Michael Westen's Guide to Surviving the Walking Dead (Part I)

[merryghoul]

Title: Michael Westen's Guide to Surviving the Walking Dead (Part I) | AO3
Fandom: Burn Notice/The Walking Dead (comic)
Prompt: Alt. Fandom: Comics/Graphic Novels
(comment_fic  prompt: rise_your_dead : Michael Westen's tips for surviving the apocalypse)
Medium: fic
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 649
Warnings: mild violence against zombies
Summary: AU Burn Notice pilot: If Michael ended up in Miami during a zombie outbreak. Complete crack.
A/N: Story follows the first few pages of The Walking Dead #1. If you've seen the TV show but not read the comic book, you shouldn't be lost, since they start off similarly.

• It shouldn’t surprise a spy, especially a spy that has passed out on a plane escaping Nigeria after being burned, to wake up in a Miami hospital. When you wake up in a Miami hospital and you hardly notice the signs of life at the hospital—carts being wheeled up and down a hallway, televisions blasting from patient rooms and the beeping of various machines—that should be the first sign that something is wrong.
• It’s a mistake to use an IV bag holder as a crutch while attempting to get out of a hospital bed. Use common sense: remove everything that is strapped to your body, including the oxygen tube and the IV needle.
• Hospitals usually have their insignia on something inside the hospital room. Look for anything—a wheelchair with the hospital’s name written on the back in Sharpie or a hotel note pad will give you clues on which hospital you’re at. If you’ve been abandoned at Mercy Hospital, you’ll know the nearest community to you is Coconut Grove. Since Coconut Grove is not a high pedestrian traffic area in Miami like the Miracle Mile in Coral Gables or South Beach, you’ll probably have to remember how your ex-girlfriend hotwires cars to escape. • Although it is tempting to use a used needle as weaponry, it’s also highly unsanitary. If there is a friendly somewhere inside the hospital, the last thing you want to give them is an incurable disease. Removing the liquid from an IV stand is fine, as long as you know the difference between disarming an enemy and bludgeoning them to death.
• When taking the elevator down in an abandoned hospital, standing in the middle will allow you ample opportunity to avoid a rotting corpse leaning against the elevator door. Use the elevator’s sensors to push the corpse away from the elevator door before stepping out of the elevator. You don’t know what diseases that corpse has inside of it.
• Most people will make the mistake of pushing a piece of wood being used to hold two doors shut to open the doors. It’s safer to attempt to listen and sense if there is any movement behind the doors. If you hear the sounds of nails scraping against the door and groaning, you know there are zombies behind the door. If you don’t, then my suggestion is to at least watch Night of the Living Dead before a zombie apocalypse happens in your neighborhood. It should be wildly available on the internet since it is in the United States public domain.
• Hospitals have many entrances. Eventually, if the zombies are strong and conscious enough, they will find a way out of the hospital, even if they are stumbling through an emergency exit. Barricading an outdoor door will be fruitless in the long run. Using an IV stand to reinforce an already barricaded door will give you more time to escape a zombie-infested hospital.
• A chair from a hospital waiting room may seem like the most impractical thing to carry with you if you are attempting to leave a zombie-infested hospital. But if it’s the only thing you can use to break a window and the interior of an abandoned car, it’s better than having nothing. It can also be used as a weapon until you’re successfully able to hotwire your car. Make sure you aim carefully—that chair could successfully go through the head of a zombie.
• Spies are taught to keep their emotions in check when on missions. Approach an enemy with too much emotional vulnerability and the enemy can easily exploit you. However, in a zombie apocalypse, your major enemy is the zombie. If you have family and friends living in the middle of a zombie-stricken city, the first thing you should do is to check and make sure your family is safe.