Chapter Text
Shauna is the first to wake up the next morning, her nervous system screaming at her. Her body isn't used to being away from their base (she never allowed herself to refer to it as ‘home’) for this long. She shakes her head and sighs.
Jackie lays beside her, still sleeping. Shauna pulls back the front door slightly and peeks outside. The sun is almost up, beams of light shining down onto the encampment. She leans out a little further to get a look at the rest of the huts. Everybody else was still in their beds. The sight of the fire-pit makes her stomach growl with hunger.
Behind her, Jackie groans. “Shauna?” Her voice calls out quietly, still dry and hoarse from sleep. Shauna turns to face her. “Hey, Jax. You’re awake.” Jackie nods back at her and sits up on the makeshift bed. “I’m pretty sure everybody else is still asleep, if you wanted to go on a walk now.”
A walk first thing in the morning has become a staple in their daily routine, so Jackie’s muscles and joints could stretch out after so many hours stagnant. Jackie nods again, a small smile on her lips. She was excited to explore their temporary home further than what they’d seen already.
Shauna extends her hand out for Jackie to grab onto, and pulls the two of them out through the already opened door. They put their boots on and start out walking slowly and take a lap around the circular fire-pit. The fresh snow squeaks under their feet.
Before they can walk for too long they hear the sounds of somebody waking up in the shelter to the left of theirs. It’s either Mari, Lottie, or Nat, and judging by the complaining Shauna hears, she guesses that it’s Mari.
Shauna sweeps some snow off a log in front of the fire-pit and sits down, Jackie sitting directly next to her. Only a few minutes later does Mari stumble out of the hut, followed by Nat, then by Lottie last. When Nat sees the two of them sitting outside, she waves.
“Oh!” She makes her way over to them. “How long have you guys been up?”
Shauna shrugs, “Not too long. Jackie just has to move around a bit when she wakes up,” She looks over at Jackie, “Otherwise her pain gets worse.”
Nat nods. “Makes sense.”
Again, silence permeates the air. Still, the women (besides Nat, mostly) are unsure of how to go about interacting with Shauna and her leashed zombie-girl. Shauna takes this all in. She usually likes the feeling of intimidating others, but at this moment all she feels is scrutiny. She wants to retreat inside her head and hide there forever. But she doesn’t.
“So…” Shauna fidgets with her hands, pulling at the skin around her nails. Jackie notices her nerves and puts her hand over Shauna’s and squeezes. Shauna closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. She is definitely not used to this much human interaction anymore.
She clears her throat. “So, um…how did you guys sleep? I hope it wasn’t too bad, the three of you having to bunk together.”
Mari lets out a loud bark of a laugh at that and Lottie smiles. Nat rolls her eyes. “Awful! And I thought having to share my bed with Lottie here was bad enough already,” Mari gestures wildly as she exclaims, then steps closer to Shauna and Jackie, “9 times out of 10, I wake up in the morning with her holding onto me for dear life.”
Natalie can’t stop herself from laughing. Jackie tries to laugh as well. Lottie groans, annoyed. She puts a hand on Mari’s shoulder.
“You shouldn’t complain, Mar. I’m the most action you’ll be getting for the rest of your life,” She looks down at Mari from where she stands, “Soak it up, babe.”
Tai and Van emerge from their hut when they hear the commotion. Van rubs the sleep from her eyes and Taissa seems to stiffen up when she sees Jackie next to Shauna. Van strolls over to the fire-pit while Tai follows behind her slowly.
“So everyone decided to wake up early today, huh?” Seems like it doesn’t take long for Van to be her cheery self in the morning. Shauna secretly envies that.
She shakes her head. “It was us, at first. Jackie has to walk around every morning so rigor mortis or whatever doesn’t set in.” She shrugs. Actually, Shauna still isn’t entirely sure that’s how it works, but there’s no way she’s risking it.
Though, once that thought enters her mind, she realizes she’d probably still end up taking care of Jackie. She’d carry her around like a human-sized popsicle.
“Ah. Like physical therapy but for dead people.” When the word dead comes out of Van’s mouth her eyes widen and she cringes at herself. Mari looks almost satisfied, as if she was just waiting for somebody to say it.
Van doesn’t say anything to clear the air, just stands there frozen. Shauna looks back at her with a smirk.
“You don’t have to be like that, you know. ‘Dead’ isn’t a derogatory term,” Jackie nods in agreement, “But yeah, that’s pretty much what it is. I’m Shauna Shipman, the physical therapist for dead people.” She tries again to lace her words with the proper amount of humour.
It works and Van is back to grinning. Shauna returns the look.
Once they stop laughing and the silence returns, Tai steps forward and stands to the right of Van. Her arms are crossed over her chest, like her own set of armor. There are storm clouds in her eyes.
“How long are you planning on staying with us?”
Shauna’s face drops and everyone is quiet again.
“Well, it’s not like I was even planning to stay here anyway. You should really be asking Nat how long she plans to let us stay.” Her tone is more aggressive now.
Jackie looks around awkwardly, like she’s slightly embarrassed. She’s always felt weird when Shauna let her irritability take over. Even during the apocalypse, Jackie still sort of cares about how people view her and Shauna.
Tai rolls her eyes. “Calm down. I’m just still not sure if I fully trust you yet. Forgive me.” There’s no sincerity to her voice as she says the last part. Her hands are clasped together in front of her in mock prayer.
Shauna puts a hand to her chest and pinches at the fabric of her sweatshirt (this has been a nervous habit of hers since childhood). She takes a breath.
“I can appreciate the honesty. I get it. I don’t trust anybody anymore,” she looks over at Jackie, “Except for Jax. You don’t have to worry about her being violent or whatever.” She holds up the rope that ties her to Jackie.
“If she does get like that, it’s not on purpose. Like, between the two of us, I’m the one to be scared of. When your closest friend is a zombie, you have to learn to be scarier than zombies. People are more likely to just run away instead of shooting if they’re intimidated by a human.” Shauna says this all as if it's merely a fun fact. The rest of the women look at her with an expression that Shauna has never been able to read properly. Her brain scrambles to come up with a response.
“Uh…so,” She closes her eyes and cringes at herself. Jackie lets out a quiet snort of laughter beside her. “If you ever end up with a zombie girlfriend, you know, I’m the one to come to for advice…” That’s another attempt at a joke. Van laughs and elbows Taissa.
“So you and Jackie are like…a couple?” Van asks this in the most polite way she can manage, but she’s been waiting to ask this since she first laid her eyes on Shauna and Jackie in the woods.
Shauna tenses up at first. “Yeah, I guess. An unconventional one.” She looks down at her boots and kicks around the snow. “We’ve been best friends since we were kids and then high school happened and I realized some things. But it’s not like we ever dated before the world went to shit.” Regret stirs in Shauna’s stomach. If she could go back, she would risk it all just for one real date with Jackie.
“Kinda the same for us,” Van points with her chin at Tai, “Well, we were sort of hooking up befor-” Taissa cuts her off by putting a hand over her mouth. “Van!”
Van laughs and tears Tai’s hand from her face. “What? We share a hut. I’m pretty sure everybody else is aware that we’ve had sex before.” Nat and Lottie stand there not saying anything, their eyes wide and lips sealed. Mari, however, seems unable to control herself.
“Oh, yeah, we’re very aware. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night thinking that there’s wolves in the camp, but no, it’s always just you two going at it like bunnies.” Her grin stretches from ear-to-ear. Tai brings both of her hands to her face and groans loudly.
“Please, please, just stop.”
This is another moment where Shauna forgets they’re in an apocalypse. Everybody is laughing together, like they’re at a sleepover or some party or anywhere but where they actually are.
Once the laughter dies down, Van looks around at the fresh layer of snow on the ground. “I think I’ll get to clearing away some of the snow now. It came down pretty heavy last night.” She walks over to where they keep their tools and grabs an old plastic snow shovel. Even now, there were still chores to be done.
“Yeah, it’s best to get it all done early,” Nat says, “Tai, could you check the traps with Mari today? Hopefully there’ll be a rabbit, or something.” Taissa nods, her arms crossed once again.
All the women go off to do their busywork, once again leaving Nat alone with Jackie and Shauna. This is a recurring event. She turns to look at Shauna.
“Are you going to stay another night, or are you going to head back today?” Her voice is gentle, as usual, and not pushy at all. She sounds like she almost doesn’t want the two of them to leave.
Shauna thinks for a moment. She is enjoying this a lot more than she would’ve expected to, the whole socializing thing. She sometimes missed the feeling of community you had in a town, now that civilization has essentially gone away. At least for now. Here, she felt like maybe it could be different for her and Jackie.
“I’m not sure. You seem like you guys have got a pretty great system going here, and I don’t wanna intrude on that any further than I already have,” she looks down at her shoes again, “It is nice to be around other people, though. I’m not lonely, but you become aware of the emptiness once you meet new people again.” It’s weird for Shauna to be so open about her feelings and she feels her stomach twist with nervousness.
Nat considers this. “You aren’t intruding. I willingly brought you here. You can stay as long as you need. Don’t be scared off just because Tai doesn’t fully trust you.” She looks into Shauna’s eyes and then into Jackie’s. She smiles at both of them.
“You can leave whenever you want. You know where we are if you need help. We’ll probably stay here until something inevitably goes wrong.”
Something in Shauna wants to stay so bad. Everybody is mostly accepting of Jackie. They hadn’t attacked her with questions about her yet. They let the two of them eat from their food supply. But who's to say they wouldn’t turn on them and try to kill Jackie anyway? The trauma and heightened anxiety of the whole situation has made Shauna extremely paranoid over everything.
Shauna thinks it all over for a moment. She clenches her hands into fists, digging her fingernails into the meat of her palms, then un-clenches. She does this repeatedly until she comes to a conclusion.
Staying, for at least a little bit, was a good idea. They’d gain allies (friends?), an emergency place to stay in case anything happened to their own base, and most importantly: Jackie would probably start to feel more human after being around other people for a little while. That’s the last push Shauna needs for her to say they’ll stay.
“If you guys really wouldn’t mind, I think staying for a little bit might be a good.” Jackie makes an excited sound, and butterflies fly around in Shauna’s stomach; she was right, Jackie does want to stay.
“It’s been…a while…since we’ve really talked to other people. And I’m remembering how nice it was.”
Natalie nods and her smile grows bigger. “It’s been a while for us, too. We get tired of seeing each other’s faces sometimes.”
There’s a second of peaceful silence until a yell breaks out into the air. It’s coming from around where the food is kept. Nat gives the two of them a worried look and then bounds off to see what’s going on. Shauna tugs at the rope-leash around Jackie and they follow Natalie, as fast as they can manage.
Another yell sounds out, then a string of curses. “What the fuck are you doing here?” “Who the fuck are you?”, and the like. Nat gets to the source of the noise fast, while Jackie and Shauna tag along behind her.
Shauna can see Nat at the food-hole (Shauna wishes her mind wouldn’t refer to it as that) standing next to Lottie. Lottie is on the ground. As Shauna gets closer, she sees that she’s holding somebody down, somebody who is obviously not meant to be there.
The somebody is thrashing around underneath Lottie. Jackie tries her best to speed up her shambling because she’s also anxious to see what’s going on. Once they catch up, Shauna leans over to see who it was that was trespassing and seemingly stealing food.
It’s another woman, her blonde hair wild and frizzy like everyone else’s, wearing a very old knit sweater with a cute kitten on it. There are glasses falling off her face. Shauna’s stomach drops.
“Misty Quigley?”