Disclaimer: The plot and some of the dialouge in this story, especially in the beginning will be from AMC's The Walking Dead, which does not belong to me, obviously. I don't make any money from this. I'm just twisting the story around for fun :)
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Erik understands that it's a new reality they live in.
Understanding this, acting by it, is what has kept them alive until now. He's seen it all burn, cities, bridges, dreams, and he has come out stronger from the flames, clean of doubt or hesitance.
He knows what it takes to survive in this world.
When it finally comes time to make the decision, it is not difficult at all, the way he always thought it would be. He looks right through the dreadful faces of the doomed in front of him, the way he looks through the rotten corpses at their gates. Their cries and pleas don't touch him any more than the garbled noises the walkers make.
"Erik, I'm begging you!" Charles throws himself in his way, fingers curled into his lapels in a desperate move to stop him.
He doesn't understand, of course. He never has, maybe never will. That is why Erik has to be the one to make the tough decisions.
"You can't do this!" Charles yells, pleads, pointlessly, "Stop! Our humanity is all we have left. Without it we are no different than the Dead!"
"Humanity isn't what's kept us alive, Charles," Erik says, with the resolute calmness of a man who has long made his decision.
"In this world you kill or you die. And we are not going to die."
xxx
"Congrats on the promotion, Sheriff Lehnsherr," Sebastian Shaw grins as he slides into the passenger seat in the police car next to Erik.
There is no hint of resentment in his senior's demeanor, in fact he looks downright happy about having been passed over for Sheriff despite his longer years of service.
"Yeah, sorry they didn't offer it to you, man," Erik says as he drives them off the station's parking lot, just to be on the safe side, "I thought for sure you were gonna get the job."
"Well," Shaw shrugs, reclined in his seat with one elbow out of the window, "I guess they saw something in you they didn't see in me, sonny."
His dark sunglasses hide any possible expression.
"Let's just hope you get to serve for a long time."
xxx
"How's your sister?" Shaw asks as they are nearing the stretch of highway they have been called to.
Someone got car jacked apparently, left on the side of the road. Not a good way to start the day.
"Edie's fine," Erik says distractedly, eyes trying to pinpoint just where on the side of the road the people who called them might be. "She works half days at the hospital, but she's still home mostly, doing...I dunno, things."
"Things?" Shaw quirks an eyebrow at him and Erik shrugs again.
"You know, stuff," Erik says vaguely, mostly because he truly has no idea.
"Women," Shaw huffs, taking a swig of root beer from his can, "You, buddy, need to find that sister of yours different living arrangements. It's not healthy for people your age to still be cohabiting. I mean, seriously, how do you ever get laid with big sis around?"
Erik grimaces, not even gracing the man with an answer to that. It's only been a couple of months since Edie's husband died. For all he cares she can stay at his place indefinitely. He actually rather likes not having to come home to an empty house anymore. Not that he is keen on chatting to Shaw about his utter lack of social circle or skills.
A movement on the side of the road distracts him.
"There," he pulls the car to a stop next to the overturned wreck of an SUV.
There is another car a few feet into the field, smoking. There are people standing about, presumably the ones who called after they got ambushed by thugs.
Erik and Shaw get out, sheriff's badges gleaming in the sun along with their revolvers.
"Someone dial the cops?" Erik calls over, waving at the people to get their attention.
The men turn around, spotting them, and suddenly everything happens very fast. They pull guns seemingly out of nowhere, and in that second Erik sees the bodies they are standing over, half hidden by tall grass and the cars.
'The thugs came back to finish the job', he manages to think before they start shooting and he is ducking for cover behind the SUV, yelling at Shaw to fall back.
The the ensuing hail of bullets he loses sight of his partner.
Eventually, he manages to hit one of the men in the leg and he goes down screaming. His buddy is distracted enough by that to stop shooting and give Erik time to look for Shaw. His partner is ducked behind the car as well, just on the other side, closer to the road.
"Run and call for backup while they're distracted," Shaw tells him, reloading his gun, "I got your back."
He aims at the men behind the other car and Erik start running, just as the shooting begins anew.
He hears one shot fired, followed by a shout, someone being hit; there's no time to turn around and find out who though, so he keeps running, because either way he needs backup.
Erik is two feet away from his car when another shot rings out and pain, sharp and hot and all-enveloping, explodes across his back.
He feels himself falling, crashing to the ground, and then he lies there gasping for air as the grass beneath him turns wet with blood.
He can't see, can't hear anything but steps coming towards him. He tries to look up but all he can see is a dark silhouette against the sun before the world turns to black.
xxx
The next time Erik wakes the world has ended around him.
xxx
He stumbles through the empty, wasted hallways, weak and disoriented in his hospital gown. His chest and back ache where his bullet wound has scarcely healed and he can still feel the pain radiating from where he ripped ventilator and needles from his body.
He yells, screams for help, for anyone, as he wanders through the deserted building, past the chaos, the rubble, the fallen, stained bodies. He tries to find anyone, anyone living but there is no echo to his calls.
No nurses, no patients alive, no one to give him answers. All he finds are corpses. Corpses in white coats. Corpses in military uniforms. Corpses in gowns like his.
Corpses and a door locked with metal chains. Written on it in blood the words, 'Don't open, Dead inside'.
He only hears them then, growling and scratching on the other side.
He doesn't see them until later, when he is walking the streets barefoot, trying to get home.
People. But not really people.
He runs to the first man he sees slouching towards him in the street, grabs him as he pleads for help. Blood-shot, milk eyes dart in his direction, and then the man snaps at him with a mouth full of blood and guts, and Erik reels back, stumbling away in horror.
They are all he encounters, these unresponsive, aggressive, sick people, all the way to his house in the suburbs.
The houses on his street, once so pristine and painstakingly well-kept, look like the rest of the streets and buildings he's stumbled past, destroyed, looted, deserted.
He can see that the windows of his house have been thrown in from afar, but he still drags himself past his strewn out possessions on the lawn, hurrying inside.
"Edie!" he yells for his sister, his voice echoing in the chaos of the clearly abandoned house.
He yells and yells, searching every room for her, but she is gone, and everything is so messy, so destroyed, that he can't even tell if she packed her things and left, or if they were simply robbed.
Erik finally breaks down on his bed, sobbing and shaking as horror and despair come crushing down on him.
He has just woken up from a wound that could have killed him, but as though that is not bad enough, he has woken up to this. To chaos. To no one.
The people are gone. Edie is gone, and he doesn't know where.
Some unknown plague has driven them all away, he thinks, more sure of it the more he remembers the few people still walking the streets. The deadly pandemic the media has always warned them about, finally here.
The apocalypse is there, and he slept through its beginning.
Xx
It takes him a whole two days before he can gather himself enough to leave the house.
He has seen all the deserted streets on his way home, has tried to turn on the television and radio with no success, and knows that that means things are really bad, on a massive scale. But there are systems in place for this kind of thing, and even if the outbreak happened suddenly and many people died, many others must have been evacuated. And if they were...then Edie must be out there somewhere.
The thought is finally enough to get him moving again.
He refuses to think about the tale the destruction around him tells, refuses to think that Edie might not be alive, might be one of the many bodies that are so carelessly strewn about in the streets.
She is alive. And he will find her.
He gets dressed, in thick clothes and heavy boots. He packs all the meager remnants of food he can find in the house, along with a picture of him and Edie from the fireplace.
On his way out, he hesitates momentarily before going back for his backup service revolver hidden under the mattress in his room.
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Let me know if I should continue :) And if so, what plot lines, characters you'd like to see.