FATAL IMPACT

[ 001] the belly of the beast
[season one, episode one]

The last screamed crackle over the emergency broadcast system had spelled the ending of normalcy and the beginning of a new world. After that there was only silence. A new era had risen from the dust of humanities mistakes and inability to control what it created. By the time humanity dragged itself back out of the mud it was too late. The world belonged to a new species. 

Chaos theory teaches that us that uncertainty and unpredictably will always be a constant in life. Whilst three months may be less than the blink of an eye in the history of the universe, it's a significant amount of time in a persons life. Three months is enough time for everything to change. Scientists watched the world fall and gave up on the idea of predicting. What was the point? Right from day one it could be seen that humanity sought to destroy itself. 

Maybe the outbreak was a cruel punishment; humans were so evil that even hell itself spat them back out. Whatever the reason, whatever the cause, none of it really mattered. If a scientist came from Washington with ideas and theories, with a cause for the outbreak, it wouldn't change the trajectory of anyone's life. There was no going back once the wheels had been set in motion. 

Tessa Mctate felt as if the days had been carved into her arms; bloody and painful. Each moment that ticked by was a sick reminder of what she no longer had. No home, no family, no safety. When the world fell, she hadn't run. She stopped and stayed and helped. She'd traded her safe job as a teacher for blue scrubs and blood, sickness and fear. She'd transformed her office, turning it into a sanctuary for those who had nowhere to go. Tessa Mctate had stayed to help to prove to herself that it wasn't all in vain. That her daughters deaths hadn't been for nothing.

She still remembered that first phone call, only moments after she'd watched it on TV. She'd seen the school bus full of children, then the bloodied monsters and the guns. Then, nothing. The screen went black, three seconds passed, and it cut to an advertisement. That must have been one of the last times Tessa ever saw a transmission on her television. Only a few hours later phones, power, televisions all disappeared becoming ancient technology to a new future. A future ruled by the dead.

The world had fallen to a sickness that ran rampant through humanity. Whether or not you could admit to yourself, you'd never get your old life back. It had taken Tessa far too long to realise that. It seemed as if there'd been hope at first; emergency broadcasts, whispers of safe havens and sanctuaries, talk of a cure at the CDC. But nothing changed. In fact, it worsened. Tessa found herself dressed in ragged clothes, coated with a thin layer of coppery blood. She wore trauma like a model and her life was the runway. 

It hadn't taken long for her makeshift sanctuary to fall. One infected patient and chaos was inevitable. Guns, blood, and death. Lots of death. She watched her friends and colleagues turn, one by one, and she finally realized what she'd been ignoring all along. That this was the new world and there was no stopping what was to come. Yet again Tessa changed, as if she were pulling off her old skin and putting on a new one. A harder one.

She spent her days disguising herself, learning how to survive in a world with no rules, the only semblance of her old self being the small gold locket she wore around her neck. Sometimes being someone she wasn't helped her to forget the person she'd been. The person with two daughters, a job, a home, a life. That Tessa had been happy. That Tessa had a future.

She was lucky adapting came easy to her. She'd done it her whole life after all; from a suffocating Catholic home to a trailer park with a screaming baby and then a sweet suburban semi with a white picket fence. Tessa's whole existence had been about adapting. At the end of the day a world full of sickness was just another hurdle to overcome. Armed with a sniper and a determination to live, Tessa had become a weapon of survival. A part of her had died that day with her daughters and she had awoken again as a new person. An unrecognisable one. 

Placing her sniper down beside her, Tessa gazed out at the street that stretched ahead. Several strands of blonde hair that had escaped from her ponytail wafted across her face, swaying in the afternoon breeze. She brushed them away with an annoyed sigh, breaking the silence of the world around her. It was strange for Atlanta to be quiet, especially at this time of day, but she didn't question it, choosing instead to use it to her advantage. 

Most days Atlanta was desolate and lonely, the only sounds being birds cawing in the distance, and the occasional muffled groan of the dead. From the outside it appeared abandoned; streets lined with crumbling skyscrapers and traces of civilization, the remains of what had once been. To say that Atlanta was unliveable was a gross understatement. The dead ruled the streets, the carcasses of poor unfortunate souls who had not been quick enough to escape certain death littering the cobbled sidewalks. Yet, despite this, Tessa found herself calling the burnt out city "home" on more than one occasion. 

Taking a shaky breath Tessa scanned the road, collected her sniper and started to move forward, making sure to remain on the balls of her feet so as not to be heard by the dead. Her scavenging for the day had been almost entirely successful and the bag on her back was heavy and laden down with tins of food and clothes. The thought of tinned spaghetti had raised her spirits and so she was quicker to move than she usually would have been.

Over time she had learnt the patterns of the groups of the undead that moped around Atlanta. She knew when they were going to be where and for how long they'd be there. It seemed unusual to her, this almost humanlike behaviour, as if there was still a part of those things that wasn't quite dead. She was sure that over time evolution would take care of that. It always did. 

The streets around Tessa were littered with trash, wrecked cars, deserted homes, even the rusted bones of a helicopter. She watched it all with curiosity and a slight sadness, wondering how on earth a city this big could have ever fallen to this? How could people let this happen? This world, the people in it... they didn't deserve this. Despite popular belief, death of the human race wasn't fair. There was still morality left behind in the lone survivors. Most of them anyway. 

Passing an abandoned tank, left to decay in the middle of the road, Tessa felt her pulse quicken.  At first glance it was beige and bland, with not a single distinguishable feature decorating it's surface but upon closer inspection Tessa noticed the dried blood on its walls, and the body of a soldier left to be pecked at by crows. Remains of a gory fight. 

Light groans from the other side of the tank caught her off guard. She hadn't expected to run into trouble yet she could smell it; the stench of rotting bodies cooking under the Atlanta sun. Her breath caught in her throat and she pressed her sleeve to her nose, whether to mask the stench of the dead or to stop herself from crying, she wasn't sure. 

"Fuck!" Tess muttered as she crouched down silently and slipped under the tank. With any luck the hatch at the bottom of the belly of the beast would be open and she could take refuge there until the herd of the dead had passed. 

Flattening her back against the harsh tar of the road Tessa shimmied her way to the middle of the tank and pulled herself through the hatch at the bottom. The inside of the tank was cold and unfriendly and the first thing her eye was drawn was the zombified soldier lying, propped up, against the wall. Tessa let out a thin breath. Whilst the sight was far from comforting as long she kept her movements slow and silent she wouldn't alert the rest of the undead to her presence. These days there was little comfort in the idea of safety. 

Redoing her ponytail, Tessa allowed herself a brief moment of respite. Her chest was heaving under the material of her thin grey t-shirt and every now and then a small tremor would ripple through her hand, hindering her ability to keep herself together. Despite everything the idea of death still terrified her. Less the idea of death but the pain that came along with it and the not knowing what would happen after. She didn't want to fade away. Not yet. There was still too much to hope for.

Pulling her knees up to her chest, Tessa quietly counted her breaths. It was a technique her daughter Ruth had learnt from her therapist and somehow it had wormed its way into the family becoming a normalcy for all three females that occupied the Mctate household. Some things didn't change no matter what happened in the world around her. There was a calming simplicity in counting her breaths. It was routine, and easy to do something so simple when she was falling apart. 

Breathe in.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

Breathe out.

5, 4, 3, 2, 1. 

In and out, in and out until the anxiety that washed over her dissipated and her breathing could return to normal. Her hands still shook but significantly less. Pressing her palm to the locket around her neck Tessa thought about her daughters. Effy; the life of the party, her eyes ringed with dark eyeliner. Ruth; who hated jeans and didn't want her food touching. The two were so different yet so similar and Tessa would have given anything to see them again. The world felt quiet without them. 

The sound of a commotion outside drew her attention from her reminiscing. It sounded as if the dead had claimed another victim but Tessa couldn't be sure and there was no way in hell she was risking her life to go and help whoever was out there. Silently crawling along to the hatch that she had entered through Tessa peered down to the underneath of the tank. She could just make out the shuffling shape of feet and legs; all signs that something must have interested the dead. There were noises to, mostly ones she couldn't make out, but the smacking of lips was unmistakable. The dead were feeding on something. Or someone. 

Sinking down onto her knees, Tessa felt a shudder go through her body. The sounds made her feel nauseous and several tears inadvertently slid down her face. No matter how many times she witnessed it, she would never recover from the sight of the dead feasting on the living. 

"Please go away." She whispered, clasping her hands together as if she were praying. "Please, please, please."

The sound of scuffling beneath the tank had her heart racing. There was no way out if the dead cornered her. Not here. She'd never get the hatch at the top of the tank open in time and, even if she did, she doubted there'd be anywhere for her to go. She was surrounded. She was dead. She was sure of it. That's when she heard the gunshots and a voice muttering. She couldn't make out the words but she knew that the dead couldn't talk. Was it possible there was a survivor? Thrusting her body over the hatch, Tessa looked down onto the road below. A man lay there, a gun pressed to his temple and his lips pursed in failed prayer. 

"Hey up here!" She yelled. "C'mon take my hand! Quickly!"

The mans eyes shot open at the sound of her voice and he gratefully took her outstretched hand, allowing her to pull him into the tank and shut the hatch behind him. Their breath was rhythmic as they stared at each other, chests heaving. The man was a cop, with dark hair and scared eyes. Tessa noticed he looked clean, which was odd for their current circumstances. She knew that she must look a sight; her ponytail mussed, her skin filthy, her clothes unwashed. In such a small space suddenly she was insanely aware of how she must smell. It had been a long time since she'd even seen running water. 

"Thankyou." The man panted out, giving Tessa a grateful look. She said nothing but nodded back her appreciation for his thanks. Exhaustion crossed his face as he leant back against the wall of the tank. "I thought... I thought I was done for and then your voice... I'm truly grateful."

Tessa smiled softly but chose to keep her words to herself. She didn't know yet what sort of state this man was in and if he was bit... she couldn't risk her life for a stranger's. She just watched him, silently, as he settled himself besides the dead soldier; the only other resident of the tank. It was clear that he was trying take in his surroundings and push through his disorientation. Tessa knew it would be better to let him figure things out on his own. 

She'd turned to her bag for only a second when she heard a shuffle and then low growling. Her guard was immediately in place as she snapped her head back towards the man and their now awake, yet dead, companion. She barely had time to react before the man let out a fearful yelp and raised a gun towards the head of the zombie, pulling the trigger without a second thought about their enclosed space. 

A high-pitched ringing rushed through Tessa's head and she felt her throat close up with anxiety. The feeling was disorientating and she gripped onto the wall beside her, trying to work her way through the pain the ripped through the front of her head. Whoever this man was, he was no genius. She was vaguely aware of the mans own pain as he clasped his hands to his ears and let out a yell. Crawling over to him, Tessa took his hand in her own and squeezed his fingers gently, reassuring him. 

 The two swayed, shoulders bumping into one another, as they fought through the pain and disorientation. In the quick flashes that shot through her head Tessa could swear she heard her daughters voices; Ruth's laugh and Effy's stupid jokes. Releasing the mans hand Tessa pressed her forehead against the cool steel wall of the tank as she waited for her vision to stop spinning. She felt sick as she fought through the memories brought about by her disorientation.

She vaguely aware of the cop shuffling about behind her but she knew that if she lifted her head things would start spinning again. Sucking in a lungful of air Tessa's hand found the gold locket around her neck and she clutched it tightly. There was nothing in this godforsaken tank to keep her grounded and she could feel her sanity slipping away. Warm hands on her shoulders brought her back to reality.

"Hey, you ok?" The cop asked, letting Tessa relax against his touch. "I'm sorry... I didn't mean... I didn't think."

"It's ok." Tessa mumbled under her breath. "We're both okay. That's what matters, right?"

"Yea, uh, yea. I'm... I'm Rick."

"Tessa." She smiled and picked at her sniper, waiting patiently for the formalities to be over.

"You got many rounds left?" Rick asked. Tessa shook her head. For her the sniper was more of a cautionary method, a way to convince herself that she was safe even if she wasn't. She knew that noise drew the attention of the dead so she avoided using the weapon as much as possible. Rick sighed. He seemed agitated, anxious, and Tessa wondered why. Surely by now he'd have more experience with the dead. Somehow, though, he seemed new to the fallen world. She didn't have time to form her question before a crackle screamed through the tanks radio. She snapped to attention at the sound of a mans voice.

"Hey you... dumbasses... yea you two in the tank. You cozy in there?"

authors note.

thankyou so much for reading chapter one! i literally adore tessa with my entire heart and her story is just so sad. anyways she deserves better (not that i'm gonna giver her better but still). i know this chapter is short but it's more of an introduction to our main character soooo yea.