Chapter Text
Gem is done running.
She has run from everything. Her parents, her responsibilities, her decisions, everything. But now, as she feels the room begin to shake, the barricade she has built hastily against the door buckling, she decides this time she will stay. She is not ready to leave behind the one thing she has left. She will stay and fight for all she is worth. She will not run this time.
Breathing steadily, she watches as a green, rotting hand breaks through the wood, unaware of the jagged splinters that pierce its skin. The hole in the blockade seems to stay still for a moment, the blackness from outside clawing its way into the room, but a moment later it consumes the entire door, leaving a gaping mouth in the shed and exposing the shelves and all the objects on them to the elements. A pair of eyes, yellow-tinted, Gem notes, slowly drag themselves in her direction and, even in the darkness, she can see clear as day the way each one of them dilates in hunger as they lock onto their target. The undead creature stumbles into the room, growling like a rabid dog, and Gem’s grip tightens on her knife.
“Prepare to die-” she thinks for a moment. Technically, they're already dead. “…motherfuckers.”
Uncontrollably stabbing, she plunges the knife again and again into the rotten flesh of the zombie. Blood that she is not entirely sure is her own fills her mouth. Ribs splinter against the serrated edge of the weapon. The sagging skin clinging to its bones has lost what little colour it had left, and what has not succumbed to gore is unmoving. Robotically, the knife rips through more skin. Screaming in vengeance for what she has lost, she drives it in an arc across its face, exposing a crushed skull as the green paper that covered it peels away. Her arm jars as it gets caught in an eye socket, and she sits in shock as instead of drawing out a bloody knife, she is left with a red stained handle. The blade has split. She slowly registers her bloody arms, one bandaged and in a sling, the other seeped with rusty-coloured flesh, the rest of her body, similarly painted with guts. Oddly, a line of Shakespeare pierces her locked mindset. “Oh happy dagger, this is thy sheath/ there rust and let me die” Maybe she was listening in those English lessons after all. Oh, what she would give to sit in a classroom, bored out of her mind, just one more time. Looking up, aware once more of the cold draught from the hole in the door, she curses as two more figures emerge from the black. She has no weapon. No defence.
“Shit.” She stumbles back, stuck in the corner. The shelves around her are filled with all she could salvage. Books, tinned food, records, and also the random junk that filled the shed before the apocalypse happened. Unfortunately, no gardening tools. Their family had never been green fingered. Ha. Of course, now they were.
The smell of rot floods the room as the two animals draw closer, shaking on their broken legs but nevertheless running towards her, and Gem accepts her fate as she prepares to punch and run. Her good arm tightens. As one zombie lunges towards her, it crashes clumsily into the shelf behind. She closes her eyes. Crash. Cracking her eyelids open tentatively, her eyebrows furrow as she registers the smashed glass, the overpowering stench of vinegar, and the pile of mangled flesh on the floor. Picking up the pickles that have scattered across the floor and putting them in an empty jar to store for later, she pulls out a battered notebook from the highest shelf and scribbles quickly, vinegar is an acid. In her back pocket, something she’s forgotten about suddenly vibrates. She pulls out her phone, staring at the message that continues to stay on the screen.
It is from Pearl.
Hey Gem,
I know the worlds a bit fucked at the moment but
Wanted to check in on you and make sure you're surviving :)
Btw we've got a little outpost of safety at my apartment block- if you’re willing to tolerate us uni students maybe you could come over?
Gem crunches on a pickle, stepping over the smoking, now very-dead bodies on the floor, and says to herself,
“A plague o’ both your houses.”