The suburban hamlets and idyllic neighborhoods of Mystic Falls resemble nothing more than the streets of a deserted ghost town. It's not the picturesque warmth that the greeting cards and travel brochures show. It's an emptiness, a quiet deadness that is eerie in its completeness. Dark windows stare like empty sockets down on a road littered with debris: clothing, overturned bicycles, a broken fence gate hangs half-off its hinges squeaking in the barely there breeze of a mid-summer in July. Cars stand abandoned in driveways, in garages, open doors and now dead interior lights in the middle of the silent streets. Newspapers crackle and whisper as the wind scampers them across pavement and grass, and a squirrel pauses at the foot of a tree, twitching ears before darting up the side and disappearing into the branches.
Damon never realized quite how much noise humans could keep up until they aren't keeping it up anymore. There's no music in the background, no voices carrying through the air, no lilting laughter or charged shouts. The familiar scents of soap and food and perfume and life are missing now, and all his senses detect is the grass and trees, dogs and cats, and the lingering, acrid stench of sickness, death and decay.
"This isn't right," Bonnie whispers and her whisper is as loud as a shout to Damon's ears in the still silence. He can hear her swallow, the slow breaths she takes to keep herself calm.
"No," Caroline agrees, wrapping an arm around Bonnie's waist. "It isn't."
It's not the time nor the place to make some quip about girl-on-girl love as he divides his attention between watching the streets and watching his companions, so he doesn't. He hefts the pick axe that he carries in one hand, gaze sliding to Ric and his crossbow. Damon can hear the shambling dead walkers but they're a good distance away and nothing to fret over.
Yet.
They pass a car, ran up onto the curb and into a tree. The hood is bent into a upward peak in the middle, the front end has a nice tree shaped dent. The airbag is deployed, and something dark and thick trails from the car and down the road, stopping at a well made Italian leather loafer.
There's a faint sound from the witch, and Damon comes to a halt, fanning to the side as the two girls stop. Peripherally he watches Bonnie bend to pick up a bedraggled doll, watches her straighten the dirtied dress before upending the overturned wagon it must have fallen out of. She places the doll neatly, without a word.
"Bonnie -" Caroline begins.
"I'm good." Bonnie's reply is sharp, tight. Damon can hear the horror in her throat, the things that she's holding back and not saying. He's almost impressed, except that she's not new to death and horror, though this goes far beyond anything that any of his companions has ever dealt with, and he hopes that the witch is a lightweight because the dent that Ric and Caroline put into his alcohol stash in the immediate aftermath was quite large.
"Matt's house is right up here," Bonnie holds her head up high, and pushes forward. Eyes straight ahead as though to block out what she's seeing because she's seen enough.
And you haven't seen anything at all, Damon thinks.
There's movement off to the side shadows, and Damon and Caroline exchange a glance, stilling at the same time. Damon places a hand on Ric's arm, Caroline pushes Bonnie behind her and - another beat later, both vampires relax. Damon can hear and feel Caroline's sigh of relief, and he rolls his eyes.
The mutt of a dog, with a matted, muddied coat wanders from between houses. It's been eating well. The stink of garbage and decomposition cling to it and Caroline wrinkles her nose prettily in disgust. "We don't have any food. Shoo!" Not too loudly, because while they have suspicions that the walkers navigate by sound like hungry, blind brain dead bats, they haven't tested it and have no intentions of doing such.
They piled into the streets from all directions when Ric fired a shot gun, and they're not too long off when cars are involved, hence the reason they're all on foot.
The dog sniffs the ground and wanders closer.
Damon growls, because the last thing they need is rabies or a tagalong mutt following around behind them.
The mongrel whimpers, backs up, tucks tail between its legs and darts across the street.
Bonnie gives him a look. "It was a dog, Damon."
"It's been eating dead bodies, Bonnie."
She blanches, and Damon smirks. He'll take the little victories where he can get them. Though the next moment he's frowning at Ric who's just slapped him up along the back of his head.
The Donovan house is empty and has been for days. Damon senses it the moment they step onto the porch. Empty houses have a certain feel to them, and this house radiates it the same as all the others in the neighbor. The smell of death is here too, the windows busted out are not a good sign.
The door is unlocked when Caroline tries the knob. She pushes it open, peering inside, and calling softly, "Matt? Matt? It's me. Caroline. And Bonnie. . . and Ric, I mean, Mr. Saltzman and -"
"Really?" Damon interrupts. He pushes past Caroline and then just stops. Hands placed against the invisible barrier before him as though he's a sidewalk mime.
"Damon, quit goofing around," Ric chastises.
"I'm not," Damon tells him and once again really, really hates the metaphysical rule that requires vampires to have an invitation. There's no way that Caroline and Bonnie won't stop looking for Caroline's Ken Doll until he's found - or until Damon can actually get inside the house.
"You can't get in!" Caroline jumps up and claps her hands. Damon steps back just in case her overwhelming happiness leads her to do something like hug him. "Yes! You can't get in!"
Blondie, of course, can get in because she's been invited and she's across the threshold and calling out for Matt again with renewed enthusiasm. Bonnie follows with a backwards glance over her shoulder, and Damon swears she's smirking at him.
"You want to stay here and watch the door?" Ric asks as steps inside.
"Yeah, why don't I do that." Damon leans against the invisible barrier as though it's a wall, and from the look Ric gives him, he knows it's just a little disconcerting. Good. He listens as the girls move through the house, opening doors, checking in closets. Damon could have told them that the boy isn't there, but Caroline won't be happy until she turns the place inside out and they've nothing but time on this wild goose chase.
Which isn't quite so wild anymore because now they have to find Matt. Who could be bleeding out and dying somewhere, with zombies feasting on his entrails but that's probably not a suggestion that the merry rescue brigand wants hear.
"He's not here," Caroline announces as she comes down the stairs and to the doorway with Bonnie on her heels. "But I know where he could be."
"The Grill," Bonnie supplies.
"You want to go to the Grill?" Damon's gaze flickers between the pair of them, but it lingers on Caroline. "You have got to be kidding me."
###
"I don't like this." Their small group is standing at the main intersection leading to downtown Mystic Falls, leaning and crouched against the wall of the corner brick building. It's past midday and the sun is past its apex and winding its way toward the evening, though it will be some time before it sets. It is the height of summer where daylight is greater than nightlight, though that doesn't matter to walker zombies.
Caroline shakes her head, cheerleader ponytail bobbing and bouncing as she does. "I don't like this," Vampire Barbie repeats.
Damon scans up one side of the street, down the other and across the square. "I assume that you like it better when the streets are crawling with zombies?"
"No." Caroline scowls at him and Damon can't help but smirk a bit. Seems that Caroline's natural way of looking at him is always a scowl of some sort. "I just don't like it when it's quiet like this. It's too quiet."
"I'm going to call it a blessing." Damon steps away from the wall and takes another look down the four streets. "We shouldn't have a problem getting to the Grill, anyway."
"But?"
Damon was waiting for the prompt and he didn't doubt for a minute that Ric would oblige him.
"Getting into the Grill might be a problem." Their traveling band of merry makers aren't the first who had this idea. That's his assumption from the scene in front of the Grill. A three car pile up, two doors ajar, one body half out of the car but not quickly enough by what's left of the attempted escapee. "I don't think we're the first ones to see Shaun of the Dead. If anyone's in there, if they're smart, they're going to have it locked up tight."
"Breaking and entering is going to be noisy," Ric says. Damon won't ever admit it aloud, but he likes that the school teacher isn't stupid and can follow his train of thought so easily. Then again, maybe he will share it out aloud because he's pretty sure Ric would be unsettled for days to know that he's able to think like a raging sociopath.
"I can unlock it," Bonnie volunteers. She looks between her compatriots and there's a firmness in her voice that suggests that maybe, just maybe, the witch has gotten some footing despite the grimness of the surroundings which don't sing cheery songs of days gone by. She wiggles her fingers, gives a faint smile that while not touching her eyes does spark with a hint of smugness. "Witch, remember?"
"Can you unbarricade it?" Damon tosses right back because it's something to do, and hell if he's going to let anyone other than himself be the smug one under these circumstances. Besides which, cockiness gets people killed and he's still thinking that in the coming days they're going to need Bonnie's witchy-juju.
"What?" Bonnie scrunches her face, frowning at him. Confusion is writ all over her face and Damon childishly marks a point in the column labeled 'Salvatore.'
"I think what Damon is saying is that if someone holed up in the Grill as a place of safety, they might have had the presence of mind to barricade themselves in." Ric comes through as the voice of reason again, explaining the things that Damon intentionally didn't say. It's familiar and annoying in its familiarity. "That's what I would do."
"Not like we have to worry about that," Caroline rolls her shoulders back. "Damon and I can handle getting inside if there are obstacles blocking the door."
"Maybe we should get there first?" Damon is tired of discussion. He's tired of roaming around and just waiting to be a buffet, solely on the off-chance that they'll find the Ken-doll to Caroline's Barbie.
Pushing away from the wall, Damon cants his head and listens to the silence of the town. There are zombies somewhere, but not close to them. Not yet. "After me. Stick together."
The last goes without saying, but Damon says it anyway.
The vampire moves out, setting off at a brisk human clip for the seemingly abandoned Grill. It's not as fast as he could move, or would like to move, but a calculated speed that Ric and Bonnie, running between he and Caroline, can keep up. They've been moving this way, in this sort of formation by some unspoken agreement. The two vampires sandwiching the humans, the first and last lines of defense.
They're moving fast, and mostly quietly, but to Damon's keen hearing they're loud. The patter-tap-slap of Bonnie's sneakers and Ric's work boots on the pavement echo like gun shots in Damon's ears. He imagines that the walking dead can hear them for miles around and wonders why humans have to be so loud.
First lesson? How to kill a zombie.
Second lesson? Stealth.
Slipping past abandoned cars, and skirting around an overturned shopping cart - never mind how that got out in the middle of the street - they reach the front doors of the Grill unscathed. The humans breathe heavily, another sound that fills the silence of the dead streets with the loudness of an elephant's trumpet.
"They're coming," Caroline says. The blonde vampire is taking a moment to demonstrate that she can be useful. She's taken up position about four feet from the doors, a large metal post in one hand. Later, Damon will wonder where she got the post and if she even knows how to use it, but for now, it's not worth the baiting. He can hear what she hears. The low shuffle of dragging and limping feet, inhuman groans and grunts still distant but coming closer.
"Witchy, now would be a good time to open the door." Damon takes up position beside the door, trusting Caroline and Ric to watch the streets. He'll take care of anything that might come shambling out once Bonnie works her witchy magic.
Magic doesn't work the way it does in the movies. Damon's seen some spectacular displays and being thrown across a room by sheer force of will or watching a trapped vampire is nothing at which to sneeze, but in general there are no telltale signs beyond chanting when there's magic at play. It's no different now as Bonnie focuses her attention on the door. The witch fixes her gaze on the door for a moment, then holds up her hands over the lock. Her eyes flutter closed and her lips part, a soft chanting of latin words falling from them.
"We're not going to be alone for long." Caroline doesn't speak loudly, though she may as well shout against the deadness of the streets and Damon's over-sensitive hearing.
Damon turns and glances over one shoulder. Not toward Caroline, but rather in the direction he knows she's gazing. He can hear the dead-footed shuffle, and his finely honed vision narrows to the sight of a trio of zombies half-walking, half-stumbling in their direction.
"You might want to hurry it up, Bonnie. Looks like we're going to get some party crashers."
As if on cue, there is an audible pop and click. Waiting for Bonnie to make the announcement isn't an option, and at the sound, Damon edges the witch aside. A booted toe nudges the door open as his hand slowly pushes down the handle. The vampire grants her points for curbing her indignation and keeping silent as he takes a quick glance inside.
"Is there - " Caroline starts
"Quiet," Damon snaps. He's listening, and there, he can hear it. Breathing and a heartbeat. Far enough back that whomever it is it smart enough to stay away from the door. "Someone's in there."
He nudges the door a bit further and stops when it hits up against something solid. "Barricaded." Peering through the crack, Damon can see the piles of tables and chairs pushed against the door. With a quick glance around, gauging the distance of the zombies, Damon shoves up against the door hard with his shoulder.
"I have a gun! I'll use it," comes the voice from inside.
"Matt!" Caroline yells. The blonde draws her eyes from her post and runs to the door.
"Shut up!" Damon hisses.
"Caroline?" The voice comes again. This time with the pounding of feet and the jock's head and shoulder appear between an upturned bar stool's legs.
"Might want to move the reunion inside?" Ric suggests, unshouldering his crossbow and aiming it toward the growing number of zombies. "Quickly?"