Consequences (Warm Bodies fan fiction)

Chapter 1

A/N: As I said, this story was posted a while back by someone else without my permission. I am the original author of this story. Originally I wrote it because I wanted to expand on what R narrated near the end of the movie. As such, this story is based on the movie primarily, but has a lot of references from the book and its prequel The New Hunger. Kudos go to Isaac Marion for a brilliant tale.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"J-Julie?"

"Hm?"

"I... uh, l-love... you," R murmured.

Julie Grigio blinked back to reality, fighting off a blush. R had whispered that soft confession just before they were ushered out of the Humvee, a little while ago. She sat still a moment, staring at the hard concrete beneath her feet. She heard the commotion around her, heard the voices floating around her head, but didn't notice a thing. Was this really happening? Her mind wandered far away, a month ago, seven years ago, lost and overwhelmed with it all.

This was crazy.

Julie knew it was.

How could it not be?

If you were to tell her last month, that she would be saved by a zombie, from zombies, she would have rolled her eyes and ignored you. If you would have told her that she'd befriend said zombie, and then be a witness to his rebirth? She'd let you know how crazy you were and probably avoid you for a while. Now, if you told her then that she'd also maybe even start to feel pretty serious feelings for him, - a zombie - in the process, besides everything else... why she'd laugh in your face and call a medical team, because clearly there was something very wrong with you.

But now... now she wasn't sure what to think, or how to process everything that had happened to her recently. Let's start at the beginning, shall we? She had just turned twelve, she was having a semi-normal life with her parents, she was with her friends, emailing her pen pal who told her a world called college where kids were free from most responsibilities, and her mom was still alive. Things in the world were still horrible of course, there were reports of strange things happening but it was too far and between to make anyone really pay attention to the signs. At least, that's how it was in her mind. And then in a span of a few months things went from really bad to much worse.

She was forced out of her home with her parents, her city had been exed. She lost so much during that time, including the spirit of hope from her parents. Freedom from responsibilities was but a fantasy now. She had seen some terrible things, had to do some terrible things too, and it all just got worse. She had thought, as long as she had her parents, she would be okay. But that was not to be. She had lost her mother not long after they found the stadium city. Her dad just seemed to lose it from there. He became rigid and devoid of most emotions, no better than the seemingly emotionless corpses they fought. She had met a wonderful boy during her first few years there, Perry. He was a bundle of hope and energy in the bleak world that she lived in. Things were great between them for the first couple years, until reality started to grab hold of him too. Perry, like her father, 'grew up', put away hope and dreams and stuck to reality. He became cold and distant, even going as far as rejecting affection from her some times.

He had died long before his last hunt.

Julie had had a moment of pure unadulterated grief the moment she realized she had lost him. But to her surprise, acceptance and even relief replaced it nearly immediately after. He, like her mother, had wanted so very badly to escape the world anyway. After all, the full dead do not experience this hellish world, do not want for anything. Even the zombies want for food. Things had been so colorless and dreary for Julie, that is, until she met the anomaly known as R. He had told her she had been instrumental in reviving him, what they had, whatever that was, was the reason 'life' was spreading like a disease amongst the rest of zombie-kind. Quicker than she had anticipated, things started to change when she met him, he brought a splash of color to her gray world, even though he himself had still been mostly gray at the time.