The two groups made no sign to greet each other but some of the adults did send the group primarily comprised of teenage girls a scathing look and pointedly ignored them the rest of the walk. The theatre, once they reached it, was further divided into groups which sat in front of a large painted white wall faced with a projector at the back. Group lines were strict and did not tend to cross, they were divided by gender, age, race, and occasionally family and the noise of them all talking buzzed like angry hornets.
"Is that her?"
"Which?"
"The blonde one."
"Oh, for heaven's sake be more specific!"
"The tiny one."
"Oh that's her alright."
"They let her back in the city?!"
"Well her aunt is the one running the blood testing."
There were gasps all around, "brilliant!"
"It's a conspiracy!"
"They've endangered us all!"
"I say we run 'em out of town."
"Perfect!"
"We can't let some little brat drag the rest of us down, can we!?"
"I heard the aunt has a cure for the virus."
"Why hasn't she released it?"
"Why would she?"
"What d'you mean?"
"Yeah, don't try and be fucking coy with us!"
"Out with it, we know you're dying to say!"
"Well, I heard that before the outbreak, they were poor."
"Poor?"
"Exactly, but now that we're all stuck here they figure we're equals or something."
The man sitting to the immediate left of the speaker shuddered and gave the girl, currently weaving her way through the crowd, a dirty look, as if he was considering getting up and driving her and her aunt out of the town at that very moment. However, she walked past him without incident and remained completely oblivious to the topic of their gossip. The man didn't make a single move and nor did any of his coconspirators, of course.
Standing off to the side and looking hesitant and confused was Kit Bae and his family. Inter-town disputes didn't tend to come with a guidebook and they weren't completely sure where they should go. "My neighbour Milos is saving some seats for us, if you need somewhere to sit."
Simon smiled, "sounds good," and the group started working their way back to the other side of the crowd.
A woman gasped quietly, "Are those the new people? Why are they with her?"
"They could have gone up to anyone here but they choose to pal around with the zombie-to-be?"
"We're such a friendly town! Why make friends with her?"
"I bet plenty of people came to welcome them, even invited them to the movie today!"
"We can't trust them."
"Well not now, anyway!"
"That's for damn sure."
"Shh! They're coming!"
The conversation was quickly stamped out as Chloe, Mr. Bae, Simon, and Derek shuffled past. "Thanks for letting us tag along," Simon and Chloe lead the four of them through the crowd while Derek and Mr. Bae discussed something boring and science-y in the back.
"No problem, I know it can be kind of hard getting to know people here."
"You're not kidding! It's like being back at high school or something."
"Hmm, you know, I think this might actually be worse than high school."
"If that's even possible," Simon grinned as they settled down around Milos.
"Milos, this is Simon, Mr. Bae, and Derek. You guys, this is Milos."
Mr. Bae chuckled, "You can both just call me Kit, no time for formalities during the apocalypse," he grinned and Chloe noticed it was in the exact same way as Simon.
There was a clicking sound as the projector flickered to life and an image was unsteadily projected on the wall facing the crowd. The mob like crowd hushed to hear the clicking and whirring of the projector.
It was due to this hush that Chloe was able to hear Derek's scoff, "The world goes to hell and these people are wasting electricity on a movie night."
Chloe was about to tell him off – intimidating or not – the movie night was helping hold their town together. It was better than sitting at home worrying and doing nothing. The crowd was bathed in the blue light from the movie as the fluttery music of the Disney opening played. Just as she opened her mouth to give him a piece of her mind, the lights completely cut out and the movie turned off, the town was thrown into utter darkness.
For the longest fifteen seconds Chloe had ever experienced, they sat in silence born of the shock. A woman near the front of the crowd screamed and the spell was broken. People jumped to their feet, ran to the exit, tripped over each other, joined in the screaming, stayed sitting, tried to make themselves as small as possible to avoid getting trampled. In short, it was chaos.
"Scared, little girl?" asked a voice suddenly very close to Chloe's ear.
"N-no!" she said as she jumped away from her unexpected company.
"Could have fooled me," he laughed, but Chloe was getting her bearings back.
"Not the time, Royce. I need to go track down my aunt." Chloe squinted, trying to force her eyes to adjust to the darkness faster. She got up from her seat where she had been remarkably safe from stampeding feet, and tried to feel her way around the people on the ground and toward her aunt's lab, where she knew Aunt Lauren would be working overtime and keeping an eye on the town entrance.
Royce laughed at her quietly, but made no move to follow her. The dim emergency lights flickered on just as Chloe's outstretched hand touched the back wall of the theatre and she took a few steps to the left and dashed out the exit, running to her aunt's lab at the other side of town to make sure the research was ok and find out what happened.
The crowd was once again surprised into silence as they tried to figure themselves out in the dim lighting. People found themselves several feet over from where they believed they were, completely separated from their clique, tangled together with people they had never talked to, lying on the floor but suddenly able to haul themselves to their feet and to safety. The crowd looked at each other in confusion, sizing each other up, and then, almost as one, wearily started to move towards the exit without a word and with a tired sort of energy.
Royce looked around at the small group of people surprised to find him in their midst. "Hey," he said slowly, pointing at Derek, "you're that new kid who went on the last raid with us." He had an annoying sort of smirk as he started walking away, Derek could see the wheels in his head turning. It was like he wanted to piss Derek off for some reason, and he wasn't quite sure how to go about it yet, but he was sure he would find a way.
Why he wanted to single out Derek of all people was a mystery. Maybe because he had seen him on the raid, maybe because of some weird macho thing, who knew how Royce's mind worked? Maybe he was just bored. He continued to smirk at Derek as he effortlessly walked through the moving crowd to his father and brother.
As he finally looked away, Derek turned to Simon. "What's his deal?"