Fic: Storm Warning (April Fic Challenge)

[csi_sanders1129]

Title: Storm Warning
Chapters: 1/1
Author:csi_sanders1129
Ratings: T (Language)
Word Count: 1639
Pairings/Characters: Tallahassee, Columbus.
Synopsis: In which Tallahassee and Columbus are trapped in the middle of nowhere but that might be the least of their problems.
Comments: Written for my April Fic Challenge 2021, Prompt: Dirty. Started writing this not long after the first movie came out. Finally finished it for this challenge just to get it out of my In Progress folder. Still haven't seen Double Tap, so no connection to that. Can be Gen or Pre-Slash. Comments and kudos would be awesome. Enjoy!

"Well, this fucking sucks."

Columbus finds himself agreeing with Tallahassee's assessment of their current situation, struggling to see anything through the windshield of the latest in a long line of vehicles. The rain is coming down in sideways sheets, much faster than the windshield wipers could ever hope to keep up with, even if they worked at all. The dirt roads out here in the middle of nowhere, way outside of any town, are more mud than anything solid at this point, and the unending downpour shows no signs of letting up anytime soon. The wind is picking up old tree branches and other debris, blowing it everywhere.

"Let's hope it doesn't get any worse," Columbus says, just as the car bounces over what has to be a pretty sizeable obstacle in the middle of the road. The car jerks and stutters for a few seconds, then it just… stops.

Tallahassee turns to glare at him from the driver's seat, a very displeased look on his face.

"The thing you're not supposed to say is 'at least it can't get any worse,'" Columbus defends, "I only wished it wouldn't."

"Apparently, that was close enough." Tallahassee tries to start it again, but the engine won't turn over and the car feels just the slightest bit off kilter, probably a flat, though that's likely the least of their problems. Being fucking stuck out here, that's a problem. "Well. Not goin' anywhere until this damn storm lets up."

It's getting dark, but the lightning flashes nearly constantly overhead, and the thunder is almost as deafening as the unending clatter of rain on the roof of the car. The only thing in their favor is that they haven't seen any zombies this far out. No cars, no houses, no buildings, either, though.

Tallahassee reclines his seat and leans back, tips his hat over his eyes. "Wake me up when it calms the fuck down."

"You can sleep through this?"

"I feel like you're forgetting that I'm from Florida, that place that gets all the damn hurricanes? I've been through worse storms than this," Tallahassee answers. "Just relax, spitfuck."

But Columbus is not fond of storms in general. He's even less fond of them when they're stuck in the middle of nowhere in the zombie apocalypse. He's anxious, and he reaches for the door because he needs to do something - he'll just get out for a minute, he thinks, see just how bad off the car is, assess the situation. That'll help. "I'll be right back," he says, but Tallahassee's hand clamps down on his arm.

"You're tellin' me you ain't got one of those dumbass rules of yours for wandering around in lightning storms?" The older man challenges, and Columbus decides not to tell him that it's rule number 48. "Not to mention, you go gettin' out of this car and you'll be soaked through in half a second. It's gonna get colder later and we've got no heat," Tallahassee reminds him. It's November now, and they're farther north than usual. "Still wanna get out?"

A streak of lightning comes down not too far away from the car, and the boom of thunder that follows shakes the earth around them.

He drops his hand away from the handle and sits back. "No. No, on second thought, I'm good."

"Good," Tallahassee echoes. He unbuckles, then, bitching about the front seat being cramped.

They've discovered that if they put the back seats down in the sizable SUV, there's enough room to lie down. Their bags make decent pillows - their spare clothes cushioning the ample cache of guns and ammo - and they've agreed, rather begrudgingly, that staying close under the thick blankets they've found keeps them both warm on the cold nights and this is certainly shaping up to be one of those. Tallahassee climbs into the back with a little bit of difficult maneuvering and a lot of cursing and Columbus follows, arranges the bags while Tallahassee digs out the blankets.

"Is this a hurricane?" Columbus asks, the realization only now occurring to him. It's not like they have the Weather Channel to turn to for reference.

"Could be. We're close enough to the coast. Tropical Storm, if not," he answers, settling under the blankets, pulling Columbus down beside him so he doesn't stay up staring at the storm all night. "Now, sleep."

Begrudgingly, he does.

---

The storm is still raging on when they wake, though it isn't the sounds of the storm that wake them, but rather the sound of a window shattering, the tinny explosion of glass cascading down on them as they're abruptly thrown back into consciousness. What was it, though? The storm, a zombie?

Before either of them can really react, before they can reach for their guns, tucked just out of reach below their pillows, someone is shouting, "Out of the car!" and raising the lift gate on the back of the SUV. Very much not a zombie, then. Someone grabs Columbus's ankle and drags him out, where he's instantly soaked by the cold rain. They pin him down into the mud before he can do anything to stop it, a shotgun pressed to his skull. Tallahassee isn't so easily handled, and there's a flash of anger in his eyes at what they've done because he's the only one who gets to manhandle the kid, okay? He moves slowly, seeming quite unimpressed by the gun pointed at his own head. "Now, old man! Move it!"

Tallahassee regards them carefully, three men not much older than Columbus, and relaxes a bit. Nothing he can't handle. No need to worry. "You're gonna let him go," he demands, his voice solid and stone cold calm.

A laugh from one of their would-be captors, "Why the hell would we do that?"

The one edging Tallahassee out of the car has made a mistake, though. He's got a shotgun, sure, and it's pointed at him, but he's too close, and it only takes Tallahassee a split second to knock the barrel aside and disarm the man. Another second, and he's got a blade pressed to the guy's neck.

"Let him go."

"You let go or I kill your friend," the one with a gun to Columbus's head counters. He's not laughing anymore.

"I'd say we got ourselves a genuine standoff here, don't you?" He addresses their third man, voice raised to be heard over the persistent wind and rain, "Look, what do you say? You give me my guy, I give you yours and we forget this mess ever happened."

"Let's not," comes a fourth voice, as the click of a round chambering sounds to his side, the cold barrel of another gun pressed to his head.

Tallahassee scowls, but drops both his captive and his knife. He begrudgingly allows himself to be wrangled the rest of the way out of the vehicle and shoved down into the muck beside Columbus. He glares as two of the men start an eager inventorying of the supplies they find in the back of the SUV, clearly quite pleased by the cache of provisions they've happened upon.

"What do we do now?" Columbus whispers to him.

Tallahassee watches carefully as he tries to figure out the best way out of this situation. He can see that while there are guns aimed at he and Columbus, the two idiots wielding them are not paying attention in the slightest. Instead, they're focused on the watching the others as they start to move the stolen supplies over to their own car (a similar SUV that probably actually works). Good, Tallahassee thinks, he can work with that. "When I give you the signal, roll under the car and you keep your ass there until I tell you otherwise," he decides.

Columbus frowns, not a fan of such unspecific plans, "What the hell's the signal?" he demands.

"You'll know it when you see it," he says. But that's when the moment is right. A prolonged flash of lightning fills the sky. He kicks out hard, makes contact with a knee that promptly bends in a direction it shouldn't and drops one of the men with guns as he swiftly swings up to his feet. The second armed man is the same one Tallahassee has already disarmed once and doing so again is just as easy. He swings the butt of the rifle at the guy's head and drops him, too. The first man is too busy desperately clutching at his ruined knee to stop Tallahassee from knocking him out, as well, and he takes an extra second to kick that man's gun over to Columbus, who has, thankfully, figured out that this assault was the signal he'd been waiting for and hidden himself beneath the ruined car, safely out of the way of any guns that might be aimed in his direction.

The booming thunder has hidden all of this from the other two, still busy with packing their pilfered supplies into their own car, and Tallahassee takes advantage of their obliviousness to sneak close enough to strike. The rifle breaks when he swings it, but it does the job of taking out one of the remaining idiots. The last, well, Tallahassee opts to just beat the shit out of him.

When he's sure none of the four remain a threat (hell, that none of them remain conscious), he ushers Columbus out from his hiding place. They're both sopping wet, shivering, and covered in mud, but it's over. "Looks like we got ourselves a new ride," he gloats as he climbs into the driver's seat of the functional SUV, "they even packed it up for us."

Columbus limps his way over and climbs in beside him, and together they speed away from the storm.

Just another day in Zombieland.