Archive of Our Own ^beta

Life during the zombie apocalypse was a nightmare and at sixteen years old, Benjamin Thomas Paul—or Ben, as his friends called him—was well aware of that fact.

Had been well aware of the fact from the moment one of the players on the football tackled another and started eating him.

Amber McClean (who Ben had classmates with since the second grade) downing a bottle of her anxiety medication and reanimating—attacking her former cheermates and making the school gym no longer a safe shelter for the rest of them only reinforced that fact. 

Ben really hadn’t needed the bandit raid on the camp or the mass mascare and kidnapping of his classmates that followed or anything that came afterwards. Especially not Travis and Mr. Parker dying or his good intentions leading to Duck getting bitten.

He knew life was a nightmare and wished as he lay dying that he hadn’t contributed to that fact for Kenny. But he had….and God only knows what would happen to Ben afterwards. Ben certainly didn’t know where he was going—only that he wished that things could go back to how they used to be.

Or at the very least, had gone differently.

Stone Mountain, Georgia was hot as hell, the days always felt long, and there was rarely ever something interesting to do—even when you had access to a car and could drive to Macon for the hell of it almost whenever you wanted.

But it was home and Ben had loved it there: even when he was spending most of his summer days sweating his ass off as he worked on his granddad’s goat farm with his younger sister, Katie. Chasing after runaway goats, grooming them, feeding them. Tending to just the farm in general.

Travis and the rest of their friends (mostly other band kids, a couple of football players, and a handful of cheerleaders) had always liked to tease him for that fact. 

To which Ben had always liked to say ‘if you’re gonna be a smartass, you can walk to school.’ 

Something that always made Katie giggle when she was with them. 

It was the little things that Ben would miss.

Katie’s giggles. Travis’s smartass remarks. Amber’s nonstop ‘motherhenning’. Holding the newborn kids on the farms and the look of amazement children would give him as he answered their questions whenever they visited the farm. His dad’s good natured gripping about how ‘bad’ he was at playing the trombone and his mom’s apple pie. Katie’s drawings. His mom’s singing. His dad’s dancing. 

Oh, how he’d end up missing the little things. 

If only Ben had known that when he, Travis, Amber, and the rest of the band kids, football players, and cheerleaders were on the bus to the last football game any of them would ever go to: joking and pushing one another around. Tossing the ball around much to the Bus driver’s disapproval. Maybe he wouldn’t have complained so much about Ms. Dodds’s algebra homework and Katie’s snooping.

Just maybe.