Chapter Text
She's woken up by the sound of arguing.
As usual.
The cold pane of the car window presses into her cheek, the sound of yelling amplified by the tiny space everyone is shoved into.
Jerk and Dick are going at it, exchanging insults (and shoving each other around as best they can, by the sounds of it).
She tries not to pay any attention at first, even though her suspicions are correct as her seat is jostled roughly. She forgets about not paying attention when their pushing and shoving causes her to get knocked forward, her head bouncing off the window hard, pain blooming in her face.
"Shit," she hisses, her eyes snapping open as she sits further upright, cradling her sore head and twisting to look behind her. "Will you two man-babies knock it the fuck off?"
She's been trying to squeeze in another few minute's rest, wanting to not have to get up and deal with this at all costs. Of course, men being men, they couldn't seem to help but be dickheads and spend every waking moment bothering people who aren't doing anything to them.
Both Jerk and Dick stop, looking back at her. Jerk raises his chin defiantly, his brown eyes narrowing. "What are you going to do if we don't?"
In the front seat, Bitch laughs, twisting around to look at Columbia too, a sneer pulling at her chapped lips. "Yeah, what're you going to do?"
Columbia bristles, looking back at the only other woman in the car, her temper already frayed due to how hot it is, and the pain in her face. "Butt the fuck out, you co-"
"Awe, man," Lancaster interrupts, thankfully cutting her off from saying something perilously stupid. At the same time, the SUV they're currently in whines and groans before abruptly stopping in the middle of the road.
"No gas," Lancaster announces, like it's not obvious already.
"Fuck," Bitch sighs, forgetting Columbia in favor of looking out the window and throwing her hands up, the bracelets on her wrists clinking. "This is just great."
Talk about an understatement, Columbia can't help but think.
Coming across this car had been a lucky break. The summer has been brutally hot this year, the asphalt at a temperature to melt the rubber right off the bottom of your shoes (or the meat off the bottom of your feet, if you were one of those unfortunate enough not to have shoes). Not to mention they only have a limited amount of water until they get back to their base.
"Well, looks like we're walking the last five miles," Dick comments blithely, shoving at Columbia's seat, jostling her again. "Come on, let me out. I'm frying like a fish back here."
"Smelling like one, too," Bitch snickers, and Jerk lets out a laugh that sounds like a cross between a choking hyena and a dolphin on helium.
There's a flurry of shoving and insults again, and Columbia grits her teeth, slipping off her seatbelt and getting out of the car, grabbing her bat and satchel before slamming the door shut.
"Cunt!" Dick yells after her, but Columbia is already walking away, slinging her bag over her shoulder and adjusting her grip on the weapon in her hands, scanning her surroundings.
She keeps her guard up, stopping at the front of the car to wait for Lancaster.
"All good?" Her friend asks, shifting his own bag on his shoulder and shifting his shotgun in his hands.
"For now," Columbia nods, her gaze continuing to drift over the abandoned highway, littered with the rusted skeletons of cars and slowly being taken over by nature again.
It doesn't look like there are any Ghoulies around, but that could change quicker than one would think. Especially when most of your traveling companions don't know how to shut the hell up.
"Okay," Lancaster nods, taking a deep breath and giving her a tight smile. "Only a few more miles. Shouldn't be too bad."
That's a lie, of course. This is going to suck.
Already, Columbia can see the sweat beading on her friend's forehead, and she can feel her own clothes starting to stick to her skin.
It's not even noon, and she just about feels like a lobster that's been dropped in a boiling pot of water.
"Hotter than Satan's cooch out here," Bitch complains.
She's got that one right, honestly. It is in fact, that hot, or so it feels.
Columbia doesn't look back, knowing they've fallen in step behind her as she starts in the direction of Lexington.
Besides the low chatter of her group mates and the occasional background noise, like the wind blowing through the overgrown weeds growing through the cracks in the road, it's eerily quiet.
There's no activity except for them, save for the random bird or two flying past.
It would be unsettling to see what would be a busy highway under ordinary circumstances so dead, but these aren't ordinary circumstances, and so Columbia has grown used to it.
It's been five years since the world ended via zombie apocalypse. Columbia had been fifteen when a student burst into the classroom and latched onto the English teacher, ripping out her throat and painting the entire front row of students in blood.
Pandemonium had followed, a lot of the details fuzzy in the confusion and panic.
Ever since then, Columbia has wandered from place to place, trying to avoid the Ghoulies that are literally everywhere.
The Outbreak itself seemed to start the same as any other zombie flick did. Someone got sick with a bullshit disease (rumors say it was because of bad meat, other claim it was something else) that never should have existed, then bit somebody else and infected them with their ick.
And so on and so forth, till the whole world was swarming with rotting bodies, because of course no one bothered to tell anyone anything was wrong until it was too late.
Now, the country is a lawless wasteland, where the only rules are that you can do whatever you want, whenever you want.
The government is non-existent, so it's not like anyone is going to enforce the law. It's pretty much everyone for themselves, save for the few that manage to find enough decent people to group up with.
(Even then, you might end up with a group of assholes that steal all of your stuff and leave while you are sleeping, leaving you defenseless in a zombie-infested suburb. Not that that's happened to Columbia more than three times, of course not).
Columbia is the only one in her immediate family that is still alive, and she's not sure about any of her other relatives. Not like she can just pick up a phone and find out, can she? What with every communication network down, and all.
She has long lost contact with all of her old school friends, too, so she doesn't have anything or anyone tying her down to a particular place.
She's been alone for the most part, save for the few times she teamed up with people when it was beneficial to her. She never stayed for long, having already had trust issues that only got worse after the apocalypse started.
This group is the longest she's stayed in, having known the others for about six weeks now. Starting from her home town of Columbia, Kentucky, she has made her way slowly across the state, by any methods she could. Mostly walking.
She met Bitch first. Okay, actually her name is Greensburg. But not really, it's just what she calls herself, since that's where she's from. For some reason, everyone likes to introduce themselves as their hometown, or where they used to live.
Columbia supposes it's a way to be less personal. Or maybe it's because not everyone wants to give out their name.
Anyways, Bitch is from Greensburg, a town only about twenty minutes from Columbia's hometown. She rarely actually calls her by that name, instead preferring the nickname she gave her.
She calls Greensburg "Bitch" because…well, she's a bitch. She's an uppity cheerleader type, with big green eyes, light brown curls and a waist to make any girl envious. But don't let that cute face fool you.
Bitch is a farm girl, and her bite is just as nasty as her bark. Columbia learned that when she got into her with her upon their first meeting. She got her ass handed to her pretty good that day, not gonna lie.
Bitch is also really, really good at killing Ghoulies. Columbia once saw her take out a group of three in less than a minute using just a garden hoe.
It was pretty impressive, and more than a little scary. Columbia had decided that it'd be smarter to befriend the other girl and team up for a while, rather than try and fight her for supplies and risk a hoe to the forehead. Bitch had agreed, to her utter surprise, and so had begun the beginning of their tentative alliance.
After that came Lancaster. Technically, he'd not been living in Lancaster when she and Greensburg had met him, instead residing in the town of Liberty, but it's what he'd introduced himself as, so they'd just rolled with it.
Lancaster's pretty quiet, mostly keeping to himself. Despite that, he's actually pretty funny once you get him talking.
He's the designated responsible member of the group, being the one with the brain cell the majority of the time.
He's a lot nicer than the other three, which unfortunately has gotten him fucked over or almost fucked over more often than not.
Being the only one of their group who isn't white, he's also the one who naturally gets the most shit.
He doesn't really need her help in defending him, perfectly capable of taking care of himself. That doesn't stop her from trying to make sure that the others don't mess with him, more than happy to throw hands if someone decides to take it too far.
Which happens more often than it should, but what do you expect from small town assholes?
No one's been stupid enough to drop the word thankfully, at least not in her earshot or to Lancaster's face. She has a feeling that he won't need her help if (or when) that happens.
She's seen how good he is in a melee fight with Ghoulies, not to mention that shotgun he carries around.
They'd met Stanford next, aka Jerk. Jerk is, naturally, the dumb jock to Bitch's mean girl cheerleader.
Built like a brick shit house and taller than almost all of them by about half a foot, he's a big dude, and not all that bad-looking with his fluffy black hair and big brown eyes.
It's too bad he's a total asshole, honestly. He is always acting like he's superior to the rest of them and constantly disagreeing with everything that Columbia says.
He seems to have a thing for pissing her off for no reason, and takes every opportunity to get in her face about the decisions she makes.
It's not like he doesn't know how to be civil, either. He's plenty friendly with Bitch and Jerk, he just doesn't seem to like Columbia very much. Maybe because she doesn't ride his dick, ooh-ing and ahh-ing over how cool he is. Or how cool he thinks he is, rather.
And ever since he and Bitch became an official couple a couple weeks ago, it's only gotten worse. Columbia tries to ignore it best as she can, telling herself that this isn't forever, but fuck if this guy doesn't know how to get under her skin and being out the absolute worst in her.
Finally, there is Dickhead, Dick for short, otherwise known as Nicholasville to everyone else. She's not even sure what his purpose of existence is.
Stocky and covered in tattoos, he has blond hair and green eyes. He's not a jock, not being nearly muscular or as outwardly likable as one (as likable as they can get, anyways).
He's that…he's one of Those Guys who go around gagging on jock-cock and making inappropriate comments about what the cheerleaders do together in the locker room.
A woman-hating, dick-riding pervert, in other words. If the apocalypse didn't happen, Columbia suspects that he's probably the type that would live in his mother's basement and bully children on Pony Simulator.
How he's not gotten eaten by a Ghoulie yet, she doesn't know. It's a shame he hasn't. He's a greasy creep whose only redeeming qualities are that he's good at getting into places others can't, and he isn't halfway bad at shooting a gun. That's it.
Even then, he is the first to run if things go south, and the first to run his mouth about how badly things suck for him.
Columbia really, really doesn't like him, which is the understatement of the century, but she tries not to say she hates anyone (even if she does).
Like, she wouldn't actively try to kill Nicholasville or anything, but she wouldn't stop if, say, he tripped and a Ghoulie or two decided to turn him into an all-you-can-eat buffet. That's all.
In a group like this, disagreements are bound to happen, sure. That's fine. Columbia doesn't care one way or the other if someone doesn't like her.
What she does care about is people don't know what is what, what they're supposed to do in certain situations, how they're supposed to handle certain things.
Which is why there are Rules, rules that Columbia has personally come up with on her own.
Of course, there are rules that the other survivors she's encountered follow. Hers have kept her alive and in one piece so far, though, and she doesn't intend to stray from them anytime soon.
Rule one is one of the most important, at least to Columbia, and that is Pace Yourself.
Pretty obvious one. Ghoulies as a whole aren't the fastest. Generally, the fresher they are, the faster they can run, but as a whole, most Ghoulies are only about as fast as the average person. If not a little slower, depending on what kind of injuries they had before turning.
Because the undead aren't the fastest, it's better to be able to run longer rather than faster. Most of them are easily knocked off balance, or can't turn fast thanks to death making it hard to move, too, so avoiding running in a straight line and putting things between you and the thing chasing you drastically improves chances of survival.
Columbia is brought out of her thoughts by Lancaster's low voice. "On your right, Columbia."
Turning her head, her eyes narrow. A Ghoulie, woman by the looks of it (or, what used to be a woman, anyways) is slowly meandering between the cars. She's almost completely bald, her skin festering and gray. Her red shirt is tattered and half way off, displaying the giant hole in her middle, guts partially spilling out. She hasn't noticed them yet, turning in circles around a blue pickup truck with no tires.
Jerk snickers quietly from behind them. "Get a load of that thing."
"We go around," Columbia decides, at the same time.
Bitch scoffs from behind her. "What, so it can eat us later?"
"No," Columbia replies back, keeping her voice low, her eyes glued to the Ghoulie, who's currently frothing at the mouth as she continues stumbling around the truck, an unnatural growl emanating from her, audible even from here.
"But if you want to run away from a bunch of Ghoulies in ninety degree weather because you couldn't resist killing something, you can," she adds with false cheer.
That was rule number two.
When in doubt…..don't. That applies to pretty much anything anymore, but to Ghoulies especially. Just because there only seemed to be one, didn't mean there was only one. It could be hard enough dealing with a singular undead, especially if you weren't expecting it.
Killing one was guaranteed to draw attention, and you never knew just how many there were in the area at any given time, which is you never engaged unless you were sure you 1) knew how many there were in the first place or 2) were sure you could escape should you choose to engage.
Avoiding attacking Ghoulies first thing also saves ammo and energy, both of which the group are not in abundance of at the moment.
Seeing how close they are to the city, and how this route is often used to get in and out of it, Columbia doesn't doubt that this lady in red has some rotten friends hanging around somewhere in this vicinity.
"Whatever," Bitch mutters finally. Slowly, Columbia moves behind another line of vehicles, keeping her weapon at the ready in case one of the undead decides to pop up out of nowhere (they love doing that shit).
A quick glance confirms the others are close behind, actually not being belligerent for once. She hopes it stays that way, as they successfully make their way around the undead woman and continue their trek to the city.