moved. (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} sidereal) wrote,@ 2006-12-17 14:24:00 |
|
| Current mood: |  accomplished |
| Current music: | Jack Off Jill - "Strawberry Gashes" |
Living is Just a Waste of Death, part I
Fandom: FOB + P!atD RPS
Pairing/s: Brendon/Jon, Brendon/Jon/Pete
Rating: Hard R, for swearing, violence, gore, disturbing imagery and slash.
Disclaimer: This is a work of complete friction. I mean fiction.
Summary: Seriously, you guys. This is some crazy shit. Zombies. I'm not even kidding. No, really. Also, badass!Jon and Pete, numb!Spencer and Brendon, and, um. ZOMBIES. Oh, and hints of a threesome on the horizon.
Notes: For my
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small}
patd_100 Jon Walker claim, prompt #22 - death.It was the middle of the night when Andy came knocking on Pete's hotel-room door. Pete awoke to the sound of his oddly-hoarse bandmate's voice calling out his name, over the sound of a fist demanding entrance. "Pete. Peeeeeete."
"...Andy?" Pete blinked, sitting up halfway and blinking at the clock beside his bed, which informed him that it was about half past midnight. "The hell?" Slowly, he rose to his feet and stumbled to the door, the strangest tension building in his chest. When he opened the door, he was reminded of why he always trusted those 'this isn't good' feelings of his.
Andy was indeed standing there, only it wasn't...Andy. Not in any form Pete knew him, at least. His skin was a sickly pallor, his eyes rolled back in his head and blood congealing thickly around the jagged shard of glass protruding from the open wound in his chest. Pus oozed out around the edges, and one of his arms was bent at the wrong angle, dangling unnaturally at his side. When he smiled, two of his teeth were missing and his gums were stained wet and red. "Hi, Pete," he rasped, and Pete blinked at him. Somewhere behind him, the air conditioner in the hotel room clicked on.
"Andy...you're a zombie."
"Took Dirty a lot longer to figure it out, but you were always the smart one in the group," Andy said with a decaying grin, taking a step forward. Pete stepped back.
"Um. This is going to be a pretty funny nightmare to tell you about when I wake up, man."
"I'll bet." It was then that Andy lunged at him, and Pete stumbled backward. Groping blindly for the first blunt object he could grab as Andy landed on top of him, his fingers wrapped themselves around the telephone that had fallen off the nightstand in the struggle. With a high-pitched cry, he raised his arm and smashed it into Andy's skull, over and over again until his jaw stopped snapping and his eyes stopped rolling around wildly in his head. The thing that had been Andy collapsed on top of him, blackish blood oozing from the gaping wound Pete had created, brain tissue leaking out from the softened bone that had been cracked by the impact of the hard plastic phone receiver. It slowly soaked into the rug as Pete pushed Andy's corpse (his second corpse) off of him with a disgusted grunt and dialed Patrick on a blood-soaked telephone, his fingers shaking and his head buzzing.
Brendon picked up the phone next to he and Jon's bed in the same hotel that Pete was in roughly fifteen minutes later, rolling over and answering it with a sleepy grunt. "Whozzis?"
"Brendon!" Pete's voice was panicked, no pun intended, and Brendon woke up immediately because Pete almost never sounded that terrified. About anything. "Brendon, Andy was a zombie and I can't reach Patrick or Joe or fucking anybody and you're the first person I got through to and I'm really getting fucking scared and room service won't pick up and I locked all the doors and windows and shit, and I fucking bashed ZOMBIE-ANDY'S HEAD IN WITH A FUCKING PHONE..."
Brendon blinked. "Um?"
Next to him, Jon stirred in his sleep. "What's going on, baby?" he mumbled, opening one eye, and Brendon patted his stomach soothingly.
"Nothing, love. Pete's just going crazy, go back to sleep."
"'Kay," Jon closed his eyes again.
"BRENDON! I am being fucking serious here!" Pete sounded near tears. "I just killed my band's drummer! And I think he was already dead!"
"Pete," Brendon tried, "Listen to yourself. You probably just had a bad dream, just get back into bed and try to get some sleep. Think about it rationally - you probably can't reach Patrick or Joe because they're asleep. And I'm sure Andy is fine, turn on the lights in your room. I bet you just beat the hell out of a chair or something with that phone of yours."
"Don't fucking patronize me, Brendon." Pete's voice turned dark. "I know what I saw, and I know what I did. You guys are in danger."
"No one is in any..." Brendon paused, because there was a sudden scratching at the door. "Hold on, Pete."
"Someone's scritch, scritch scritching at the door, aren't they?" Pete demanded. "That's what Andy did."
"Hold on, Pete." Brendon rose to get the door, and Jon continued sleeping beside him.
"Don't get it, Brendon!" Pete shouted, but there was no answer, and it was in that moment that Pete knew what he had to do. Ripping the phone out of the wall (because hell, it had proven to be an affective weapon the first time), he made his way to the door of his hotel room and cautiously kicked it open. Sticking his head out into the empty hall, he looked around. "Hey. Any...any zombies out here?"
"Hello?" Brendon said bemusedly, opening the door to he and Jon's room as he pulled his bathrobe around him. The woman standing there was in her mid-thirties and looked normal enough, save for the yellowish tint to the whites of her eyes and the grayish pallor of her skin. She swayed slightly, standing there and smiling at him with loose-looking teeth.
"Room service," she said in a thick voice, and Brendon stared.
"Excuse me? It's almost one in the morning..."
"Back up off him, you CUNT!" Pete exploded from behind her as though he'd been hiding under the rug or something, bashing her over the head with a telephone that looked as though it had been torn out of the wall, until she crumpled to his feet with a massive bleeding dent in her skull. Brendon looked the whole scene up and down, his eyes wide, and Pete tried to explain. "They seem to be able to talk and attack and everything, but they're not too smart. They pretty much just stand there and let you hit them."
Brendon turned and walked back into the room. "I'm going to make some tea. Would anyone like some tea?"
Pete closed the door behind them as he entered the room. Jon was sitting cross-legged on the bed in his boxers, apparently having watched the whole thing from there. "I want some tea," he said simply, and Pete fought the strangest urge to laugh madly.
"Let's all have some fucking tea!" he said, grabbing the first t-shirt he found lying over a chair and wiping off the bloody phone with it. Brendon hummed quietly to himself as he stuck three cups of warm water into the little microwave and grabbed three teabags from the minibar. Jon picked at his fingernails. The room was quiet for a few minutes. Finally, Pete spoke again. "Hey, guys. There are zombies outside, probably."
"Probably," Jon agreed. "I want to call Spencer and Ryan."
"I don't." Brendon's voice was suddenly clipped, and he didn't seem to care that he'd just slopped hot water all over his hand as he dipped teabags. "What if they're...what if it's too late?"
"But what if it isn't?" Pete pointed out. "I still want to try for Patrick and Joe."
"They're all down the hall, right? Across the hall from each other?" Jon said reasonably. "It would only take a minute to run down there and check. Is there anything in here we can use for weapons, just in case? Pete's got his phone."
"I'm not going going to hurt them. No matter what they've become," Brendon insisted stubbornly. Jon watched him from where he was sitting, and oddly enough he was smiling slightly, his eyes unfocused and glassy. Outside, there were still car lights flashing in from the window and across the wall, though if these things could walk and talk, who was to say they couldn't drive too? For a moment, no one knew what to say. And then something slammed into the door.
"For fuck's sake you guys, let me in!"
"Spencer," Jon whispered, all but falling off the bed in his mad rush to get to the door and throw it open. There was no doubt in any of their minds that Spencer was still alive - the panic in his voice had been human. Plus, the zombies seemed to prefer either scratching creepily or knocking politely on doors, anyway. As soon as he stumbled into the room, Spencer collapsed into Jon's arms whimpering. His legs went weak under him, and he clutched at Jon's biceps in an attempt to keep himself upright, but Jon was already picking him up in a fireman's carry and carrying him over to the bed. He laid him down carefully, Spencer's arm was bleeding, but it didn't seem profuse enough to need stitches. Otherwise, he seemed as fine as a person could be expected to be in the situation.
"Spence..." Pete whispered, approaching the bed because Spencer only seemed able to stare up at the ceiling with huge, blank eyes. "Spencer, what happened?"
There was a long silence, in which Jon took Spencer's hand and gave it a squeeze. This seemed to rouse him slightly, and he managed to focus his eyes on Pete. "Ten or so," he said quietly, his voice a hollow echo of what it had once been. "About ten of them swarmed my hotel room. I was sleeping, and I woke up as they were all reaching...standing over my bed and reaching for me with those mottled arms. A chunk of..." he swallowed hard. "A chunk of this rotting flesh, it fell onto my face. It felt slimy, and it wriggled. Ryan...Ryan was with them."
Pete closed his eyes. Brendon whimpered softly. Jon shook his head.
"No. Not Ryan. We're going to go find him, and save him. You made a mistake, Spencer, you weren't all the way awake." He spoke this as if it was the most obvious thing in the world and Spencer remained quiet and watched him deny, giving him a sympathetic look before closing his eyes.
"I'm going to go to sleep now, guys. Good night."
Somewhere in the corner of the room, Brendon had curled up into the fetal position on the floor and was whimpering softly, clutching his head. "This isn't happening. Wake me up when the pancakes are done. There's no such fucking thing as zombies."
"Listen to me!" Pete spoke loudly and forcefully enough to make everyone in the room look up at him, even Brendon. "We are not going to fucking fall apart in here and just sit around waiting for those things to come eat us or kill us or what the fuck ever. I know I'm not, at least." He snatched up his telephone once more, marching toward the door. "They already know we're in this room, we don't have much time. Jon, you pack up all the food in here that will last in my car. Brendon and Spencer, gather up everything in this room that might service as a weapon until we can get to a gun store or something. Sharp sticks, blunt objects, I don't care." He looked around at all the blank, stunned, wet-eyed faces staring back at him and snapped, "Fucking now!"
They burst into action. Together, Spencer and Brendon snapped off the bedposts of the bed to make sharp, jagged wooden stakes that were half as tall as they were. Jon emptied the minibar and tucked everything into Brendon's overnight bag, stuffing all the extra clothes he could into his own. "No more than two bags," Pete said to him as he was doing so. "We need to travel light."
While they were doing this, Pete dialed Joe and Patrick's rooms. There was no answer, and so Pete tried Patrick's cell phone one last time. Nothing again, but. His voicemail message had been changed.
"Pete! Oh god, Pete, Andy...if this is you, fucking anyone! They came for us in the hotel, fucking zombies...I got out, I'm okay. I'm heading for New Jersey. Oh god oh god...someone please come find me, I'm alone..."
They were in Pennsylvania. Hellertown, to be exact. New Jersey was at least two hours away. Why Jersey, 'Trick? Pete wondered helplessly, sitting down on the edge of the bed, clutching his Sidekick while the three boys bustled around. What didn't you have time to tell me? What's in Jersey?
"I think we're all ready, Pete." It was Jon talking, he was standing in front of him like a soldier with a sharpened stake in hand (Spencer had used a pair of hair-trimming scissors from Brendon's grooming kit to sharpen them even further), and both duffel bags over his broad shoulders. He seemed to have recovered fairly well, at least better than Brendon and Spencer had. They'd done as Pete had asked them to, but with a blank, plodding kind of emptiness that he was sure he was going to have to shake them out of eventually. There were enough zombies outside, the last fucking thing he needed to be dealing with was two more in here.
"Good," Pete said simply, standing up and looking everything over. "Now we need to make it out to my car. It's in the parking complex, on the D-level...I'm trying to figure out which is safer, the stairs or the elevator. I'm thinking the elevator. Too easy to get chased or trapped on the stairs."
Brendon and Spencer remained silent, staring at their feet. But Jon pointed out, "But those things might have taken control of the elevator, or hell. Even the entire hotel's power system. They can obviously talk and reason things out, enough to knock on doors and try to trick us into thinking that they're room service at least. Who's to say they're not smart enough to work out how to disable a circuit breaker?"
Jon had a point, and Pete gave him an impressed look. "But if they're so smart though, why do they just stand there and let you hit them in the head once you get that first shot in?"
"Maybe it's the first shot that immobilizes them?" Jon suggested with a shrug. "If they can talk, then whatever is reanimating them must live inside their brains as opposed to their hearts or bloodstreams or whatever. There's no other way they'd be capable of speech and logic the way they are, so it makes sense that a blow to head would be the only thing that could freeze or damage them. Kind of like a stake to the heart with a vampire, because the heart is source of what reanimates them - human blood. It's something in the brains of these things that's keeping them 'alive'."
"Shit, kid," Pete said, giving Jon a once-over. "You're smarter than even I gave you credit for."
"I just watch a lot of horror movies. Ironic, no?" Jon shook his head, almost smiling. "But as far as the current debate goes, my vote is with the stairs. I don't trust these things to be stupid enough to not have disabled the hotel's power yet, especially since it looks like they've been taking it over floor by floor."
"Okay. I think you're right, actually." Pete stood up, gesturing to Brendon and Spencer. "Do you think those two are going to slow us down? You and I could always get to the car and park it out by the curb so that all we'll have to do is run through the lobby and grab them, and then run back out again. But that would mean leaving them here alone while we got the car."
"I don't think we can risk that," Jon said, taking a step closer to Brendon. "Call me biased because Brendon's my baby, but neither of them seems to be in any condition to fight off anything that broke its way into this room right now. They're both skinny enough, if they slow us down too much we can both carry one."
Brendon leaned against the wall, staring quietly off into space. Spencer was sitting on the bed and not blinking much. Somewhere between gathering up weapons and talking about how to get out of there, both boys had shut down. It had been so quiet and abrupt, but at least they were staying out of the way. Jon approached Brendon carefully, taking both of his hands into his own. "Hey, lover," he said tenderly. "We have to go now, okay? Are you still with me?"
Pete put an arm around Spencer's shoulders. "Come on Spence, Jon and I are going to take you somewhere safe. I promise we won't let anything hurt you." Slowly, they guided the two boys out of the hotel room together. It was almost creepy how obediently Spencer and Brendon went with them - like they'd been sedated or something. Pete would have expected them to put up more of a terrified fight at leaving the relative safety of the room, and he could tell by Jon's surprised look that he felt the same way. The hallway was empty but dark - all the lights had been shut off, and Pete let go of Spencer to hold his telephone more securely. The red plastic receiver was cracked now, but for some reason he'd grown to trust it. It had saved his life twice now, after all.
Just yesterday, you were a rock star, he thought suddenly with an insane urge to laugh out loud. They made it all the way to the doorway that led to the stairs' entrance with no incident, and then the voice came.
"This could be so much easier for you all."
They all froze. Because every one of them knew that voice. Brendon seemed to snap awake, shaking his arm loose from where Jon had been holding it and looking around frantically. "R-Ryan?"
But the thing that emerged from the shadows and staggered into their line of vision wasn't Ryan. It wore his skin - his sallow, swollen skin, slick with death, but it wasn't him. Thick, oily-looking yellowish discharge oozed from the corners of his rotting lips, and there was a glistening, gaping wound in his lower stomach. Slick, gray-blue ropes of intestine could be seen coiled loosely there, shifting wetly around with every step he took. His eyes had clouded over completely, to a milky solidity that made him look blind. But when he looked into Pete's eyes, he knew without a doubt that he could see.
"They came for me a few hours ago," he rasped, laughing with a wet, sucking sound. "Gutted me with their bare hands, made me free. I could do the same for you - we're going to win, anyway. There's no point, guys. Let me help you." He reached out for Brendon with both skeletal hands, and Jon stepped in front of him as he recoiled in horror, whimpering softly. Pete lifted his telephone threateningly, but couldn't find it within himself to kill 'Ryan' with as little hesitation as he had the others. It was then that Ryan lunged, shoving a shocked Jon aside with more strength than should have been possible for his decaying body and grabbed Brendon, clawing wildly at his face. Brendon screamed as 'Ryan' gouged five deep gashes just under his right eye with his blackened fingernails, and Jon snapped back into himself.
"Fuck you!" he shrieked, and surprised the hell out of them all by wasting not a second more in yanking Ryan off of Brendon by the back of his shirt and burying one of the stakes into the back of his head. He slammed it in so hard that it came back out through his forehead, chunky gray brain tissue spurting out with it, the wood soaked in blackish blood. Ryan crumpled to his knees with his milky eyes wide in an expression of shock, and collapsed onto his side. Jon put one foot against the side of his head and braced himself, pulling the stake out with a wet sucking sound and looking down at the gaping hole in 'Ryan's' head, still leaking blood and brain goo all over the expensive carpet.
"He would have wanted you to, if he'd been in there somewhere," Pete reassured Jon quietly a moment later, reaching out to pat him on the shoulder. "You didn't kill Ryan - you killed the thing that had stolen his body."
Jon paused, glanced over at Brendon's bleeding face, and then stomped on Ryan's head so hard that it split like a melon under his flip-flop and left a thick neck-stump attached to his shoulders and little else. Spitting into the gore, he said, "Awesome. We gonna stand around here and take a piss or what?"
They made their way up the first flight of stairs. It was four floors until they got to Pete's car, and he was a little surprised to find that they made it with no incident. Loading everything into the backseat of his car, Pete took the wheel while Spencer curled up and moaned softly on top of the duffel bags in the back. Jon took the passenger seat next to Pete, and Brendon all but sat in his lap. Jon stroked his dark hair and murmured softly to him, while Pete turned on the radio to see if there were any emergency broadcasts. There were.
"Oh god, we're in Fulton, someone PLEASE COME HELP US!" the voice on station 48.5 FM erupted into screaming. There was a tearing sound, and then the sound of someone grabbing the microphone again. The same woman's voice. "My family and I, we got here so we could broadcast for help, but they've found us! Please, someone...AAAAAAGGGGHHHH!"
The broadcast went dead. But then, a moment later, another voice.
"Hello, meatsacks. Run, run! These bodies of yours are fun to play with."
Then it went dead for good.
Pete turned off the radio.
"Where are we going?" Jon asked about an hour later, after Spencer and Brendon had both fallen asleep. He'd been quiet for the most part, staring out the window while Pete watched the gas gauge get closer to E.
"Jersey."
"What the hell is in Jersey?"
"I don't know. But just before he bolted, Patrick changed his cell's voicemail message to tell anyone who called him that he'd escaped the zombies and was heading for Jersey."
The highway was empty, a long stretch of quiet darkness surrounded by trees. If he rolled down the window a crack, he could hear the rustling all around them that indicated that more than wind was stirring those trees. Shuddering, he rolled it back up.
"Do you even know where in Jersey Patrick is? And what about Joe?"
"I don't know, Jon. I'm just going on what I have right now."
Jon fell silent for a moment. And then, "We're about to stall," gesturing to the gas gauge.
"I know. The road signs said that there's a gas station about five minutes up."
"You do realize that the zombies probably have those places staked out, right?"
"Sure do, guy who just stomped his former bandmate's head like he was crushing a fucking box for the trash man."
Jon shut up, and soon they reached the gas station. Before Pete got out, Jon grabbed his arm. "Two things. One, I'm going with you. Two, If that map in your glove compartment is right, there's a firearms dealer about a half-hour out of our way." They looked into each other's eyes for a long moment, and then Pete leaned over the gear shift and took Jon's chin between his thumb and forefinger.
He whispered, "Thank you for holding it together with me. I don't think I could have done this without you," before pressing his lips to his in a slow, chaste kiss. In his lap, slumped halfway to the floor of the car, Brendon stirred. Jon pulled away, blinking, and then shook his head.
"What the hell else are we supposed to do? If I let myself fall apart like these two...not that I can blame them, but still...we'd be fucked."
"You knew I needed you. And you stepped up. If we live through this, I'm buying you a sundae."
They smiled sadly at each other, and unbuckled their seatbelts.
Jon kept watch while Pete filled the tank, but surprisingly enough there were no zombies to be found. Pete supposed that they were either supremely lucky, or that they just hadn't gotten this far yet. Maybe that was why Patrick had gone so far as to head for Jersey - maybe he'd known that the zombies traveled slowly and figured that being a couple of hours ahead would buy him some time to think or find a safe zone, Pete mused. It only took a couple of minutes to fill up the car, and soon he and Jon were back in it and speeding down the highway again. Brendon had woken up while he'd been doing so, and they pulled over by a diner so he could stretch his cramped legs. Jon took the wheel for Pete then, and Brendon crawled into the back to sleep with Spencer where there was more room. Pete tried to sleep too, but his rest was fitful and dreamless.
They made it to the 'WELCOME TO NEW JERSEY' sign right as dawn broke the next morning, Jon still driving. Pete was surprised to open the trunk when they got out to stretch to find it crammed full of guns, ammo, and more food. Clearly, Jon had stopped at that firearms store, and a grocery store too apparently, all by himself. He looked up at Jon, who was arching his back in the pale dawn light, and he shrugged. "I didn't want to wake anyone up. I made sure to lock all the doors, I was only in each place for a couple of minutes."
Brendon walked up behind Jon and silently put his arms around him from behind. Pete kind of wanted to do the same. Even Spencer seemed better in the morning, complaining that he was hungry. Jon had gotten all sorts of things - bottles and cans of water and soda, chips and bread and a few packs of lunchmeat and dried fruit and nuts and muffins and cereal and cookies. They ate breakfast and looked over the guns, Brendon shuddering when Jon tried to hand him one. "No thanks, love. I think I'll stick to the big sticks, phallic as they may be. I hate guns."
"Lemme see one," Spencer said, sitting on the hood of Pete's car and reaching for a revolver. It was dangerous to just be sitting around in the daylight like this, they all knew. But the zombies seemed to be at least slightly more active at night - they hadn't seen one yet, and Jon claimed that he hadn't noticed any stirring in the woods since dawn had broken. "Does anyone even know how to shoot one of these?" Spencer asked reasonably, lifting the gun as if he was surprised by its weight.
"I do," Jon spoke up. "Kind of. My dad used to take me to the firing range when I was younger. I know the basics at least, I can show you guys." He looked over the guns for a moment, and finally picked up a solid-looking, chrome Browning 9MM pistol. "I'll call her Shirley. Now watch."
Looking across the street at the clothing store a bloated, balding zombie had just stumbled out of, he raised the gun with both hands and aimed carefully. "That's right you fucking bitch...just line your fat ass right up," he murmured softly, before squeezing the trigger and firing. He nailed her right between the eyes to everyone's surprise, including Jon's. She collapsed to the pavement with a wet smacking sound, and Jon looked down at the gun in his hand. "This is a good gun, wow. I think I'll keep this one."
For the rest of the morning, he taught them what little he knew of shooting, aiming and how to fire and such. It wasn't much, but even Brendon agreed to lessons just in case, and when they were done they all felt a little safer. They packed everything back into the car again, and Pete tried Patrick's cell phone once more. He got the same message.
"Pete," Jon said slowly as soon as they were on the road again. "Have you considered that maybe Patrick is...maybe he's one of them? And that this is a trap of some kind?"
"No," Pete said sharply. "And I don't intend to."
That ended that conversation.
The whole city was quiet and empty, it was eerie as hell. They drove around until they found a small abandoned house that seemed to be zombie-free, and Pete parked the car in the garage. "We can't stay here for long," he explained to the others. "I have a feeling that the zombies can sense where the living humans are or something. But it's a place to crash while I try to figure out how to get to Patrick at least." They all took turns in the shower, and Brendon and Jon collapsed into bed together soon after. The walls of the main bedroom were lined with pictures of a family that was probably undead now, dead if they were lucky, and Brendon shivered and turned their faces away so that they were facing the wall before he climbed into bed with Jon. Spencer insisted on sleeping in the closet for some reason, and so Pete decided to bunk with Brendon and Jon.
The bed was big and their young bodies were warm, and for a few seconds the three of them felt safe. Brendon cuddled as close to Jon as he could get, Pete on Jon's other side spooning against him. Despite themselves, they exchanged a series of long, deep kisses before falling asleep. Because it was all there was left, really. Except for Spencer, hunched over and snoring in the closet.
