notes: you guys aren't overly fond of zombie movies or stories either? we could be like, related or something. also, i watched fairy tail abridged (the parody) and you guys, it is gold. natsu's such an asshole but he's also so cool. lucy is portrayed as kind of a dumb blonde who doesn't really do anything though, but.
dedication: to pizza, and guardians of the galaxy, my favorite marvel movie.
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(a zombie memoir, wherein Romeo Conbolt concluded that being a paperboy is a terrible career choice,
and getting attacked by zombies is an occupational hazard, apparently.)
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act ii
this is do or die, or so i guess we're skipping breakfast and going straight
to the slaying
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{show them all you're not the ordinary type}
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—
Levy pulls the pillow over her ears and groans, thinking maybe—just maybe—she shouldn't have pulled an all-nighter reading. In her defense, once she had started, she hadn't been able to stop. It was like the book had completely pulled her in, and she didn't reemerge until the back cover was shut, and she blearily noticed that the clock read 1:07 am.
Also, what the hell kind of way to is that to end a book? To just leave the main character to die like that—or not, she doesn't actually know because the last page was all fucking cryptic. Whatever, now she has to go out and buy the last book of the trilogy, figures.
She squints against the bright sunshine streaming through her window and yawns. Levy rolls over and rubs at her eyes wearily, still grumbling. The alarm clock—which she had conveniently forgotten to turn on—says it's half past eight. Well, so much for her morning run, then. Honestly, she's seriously tempted to just go back to sleep and forget everything she has to do today.
She somehow managers to roll out of bed, but that also entails bringing the mess of bedding down with her and crashing to the floor, apparently. It hurts like a bitch to make face-to-face contact with hardwood flooring, she now knows.
After a few slow, antagonizing minutes she peels herself off the floor and untangles herself from the bedspread extravaganza, tossing the blankets and sheets aside. She'll make her bed, really, just after breakfast and a mug of the strongest coffee ever brewed.
Levy plods down the stairs and makes a beeline for the kitchen. She prepares the coffee pot and turns the radio on before starting on breakfast. Small but nimble fingers turn the dial—she takes a moment even in her sleepy state to admire the mango-peach color of her nail polish—and the small device crackles to life. To be honest, that's about all it does. There's nothing but crackling and static and the occasional cut-in of someone screaming something she really can't make out.
It's odd, really unusual, but she isn't deterred. She listens to Welcome to Night Vale, she's experienced far stranger things than this. Besides, she does vaguely recall hearing about a new radio program airing on Saturday mornings—Magnolia Mystery Hour, or something like that. Levy just shrugs and turns the front burner on with a little 'click.'
She's in the middle of making eggs benedict and slathering toast with peach preserves when she first notices something is off. The radio is still doing its snap-crackle-incoherent screeching maybe messages-pop thing, but that doesn't really alarm her. What does, though, is that the morning paper is late. She knows that she's being fickle, okay, but seriously. She and the paperboy have a schedule—one that they've been following for like three months—and now this. Besides, she always reads the Saturday morning paper over breakfast on, well, Saturdays.
(She knows that she sounds like a mid-forties suburban dad, okay, but honestly she's seventeen and likes to stay well-informed, thank you very much.)
Levy rolls her eyes and huffs before taking her eggs off the burner and shutting it off. She picks up a piece of toast and shuffles toward the front door, her teddy bear slippers sliding across the floor. She fully intends to park herself on the front porch and wait for the paper.
At least, until she flings the door open and is met with the sight of what appears to be a scene out of a horror movie, complete with the undead FedEx guy chasing Mrs. Winters down the street.
Well.
That just—
That just explained so much.
She's about to slam the door shut again when she hears it—the whirring noise. It's constant, fast, and coming towards her at what is apparently, an impressive speed. Levy turns and—wonder of all wonders—there is the paperboy on his bike, pedaling towards her like a bat straight out of hell.
He screeches to a full halt in front of the walk leading toward her house while she gapes at him. It's only then that she realizes that this boy isn't the regular kid, but a different one.
"Sorry Miss," he checks the name on the paper, "McGarden. Jasper's sick with the flu or something—didn't let me know until six forty-five this morning—and so I had to take his route. That's why your paper is late."
In her peripheral vision, Levy sees the FedEx zombie finally catch her neighbor and bite into her. Then she recognizes the kid standing in front of her, and also realizes that he is still somehow miraculously unaware of the chaos going on around them.
He tosses the paper onto the brick walk in front of her and prepares to peddle away. "Sorry again. I have to go—"
"Romeo," she says very suddenly, hurrying down her front porch steps, arm outstretched, "come here."
He blinks. "Oh, hi Levy. What—"
"Romeo," she tries again, voice rising an octave, "what are you—just," Levy practically yanks him off his bike.
The fourteen-year-old shrieks as all the papers left from Jasper's route scatter across the pavement, but she's too preoccupied with dragging him away from the flash-eating zombies to care.
"Get inside if you want to live!"
She shouts at him as she pulls him through the front door and slams it shut just as a construction worker with his intestines dragging on the ground reaches Romeo's bike. Said boy gawks and starts to flail as she begins locking the door. "Holy shit," he swears, "what the crap. How did I miss the freaking zombie apocalypse?"
Levy slides the last lock into place and brushes a stray curl behind her ear. "I think you were too busy trying to get me my morning paper."
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(x)
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Erza Scarlet is busy baking strawberry crème crepes when the world as she knows it ends. The television program on in her living room abruptly switches from a show about the cutest animals in the world to a frantic reporter shouting words she can't really understand. She slides the last batch of crepes into the oven and brushes her hands off on the apron tied around her waist before slipping into the room.
The city behind him looks like something out of one of those dumb movies Natsu likes to watch, and she briefly wonders if this is one of them. Further inspection shows that it is not, in fact, a flick about the impending and 'oh shit it's here' apocalypse, but that the world has been suddenly overrun by the living dead. Like, for real.
How utterly cliché.
What a way to start out your Saturday morning.
She stares at the tv with wide eyes as the reporter on front of her is eaten before her; the screen goes to the colorful error slide and screeching ensues. Erza's mind is racing, but it isn't really getting anywhere, when something slams into her front door. She jumps and nearly falls over the couch, but slowly makes her way over to see what the cause of the noise is.
Cautiously, she peers through the peephole.
It's a zombie, because what else could it have been?
The dead but undead thing makes a low groaning noise and throws itself at her door again, causing her to jump back. She has to get out of her—her home might be safe now, but not for long. Her friends are also probably in danger, or doing something stupid and putting themselves in harm's way, and she has to make sure that they're alright.
Erza unties her apron and hangs it on a hook. Grandpa Rob had never owned any guns, and she doesn't either, so she's going to have to improvise. Her gaze lands on the firepoker hanging innocently next to the fireplace, and her lips twitch. The banging on her door is getting louder, and it's likely the would-be intruder is throwing himself onto it harder.
Most of her street seems oddly clear though, but she knows that looks can be deceiving. She has to find a way out of here and locate her friends. Then they can try and make it somewhere safer.
The oven timer starts to go off, and she blinks.
But first, her crepes.
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(x)
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"Shoo! Get out of here! Shoo!"
Wendy swats at the preschoolers with her umbrella, squealing and trying to keep them as far away from her as possible. They've cornered her on the playground, and she has nowhere to go. She manages to whack a redheaded boy missing his whole left hand that's gotten particularly too close in the face with the umbrella. He stumbles backward, and his forehead splits open on impact, blood and other unidentifiable nasty-looking fluids splattering the surrounding area.
She shrieks and her body shudders subconsciously at the sight. Glancing behind her, she grabs onto the weird climbing structure unique to their park and scrambles up it. The assorted mix of undead preschoolers and school-age children are still trying to reach her, but they apparently can't climb the funky play sculpture.
Breathing a sigh of relief, and she leans back a little. The thing is like seven feet tall—technically it's probably a safety hazard, but hey—so she's safe. For now, anyway. Dying by a gaggle of zombie children hadn't really been on her agenda for today, and she plans to keep it that way.
She can't say so much for being attacked by them, though.
Wendy peers down at the moaning and gurgling small mass of infected kids and whimpers. She knows that she has to take them out at some point—or else she'll be the one down and out for the count—but she's not quite ready yet. They're probably not even that much younger than she is, and they were some loving parents' babies at a time.
Were being the key word in that sentence, because now they're just a bunch of mindless zombies trying to eat her.
What a time to be alive, truly.
She sniffles and pulls her legs up to her chest, careful to keep her balance lest he fall to her certain death by the undead. The bloodied umbrella is hooked onto her right arm. It's black—not really hers, but some poor unfortunate soul's who'd been attacked and hadn't made it out alive—and she thinks that it's suiting.
But honestly, zombies, of all things? This is beyond ridiculous—it's almost entirely unbelievable. Except, you know, not. The bodies littering the streets and the graying children snapping their jaws beneath her are proof of that. She buries her tear-stained face in her skirt and tries to not cry. It's not very easy.
Five minutes, she tells herself. She's giving herself five minutes to get it together and then she's going to climb down and take care of the zombies trying to eat her. Kids or no kids. It's not like they're actually human anymore, and they probably can't even really sense pain. That is what she tries to convince herself, anyway.
At three minutes and forty-two seconds, the sound of a struggle and other weird noises makes her look up, and ultimately, down. All the zombie schoolchildren have been dispatched, and standing in the midst of them is a teenager with wild blue hair. He glances up at her—he has a facial tattoo, is he some kind of delinquent?—and smiles. He offers a hand, the one not holding the bloody crowbar.
"Hey," he says, "why don't you come down from there?"
She blinks, but complies.
Wendy climbs down from her perch, trying very hard not to look at the decapitated bodes around them, and he helps her over the head of the boy who she'd previously hit with the umbrella.
"I'm Jellal," he introduces, and she nods, bottom lip trembling. "How about we get out of here?"
She slips her hand into his, and tries to smile.
It comes off as more of a twitching grimace.
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(x)
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Lucy peeks around the side of the house, towards the forest. Everything seems clear, with the few stragglers still around spread out on the ground behind her, missing their heads. She's always been kind of squeamish around blood and killing and well, missing extremities, at least until she became friends with Natsu. She cleaned him up after fights, and so that kind of toughened her up some. Because Natsu got himself into a lot of fights.
But.
Decapitating former people who've been trying to make a meal of you is completely different.
She blanches, and slips from her concealed spot. It's about a fifteen minute powerwalk to Fairy Tail, yet, and something isn't right. She can already feel it settling into her bones, can hear Natsu's dumb voice in her head mumbling something about things being 'too easy' and 'fucking quiet.' Of course, at the time she'd been seated next to him while he and Gray were playing video games. Totally different situation, but still the same feeling.
It's a gut-feeling, and Lucy knows that all the television shows and movies always advise to trust gut-feelings.
Still, this is the fastest way to her destination, and the closest. She prays that Levy and Wendy are okay, because her best friend always goes on runs in the early morning hours on weekends, and the younger girl likes taking walks to the bakery downtown for their blueberry muffins. It's Magnolia—the perfectly safe town named after pretty flowering trees—and nothing bad ever happens in Magnolia. Except, apparently, the zombie apocalypse.
But that's just this one-time thing.
So anyway, back to the problem at hand. She's hurrying along, and everything is going great, which is also very bad. Especially when the rumbling starts. Lucy pauses, head titled upward and ax hanging loosely at her side, and swallows. It's coming closer, steadily and surely, and it sounds like—like—
It sounds like footsteps?
"What the hell?!"
Something peeks over the hill, and that's when the blonde starts to panic.
Because zombies, a whole horde of zombies is coming straight for her like a freight train of inevitable death. There are undead walkers of all shapes and sizes, ethnicity and occupations, and they are not slowing down. Her breathing promptly stops, and she goes very, very still.
Her eyes slowly slide from her sure doom to the line of trees bordering the forest, and she makes a split-second decision that probably saves her life. Lucy bolts for the treeline, and, finding a huge oak and deeming it acceptable, she scrambles to climb up it in time.
She's never been an expert at climbing trees—that's more of Natsu's domain—but she manages. She's grabbing branches and hauling herself up like someone grabbing items on Black Friday, mumbling unintelligible things under her breath. A scream rips from her mouth as a hand grabs her brand new pink Chucks and she promptly kicks the undead soccer mom in the face and tears her foot free.
By the time she's some nine or so feet high, clinging to the tree branches like they're her life line (because they kind of are) the massive horde of zombies has reached her. They drag themselves over the spot she'd been standing in only a minute or so before, and she shudders violently.
Well, she thinks, now what?
tbc.
end notes: i'm so tired and also hungry but mostly tired. review?