Disclaimer: Not mine, just playing.
This is just a small thing I wrote out one day because I love Rochelle and wanted to try writing something from her PoV.
Un-betad so any mistakes are my own.
Rochelle let out a tired sigh as she lent back against the wall behind her, hands idly moving across the rifle in her lap as she kept watch.
Today had not been a good day.
Not that any day was a good day in the zombie apocalypse, but today had been especially bad.
It had rained the entire day, and not just a small or medium drizzle. No. It had been a heavy downpour that had significantly reduced their visibility while soaking them all to the bone. The noise of it had been enough to drown out the echoing roar of any incoming horde as well, just to add even more fun to their shitty situation. Rochelle was honestly surprised they had made it out in one piece.
Well, mostly one piece.
She had suffered a nasty gash to her right leg, courtesy of one of the three witches they had seen that day. Nick had been raked across his chest and for a moment, after the witch had been killed, none of them were sure if he was still alive. There had been so much blood.
He'd gotten up and carried on, even if he had to trade off using Ellis or Coach for support for most of their journey.
That had ended after Coach had been tackled by a charger and his already bad knee had been made worse. Ellis had supported him the rest of the way to the safe-house while she had taken Nick's weight when he couldn't walk by himself anymore, and given their height difference that hadn't been the easiest of tasks.
Ellis hadn't been spared either.
There may have thankfully been a lack of chargers around, for some reason they seemed to target the younger man above the rest of their group, but he had still gotten tackled by a hunter and suffered some nasty looking cuts on his arms before Nick had kicked the thing off and shot it in the face. By the time they had reached the safe-house they had all been limping and bleeding from various wounds.
She was just glad that there had been medical supplies in the safe-house they had found for the night, enough to properly take care of Nick's wounds, no matter how much he grumbled about it, and pain meds for Coach. The last thing any of them needed was their unofficial leader to be down for too long.
They could give it a day, maybe two then they'd have to move on regardless of how well his leg was doing. Rochelle only hoped that the strain on the limb hadn't been too great.
A strangled moan sounded outside the door and she gripped her gun tighter, fingers moving without thought to the trigger, ready to fire should something try to get through. She didn't like to think about how familiar she had become with the weapon.
A quiet sigh left her as the snarling groans moved further away, her body relaxing ever so slightly against the wall.
She had no idea how her life had come to this. One moment she was heading down to Savannah to do a story on the infection, the next she was stranded and running for her life as monsters out of a horror movie snapped at her heels.
She didn't even know if the rest of her news team had made it.
She hoped they had, they were good people and even the ones she hadn't liked didn't deserve death at the hands of a walking corpse. Or tuning into one themselves.
She had honestly thought that she was going to die when she had found herself alone, then a day later she had stumbled into a hotel and had found three other living, breathing people.
Rochelle rubbed at her forehead before looking over at her companions. She was still surprised that they had all stuck with each other, she perhaps hadn't been as abrasive as Nick had been when they'd first met but she hadn't held out any hopes of them staying together long.
Now though? She couldn't leave any of them behind. None of them could, no matter how much Nick might protest otherwise.
A small smile tugged at her lips as she kept vigil over them, Coach asleep on the lone mattress while Nick and Ellis were propped up against the wall, bodies having slumped into each other as they slept.
She didn't know what was going to happen to them, if there was anywhere left uninfected in the world, never mind the country.
But she did know that so long as they stuck together, they'd be okay.