arineat:
McKirk-Zombie Apocalypse AU
Filed under: things I didn’t know I wanted.
Jim’s been flirting with the end of the line for two days, out of water, out of food, down to his last round of ammunition and bleeding sluggishly from the best kind of wound — the kind that’s not from a bite. His fatigues are torn off up to the knees, the price he’s paid for the series of bandages he’s bled through and discarded; his jacket is long since lost, snagged on a barbed wire fence and abandoned for the sake of speed. In the height of the day, dragging his sun-stained body across the Arizona desert, Jim wants to shed his shirt too, carry nothing that will trap the heat against his body. At night, all too aware that to light a fire is to forfeit his life, he curls his limbs inside the worn-thin cotton and shakes until morning.
For the first time since this whole thing started, Jim’s starting to wonder if there’s any point in trying. Jim’s starting to wonder how miserable a human can get before they might as well just be a zomb.
So, yeah, when he sees the cloud of dirt rising up to the east, maybe he does assume the worst. Maybe he does square his shoulders and load his gun and close his eyes, waiting for the stench of putrid, rotting flesh to assault his nostrils before he makes his last stand — it doesn’t make Jim a coward or anything. It just makes him someone who knows the futility of running when there’s nowhere left to go. It just makes him someone who’d rather die fighting than alone in the desert, gasping for water he’ll never find.
Only then Jim hears the sound of brakes screeching, of someone drawling, “Well goddamn, kid. You wanna shoot me, you go ahead and shoot me. There are worse ways to go these days.”
Jim’s eyes slam open, and he’s so surprised he nearly drops his gun. The guy in front of him, sitting pretty in the front seat of a hard-topped pickup truck, is wearing a plaid shirt and sunglasses; his hair is sun-bleached and there’s a long scar running up the left side of his face, like someone knifed him, maybe. But most importantly, he’s not oozing from any open sores, reeking of decay, or attempting to rip Jim’s flesh from his body. He’s… he’s…
“You’re human.” Jim hasn’t heard the sound of his own voice in weeks, and it’s raspy, jagged from disuse.
“Not according to my ex-wife, I’m not,” the guy says. He tips his sunglasses down and gives Jim a once-over, frowning and tapping his own arm in the same spot where Jim’s bandage is. “How ‘bout you, kid? You hiding a bite under that half-assed dressing?”
“Huh? Oh, no. Barbed wire,” Jim says, waving a dismissive hand at the blood-stained bandage. He’s still staring at the guy, at the truck, which— “You still have gas. How do you still have gas?”
The guy grins. Jim’s brain, running on nothing but adrenaline and force of will, throws up the nonsensical thought that it makes him looks younger. “We all got our secrets. What’d you do that got you tangled up in barbed wire?”
“We all got our secrets,” Jim parrots back at him, doing his best to mimic his Southern accent. He realizes, a second too late, that mocking someone who might be your last chance at staying the fuck alive is a stupid thing to do, and hastily adds, “Look, how much for a ride? “I got… uh… “
“Don’t lie to me, you ain’t got shit,” the guy says. This is the truth, so Jim squares his shoulders, pushes out his chin, and holds his ground; the guy whistles, low, from between his teeth. “You don’t back down easy, though; I like that. Aw, fuck. What’s your name, kid?”
“Jim,” Jim says. “Jim Kirk.
“Leonard McCoy,” says Leonard. “You’ll do. Now get in the goddamn truck.”
