✶| You got bitten (req)

(Zombie apocalypse au)

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Nobody could remember a Gotham that wasn’t overrun by the undead. Not anymore. The city that had once been filled with the constant blare of sirens, the rumble of traffic, and the distant sounds of criminals being chased across rooftops had become a graveyard. Two months. That was all it had taken for the world to crumble into something unrecognizable. In just sixty days, everything the Batfamily had spent years protecting had fallen apart, leaving behind nothing but ruined streets, abandoned buildings, and the restless dead that wandered through them.

At first, it had seemed manageable. A few strange reports on the news about people being hospitalized with an aggressive, unexplained illness. A handful of violent incidents, dismissed as drug-induced psychosis or some new strain of infection. Then came the videos of patients dying in hospital beds, only to rise again minutes later, attacking doctors, nurses, and anyone unfortunate enough to be standing nearby. The hospitals became the first places to fall. Then the police stations. Then the shelters. And by the time anyone realized just how catastrophic the situation had become, the infection had already spread too far to contain.

The worst part was that the dead didn't stay dead.

Some portion of the virus carried properties eerily similar to those of the Lazarus Pits, preserving the bodies of its victims long after their hearts had stopped beating. Their flesh didn't rot the way it should have. Their muscles remained functional, their bones stayed intact, and whatever unnatural force animated them seemed determined to keep them moving long after death should have claimed them. They were corpses that refused to decay, driven by an insatiable hunger that no amount of bullets or barricades could permanently satisfy. Head trauma seemed to be the only reliable way to put them down, and even that offered little comfort when there were hundreds of them pressing against a single barricade.

The virus spread like wildfire after that. Quarantine zones collapsed overnight. Evacuation routes became feeding grounds. Entire neighborhoods went dark as the power grid failed, and the military's desperate attempts to establish safe zones ended in disaster. At first, there had been soldiers stationed at the outskirts of Gotham, supply drops scheduled for the surviving population, and emergency broadcasts promising that help was on its way. Then the broadcasts became less frequent. The supply drops stopped. The military checkpoints fell silent. Eventually, even the emergency channels became nothing more than static.

No one was coming to save Gotham.

So the Batfamily did what they had always done. They kept fighting.

And then there was the manor.

It had become impossible to defend. The grounds were too exposed, the surrounding streets too infested, and the constant noise from the estate's failing security systems attracted far too much unwanted attention. Eventually, Bruce had made the decision to abandon it. The cave, once a place for training, investigation, and the quiet hum of expensive machinery, had been transformed into a bunker. Reinforced barriers sealed off the entrances, makeshift sleeping quarters lined the walls, and the main computer stations shared space with crates of canned food, medical supplies, and ammunition. The air filtration system ran constantly, recycling what little clean air they had available. Every resource was counted, every ration measured, and every unnecessary light switched off to conserve power.

It wasn't comfortable, and it certainly wasn't safe enough to offer anyone peace of mind, but it was shelter.

For weeks, the Batfamily had lived beneath Gotham on recycled air and dwindling rations, emerging only when someone needed rescuing, supplies needed gathering, or another district threatened to fall completely.

And you had been part of this determined, chaotic family through all of it.

You had taken your own share of patrols, ventured into the devastated streets, and risked your life to bring strangers back to whatever passed for safety these days. You had watched Gotham crumble one block at a time, seen the terrified faces of survivors huddled behind barricades, and learned the terrible truth that not everyone could be saved. Still, you kept going. The city needed every capable person it had left, and the Batfamily couldn't afford to lose another pair of hands.

That was why you had gone out that day.

Your assigned sector had been relatively quiet for the past few patrols. The occasional groan drifted through the empty avenues, carried by the wind between buildings, but the streets had seemed manageable enough to traverse.

Until a civilian fired a gun.

The sharp crack shattered the silence, echoing between the buildings and drawing the attention of every undead creature within earshot. The man had been trapped in the middle of a growing mob, cornered against the wreckage of a vehicle with nowhere left to run. He had fired in desperation, apparently unaware that the noise would make his situation infinitely worse. The gunshot drew more of them from the surrounding streets, spilling out of alleys and abandoned storefronts until the mob became a tide of grasping hands, snapping teeth, and decaying faces.

You had tried to help him. But the crowd had grown too large too quickly, and every attempt to force your way through seemed to bring more of them surging toward you. The civilian disappeared beneath the mass of bodies, swallowed by the chaos, and the space around you shrank until there was barely enough room to move.

Survival became the only thing that mattered.

You fought your way out with whatever strength remained, dodging snapping jaws and clawing fingers as you pushed through the edges of the mob. By the time you managed to escape, your lungs burned, your limbs ached, and the sound of the undead pursuing you seemed to follow you long after you had left the street behind. You climbed, scrambled, and finally reached the relative safety of higher ground, putting several stories and a precarious rooftop between yourself and the swarm below.

For a moment, there was only the sound of your own ragged breathing.

You had survived the mob.

You had made it out.

But as the adrenaline began to fade, a strange discomfort drew your attention to your left shoulder.

Somewhere during the frantic escape, amidst the grasping hands and desperate struggle to get away, you had become careless. Perhaps something had caught you while you were forcing your way through the crowd. Perhaps you hadn't noticed the pain beneath the rush of panic. Whatever the cause, the result was unmistakable.

A bite mark marred your left shoulder.

The punctures were ugly, the surrounding skin already irritated and inflamed. The fabric around the wound had been torn, and the sight of the exposed flesh beneath it made the entire world seem to go unnaturally still. For several long seconds, the ruined city below became nothing more than a blur in your peripheral vision. The distant groans of the undead faded beneath the sudden, crushing realization of what had happened.

You had been bitten.

There was no mistaking it. No convenient explanation. No possibility of dismissing it as a scratch from broken glass or an injury sustained during the climb. You knew what the infection did to people. You had seen it happen too many times to misunderstand the implications.

And the worst part was that you knew exactly what the Batfamily would say if they could see it.

Bruce and Tim had been working tirelessly on a potential antidote since the outbreak began, gathering samples and analyzing every fragment of information they could recover. They had made progress, or at least they believed they had. There were promising leads, partial breakthroughs, and enough evidence to suggest that the virus might not be irreversible. But a finished treatment remained painfully out of reach. The formula was incomplete, the research inconclusive, and the time required to make another breakthrough was a luxury none of you could afford.

There was no guarantee that an antidote would ever exist, much less that it would be ready in time.

The thought of returning to the cave suddenly felt unbearable. The others had already lost so much. They had watched friends, allies, and countless innocent people succumb to the infection. They had spent every waking hour trying to find a cure, clinging to the possibility that the world could still be salvaged if they just kept fighting a little longer. You couldn't imagine what the sight of that bite would do to them, what it would mean to Bruce after everything he had sacrificed, or how would react when he realized there might be nothing he could do to help.

You could picture Jason's anger, Damian's refusal to accept the situation, Tim's desperate attempts to calculate a timeline that might not exist. Barbara would search for every possible alternative, Cass would notice every tiny change in your movements, and Steph would try to find some way to make the impossible seem less frightening. Alfred would remain composed, but even his steady hands might falter.

They were your family.

And you had no idea how much time you had left with them.

The bite throbbed beneath your torn clothing, a small, merciless reminder that the infection had already begun its work. Every second that passed brought the possibility of fever, confusion, and the gradual loss of control closer. You had spent two months fighting to keep other people alive, convincing yourself that there would always be another mission, another patrol, another opportunity to make a difference.

Now, standing alone above the ruined streets of Gotham, with the undead gathering below and the city's dying skyline stretching into the distance, you were forced to confront a possibility you had never allowed yourself to consider.

You might not make it back.

And even if you did, you might not remain yourself for long.

The Batfamily had been searching for a cure to save the people of Gotham. Bruce had refused to surrender, Tim had refused to stop researching, and every single one of them had continued fighting against a disaster that seemed determined to consume everything they loved.

But the virus was inside you now.

And for the first time since the outbreak began, there was no clear path forward, no carefully planned escape route, and no guarantee that determination alone would be enough to save you.

There was only the bite on your shoulder, the silence of the dead city, and the terrible knowledge that the people waiting for you beneath Gotham had no idea they might soon be losing one of their own.