#bkdkzombieweek but I'm a dumbass who forgot prompts were a thing and didn't find out about it until it's almost over so basically just I write a zombie fic for fun lmao

cw // gore, blood, violence, killing of zombies, swearing

Bakugou Katsuki’s life is fucked up. Want to hear the list? Here’s the list, written entirely in his brain because even things like pens and paper are dangerous to acquire nowadays and he couldn’t be fucking bothered. He wrote it with aching, bloodstained hands wrapped tight

around an ax stolen from a fire hatch and a heart trying desperately to escape the confines of his bruising ribcage and a mouth full of curse words and bloody spit.

Number one: He’s living through the goddamn fucking apocalypse. That should be enough said.

Number two: The sound of rotten bones squelching against insides as they connect with hard wood is easily recognizable and won’t get out of his fucking (nightmares) dreams.

Number three: He can no longer distinguish the smell of blood because it all smells like fucking blood.

Number four: His hands are practically made of callouses and molded closed, from holding the damn ax every second of the day.

Number five: He lost his fucking skateboard.

Number six: He hasn’t gotten a haircut in months. He looks like his fucking mom.

Number seven: He doesn’t have a mom anymore.

Number eight: He’s making lists in his head like he’s damn Deku.

Number nine: He doesn’t have Deku.

Number ten: or anyone.

A sickening crunch (see number two) echoes through the empty hallway of what was previously Katsuki’s old middle school as he lets the list trail off in his mind, focusing instead on the decrepit corpse he’s busy beating the shit out of. The ax is a damn godsend, usually able to

cut through the Creepy Fucker’s rotting skin (Katsuki hates the word zombie. It makes it seem too much like a movie. It’s not a fucking movie anymore). But the one occasion that hacking away didn’t do enough for him led to Katsuki making one hundred percent, absolutely sure that

they’re dead by cutting the heads clean off.

It always makes him sick. (I’m sorry.)

But he’s not weak. And he’s not going to cry.

He’s not Deku. (see numbers seven through nine)

He’s not, but Deku is, and that’s why he needs to find the bastard. Find the scrawny shit nerd

and drag him out of this apocalypse someone like him doesn’t belong in. This is the world for people with bloodstained lips kissing bloodstained teeth, with guns on hips and bats in hand, with hardened hearts that can rip soft ones right out of wet ribcages, with cheeks barren of

tears as the desert of oceans.

It’s not the world for those trembling lips and chattering teeth, those hands made to pluck flowers and write letters, those kind hearts and kinder souls, those shining cheeks and bright-eyed futures.

It’s the world for who Katsuki has to be, not

one for who Deku has always been. Will always /get/ to be, if there’s a single drop of goodness left anywhere in this godforsaken place (as each day passes, Katsuki’s less sure there is).

If there were a single bit of piety left in his soul, Katsuki would pray for that. Pray for

him. But all the kamidana have been turned into bonfires by now, and spirits never did shit for him anyway.

He averts his eyes from the bodies littering the floor (I killed them I killed them I killed them I killed-) and hefts the ax in his aching hands (see number four),

scanning the rest of the hallway for any more Rotting Fucks. He finds none, at least not right in front of him, so he starts creeping quietly down the hall. The middle school was his first safe haven back during the First Wave, transformed by the community to a form a place they

thought would be safe.

They thought a lot of things back then. Including that this would all be over soon.

There was an infected person that somehow got in – Katsuki doesn’t know how. The poor fuck probably didn’t even know they were bitten. But it doesn't matter how it

happened, because the end result was the same: zombification and utter disaster. It spread like fucking wildfire, starting in the makeshift medbay and suddenly they were everywhere.

Katsuki didn’t run.

(he knows better now, knows better than to let stupid fucking pride make those decisions for him, not when they fucked it all up the first time, not when he lost so much to it, not when he lost him to it and her to it and himself to it)

He didn’t run, and that’s how he ended up begging the empty shell of his mother to come back, to not hurt him. That’s how the last coherent word he heard out of his parent’s mouth, along with the dying sparks of life and recognition in her eyes, was “Go.” before it sputtered out.

He didn’t run, so Deku didn’t run, and that’s how he ended up shoving the screaming, sobbing nerd out a window, repeating his mother’s last words to him as clammy hands wrapped around his ankles and dragged him back through the slick.

That’s how the last memory of the face belonging to the one person he’s supposed to protect is one of terror.

That’s how Katsuki learned how blood oozes, how cracked skulls fill a room with thick stench, how tears mix with the blood and bits so well you can convince yourself

you never started crying in the first place.

He knows better now. He knows.

He’ll run. He’ll run anywhere to make sure he’s alive.

That’s why he’s back at the school now, forcing down bile and creeping panic like dead hands ghosting over his lungs and sinking in. He wants to know if Deku would’ve come back (/for me/). It’s been months, he knows that, he knows it’s unlikely, but it’s the only fucking clue

he's got. The shitty radio station he found was bust, the missing person posters have created entire new layers on every street pole and alley wall and Katsuki didn’t have the resources for one of those anyways, and all their old spots are abandoned or overrun by undead.

He’s got nothing but this shitty school full of shitty memories and shittier dreams.

He wishes the worst thing he ever did in these halls was knock Deku’s lunch out of his hands.

He flexes his aching fingers around the handle of his trusty ax, found way back then, the one

he’s somehow held onto all these months. It’s his most valuable possession these days, his best form of protection (/It’s a weapon. It kills. I kill./), but it’s dulling. Sharpening it against walls only gets him so far.

He’ll figure something out, he thinks as he makes his way

cautiously from room to room, keeping his breathing shallow and trying not to gag at the suffocating stench from most of them. He has to.

The school is completely empty of anything truly alive, but he finds a cupboard not quite sealed by blood and grime that someone, probably

one of the people that had lived in here, had once filled with snacks, including a whole-ass mini box of granola bars, so the trip was successful in that fashion. It wasn’t a total waste, at least. Katsuki empties the box into his pockets, fitting as many as he can there before

just dropping them down his shirt – better than carrying it around and risk not having a life-saving free hand.

After confirming that there’s no other food, Katsuki suddenly can’t spend another second in this place, so he bolts out as quickly as he can, only running into a weak

-ass crawler on his way. He just avoids it, figuring the decrepit thing will be decayed soon enough and isn’t worth his time or effort (/I won’t kill unless I have to. I can’t./)

The streets are empty and cold, and he stops at the pond in the middle of the grounds to quickly

rinse off his gunk-covered hands, arms, face, everywhere. He does it with one hand at a time, never letting go of the ax and never letting his guard down. He also doesn’t dare to drink the water, despite the burning in his throat, because that's a mistake he only had to make once

He’s lucky to still be alive after that particular screw up, he was sure he’d fucking cough up a lung before it stopped.

After washing up, he’s off to find a safe place to rest for a bit, maybe sleep if he’s lucky (he rarely is). His last place, a freezer locker in the back

kitchen of an abandoned restaurant, got overrun by Decaying Fucks with a taste for gourmet sukiyaki – i.e., scarfing down the moldy shit then puking it right back up all over Katsuki’s path back to the freezer. It’s unsafe to get in and out of, which fucking blows because that

thing /locked/.

But, no, now he’s on the search for a new safehouse. He considers the school, but even without the lack of security there’s no way in hell he’s spending the night in /there/. He's gotta find somewhere else, and soon.

He sets off down the road, wishing for the

thousandth time that he still had his beloved, beat-up skateboard (see number five). It’d be faster than walking or running everywhere and maybe provide slight relief to his aching feet, but the thing got left behind during the First Wave panic when his parents moved them over to

the middle school. He’d gone back for it around the first month of being alone, but his house had been trashed and the board was nowhere to be found. Looter or undead, he doesn’t know, but he hates them.

There are a few undead shuffling around, but they're less dangerous kinds

and Katsuki manages to keep under their radar (his hands still grip the ax so tight it hurts). As he walks through the city, the empty city he once called home, he starts thinking whether he should still be here.

Musutafu, being a large, overpopulated city packed with people,

was a breakout hub during the First and Second Waves. Pretty much everyone was either zombified or booked it the second they could. Katsuki didn’t, still holding on for Deku.

But he was probably the only person left here, or one a mere handful of stragglers (/more people like me

more people searching/).

But this is a matter of calculations. Logic. Weighed measurement of risks and benefits. He can’t let feelings get in the way of survival, or foolish notions of hope (/hope’s keeping me alive, though/).

Logically speaking, he’s been in Musutafu for

months. He’s searched this one city for months and come up empty-handed. Maybe Deku left, jumped ship with any other escapees from Aldera – if there were any others.

Katsuki would have a better chance at finding him, and at surviving, if he left. So, he’ll leave. Simple as that.

He stifles a sigh as he looks down the long road in front of him that would lead out of the city’s limits. He really misses his damn skateboard.

//

Four Creepy Fucks, three close calls, two aching feet, and who knows how many fucking hours later, Katsuki slinks into a gas

station at the edge of Musutafu as the sun goes down – or he might be past the edge, he’s got no idea. What he does know is that everything hurts like a bitch and he’s full of hatred. Towards everything.

Sometimes these days he’s too exhausted to be full of rage, but not now.

And, honestly, thank fuck for rage and hatred, because they power him through the next three days of Rotting Fuck after Rotting Fuck (/murder after murder/) and miles upon miles of nothing but empty highway roads and crashed cars covered in vines and greedy bushes.

He rifles through a few of them to see if he can find anything and is rewarded with a rather large pocket knife tucked in a dash, next to a box of matches. Fucking jackpot. He also takes a whiff of the hoodie abandoned in the backseat before deciding that’s it better then what

he's got on and switching them out.

After the three days of walking, he finally reaches Shizuoka City, and lo and behold, there are people there. Actual, living people staring him as he walks down the street, gripping his ax like a lifeline and forcing back tears. He can’t

trust them. He can't trust anyone.

But holy /fuck/ it's good to see them.

He searches the few small groups he sees for a head of green hair, but doesn’t find any. That’s fine, it’s a big city. He’ll look.

It’s not until a few days later that he realizes how hard looking

might be – he’s gotta fucking survive first, and that’s way easier said than done. There’s hardly any damn food in this city, and Katsuki’s forced to chug a few cans of expired curry or risk starvation. And Shizuoka's a bigger city than Musutafu, meaning more Moldy Fucks on his

ass all day.

He slams the ax as hard as he can, slicing through an undead’s head and pinning it to the wall with a sickening crunch and thunk. Cursing under his breath, he props one foot up on the wall, using it as leverage to yank his ax back out of the grocery store wall just

in time to swing it at another guy groaning and gargling behind him.

He embeds the ax in another’s skull, twisting it violently to the side to crack the softened bone clean open. There’s bile and puke rising in his throat again, but a clammy hand wraps around his thigh before

he can even /think/ about hurling.

He slams the ax down on the arm, chopping it off and backing away from the writhing body on the ground as fast as he can, kicking his leg wildly to get the remaining hand off.

Fuck, fuck, /fuck/, he just wanted some damn fruit snacks. How the

hell did he not notice there were so many in here?

All he can do is swing his ax around as fast as he can, hacking away bits and pieces of the things surrounding him as the panic sinks its rotting fingers into his chest again. It’s tearing into his lungs, his heart, his bones,

every part of him, inside and out.

But he can’t fucking die here. Not before he finds Deku, not when he’s survived so long already.

He fights through the terror suffocating him enough to spot a temporary hiding place, in between two shelves and behind a cart, which he dives

under the instant he gets an opening. He presses himself close to the ground, shuffling forward in an army crawl to distance himself from the corpses trailing after him. The blade of the ax scraped painfully against the floor, but there's not much he can do about that as he

searched wildly for any way out.

And then, salvation. A heavy door to the back alley, labelled emergency exit. Katsuki thinks this qualifies as a damn emergency, and quickly plots a route through the shelves that runs into the least undead.

Sucking in a sharp breath, he jumps

to his feet and /bolts/, yelling and brandishing his ax like a madman. He chops through things without abandon, ignoring the disgusting things flying off them and at him until he gets to the door, slams it shut behind him, and promptly pukes his guts out.

There's not much in

his guts to puke.

His knees buckle and scrape against the concrete as he retches pathetically, coughing and heaving in ragged, painful breaths. The ax clatters to the ground with him, but he keeps one hand over it, panting and trying to stand. He ends up just stumbling back and

landing on his ass again. Fuck.

Come on, he has to get up.

He hears groaning.

He /really/ has to get up.

He whips his head up and rushes to lift his ax, but the Creepy Fuck is already over halfway down the alley towards him, moving way faster than a rotting corpse should

be able to. Shit.

Katsuki scrambles backwards until his back is up against a wall. FUCK. He has to get up. He has to get up. (/I have to get up I have to find him I need to find him I can’t die please I can’t die I have to-/)

WHAM.

A nauseating crunch (see number two) fills

the alley, and the head of the undead that was in front of Katsuki seconds before is suddenly gone. It goes flying clean off, spurting blood everywhere and spattering Katsuki’s face with the shit.

He gags again and dry retches to the side before wiping his mouth with the back

of his hand and gripping his ax tightly. He musters enough strength to lift it up, hoping to defend from whoever or whatever just killed that guy.

And then he glances up and meets viridian green eyes.

Bakugou Katsuki's life is /so/ fucked up.

TBC!! this is fun :D

(check me out on ao3 if you like my works!! https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyofsnails)

ok lets add some more!!! perspective swap because deku is here now!!

Izuku’s breathing is heavy and panicked as he heaves in oxygen and forces out the fear and disgust that has him frozen to the spot. The zombie’s blood had gone everywhere, including his face, but he’s too in shock to care. Because as he stares down at the person he just saved,

his makeshift skateboard weapon in his hands frozen where it stopped after impact with the zombie’s head, Kacchan stares back up at him.

Kacchan, who he thought was dead, and looks halfway there now, covered in blood and dirt and torn clothes. But he's not dead or undead,

because his bloodshot red eyes aren’t that same empty Izuku’s seen in the zombies, seen in the eyes of the people he couldn’t save. They’re not the eyes of someone safe and bright, sure, but they’re the eyes of a survivor, and that's more than Izuku could've ever prayed for.

Survivors are the only people around anymore.

Survivors and him.

He still has no idea what to say. He hasn’t said more than a few words to anyone in months, he’s not even sure the words will come out when he opens his mouth.

What he wants to do is sob, collapse to the ground

and hug him, but Kacchan's still holding onto the ax like it's a part of him. Izuku watches those once-jewel-bright eyes rake over him, and he wonders if Kacchan thought he was dead, too. He wouldn't be surprised.

The last memory he had of Kacchan was watching in terror as he

was dragged back through the window he pushed Izuku out of, and all he could do was scream. Kacchan saved his life, but Izuku couldn’t do the same for him. And he tried. He tried to get to him on legs battered and bruised from the fall, with hands shaking so badly his hands

couldn’t hold on to anything, with a fearful heart rabbiting in his chest, but he couldn’t. Someone dragged him away kicking and screaming and trying.

He joined up with the tiny group of survivors from the school, one of whom had dragged him away from Kacchan. He kept trying to

go back, but they stopped him every time ('shit, kid, you got a death wish? /yes/). He was safe with them, for a while.

But those things don't last.

He was the only survivor, and he didn’t deserve to be. He didn’t even deserve to be called that, but he’ll take every borrowed

day he’s got if it means he’s any hope at stopping this. Save everyone for the people he already failed.

Kacchan opens his mouth to speak, but all that comes out is a rasp. For some reason, that’s enough for the high-strung tension to drain right out of Izuku’s body,
slumping

his shoulders and letting the skateboard come down to his side. He swallows thick tears in his throat, holding a scarred, grimy hand out to Kacchan on the ground. (/please take it, please don’t leave me, please don’t leave me behind again, not here/)

Kacchan lets go of the ax

with one hand, holding it up towards Izuku's...then slaps away his hand and scrambles to his feet. His eyes are wide and he grips the weapon with both hands again, looking at Izuku like he's a /threat/.

Izuku's bleeding heart /shatters/.

"Kacchan?" he manages, more a wheezy

whisper than a word.

It’s hard to tell with the blood, but he thinks Kacchan is crying. Kacchan never cries. “Fuck,” he breathes, panic and fear and an overwhelming grief tainting his words. “Fuck…I-you…no. No.”

"No what?” Izuku warbles, definitely crying now, sobs building

painfully in his constantly aching chest.

“No,” Kacchan repeats, meeting his eyes, “Please.”

“Please what,” Izuku begs.

“I just found you,” Kacchan says, desperation coating everything, “I can’t…”

He’s never heard Kacchan say that before. It sounds wrong. “You can do

anything, Kacchan."

"I can't /lose/ you again," Kacchan suddenly yells, thick tears cutting through the blood drying on his face. His ax clatters to the pavement as he lets his grip on it go slack. “Fuck.”

“Kacchan, what are you talking about?" Izuku pleads. This doesn't make

sense. "I'm not going anywhere." (/not without you, not ever again/)

"Your fucking arm, Deku," Kacchan whispers, slumping back against the wall and sliding down until he’s sitting, head hanging down. Izuku frowns, sniffling and holding back more sobs, then looks down at his arm.

The sleeve of his hoodie had ridden up, exposing his forearm.

Oh.

Izuku suddenly feels so many things at once he might burst out hysterics – tears or laughter, he’s not sure. Instead, he just heaves in a shaky breath and sets his board on the ground. This is Kacchan, he

trusts him. So, he pulls his hoodie off over his head so he’s just in a tank top, revealing almost the full mess of scars and, most importantly, bite marks covering his skin, slowly turning his body into a mess of tissue and searing memories.

Kacchan looks up and his eyes go

wide. Izuku swallows.

"Kacchan-"

"What the fuck."

“Kacchan, please just let me explain,” Izuku begs, kneeling to the ground. Kacchan presses himself up against the wall, away from Izuku, and Izuku understands why he does it but it doesn’t make it hurt any less. "I don't...I

don't get it either, but I don't...I've been bit, and nothing happens."

He remembers the first time rotting teeth sunk into his skin, how he screamed and punched and hacked his way to freedom but couldn’t escape it, how he dropped to the ground and curled up and sobbed for

hours. How days passed and his mind was still clear, his body was still working, he was still /alive/.

Blessings are curses and curses are blessings.

“This,” he continues, gesturing to the bite mark Kacchan had seen on his arm, “happened months ago. I haven’t…I don’t turn.

I swear."

Kacchan stares down at the mark for a long, drawn-out moment, the silence thick and palpable between them. And then he looks up, meets Izuku’s eyes, and tackles him to the ground.

Izuku starts sobbing right then and there, wrapping his bare arms around Kacchan’s

frame and digging his fingers into the fabric of his hoodie. He’s warm and smells absolutely horrible and he’s Kacchan. He’s alive.

“Holy shit,” Kacchan breaths, voice shaking just barely as he squeezes Izuku tighter and buries a hand in his hair, pulling the two of them as

close as physically possible. “Holy fucking shit.”

“Yeah.”

Izuku feels like his chest is cracking open with the force of his sobs, hiccupping and gasping into Kacchan’s shoulder. It’s painful but he’s grateful for it – he’s learned to be grateful for a lot of pain these days,

because it tells him he really is still alive. And now he’s not alone.

Kacchan pulls away just far enough to press their foreheads together, a gesture so intimate and reminiscent of their past Izuku chokes out another sob, holding Kacchan’s face between his hands and swiping a

thumb across his cheeks, leaving tracks in the caked-on blood and dirt.

“I’m sorry,” he croaks through another hiccup and sob, “I’m so sorry, Kacchan.”

“What the fuck are you sorry for,” Kacchan says, like he wants to snap but doesn’t have it in him to.

"I left you behind,"

Izuku sobs weakly, opening his eyes when Kacchan pulls out of his hold. He glares as he reaches out and grabs Izuku by the chin.

“If you didn’t, you would’ve died,” Kacchan growls, though there’s something vulnerable, something pleading in his eyes and his tone. “I would’ve

killed you myself for being that stupid."

Izuku somehow manages a small laugh. “I tried to,” he admits, “Come back for you, that is.” Kacchan scoffs, and suddenly Izuku is crying again. “Kacchan, I thought…I thought you were dead.”

“Yeah,” Kacchan huffs, touching their

foreheads together again. "Like I'd let you have all the fun without me, shit nerd."

“Of course not,” Izuku laughs softly, thinking back to a childhood that he sometimes feels belonged to a different person altogether. “Kacchan’s gotta do everything I do.”

“No,” Kacchan says,

"/you/ gotta do everything /I/ do."

“Right,” Izuku smiles, “sorry.”

“We should move,” Kacchan says after a few moments of silence, sitting up and moving to stop pinning Izuku to the ground. There's no question in the 'we'.

Izuku glances back at the corpse lying behind them

(/I could've saved them/) and nods, standing up next to Kacchan, who grabs his ax off the ground.

Izuku nods at the weapon. "You're lucky to have that."

Kacchan hefts the ax in his hands, like he’s weighing it, then looks to Izuku’s skateboard that he picked up. “You’re lucky

to have /that/." He scuffs his black boots against the asphalt. "My feet hurt like /hell/."

Izuku laughs a bit. “Well, then it’s a good thing we don’t have too far to go.”

Kacchan glances at him, questioning. “You got a place?”

“Yup,” Izuku answers, popping the p just

because he can and starting out of the alley, “Follow me, Kacchan.”

“Like I’d ever do that.”

Izuku laughs. (/god, I missed him/)

uuuh fin or tbc, not super sure where I'm going with this but if there's enough interest I'll continue (maybe on ao3)

anyways thank u for reading!!! this is a little more angsty than my usual stuff I think swag's infecting me lmao