A/N: Hi guys! So I've been wanting to do something like this for awhile...and I gave into the urge when I watched HTTYD the other day and played a compilation of the music in a concert. Anyway, these chapters will probably be short, but hopefully they'll be quick. So please follow, favorite and review if you enjoy it! Oh, and it's told from Hiccup's point of view.

Genre: Horror/Adventure/Suspense (With a smattering of humor.)

Rating: T, for (likely) violence, gore, scary things (?) and (possible but unlikely) romance.

Warnings: This is a zombie apocalypse AU, so don't read if you don't like zombies. Or apocalypses. Or dragons.

Pairings: None. (Unless you count Hiccup and Toothless's friendship. Don't worry, there's no slash.)

Disclaimer: I don't own How To Train Your Dragon or any of the characters. (And to cover my ass, I don't own the cover image either.)

How To Fight Your Zombies

There aren't too many things I don't like. Sure, my little island...town...thing can get stuffy and annoying at times, and my life is kind of not great, but I don't dislike it, really.

Now, I don't like when my dad ignores me, or the fact that everyone thinks I'm...well, a hiccup in their lovely little dragon-infested, smelly, Viking world. But more than anything, I hate, hate, when I'm wrong.

When the first Terrible Terror showed up...yesterday morning, I guess it was, everyone thought the little thing was just having a bad day. It was foaming at the mouth, and flopping around like a fish on dry land (we have lots of those around here), and looked really sick. I'm not really sure what happened from there, because apparently I'm not fit to take on even the lowliest of dragons, and my dad kept shouting at me to go home, but a bunch more Terrors showed up, and people started getting bitten. Normally that would have been fine; Terrors were small, and it's not hard to treat their equally small bites (though it was a little weird that they were biting instead of shooting their little fireballs). But this time, anyone who got bitten started acting strangely, almost like they had been poisoned. I saw one of them, and it wasn't pretty; the man's eyes were bulging, and his skin was almost grey.

My dad, Stoic the Vast, chief of our tribe thing (I really don't know what to call anything around here), thought everything would be fine. After people started realizing the people getting bitten were poisoned, they got rid of the Terrors by stuffing the bodies in a sack and chucking it into the sea. (It's a tried and true method of dealing with almost any problem here.) There were only a few victims, and they were being treated; even if they died, it wouldn't be a huge tragedy. (It sounds like we're barbarians who don't care when our own people get killed...but it's not like that. We just lose men all the time. It happens when you fight hordes of vicious dragons on a weekly basis.) But then, really early this morning, all Hel broke loose.

Yeah, how I hate being wrong? This kind of thing is why.

My dad and I heard the screaming, and we woke up almost screaming ourselves. (At least, I almost screamed. I don't know about Dad.) As usual, he shoved me back into the house when I tried to follow him out, but, also as usual, I followed anyway, and kind of wished I hadn't. I'll never forget what I saw, even though I only looked for a split-second.

A woman was screaming bloody murder and running up the hill towards our house. She was clutching her hand to her chest; I could just barely make out, by the light of the few torches outside, that some of her fingers had been lopped off, and blood was spraying everywhere... But the worst part were her eyes. The white parts were a nasty yellow, and bulging out of her head like they were gonna pop out at any second. I ducked back into the house at that point, watching my dad through a tiny crack I left in the door.

I would have definitely advised against it, but my dad grabbed the lady's shoulders and began shouting, which was classic Stoic. She was freaking out (obviously), but eventually said something about Terrors and being bitten. Dad kept yelling, trying to get answers, but she passed out at some point and flopped onto the ground, writhing (like a fish on dry land).

Dad shouted something to me, something about staying inside and not messing anything up, and he ran down to the village, carrying the woman with him. This was one time I didn't really want to disobey him, so I shut and latched the door and peeked out a window that faced the village. I guess I fell asleep there somehow, because the next thing I remember was waking up to the pale light of dawn and horrible shrieks from down the hill; I watched for awhile, but didn't see anything out of the ordinary.

But then the first one, the first...thing ran far enough up the hill that I could make it out. It was...it looked like one of us, a Viking, but it's face and hands could just have well been bare bone, and it's eyes were an awful, shining yellow. It was chasing a man up towards our house, and then...it jumped on him, and bit him right on the side of his neck. The man let out a screech like nothing I had ever heard before and started thrashing around, eventually getting away from the thing. It was too late though; a huge chunk was missing from his neck, and I could see his eyes shifting from dark, normal Viking eyes to the yellow ghost-lights of those creatures.

I had had enough at that point. I knew I couldn't fight those things, and I'd be killed if I stayed in the house. It seemed like they were all still in the village, but I couldn't be sure. I was kind of in shock (wouldn't you be?) and barely managed to shove some bread and dried fish into a bag before I was out the back door. I didn't think about what was going on, or what it meant or anything; the only thought running through my brain was to get as far away from those things as possible.

And then, somehow, I was running through the forest like a madman, with had no idea where I was going, or what I was gonna do when I got there. My chest hurt...I'm not made for that much exercise. I couldn't hear the sounds from the village anymore, so that was comforting, but I must have sounded like a Monstrous Nightmare trampling a house, crashing through the underbrush. (I'm not that graceful either.)

I suddenly found myself wishing I had grabbed one of my dad's big battle axes or something; anything more dangerous than the little dagger that was slapping against my hip. I knew that would slow me down though, and I was doing a great job of that all by myself. My legs ached, and I was stumbling like an idiot before I finally fell down in the middle of a tiny clearing.

I lay there, breathing hard and sweating like a hog, my pack deadweight on my heaving back. (I like to pretend it was super heavy.) I would have stayed like that for awhile too, if the sound of a twig cracking from somewhere to my left hadn't broken the silence. It took me a second, but I struggled to my feet and pulled out my dagger, which seemed to be vibrating strangely. Only then did I notice I was shaking, though I didn't really know if it was from fear or exhaustion or both.

"Who-who's there?" I had meant the words to be intimidating, you know, like a big, mean Viking; but they ended up as more of a high-pitched squeak. I felt small, in that grey forest, barely lit by a sliver of sun peeking over the horizon. And I'll admit it; I was scared out of my pants.

"I'm warning you...I've got a kni-" I stopped talking kind of forcibly, as I was thrown onto my back by...something. All the air flew out of my body as I slammed onto the ground; it felt like I was hit by a Night Fury blast. I was seeing stars behind my closed eyelids, and it took what felt like ages for me to catch my breath, but I wasn't dead...yet. That had to be a good sign. I tried to move, but there was something pinning my arms down. Something that tightened it's talons as I struggled. Had the creatures at the village grown claws?

Finally gathering up the courage, I cracked one eye open and nearly died (again). Two huge, glowing green eyes stared down at me, burning with almost too much intelligence.

Remember what I said about Night Furies? Yeah? Good. And remember when I said I hated being wrong more than anything else? Got that too? I'm gonna revise that.

I despise being right.