Love Bites ~ Craig of the Dead au ~ Tricia x Karen fan fiction [COMPLETE]

1

"This map makes no sense!" Karen complains, "we've been driving along this road for at least an hour and we still haven't reached the lake."

"Babe."

"Yeah?"

"You're holding it upside down." I point out.

Karen turns the map around and a faint embarrassed blush creeps onto her cheeks.

"Oh."

"It doesn't matter," I shrug, "we found some food on the way here so it wasn't a total waste of time."

"But we could've had fish tonight. You were excited to go fishing and I ruined it."

"You didn't ruin anything, Kar," I tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear, "you made a tiny mistake and that's okay. It's still light, so we still have time to go fishing."

"Are you sure you're not mad?" She mumbles.

"I could never be mad at you." I smile.

Flustered, Karen turns to the window, but I can see her reflection smiling to herself.

I start the car back up and turn around to drive back the way we came.
The road is relatively clear, aside from a few bodies piled up on the sidewalk and the occasional tree. The stench outside is so bad we have to have the windows up all of the time, meaning it gets pretty hot inside the car.

"Can you turn the AC on?" Karen asks, pulling at the neck of her tank top, "it's too hot."

"Maybe if you took your hoodie off you'd feel better." I tell her, but I turn on the AC anyway.

"I don't want to loose it though. It's exactly like Kenny's."

"I know, but you're clearly too hot," I take a hand off the wheel and put it on her knee since she finds it comforting, "just leave it on the back seat. We aren't abandoning this car until the gas runs out."

With a sigh, Karen removes her hoodie and puts it on one of the back seats, where our guns are.
We feel more comfortable using our other weapons, so we don't feel it necessary to keep the guns on us at all times, especially since my shotgun is too big to keep in my pocket.

"Hey, what's that?" I ask, squinting at the road ahead.

"What's what?"

"That," I point in front of us, where a shape is stood on the sidewalk, "is it... a person?"

Karen checks her pocket for her knife, then grabs her bow and a handful of arrows from the back seat. She puts the arrows in her quiver (which she always wears) and keeps hold of her bow.

As we approach the shape, it gets clearer. It's definitely human shaped and appears to have a cloth sack at its feet.

"Is it alive?" I think aloud.

The thing outside suddenly turns around, taking me by surprise. I panic and the car swerves, almost hitting a tree. Karen grabs the wheel for me and straightens the car out.
I hit the breaks.

"Looks human to me." Karen whispers as it moves closer.

"Hey there!" It says. Definitely human. Definitely male, "mind rolling down your window for a sec? I need a favour."

The guy is quite tall, with long brown hair that he tucks behind his ear to stop it falling into his eyes. He doesn't appear to be carrying any weapons, but I still don't trust him.

"I'm sorry. I can't do that." I say.

He frowns.

"I'm not bitten, if that's what you're concerned about," he lifts his sleeves to show unbitten wrists and shows his neck too, "I'm Mark Cotswolds."

"Good for you."

"Hey, don't be like that," he leans an arm on the car, "Look, I need a lift to my place and you've got a car."

"What's in it for us?" I ask.

Karen flashes me an annoyed look.

"I suppose I could give you a couple of tins of tuna I just found," he unties the cloth sack and rummages around. I get my foot ready in case he pulls out a weapon and I need to speed off, but he's true to his word and pulls out a multipack of tuna, "our place is just by the lake so we're kind of sick of eating fish at this point."

The lake?

"Let me see the tuna."

I unroll the window enough for him to pass it to me, then immediately roll it back up. I check the expiration date. Still fresh.

"So, do we have a deal?" Mark asks.

Karen screams and points behind Mark. He jumps and whips out a gun from his back pocket, then spins around to defend himself. Little does he know there's nothing there.

"Step on it!" Karen shouts.

I quickly put my foot down and we go as fast as the car will take us until we're sure Mark won't be able to catch up to us for a while.
Instead of continuing straight ahead for the lake, I take a right turn onto a street with lots of abandoned houses.

At the end of the street is a house that's been torn apart. Literally.
The door has been taken, the windows smashed, parts of the walls have been somehow stolen and the carpet pulled apart.

I park the car in this house's driveway and check that there aren't any zombies close by.

"All clear." Karen says.

We get out of the car and gather all of our things from the back seat. I tuck my bloody katana under my arm as I pull out the bag of canned food we found under the floorboard of a shed.
I swing the bag over my shoulder to carry it like Santa's sack, then lock the car door. Not that it makes much difference; if someone wanted to steal it they could just break the window.

"I wish we could've gone to the lake," Karen signs sadly as we walk to the back of the house, "having fresh meat would've been nice."

"Yeah, but with that trick you pulled, it wouldn't be safe to go to the lake." I point out.

Behind the torn up house is a large tree where someone built a treehouse. Despise it being a children's treehouse, it's actually quite spacious and has enough room for all of our stuff. Plus, nobody would think to raid a treehouse so our stuff is pretty safe up there.

"I'm sorry, but I really didn't trust that guy." She says.

"Babe, quit apologising. You made a good call," I start climbing up the ladder, "He did seem a little sketchy."

I make it to the top of the ladder and I climb into the house. I immediately kick off my boots and curl my aching toes in the soft carpet.

While Karen makes her way up, I begin emptying the food bag. Along with the tuna, we've got a jar of hot dogs, a tin of fruit cocktail and a slightly bruised apple that fell on Karen's head.
I put all of the food in a tattered cardboard box that has the rest of our food in. By 'the rest', I mean half a bag of dry pasta and a tin of tomato soup. It's not much, but we've survived five years on stuff like this.

Karen joins me in the treehouse and sits cross-legged on the carpet beside me. She rests her head on my shoulder and lets out a small yawn.

"Are you hungry?" I ask.

"Not really," she mumbles, "just a bit sleepy."

Since I'm not hungry either, I push the box against the wall and get up to find our blankets. They're very stained and a bit smelly but they keep us warm at night.

I find them in the corner, hidden under the carpet. I pass one to Karen and take the other for myself.

"It's still light. Are we really going to bed now?" She asks.

"If you want. I'm not very tired but I don't want to go out on my own."

Karen yawns again.

"Night, Trish." She mumbles, lying down on the floor, head propped on her arms.

I lie beside her and copy her position.

"Night, Karen."