It's The End Of The World And I Could Do With A Cheeseburger

If he had to pick one thing about the small town in Nevada that he hated. Well-Amongst a lot of things, it was the smell. That stinking, humid, rotting smell of corpses. Though, admittedly that wasn't the towns fault-And the place had smelt just 'fine and dandy' a week ago when he'd showed up there. The second, well, the second was the ravenous group of citizens-turned-monsters which were the reason for the large amount of bodies decorating the desolate streets. What a lovely little homey touch. But then, since the population was down, and nine times out of ten the person you ran into on the street was gunning to rip your throat out, you began to enjoy the company of the dead bodies.

Okay, so, he was getting ahead of himself.

Frederick Jamison, James for short, was a drop-out, plain and simple. Mommy and Daddy had high standards and he'd not met them, so to forgo the family 'shame' they'd indulged his want for a year away from school and purchased him the next tickets out of dear old Germany and into the pit of temptation and sin. Namely, America. Not that he was complaining. There was a lot more to do. Drinking, smoking, drugs-And, well, girls. Lots and lots of girls. Not that he simply swung that way-But advertizing to his upstanding citizens of parents that he wasn't adverse to a bit of man on man action, well he was sure that would be pushing them over that scarce little line they were already teetering upon. He wasn't that insensitive. He might have been the disappointment in the family, but he didn't want them to cut him out completely. Neurotic and up-themselves as they were, they were still family, right? At the end of it, the twenty-three year old loved his parents. He loved them enough to let them ship him out of the country with a VISA stating 'one year'. In other words, have your act cleared up before this time, or it will be permanent.

The first four months had gone well. Town to town. State to state. He'd been given money, that was one thing his parents weren't scarce on, but driving around in a hired car was nothing to spending a night in the cell for being caught hitch-hiking. Who knew they could be so harsh about accepting a lift or two? It wasn't as if he was a very menacing person. Strange and bizarre he could accept, but scary? Possible rapist and or killer? The thought made a smile twitch to life on his lips. He stood at an unimpressive height, and an unimpressive build. He was pale, pasty and not unimpressed by this fact. It wasn't as if he didn't try to tan, but apparently his genetics had other ideas. When he'd been younger he'd had a nice head full of wispy blonde curls, but one day when his parents had pushed him too far he'd taken to his hair with a pair of sissors and some hair dye. Green hair dye. Needless to say, it had never been the same again.

Bringing a hand up to rub through said hair, cringing at the feel of grime, dirt and God-knows what else, he slipped from his thoughts and concentrated on the door in front of him, slipping it open and clasping long fingers around the hand-gun he'd stolen off a dead police officer three streets back. What? The man didn't need it any more, he didn't even have a head. Holding the gun at the ready, he finally deemed the room safe and pushed the door shut, lowering the gun and pushing it down the front of his pants, leaving the handle out for easy access.

Positives: It was easy to get to.
Negatives: It better fucking not go off.

Shrugging the bag off his shoulder, he wandered toward the shelves, salvaging some food and the essentials. In other words, cigarettes, as many packets as he could fit without looking a bit psychotic-Oh, to hell with psychotic. Cigarettes in normal life had been a nice little relief. Now, they were his life line, keeping his mind off the fact he was probably one of the last in a town infected by the nice locals who now wanted to seperate his head from his body. This was why he didn't like people. Not unless they were for sex-And these people, well, he was keeping them well out of his pants.

Zipping the bag up, he grimaced as he caught his reflection in the window. The was blood on his face, dry and with a brick like texture, cemented in lines down from his nose, the middle which was sporting a rather unattractive bandaid. Spongebob. It had been the only packet he could find. A couple of days ago he'd had a run in with one of the creatures and it'd torn his septum piercing out. Not nice. He'd made sure to blow it's head off for that, which explained the disgusting bits of purple on one side of his face. Zombie brains. The roots of his hair were showing, but that was the least of his worries. If hell could incorporate itself into human form, that would be him. He looked terrible to say the least, and his clothes were struggling to keep together, what with all the tares and such he'd gotten from all too many encounters with the locals.

The world had gone to shit.
Over stating, but the town at least.
And James was sitting right in the middle of it, lighting himself a cigarette and wondering just vaguely if it were against all odds for one shaggable woman to have survived the apocalypse. No, with his luck? It'd be a WoW geek who could have stood to stop eating McDonalds long ago. He could think of only one thing at that moment, and in the words of the oh-so-wise internet: FML.

Fuck My Life.

The common saying is: When it rains, it pours. But in Seth Ryder’s mind this was far beyond pouring now. This was a torrential monsoon including hail, and any other sort of precipitation that was all around detrimental to a normal life. It had changed so quickly as well. In only a week’s time the city had practically destroyed itself, and in only a few days Seth predicted that it would either: a) destroy itself completely and cease to exist, b) the United States Government would take action and it would cease to exist via a nuclear blast, or c) the plague would breach quarantine and would spread to more of the U.S. or possibly the world. Seeing as what the options were at the moment, Seth really didn’t like any of their outcomes.

Seth was not a pessimist. Oh no. He was just logical, and those were the only logical outcomes that they had right now. They couldn’t go from having a city overrun by creatures that belonged in a George A. Romero film then suddenly have everything be alright. The world didn’t work that way, and anyone who believed so was most likely delusional. Now a logical mind was not one that was always free of guilt, however. Seth was a perfect example of that. Now, upon seeing Seth one would wonder why a young man who appeared to be anything but ordinary could possibly have something to feel guilty about in a crisis such as this. Well, it is easily understandable if said young man was one of the reasons for this problem in the first place. However, this was not his intended outcome. Far from it, actually. Seth had been unknowingly duped as it were.

Having been a rather exceptional student even in his younger school years, Seth had found education to be quite easy. He graduated at the top of his high school class, had a full-ride scholarship to practically any school that he would really want to go to, graduated Summa Cum Laude from Georgetown University with a degree in Bio-Chemistry, moved on to complete their accelerated Master’s degree program in the same field, and was looking to complete his doctorate studies through researching on curing diseases and infections. This lead him to working in Nevada as they were looking for bright, young minds for new and better ideas. He was curious on the direction that the company was going, but he was always assured that they were going to be making the biggest break-through in human history.

At twenty-four, Seth had been one of their youngest employees within the research department, and felt like his career was really taking off. They had developed some drug that was supposed to generally heal any sickness. However, something somewhere had been tampered with. Seth had found out about the company’s little charade too late. Nothing could be done to stop it, but the building was supposed to contain it. Somehow that did not work out that way, and some infected escaped the labs, killed or infected whoever got in their way, then took off for the city. It spread like wildfire and sent the city into chaos.

Seth had never been a fighter, but he had been somewhat athletic. In high school he had been on a swim team, but that didn’t mean too much now. Sure, he jogged a bit and ate right, but overall Seth would not deem himself as being one who was built to survive. He was just downright lucky…for the most part seeing as how he ended up here, but hey! He was alive.

Seth had found a safe place to stay last night, and he was able to lock himself inside away from the chaos outside. However, there wasn’t much food there and he had to leave that safe haven in hopes of finding another one, or perhaps another survivor. He hadn’t come in contact with another living person other than the ones who were turned. On the short trip of two blocks, Seth had nearly been ripped apart, but luckily not bitten. He’d used the last of his ammo as well as a lot of his strength to fight off and get away from them, but not unscathed. That was the reason for him being in one of the convenience stores. He’d found a first aid kit as well as a sewing kit, because he had a rather large gash in his side that needed stitches which was the worst of his wounds. Other cuts and bruises lined his body, but they weren’t too bad. There were quite a few bruises in the forms of handprints, and one quite dark one around his throat. If he were to liken himself to anything, Seth figured he looked like a victim of domestic violence…that wasn’t too far from the truth, he supposed.

He hadn’t heard anyone else enter the small store which he had deemed safe, so his remaining weapon, a baseball bat, laid down at his side. Seth currently had his bloodied button-up t-shirt off, and he was looking in a small hand mirror in order to try and stitch his skin back together. He was making a mess of it, and now a bit of noise as the wound still hurt a great deal and pulling it back together with some string he found which had been on sale was not helping the pain. Seth bit back a sort of groan, and winced when he made a bit too much noise. He didn’t think it was loud enough to attract anything, but how could one really know?

Currently, Seth was sitting on the floor of the store with his back to the end of one of the line of shelves and was fighting back tears so he could still see. Pain tolerance was not his forte. His black dress pants looked more of a dusty grey now from dirt, smoke, ash, and blood that stained the tattered pants. He’d gotten rid of his lab coat which had been too bit and bulky to continue to wear, and an overall hazard as it was easy to grab. His blue eyes were working hard on focusing on the small mirror so his dexterous hands could maneuver correctly. His thin frame was even more evident with his shirt off, and some would say that he was perhaps a little on the skinny side but not so much that you saw every bone. It just made his collar bones more prominent, and the small amount of muscle he had could be seen but even that was minimal. In other words, he was far from intimidating even if he had blood on his face and his brown hair was somewhat matted with dried blood that wasn’t his own. Some people looked badass with blood on them, but Seth…well, it just made him look…Well, he hardly ever looked badass.

Seth then froze when he heard something. In the silence of the store the zipper was extremely loud. Add to that the fact that he was somewhat paranoid, and it sounded like someone was ripping a phone book. His eyes widened and he had stopped mid-stitch in order to place his hand on his baseball bat. He hadn’t had to use that, yet…It seemed like that sort of weapon worked in the movies, but who knew about this sort of situation? He just hoped that it would protect him long enough to possibly get through all of this. Seth tried to keep his breathing low, but he worried his heart was beating too loudly because it sounded like a drum in his ears as he felt the need to panic and run. However, he kept himself seated on the floor as ready as possible with a threaded needle still hanging off his side and his gash three-fourths of the way stitched.

He leaned out just a little to try and see what had made the noise, but then moved his head back quickly. Seth didn’t want to see that badly, because if he saw one of the infected then that meant they could see him…Staying hidden seemed like the best choice right now.

Taking a nice long drawl on the cancer-stick and parting his lips so the smoke could curl up from his breath, he paused when he heard the slightest of a groan. When you lived in a town of man-eating beasts, you got good at keeping an ear out, and a sound like crunching or groaning, as cliche as this was, were actually the best alerts of when there was a non-friendly about. Breathing out the last of the smoke, he stubbed the cigarette out on one of the shelves nearest to him, his brows knitting together in a frown.

Usually zombies weren't the most graceful of creatures-Hell, all the time, but this thing managed to have gotten into the store before making a single sound. Now, that just seemed an instant call for suspicion.

Lifting his bag over his shoulder with ease, he slipped the gun from the front of his pants and cocked it with a loud resounding click causing him to cringe. Now that would bring a hoard down on him. Sometimes guns were more trouble than they were worth. Blow one zombies head onto the pavement, and you've just made a sound loud enough to call each and every other zombie in the street after you. Good for power, bad for keeping your head low. Ducking down beneath the shelves, he listened for the sound of clumsy shuffling and grimaced when he heard nothing. That meant one of three things.

1. Zombies were getting smarter. Bad. For all sorts of reasons.
2. He was just getting paranoid and hearing things-He could be going crazy, he occasionally spoke to himself, was that a sign?
3. It was a person.

Now, three was unlikely. There were no people here. People in the sense of 'how was your day, greg?' sort of people. Not 'braaaaiiinnnsss' sort of people. He'd never heard a zombie say that, but he assumed that was going on in their heads. The movies said so. And since when had television ever lied?

Shifting himself along the floor with ease, a skill he'd learnt from sneaking into clubs without being seen, he held the gun at the ready, his ears straining for any sound. Anything at all. And then he caught it. The slight of breath.

Zombies didn't breath.

Swallowing, he shifted around the corner of the shelf, training the gun on a male, and standing himself up, not caring to keep himself silent any longer. The guy looked no better than him. In as bad of shape as well. Though, covered in blood and dirt, there was no way this guy was a zombie. The gun kept in place, just incase.

"Oi-You trying to get yourself killed?"

Nice way to start a conversation. Meh. He wasn't a social person. Being surrounded by zombies hadn't changed that.

Those few moments felt like an eternity, and Seth nearly yelled in surprise when the other young man came around the corner. He hadn't even had time to react, really, so he was left staring up at the gun with wide eyes and a terrified expression. It took a moment for Seth to realize the man with the gun said something, and he blinked at the question.

"If I were looking to get myself killed, do you think I would be hiding in a convenience store?" he answered the question with a question. Seth started to relax a bit, "Now, unless you plan on shooting me, which I would rather you didn't, could you please lower that gun?"

Seth's hand relaxed off the baseball bat, and he then went back to sewing the last couple of stitches he needed before he tied it off and cut the remaining thread. He stood up slowly, and looked like he was sore as he winced when he did so. More bruises could be seen on his back as he bent over to pick up his shirt and put it on. While buttoning it up, Seth took in the other's appearance. Not that any person really fit the 'zombie apocalypse' persona, but this guy...well, maybe it was the green hair that set it off. He seemed more like the type who would attract trouble to himself than get himself out of trouble. However, seeing as how he was still alive and (unlike himself) had a gun...

Seth wiped his hand off as best he could, then held it out to the other, "It's nice to see someone not wanting to eat my head...I'm Seth." he said and offered a very small smile. He didn't really want to get off on the wrong foot with someone holding a gun.