#otisl

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I will make the actual tumblr post for it later, but I really need to go to bed. Pls mind the tags.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/88585711

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Migration in Spring (Once There Is Something Left Series)

Fandom: Sanders Sides

Relationships: Remus & Emile

Characters: Remus, Emile

Summary: Remus and Emile start to travel during the first spring of the apocalypse.

This is the fic for my 8th BINGO card. Thanks for voting!

Notes: Zombie Apocalypse AU, discussion of mental illness (including someone with mental illnesses using the word ‘insane’ to describe themselves)

This takes place in the same universe as the Is There Anything Left of Patton? series.

“Where are we going anyway?” Emile asked.

Remus glanced at him. He looked tired and cold, but there wasn’t much to do about that. Remus was tired and cold too. “We’re not really going anywhere,” Remus said.

“Then, why are we moving?” Emile asked, a tinge of real frustration in his voice. He was usually rather chipper or at least pretended to be even now. He’d been able to keep his mood light even in the winter months that were just now starting to be over, though the current early morning temperature would beg to differ. Yet even someone like Emile had lines Remus had discovered over the past few months where they were each other’s only (living) company. “Why couldn’t we just stay there.” ‘There’ was the house they’d buckled down in for the winter. It had had a lot of supplies which helped them get through this first winter of the apocalypse, but as spring dawned, Remus had spotted the signs it was time to leave.

“It’s not about where we’re going,” Remus said. “It’s about what we’re avoiding.”

“What we’re avoiding?” Emile asked.

“The dead are migrating, can’t you tell?” Remus asked.

“They’re what?!” Emile asked alarmed. “No! How can you tell?”

“They might be corpses reanimated by some unknown parasite or virus or whatever, but they still obey some of the laws of nature. They don’t move well in the cold, so the mobs traveled South for the winter, but spring means they’re starting to move back North. I’m assuming they’ll go back to wherever they were ‘born’ for the summer like sea turtles return to the beaches they were born at to lay eggs. There’s been some signs of them moving North already and that house was great for the winter, but it’s directly South of New York City. We have to move out of the path before the big mobs start coming.” He glanced at their map. “The best place would be to get up into the Appalachians for the migration if the weather keeps them at bay long enough.”

“A-are you sure?” Emile asked.

“Nope,” Remus said cheerfully. “Just my gut.”

Emile sighed. “Well, your gut has gotten us this far,” he acknowledged. “So, I’ll follow you.”

“Aw, thanks Doc.”

“Please start to call me Emile, Remus.”

Remus fake gasped. “Honestly, Doctor Picani, just because I’ve seen your penis one time doesn’t mean we should drop doctor-patient etiquette.”

“I was bleeding out from a bullet wound, Remus. Is that really all you could focus on?”

“Obviously not. You’re still able to walk, aren’t you?”

“That is true,” Emile acknowledged.

“Though…” Remus started.

“Don’t,” Emile said, and Remus was delighted to see him have to cover his growing smile with his mitten. “Don’t start. You’re horrible.”

“Horrible is my middle name.”

“It is not,” Emile said. “I’ve seen your paperwork.”

“Well, I wanted to have it legally changed, but mother never let me. Who names their child Remus Reginald Royal? No wonder I grew up to be fucking insane.”

Emile frowned at him, clearly about to go into one of his head-doctor lectures.

“Yeah, yeah,” Remus cut him off before he could start. “I’m not insane. Just clinically depressed with a nice case of PTSD and probably borderline personality disorder…because there’s a real big difference.” He said the last under his breath, but unfortunately Emile heard.

“There is a big difference!” Emile protested, “especially for you as you have a history of using words like that to not only put yourself down but to reinforce a self-constructed sense of helplessness in the face of the problems you can control…”

Remus groaned as he, as anticipated, started in on another head-doctor lecture. Was it too much to ask the universe for a zombie to come out of the bushes and try to eat them?

Want to read more? Click below!

Is There Anything Left of Patton? Master Post

Main Master Post.

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For the fic I associate your username with, it’s kind of a toss up between Labels, this first fic I read by you, and Is There Anything Left of Patton, with just has a soft spot in my heart. Probably Is There Anything Left of Patton

Okay, so for Is There Anything Left of Patton, I actually have a pretty intricate idea of zombie mechanics in the story. There are multiple strands of the zombie virus that were distributed to different populations. There are 5, 6 if you include Patton's mutated strand. Each strand has slightly different behavior.

Three of the five have a sort of mobbing behavior where they will instinctually group up though all 3 have slightly different migration patterns. They will group up with each other when these migration patterns intersect causing mega-mobs which you will usually see in the fall and spring when all zombies are moving south for the winter or back north for the summer. These are very dangerous.

The other two strands are less likely to mob at least in any permanent sense. There are wanderers that don't really have a set migration pattern. They'll sometimes temporarily meet up into groups of 2-4 to go wandering around and will on occasion stick with mobs for a couple of days before pealing off. They're dangerous because they can surprise you by just being there. With mobs, you have warning, but this jerks just wander up to you on a street out of nowhere!

The last strand doesn't wander around at all. They lie in wait and are the most dangerous strand when you're exploring new areas like abandoned houses. They don't make much noise or move often until prey is within lunging distance. Instead of migrating during the winter, they'll hibernate.

Patton's strand is a derivative of the wandering strand. He doesn't have much of a pull to go after mobs, but he can still sense when they're there.

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Janus in Is There Anything Left of Patton?

So, Janus’s timeline is basically he got a bit of warning about the apocalypses before it happened. He’s a biomedical engineer and had a classmate who worked on the virus that caused the zombie apocalypses. That classmate shot him and a couple of other people an email before it all went to hell with literally everything they knew about the virus while they were dying locked in the facility. 

Janus then proceeded to book it. One may think this was him being a coward because he didn’t give any forewarning to people, but really he was more being pragmatic and trying to protect that information, figuring others would probably try and also would likely either be ignored or shut up (as the information was still being suppressed at that point.) He bought as many supplies as he could, packed everything he needed and as many flashdrives as he could find at Walmart with copies of the documents he was sent, and drove into the mountains. He tossed about half of the flashdrives in different places along the way, but kept the rest.

He found a cabin in the mountains and lived there for about a year. It was probably a little after Virgil found Patton that he decided to venture out, figuring the zombies would at least be a little dispersed by this point. He took his car until it ran out of gas and then went by foot.

His strategy now is basically wander around until he finds a use for the information he has. His usual strategy is to cover himself is zombie guts to mask his scent and it works pretty well for him. He’d pretty good at acting like zombies too. They usually just ignore him and he observes them out of the corner of his eye, gathering more data that he writes down later. He has given a couple of the flashdrives to groups of survivors he’s found. (He freaked them out every time because they’d think he was a zombie and he’d just toss the flashdrive at them.) He currently has 6 flashdrive left. He hunkered down in a house during the winter.

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I actually had saved this to my playlist for possible songs for the “Folds in Paper” playlist... then I realized how well it fit “Is There Anything Left of Patton?” and thought I’d share.