Chapter Text
Chapter One: Crash, Burn, Rise
The Corporal’s ears rang as she came to, blinking rapidly. She shook her head with a grunt of discomfort before her eyes popped open with a guttural gasp of agony as the pain that had knocked her out in the first place exploded across the side of her face. It consumed her for a moment or two and she cried out again before trying to orient herself. The task was difficult; the world around her was plummeting--quite literally plummeting . She reared back in her parachute in alarm, clutching wildly at the tethers attaching her to the chute and cycling her legs uselessly in the air. To one side she heard another boom and whipped her head around to see the helicopter crashing into the tree line in a burning wreck. The Corporal flinched at the second explosion when it’s shockwave impacted.
The rushing wind and her own breath filled her ears. Tears flew out from her eyes both from pain and the sheer force of the passing air. She was falling too fast. Her parachute was disintegrating above her. Fumbling at the straps on her chest she found her back-up chute and yanked the cord. The secondary parachute opened with a snap, abruptly slowing the Corporal’s plummet to the earth with a sharp lurch that knocked the air from her lungs. She struggled to regain her breath and get her bearings, running over what she remembered.
She’d been in the helicopter. The Pilot had been trying to make conversation the whole trip, had mentioned them having only half the promised supplies...Project Greenshoot...she’d talked about Project Greenshoot and then there’d been an alarm, the pilot shouting about them being shot at, the Radio Operator telling them to jump. She’d cleared the jump and something had struck the side of her face under her visor and helmet, something that seared and burned.
Alright then, she thought to herself, she felt reasonably caught up with her most recent predicament as the tree line approached rapidly. She started slightly when her headphones patched in the near-frantic voice of the young man from Abel.
“…if anyone’s still alive, if you’ve got your parachute open, this is Sam Yao from Abel Township. Awww, I’m just—I’m just the radio operator, man! I’m not supposed to handle this stuff! Okay, okay. Listen, you’ve come down—or you’re coming down in a horde of zombies. They’ve heard the noise, they’re coming! There are thirty—no, forty—aw crap! Look, your only safe path is going to be towards the Tower… ”
The Corporal’s head flew up and she twisted in her harness to get a glimpse of the tower before she passed below the trees. With the building sighted and marked in her head, she tucked her legs up to her chest and gripped the cords of the chute with a grimace as she braced for impact. It was another series of jarring lurches for her as the material of the chute tangled in the branches and brought her descent to an abrupt halt. For the second time the Corporal was left wheezing and coughing as she struggled to re-fill her lungs. The world swaying beneath her as she swung back and forth in her harness didn’t help her get her bearings.
The boy from Abel was right; in what seemed like a very short amount of time after the tree had snagged her she heard the all-too-familiar wheezing moans. Her ears were ringing again, her face hurt like hell and now her arm stung for some reason, but those moans sent all of that to the back of her mind and brought the situation into sharp focus. Order of operations—she had to sort out the order of operations. Alright, First , she needed to get down from the tree. Then she needed to head towards the tower. It had been to the northwest, she’d made note of that and her sense of direction was impeccable. She simply had to get down from the tree before the zombies reached her and then outpace or lose them en route to the tower. Simple...in theory, anyway.
With a grimace of determination she pulled her knees up to her chest again and reached for the knife in her boot. Within seconds she had unbuckled her harness and was sawing madly through the straps she couldn’t shrug off. She dropped a little more suddenly than she was expecting as the final strap snapped half-way through her sawing at it, but the corporal wasn’t completely caught off guard. She winced at the impact of the ground, even when it was dissipated with her well timed roll, but still she managed to scramble to her feet. There wasn’t any time to dwell on the ache that went through to her teeth at the landing, not when the rustling of bushes and the cracking of twigs underfoot made her whip her head around to glance back. The first of the grey-faced, walking corpses was approaching through the trees, its comrades scattered behind it.
The Corporal’s eyes darted around to get a grasp of her numbers and options. The horde was closing in on her and the gap for her to escape was closing along with it. She didn’t have time to try and recover her pack. Her best shot was the boy on the radio. She bolted; sprinting through the trees and dodging a grey arm that reached for her and missed by scant inches. All she had was the knife in her hand, the headset in her helmet and the clothes on her back.
She burst through the trees at a sprint, finally able to open up her stride as she reached the clearing, the tower in sight. It looked like some sort of mill. The Corporal frowned a little as the transmitter in her helmet came back on with a touch of static.
“ Wow, there’s…there’s someone alive down there. Running! Hey, can you hear me?”
“Ye-yes,” the Corporal managed to force out of her lips, struggling around a throat that clamped shut at the thought of talking to a stranger. Not that it seemed to matter, as usual.
“… No answer.” The boy on the other end of the radio said, sounding disappointed. “ But still, just look at ‘em go! Heading for the Tower, just like I said. Okay…running person. If you can hear me, well, you’re doing great. The main group’s behind you, and you’re going to come out of this forest soon, but there’s a…yeah, well, I-I can’t think of a phrase that’s not “small army of zombies”. Sorry, don’t do well under massive pressure.”
The Corporal couldn’t help but smile a little. She thought he was doing fine. Stressed, perhaps, but he hadn’t lost his head. Quite the contrary, he proceeded to give her succinct instructions that she followed promptly, banking hard to change her direction, much to his delight.
“ They can…you can hear me!” Sam cried with an exuberant laugh. “ Okay, okay, we can keep you safe. It’s cool, it’s cool, we can bring you in—no! we can’t ask them that! They might be injured!”
The Corporal frowned a little at the change in dialogue and glanced over her shoulder at the growing group of walking corpses behind her. A new voice had joined Sam’s on the radio: an American woman, calm and collected and urgent.
“All the more reason to ask them then! This is Dr. Meyers, only medic at Abel Township. Lord only knows I’m sorry to ask you this, but your route will take you almost past the old hospital. We know there are medical kits there from the first wave of infection--if you could pick up one or ever two, it would help us.”
“It's too dangerous!’ The young man, Sam, interrupted passionately, “ You know what happened to Runner Five!”
“The zombs have all followed the sound of the crash!”
“And what about whoever fired the Rocket Launcher?”
Selfishly, a big part of Five was on Sam’s side. All she wanted was to get either behind a decent barrier or up a high enough perch to escape the undead, but there was another part of her, one of the many parts that so often clamped a metaphorical hand over her voicebox, that was oddly glad to be given this mission to prove herself. Showing up with orders in hand on a supply helicopter was one thing. Showing up on a Township’s doorstep empty handed and begging for their hard-earned security and supplies was quite another. She listened to the unfolding argument between Sam and Doctor Meyers without comment--not that she would have been able to comment even if she’d wanted to. She was pretty sure the mic in her headset had been damaged by whatever piece of debris had hit her face. Her ears perked when Sam dubbed her their new Runner Five and she even picked up the pace. If she was going to be given this new designation then she was even more determined to earn it.
The Corporal slowed as she approached the hospital Dr Meyers had mentioned. Like most buildings these days, it was eerie. The remnants of a barricade remained Personally, she would have preferred climbing inside, but if they needed her to search the ground floor, well then. Ground floor it would have to be.
In the comms shack at Abel, Sam and Maxine huddled tensely in front of the monitors, watching as the Corporal slid in through the gaps in the battered barricade blocking the door—an early, unsuccessful attempt to keep out the undead. With a couple of keyboard clicks Sam had accessed the security cameras in the hospital. With a few more clicks they had zoomed in on the tattered uniform and scuffed up helmet.
“Look, they’re injured.” Sam said, pointing to the screen where they could see the new Runner pulling their sleeve down to reveal a bloodied arm. Both Doctor and Radio Operator exchanged a tense glance but said nothing. If this new Runner was bitten, they wouldn’t be coming into Abel. They would have gone through all of that for nothing.
The Corporal started rummaging through the mess of the room, glancing around every once in a while to check for any Grey intruders. After a few minutes the Corporal stopped, apparently annoyed with something as they reached up and peeled the helmet off their— her head. A short, curly, black ponytail swung just over her shoulders and wayward curls hung about her face. She shook her head and ran her fingers through the sweat-soaked hair, flinching at something. As she turned towards the camera again both Sam and Maxine winced and grimaced to see the painful, fresh burn that bloomed from cheekbone to jawline on the right side of her face.
The new Runner Five didn’t pause long though, and started rummaging through the mess, finding a backpack that made Sam sit back limply in his chair when he saw it on his cameras. She looked at the half-empty rucksack with the red number five stitched onto it and started snatching up small items to stuff into it before moving on. They watched her duck into rooms, forcing her way through a couple of locked doors quickly and efficiently with Sam and Dr. Meyer’s encouragement in her ears.
As they watched the Corporal—or the potential new Runner Five—Dr. Meyers started to feel agitated about the bleeding arm and leaned forward to peer at the screen.
“Ughh...I can’t see properly. I need to get a look at that arm and see if it’s a bite...”
The new Runner apparently heard her, because she looked around until she found the camera and then walked up to it. She winced and climbed onto a table to hold her forearm close to the lens as she pulled her sleeve back to show them the wound. There was a long, deep gash, but no teeth marks and no sign of nails. The woman hopped back down and pulled another face as she started to rummage through the drawers of the desk. She stopped short with a frown and pulled out a file, peering at it a moment before also finding a shirt, still in its packaging.
Wasting no time, she ducked into a nearby room and eased the door closed as quietly as she could, her eyes darting around the room as she held her bleeding arm close to her chest. The room was bare; the furniture had long been stripped from it to contribute to the barricade at the front. The result was a space that Sam imagined echoing with every foot fall. Visibly breathing heavily, New Runner Five wedged herself into a corner and pulled the shirt out of its packaging. She then cut both sleeves off with her knife.
“What’s she doing?” Sam muttered with a frown as she balled one length of cloth tightly and shoved it into her mouth. The New Runner Five still had her knife out and produced a lighter from one of her pockets. Taking deep breaths, she lit it and dragged the little flame along the flat edge of the blade.
“Ohhh no,” Dr. Meyers groaned in dread, “Look, Runner Five, I know what you’re thinking, but I don’t recommend it—”
“What? What’s she doing?” Sam asked nervously. The new Runner looked up at the camera again and held out her bleeding arm so they could see the droplets of blood she was leaving in a trail.
“Oh.” Sam said, finally catching on to what she was doing. “Oh no. She’s...she’s not…”
With another set of deep breaths through her nose, the young woman took the knife, pressed the flat, heated edge to her skin and drew it down along the gash. Her makeshift gag muffled her scream as she cauterized her own arm. She dropped the knife with a clatter and lurched forward onto her knees, hunching over the now-burned, but no longer bleeding forearm and spitting out her gag. Involuntary tears and a trail of clear snot from her nose were streaming down her face as her breath came in gasping heaves while she shook from head to toe.
In the comms shack Dr. Meyers and Sam both flinched in sympathy as she poured out a bottle of water from her pack over the other sleeve and then wrapped her burned arm awkwardly with her good hand, her face bloodless and her whole body trembling. With a wide grimace and another few deep breaths, she hauled herself up and pulled a notepad and marker she had found out of the bag, taking a few seconds to write and then hold up the large block-lettered note to the camera in the room.
IMPORTANT??
She set the notepad down and then held up the box she’d found in the locked desk before in turn setting it next to her little sign.
“Is that the Center for Disease Control File?” Maxine asked in disbelief.
“What’s that?” Sam asked.
“It might be nothing or it might be everything,” Maxine replied gravely.
“That’s a pretty narrow definition,” Sam quipped, his voice tense.
“Runner Five, I don’t say this lightly, but that box could be worth your life to protect,”
Runner Five swallowed and swayed as she nodded in acknowledgement, staggering forward a few steps before picking up the pace. Her strides became more certain as she went along, clearly feeling like shit but forcing herself forward.
“We need that file.” Maxine stated.
“We’ll get her home.” Sam agreed with a nod. He’d already lost one runner this week. He wasn’t going to lose a second.
Each of The New Runner’s steps echoed in the Hospital hallway and she had to swallow down the urge to panic with each resounding thud. She kept her head down, eyes darting to every potential ambush point for the Zombs. She tried to move as quickly and quietly as possible, knowing that her success would be limited. She was quickly proven right when a shadow loomed through the frosted window of one of the doors, hollow groans rasping from the other side. A blurred handprint smacked against glass with a thud, smearing something down the pane as the zomb pulled back for another, sluggish slap. The shadows behind the window spread as the first groan became a chorus of wheezing, growling and grunting.
The Corporal picked up the pace, but the first seemed to have alerted every other Zomb on the floor. Soon there were already thumping hands at windows before she even reached them. She gave up entirely on stealth. They knew where she was. A fresh surge of adrenaline kicked in and she broke into a full run, the pain in har arm and face forgotten with the all-important box clutched tightly in her good hand and the recovered backpack slapping against her back with each stride. It wasn’t just behind closed and barricaded doors anymore; sounds of the undead filled the corridor and the stench of decay was filling her nostrils just as fast.
“ What’s that shadow over there ?” Maxine’s voice asked in her ear. Even if the Corporal would have been able to talk to them she probably wouldn’t have bothered with the obvious, particularly when it became clear that Sam had realized what she already knew all too well.
“ Aw, aww, no! This was what - when we sent her out, this was what happened! They’re following you, Runner Five - the swarm from the car park, they’re following you! Now, run! ”
She certainly didn’t need telling twice. She didn’t really need telling once, to be honest. She made a beeline for the first large window she saw. She hopped up and grabbed the frame with one hand, kicking the glass out with her booted feet and all but crashing through it to the outside. She didn’t quite make the landing and hit the ground with a shower of glass shards and dull thud that jarred her, but not enough to really slow her down. In the next moment she had scrambled to her feet and was running again for all she was worth. Sam was on the other end of her earpiece giving her desperate directions that she followed in a blur of terror and adrenaline.
What cut through the strange zone that the Corporal found herself in was when Sam’s rapid-fire, terrified voice suddenly stopped and then stammered in slow, horrible shock. When she rounded the corner of the building the Corporal skidded to a halt at the sight of what had distressed Sam.
It was a zomb. A fresh one. The grey was still a tint; it hadn’t completely eclipsed the rich, dark brown of the flesh beneath the virus. Her— its features were still intact; decay had yet to set in. The Corporal-Runner could imagine that moaning, drooling face smiling and laughing, could picture the then-living woman pulling on that pink Jersey with the bold, large, white number 5 in the centre.
The Corporal swallowed and backed up several paces to avoid the grey-tinted, groping fingers and started to run a wide arc around the zomb to reach the fence. She felt for poor Sam as he audibly grieved over the radio connection but she had to focus if she wanted to meet this ‘Sam’ or ‘Dr. Meyers” in person. She kept an eye on the thing that had been ‘Alice’, though her attention was almost immediately divided amongst the horde closing in on her even as she bolted through a small, wedge-shaped gap in the toppled fence to try and funnel them. It helped buy her a short amount of time to build a little more distance between them.
The remaining run back was a blur for the Corporal. She registered the appearance of another male voice, this one older and deeper than Sam’s, belonging to a ‘Runner Seven’ but her focus zeroed in on Sam’s directions as the Radio Operator struggled to maintain composure through the sniffles of poorly suppressed tears and heartbreak. She had neither the weaponry nor the strength to try and take on the horde, but part of her wished she did so that she could spare this poor man watching what would inevitably happen. If she were stronger or less selfish she would leave the camera’s view and dispatch the zomb herself, but she needed his help to get back to this Abel, and she still had no means of putting down the zomb. Abel would simply have to take care of their own, apparently.
In what seemed like both an eternity and somehow no time at all she was cresting over a hill and could see a collection of buildings and wire fencing. People were heading towards her with guns glinting in the sunlight.
“OPEN THE GATES!” someone bellowed. The Corporal barely heard whoever it was; she could barely hear anything apart from the moaning behind her and the ragged gasps from her own throat. Her legs burned, her chest was on fire, her back and shoulders screamed against the weight of the full pack strapped to her body, but she wouldn’t stop. She couldn’t give up now. She stumbled and cried out, her fingers brushing the ground as she fought to regain her balance.
“ DUCK!” Someone yelled just before gunshots cracked by her ear.
The edges of her vision were blurring and sounds were getting further away as the gates creaked open. She stumbled through, tripping over her own feet while she somehow registered people shouting above her and the popping of gunfire. With the boom of the gates closing her safely within the township she tumbled to the ground, the force of her momentum sending her scraping through the dirt and into darkness.
Sam bolted through the crowd at the sight of the young woman sprinting for the gates. Her crammed pack was swinging wildly and slipping haphazardly off one of her shoulders while she struggled to keep it. He’d seen runners discard items on a regular basis, but she was either too far gone from exhaustion or too terrified of rejection to let anything go—especially not the impossible black box clutched tightly in one hand.
“Out of the way! Out of the way!” He exclaimed, bodily shoving a few people out of his path. She was getting closer and closer, a throng of lurching corpses behind her. The gates screeched as they were hauled open with a group of armed gunmen rushing through the space with weapons firing. Atop the wall were a group of their best shots armed with crossbows to take out more of the ‘zombs with reusable ammo.
The new Runner Five pumped her arms madly as she passed through the space the gunmen had left her and sprinted over Abel’s threshold. She made it about thirty feet into the compound with the gates closing behind her when she took another misstep and tumbled to the ground, sliding through the dirt in a cloud of dust.
Her chest heaved almost violently as her breath came in loud, desperate wheezes; it was like she was having a slow-motion seizure as her back bowed with the effort to fill her over-taxed lungs. Yet, she still clutched the black box in one white-knuckled hand. Sam caught the look on Sara Smith’s face when she saw the bandaging around the newcomer’s forearm. As Sara jerked her gun up, Sam dove between the New Five and the rifle with his hands up.
“Wait, wait, wait! It’s not a bite! I saw her treat it on the cameras myself, it’s from the helicopter accident!”
“With the quality of those cameras? You can’t be sure!” Runner Eight snapped.
“NO!" Sam yelled, practically throwing his body over Five’s as a human shield. “ No ! She just went through hell out there and risked her life and did this incredible thing that even the best of our best couldn’t get and—and—“ Sam stammered. The clunking of boots and the drone of the gates closing brought a surge of relief to everyone around as the gates closed, but didn't abate the tension around the compound's newest occupant. Sam didn't have to struggle long without an ally, though, as a familiar, tall figure approached.
“Put that down, Eight!” Seven barked, the Doc hot on his heels.
“I don’t know about that!”
“No one bitten fights that hard to stay alive!” Runner Seven snapped as the Doc knelt next to the newcomer, taking the bandaged forearm in one hand and trying to pry the precious box out of the vice-like grip. It took effort; their calming platitudes and assurances didn’t reach the young woman as she drifted in and out of semi-consciousness.
Immediately after retrieving the file the Doc took out a pocket knife and carefully cut away the makeshift bandage, holding up the arm for them to all see the angry burn marks there.
“She’s clean!” Maxine declared loudly before looking at the angry wounds on the young woman’s face and neck. “Of Zombs, anyway. We’ll finish the exam inside. I don’t like the look of these burns though. We’re just asking for sepsis,”
“C’mon,” Sam admonished the assembled gunmen, easing back from his protective splay over the newcomer and twisting slightly to wave medics over. ,”Let’s get a stretcher over here!”
As a couple of off-duty Runners rushed to the task, the Doc tilted her head to the side and pursed her lips upon noticing the dog tags. Sam saw the motion and looked from her to the newcomer and then back again.
“Well? What do they say? Who is she?”
“They’re pretty scratched up. Looks like…Corporal…R…something?”
“Any first name to go with that?”
“Just an initial. A. And is that…? Yes! That’s a blood type. Thank god, it looks like she’s O negative.”
“A…R? AR? What, do we have a pirate here? Alright, that’s a pretty good one, I suppose.” Sam rambled, rubbing the back of his neck.
“Here, help me get her on the stretcher.”
“You got it, Doc. Anything for the Runners.” Sam told her as he jumped to help.
One thing was for sure, this was certainly a memorable entrance for a new Runner.