Zombie Mall Fustercluck [ApocalypseStuck]

[RulerOfNerds]

Roxy(for now)
Karkat

Sometimes life doesn't go as planned. Dreams are crushed and rebuilt over and over in a single person's lifetime, from changing interests to lack of opportunity, or down right inability. For Karkat, he wanted nothing more than to become a novelist, living with his roommate and eventually a mixed kitten or elderly cat saved from the streets. He'd write on his laptop in a coffee shop every morning, drown himself in caffeine, and maybe find love somewhere between an ice mocha and a swinging door- like something out of a romcom. For Roxy, he wanted to code his own video game with his friends each doing their own part in the project they would share. He dreamed of a love he couldn't share, and settled for the idea of a the close bond that he could always keep in reach with a dream for them all to move in together. In a perfect world, their dreams would all come true.

When the chaos started, the world was a blur of panic. Most of the beginning had been lost to Karkat, between the dash to keep his family close, to keep his roommate and his brother at their side. The first week was mostly hiding and waiting in the Vantas family apartment, his father had stashed plenty of supplies to keep them going for a while without need to leave, and for a while they got active reports from the outside world before every channel turned to static and the internet became inaccessible. When at first it seemed whatever caused people to start eating each other was quarantined to the city, it was evident that it had quickly spread enough to become a global interference.

The father of the family, Carmine, took to studying the world outside rather quickly, and most of what he learned kept neatly scrawled in his leather bound journal. A series of body blows could harm them without killing them, they were fast to react to sound over their other senses, and while they could operate doors other things like seatbelts were lost on them. Their first few trips outside the apartment were shaky, with Kankri overseeing the group of three from above with their father. Then the rounds started, jeeps tore through the city every few days to find survivors, lead the zombies to a specific area, and mow down some of their numbers. It was when Carmine had taken to the streets to warn the group about the oncoming jeeps that the retired veteran got bit. They hadn't known what would happen so Kankri rushed to his father's aid, helped him back upstairs, and to their eventual demise. By the time the group had come back, the horrific scene in the father's bedroom had already passed. Both of father and son stood among the blood with milky-white eyes.

In the rush Karkat managed to snag the old journal and discarded rifle, but in their escape they lost the older Makara brother to the grubby undead hands. It was something Karkat apologized for profusely at the time, because he couldn't find it in himself to shoot a bullet into the man that raised him or the older brother he had argued with not even the day before.

It wasn't long after that Roxy spotted the pair and, knowing Karkat from college, took them in. He had been holed up in the mall since the beginning. With only a couple handfuls of people visiting the Skaia mall after the rise of online shopping and streaming platforms, it was easy pickings. They barred up the stores that had too many security risks; big glass windows, broken locks, or too many dead inside. They also boarded up the somewhat defendable points of entry, using both supplies from the hardware section in the mall and a few furniture displays. Overall it had been good standing there, only Roxy went the extra mile, getting full control over the inner workings of the mall with some old fashion lockpicking skills. With the two other's help over the course of the next couple months they managed to secure the two upper floors of the mall, along with setting up their own little garden of vegetables under the skylight and taking care of their water problem via collection tanks they took from one of the stores.

Over all they were doing pretty well, but the storm outside their haven wouldn't quell, even as days moved on, even as jeeps lead out hoards and mowed them down. There was no apparent end to them in sight and aside from the occasional helicopter in the beginning, there were no signs of life. The government had failed them, humanity, their dreams, was all shattered to some small sense of normalcy they could find in their speck of their world. Like the time they began to spend on the roof of the mall.

While at first Karkat could attest to it being just to check up on the solar panels and water collectors, it became the place of normalcy, away from the terrifying liminal space of the mall and it's echoing corridors. Though Karkat wasn't one for sports, he would work out up there, the typical exercises that didn't require equipment, but also out of boredom he began to bat around a volleyball with Roxy and it became just something for the group of three to pass the time when they weren't overseeing their responsibilities. Meanwhile Roxy took to keeping good with his aim, practicing with a bb gun on some of the stumbling dead that walked the street below.

Hoards rolled in every afternoon like clockwork, and Rox propped themself up at the edge of the building on a stolen beach chair, just far enough that they could bend forward and duck from the patrolling jeeps if they took a sudden change in routine and felt like shooting on the mall for a take over. Like Karkat, they were weary after hearing his story and watching their rowdy nature, hollering and yelling from their jeeps as they drive past, as if the end of the world was some giant party. Being preoccupied with the idea of a rising corrupt band of blood thirsty survivors, like something straight out of a movie, they don't hesitate to hunch down at the sign of movement in one of the buildings across the street. A short whistle coming from their lips to warn the others on the roof. Karkat who quickly crouches and crawls toward the wall. "What is it," Karkat grumbles, the gravel digging into his knees, only to get some binoculars shoved into his cheek.

"The gunshop across the way, second story. Theres no way zombies learned how to hop up and climb fire escapes, right?" Since the beginning the first floor of the gunshot had been boarded up, and from the sound of things inside there were only dead inside when Roxy wanted to try sweeping the place. The only way in was a broken fire escape ladder up into the office above and to the roof. However they never saw any movement in the office before, and it was very clearly a shadow moving just beyond the window. "Should I try and nick the window with a bb?" Roxy offers, wanting to see if they could get a look at the survivors, but Karkat is cautious. "Not yet..."