The Fall Of Abel Township

[bungakertas]

Summary: Abel's walls have come down and everyone has to get to New Canton somehow. But even without his comms shack, Sam isn't about to leave his runners out there without him.
Characters/Pairings: Sam Yao, Runner Five
Warnings/Tags: zombies, violence, gore, horror, minor character death
Spoilers: All of season one.
Disclaimer: The characters of Zombies, Run! and all that comes with them are the property of Six To Start and Naomi Alderman. No money has changed hands, and no copyright infringement is intended or implied.
Author’s Notes: The last episode of season one ends with Abel having already been attacked, but a lot of people still there. The first episode of season two starts with most of Abel's surviving population as refugees in New Canton and Abel largely destroyed. Which means that pretty much all of Abel's population had to get to one place from the other. But we're never told how.

The ending to this one is kinda sad. Just so you know.

*~*~*

The explosion rocked the comms shack. Actually rocked it. And then the whole building started to pitch over.

Sam and Janine managed to both get out before the comms hut collapsed entirely. It had never been the most impressive feat of construction, but it hit the ground with enough force that the two felt it in their feet.

Sam gaped for a moment at what he saw.

Abel Township had always been a spit-and-bailing-wire affair. Most of their people were in tents, and they'd actually taken to making some buildings with pasteboard skeletons and cardboard walls. There just hadn't been time to improve on it.

The second explosion had been much more powerful than the first. Most of Abel township was now blown over flat. Including most of the wall. A few sections next to the gate were still standing. And there was a weird section of about ten feet along the back side that looked fine. But, for the most part, Abel was destroyed.

"What happened?” Sam asked.

“That, Mr. Yao!” Janine said. She was looking behind him.

Sam turned to see a rocket launcher lying discarded near where the wall used to stand. Advancing on their position were ten zoms. Abel's residents had been ready to defend against an attack, but either the ones who'd been on this side were out of position, or they'd been injured in the blast. And they both heard the inquisitive moans from farther out. Even though the runners had managed to distract most of the undead away from Abel, this much noise was going to attract a lot of them back to it. There were three-hundred zombies in the area.

Ten of whom were inside what used to be Abel Township right at that moment.

Sam raced back to the wreck of the comms shack, hurriedly turning over boards.

“Mr. Yao?” Janine said crisply, drawing her knife. The first zombie was gaining on their position. Two others seemed to have singled Sam out as their dinner.

Sam ignored them all, turning another section of what used to be wall.

“Mr. Yao,” Janine snapped.

The closest zombie inhaled a rattling, wheezing breath in reply. Sam tossed a whole section of building away.

“Mr. Yao!” Janine shrieked, an edge of panic now in her voice.

“Got it!” Sam yelled, pulling his weapon's belt free from the wreckage. Nobody was ever unarmed these days. Sam owned a handgun, which was now loaded and ready, but it was his machete that he pulled from its sheath.

The first two zombies went down easily. Janine dispatched another with her knife. The two of them fought, mostly back to back, until all the zombies they could see were dead.

Sam tried his headset, but didn't even get static. “Comms are down,” he told Janine, yanking the now-useless equipment free. No sense carrying unhelpful gear.

People were pouring out of their defensive positions, weapons out, gathering in Janine's yard. Janine quickly stood next to the flagpole. “People of Abel, you can see what has happened to our wall. It is not safe to stay here. I advise you all to go to New Canton and ask them to take you in. We'll coordinate from there on rebuilding.”

A round of protests went up. Understandable, given that New Canton had been actively attacking Abel not an hour ago.

“We have no other choice. Abel is completely compromised, and there is no one else!” Janine said. “Go. Now.”

The crowd dispersed. Sam heard a zombie and turned. There was one only fifteen feet away from him, but a quick swipe from his machete finished it. He turned towards New Canton and saw the wall down in that direction.

“Mr. Yao, you'll need to stay here. We'll have need of you when we get communications back online,” Janine informed him.

Sam nodded at the zombie approaching her from behind, which she turned and put down with a knife to the eye.

“I have runners out there,” Sam said. “I won't leave them out there alone.” He fastened his weapon's belt on, and buckled it tight on his hips. It had been a long time since he'd worn it regularly. Since before he had come to Abel.

“You'll be far more use to them here, ready to work when they need you,” Janine told him.

“I send them out and I bring them home, Janine!” Sam answered. “That's my job! I bring them home! I won't leave them out there! It's my job to bring them home!”

Janine rolled her eyes. But what she said was, “Good hunting, Mr. Yao.” And with that she turned for her farmhouse. The sturdy construction had withstood both explosions, and was still standing, mostly undamaged. Janine could wait out the rest of the world in there. So Sam turned and started out across what was left of the wall.

Sam ran.

Abel Township was built around Janine's farmhouse, which sat on top of a hill. Around this hill a huge basin spread out in all directions and they had a good 100 meters before the edge of the treeline. Once you reached the edge of the trees, though, things got harder. There were game trails running here or there, pathways beaten out by the runners, and—Sam had a strong suspicion—more than a few trails that ran too close to Abel that Abel did not know about. It was easy to get lost, and it was easy to run practically straight into a zombie before you even realized you had.

Sam did not get lost. He did, however, run into a zombie. Literally.

It was sheer luck that saved him. A shambling corpse has a shockingly poor reaction time. Sam raced straight into the zom, something that used to be a teenage boy, and bounced off of it, ending with his back against a tree.

The zom let out a moan that froze Sam's blood. He hadn't heard one this close in a long time. He swung his machete and sliced open its brain, trailing an arc of blood from the point of impact.

A fetid arm came around the tree, grasping his shoulder. Sam turned and swung the machete again, separating the arm from the zombie. But when he tried to pull his blade free, it was stuck fast.

The new zombie came around the tree, clicking it's teeth at him. Unlike the last, this one had not been a teenage boy. Instead, it looked like it had been a woman. Gray flesh now clung tightly to its bones, making its face look more like a skull than anything else. It was wearing a miniskirt that was barely hanging on to its bony hips, a jacket that used to be trendy, and a tee-shirt emblazoned with the word “Juicy” in now-dulled bedazzles.

It stretched the arm it still had out towards his face, but Sam easily dodged the attack. He grabbed the thing's head and slammed it into the tree trunk. Hard. The zombie gave a rattling wail, oblivious to the attack, still trying to get hold of him. He shoved its head into the tree again, against a knot of wood. Two more times, and then he heard a crack and felt a crunch-and-squish under his hand. Once more and the corpse stopped moving and dropped to the ground at his feet.

Sam hadn't made a sound during this whole encounter, but the zoms had. And breaking open that second one's head had not been silent, either. He could hear shuffling feet all around him.

He wrenched his machete free from the tree, having to actually use his leg to brace, and took off in the direction he thought was towards Runner Four.

He thought he'd gone wrong after about thirty seconds. Between the overgrown underbrush and the attack that turned him 'round, getting lost was hardly a surprise. He knew he'd gone wrong when he started hearing the gunshots. They were all coming from behind him. And if he could hear them…

They couldn't be completely sure. It wasn't as if they could give a zombie an fMRI, assuming they even had access to the tech (which they did not). But Maxine had theorized that though zombies saw very poorly (never blinking was, as it turns out, not very good for your eyes) they could hear, on average, better than living humans. Something about not having internal noises from pulse and heartbeat and breathing to distract them. It would explain a few things about zombie behavior.

So, if Sam could hear those gunshots, and they were behind him, then any zombies in front of him were probably making a beeline for his position right now.

In confirmation, six zombies emerged from the fog in front of him. Sam didn't even bother trying to fight them. He just turned and ran. Gunshots meant people, and people meant (hopefully) help.

The trouble was, firing a gun first, in a crisis like this, was a bit like breaking trump. Once one person had done it, everyone within earshot might as well do it, too. The zoms were already coming, so stealth was mostly out the window. If you had the ammunition, you might as well use it. There were now multiple shots coming from different locations. All still ahead of him, but it was obviously more than one person shooting.

With a pack of zoms now running him down, Sam couldn't slow down to be sure, but the terrain around him looked close on to New Canton territory.

Entirely by accident, he found a proper trail. Not a tiny game trail that was barely beaten out of the forest, but a true walkway. It looked like it had been a winding sidewalk. Now cracked in more places than he could count by tree roots underneath, and all the cracks filling with grass, but it was clear enough that he could get a little more speed.

The zoms behind him kept pace, though. In fact, it sounded like they were gaining a little bit, chasing him into what was unmistakably that abandoned park they sometimes thought about turning into a farm.

The underbrush was actually a little thicker here. Since all the big trees had been cleared out, there had been nothing to stop the undergrowth (which was really anything ten feet tall or shorter) from taking over. The town council hadn't sent any maintenance crews since the outbreak. The grass on the sides of the walkway was up to his chest.

Sam was going flat-out now, feet pounding, breathing steady, pushing ahead, but the zoms were matching him stride for stride. He was going to loose the chase. And he had nothing to drop for a distraction. They were going to catch him. Not only had he not brought his runners home, but they'd have a new operator the next time they ran a mission.

A body loomed up in front of him, and Sam raised his machete.

The body, however, responding by drawing a sword. There was only one person Sam knew who carried a sword around here.

Runner Five pulled the Kensaido sword she'd found all those runs ago from the sheath on her back and sliced through the brain of the first zombie in the pack. She drew out a knife with her left hand and stabbed it into the temple of the next one.

Sam turned to help her out, but the sprint had left him winded and clumsy. His first swing managed to take out a zom, but he couldn't stop the momentum and was turned half-way around when the next was on them.

But Five was a machine. She saw him in trouble, and actually spun, sword out, taking the zom in the head, and back to face the last of the pack. She took them down with no trouble.

“I was looking for Runner Four,” Sam told her.

Five smiled. “Me too. Major De Santa's back. She said stop running.”

“What? Right now?” Sam gasped.

That drew an amused huff of agreement.

“Are we close to Jody?” Sam asked.

“No,” said Five. She pulled out a cloth and wiped the brains off her knife and sword before sheathing them. The zombie plague didn't survive more than a minute outside of a body (though it obviously persisted inside a body even if that body was dead), so there wasn't much worry about cutting yourself on a knife you'd used to kill one. But better safe than gray was just good practice.

“Time to run,” Five said. She and Sam set off.

Sam had once remarked to Janine that he suspected Five was very talkative on runs, but never on comms or inside Abel. And that the runners just pretended she was always quiet. What he discovered was that she was just as silent running as she was any other time. She didn't seem remotely perturbed by the fact that they were running in the direction of where they'd last known most of the zoms to be. She maintained a steady pace next to him, striding along with only her breath to give her presence away.

Sam found himself staring at her. She didn't seem afraid at all.

He missed a zombie that practically fell out of a tree. It almost took a chunk out of his ankle, but Five threw her knife and it struck into its head up to the hilt.

She pulled it free and gave him a wry look. “No scanners out here, Sam. Eyes up.”

He nodded and they kept running.

Five did the navigating on their way to Jody's last known course. Sam managed to redeem himself by taking down two zoms on the way. Five examined the ground and finally said, “She hasn't been here.”

Sam was about to reply when they both heard a steady chant of “Just keep running. Just keep running. Just keep running.” approaching from down the path.

Five turned and began heading away from Jody's voice at a slow pace. Jody came into view, running strong but covered in sweat. As Sam also started in at a slow jog, the first of Jody's zombie groupies came into view. By the time they were all visible, it was obvious that she had about twenty still on her tail.

When Jody caught up to them, Sam and Five matched her pace.

“Hello!” Jody gasped, her pace not slowing, but her breathing obviously starting to struggle.

“What do we do with our new fans?” Sam asked them.

“Towards New Canton. Gunshots in the woods will confuse them,” Five answered.

The three of them slowly turned their course, headed back the way Sam and Five had come.

Sure enough, once they got close enough to the chaos between Abel and New Canton, their little pack started breaking up. The next time Sam glanced back there were only fifteen. Then ten. Then eight.

When it got to just eight, Jody and Five turned to face them. Sam followed suit, and between the three of them, they put down the entire pack.

“You'd better ditch that New Canton headset,” Sam told Five. “They're the only place to go, and they won't like knowing we had it.”

“They know,” Five answered. “Worked it out from my movements. They don't know who it was, but they know it was us.” She stripped off the headset, though, and began breaking it into parts. She dropped these parts irregularly as they ran. This one in a forgotten bin, that one down a storm drain. By the time they came in sight of New Canton, she only had Abel gear on.

New Canton was like Abel in that it was on top of a hill. That was basically the only way, though.

New Canton was built in and around a castle. When it was first constructed, several hundred years ago, the owner must've had a great deal of money for the time, because it was outrageously big. And it had remained fairly well preserved. So it came complete with an enormous keep, a thick wall, battlements, and an actual portcullis. Once upon a time, there had probably been a moat at the bottom of the hill, but somewhere along the way it had turned into a small ditch. That hadn't stopped New Canton from using it as a boundary line, though. They'd stretched a chain-link fence just inside the ditch, hung barbed wire on top of that, and dug fortifications and extra living spaces into the hillside. So now an attacker would have to deal with all the usual fortifications they'd expect when attacking a castle, plus some nasty surprises on the way up to the wall. And that was just to get to the wall.

Sam and Jody had grown up in Britain, so they were used to castles, in varying states of repair, littering the landscape. But Five, being American, kept staring at it as they approached, to the point where she nearly missed a zom looming up at them and Sam had to take it down.

“First time seeing a castle?” Sam asked her.

She offered him a rueful smile. “Does DisneyWorld count?”

Sam laughed at that, hearing Jody join in. “No.”

The three of them were almost to the gate when they heard a voice call out, “More Abel refugees? You three can stop right there!”

For the first time since Abel's walls fell, Sam stopped running.

They had to surrender all their weapons, and submit to a full strip to be checked over for bites (which Jody and Five found unremarkable since every runner had to do that every time they came back from a run but Sam found more than a little embarrassing), but they were eventually allowed inside, and assigned one bench, big enough for the three of them to sit down, for their space within New Canton.

They spent the afternoon telling jokes, greeting the other Abel refugees as they came in, and trying to keep Five from growing agitated as those refugees kept not being Stan Medina.

Sam had seen how Stan reacted when she had been out all night on a run-gone-wrong. He had planted himself at the gate and refused to move. He hadn't talked a lot. Just waited, and paced, and wrung his hands. And when Five had finally come running back, with so many zoms chasing her that it took forever for the defensive gunners to put them all down. Stan had practically caught her when she nearly fell out of the door wearing a robe and carrying her gear. And then, when Janine and Maxine had demanded they have out their argument right then and there, he'd waited again outside Janine's house.

Stan was all energy when he was worried. Hands everywhere, pacing, breath too fast. He gave you the impression that he'd fly apart if you touched him.

Five was the opposite. She was getting impossibly quieter. And Sam was remembering that she was actually a bit short. Given some of the stunts she'd pulled on runs, he had a habit of thinking of her as enormous, but she was only a little more than five feet. In fact, as darkness started to fall, and she sat there, just frozen on their seat, enduring check-ins from Stan and the New Canton mucky-mucks and on and on, she looked almost like a little girl. And a lot like she was expecting a beating.

Everyone survived the apocalypse in different ways. Everyone took to it in their own manner. But some of that was because of who they'd been before the end of the world. Sam had never asked, because you didn't ask this sort of thing, but… Well, you couldn't help but wonder, could you? What was it that Five had been before all this that made her fearless in the face of zombies, but silent before other people?

The sun went down, and New Canton stopped taking refugees. Stan still hadn't come.

For the first time since her arrival at Abel, Sam watched Runner Five cry. And nothing he or Jody did could make her stop.

THE END