Shock

Detroit's far enough north that they have some warning about the hordes of ravenous undead that rose from the swamps, or whatever the latest story is; it changes all the time. The Shock prep a hideout with rations, water, batteries, lights, and every other necessity any of them can think of. Nolan knows where to get guns, and where to come out alive with them. They're not gonna end up like the dumbasses in cheap slasher flicks, blindly opening doors and huddling uselessly in the dark. Ivory considers those movies how-not-to manuals.

Even with their preparations, the zombies take them just a little by surprise, and they lose Smith to a bad knee and worse luck. She's already surrounded by grayish-green figures when Ivory realizes they've lost her, but you only turn around for your fallen buddies if you want to be the rising corpse right before the commercial. Ivory likes life, heart hammering in her chest, breath raw in her throat; the only blood she wants in her mouth is her own when she licks her wounds and bites her tongue.

Three days later, Cash decides that the danger was overblown and she wants to go "shopping". She doesn't come back. Stupid. Don't go out alone when the dead are walking and starving. Even the dumbasses in the movies know that one. Then again, any zombie that tries to eat her brains is gonna be looking from now to Doomsday, which, on the other hand, might not be all that far off.

There's still a world out there. Ivory calls Camille in San Antonio for a couple of minutes every other day or so. The South got hit hard, but Texas is pretty safe and San Antonio's stocking up the Alamodome just in case. Becky's itching to kill something, and she's pissed about her guns for some reason. She's not the only one who calls. Ford checks on her momma and her bro down in Louisiana pretty regular. One of the rumors says the zombies came from New Orleans, in case anyone was wondering where the missing got to during Katrina; they've been hiding out in the swamps and eating small towns until there's a horde or two. Another one says the government brought zombies down to do the construction work, which wouldn't surprise anyone. In any case, Summerfield is a fuck-lot closer to New Orleans than Detroit, so Ford calls in. She calls Powell's family once, stealing the number from Nolan. She leaves a message. No one calls back. No one ever calls back.

Cabin fever sets in after the first couple of weeks, when the power starts flickering and it's harder to keep track of days and people. Braxton won't shut up about her son, and Ivory doesn't tell her that the kid was probably a light snack already. Hey, at least he's not a baby zombie, gumming the flesh of the living and trying to suck blood out of women's tits. Somehow she gets the feeling that this doesn't count as reassurance.

Ford's good until the day she calls and her brother doesn't answer and there's a scream at her mother's house while she's on the phone. "Momma?" Ford asks, her voice getting real quiet and scared. "Momma!" There's another scream, and they all hear this one when Ford yanks the earpiece out of her ear and hurls the phone across the room. They try to put it back together, but there are a few pieces missing.

They try to put Ford back together too, but there are also a few pieces missing there.

Jesus-girl spends the whole time on her knees, and Ivory gets to thinking that there are worse things to do when hiding for your life from zombies. Not that she's fond of Jesus-girl, but she looks strong and sturdy in that pose, and there isn't much left in the post, so Ivory approaches and looks kinda up at her. "Kate-" she starts, but pause and reset, because Johnson flips her shit at people calling Jesus-girl Katie. "Katharen."

Jesus-girl turns her head slowly, and her eyes are rolled all the way up, nothing showing but bloodshot veins in the white. "The End of Days is upon us! Look upon the works of the Beast and repent before Christ comes to scour the earth!" The rest is unintelligible, and Ivory backs off, because either those are tongues or they're groans of the undead, and fuck if she's gonna stick around either of those. Jesus-girl might look strong, but she's rotten at the core.

Johnson's going through the stages of grief, which makes sense because apparently she and Smith were damn near married, but something goes really fucking wrong at bargaining. She goes out, comes back three days later coated in gore and with Smith's body slung over her shoulders, toothmarks showing livid in blackening flesh, blood-soaked sandy hair not quite covering the dent in her- its- skull. "Swin's dead again," Johnson says cheerfully, and really, no one is going to fuck with someone that cheerful about a dead teammate. She puts Smith on her pallet and acts like everything's normal.

As much as hope and prayer have any place here, Ivory hopes and prays that the groans she hears are natural from Smith's lungs starting to rot, or those are Johnson's fingers in Johnson's snatch, because otherwise ew.

Turns out Powell's goddamn claustrophobic and she heard all the Louisiana rumors and what happened with Ford's momma. There's killing rage behind her bared teeth and flared nostrils, and Ivory gets the feeling it's worse because she can't make herself get out. Nolan's holding her together, holding herself together, and it's not like Nolan was a textbook example of stability before zombies showed up.

Pierson and Batteast go out and kill things on what used to be Sundays, and Ivory tags along once or twice, until the day she gets separated from the two of them and she hears Batteast screaming and screaming and not stopping until the gunshot silences her. Pierson tells everyone they were attacked, but Ivory checked the body and the only wound on Batteast was the bullet hole. Pierson's too good at killing things for Ivory to comment on that, and then there's the fact that she'll never know if Batteast was screaming, "No! No!" 'cause she didn't wanna die or "No more!" 'cause she did.

Somehow, Ivory realizes after a month, she's become the sanest woman in the room. She's not quite sure how that happened, since she knows damn well everyone would have expected her to flip out or get chomped by now, but she's always been more clutch than she gets credit for, and it doesn't get much more clutch than the possible end of the world. She's the one who gets Johnson out of bed every so often and scrubs the death off her, the one who keeps an eye on Powell so Nolan can pass out for a while, the one who holds Ford's hands when Ford starts scratching for her own blood, the one who coaxes Coach, and sometimes Nolan, to swap stories with her. Words have power. Words mean they're still human. Words keep them alive.

"Guess what, Ivory?" Coach says, raspy and tired and still dripping sarcasm, and quiet, so she knows he's gonna mention Smith; he only gets quiet when he doesn't want Johnson to bust in and deny the dead thing, no matter how much of a stink Smith makes. "Our team captains are dead. We need a new one. To hell with seniority, you're it."

Ivory rolls her eyes. "What the fuck you think I been doin'? And who the hell else would you pick?"

That doesn't stop her from stitching a curve of fabric to each of the shirts she packed away at the beginning of the whole fucked up adventure. Besides, team captain gets two guns. Extra power. If she's gonna try and make Ford, or Braxton, or especially Jesus-girl (who's quit with the whole prayer thing and stuck with the speaking in tongues thing, since she's making weird noises but not trying to eat anyone) do anything, she's gonna need two guns.

"Welcome to the Show," Nolan says, maybe smiling, maybe not. "Bet you never thought you'd get this far this fast."