Heeeeeyyyy... Long time no see, huh? (Somehow I think something like this is going to be at the top of the first chapter of almost every story I post here from now on. I take such huge unannounced breaks...)
And I'm going to go ahead and apologize to anyone reading this that happened to also be reading my TF2 fanfic, A Game of Red and Blue. I know I had high hopes for that story, but I ran into various plot snags and just general poor plot handling and kinda lost interest the more I realized that the story was complete shit. So as of 1-3-14, it has been officially put on hiatus until further notice. Notice that I'm not necessarily canceling the story. I'm putting it on the back burner in the hope of eventually returning to it someday. So don't give up on AGORAB, just don't get your hopes up either and raeg at me for not posting anything of it ever again if I never do get to make a return.
Ahem. Now that that's out of the way...
About the story you are about to read (or, y'know, already read the first chapter of and came back to this huge-ass author's note to read afterwards). This story is pretty much going to be my head canon for what happens after the events of L4D 1 and 2. I will admit right here and now that I pulled some inspiration for the story from the absolutely amazing L4D fanfic, Two Step by Disrupted Original (If you haven't read that story, go read it now. Like, now. Well, after you're done with my story. It is so fucking good, I can't possibly hope to live up to its pure amazingness). So before anyone draws parallels to that story and claims that I'm copying, I'm trying my hardest not to outright copy. Just be inspired.
Here's to hoping that this story might actually GET somewhere (I seem to write more and more on each fanfiction I start, so maybe there's a chance for it. Hell, this story already has the largest chapter size I've written to date, being 15 pages long as opposed to my usual 9).
And BTW, the cover is a WIP version of a much nicer image I'm working on. Once I finish it, I'll replace the cover and put a link to a larger version of it somewhere where you guys can find it. My icon is the most complete part of it so far, that part being Ellis's face. :')
But first, copyright disclaimer. Not that I should really have to, though. If I owned L4D, we would've already had a L4D3 and possibly even a L4D movie or two by now. :'D
Left 4 Dead, Left 4 Dead 2, All Official Content © Valve
Original Characters © Me
The sun was slowly descending, the majority of the Florida sky still blue with rims of orange and pink merging with the horizon. Seabirds cried in the distance, the sound harmonizing peacefully with the gentle swooshing of the ocean waves as they crawled up the shore only to sink back into their source.
It was an atmosphere in stark contrast to the terrifying and wretched one that had spread over most of the planet within a few short weeks as an unprecedented supervirus single-handedly brought the human race to its knees.
The calm was a welcome change to a young woman of nineteen who had, so far, survived the apocalypse with only the help of some scavenged weaponry and three very different companions.
Two, now.
She was seated atop a palm tree that was bent over the clear shallows of the ocean below, its fronds swaying in the breeze. She held out a fishing pole found on the sailboat that had brought her group to their island paradise, but it was already beginning to bend permanently downwards and lose its bright finish to frequent usage and exposure to the elements.
The brand logo was still discernable, but brands had ceased to be even remotely important in the zombie apocalypse.
"Come on, fish. You know you want this bait."
Her green eyes intensely studied a small, drab fish swimming busily about her line, occasionally nibbling at the scrap of meat on the hook but never taking it.
She gave the line a small tug to entice her target. "Bite the hook, you stupid fish," she mumbled under her breath.
It ignored her demands and continued flitting about, its close proximity to the hook cruelly taunting her. She tugged again, her patience wearing thin after catching only four small specimens during several hours of fishing.
That was perhaps two good meals at most for a single person. And she was fishing for three, one of whom was a burly man with an appetite that doubled, possibly even tripled that of his companions'.
She sighed in exasperation when her target finally decided that it was through tormenting her and darted away into deeper waters.
"Screw you too, fish."
She ran a thin hand over her sweaty forehead and through her dark hair before lying down upon the palm's nearly-horizontal trunk. "Great. Looks like we get to dig into the rations again," she thought as she stared at the flapping fronds of the properly-upright palms behind her that passively shaded her from the sun.
The rations that had been stockpiled on the sailboat by its previous owners were plentiful, without a doubt. On their own, they were more than enough to last the group of three for a couple of months at the very least.
But they were smart enough to realize that their limited supply of canned goods and MREs couldn't last forever. It was decided the day they arrived (which happened to be five days previously) that meals would consist of fresh food from the island with the rations being preserved for unlucky days, such as this one appeared to be, where the gathered sustenance wouldn't be enough for a full meal.
She continued to stare at the fronds for several minutes, the cool breeze rushing over her body like a river, and her bare arms and legs receiving the greatest relief from the heat. She sat up as the wind died away, studied the sun's position in the sky, and cast her line again, hoping that another fish would happen by and decide to actually take the bait.
She still had another hour or so left until she had to call it a day.
The remaining hour had passed and the sky was now a beautiful shade of gold, the sun nearly amalgamating with its distorted twin on the undulating surface of the ocean. The young woman noted that it could've very well been a picture on a postcard or vacation brochure, and the thought of such things brought with it a pang of longing sadness in her heart.
She had no sooner felt that pang than she buried it in an ever-growing heap with the multitude of other things she had forced herself to forget, to hide away for the rest of her years on the now zombie-infested Earth for the sake of preserving what was left of her own sanity.
She found herself wondering just how many years of her life had been shaved off already from the omnipresent anxiety.
Suddenly, she was returned to the matter at hand when she noticed a dark, slender shape darting about her hook, seemingly torn between biting the presented meat and returning to the reefs for the night. The sea had been merciful enough to provide her with another, larger fish within the previous hour, and apparently still had mercy to show.
She jerked the line away, a maneuver that proved quite successful with this fish. Afraid to lose a free meal, it carelessly engulfed the bait in its mouth and earned a rusting hook through its blank face for its troubles.
Her captured prey realized its fatal mistake seconds too late, and desperately struggled in vain against the force holding it back. She began to firmly reel it in, a satisfied grin on her face as the fish was drawn closer and closer to shore.
"Well, maybe only Francis will have to dig into the rations tonight."
It was still very much alive as it was lifted out of the water, flailing madly while suspended helplessly in the suffocating air. She laid the pole across her lap and gripped the line just above the thrashing creature, waiting a few seconds for it to tire before grabbing the fish itself and removing the piercing metal from its mouth with a pair of pliers from her pocket.
She dropped her newest catch into a stained, plastic blue bucket waiting below that was filled halfway with seawater and the five other fish, before lifting herself off of the palm and down to the warm sand of the beach. She pulled the line back over the pole and caught the hook on the hook keeper before setting it down next to a clear tackle box beside the bucket.
She carried the bucket to the edge of the shallows where she proceeded to pour out a large amount of the water, leaving just enough to keep the fish alive until they could be dressed. Before stepping out of the water, she paused and felt the wet sand slipping in and out from between her toes as she absentmindedly wiggled them in the small waves.
The warmth lessened the dull ache in her feet from the large amounts of running, climbing, and kicking she had done over the past few weeks, and that spending a semester lazily holed up in her room and watching horror movies hadn't prepared her for.
However, before she could dwell on the past again, she pushed the memories from her mind and instead focused on the pleasant physical sensation of the present. She supposed she had to find joy in something if she were to maintain her wits.
After sufficiently relieving her feet, she procured her supplies from the sand and began the short walk back to their improvised home in one of the Dry Tortugas National Park's small, abandoned staff buildings.
"Hey, Francis. You seen my spit anywhere?" asked a lanky man as he rummaged through an organized stack of plastic bins and cardboard boxes, a few of which he found mold beginning to grow on. He would have to take care of that after cooking.
He lifted out various small supplies one by one, meticulously searching under and behind each and every object without disrupting the order and neatness he tried to maintain.
His training as a systems analyst resurfaced as he carefully examined the problem before him and methodically went about trying to solve it. He had retraced his steps, sorted out possible locations, and was currently in the process of checking and rechecking every nook and cranny since the previous two tricks had failed him.
Going about finding the spit and treating it as if it were an issue with a computer gave him a strange feeling of nostalgia. When his mind reflexively jumped to the stereotypical "did-you-try-turning-it-off-and-on-again" question, he realized that old habits really did die hard.
"Louis, I didn't know it was my job to keep up with where you spit," came Francis's gruff and sarcastic reply, bringing Louis abruptly out of his thoughts.
He sighed and inwardly slapped himself for not thinking before he spoke, allowing Francis to twist his words for his own amusement. "My skewer, Francis. Have you seen my skewer?" Louis turned to see a superior smirk on the biker's face.
"Oh, that spit! You gotta learn to clarify yourself better, man." He gave a light chuckle as he scratched his cheek. "But nah, I haven't seen it anywhere. You better find it soon, though. I'm starvin'."
He turned to step out of the small office they had converted into a storage room when Louis stopped him. "You put my skewer somewhere, didn't you?"
Francis had been caught. He would admit that he didn't put that much effort into where he had hidden the spit, performing the prank merely as part of a daily competition of wits with Louis, but he wasn't about to let his friend off that easily.
"No, now why would I take your skewer, Louis? Why would a hungry guy like me take somethin' his cook needs to make his food?" Louis's bored and unimpressed expression clearly let him know that he was failing miserably at convincing him.
"First off, I'm not your cook. We've been over this. Second, why would you even be in here if there was nothing to entertain you?" He sat against the stack of boxes, his head resting on his hand as he awaited Francis's reply, dumb as it might be.
The duo had spent most of their time on the island together in this fashion: they would tepidly test each other's wits in random ways, such as harmless pranking and petty banter. They had at first attempted to include their third companion in their "games" as well, but she quite often served as the game-ender. As a result, their friendly competitions only played out when it was just the two of them.
Louis asserted that such mind-exercises were very good for maintaining their mental health, and so he and Francis continued to tolerate each other's conflicting personalities, using them as fuel for harmless teasing.
"I could tell that you were lookin' for something', so I came to see what you were lookin' for. Excuse me for tryin' to help, Mr. Accusation." Francis raised his hands in feigned resignation before planting them on his hips confidently as he tried to calculate Louis's next move.
The analyst's face lit up and he pointed triumphantly at his opponent. "Ah-hah! Wrong answer, Francis."
"What?" The situation wasn't looking very good for the biker.
"You would never help me find something unless I made you." Louis crossed his slender arms, a smile now growing on his face. Victory from this point was practically assured. Francis wasn't too fond of losing, and quickly flared up without realizing it.
"Bullshit! Like skinny, little you could ever make me do anything."
"Exactly." Louis chuckled victoriously. "The only person you would ever let order you around is Bill."
The increasingly warm atmosphere suddenly became cold at the mention of their old leader's name. Neither could speak for several moments as they looked away from each other, instead focusing on some small, obscure detail of the room to take their attention off the mutual sadness they felt.
"… Yeah," Francis eventually mumbled, momentarily breaking the suffocating silence.
Ever since Bill's death at the bridge in Rayford, there had been a noticeable change in the group.
There was, of course, a bitter sadness at losing a teammate, a genuine friend, when the group was so close to reaching the safety they had all fought so hard for. There was a deep-seated fear that another member of their group would be lost, or that the group would fall apart without Bill to hold them together. There was an ever-present regret, a belief amongst all three that somehow, things could've been different, that Bill's death could've been avoided.
Bill's motto of "we look out for our own" was not forgotten by his three companions, and they each had made a silent pledge of their own accord to continue to uphold it and preserve the group, but the strictness with which they chose to live by the motto varied between them.
The three remaining survivors knew that things would never be the same without Bill, and also knew that it would be a fairly long time before they all fully recovered from the incident, if they truly recovered at all.
The two companions remained in the storage room for several moments, silent and distant to each other, as the sadness gradually lessened to a much more tolerable level. Francis was the first to come back to reality.
"So… I guess you've won back your skewer," he said somberly.
"Where is it?"
"In my sleeping bag." This prompted a disgusted look from Louis.
"Man, that's kinda nasty, don't you think? I know you're you, but I'd expect you to be at least a little more considerate of me and Zoey. We have to eat food off that too, y'know."
"Yeah, I didn't think about it too much. Just put it the first place I thought of." He scratched the back of his head sheepishly as Louis stood up, grunting quietly at the dull throbbing in his left thigh. He rubbed it gently before standing fully upright.
"Looks like I get to wash it off, then."
"Nah, I'll… I'll… do it." Louis was quite shocked by Francis's offer. Rude, brash, and arrogant Francis was actually offering to help someone else without even being asked? He would say that it was a sign of the apocalypse, but that had already happened.
"Heh. If the old man were here, I know he'd make me clean it off. And he'd be on my ass the whole time to make sure I did it his way, too."
Louis felt a smile tugging on his lips as he closed his eyes and pictured the scene. He couldn't stop a chuckle from escaping his throat as he shook his head. "Yeah. He would, wouldn't he?"
Louis limped behind Francis to the main room of the building, which was large and lined along the walls with shelves that once displayed various fishing supplies, designated by signs hanging above them. In the corner farthest from the door, between a shelf labeled "Bait and Decoys" and a long-defunct and empty refrigerator labeled "Fresh Bait", was a gathering of three sleeping bags.
Francis carelessly squatted on the middle sleeping bag, Louis's, as he unzipped the one closest to the wall and procured the missing spit from it. He obviously wasn't extraordinarily changed, but Louis didn't mind too much. He was quite used to it and didn't expect otherwise.
"So how about I play the role of Bill and make sure you clean the skewer my way?" joked Louis as the biker began to walk towards the front door.
"Hey. Don't push it." He gave Louis a slight glare as he pointed at his face, directing the smaller man backwards. "I can clean a gun, so I think I can clean a skewer." He continued on towards the door.
Louis raised his hands in submission. "Well, alright then. You just might wanna have that cleaned up before Zoey gets here. You don't want her thinking you've gone soft, have you?" Francis paused once again and glared irritably at him.
"I told you, you're pushin' it. Stop me one more time, and I'm shovin' this thing up your ass and makin' you pull it out and clean it. Got it?"
Before Louis could reply, the door squeaked open obnoxiously as Zoey stepped inside, bucket in one hand and the tackle box in the other.
"Nice to see you two haven't killed each other while I was gone." She noted Francis's irritated look and the spit gripped firmly in his hand. "But I think if I had gotten here a little later, that might not have been quite true."
Louis smirked and looked back to the biker. "Looks like you're a little behind schedule, Francis."
"Shut up. Just shut up. I'm outta here." With that, Francis stomped around Zoey, his bare feet making conspicuous slapping noises on the hard, smooth floor. He jerked the door open and quickly made his escape. "See you assholes later." The door creaked in complaint as it slowly closed behind him.
"I'm guessing you won your daily competition?" Zoey asked with only mild interest as she placed the bucket and tackle box on the front counter next to the register.
"Yeah, I think I did."
"I guess there was a deal or bet of some sort. Did you pass cooking duty over to him tonight or something?" Before Louis could answer, she quickly made her opinion of Francis's cooking known, not that his own opinion differed. "I really hope you didn't pass cooking duty over to him. I'd like some good food tonight."
"Heheh. No, I'm still cooking, I promise. He just gets to clean the spit off because he hid it in his sleeping bag as a prank." Her face quickly twisted in revulsion.
"Ugh. That's gross," she remarked, sharing his sentiment. "Maybe one of us should go and make sure he cleans it right. I personally would prefer not to eat whatever gunk is crusted over in his sleeping bag." She squinted her eyes at the group of sleeping bags, waggling her fingers in a creepy-crawly manner as she described the nastiness within.
"I already offered, and you see how pissed off he got." He then hunched over slightly and held his arms stiffly bent to his sides as if he were flexing large and powerful muscles. "I can clean a gun, I think I can clean a skewer," he said in his best imitation of Francis's gravelly voice, pointing his finger in Zoey's face. "Don't push it."
His imitation earned a chuckle from Zoey. "Wow Francis, I thought you left already! What'd you do with Louis?" Her playful sarcasm brought a wide smile to the analyst's face. Catching her in a good mood never failed to make his own mood brighten up significantly, especially now that her good moods had become increasingly sporadic.
She shook her head as she descended from the temporary buzz before walking back to the door and searching for Francis through the glass. "So what were you pushing, anyway?"
"Ah, it was nothing. You know how he gets mad over little things." He joined her at the door and watched as Francis walked up to their fire pit, carrying a bucket of water that his observers hoped was from their purifier.
Zoey didn't watch long before going back to the counter, followed shortly by Louis. "So who's gonna clean the fish, since Francis is busy cleaning the spit?"
"We can rock-paper-scissors for it," he suggested, leaning on the counter to lessen the weight on his injured leg. Zoey brought her hands to the ready, but thought for a moment before dropping them back to her sides.
"No, it's not fair to make you pull double-duty. I'll do it." She grabbed the bucket and moved for the door, but was halted by Louis grabbing her arm.
"Well, if it's not fair for me to pull double-duty, it's not fair for you."
"Do you really want to wait for Francis to finish before these get cleaned? No telling how long that's gonna take. The fish might all be dead by then." Her stomach growled loudly as if to concur with her words.
"Look, how about we split the job? That seems pretty fair to me. And we'll get done twice as fast." Zoey weighed his offer before looking back up with a subdued smirk.
"Alright. I'll take that. I just hope Francis can keep up with us."
A petite woman was briskly making her daily trip to the medical bay of the USS Gettysburg through the quarantined section of its twisting lower corridors. She was late for her shift at the bedside of a specific patient, and was still attempting to calm herself from the catastrophe that had put her behind schedule.
She turned a corner and was nearly run down by two people dashing in the direction she had come. She recognized them as members of the ship's medical staff, barely catching glimpses of their faces as they continued down the corridor as if she hadn't been there at all.
"Must've just found out what happened."
She continued down the hallway, passing several doors in the medical bay before reaching her destination. She stood before the door and took a deep breath as she attempted to clear her mind. No need to further make herself look like a mentally unstable and helpless fool in front of her teammates.
She let her mind be overtaken by the white noise of the ship. The monotonous hum from the pipes and vents overhead lulled her into a temporary sense of security and peace.
"Come in," said the bored man currently on bedside duty after she finally knocked on the metal door. She gently pushed it open to see him leaning his chair backwards on two legs against the metal wall, his arms crossed expectantly.
"It's about time, Rochelle. I was starting to think you were gonna leave me in here for a whole other shift." He lowered the chair down to the floor as she quietly pulled the door shut behind her.
"Well, would you have stayed if I had?" She meandered in front of him and crossed her own arms, mimicking his expectancy. It would seem that he hadn't yet been told the news. She wasn't surprised, since apparently not even the medical staff had known until mere minutes before.
"No," he stated quickly and dryly.
She scoffed and turned in the direction of the room's patient, who was sound asleep. "Oh, come on now, Nick. He saved your life, didn't he?" She gestured to him as she spoke and Nick reflexively followed her gaze, clasping his hands together as he leaned over onto his forearms. "And besides, you know he'd do the same for you."
"Yeah… Yeah, I know." His mildly dejected tone, coupled with a tired sigh and resigned hand through his dark hair, betrayed his true feelings and what he would've really done. "Ellis would sit and wait for days like a dumb dog. No doubt about it." Rochelle nodded slowly in agreement. "Hell, he'd probably cry too."
"Don't say that like it's a bad thing. It shows that he cares." She faced Nick as he relinquished the chair to her and made for the door. She then picked it up and moved it from the foot of the bed to the head, where she could talk to Ellis should he wake. "And by the way, dinner is pretty awful tonight."
"Huh. When does it ever qualify as 'good'?"
She shrugged. "At least most of it is better than what we'd been eating."
"I don't know how strongly I'd agree with you on that." He raised his hand in a half-hearted wave and turned back to the door, but she stopped him once again before could leave.
"And Nick… Watch out for the soldiers tonight."
He halted abruptly and looked over his shoulder at her, his body language suddenly wary. "What's going on?"
"Coach can explain it to you better than I can." She felt guilty that she was pushing the job on Coach, but she was trying to avoid recounting the scene as much as possible. There was already one event that she relived almost every night, and she didn't need another.
He watched her for a moment with furrowed brows. "Rochelle, are you okay?" She knew she wasn't hiding her current state of mind very well and his concern was appreciated, but she really didn't want to talk about it.
"Yes, I'm fine. You just go on." He didn't push her to elaborate, though he clearly wanted to, instead continuing out into the hallway and onto the quarantined "carriers-only" cafeteria.
Rochelle sighed as she settled down into the well-worn chair, attempting to get as comfortable as possible. She was taking the shortest shift that day, but she still had a couple of hours until she would be sent back to the carriers' quarters for the night. She resolved to make as much of the quiet as possible while she still had it.
"Alright. That's over with, time to think about something else."
Once she had gotten into a comfortable position, she looked over her injured companion for any changes, positive or negative, since the last time she had seen him.
His breathing was deep and stable, a positive sign for his broken ribs. Though she knew that this was most likely only because of his being asleep and heavily medicated, she was nonetheless pleased to hear it. Listening to his ragged and shallow breathing all throughout their time on the helicopter from New Orleans had frightened her to no end.
The bandages on his head had already been removed, and she could once again clearly see the road rash on the left side of his face and the long laceration extending from above his left eye to his left cheek, taking out a portion of his eyebrow that happened to be in its path. It had taken seven stitches to close, and she had been told by one of the doctors that they would be the first set to come out.
His left arm, also marked by road rash, was bandaged firmly at an angle to support a sprained and chipped elbow, and would most likely remain bandaged for a few weeks. However, it had been explained that even after the wraps came off, the usefulness of that arm would still be reduced for a while longer.
"Oh, Ellis…" She reached out and gently gripped his right hand, careful not to push on the IVs in his wrist. She traced random shapes on the back of his hand with her thumb as she noted the state of a large, dark bruise on his forearm. It was getting better, but still looked quite tender. "That Tank really messed you up, didn't it?"
The memory of what happened four days ago on the Veterans Memorial Bridge was still quite vivid in her mind, predominating over the new event by a large margin.
She and Coach were holding up the back as Ellis and Nick ran slightly ahead, all of them rapidly firing round after round into the overwhelming horde. The screeching and snarling was deafening, and the smell of rot and smoke filled her head. She found herself gradually being separated from her teammates by the swarm. She felt the world closing in on her, both physically and sensationally, and she could've sworn that she had begun to suffocate in the pandemonium.
But they couldn't stop. They had to keep moving. Stopping meant certain death, and they had already come so far. They were too close to their goal to die. Far too close.
As they neared the opposite side of the bridge, the foreboding roars of a Tank could be heard in the distance, and any hope she had left by that point had shrunk away to almost nothing. The abandoned cars on the opposite side flew into the air one by one as the charging beast effortlessly threw them aside like an unruly child tossing about his toys.
They didn't stop running, didn't stop shooting. They couldn't. They pressed on, jumping over debris and climbing over cars, dashing over the crumpled corpses littering the ground and shoving away the ones that still ran madly at them. The horde seemed to thicken instead of thin out and the Tank drew closer. It was still far enough away that it couldn't be spotted, but its roars were clear and menacing, and the objects it hit into the air were a very straightforward indication that it was on its way.
Suddenly, the wretched scream of a Smoker somehow found its way to their ears. "No! No! Smoker's got me!" she heard Nick yell over the cacophony, undoubtedly being dragged somewhere far away while she was unable to see anything past the lines of abandoned cars and the relentless swarm.
She tried to remember which direction the Smoker's screech had come from, but all sounds she had heard echoed cruelly around her. She fired and fired, knowing that she was using up too many bullets too fast. But she didn't care anymore.
"Nick! Nick, where are you?! I'm coming, Nick!" she shouted at the top of her lungs. He answered with a single pained scream as the air was squeezed from him. "Nick! Hang on!"
She couldn't move forward anymore. The infected were too closely-packed, too strong. She stopped using her Uzi as a firearm and instead proceeded to bludgeon any zombies within her reach with it as she tried in vain to charge through them like a valiant heroine in some fantastic story, off to Nick's rescue. In reality she was more like a wild animal, drowning in an undead sea and screaming until she could scream no more.
Time seemed to slow to a stop. Her heart pounded in her ears. The sound was too much. She was going deaf, she knew it. She was being beaten and clawed and bitten from all sides. Zombies were pulling her back by her matted hair, by her ragged clothes, by her empty backpack. Every part of her body screamed with agony.
She wanted to drop everything where she stood, fall to her bruised knees, and cry every single tear that she had withheld with pride over the past week as she was finally devoured alive by the horde.
She was going to die. Nick was going to die. They were all going to die, right then and there.
There was no hope of survival. It was pointless to even try. There was nothing left for them but pain and misery and horror. There was no safe place left on Earth. Everything was dying, dead, or undead. They could no longer prolong the inevitable.
The Green Flu was omnipresent, inescapable, unstoppable. How pathetic that she finally accepted that horrid truth in her moment of death. She knew it all along, but had refused to give in to the unpleasant reality even though she saw it everywhere, every day...
"Rochelle!" She heard her name called from somewhere off to her right. "Rochelle! Come on, girl! Snap out of it!"
It was Coach.
She looked in the direction of his voice to see him clearing out the wall of infected between them with his shotgun. He later told her that she had slowed to a trudge, her Uzi held limply at her side as she let the horde overwhelm her. She had felt warm liquid running down her face, and she couldn't remember if it was blood, sweat, or tears. In retrospect, it was probably a gruesome mixture of all three.
He punched away the infected immediately surrounding her and gripped her arm with the firm and reassuring hold characteristic of him. "Come on, now. We ain't got time for that shit. You stay with us, Ro."
He took a split second to look her in the eye, and then returned to slaying the relentless infected when he had decided that she was sufficiently back in reality.
"Th-thank you, Coach," was all that could force itself from her dry throat.
"Don't make us leave you behind. Keep up and don't get distracted again. We are too close to fail now."
She nodded, knowing that he couldn't see her, and raised her Uzi back into firing position. With new strength, she fired into the horde as she and Coach steadily made their way forward, they hoped in the direction of Nick and Ellis.
On the right side of the bridge, they noticed two cars laying on their sides and making a convenient wall with just enough space between them for a single person to squeeze through.
"Over there! Get behind those cars!" Coach directed loudly, but she was already on her way there. With her small frame, she slipped through with ease; Coach wasn't so lucky, and had more difficulty maneuvering his much larger form through the tight space.
"Come on, Coach! You can do it! Just suck it in!" she shouted, urging him on whilst thinning out the infected that were beginning to stream in from the opposite direction. He thrashed about madly and pushed on the cars with all the strength he could muster until he finally made it through, and the duo pushed onward as the majority of the swarm piled up behind them on the cars.
"Nick! Nick! Come on, man, say somethin' will ya?!" Ellis's frantic voice finally reached their ears, and they were reassured to know that they hadn't gotten turned around in the madness. But that comfort was very short-lived when they realized that Nick was still missing.
They climbed atop a pile of debris between an overturned truck and an abandoned Humvee. From it, they could finally spot Ellis on top of a bus, his head jerking back and forth as he searched for their lost teammate. Just as she was about to call out his name, he caught sight of something to his right and raised his assault rifle, ignoring the horde clawing its way up to him.
"I got ya, Nick!"
She followed his line of sight to see Nick dangling limply from a high beam, suspended by the offending Smoker's tongue. He was slowly being lifted higher and higher towards his captor, and she felt her stomach drop and the tears begin to well up again.
He was so still.
She was horrified by the very real prospect that they were too late to save him. But even if he wasn't dead, a drop from that height could very well kill him just the same. She could think of no alternatives, no third way out. They were to either leave him to die at the hands of a Smoker, or shoot him down and let him fall to his death.
Ellis, whether he had thought his actions through or not, pulled the trigger and brought an end to the Smoker, a cloud of noxious smoke trailing from its deflated corpse as it fell backwards off the beam, its tongue unraveling around its prey.
She instinctively screamed Nick's name as she watched his limp body fall, time seeming to slow down once more. She was thankful that a broken concrete barrier had shielded her eyes from seeing him hit the ground.
She and Coach both took off at a sprint, but Ellis had beaten them there. His head was already upon Nick's chest, searching for any signs of life by the time they had slowed to a halt. She steeled herself to hear a confirmation of the loss of Nick when Ellis surprised her. "He-he's still alive! He's still here!"
The look of hopeful joy on his face was a wonderful sight for her to behold in that moment. She felt her spirits rising and the tears continued to well, this time fueled by happiness instead of terror, pain, or despair.
She was amazed that anyone could survive the fall Nick had taken, and had thought of it as nothing short of a miracle. On the ship, it was explained to her that he had survived without major injury purely because he was unconscious, leaving his body loose and flexible. If he had been awake, he would've instinctively tensed up in preparation for the fall and made serious injury or death an almost guarantee. But even though there was scientific explanation as to why Nick survived, she still couldn't entirely shake her belief that it was, in fact, a miracle.
She was reminded of the horde when she heard Coach begin to fire once again into it, and she quickly joined him in defending the other two from the infected as Ellis began pumping their friend's chest and periodically performing mouth-to-nose, avoiding the blood running from a large cut on Nick's lower lip and chin. It didn't take long at all before he came to, wide-eyed and gasping desperately for air between hacking coughs.
She had never before felt such appreciation of Coach's insistence that he teach them all how to perform CPR.
"There ya go. Good to have ya back, Nick," Ellis said as he patted Nick's back, his breathing still broken up by small coughing fits.
"O-okay, okay. I'm-I'm good." Nick weakly held up a hand signaling Ellis to stop as he got to his knees. She listened as his gasping and coughing died off, and gave a sigh of relief.
"Alright y'all, we done wasted enough time. That helicopter's gonna leave us if we don't-"
Without warning, a crumpled car flew past them, cutting off Coach mid-sentence and sending Rochelle reeling back onto the ground out of shock. The next thing she knew, the Tank they had forgotten in their desperation to save Nick was barreling straight towards them, giant fists pounding the now-quaking bridge.
How she had missed its loud roars and the tremors below her feet, she would never know.
The next few seconds went by so fast that she could barely recall them as much more than a visual blur backed by Ellis's screams of pain and terror. A fair amount of the scene had to be relayed to her by Nick and Coach. She was glad she couldn't actually remember much of it. If she could, her recurring nightmares would likely be much, much worse.
The Tank didn't flinch at the shells rapidly fired into its swollen flesh by Coach. Instead, it backhanded him to the ground in retaliation and punched a nearby car towards him to finish the job. It missed, but the Tank switched his focus to Ellis and Nick, much closer targets. Nick managed to crawl out of the Tank's path just in time but Ellis tripped as he attempted to stand, giving the mutated creature just enough time to strike.
It showed no mercy this time as it punched him several feet away. It pursued its victim, this time grasping his leg before he could react and slamming him into the ground again before tossing him onto the hood of a car. When his body bounced off the car and fell to the concrete behind, the Tank turned its attention back to the others.
None of them remembered much from that point until they had made it onto the helicopter. The lightning-fast action and sheer terror was too overpowering.
She remembered that they all had begun to fire on the Tank. She remembered that the bridge had begun to collapse on one side. She remembered that the Tank had slid off the tilting bridge and fallen to the waters below. She remembered the immense feeling of relief after finding out that, like Nick after his fall, Ellis miraculously still had a pulse.
And she remembered fending off the horde with Nick while Coach walked Ellis, who was just barely conscious and clearly wracked with pain, most of the remaining distance to the helicopter, verbally encouraging him the whole way. He collapsed shortly after they made it to the off-ramp, and was carried the rest of the way by Coach and Nick. Once inside, they settled him on the floor of the helicopter and provided the best first aid they could with their remaining supplies, despite his miserable moans of protest after waking up enough to feel pain again.
Ellis looked so painfully broken. Removing his ruined yellow shirt revealed a bruised and bloodied torso, three ribs on his left side clearly protruding unnaturally outwards. His breathing was rapid and raspy, desperate and shallow; it was a sound that almost made her wish she really had gone deaf from the horde's roaring.
Coach and Nick went to work cleaning the open wounds they found on his body while she attempted to clean the cut on his face. It had been bleeding badly enough that she thought he had lost his eye or completely cracked his skull open when she first saw him after the Tank was gone.
She ripped a piece off of his discarded shirt and pressed it to the wound, futilely trying to stop the bleeding. The speed at which his blood soaked through it and stained her battered hands frightened her almost as much as his breathing.
Every minute they spent on the helicopter felt like an hour to her. She struggled to hold back her tears, to appear stronger than she apparently was, if only to spare poor Ellis from seeing her so distraught during his dying moments. Her mind was hopelessly overrun with a single repeating train of thought:
"We're about to be a party of three. Ellis is going to die here. He's not going to make it. We won't get there in time. We were so close, but we failed him. Good-bye, Ellis. I'm so sorry."
She drowned out the rest of the world as those thoughts looped themselves over and over and over again in her head. She couldn't stop them. She couldn't even try. She just let them repeat, her hope once more fading away with each cycle.
But before she could register time properly in her mind again, the back door of the helicopter slowly opened and the sun's light flooded the space, stinging her eyes. Military personnel stood outside, dressed in dark suits that covered them from head to toe. Their faces were obscured by gas masks and they all had their weapons steadily trained on them.
"Carriers, you are now on board the USS Gettysburg and are under military custody. Immediately place all of your belongings on the floor of the helicopter and slowly stand with your hands above your head. Do not make any sudden or violent movements, or we will not hesitate to open fire."
Rochelle shook her head with a sigh as she tried to push the unsettling memories from her mind. The thought that she simply gave up the way she did, that she let her spirits drop so easily, still elicited stinging feelings of shame in her.
"There's no point focusing on that now. It's already done, and we're all safe. The bad times are over," she mentally reminded herself for the umpteenth time, only to realize that those words had no meaning anymore.
They weren't safe. They would never again be safe. It was too much to ask. They really had been condemned to spend the rest of their lives in a living hell.
She knew she would never escape the memories, the mental torture. She wondered if she would've been better off dying on the bridge. Then she wouldn't have to suffer, neither physically nor mentally.
It would all be over for certain, then. She would finally have the peace she pined for…
She was abruptly pulled from being consumed by her raving and self-pitying thoughts by the sound of sickly coughing from the bed beside her. She put on the warmest smile she could for her wounded companion.
"Hey, Ellis," she greeted sweetly, to which he responded with a weak smile and a flick of his hand.
"Hey, Ro." His voice was horribly raspy and quiet, a sound that tugged at her heart and elicited all the feelings of pity that she could muster.
But she was resolved not to show that to him. He deserved better.
"So I see you've finally decided to rejoin the living again today." He simply nodded tiredly in return, his eyelids drooping and his smile slowly fading as he appeared to lose the strength to hold them up.
It was difficult for her to maintain her own façade of contentment, perturbed as she was by someone so happy and excitable suddenly being painfully reduced to little more than a broken body. Even Coach and Nick, who were usually the ones to remark negatively about Ellis's incessant talkativeness or stop his asinine Keith stories when he started to tell them, admitted that his silence was one of the hardest things for them to endure as they waited for his condition to improve.
"That's good," she said for the sake of speaking. Even though he was unable to speak much for himself, he seemed quite attentive when listening to others talk. "Is your pain medication holding up?"
She felt that talking helped her as well. It gave her an outward focus that temporarily blocked out the raging storm in her mind. It was the reason why she didn't like to be alone, why she tried to keep herself with another person whenever possible.
"Eh…" He thought for a moment, gauging the pain levels in various parts of his body, shifting around very slightly as he tested out his extremities, the most mobile parts of him at the moment. "Alright, I guess," he concluded, apparently not in exceptional pain at the moment.
"Good." The room fell silent again as she thought of something else remotely pleasant to say, Ellis waiting patiently for her to continue. Her eyes flicked to the stiches on his forehead. "Did you know that those stiches on your head are coming out tomorrow?"
He tilted his head marginally, his expression becoming one that she read as vaguely perplexed. "On my head?"
"You did know that you had stitches there, right?" He looked upwards as if he were trying to see his own forehead for a moment before shaking his head. "Uh-uh."
"Well, you do." It was the closest he had yet gotten to his normal, goofy self, and she allowed herself to chuckle quietly in appreciation. "Right here," she clarified as she traced a short line across her left eyebrow with her finger. He mouthed a silent "oh" before leaning back into his pillow. The room fell silent for another minute, and Rochelle forced herself to break it.
"God, I don't see how in the world you sleep all day and night like this. I don't sleep very much at all, and I'm so awake every day it's to the point that it's becoming a bit of a bother," she half-lied to continue the conversation on an at least somewhat-positive note. She didn't get very much sleep, that was most certainly true. Being awake and sufficiently aware of reality was the lie.
He simply answered her with a tired shrug.
She didn't know whether or not her mask of warmth and strength really fooled Ellis. True, he was undeniably simple-minded at first glance. But over the week she had spent with him she had come to realize that even someone like him had hidden depths.
They were just difficult to really place without further observation.
So, I originally wasn't intending for the chapter to be quite this many pages. I also did intend to get a fair amount further into the story than I did. Go figure. I think Rochelle's memory of the bridge ended up being about twice as long as I had planned, so that was something of a setback.
But, maybe it's a good thing that the first chapter didn't turn out as I planned. I apparently got in more detail than I expected, plus I'm just proud of myself for going 6 pages over my usual chapter length. I was on a roll with this fic! And I kept getting pulled away from it, which made me want to work on it that much more. (I started getting all pissy on people when they bothered me in the middle of a writing session. LOL)
And now for a public service announcement...
I'd just like to let you guys know that favorites, follows, and reviews (but mostly reviews) are what keep stories alive. If you like Show Me Hope so far, leave a review! It doesn't even matter if you leave an anonymous review! Reviews are both rewards for an author's hard work, and helpful tools for improvement as they receive constructive criticism. Plus, it only takes a few minutes of your time to write a basic review. The longer and more substantial the review, the more desired and helpful it is, but all reviews are welcomed and appreciated. So in that sense, leaving a review is a lot like leaving a monetary donation except that it's free! Remember this whenever you read a fanfic, whether you like it or not. Leave a review on good fics to encourage the author and promote the continuation of exceptional works. Leave them on "bad" fics to help the author improve, and possibly bump their story from bad to good if they're willing to listen. ;)
Thanks for reading, guys! I hope to have the next chapter out soon, but I'm going back to college on Sunday and balancing two studio art classes can prove to be very time-consuming. Oh, and I'm being made to get a job this semester because my parents can't stand the fact that I like to stay in my room. :c So I can't make any promises, but reviews can help speed up the process. They're incentive, after all!