Jason's POV

A blood curdling scream made everyone in the room wince. Someone bounded up the stairs and I saw it was Leo. His eyes shone with worry, and his face filled with panic and fear. "Kid... At... The... Gates!" He panted, "Not... Even a... Teen!"

Annabeth, Piper, Hazel, Frank, Nico, Reyna, Thalia and I all jump up and rush down the stairs, following Leo. They creak and our footsteps create loud echoes in the nearly empty building we call home. We rush to the windows and see nine zombies, all walkers, slowly approaching a kid, who's back is pressed against our gate. He let out a guttural scream again and we all wince. It took a second for it to process he was screaming mom. One of the zombies was recently turned, her face almost normal, other than the fact that her face was pale, her eyes dull, and the huge bite mark ushing blood from the side of her neck. "MOM!" The boy screamed again, letting out loud sobs. The women had brown hair and a once pretty face, which was now splattered with blood. "HELP! SOMEONE! MOM!" The boy screams, crying even louder.

"Can we help him?" Piper asked breathlessly.

No one answers for a second. "Open the gates. Everyone armed?" I asked steely. The walkers were getting closer to the kid.

Unchorused answers of "Aye." come from my team.

"Then open the gates. Now!"

Leo scrambled over to a control board over to the side of the room and flips a switch. There's a loud squealing noise as the gates slowly start to open. "Go go go!" I yell, and everyone runs for the gates twenty feet in front of us.

The boy looks back at the gate, which is swinging in very slowly. Too slowly. My team runs faster as the walkers get closer. The other eight are obviously much older. Their flesh is falling apart, with white, dull eyes. If they do have hair, which most of them don't, it's ratty, greasy and disgusting and in small patches that are falling out of their disgusting scalp, huge plates of dead skin hanging off of their bodies like bugs clinging to skin. The boys eyes widened when he saw us, and he looked desperate. The walkers weren't far at all. They could almost reach them...

Annabeth, who can run the fastest, gets there first. She grabbed the boy's arm and yanked him through the gates. "LEO! SHUT THE GATES!" She screamed.

"GOT IT!" Leo screamed back, and the gates shudder and freeze before heading back towards the walkers before locking in place.

Annabeth let's go of the boys arm and hands him over to Hazel, who kneels down in front of him. He's crying violently. "M-My m-m-mom!" He cried, looking back at the gates. His mom, whom I'm assuming is the newer walker, it trying to reach through the gates, the other zombies pressing her against the gate fence as they all try to reach through to grab us.

"Shh, it's okay," Hazel whispered, putting a gentle hand on his shoulder.

"B-But... M-My m-mom!" He wailed mournfully.

"It's not her anymore." Hazel told him softly. "That's not your mom. Come on, let's get you cleaned up okay?"

He sniffled, looking back at what used to be his mom one last time. "I love you mommy..." He whispered. He then looked back at Hazel and nodded. Hazel smiled and took the boys hand. Leo was right, he didn't even look like a teenager yet, in fact, he didn't look any older than ten. His raven black hair was caked with dirt and mud. The whites of his eyes were yellow and bloodshot, the iris an unnatural bright green color. Tears streamed down his face, and blood covered him from head to toe. We all walked back towards our home and Leo's head popped out from the base level. "Yo, kiddo, you alright?" he asked, joining our side as we walked towards the old, wooden stairs.

The kid sniffled and nodded. "Kinda."

Leo smiled at the kid. "You'll be alright, we've got the safest home in all of New York here. What's your name?"

"My name's Perseus Jackson. But I like to be called Percy." The boy said, looking up at Leo. His tears started to slow down a little bit, which was good.

Leo smiled. "Nice name. I'm Leo. That's Hazel, Reyna, Thalia, Annabeth, Piper, Frank, Jason and Nico."

Percy's head followed Leo's finger, which pointed to all of us when he said our name. I smiled gently at him and he smiled weakly back. Poor kid. "How old are you, Percy?" Hazel asked.

"I'm seven."

Everyone looked at one another in disbelief. He looks so much older, I was thinking more twelve. Nothing like seven. No child deserved to go through this at that age. "When's your birthday, Percy?" Piper asked.

Percy sniffled once more. "August 18th."

"What's the date, Jason?" Thalia asked.

"June... 7th." I replied as we headed up the stairs.

"So in two months you'll be eight?" Reyna asked. Percy simply nodded in response.

We got to the third floor, which is the living area. "Okay, if you follow me I'll let you take a shower okay? We could probably find you some new clothes, just go take a quick rinse okay?" Hazel told him gently, leading him towards the bathroom. He nodded.

"Thank you miss Hazel." He said shyly. Hazel smiled and lead him into the bathroom. I could hear water running and Hazel came out soon after.

"He's such a sweetheart!" Hazel exclaimed.

"He seemed to polite." Annabeth agreed. "But he needs some clothes." Everyone looked at Piper, who shrugged.

"I'll need to get some measurements, but yeah I'll make him clothes." She agreed.

"I wish we could raid that clothing store downtown, but that's too far." Leo sighed.

"Yeah, it would be suicide." I agreed.

"How about we get some food for him?" Hazel asked. "I bet he's starving."

"Good idea, Leo, you know what to do." Leo nodded and scrambled into the kitchen.

"I can't believe he's so young." Nico muttered, sitting down on the musty, ripped blue couch.

"Me neither. I mean, obviously he had his mother, but still. Two people surviving on there own for a year? Highly unlikely. Especially if one of them is a seven year old kid." Reyna agreed, sitting on the arm of the couch beside Nico.

"Poor guy, lost his mom. Probably right in front of him, too. She didn't look like she was a walker for more than a day." Leo agreed, coming out of the kitchen with a slightly steaming bowl of soup.

There was a short silence. "How are we?" I asked eventually, looking up at Leo. He flinched, like I had yanked his ear.

"Not good. We've only got a few more weeks of food."

I sighed, pinching the bridge of my nose. "Annabeth?" I asked. She sent me an apologetic glace, leaning against the wall of peeling paint and mold.

"I'm running out of supplies. If we run out, we won't be able to make any more traps. Then there's Leo's thing with the electricity, heat, and water. He needs supplies to keep that running. If we run out of power, our gate..." She didn't go on, and she didn't need to. If our gate went down, we would be ambushed.

"What about those zip lines you were trying to make?" I asked. "We could use that as an emergency. Pack only what we need in easily accessible bags then get the fuck out if there's a problem."

Annabeth shrugged helplessly. "Jason, there just aren't any supplies left around. We've already gone through all the dumpsters in the area, we don't live anywhere near a scrapyard. If Leo and I had access to a junkyard of old cars... We'd almost have everything we could ever need. Maybe even get one running, then we could go on supply runs farther away." Annabeth shrugged once again. "But we don't."

I sighed. "Yeah. We need supplies, food and water. Those are our top essentials. All the stores are already raided though! All those fucking gang members got all the stores under surveillance or some shit."

"I have something to offer." a small voice said from the bathroom, who's door is still closed.

"Percy? Are you done?" Hazel asked.

"Um, yes miss."

"Alright. You see the towels in the corner? Just take one and wrap it around your waist okay? Then you can come out." Hazel told him gently through the door.

"Yeah, okay. Thank you miss."

A few moments later, the scrawniest boy I'd ever seen came out. His pale skin seemed like it was trying to suffocate his body, tightly hugging everything. His rips stuck out, and his collar bone was easily seen. He fidgeted uncomfortably while he began to talk. "My mom and I... My mom and I were a gang." he spoke softly. "We- We were the Riptide gang."

Everyone blanched. The Riptide gang was the second strongest gang in all of new York. They were rumored to have more than twenty people and were really deadly; a gang we avoided at all costs. "Was there anyone else?" Annabeth asked, the first to recover from her shock. Percy shook his head softly, letting his long, slightly damp hair fall in his face.

"It was just us. I... I have an offer." He spoke softly, like he were scared we would throw him to the walkers if he upset us. Which we wouldn't.

Unless they were a backstabbing traitor from another gang finding out our weaknesses.

"Which is?" Hazel asked.

"We... We dug a storage underneath a cabin, down on Montauk Beach. The soil was soft from half of it being sand, and it was easy to build, and it's sturdy. But inside, there is food, water, machinery parts. We didn't quite know how to use the metal parts, but we figured it might come in handy some time. It's huge, with at least a years worth of food and fresh water." He rubbed his left eye.

"And? What's the catch?" Piper asked, leaning forward in her seat.

"Nothing much... I just want you guys to teach me all you know." He tilted his head sideways slightly. "I can tell you're all smart- But in your own ways. I want to know how to be like all of you." That, somehow, brought warmth to my cold heart. Murdering dead people for a year left you a scarred killer- but this little boy was like a small flame.

"There's a small problem- Montauk is at least an hour from here." Annabeth pointed out, walking over to the map of New York pinned to the wall with a few rusty daggers.

"Not if you take the shortcut. There are shortcuts everywhere if you know where to look." Percy told us innocently, and for a moment it was hard to believe he was a little kid that survived the zombie apocalypse for a year. It was a known fact the Riptide gang moved fast, inhumanly fast.

"Okay, what's your shortcut?" Reyna asked, gently leading Percy over to the map. Thalia brought over a chair so he could stand on it and he nodded to her.

"Thank you miss."

"None of that miss stuff with me. Call me Thalia." Thalia told him. He looked slightly nervous but nodded, then turned his attention to the map. He furrowed his eyebrows in concentration until he pointed to a street not to far from here with a pale, scrawny finger.

"There."

"There what? What's there?" Annabeth asked curiously. Everyone was standing behind him, waiting for him to show them how they got around so quickly.

"A sewer cap. They run everywhere, and since they is mostly no running water, they've all dried up. They're easy to run through to get from one place to another, and as long as you cover all of the caps when you're done no zombies can get in because they don't have enough strength to lift the caps; the max they can lift is 9.84 pounds."

Everyone looked at him curiously at his last statement. "My mom and I knew a lot about zombies. Different kinds, what the different kinds were caused by, special abilities, and strengths and weaknesses."

Holy shit this kid was kind, shy, adorable, and fucking smart. "So the sewers can take you to Montauk?" Annabeth asked. Percy shook his head.

"It's a little ways away, but since it's in the middle of nowhere and the apocalypse started in the off season of the beach, no zombies have found it nor were created there." He explained. "Everything's abandoned, even by zombies and other gangs."

This gang was smart. It was very unfortunate his mother died, not only because she was smart though. I felt sorry for the kid and wished he had as much happiness as he did intelligence. "This sounds good. We'll get ready for expedition early tomorrow." I said, finalizing the trip.

"You trust me?" Percy asked. We all looked at him.

"Why wouldn't we?" Piper asked.

"I mean... Aren't my mom and I one of the top gangs? What if I was sent here by, like, members of the Riptide gang that I pretended we didn't have. So that I can lead you into an ambush, or trap, or find out the weak spots in your defenses so we could take over? I have no reason to have placed trust in you, yet you're kind to me."

That left everyone in a stunned silence. This kid was too fucking smart for a seven year old kid. "Because we just trust you. Nothing wrong with a little trust, is there? Now eat, you look starved." I told him, gesturing to the food. "Plus, you wouldn't have told us if you were going to do it."

"That's what my gang would have wanted you to think." Percy pointed out. "Exploiting other gangs is easy. You have to use reverse phycology to confused them into thinking you're on your side. Then, you attack from their weak point and they stand no chance." Percy sat down in front of the food. "It's easy, really."

"Have you and your mother taken over any gangs?" I asked curiously, sitting next to him.

"A few." He responded with a shrug. "We only take over the cruel gangs, the ones who murder innocent who haven't turned for power."

"That's sick. I hate those gangs. We're supposed to be a community and help each other survive, not fucking murder the only people who can help us." Nico grumbled.

Percy looked at all of us, like we were specimens under a microscope, before giving a slight smile. "I like you. You guys are nice."

"Wait," Leo said, slapping a hand over his heart. "Did someone just call Nico... Nice? The real apocalypse has began!" he then proceeded to collapse into a heap on the ground, a hand dramatically placed on his forehead.

Percy frowned at Leo. "Is he okay? Like... In the head?"

I placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. "No, no he is not."

Author's Note

I'm creating too many stories... Oh gods help me, please...