Kyle "Gaz" Garrick/Fem Reader Zombie apocalypse AU (all parts here)
CW: Reader is hit in the face
It’s a moment every animal knows — the instant you comprehend that you’re in imminent peril, and your brain makes the decision between fight, flight, or freeze.
It’s not a conscious choice that propels you to act, but you do. You smack your fist down as hard as you can on top of his knuckles, over and over amidst a mindless frenzy to wrench the ax away from his control, digging your knees into the dirt and heaving—
You get free so suddenly, the momentum lands you flat on your back, knocking the wind out of you in one solid whoosh. If you were a trained fighter you might know that this is when you have to move, even when you feel like you can’t. You have to kill him now, before you can even draw a breath, before he has a chance to recover and retrieve your only weapon.
But you’ve never fought anyone in your life, and in those few seconds of panic over your lungs locking up, Gaz materializes on top of you.
His arms are trembling, even as he efficiently pins you to the ground. You can only assume it’s his muscles giving out from the exertion of killing half a dozen people in the span of an hour. But his fingers are iron, clamping around your wrist in a way that shoots a sharp pain through your arm, right as you’re able to suck in your first gulp of oxygen.
The agony is too much. Your hand spasms open, and you’re forced to drop the ax with a yelp, as invisible splinters of repulsion shoot through your nervous system.
He’s touching you with his murder hands, huffing his hateful breath into your neck as he flings the ax out of your reach, landing in the grass with a soft thump. The fact that he doesn’t want to immediately kill you with it sends another, stronger wave of dread through your belly. You’re alone out here, surrounded only by the corpses that are proof of his cruel nature.
He’s so heavy, and you’re so tired.
Gaz seems to sense the change in your body when you give up. Your muscles go limp as tears of despair prick at your eyes, and all you can do is turn your face away from his.
“You,” he pants, loosening his grip to restrain you mostly with his body weight, “are not an easy person to find.”
Tears begin spilling out over your nose, even as you screw your eyes shut as tight as you can. You walked right into his trap, and it’s all your fault.
Now you’re both shaking. You’re both high on adrenaline and low on energy, vibrating against each other while he catches his breath and decides what to do with you. Your thoughts should be racing, coming up with escape routes and plans, but they’re not. You’re locked onto the one inevitability that’s been nipping at your heels all these months: you’re dead.
Fate has finally caught you in a misstep, and you’re going to die now. You can’t help but picture the worst case scenarios, flipping rapidly through your brain like a horror movie highlight reel, terror closing up your throat.
You’re dead, you’re dead, you’re dead.
Gaz is saying something, but you can’t process it. The air has become too thick to breathe, too thick to hear or see. Stuttered half-sobs wrack your chest, cramping your muscles into tight knots. Desperately you try to suck more oxygen, breaths coming faster once Gaz’s weight lifts off of you. You lay there uselessly on the ground, light-headed and tunnel visioned with despair as you gasp over and over—
Pain radiates across your face so suddenly, all the autonomy shoots back into your limbs like a lightning bolt. You’re not sure if it’s the sting that brings you back, or the blind outrage that he just slapped you.
“We’ve got to go,” Gaz orders.
“W-what?” The hot imprint of his hand throbs on your cheek as you blink stupidly at the shadow above you.
“There’s blood everywhere, we’re going to have biters here in an hour. I’m not going to hurt you, just— just fucking breathe, idiot. We’ve got to move.”
You can feel his knees on either side of your thighs, feel his arms shaking beside your shoulders like he’s just hunched over you, waiting for reality to sink into your brain.
Finally you find your voice, even if it’s a weak, disbelieving croak. “You hit me.”
”Sorry.” He doesn’t sound at all sorry. He sounds urgent and annoyed, as if he resents the two seconds it took to say it.
Helpless tears well up in your eyes again. You should never have survived this long, this was a mistake. You should have let the first one get you, when you watched that fresh biter stumble around your apartment lobby for the first time. Should have offered your own flesh and given up immediately, to avoid all of this.
“I don’t have any tampons,” you whisper, swiping at your eyes.
“Got them packed away. Come on.”
Finally Gaz gets to his feet, and before you can even muster the energy to sit up, he hoists you upright by your armpits.
Your head immediately spins with the sudden reorientation and lack of food. He must sense your wobbling because he holds you steady for longer than necessary, until you flinch away from his touch.
“Get your bag, get as much food as you can carry on the move,” Gaz instructs, his dark outline bending down to grab something from the dirt. “I want to be out of here in five minutes.”
The rain makes everything so much worse.
It’s a steady drizzle by the time you’ve got your things packed, and you’re bundled up as best you can with all of your jackets layered damply together.
It won’t be enough. You’re going to get soaked through in an hour, and then you’re going to die because wet and cold means dead out here. You’re still not sure why you’re alive, why any of it matters at all, but being assigned a task has unfortunately put you in work mode.
Gaz is waiting for you at the edge of the trees. “Here,” he says when you join him, pressing a piece of clothing into your hand.
It’s a coat of some sort, sturdy and thick enough to make you think it might be waterproof.
“Stop at the gift shop on the way out?” you grumble, exchanging your least favorite jacket for the new layer.
Impatient with your speed, he tugs the straps of your pack into place for you, clipping it across your chest and making an annoyed sound in his throat. “Come on, then.”
Your saving grace really is that waterproof layer, keeping your trunk warm and dry while the rest of you becomes sopping wet. You must be going slower than normal, because you’re not thirty minutes into your journey before Gaz pulls you aside under a thick evergreen and forces food and caffeine pills into you.
That’s when the true misery kicks in, when you have enough brain power to soak in how fucking wretched you are. Everything is soggy and dark, and your body is so tired. One step after another, your feet find their way where they’re supposed to go, and your mind wanders to stupid, irrelevant places.
You fantasize that you’re not actually trailing along behind a mass murderer in the dark woods. It’s actually not raining, and the group is still alive for you to hate. You’re going through those houses again in the dark, finding cabinets full of tampons, and every food and supply you could possibly need. You take the time to coat your body in some designer lotion brand, and you even catch a few hours of sleep on someone’s king-sized, memory foam mattress.
The hallucination continues as you walk, becoming more and more ridiculous until you’re creating fake scenarios of your new life in a sanctuary city. It’s the dream you’ve held all these months, that some day you’ll find a place safe and warm, with rules and laws and stability.
You’d be able to let your guard down, and fall in love with someone handsome and tall. Really tall. He’d keep you under his protection and teach you how to fight, like all those fantasy books you read in your past life. You’d finally be able to rest, and have enjoyable sex, and do all the things that humans can only do when they’re not running for their lives.
They’re things you’ll never be able to do again, so you dream of them while you walk through the sodden underbrush, and the thorns, and the slippery roots.
The caffeine has just begun to wear off when Gaz finds somewhere to stop for the remainder of the night. It’s a shallow cave, more of an overhang than anything, and definitely not dry inside. You both have to press into the concave of the rock to find shelter from the rain, unpacking your bed rolls to use as blankets.
And then to your horror, Gaz shuffles up next to you.
“No.” you exclaim, elbowing him away.
“Fuckin’ hell. Not trying to touch you, just getting warm.”
“Get warm over there,” you hiss.
There’s an uncomfortable silence then, which you imagine is him grinding his teeth in the dark, trying to figure out if he should take your body heat by force.
“Now that we’re not walking,” he says finally, in an annoyed rush, “you’re going to cool down very soon and very fast. And I’m not bloody waiting for your little teeth to start chattering before we take-– fucking-– rational survival measures.”
You clamp your jaw shut to keep your teeth from chattering and sniff pretentiously. “I’m warm enough without you, so it s-sounds like your problem.”
The soft pattering of rain on leaves gives you a sick sense of satisfaction. You hope he’s really cold and really wet, and really, really pissed at you for winning one against him. If he wants what you’re not offering, he’s going to have to take it. He’s going to have to prove, right out in the open, that he’s exactly the person you’ve always known he is, and there will be no denying it.
When he speaks again, his voice is unexpectedly soft and smooth. “I have a chocolate bar in my bag.”
Your eyes spring open in interest, which quickly changes to a scowl once you realize what he’s doing. “Good for you.”
“It’s… ah.. Snickers. A big one.”
Resist, resist. You ignore the vivid memories of caramel and peanuts, and sniff again. “Just going to brag all night, or can we get some sleep?”
There’s the sound of a zipper, and then the familiar rustle of a candy bar wrapper behind you. You can’t help the way your mouth instantly waters.
“I reckon three hundred calories is a fair enough trade for putting my back against yours.”
Three. Hundred. Calories.
Murders aside, you’d have to be a fool to refuse that offer. Irritated, teeth beginning to chatter, you scoot your ass back on the rocks until you bump into him, and then snatch the candy bar out of his hand. Gaz laughs under his breath at your eagerness, but thankfully doesn’t kick you while you’re down by commenting on it.
You both settle in, spine to spine, and you wait until you’re as comfortable as possible to open your prize.
It’s… indescribably good. It must have been near his body in the bag because it’s wonderfully warm, and buttery soft. You close your eyes and take bites as small as you can, trying to stifle the small moans of pleasure, and failing once or twice.
Between the sugar filling you with dopamine and Gaz’s warm back against yours, you don’t remember falling asleep, with the empty wrapper still clutched in your fingers.
You wake up with your mouth dry, and your teeth coated in that sugar fuzz from eating before bed. Crinkling your nose, you attempt to go back to sleep before you can wake up any further and notice your various aches and pains.
No use. Your ass hurts from sitting on pebbles, your neck hurts from sleeping semi-upright, and it stinks—
Your heart begins to race as your eyes spring open, and you verify that you are smelling what you think you’re smelling. It’s that unmistakable stench of rotting flesh, like the worst roadkill you’ve ever passed by.
“Gaz,” you whisper, right as the biter stumbles into sight in the woods below.
He’s not awake, you can tell by his slow breathing. Quietly you elbow him, keeping your eyes on the danger. “Wake the fuck up.”
“There’s a biter. Can you shoot it from here?”
Gaz turns his head to peer over, and you both watch the corpse shuffling by, in what you assume is the direction of the bloody camp. Barely recognizable jeans hang off one rotten ankle, leaving the biter in only a tshirt and pink underwear atop sunken, grey skin.
“She’s going the opposite way,” he finally murmurs. “Let her be.”
You open your mouth to argue, because that attitude goes directly against Doran’s philosophy, but then you close it again. Doran’s dead, and you’re apparently got new rules to learn.
There’s more movement in the trees, and you both soberly watch as five more biters make their way past your hiding spot. Five more arrows you could shoot, that Doran believed would make a dent in the population, if everyone did their part. Gaz apparently sees it as more of a drop in the ocean, which is far more worrisome. Has it really become that bad?
Dividers by the-aesthetics-shop
