Chapter Text
By all means of logic and common sense, Clint Barton should not have survived this long in the zombie apocalypse.
It wasn’t exactly that he was skill-less or anything, like most unlikely survivors were. Clint had met a few of those people, those who were soft and scared and probably just played video games or were accountants or something before all of this happened. Which he couldn’t blame them, of course, but being able to solve long division in your head just really wasn’t going to help when a zombie was trying to break down the door of your house. The things that were going to help in that situation, the situation that was quickly becoming more and more likely as days ticked by since the first outbreak, were fight-or-flight instincts, quick thinking, the ability to use a weapon, basic survival skills in general.
And well, Clint certainly had some of those. He had his bow, he had some athletic ability. The simple fact of having anything deadly enough to kill a zombie combined with the knowledge of how to actually enact that deadliness was enough to get him somewhere. And he had much more than just the basic knowledge of how to fire the weapon to fall back on. Naturally that kind of skill would get him somewhere.
But really, the basic survival skills were probably the most key piece of the puzzle. Being able to find food, staying away from hordes, having the forethought to check areas out before entering so as to not get eaten… yeah, that sort of thing.
And based on his track record of life skills from before the apocalypse that sent deadly zombies chomping down on the heels of anyone unfortunate enough to attract their attention… well, it was really a shock to anyone that Clint was still alive, at this point.
And by anyone, that meant Clint himself. He had lost track by now of how long it had been since he spoke to another person. A living one, at least.
Who thought it would be a good idea to leave an archer with absolutely no sense of self preservation alone in the apocalypse? The universe, apparently. The universe had an interesting sense of humor.
But if the universe was going to deal him this hand, Clint was going to play it out. He was going to survive, even if it was out of pure spite and dumb luck. He had survived this long, hadn’t he? And it had been multiple months now, he was sure of that even if he had lost track of the days barely two weeks in. But if he hadn’t died yet, then he wasn’t going to die.
He was going to take the universe’s game, and he was going to beat it.
At least, that’s what he told himself as he felt his heel hit the edge of the roof, an instinctive glance over his shoulder sending a thrill of fear down his spine as he saw the drop that awaited just behind him. He could smell the rotting flesh coming from just in front of him, could feel the hot, rotting breath of the zombie that was barely held back by the brunt of his bow, could see the movement of more undead just behind it, shambling up the weirdly wide staircase up to the roof. This is where some of those survival instincts would have come in handy, wouldn’t they? For example, the thought to actually check the building for undead before he got himself cornered on the rooftop because he charged carelessly into some random building.
Yeah. He really should be dead by now, shouldn’t he?
The sun was hot, burning even, and Clint could feel the drip of sweat down his back, drenching the torn purple T-shirt that he had been wearing for the past several weeks. There was a new hole in one of the sleeves already, the rotten nails of the zombie just failing to break his skin thus far as he was pushed even closer to the end of the rooftop. The creature’s hot breath smelled like… well, like something dead, since that was exactly what it was. Hot, dead corpse-smell was something that Clint was getting far too used to, as was the sight of zombies. Not just zombies in general, that was worrying enough, but up-close zombies, zombies clawing at a thin piece of wood and string that held them just out of biting range as Clint’s mind raced to come up with a plan— something he was chronically bad at, of course.
This situation was becoming concerningly normal, and it was almost worrying that he felt more annoyed by the deadly monster than anything. The thought almost made him want to laugh, and maybe he would if he weren’t so focused on the strain of keeping the thrashing zombie just a few feet from his face. Maybe it would be scarier if he could actually hear the zombie’s groaning. But then again, if he could hear it, maybe he wouldn’t be in these situations quite so often, would he?
If only the frequency at which he got into these scenarios would make it a little bit easier to get out of them.
The zombie snarled, it’s rotten lips twisting and distorting with the assumed sound. Bits of saliva flew from it’s open mouth and Clint wrinkled his nose as the infected stuff hit his shirt, a grunt slipping from his own mouth as he instinctively tried to lean back. He could feel the hot, open air against his back, the absolute nothingness between him and the ground with each inch the zombie gained. His heels were pressed flat against the eave of the roof, the little edge digging into the back of his legs as he was pushed back again by the zombie’s insistent lunges. His sense of balance was keeping him upright thus far, but that wouldn’t last long… and of course, the other zombies had made it up the stairs at this point. How was he supposed to know zombies could climb stairs? Who on earth made their third-story roof so zombie-accessible?
Clint’s heart was pounding a bit more heavily now, his eyes darting between the zombie that was inches from his face and the others that were beginning to creep forward. The stupid things were usually so slow, but these ones almost seemed faster than usual. The thought was concerning. How many was that? Four? Maybe five? It was hard to see with the one in front of him, but it really didn’t matter. One zombie was bad enough. Dumb luck probably wasn’t going to get him out of this situation, at least not if he kept standing there like an idiot.
The zombie lunged again, and Clint grunted as his arms shook, the wooden bow that was keeping the zombie at arm’s length slipping a bit closer to his chest, the place that his heart was thudding more rapidly by the moment. He had to do something if he wanted that heart to keep beating. Those other zombies were just a few yards away.
His head tilted back, his eyes darting down to the alleyway below, to the other roof across from him. That one was only two stories tall. The gap wasn’t that big.
The zombie lunged. Clint pulled back his bow at the same instant, twisting out of the way as the zombie stumbled forward. It’s feet caught on the ledge that Clint had been just pressed against, the momentum of the lunge still carrying it forward even as it started to tip. Clint didn’t think, just swung his bow like a bat and felt the satisfying thwack of wood against rotten flesh that sent the thing careening over the edge.
There. One down.
Five more to go.
Clint took one look at the approaching zombies— now hardly two yards away— one look at the complete lack of fire escapes or ladders or anything helpful on this side of the building, then took about four steps back and charged to the edge of the building and jumped.
Once again, Clint Barton probably should not have survived this long in the zombie apocalypse.
His left leg nearly buckled with the impact, the dull thud reverberating through his bones as he stumbled forward just inches from the edge, cursing silently as he did. Stupid move, that was really a stupid move wasn’t it? Jumping rooftops in real life was not the same thing as it was in movies and comic books. Jumping rooftops should result in broken bones, fractured bones, or at least scrapes that could get infected by the zombie spit on his shirt.
And yet Clint Barton just stumbled, looked back over his shoulder, and grinned in triumph at the sight of the confused zombies hovering at the edge of the roof just above him. One of them stumbled forward as if to follow him, and instantly went tumbling over the edge and into the alley below.
Dumb luck really had to be Clint’s friend. There was no way he would still be alive otherwise.
But he was, he was alive and kicking and even still walking so he grinned widely, turned his back on the zombies, and promptly sprinted in the opposite direction…
And as it turned out, the rooftop was smaller than he expected. A lot smaller.
Actually, it wasn’t even a full rooftop. Half of it was the flat, warehouse-style roof of a stereotypical city building, the kind that was great to run from zombies on and could even be reasonably jumped across if you were an idiot with no planning skills in the apocalypse. The other half sloped down, a sort of thin tin roof that covered what may have once been a patio, or maybe just made the building look more artistic. It didn’t matter what it was for, really. It didn't matter because Clint was an idiot with no planning skills in the apocalypse who didn’t think to look where he was putting his feet—
The metal was hot, so hot that it seared right through the thin, worn-out soles of Clint’s tennis shoes and burned his heels. Not that he had a moment to feel the heat, because the metal was also slick. It only took that one wrong step and suddenly his feet were thrown out from under him, a shot of utter panic flooding his brain for the one, brief moment before he was suddenly in free fall skidding across the shockingly steep slant of the roof. The metal seared his exposed skin, hot and painful where he skidded against it, and Clint could almost hear himself swearing. But the noise was the farthest thing from his mind as the world tumbled around him, pain sparking up his side and his head and his legs and every part of his body. His bow barely stayed in his hand, his wrist aching where the wood hit against metal and the metal hit against flesh. Then suddenly the metal roof was gone and nothing was under him, nothing but raw, hot air that streaked past his bruised limbs as he fell into a true free fall.
There wasn’t even time to shout, which was probably a good thing. Dumb luck really could only take a person so far, and it seemed like Clint’s had finally ran out.
His eyes flickered shut and he braced himself for the impact.
It came, oh man did it come. But it wasn’t exactly the sort of impact that he was expecting, the sort that involved hard concrete and the sharp snap of bones. He had experienced falls off of roofs plenty of times, he knew how the ground rush was supposed to feel. It was supposed to feel like a brick wall, like he had been slammed into rock and pressed flat, steamrolled by truck or something along those lines.
It wasn’t supposed to feel so… condensed? Would that be the word? Smooth, almost. A little squishy. And the smell, the concrete was not supposed to smell like rotting corpses and puke and rot.
Clint gasped, inhaling sharply in panic— something he regretted two seconds later as he choked on the rancid air around him— and scrambled, trying to find a handhold on the weird substance that he had fallen on top of. His palms slid across the rubbery surface beneath him and the panic enveloped him again as the stink choked his lungs, images of putrid, rotting bodies surrounding him, dragging him down, finally claiming his far-too-extended life and sinking their disgusting teeth into his bruised and battered flesh…
But a moment later the fog in his brain cleared enough for him to realize that he was not in a pit of rotting corpses. No, it just smelled like a pit of rotting corpses. The thing he was actually sitting in was a dumpster: one of those giant, industrial-sized dumpsters that sat outside of restaurants sometimes. One that probably hadn’t been emptied since the very beginning of the apocalypse, however many months ago that had been.
The universe really had a sick sense of humor, didn’t it?
As the realization set in that he wasn’t immediately dead, so did a few other things. First, the sense of relief that came with knowing he would keep his meager life for a little bit longer… that was a good one, and it caused him to inhale for a sigh. That, however, caused him to choke again on the absolutely rancid smell of the dumpster, a smell that crawled into his lungs and left a horrid taste in his mouth that made him once again wonder if there was a dead body in here. Not even a zombie, just a regular old dead body rotting away under the black trash bags that he had fallen on top of. That was a far less pleasant thought. Then, after he had spent at least a full minute choking on air, he realized just how much noise he must have been making, and he yet again wondered how he had stayed alive for so long in the apocalypse. If there weren’t zombies gathering outside of his dumpster right this instant, it would be a miracle.
And then the pain finally set in.
Clint had felt the pain on the way down, obviously. The fall hurt. It hurt a lot. But then, when he tried to lift himself up to see outside of the giant dumpster, suddenly he realized just how much pain he was actually in. He barely managed to swallow back a scream as pain racked up his side, the sound choked and strangled into a noise that was hopefully less noticeable to any passing zombies but that did nothing to relieve the sensation in his side. He threw his head back, instantly regretting it as his skull banged against some indistinguishable black bag, his fists curling into the trash underneath him as he grit his teeth in pain. It wasn’t just his side; every inch of his body felt like it was on fire, whether it was from the fall off of the building, from rolling across the hot roof, from the zombie fight that had driven him up to the roof in the first place, or one of the million other injuries he had carelessly let himself get over the course of the past few days. It hurt, it hurt like you might expect falling off of a roof into a dumpster might hurt, only somehow worse.
And of course there was the very, very good chance that bloodthirsty zombies were on the way to his location right this moment. Which was an extremely comforting thought while trying not to throw up from a combination of pain and the disgusting smell that clung to the air. Did puke attract zombies? Human smell did, and what was more human than the smell of puke?
He chuckled, the noise rubbing against his dry throat and— presumably— echoing around the narrow alleyway that he was in. Not that he could hear it. Or the possible sound of zombies in his vicinity. Or anything, for that matter.
Because what was better than being a total disaster of a person in the apocalypse? Being a deaf disaster of a person, obviously.
Yeah. It really was a miracle that he had lasted this long.
But if he had lasted this long, he couldn’t just die in a dumpster, could he?
Clint grit his teeth, his fingers digging into the garbage around him as he tried again to push himself up. Once again pain stabbed through his side, red-hot and horrid, but he ignored it. He just breathed sharply, trying not to gag on the sickness in his stomach and the smell in the air and instead forced himself to sit up, to gasp at the fresher air that hovered above the depths of the dumpster. He couldn’t stop now, not with the adrenaline that would surely die out in a few moments, so Clint forced himself to stand, to find his footing on the black trash bags beneath him, to brace himself on the side of the dumpster. Somehow, miraculously, his bow was still in hand, and the wooden shaft dug into his palm as he gripped it desperately. He used it as a brace to help himself stay on his feet, only swaying slightly as he tried not to pass out. Somehow, he succeeded.
Maybe it wasn’t just dumb luck that was carrying this deaf archer through the apocalypse. Maybe it was just his absolute refusal to let himself die.
Clint found a smile— maybe a delirious smile, but a smile all the same— climbing onto his face as he looked out into the alleyway. The bricks were stained with graffiti and blood, the sun was still hot over head, and he was barely standing in a dumpster, but hey. He was still alive, and he was going to keep it that way.
After all, if he had survived this long then… well, what else was there to do?
Clint grinned once more to himself, winced at a twinge of pain from his scalp, then turned to try and figure out a way out of the dumpster…
And promptly came face-to-face with a shocked, slack-jawed, alive face.
There was a man standing in the alleyway, a bloodied white stick in his hand and two rotted corpses unmoving at his feet. The man was staring at him.
Well.
Subtlety was certainly not the reason Clint had survived this long in the apocalypse. The universe really did have a strange sense of humor.