Title: Apocalypse [3/?]
Disclaimer: Don't own Heroes. Don't claim to own Heroes. But I sure do love Heroes.
Main Characters: Matt Parkman, Mohinder Suresh, Molly Walker
Word Count: 4566
Rating: This chapter is rated PG-13 for some course language and mild violence. The fic as a whole is rated M.
Genre: General/Drama/ZOMBIE.
Notes: Ack. This took way too long to get up. A month, to be exact. I chalk this up to the stresses of exam writing. Now that they are over, I hope to write the next parts a lot quicker. I'm trying my best to be accurate with all of the New York street names, so don't zombify me if they are messed up. A huge thanks goes out to ibroketuesday for being my ever patient beta!

Cross posted to mytwoheroes, heroes_fic, matt_mohinder and, of course, undeadheroes!

|| Part 1 || Part 2 ||

April 27, 2008. 10:50 a.m.

“You did the right thing, Holly.” Matt cooed as he gently rubbed circles around her back. She was kneeling over the nearest wastebasket, her breath putrid with the scent of vomit.

“I didn't want to shoot him, Matt. Why did I shoot him?” She looked up at him through tear reddened eyes, guilt swimming beneath the tears.

The guilt, however, was entirely Matt's. He had ordered her against her will to shoot another man in the head. In the process of doing what he firmly thought to be correct he had sentenced one man to death and one innocent woman to a lifetime of guilt. “He would have killed us if you didn't shoot him.” The words were said to her, but meant to soothe his own aching conscience.

“Says who?” She clutched at her stomach as Matt helped her to her feet. She sat gingerly on a nearby desk and closed her eyes, focusing her energy on trying to make the room stop spinning.

“You read the same report and saw just as clearly as I did what his intentions were.” Matt looked over at the still corpse lying on the linoleum floor. Other than some scuff marks and a few chunks of flesh, the floor was clean. Three bullet wounds and not a drop of blood.

“I thought you said it was all a hoax,” she replied, the beginnings of a smirk curling the corner of her lips.

“Yeah, well. Recent events have me convinced otherwise,” he replied with a smirk of his own. What the smirk hid was the sad realization that what Estelle had contracted wasn't curable. Any hopes he had that it was something a trip to the hospital could fix had been dramatically dashed. Matt was a man of evidence, and the evidence so far indicated that what Mr. Priestly had told them was true. Until proven otherwise, he would work under the assumption that the dead were indeed walking among them. “How bad do you think it is?”

“You were here last night, weren't you? We had more calls last night than we get in two weeks. It's bad. The problem is that it came on so quickly so nobody knows what's going on. People don't know what kind of danger they're really in.”

“Which means people don't be as careful as they should be, which means people won't be as careful as they should be, which means more people are going to get infected.” Matt added thoughtfully, his mind swirling with the extrapolation of possibilities.

“And with more people infected, the farther the virus is likely to spread,” Holly continued with a heavy sigh. She cast a look at the gray corpse lying between the desks, her face twisted with an undefined emotion. “God, I really don't want to shoot anybody else, Parkman. One was more than enough. I don't know what we should do.”

“Our jobs,” Matt answered as flashes of home flickered through his mind. He had left Mohinder with nothing more than a gun and an order to stay put, not realizing just what kind of danger they were really in. He had thought then that, despite his incident with Estelle, the violence in the city was due to rational humans just going on a rampage. If Mohinder pointed a gun at them they would have backed away. But what they were now facing were not rational beings. They were ruthless killers with only one goal in mind.

“How can we do our jobs if nobody is around? Everybody is already out there and we still can't contain it. The two of us aren't going to be much help.”

“I'm not thinking in the institutional sense. This thing is bigger than the police force. We need to protect and serve those close to us.” Matt dodged his way through the lines of desks towards weapons closet. The door was securely locked, but Matt knew where Fuller kept the key. He walked briskly back over to Fuller's desk. “I need to get home to my family and get them out of here. I think you should do the same.”

“My-my brother lives up in Connecticut and my parents are in Ontario. I live alone.” Her voice held a slight intonation of hope, a gentle prodding of suggestion.

Matt seemed oblivious in his search for the key. “Damn it, it's not here,” he cursed, slamming the drawer of Fuller's desk closed. He looked up at Holly and sighed deeply. “How many guns do you have on you?”

“Just the one.”

“Did you drive here?”

Holly shook her head. “I take public transportation and we don't have any squad cars left.”

“Alright, you're coming with me then,” Matt decided quickly as he strode towards the door of the station. “Grab as much 9mm ammunition that you can and meet me out front. I'm going to pull the car around.”

Holly issued a relieved sigh, nodded briskly and disappeared into one of the back rooms as Matt stepped out onto the street. Already the thick stench of death had begun to fill the air, hitting him like a wall of dreadful realization, a final piece of evidence that served to solidify Priestly's argument in his mind. A distant gurgle of moaning and hissing rumbled through the streets.

Matt cast a look south down Ocean Avenue, an street usually bustling with life, and saw nothing but parked cars, standed hot dog vendors and some free-floating sheets of newspaper. The view to the north was much the same; deserted convenience stores, abandoned bicycles and stillness, save for three figures who walked with a purposeless motion. Even though they were two intersections down the road, Matt's sharp eyes could still see the red stains splashed across their shirts. One of them, a middle aged man in shorts and sandles, lifted his head and looked at Matt. With labour, as if his legs were stiff and bothersome, the man made slow, waddling movements down the street.

Matt made a quick judgment and designated two as Type III, relatively harmless unless approached, and the other as Type II, dangerous if one is not cautious around them. Judging by the pace of the man's walk, Matt estimated that he and Holly had less than three minutes before the man reached them. He turned on his heel and hurried around the station to the parking lot in the back. The lot was clear of any infected individuals so Matt eased his caution and briskly walked to his car, starting it without incident. Thirty seconds or so had already gone by. He needed to be quick, so he paid no heed to his car's protests as he threw it in reverse and pressed firmly down on the accelerator. The tires squealed in anger as he backed sloppily out of his spot. He changed gears and shot forward, exiting onto the Ocean Ave and pulling up to the station's front door. The Type II was close enough for Matt to make out individual features, but it was the street behind it that caught Matt's attention. In the minute that it took him to pull his car around front, three more infected had emerged, all three clearly Type II, all three making their was slowly towards him.

Matt swore fiercely and jumped from his car, taking the steps up to the station door two at a time. “Holly!” he called once inside. There was no answer. “Holly, where are you?”

There was a rustle in one of the back rooms and Holly appeared moments later. She had a small backpack slung over one shoulder, the angular and lumpy shape of it suggesting its contents. “We got a shipment of bullets a week ago so I stuffed as many boxes as I could into this thing. I also found this,” she continued as she held a baseball bat out in front of her, “in the evidence room. It was due for processing but I don't think that'll get done anytime soon.”

“We need to go, right now,” Matt said without preamble. Explanation or praise would waste time that Matt was sure they didn't have. He estimated that two minutes had already gone by and the Type II was getting dangerously close. When she hesitated, Matt rushed forward and grabbed her by the elbow, pulling her towards the front door. “I'm not kidding, we need to move!” He grabbed the bat from her hand and pushed open the front doors. Beside him, Holly squeaked with fear.

There was a small gathering of them now, most of which were idling two intersections down, near Caton Avenue. Matt guessed that there were probably twenty or so lingering about. Of these, six were easing their way down the street towards them. The man in shorts and sandals was no more more than fifty feet away from them now and seemed to be closing ground quicker than before, his lips curled back with hunger.

Matt could feel Holly getting weak-kneed beside him, so he urged her forward with a firm hand on the small of her back. They raced down the steps to the waiting car. Holly threw open the back door and tossed the backpack across the seat before climbing into the front. Rather than going directly into the car, Matt took a few decisive steps towards the sandaled man. He jabbed the top of the baseball bat into the man's chest with force. The man gurgled and snapped as he fell onto his back, his limbs squirming aimlessly Fas he tried to right his body again. Matt took advantage of this brief victory and hastily climbed into his car, put it in drive and turned south down Ocean Avenue.

***

April 27, 2008. 11:32 a.m.

Mohinder fingered the curtain away and peeked out the window to the ground below. Kimball Street was completely deserted. There wasn't even a rat picking at the garbage in the alleyway. It seemed as though even they had the good sense to flee while the option was still available to them. Because of Molly's insistence not to abandon Matt, Mohinder had to delay their escape time after time. He knew staying put and waiting for Matt was a foolish thing to do, but he didn't know if he could have handled the scorn in Molly's eyes had he decided to run.

He cast a glance over at Molly, who had abandoned her math homework and was now chewing nervously on her thumb. Had he sentenced her to death because of his reluctance to leave Matt behind and break her heart? The thought that his miscalculation would lead to her death shook him to his core, so he swept across the room, intent on gathering her in his arms and apologizing for his stupidity. The sound of quick footsteps echoing through the empty hallways made him freeze mid stride. They reverberated in his skull until they became a mocking laughter of his indecision to flee, his condemnation of Molly's life. Had the rioters already made it this far into Brooklyn? He had really expected at least a little more time.

Mohinder motioned for Molly to hide and tightened his grip on Matt's pistol, pointing it at the door of the apartment. His finger quivered on the trigger as the steps grew closer, passing Eden's old apartment. He had killed a man before and had almost murdered another. Still, the thought of taking a life, even in self defense, left a sour taste in his mouth. It was the sharp jingling of keys and the subsequent sound of the door being unlocked that made Mohinder lower his weapon. It was illogical to assume that a rioter had somehow found a pair of keys and the apartment they belonged to. There was really only one person who could be on the other side of the door.

Sure enough, when the door swung open, Matt flew into the apartment. A female officer followed close behind, a stash of documents in her hands and a lumpy backpack hanging off of one shoulder. Mohinder assumed her to be Holly. They both looked pale and frightened, even a little sick.

Molly's head popped up and her face brightened considerably. “Matt, you're home!”

“We're leaving, right now,” Matt barked without preface or greetings. “Grab whatever you can and let's go.”

Mohinder would not be so easily ordered. “Matt, what took you so long to get home?” he asked. “You look flustered.” He studied Matt a little closer. “And why do you have a bat?”

Matt opened his mouth to respond, paused, and turned to Molly. His faced softened considerably, but Mohinder could still see the tension tight in his cheeks. “Molly, why don't you go to your room and pack up your things. We might not be back for a while, so don't forget your walrus or the picture of you and your parents in front of that big Sequoia.”

“It's a manatee...” Molly muttered beneath her breath as she slinked away to her room, seemingly dejected by being excluded from the adult conversation.

After her door closed with a soft click, Mohinder stepped towards Matt and spoke in hushed tones. The news obviously wasn't going to be good and he didn't want Molly's prying ears to hear. “Matt, what's going on? I know you know something.”

Matt ran his hand through his hair huffed a sigh. “It's not exactly easy to explain. Or believe.” Behind him, Holly looked tense and shaken.

“After everything I've seen pursuing my father's research I'm inclined to believe that anything is possible.”

Matt walked over to the kitchen table and set the dossiers down. He flipped through a few pages before stopping on a sheet with a strange, S shaped symbol in the top corner. “Read this. It explains it better than I ever could. But be quick, we have to move.”

Mohinder scanned through the page, a hesitant arch to his eyebrows. He had heard of residual electrical energy causing a muscle to spasm after death, but never to revitalize an entire body. “This sounds like some sort of cheap B-movie...”

“Just read,” Matt interjected.

Mohinder rolled his eyes slightly and continued down the page. The argument was strong, he had to admit, but it just wasn't logical. People couldn't return from the dead. Yet...Peter Petrelli had. Mohinder had witnessed his death first hand. He wasn't around to see his subsequent revival, but Peter was certainly alive that night at Kirby Plaza.

“This name sounds familiar,” Mohinder said after he was finished reading. Robert Priestly. Where had be heard that name before? He shook the thought away and concentrated on the content of the letter. Even though he had seen some truly amazing things, a zombie infestation of New York City seemed a little far-fetched. “Matt...”

“We saw them, Mohinder! I...” he paused briefly and cast a glance to Holly, “Holly had to kill one. Remember when I told you I couldn't hear Estelle's thoughts? It's because she didn't have any!” Behind Matt, Holly made a face.

“That could have been for a variety of different reasons,” Mohinder tried to explain, “maybe she was on some sort of medication. Maybe your ability wasn't functioning properly.”

“It was working fine, Mohinder. You're the one who said that it wasn't rabies. You said you didn't know what these people had.”

“But the walking dead, Matt?”

“It's true.” Holly said, stepping toward the bickering duo. She eyed Matt wearily, but spoke to Mohinder. “It's true, I saw them. I even killed one. Its blood was already thick and curdled, which is only supposed to happen after death. Coagulation. When Matt and I left the station there were about twenty of them out in the streets. It was just like what the letter said.”

Although a corroborating story wasn't enough to convince Mohinder entirely, it did offer some validity of Matt's account. The name Robert Priestly still tingled below his thoughts. “Well, whatever they are, we need to prepare ourselves against them.”

“No. No, we can't stay here. This Priestly guy has a list of evacuation points that we need to get to right now.” Matt flipped through the papers, pulling out a sheet with a list on it. “Here. The closest one...” he said as he scanned the sheet quickly. “The closest one is the Brooklyn Bridge.”

Mohinder shook his head. “I know where they are. The news provided a list of these points shortly after you left. The Brooklyn Bridge is the closest and the Manhattan Bridge after that.” Mohinder shook his head and waved his hand dismissively as he trailed off his original point. “By saying that we should prepare I didn't mean that I want to stay. I'm saying that we can't leave.”

Matt's face darkened considerably, perhaps sensing the bad news that gurgled beneath Mohinder's conscious mind. “What do you mean we can't leave?” he asked with gravity, although Mohinder was sure he had already deduced the answer.

“The evacuation points were...” Mohinder struggled to find the right word. “...Compromised. Whatever these people are, whether they are infected with an unknown virus or if they truly are the walking dead, they reached the evacuation points and started killing people. If anything, those points are now the most dangerous part of the city. Some people didn't get the message in time and went to those points, only to die.”

“All of them?”

“All of the ones that would have been any use to us.”

Matt spat out an angry expletive and Mohinder schooled him with a look. “What we need to do,” Mohinder continued, reminding Matt that there was still hope, “is prepare ourselves.”

They fell silent, their eyes unfocused as each of them considered the consequences of the situation, until Holly spoke, her voice thick with dread. “How do you prepare for something like this?”

April 28, 2008. 8:42 a.m.

The dumpster was cold, dark, and smelled like a hodgepodge of rotted food, but it was the only safe place right now. She could hear the shuffling of aimless feet outside, dragging pebbles across the pavement. Occasionally one bumped into her haven, at which point she would begin to shake uncontrollably and worry that this movement would give her hideout away. Worse than the occasional bumps that signaled proximity were the angry snarls that made her cover her ears and silently beg for her mother. She didn't know what they were, but she knew they were dangerous. Fatally so.

She pressed her hands over her ears and closed her eyes tightly, trying to drown out her reality by escaping into her mind, but there, too, were horrors. The lids of the dumpster sealed out the light and so the passage of time was lost to her. The only thing that told her almost a full day had passed was the faint neon glow of her watch.

April 28

8:42 A.M.

Had a nearly full day really gone by? The last time she had seen sunlight had been when she ducked into an alley and dove into a dumpster. She might have slept, she might not have. She couldn't remember. She didn't really care. The only thing she cared about was staying quiet so they wouldn't find her. The dumpster she was in had no lock to the lid. If they knew where she were, all they had to do was open the lid and she was done for.

8:43 A.M.

How did she come to be here? She was scheduled the early shift yesterday. It was her responsibility to caffeinate New York before they headed off to work. She remembered walking in and being relieved to see that she was working with Thomas. He always knew how to make her smile. She remembered her first customer of the day, a dour man with a ragged beard and weary eyes. She and Thomas had joked afterwards that he looked like a petty thief. She remembered her first break being at eight thirty and setting her watch for eight forty five. She remembered the next hour being uneventful, even boring. The stream of customers had thinned until they stopped showing up altogether.

8:44 A.M.

But then a customer did come in, around ten thirty. She was washing something in the back and Thomas was minding the front. She remembered hearing a strange moan. She remembered Thomas raising his voice. She remembered peeking through the small window on the door that separated the front and back of the store. Then she remembered the customer eating Thomas, tearing the flesh from his neck and clawing at his chest. She remembered being frozen, being...

8:45 A.M. *beep beep, beep beep, beep beep*

“Oh shit!” she whispered fiercely as she tore at her watch and stuffed it under her shirt, hoping to drown out the sound. “Oh shit, oh shit! Shit!” Her heartbeat pounded in her ears and she bit down on her lip. There was silence outside her dumpster. The only thing she could hear was her quick breathing and her own silent prayers. Then, slowly, a general shuffling sound, accentuated by excited moans. She screamed in her mind. She knew they had heard it, she knew they were coming for her. “Fuck! Oh, please, please God! Please, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry, God, for whatever I did. Please!”

They were getting closer, their footsteps quickening. A bang echoed loudly as one of them crashed into the side of the dumpster. Then another, and another. The force of the impacts caused the lids to jiggle and bounce slightly from their resting place. She saw the blinding light of dawn patched out with the dark bodies of her doom as the dumpster jostled about. She saw a couple of fingers get caught beneath the bouncing lid. Her dark haven was flooded with light a moment later, and she saw several hungry, bleeding figures looming over the edge of the dumpster. She screamed, and then she saw nothing at all.

April 28, 2008. 8:42 A.M.

“I still think staying here is a bad idea, Mohinder.” Matt paced the living room nervously. The first night had gone by without incident. He and Mohinder had ventured out of the apartment and down the stairs to the pathetic looking front foyer of their building. They had locked the door and shoddily barricaded it with some loose furniture, hoping it would hold up if one of them tried to get in. None of them did, although they had begun to linger about outside. Their concentration was thin, but Matt feared that they would congregate. Holly had volunteered to raid other apartments for food, commenting snarkily on how three people could live on such a small amount of food.

“Would you really like to leave now?” Mohinder asked with a sarcastic arch to his eyebrow.

“No, I would have liked to leave yesterday when we had the chance to,” Matt shot back. For all his appearance of being calm and collected, Matt knew that Mohinder was panicking inside. He knew that Mohinder was, indeed, doubting his own advice to stay put. He also knew that Mohinder was already blaming himself for Molly's inevitable death. Matt threw his head back in frustration and rubbed his hand across his face. “But....whatever. We're here now and we're just going to have to deal with it the best we can. I'm sure we'll be fine.”

Mohinder offered a self-deprecating smirk and looked away. “You don't have to do that, you know.”

“Do what?”

“Pretend to be optimistic just to alleviate whatever guilt I feel.”

Matt opened his mouth to deny such charges, but Mohinder continued quickly. “I know that you know I feel guilty about not leaving with Molly when I still had the chance. When I think about it, though, I'm glad I didn't. If I had left with her when I wanted to, we would have been at one of those evacuation points when they were compromised.”

“I didn't say that to make you feel less guilty,” Matt denied.

Mohinder shifted his position on the couch and stared at Matt more directly. “Matt. I can't say they I know you very well at all, but I know you well enough to know that you are the type of person to say something like that, then subsequently deny it meant anything other than what it was supposed to mean. You care about other people's feelings too much, and frankly, I find it kind of insulting that you don't think I can deal with my own emotions like a grown adult.”

Matt was taken aback by this, although he couldn't deny the truth that it held. His mother had said the same thing, as had Janice. He was about to reply when he was cut short by a terrified scream.

“Matt! Matt!” Molly.

Their conversation was dropped immediately and they both dashed towards the bedroom. Horrors blinked through Matt's mind as they approached, horrors that he prayed were not real. They burst into the room to find it empty, save a scared and crying little girl on the bed who was stretching her arms out. Matt flew forward and crushed her in a hug. For a terrifying moment he thought of the Nightmare Man. “What? What is it? Is it the Nightmare Man?”

“She's dying! Matt, she's dying!” Molly howled into Matt's shoulder. “They're killing her!” The last part of her sentence trailed off into a horrified scream.

“Who? Who's killing who?” Matt asked, placing his hands firmly on her shoulders. Mohinder watched with concern behind him, his brow knitted.

“The girl in the dumpster! Aah!” Molly raised her hands and began to claw at her scalp, whimpering pathetically.

Mohinder walked to the window and looked into the alley below. When he looked back at Matt he shook his head.

Matt cupped Molly's face in his hands and stared into her terrified eyes. “Molly? Molly, look at me.” She tried to twist her head away, but Matt held her in place. “Look at me, Molly! There is no girl. There is no dumpster. It's just you, me and Mohinder. That's all.”

“No! No, she's in the dumpster and they're...they're eating her! Matt they're eating her!”

“They're not!” Matt said with authority. Then, more calmly, “they're not eating anybody.” He cast a glance at the clock beside her bed. “It's a quarter to nine in the morning. It was just a bad dream, Mols. That's all.”

“It wasn't!”

Matt nodded and stroked her hair back from her face, then kissed her temple. “It was, Mols. You saw something scary on the news and you had a bad dream about it. That's okay. I did too. Bad dreams can't hurt you anymore, Molly.”

“It wasn't a dream, Matt! It was real! There was a girl in a dumpster and they found her and they started to eat her!” She was growing frantic, pushing Matt's hands away from her face.

Matt cast a desperate and questioning look to Mohinder. When he nodded gravely, Matt turned back to Molly and looked her in the eyes. “Go to sleep Molly.” Then, almost as an afterthought, “and have sweet dreams.”