Caz

When it was time to switch he took the next shift. He wasn’t sure how much sleep Heather had gotten before they met, so he thought she might need it more than he did. Keith was quietly snoring away as he slept on his back, one leg up the other dangling at the end of the seat. Caz had his attention turned to the outside and looked through the trees. It was getting brighter which meant it was early morning and Caz wondered if he should let the others sleep some more, when he could hear something in the distance. Immediately he picked up his rifle as he was on full alert. He looked at the others to see if they were awake, but none of them seemed to noticed. He had looked at his stopwatch when he woke up, which told him he had gotten around four hours of sleep, so he glanced quickly at his watch to see how much sleep the others had gotten and saw that Keith had only gotten three hours, but he had to wake them both up. 

“Psst, Heather,” he whispered loudly to Heather, as he crouched down next to her. She stirred in her sleep and opened her eyes, looking confused at Caz before she got startled by him being so close to her. He placed a finger over his lips and pointed out of the window before she had a chance to say anything. She froze in her spot, listening and frowned.
“Is that music?” she whispered to Caz as she tried to strain her ears to hear better. Caz nodded as he got up and went over to Keith.

"Either it's a trap or someone's an idiot" Caz said while he placed his foot on Keith’s thigh, who was still asleep. He frowned a little as he pushed him with his foot. “Keith, wake up,” he said in a hushed voice.
Being startled awake, Keith grabbed his bat almost as if he knew where it was in his sleep, since it was never far away from him and as a reflex, he swung it towards Caz, but stopped just inches away from him. He glared at Caz, his jaw tense and his body ready to fight, when he realized who he was pointing his bat against and relaxed, but visibly annoyed.

"What...?" he asked but got distracted by the music. Keith got up from the seats and stretched. It didn't face Caz, he kind of knew Keith would wake like that and was already moving by the time Keith realized what was going on, but he noticed Heather got startled by Keith’s abrupt awakening.

Caz went to the door that faced where the music was coming from and stared intro the dark forest, like he hoped to see where the music was coming from. He wondered who would be so stupid to have music going as it would just attract zombies, and wondered if it was a trap or if the person really was an idiot, then he wondered if the idiot was already dead. A dead idiot would have a hard time turning their music off again.

"We seriously need to stop that music, who knows what kind of zombies could appear, and what danger that could put us in" Keith said seriously as he rested his bat on his shoulder and came up to Caz, looking out at the forest, looking like he was ready for a fight.

“Easy tiger,” Caz said, as he placed a hand on Keith’s arm while looking at him. “If they were going to come here, they would already be here,” Caz said as he looked around. Keith pulled his arm away, not roughly but he still seemed slightly uncomfortable.

“True, but still, we should stop who ever is playing the music, mostly because I’m getting a headache, and the music sucks,” Keith complained, which made Caz snort a little and shake his head.

“Fair, beside I rather not want who ever is playing the music to decide to come our way,” Caz agreed.

“So are you going to go investigating?” she asked them. Caz frowned a little as he looked down at his hand and let out a sigh.

“Y’know, we could just ignore it and go?” he suggested, even though he knew he had already lost the battle as he looked at the others. Keith looked at him with a frown and Caz put up his hands in surrender. “Fine, fine you win,” he said and put down his hands, “but any sign of danger and we’re out of there, got it?” he looked seriously at Keith and crossed his arm. He knew there would be a chance Keith could end up doing something stupid, so better make it clear now then when they get there.

“No problem, I don’t have a death wish yet,” he answered casually like they were talking about the weather, which made Caz wonder what he meant but kept the question for some other time. Caz guessed Keith wanted to stay in the train car just a little while longer to get some more rest before they went on their journey.

“I’ll be here waiting, just be careful,” she said, and Caz held his rifle ready and gave Keith a nod before they both headed out to the forest.

The sun where slowly rising, illuminating the path around them as they went towards the sound of the music. The deeper they got into the forest, the dark and harder the terrain got. The music got louder suggesting they were on the right path and when they got close enough they could hear zombies groaning. Caz knew it was going to be dangerous, so when they reached a big tree, they hid by it. Caz had his back pressed up against the mossy tree and could feel the moist from the moss seep through his clothes, and he almost yelped from it as it felt gross and cold, which made him do a little jump and bumped into Keith.

“Fuck, sorry,” he said but quickly covered his mouth when he remembered that he shouldn’t be talking, even though he had a feeling the music were probably loud enough to drown out his voice. Caz noticed Keith glance at him with a smirk, but the sound of laughter got both of their attention and like an automatic response, Keith stepped in front of Caz like he was trying to shield him. He frowned as he glanced up at Keith and quickly ducked under his outstretched arm as he crouched down and moved towards the bushes, where he had a chance of peeking through without being seen. What he was witnessing almost made his jaw drop.

Out there was a dark haired guy with a mohawk, who was on top of a rundown car, dancing to the music, which was playing on a portable boombox, while swinging two swords against zombies, and he was smiling like a madman. Caz had to blink a few times to really believe what he was seeing and glanced at Keith when he joined Caz, crouching too. Keith’s expression told Caz he was trying to understand what he was seeing when he spoke in a hushed voice.

"You want to stop him?" Caz asked, since that's what they had come here for. Caz looked at the scene again, the zombies were coming sparse, and the pile of bodies was building. Now would be a good time to do it.

"Yeah, but how? That guy seems to be doing well on his own, but if something bigger decides to tag along, I’m not sure he would be able to handle it," Keith said as he looked at the guy. He was right, if something bigger decided to join the fight, the crazy guy could get in trouble. "We could try to talk to him? Or maybe shoot down a monster near him, to get his attention?" Keith suggested. 

"And attract the monsters toward us? Bad idea," Caz points out. He thought about what to do and looked down around him. It was hard to see around him as the sun wasn’t really reaching down to them, so he took his good hand and scraped the ground to look for pebbles. He drew his hand up towards his face to see what he got. A lot of dirt, a dirty hand and 3 pebbles. Jackpot. He turned his body so that he got a better view, and aimed at the boombox before he threw the first pebble. It hit the top of the boombox. He tried again, this time hitting one of the speakers. But nothing happened. Caz took a deep breath to calm himself. He imagined it was like his roommate's mouth and threw the last pebble. The music stopped and it suddenly got dead quiet, or more a quiet as it could get with the groaning of the dead. Who knew that throwing popcorn in your roomie's mouth from far distances, would someday become useful, he thought nonplussed.

---

Adrian

Adrian was swinging his one sword above while the other was pierced through a zombie’s stomach. He was following the music, which meant he was now on tiptoes, almost like he was trying to dance ballet, like they did to classic music. Fighting was like a dance for him and dance he did. Working his pulse up by being surrounded by zombies and slicing them up. It really made him feel alive. He was like born for the apocalypse and he was glad to be alive in its time. Some would probably call him a madman for dancing with zombies and smiling. But Adrian was living. He kicked the zombie away and danced to the next monster. Slicing, step, slicing, step. All in a rhythm.

Until the music stopped. In his surprise he turned towards it, completely forgetting about the zombie he was about to slice. 

“But I just changed those damn batteries!” He growled as he started to go towards it, when the zombie grabbed his arm. He quickly sliced the arm away without even looking at it. He was pissed that the music had stopped, ruining his flow. Maybe his boombox was broken? As he got closer to it, he could see it had just been stopped, but how? Could it have been one of the zombies? Impossible. He looked at the remaining zombies, since some of them had already left, because there was no music to attract them. But five zombies were closing in on him with their ugly faces. Adrian swung his two swords, fighting two zombies at once, but with the sudden stop in his music, it threw him off a bit, so he was kind of struggling, but that only put a smile to his face. That was what it was all about after all. Struggling, surviving, living on the thrill. Two down three more to go.

Suddenly, as Adrian swung at one of the zombies, a red-haired guy appeared out from between some bushes, with his bat raised and he swung it at one of the zombies, hitting it perfectly in its head which made its gooey rotten blood spew everywhere. Adrian came to a completely halt, surprised by the sudden appearance of a stranger, who was grinning. He almost gaped at the crazy ginger that had just invaded his clearing. AND STEALING HIS KILLS. He pushed the dead zombie off his sword. There was now only one zombie left and the ginger was already taking a swing towards it. 

"DON'T YOU DARE TAKE MY KILL, GINGER BOY!" Adrian yelled at him and pointed his sword towards him threateningly, as best he could with a zombie in between them.

The guy stopped mid swinging and Adrian was pretty sure that if he had stopped a second later, the bat would have slipped out of his hand by the sheer force of the swing. He was clearly strong, but Adrian didn’t care about that. The dude stared at him slightly taken aback, blinked a few times and then put down his bat, the tip resting on the ground as his hands were resting on top of the handle.

"By all means" he gestured with his right hand to the zombie, like a ‘ladies first’ and offered it to Adrian, as if it was the guy’s own zombie he was giving up, not a zombie he almost stole.

Adrian pulled up his lips into a scowl, as his blood was boiling with annoyance. The dude was pissing him off so much that he wanted to kick his ass. First he just barged in and now he was ‘letting’ Adrian take the last kill. The sword that was pointing towards ginger boy swung and took the zombie’s head clean off. The zombie’s tall body crumpled in between them and he then stepped over the corpse and came face to face with ginger boy. The guy was a little taller than Adrian, which didn’t deter him from looking threatening. 

"Find your own bloody clearing with zombies next time, ginger boy." He almost whispers threateningly.

A smirk appeared on the guy’s face, clearly not fazed by Adrian’s threat.  

"Sorry, but your music was just so horrible, I couldn't bear to listen to it. If you want to have your own monster mash, you should get a better taste in music," he answered and rested his bat on his shoulder.

Oh. Oh! This guy is asking for it. Arian was about to punch the fucker in the face, when a person interrupted them as he stepped in between them. Both of them were forced to take a step back to make room for the new person.

“Guys, tone it down, save it for the zombies,” the guy said, and Adrian raised an eyebrow at him when ginger boy suddenly apologized to the new guy, who just sent him a pointed look before his attention suddenly turned to Adrian with a scowl. 

 "And what kind of idiot listens to loud music in the middle of this? To kill zombies for fun?” He growled and threw his hands up in the air. “And I was enjoying the peace and quiet,” he said to no one in particular.

Adrian was gaping at the guy as he couldn’t believe what he was saying that he was no longer mad, just confused over the situation. He shrugged at the guy and his accusation and shifted on his feet.

"I’m just doing a bit of exercise," he smirked. The guys looked at him in disbelief and the ginger mumbled something about sleep which peaked Adrian’s curiosity.

"Sleep?” He asked ginger boy who looked at him with a frown.

“Yeah, we were sleeping but because of your shitty music, we couldn’t,” he said with an annoyed sigh.

“Where the hell did you guys sleep? There's nothing nearby."

"An abandon train in the forest. Your loud music disturbed us, but now that you have quiet down," ginger boy said and turned towards where they probably came from, "I'm going back. Heather and the munchkin must be worried. I guess you can take it from here, right Caz?" Ginger boy looked back at the other guy; Adrian now knew was called Caz.

Caz's face turned into a scowl as he turned around to join ginger boy.
“Leaving me to deal with this alone? Are you an idiot?” he huffed at the ginger boy. “I don’t think we need to say anything else, I think he gets it, so let’s just leave.” He placed both his hands on ginger boy’s back and started to push, as if he quickly wanted to leave.
“I got it, I got it, no need to push,” ginger boy grumbled as he walked, looking fairly annoyed at Caz.

Arian watched as the two of them left the clearing, disappearing into the dark. He wondered what they meant with train, and he tried to think if he had seen any trains nearby. Then it hit him, as he remembered he had seen one. He hadn’t thought to stop and check it out, the last time he went in that direction, as he was moving quickly past it. Knowing where they were headed, Adrian turned around to collect his boombox and headed off in a different direction than them.