Stan Of The Dead

This fic is based on my favourite film, Shaun Of The Dead. I started to write this before, but didn't like how it was going, so I've decided to start again. Hopefully it'll get finished this time!

I don't own South Park, which belongs to Trey and Matt, or Shaun, which belongs to Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright

Chapter 1

Stan Marsh took a nervous sip of his milkshake and glanced at the angry girl sitting opposite him. Her mouth was moving, words were coming out, but he had no idea what they were. He looked across at another table where two of his friends, Kyle Broflovski and Kenny McCormick sat. Kyle made an impatient palms up gesture. Stan gave him a discreet shrug.

He turned his attention back to his girlfriend, Wendy Testaburger and tried to concentrate on what she was saying, but it was so hard. It wasn't that he didn't care…well actually it was. He didn't care. Not in the slightest.

He looked around the room again. Whistlin' Willie's Pizza Shack was almost full. He spotted some of his fourth grade classmates milling around near the video games and wondered idly what they were watching. His eyes travelled over the room, past the counter and the cash register where Whistlin' Willie stood, past Mary, the waitress, who was taking orders from a small group of fifth graders and finally stopped on the widescreen TV mounted on the far wall. It was tuned to a news channel and the report was about a radiation spill in North Park. The Army had quarantined the town, but there was speculation that the effects of the spill could hit nearby towns. Stan wondered what they meant by 'effects'.

"Stan!"

He jumped. "What?"

"You're not listening to me are you?" Wendy sounded hurt, not angry.

"Yes I was…" Stan protested weakly. He paused, trying to remember. "Er, you couldn't just give me a quick recap could you?"

Wendy's glare almost nailed him to the back of the booth. "We were talking about our future, Stan! Or rather I was. You were daydreaming!"

"See Wendy! I told you he'd be like this," said a voice from the next booth.

That sounded like Wendy's friend Red. Stan frowned. He'd forgotten that Wendy's friends were in the next booth. "Our future?" he asked, ignoring her.

"You know, what we're going to do when we graduate, that kind of thing!" Wendy said.

"Duh!" said another voice. Bebe, from the sound of it.

"I've got my career path all mapped out, but I have no idea what you want," said Wendy. "If we're going to be together we have to have the same ideals or our relationship isn't going to work, Stan."

Stan stared at her, his mouth hanging open slightly. He didn't really have any ambitions, apart from seeing the next Terrance and Phillip movie, and anyway, graduation was years away. He shut his mouth and tried to think of a way out of the conversation. All this talk of relationships and the future was getting too much for his pre-pubescent brain.

"Wendy, I'm ten. I don't know what I want to do when I graduate. I don't even know what I want for breakfast tomorrow."

"That's not good enough Stan!" Red said. "You can't expect someone like Wendy to be with a loser who spends all day drinking beer and playing video games! I bet you haven't even bought her anything for her birthday, have you?"

Stan felt his face redden. "Yes I have, actually!" he lied. "What's this got to do with you, anyway?"

"They're my friends," Wendy said quietly. "They're only looking out for me."

Stan sighed. He wasn't going to win this argument, he could see that. He thought hard for a moment. What did he really want to do? Some days he wanted to be an astronaut, other days a policeman. Living in a place like South Park, sometimes just getting through each day was an achievement in itself.

"Look, I'll think about it. I will!" he said. "I just don't know right now."

Wendy opened her mouth to reply but was cut off by a loud cursing from the group of fourth graders. Stan's other friend, Eric Cartman, pushed through the small crowd and stomped towards them, muttering to himself.

"Bad luck Eric!" Butters called after him.

"Its not bad luck Butters!" Cartman said angrily. "That game is fucking fixed!"

"Oh yeah of course it's fixed!" Token Black said sarcastically. "Nothing to do with you being crap at it!"

"Fuck you, you black asshole!" Cartman shouted and flipped him off.

"Look at Token, Stan! Now there's a guy with ambition!" said Bebe.

"And money!" said Heidi dreamily.

"Do you really want to be like him, Stan?" Wendy asked, nodding toward Cartman.

"I'm nothing like him!"

"No, not now. But we don't need a crystal ball to know what's going to happen to him."

"He'll either rule the world or end up on Death Row," Stan said.

"Exactly."

"That's hardly going to happen to me, is it?"

"What I'm saying is, you have to take control of your own destiny," Wendy said patiently. "And right now, you're not."

Stan was about to reply when a large shadow fell across the table. Cartman grinned down at them. Wendy glared at him.

"Hey Stan. S'up, hos."

"Go away Eric. This is a private conversation!" Wendy said testily.

Stan glared at the other booth. "Could've fooled me," he muttered.

"Not any more!" Cartman said to Wendy. He squeezed into the booth with difficulty, his large stomach pushing the table back as he sat down next to Stan. "So, what are we talking about?"

"Sta-an! Make him go away!" Wendy cried.

"We'll talk tomorrow Wendy." Stan looked pointedly at the other girls. "On our own."

"Ha! Bros before hos, bitches!" Cartman said triumphantly.

The girls got up, Bebe, Heidi and Red shooting varying looks of loathing at Stan. "Guess I'll see you tomorrow then," Wendy said flatly.

"Yeah."

The girls paid and left, all talking in low voices. Stan couldn't make out what they were saying, but he knew it was about him and that it wasn't complimentary. Ever since he and Wendy had got back together, Wendy's friends had been trying to split them up. Stan didn't know what they had against him, but he was determined not to let that happen. Things between them had soured recently, though, thanks to the malign influence of her so-called mates. He didn't think she'd listen to them, but he couldn't be sure.

"What did the coven want?"

Stan looked up. Kyle and Kenny were standing next to the table.

He sighed. "Oh, nothing. Just the usual bitchfest."

"Dude seriously, you don't have to put up with this," Kyle said. "Just dump her. No girl is worth this amount of misery."

"Yeah," agreed Kenny, his mouth obscured by his orange hood. "You should get in there first before she dumps you!"

"No!" Stan shouted, jumping up. "I'm not giving them what they want!" He looked around and lowered his voice. "Besides, me and Wendy are tight. She's not gonna dump me."

"You sure?" Kyle asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Yeah." He swallowed hard. "I think."

Cartman, who'd been eating the rest of Stan and Wendy's pizza, stood up. "Well, hasn't this been fun?" he said sarcastically. He stretched and burped. "Who wants to come back to mine and play video games?"

"Yeah, okay," said Kyle. Kenny nodded.

"I don't know," said Stan cautiously. "I haven't even started that book report Garrison set us."

"The Harry Potter one?" Kyle asked in disbelief. "Stan, you've had a week to do that."

"I know! I just keep getting side-tracked by…stuff."

"I did mine the day it was set," Kyle said proudly.

"Yeah well, not everybody is a butt-kisser like you Kahl," Cartman said, ignoring Kyle's glare.

Stan smiled to himself. Kyle's smugness could be bloody irritating, especially when he knew he was right about something.

"You know what, I think I'll head home," he said. "I've got to hand something in tomorrow. My parents'll ground me if I get another F."

"But it's still early!" Cartman protested. "You've got time to play a couple of games Stan."

Stan chewed his lip, suddenly undecided.

"Call Of Duty, Stan," Cartman said, noting his friend's indecision. "We can't take that base without you, buddy."

"Leave him alone, Cartman," Kyle said. "You go home if you want to, Stan. Your grades are more important than some stupid video game."

Stan looked at his friends, and then at the large clock on the wall behind the counter. It was only 5.30pm. Cartman was right, it was early. But then again, so was Kyle…

"All right, I'll come," Stan said, after a few minutes of consideration. "But only for a little while, okay?"

"Okay Stan," Cartman said, slipping an arm around Stan's narrow shoulders. "Just a little while. I promise."

Stan glanced at his watch as he sprinted along Main Street and cursed loudly. 8.30! Why the hell had he let Cartman persuade him to stay for so long? Not only had he missed dinner (which his parents would be super pissed off about) but he'd left himself no time to do his homework. He turned into his street and slowed to a walk, panting hard.

It was then he became aware of the groaning. Stan stopped and looked around. The sound was coming from an alleyway that ran between two houses. He peered in, squinting in the increasing darkness.

"Hello? Is anyone there?"

Something stirred in the darkness. Stan took a few steps back as whatever it was began to move slowly towards him. He had almost backed into the road when the thing finally emerged into the light of a nearby lamp-post. It was a hobo, dressed in a long red coat and ripped jeans. His long light brown hair hung lankly over his face. He shuffled towards Stan, still making that horrible guttural groaning sound. As he came further into the light, Stan noticed something else. The hobo's coat wasn't red at all. It was covered in blood.

Stan swallowed hard. "Are you okay, dude?"

The hobo groaned loudly in answer. The sound echoed down the quiet street and caused all the hairs on the back of Stan's neck to stand up. He shivered. There was a familiar sense of wrongness in the air. He knew that feeling well, and he hated it. That feeling usually meant something bad was going to happen to the town and when it inevitably did, somehow he always got dragged into it. Well not this time.

"Whatever's going on, it's not my problem," he said slowly. It didn't help.

The guy's on something, that's all it is, Stan thought, trying desperately to rationalise things. He's fallen over and hurt himself, that's why he's covered in blood. What else could it be?

Whatever it was, he wasn't prepared to stay and find out. He ran all the way home, the hobo's forlorn groans following him. He didn't stop running until he was safely indoors, with the door locked firmly behind him.

Chapter 2 up soon…