Tatum Donnelly (a_straychild) wrote in horror_story, @ 2013-05-15 16:30:00 |
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Entry tags: | alternate universe, hunter, mack, tatum |
AU: Zombies, RUN!
WHO: Mack, Tatum, and Hunter.
WHAT: AU in which Hunter & Mack are two survivors who have somehow managed to craft a small community of fellow survivors and crown themselves leaders. Tatum, who's been on her own for months, becomes their unlikely and clueless captive. (Based on Walking Dead rules! CUT IT OFF, QUICK.)
WHERE: Present day, somewhere along the eastern coast of the United States.
WHEN: Mid-November, right around when WINTER IS COMING.
WARNINGS: Kidnapping, period jokes, so far. There will be violence & gore to come! It is a WIP.
Tatum had no idea where she was going, and she was terrified. She couldn't see anything with the cloth hood that been pulled over her face, and although she could breathe inside, it wasn't an easy task. It was uncomfortably warm and stuffy, her own heaving breath blowing back in her face with every step that they took. Left foot, right foot, left foot. How long had they been walking for now? Hour, or two? Maybe more, time seemed to drag on. They weren't in the city anywhere anymore. The concrete under her feet had turned into leaves and brush long ago. She could hear the scrunch of at least ten other sets of boots, and when she stumbled, if she fell down, there were always at least two hands to grab her by the back of her shirt and haul her up to keep walking, hands still bound tightly behind her back.
Once, it would have been their pack they were grabbing her by if they went for her back. But they took her pack long ago. It had been filled with supplies that she had foraged and gathered all by herself, everything that she felt she'd need. Nothing too heavy, though, she liked to generally travel light. She couldn't exactly fight a group of biters on her own, or she preferred not to anyway, but she was small and agile. She was a climber, she was quick, and she known the sort of situations to avoid if she was on her own. What people to avoid, which had been mostly everyone. This group had been sneaky, or at least one of them had been. She hadn't been expecting them. One minute she had been raiding the pharmacy, shoving all of the Midol left on the shelf into her bag because some things like cramps didn't go away just because the world ended, and then next minute, she heard them coming.
Talking and laughing way too loud for a group of people that should have been afraid for their lives. She could hear the cocky tones before she even saw their faces, which she never ended up doing. There were several voices, she registered that much, but while her head whipped around to face them, a hand fell on her shoulder from behind her. She thought it was a biter at first, waited a split second for the teeth to follow the hand and attach to her somewhere, but it wasn't.
It was a tall blonde girl, her face grimy, but grinning smugly. "Sorry, kid!"
Then the cloth hood had been over her head, and then she did scream, which got the blonde cursing. She thought they meant to suffocate her, she was sure of it, but she didn't know why. The tall girl had clamped a hand over her mouth, "Shut the fuck up, ya little turd! You're gonna wake up the whole neighborhood!", and Tatum bit her hand as hard as she could through the cloth. She didn't taste blood, but the blonde was quick to pull it away. Shoved to the ground, the blonde kneeling on her back to keep her there, she was certain that was the end. She waited for the blonde to slit her throat. But then they were tying her hands together with something, some kind of rope but not as rough, and she was being hauled back up to her feet, shoved toward another set of hands that held her by her shoulders.
She remained silent.
"What are we supposed to do with this one?" came one voice, the one holding her, as she listened to the other footsteps spread out through the abandoned store. They were loading their bags, taking things from the shelves by the armload it sounded like, gathering supplies, the same as her. "I dunno, Mack told me to bring her back something good. She wants to send me on stupid fuckin' supply runs, when I could be on the wall? Fuck that, I'm bringin' her back somethin' real interesting, wait till you see her face." She was pretty sure that was the girl who had grabbed her, the same Southern drawl of the earlier swear words. "She always wanted a puppy dog."
"You shoulda just killed her. Just another mouth to feed. What's she gonna do at camp, hard labour? Put her up on the wall instead? Does Mack need walker bait or something?" There was a round of chuckles from various sources in the pharmacy. "What's she got in her bag?" Some rustling, more chuckles. "She got a little gun in here, no ammo. And.. well, we could give some of this to Mack, might take some of the bitch edge off.." The shake of a plastic canister of pills. Oh, bitch jokes. Period jokes. What a classy group indeed. There was still an uncomfortable aching of on-coming cramps in her own stomach, and Tatum had been in no mood.
"We'll figure somethin' out for her. You know, 'don't judge a book by it's cover' and shit," said the blonde girl again, her voice raised a little to be heard from what sounded like further down the aisle. "Or whatever the fuck Mack says. She might be a genius! I mean, I never thought of snaggin' any fucking Midol all this time. Won't be the only bitch at camp who'll be happy to see some of that shit brought back to the infirmary.. you ever have fuckin' cramps, Baxter? Been on the rag? Didn't fuckin' think so. That shit ain't funny. Give the kid a fuckin' pill, and let's hurry this shit up. I ain't got all day."
So they'd done that much for her, pulled the cloth hood over her face up enough that she could dry swallow a couple of pills, and then shortly after, they'd been on the road. That felt like hours ago now, with the constant walking, her hands still bound. Left foot, right foot, left foot. They were chattering amongst themselves, and occasionally the group would halt, she'd hear a familiar groan, and she'd hear the wet thump of someone's weapon against a skull, successfully splitting it. They'd start walking again. She had mostly given up listening to them, still unsure what or who they were talking about, where they were going, or what they were going to do to her. They didn't include her in the conversation. She was clearly cargo.
She hadn't run with a group since her sister had died, and even then, she wasn't sure that her brother and sister had been a group. They had just been three scared teenagers, who had been lucky enough to escape their home together, unscathed. For a little while, anyway.
Her brother went first, he was too brave, he'd always put himself first. Refused to let the girls do much of anything, which is what Tatum had been capable of at first. Basically nothing. Sera had taken to things better, she'd always been smart as a whip and capable, and after their brother had died, she had quickly taken over as their leader. When it was just the two of them, Tatum had begun to come around, to realize her situation. To realize that they had to do what had to be done, to realize her strengths. Her tiny bony physique, that had always seemed a hindrance in every day social life trying to fit in with her peers, was suddenly helpful for sneaking into places, through places. For climbing, for running, for doing all sorts of things. Sometimes even her stupid pop-culture knowledge of zombies helped, although they had taken to calling them 'biters'. It stuck. She knew plenty of first-aid, even if it hadn't been enough to save her brother or her sister.
There was no saving anyone from a bite, that she knew of, that was another part of reality. There had been nothing left of her brother to try to save anyway, and Sera had been bitten so badly. She had turned within hours. Tatum hadn't been able to kill her, but she'd been able to run. On her own, things had been surprisingly easy. She had expected to die very quickly after Sera was gone, the brains and planner of their operation not to mention the voice of stern reason when things got bad.. but she hadn't died. She had survived the remainder of the summer, and now autumn had come, and she was still alive. Winter would be soon, but the although the trees were mostly empty, there were still at least a couple of weeks to go.
She had been trying to keep track of the days, that was something she had done from the beginning, marking them out in a notebook in her backpack. It was mid-November, if her calculations were correct (and they had to be at least close; she had been so diligent) and she had survived. Now this group had a hold of her. She knew that it could have been worse, big groups of people were things she avoided like the plague in her regular life and after the apocalypse had been no different. She still didn't know what to say to people, and people could do awful things now, terrible things. They always could. But what held them back now? Her sister had reminded her of that fact every time that they found themselves sneaking past any group they came across. They'd seen it, once at night, what people could do to each other. Something Tatum didn't like to think about too often.
Big groups weren't good. They had numbers, power, there was no government, no organization, no rules, no laws. Big groups had big men, too. Big men that could do anything they wanted to you. Rape you, kill you, torture you, probably. Tatum had no trouble dreaming up nightmares of what people could do to her, or what evil schemes they might dream up. She had read and played and watched so much zombie related pop-culture that she had no trouble imagining the sort of things that were going to happen. She'd seen a thousand different end of the world scenarios play out in fiction. It wasn't nearly as entertaining to watch in real life. There were psychos in everyday America, and there was no way all of them had died. The apocalypse had made new psychopaths, if anything else, unencumbered by the laws and morals of organized society. People could do anything to you.
Like take you hostage in a pharmacy, and drag you for what felt like hours, through the woods. It had to be nearly dark out, though she couldn't tell from inside of the hood over her face anyway.
"Hold it."
The entire group came to a halt at once, the crunch of leaves under foot stopped, and someone grabbing her by the back of her shirt again, making her stop. There were sounds that she didn't recognize entirely, something unlatching and then a screeching sound, like something that needed to be oiled, but she couldn't be sure. Within a few moments, they were shoving her forward again, but a new pair of hands took her by her arm, pulling her to her left. She almost stumbled. "Gimme her bag, I'm taking her to Mack," She was fairly certain that it was the blonde girl from earlier, the one who had grabbed her initially and started this whole mess, and the one who had called halt and opened whatever they had just walked through. It felt different where ever they were now, blocked from the chill of the wind that had been picking at them outside.
She resisted the urge to kick the blonde in the shins while they walked, because that was the sort of thing that did get your throat slit. She had no real choice but to be a compliant hostage, just based upon their numbers. She didn't doubt that this girl could dispatch her in a second. She had come up on her like a shadow, practically. If only Tatum had been paying more attention. Why couldn't the bitch just had left her alone, what did she want with her? Who exactly was she taking her to, and what the fuck were they going to do to her? She still could not see, but she was fairly certain it was just herself and the blonde, their footsteps the only ones that Tatum could hear shuffling along now. The rest of the group had split off, gone somewhere else, probably to unload their spoils.
The next sound that Tatum heard was the unmistakable opening of a door, which she was quickly shuffled through. Once the door shut behind them, Tatum was surprised when her arm was released entirely. There was the sound of knuckles cracking behind her, and for a moment, she braced herself for a punch in the back of the head or something. But the blonde seemed to be genuinely just stretching herself out. There were the sounds of some other things cracking, her shoulders and neck maybe, as she spoke. "Brought you back somethin' good like you asked, boss," she drawled. "It was an awfully long fuckin' walk to get it, but there was only one, so I sure do hope you like it!"
The sarcasm was practically dripping from her words. Whoever she had brought her to, she seemed to have the right to talk to her like this, somehow. Maybe it wasn't someone in power. Would that be better or worse? Tatum really had no idea. While the exchange went on, still no one held her, though her hands were still bound behind her back, her face covered. She considered running, but what good would escaping even be when she couldn't see shit? What, piss them off, only to run into a wall? She simply stood where she had been placed, waiting.
"When's the last time you got laid, anyway? Take a look!"
When the hood was finally pulled off from her head, Tatum's eyes squinted closed almost immediately, struggling to adjust to the sudden light in the room. Indoors, somewhere. But she didn't even really want to open her eyes and see who her blonde captor was talking to. This was exactly the sort of thing Sera had warned her about. This was exactly what her sister had always been harping on about, about being vigilant, being aware. Because people could take you, and make you do whatever they wanted. "She's not a big talker, but I know you like gingers.."
Hunter grinned, extending a hand in Tatum's direction, as if she were Vanna White showing off a prize to her best friend. "Thoughts? Can I get off fucking supply duty now?"