Chapter Text
Chapter 12
The weather grew warmer, a true evidence of spring’s arrival, and you’ve pretty much ditched your thermal clothing. Zombies grew fewer than prior to the winter, and wildflowers sprouted up through cracks in the pavement, alongside weeds and grass. With the decrease of zombies, however, you’ve also run into your own problem — food. Supplies were still plentiful back at the base, but Link and you had eaten through a lot of your provisions over the time beneath the snow.
Since you’ve raided the vast majority of the buildings around your vague radius, that meant that the two of you had to venture out further to get new supplies. Unfortunately, now you also had to be more wary of what you’re scavenging. The last thing either of you needed was to get some sort of poisoning.
Link and you have found a warehouse — shiny and new, completely undamaged. The problem, though, is that there is no way to get in. There are no windows, no holes in the walls, no cracks in the doors, and the doors themselves were too heavy to try and lift, even together.
But there were probably good supplies in there, and hopefully no zombies. In any case, there was no sound coming from inside when you pressed your ear to the doors.
You stared at the doors, debating going to find something else, but curiosity, and a bit of greed, was gnawing at you. Link lifts his axe over his head, and brings it down on the door with a loud clang, but the axe bounces off, leaving behind little more than a scrape and a dent. Link returned back to your side, rubbing his forearms. It looked like the recoil hurt. Nearly fifteen minutes of fruitless labor, trying to find a way in.
If only you could knock something into the warehouse… You look around, but you don’t have a convenient wrecking ball out in the parking lot, much to your dismay. Across the road, there’s a car dealership, but most cars don’t work anymore, especially those that had been abandoned out on the road. Back when the apocalypse first started, it was rather common to hear a car combust off in the distance for one reason or another.
Link’s eyes follow yours to the hill of cars that stand unoccupied just across the road. He glances to the doors of the warehouse, a mischievous smile growing on his face. He taps you on the shoulder to get your attention, and points at the cars, and then to the doors. He really wants to ram one of those into them.
Admittedly, you kind of want to see that, too, but that’s only if you manage to start up one of those cars.
“You think we’ll be able to find some keys inside?” You ask, looking at the building. They probably did have keys somewhere. No way the workers just kept them.
You make your way across the road, glancing inside the dealership. There’s the remains of a zombie lying on the floor, but it’s definitely dead, so it should be safe to head inside. The front door is bent in, the lock already broken before your arrival. You click your flashlight on, beginning your search. You hop over the front desk, while Link heads deeper into the restricted area of the store. You sift through the cabinets, but there’s nothing that remotely resembles somewhere they would put a bunch of car keys. You pull one of the drawers open, retrieving some useless documents from it. One of them has a sticky note attached to it, a numeric code written on it.
“Huh…” you put the papers down on the desk, and beneath them, you spot some car keys.
You pick them up, attached to some keychains and house keys. The label has a Jeep logo on it. They must’ve belonged to someone who used to work here.
Bang! A loud gunshot echoes through the store, your head whipping around to the door that led into the back area. What is Link up to now?
You peek into the back room, finding your companion in front of a steel storage. Link had busted the lock. Maybe that’s what that code was for…
He opens the doors, revealing inside a whole bunch of hanging keys. You peer over his shoulder, looking at all of the brands.
“So…you got a car preference?” You ask.
The two of you need something sturdy — a bulkier, tougher car that you could ram the back of into that door — like a Ford, or a Subaru.
You wander through the rows of cars, multiple sets of keys in hand. There are all sorts of cars still here. Different models, years, faces, shapes, you name it. But the problem was seeing which one still worked. It’d been months since anyone’s driven one of these, and their battery might’ve very well died. You can’t even begin to imagine how you’re going to try and jump-start one of these if all the rest of them have dead batteries, too.
A bulky, new Subaru sits at the end of the row, looking like it could really take a hit if needed. Link and you sort through all of the different keys, trying to find one that it might react to. Finally, with a press of a button from a set of Link’s keys, the car beeps, signaling its revival. The two of you exchange a look of excitement, and you reach for the driver’s door. You love Link, but you’re not letting him behind the wheel.
You take the key from him, and climb into the driver’s seat, while he hops into the passenger seat. You fix your seat into a comfortable position, and take the car off of the parking brake, before putting the gear shift into reverse. Lifting your foot off the brake, you feel the car stir. By some miracle, the battery wasn’t dead yet!
“You got your seatbelt on?” You ask your companion while you pull your own on. Link nods, already buckled in.
“Great,” you say, twisting your body so that you can see out of the back window as you reverse. You pull out of the parking spot, driving over to the road. The car struggles a little under your control, and a few less than normal sounds emit from it, but so long as it doesn’t blow up upon collision, that’s fine by you.
You make your way across the road again, and turn the car so its back is facing the warehouse door. You brace yourself, glancing at Link. He doesn’t look like he’s changed his mind, meeting your gaze before looking through the back window again.
“You should get out,” you tell him. “You know, in case the car decides to blow up upon impact.”
This car hasn’t been driven in a good few months now, and there’s definitely something that either became wrong with it, or already was even before the apocalypse. It’s a valid concern, and you’d rather at least one of you get the resources from the warehouse. Yet, Link’s brows furrow, and he gives you an offended look for even suggesting such a thing.
You sigh, and put the car in reverse. Without another thought, you slam on the gas.
You flinch at the sound of the metal bending and scraping against the surface of the car. Yet, you're alive! Your eyes meet Link’s, a smile crossing over your face once more — it worked! He returns the smile, glancing into the warehouse through the back window of the car. The coast looks clear, and there’s a bunch of boxes around, untouched.
“This might be our greatest heist to date,” you joke, putting the car back into drive. “I wish we could clear out all the roads somehow. Imagine if we could drive around town. We’d be able to travel farther and faster, get bigger hauls, hit and run zombies.”
The car wobbles out from underneath the broken door with some struggle, and you drive it off to the side, before turning it off. Link and you exit the car, taking a moment to cringe at the huge dent that it now had, and pull out your flashlights. Inside the warehouse is dark, but safe. It hasn’t housed any occupants in a while. Inside the boxes, you find all sorts of things — machinery, tools, wood. It’s a shame there’s no food to be found, but you suppose you could always reverse collide with another warehouse door if need be.
Link and you are packing some tools and materials into your backpacks when you suddenly hear heavy, sporadic breathing. Your ears perk up, and you look up to see a Viral zombie bolting to the two of you.
You don’t have the time to reach for your bat. It collides into you, throwing you back against the cement floor. Your hands fly up instinctively, grabbing it by the neck, and trying to push the thing off, but it’s ravenous and stubborn.
Blood splatters over your face, as Link’s axe connects with its head, a sickening crack! echoing through the warehouse. You’re pulled back up onto your feet, yanked outside before it has time to recover. You reach into your pocket, preserving on the unlock button a few times for good measure.
The car beeps open, and the two of you fly into the backseat, slamming the door shut behind you. The zombie runs into the metal, its grimy hands clawing at the glass. Link had gotten a good hit on it, blood spilling out of a large gash on the side of its head. Nonetheless, it’s a nauseating sight you don’t look too long at.
You separate from Link, and crawl back into the driver’s seat. Link joins you in the passenger’s, and you make sure that all of the doors are locked shut. The zombie moves with you, screaming and clawing at the glass. It begins hitting the window, but the glass remains strong still. For now. After that previous collision, you’re not sure how long that will last.
You switch the car into reverse, backing up. The Viral stumbles, but regains its footing quickly. You crank the gear shift back to drive, and step on the paddle. The Viral is knocked down for good this time around, and you try to ignore the crunch that comes from beneath the tires.
You drive the car out onto the road, attempting to navigate it past the cracks and potholes in the pavement. You glance through the rear view mirror, but it looks like you lost that zombie. Phew.