Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Jasper’s POV

This is a nice bat. I spun it around my right hand a few times enjoying the feel of the smooth wood. Stuff like this was hard to come by. Who would’ve thought the world would go to shit like this.

A big ugly bitch of a zombie with exposed brains came out from behind the manikins in the corner of the store and I flipped the bat around a few more times before swinging through the creature's head putting it down for good.

Then I heard another release a guttural wail behind me. Where the hell is a noise like that coming from in something that’s dead?! It didn’t matter now as more came from the woodwork attracted to the call the zombie let out. I could hear them all behind me moving slowly and I turned even slower hoping that I would turn around and it'd all be gone and everything would be back to normal. Nope the world was still in the toilet but nice try though. Let’s kill these bitches.

My fresh new bat did good at extinguishing the undead lives of these forsaken creatures. Headshot one by one by one until I got tired of that and just used the end of the bat to nudge them away. These were the slow ones and I could run. I didn't need to exert all of my force before I’m even halfway out of the mall.

Shoving my way through didn’t prove to be as cathartic and instead was kind of gross as the zombie flesh squished under my bat and made an unholy squelching noise.

Fast paced footsteps broke through the disgusting peace of it all. The groans following those steps let me know it wasn’t somebody in the neighborhood for a little mall run and I needed to run instead of just shoving around and smelling the roses.

I took off towards the non-functioning escalator running down the middle of each side's black railing. The metal pegs meant to prevent people from sliding down the middle produced sharp pains in my feet even through the strong boots. My arms almost t-posed to provide balance for the steep trek down.

Finally I made it down and jumped off at the end tucking and rolling as I failed to land on my feet. More zombies came out from the stores on the bottom level. Some slow, others fast and I knew I needed to shut shit down before it got worse. A wired up button hooked up by some smart punk was all I needed to press to get all the doors to close even the malls opening. If I didn’t make it out that would be it for me.

So I’m going to make it out. I ran and fucking ran pushing myself to the limit using the bat to shove and swinging a little too as I pushed through the gathering crowd of zombies until finally I threw the bat under the closing door and dived through the closing slit myself like a player headed towards a what could hopefully be a home run.

I had made it out and the door finished closing behind me. I was sprawled out on my stomach on the orange dirt of Arizona cooking in the dry heat. My bat was ahead of me and I crawled forward to grab it. My eyes burned from the bright sun that contrasted greatly from the dim setting of the mall which I had only been in for thirty minutes or so.

Still I covered my eyes with my left arm as I looked down and took in my new bat that had tape wrapped around the handle for a perfect zombie killing grip. Thankful for its part in saving me although I could’ve just whipped out my pistol I kissed the bottom of it. She was mine now, better at stealth and efficiency than my old pistol anyway.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. My ears were ringing and I heard a gunshot come from behind me.

I felt it too.

Bella’s POV

The dumbass collapsed ahead of me, his blood staining the orange Arizona dirt. I glistened unnaturally in the Arizona sun and knew to take cover soon as I plowed forward and grabbed the rando and his bat to drag to the mall’s opening.

I took out a remote and pressed a button that opened the door. It moved upward ever so slowly and I pulled up the cage myself, kicking the guy under it and closing the cage after entering behind him.

I closed the door and the coven came out to scare away the zombies and Emmett took Jasper away to our hideout. I looked at the bat. My bat, and wondered how the fuck he got to it. Clearly some of us are doing a lot more fucking around than others if he was able to get this far into our territory. Or maybe he was special.

He would do good here.

Chapter Text

Tanya’s POV

As I looked forward in our clustered group and saw him I thought there was something to be said about the new member’s ability to captivate all of us. There was something to be said about the way he had wormed his way into our leader’s heart and then the rest of them. Jasper. A tall honey blond man and now after some time, a vampire. His abilities revealed themself to us shortly after his turning, pathokinesis, the ability to sense and manipulate one’s emotions. At first we theorized his ability as being the reason we all seemed to be so taken with him. It was also very fitting that he was a charismatic human and vampire.

Bella thought him charming when she first brought him to us some months ago. On the other side of that coin I was very leery of him due to his charm and couldn’t understand why she would bring him here and potentially endanger us all. I had left my old coven for this very reason, but maybe this would be different. All I know is I trusted my mate. Bella had brought him here with promise and I had to trust that.

I didn’t have to start now though.

Jasper’s POV

The Arizona dry heat was something I could appreciate now since my turning. It didn’t burn my nostrils since I no longer breathed, and it didn’t burn my indestructible porcelain skin due to the characteristics of a vampire. It was relaxing and I could feel that the others enjoyed it too.

Well, at least Emmett did, but Bella seemed to be highly annoyed by it since it meant the humans stayed inside their dwellings and animals burrowed in their shelters to keep cool against the record breaking heat.

She hated being unable to provide for us as the leader. Ages older than me or any of us really, and I hated having to feel that from her because I knew what it was to feel like a failure from a chapter of my life when I was once human. To assuage her undeserved feelings I trekked up to her from my position in the middle of the group.

Placing my cold, undead hand on her heavily padded shoulder I spoke, “It’s ok. I can tell you personally that none of us blame you.”

Usually we would mutter under our breath when we were outside of the mall but I wanted her to hear me. I wanted to be heard over the constant groans of the rotting and walking corpses that roamed the Earth and I couldn’t just manipulate her emotions on this and make her feel an illusion of happiness. It would go away soon enough and we would be back to square one.

“You don’t have to blame me. I may not have your ability but I can still feel your disappointment that we are staying here. Not just yours but the rest of them as well. I have my reasons for staying here and you all will just have to trust that please. I see something good coming for us. Just wait a little longer.”

Bella muttered her statement without even looking at me unlike when I had previously spoke. She even shook my hand off and as quiet as she was I could hear her voice had tapered off to pleading.

I thought about telling her the next thing that was resting on the tip of my tongue but her statement made me think otherwise.

Perhaps that decision was a mistake as I began to feel Edward’s judgment from behind me. Either he didn’t agree with the initial idea or he didn’t agree with me not telling our coven leader. I didn’t care about his judgment. Although he could be fun sometimes and I really came to consider him as my brother as well as his werewolf mate Jacob, matching judginess of others could be annoying and completely overbearing.

You could definitely overdose on time around the both of them but at least they had each other and they never seemed to get tired of that.

He might escalate the issue if I continued to think of that same thought so I pushed it down. I simply believed that a move might be in order for us, maybe to somewhere with a tropical climate and setting and not this desert hellhole. It was why I had left Texas and was moving my way through Arizona before I was stopped here permanently that one day in the mall before I found that nice bat. I laughed internally as I recalled how quickly I had lost that bat and everything had changed not long after that.

Emmett’s POV

I don’t know what the hell everyone else is thinking but I sure as fuck am bored. We weren’t finding anything out here in this barren desert except for stupid lizards. I had walked next to Rosalie this entire time since we had left the mall. That was shortly before the sun came up and now it was fucking noon. Still nothing.

I trusted Bella and Rosalie really trusted Bella so I wasn’t always free to speak out against her around my mate but I sure did think it. A lot. At least Edward kept to himself with everyone’s thoughts. He wasn’t quick to reveal our innermost thoughts unless he believed it was important to the coven’s safety, something I could respect him on. But would he consider this important? I simply believed we should leave and go elsewhere. I liked it in the forest back when I was a human. It stands to reason there would be other humans there to feed off of ,too.

Bella still thought we should stay here in the desert isolated from the rest of civilization even if it meant we had to hike everywhere each day just to find a tiny animal to kill and share. Humans weren’t off the table; they were just even harder to find. I wanted to eat Jasper when he first got here but Bella had her mind set on turning him.

Carlisle had to work hard to pacify the rest of us when Bella made a decision like that at the risk of us all starving. But he believed in her and thought this was best as well. Humans were off the table to him, so I could understand why, but they weren’t off the table for me so even though I understood I couldn’t say I cared at the time. I was just so mad.

Jasper really helped that since he’s been here. More specifically since he turned.

He really was like a brother to me now.

Chapter Text

Tanya’s POV

The silence had been tense among us before I decided to break it with the one thing that had been on my mind.

“Bella, you should listen to the boy. I don’t know if it’s his charms but I agree with him and his reasoning. There is nothing here for us anymore like there was all those years ago. We must go, my dear.”

Our desert trek had ended rather uneventfully after finding nothing but an armadillo and a half dead man whose blood served us no satisfaction. The suffering we faced under the symphony of zombie groans was not equal to the game we found on our hunt. This had been happening for a few weeks starting shortly after Jasper was turned.

I can’t imagine how he feels surviving off this hybrid human and animal blood regimen amid an apocalypse that forced our kind into a diet we were unfamiliar with and not very fond of to begin with. Rosalie says it could teach him some much needed control as Jasper’s hunger quite outweighs what Bella can provide for any of us in these conditions. Not that she would know anything about control with her rash choices before the apocalypse forcing the coven to move to Arizona in the first place. Not that I would know too much about that.

I was still with my old coven back then. Before the outsider destroyed everything and I came to find my mate and this new coven.

“Jasper doesn’t know everything!”

Her sudden outburst pulled me out of my thoughts. This anger wasn’t unlike her but it was always surprising when it revealed its ugly head. While it wasn’t unlike her it surely wasn’t appealing on her. Nor was it on any others.

But I couldn’t tell her that.

“My love, why won’t you listen just this once? Is it because of who it’s coming from? You know he can’t help what Edward does with his thoughts!”

“Why are you defending him?! This isn’t like you. You refused to even get to know him when he was first here and now you’re buddy buddy and agreeing with his ideas just like that!”

She snapped to enunciate the that at the end of her sentence. She was quite mad.

“No, I’m not buddy buddy with that boy. You’re right I’ve refused to know him and although I know him now my trust is still wavering in him. But that doesn’t interfere with the fact that he simply thought the obvious and Edward called it out. There is nothing out there for us! Nothing.”

My eyes started to well up with venom halting Bella in all her emotions.

“Don’t you think I know that? He didn’t have to say it when I can fucking feel it. I know.”

She was quiet for a bit of time before exiting our wing of the mall in a blur. Her sudden journey ended in the pit of the mall where the others occasionally hung out as they were doing now.

At the sight of their leader they ceased all activities and gave her their attention. Jasper was a bit quicker at that than the others for the time being due to his newborn strength.

“Bella, I’m sorry.”

The first thing out of the boy’s mouth before Edward spoke up as well.

“I’m not.”

He was still sitting unlike the others who were standing to show Bella their utmost respect. The disrespect from him and Jacob was becoming more intense the longer we stayed in this barren wasteland that was becoming increasingly devoid of any food sources for us.

“Shut up the both of you! I’m sorry! Me!”

They both stopped their bickering and Edward finally stood although his mate was nowhere to be seen.

“I’ve been keeping us here because of something in me that died a long time ago. My mother and father went on to have another child after the abrupt end of my human life. A boy. He had another child and the lineage continued like my mother always wanted. I’ve been following another descendant of his named Charles who was living here. He died. Turned really. But not into one of us.”

The mood turned somber in the recreational area as we took in something new about our leader. Something that we all deeply related to. Wanting to find a connection to our human side that we had previously lost.Some never found it.

“I’ve been incredibly selfish and-” blinking rapidly she continued “it’s not fair to any of you. You may not know it but as your leader I can feel that type of thing even if it’s not as deeply as Jasper does.”

A couple of chuckles fill the area before it quiets again and Bella continues although we all know where this is going without her having to even say anything.

“We leave at nightfall, understand?”

Nods were given from all of us before she left the area and went to our wing of the mall once again. I met her there and we packed our very minimal belongings in silence. A comfortable silence.

Edward’s POV

When Bella left all I could think was that it was about time she took some action. I thought I was going to have to do something myself. And trust me I would’ve done something. After all these years I did not wish to betray her but if I feel something must be done I will always do it to protect Jacob, no matter what.

I couldn’t read her thoughts like the others but the time I had spent with my ability since my turning had also allowed me to be rather intune with body language and reading that as well. Not unlike other vampires my age. Something was weighing her down and in turn causing us to be weighed down here in Arizona. Jasper could feel it too and his mind I could read.

But wait a minute, where are we even going? We leave at nightfall but now what? God, this is the type of stuff that makes me wish I could read her mind.

Bella’s POV

I was thinking somewhere like Zihuatanejo.