Dead City

Teasley might actually be livelier if she were a zombie. Not for long, of course, because Alana isn't stupid, and 'can Beard shoot?' has turned into 'yes, Beard can goddamn well shoot between the eyes at previously unheard-of ranges for her.' But it would be a break from the monotony. At least then she might actually make some noise, and she'd definitely be a more interesting roommate, even if, as mentioned, it would be a much shorter-term arrangement than this one they've come to.

But she's not among the undead, and she's not among the dead, although numbering her with the living might be a stretch. Surviving, maybe. Wrapped in a tight, contained ball, she doesn't move much unless she needs to use the bucket, and there's usually a small dent in the food supplies when Alana gets back from another scavenger hunt through the apartment complex.

Even for a zombie, Chas had been stupid. Forget about being stumped by doors; doorways had given her issues, and windows had confused her into paralysis. She'd been all too easy to re-kill.

She'd also almost lulled Alana into a false sense of complacency.

There's something creepily normal about living in an apartment while zombies invade, but it's high enough up that the zombies would take a while to get there, and her place has a fire escape, one of the many human things that the living dead don't remember how to use. She cooked everything she had once the power went out, grateful for budget cuts and old gas stoves, able to keep meat from going bad.

She misses milk, though, and if she makes it to summer, she thinks she might miss ice cream.

God. DC summer, and the city full of corpses. There's something way too eighteenth-century about this. The only things that might keep an epidemic from spreading would be a lack of living hosts or the viruses killing each other before they infected too many people. Or if the sudden invasion of the undead comes from a virus, maybe that one would eliminate any others in its path. Be immortal and immune from all disease. It almost sounds tempting.

Coco had had smears of blood at the corners of her mouth and eyes, maybe decorative, maybe from messy eating, or maybe she still burst into tears at the slightest provocation. Maybe she was crying while she died.

It made it hard to tell which of Alana's shots had been accurate, although it didn't really matter just as long as enough of them pulped decomposing brains past the point where movement and instinct were possible.

She convinced herself that the tears were just a memorial.

She settles into a simple routine: wake up, make sure Teasley's still breathing, load the gun, check the building. Doors that swing crazily on their hinges mean apartments that are fair game, and the occasional zombie too stupefied to leave home. After that, she claims any food that hasn't rotted or gone bad, vitamins, salt, soap, toiletries, jewelry that strikes her fancy, pretty little things that might lighten Teasley's spirit.

Doors closed mean other survivors, people she warned to stay inside. She scavenges a little for them, leaves them some supplies of things she doesn't like.

Doorways without doors mean Alana's been through the place and taken anything of value. Doesn't matter if the zombies get into those apartments.

Crystal had been quiet and subtle, or so she gathered. Alana wasn't sure. She hadn't had to be the one to take Crystal down, so she'd never know what the fight had been like.

She found the body afterwards, two floors up from her apartment, black tearaway pants and half of a familiar jawline. There wasn't much else left, between what the dead had done and what the living had done.

Somehow, Alana wasn't surprised. Crystal'd always done her own thing.

Alana takes to setting things on fire when she can. Nothing major, of course. No use in burning useful things. But re-killed zombies aren't much use to anyone, and it's more certain than a headshot. Burn a body to ashes and it won't rise again. Plus it's hygienic. Disease can't spread too far if its incubators are burned.

It's going to be a little uncomfortable when full summer comes on, she guesses. Maybe she can set up one of those things like with the magnifying glass that kids like to do to anthills, set up a pile of bodies and a big piece of glass and let Mother Nature do the burning for her.

Teasley doesn't comment on the smell like roast beef that hangs around Alana, or the flares of light that appear on the horizon. Sometimes she runs a finger along the soot that coats Alana's face, reshaping it into war paint and tribal designs. Alana pushes her hand away, but she always gets to regretting it later, isolated in the thick heavy dark.

Nakia was rough. Nakia almost killed her.

Chas had been so easy, so damn stupid, and Coco had been a distance kill. Nakia got the drop on her, and the only reason Alana hadn't joined the ranks of the walking dead was the brittleness of zombie bones. Nakia'd grabbed her, held her way too close for comfort, and was all ready to chow down when Alana had broken the embrace, broken Nakia's arms like branches.

Alana had led Nakia though the halls to the fire door and timed things very carefully. Pushing and pushing and pushing, and bone had given way before metal. Even then, Nakia had twitched a couple of times before dying. Again.

There's blood under Teasley's nails, and most of it isn't hers. It's too thick, too dark. It makes her hands smell like death. Alana stops asking her to clean it off after the third or fourth time she does so by scraping the offending nail against the edge of a tooth, expressionless and uncaring. Not that she swallows the blood more than once or twice, but Alana does not approve of people eating blood in her anti-zombie hideout.

DeLisha was already dead… again… when Alana edged into her apartment. She'd been dead a while, and undead a while before that: her skin was green like verdegris, maybe a little darker, and a lot of unnecessarily soft parts had sloughed away.

Even factoring that part out, she looked like hell. A hockey player would have been proud of the dentition in her rigid death grin, one eye was gouged out and the other was mostly gone, and her face was so deeply gashed that Alana half identified her from her long arms, the wingspan of a seven-footer. The side of her skull was caved in, which was the real proof of death-death, because Alana had seen zombies get up from worse than the rest of DeLisha's injuries.

It was kind of a relief not to have to kill another of her teammates, but unexpectedly, she felt a hot stab of possessiveness. These were her zombies, damn it. An entire dead city lay out there, and someone was killing her zombies? Wasn't like she had any other responsibilities; the least she could do was handle her business in that single apartment building.

Closed windows locked out the few sounds of the city. The silence was so profound that Alana could hear her heartbeat, hear another heartbeat coming from the corner.

Alana comes back at dusk sometime during the third week. "You're Nikki again," she says to Teasley, and it kinda makes sense, considering that she's carrying what's left of Blue's head. "Oh, and we're out of teammates."

Teasley- Nikki- considers this. "Hit your shots," she tells Alana.

"I do."

"Good."

Four words. It's a fucking record.

The kids had been having a party when a whole bunch of somethings tore the hinges off Tamara and Nikki Blue's door. At least that was Alana's guess from the batch of unfamiliar bodies clustered around what was left of Tamara, Blue, and Zane.

The kids had done a good job of killing almost all the zombies. Almost wasn't good enough, though, and the first bite was the deathblow. She ended up picking off the rookies as they shambled back. It was relatively simple, but she'd gotten good at this.

She thought she saw a tear in Bernice's eye, but maybe it was just a maggot making itself comfortable.

Somehow it feels right to edge closer to her roommate each night until they're up against each other, living warmth against living warmth. Teasley hasn't cared; maybe she figures Alana makes a useful shield if anyone comes from that side. Alana awakens in false dawns with her hand on the artery in Teasley's thigh or resting lightly against Teasley's wrist, feeling the blood jumping. It's not just zombies who feel life, are drawn to it helplessly, need it to live.

The first night Teasley responds is the night she's just Nikki again. Alana sleeps like the- like a log, since she spends so much time out and about, so she doesn't notice until the morning, when Nikki's hand is over her heart and Nikki's breath whispers warm over the exposed skin of her throat.

They're in tune, in sync, in perfect harmony. It's like there's only one heartbeat in the room.

Alana shivers, more scared of this than the dead.