The Zombie Apocalypse with MCR (Complete)

Some Distance

Natalie and Frank have quiet (separate) trips. We come home unscathed and armed with hobbies and clothes and food.

Gerard and I have a rough time. Pandora gets left behind in the car, and the two of us head for a sleek and glossy gym. He wants work-out gear, and we find plenty of it. That, and a dozen big and beefy corpses. They're all in the late stages of decay, with sunken faces and sickly grey skin and patches of missing flesh.

I get thrown into a mirror, which shatters around my back and leaves me gasping for breath. Gerard scoops me up and we book it. Not before we get stuck in a stairwell, with the corpses battering at a door I can't lock.

I brace my back against the rattling door and plant my feet.

"Go, Gerard." I order through gritted teeth as the wood smacks against my spine. "I'll follow as soon as you're at the bottom."

"I'm not fucking leaving you!" He shrieks, eyes wild. He's sweating, and his knuckles are scraped and his cheek is bloody.

"If you don't we'll both die!" I holler back, and I'm furious. "Run, Gerard. Keep running. Now!"

He stares at me, at the little glass window with all those rotten faces pressing in close, and he does it. He turns and runs down the stairs, and he leaves me behind.

"Quickly!" I shout after him, "Keep going, Gerard. Keep running!"

"I'm here!" He yells, and his voice echoes from far below. "The door's open! Come on, Nevaeh!"

I take a deep breath and do a mental check to make sure my ankles and legs and my spine is working properly, and then I run too.

Woodchips rain over my back as the door shatters behind me, and the snarls are loud and full of hunger.

Corpses are clumsy at the best of times, but their rotten, broken feet are not reliable supports on the uneven floor I hurtle down. I hear bodies crashing, shrieking as they tumble after me. One flight down and I'm clear of their destruction, clear of the falling bodies.

Two fly over the bannister and soar four stories down. Even from the third floor up, I hear the bones shatter and the skin tear.

"Nevaeh!" Gerard shouts, and his voice wobbles with relief as I stumble into view.

His hands catch me, and we slip and slide through the mess of the two shattered corpses. The foyer of the gym is blessedly empty, and the doors are heavy. I snatch Gerard's baseball bat and slide it through the handles, bracing the door.

Bodies hit the other side with dull thuds and responding snarls, and the doors heave outwards like a mouth opening to yawn. The bat is wedged tight though, and the barrier holds.

"Are you okay?" I turn towards Gerard, breathless.

His arms are already around my shoulders, his chin on the top of my head, his hold on me painful but welcome.

"Don't ever fucking ask me to leave you behind again." He says into my hair, and his body shakes around mine. I smell his sweat and the salt of his blood and tears.

I chuckle, and pat his back, and lay my cheek against the sharp angle of his collarbone. Too sharp - I need to make sure he's eating more at home.

"Come on," I mutter, and pull out of his arms. His cheek is grazed, and I twist his jaw into the grey sunlight of early afternoon so I can see the wound beneath the blood. "Let's get back to Frank, he'll deal with the injuries."

He's waiting for us in the driveway, sat at the front door like a puppy waiting for it's humans to get home from work. His knees are up by his chest, chin on his forearms, the door open at his back. He perks up as soon as he sees the car.