Disclaimer: The world of L4D2 and it's characters belong to VALVe, certainly not either of us.
"Puke in the hole!"
To her left, Nick threw a vile of vomit. Green and bubbling, it splattered to the floor. Infected gathered around it like it was Christmas morning and Alice prepared her machine gun. The regular ones were easy to kill with just a gun. This was a well known fact by now. Still, the fire helped. Fire? Where the hell was the fire coming from...
"Hey!" She called to the man at her right. He was at least a few yards away from her and Alice had to raise her voice to be heard. "We're heading toward the elevator, you comin' or what?"
No answer, only a blank stare.
Alice shrugged. "Your choice, dude."
This had been another very bad idea. They hadn't been ready for this. Then again, it wasn't as if Walsh had been anticipating The Vannah to suddenly go up in flames. It'd taken so long to get up here too.
Just where the hell was she!
It was chaos. ...what if someone shot her? There were people here due to the evac postings after all. Why wouldn't there have been fire? Of all things...not again.
Please, not again.
"Hey!" a voice called and he couldn't help but turn, he'd heard the sound of their gunshots for a few moments and froze, hoping a little body wouldn't be filled with holes at the end. The girl who'd shouted was currently blasting a crowd of the things with a machine gun, while a man in a white suit took care of the stragglers with a fire axe. "Don't just stand there, man! Get in the elevator!"
How could he? Not when...wait...was that?
He ducked quickly into a room and grasped hard as the hem of a crouched infected in a yellow hoodie, breathing out in relief when the tiny thing latched onto him like it would drown instead of trying to tear him apart. He held her in one arm softly, slipping his wrecking bar into one of the belt straps and un-holstering the Glock.
It's not like discretion mattered anymore anyway.
"Hold the fucking door!"
"Holdin' it!" she called back. The man rushed into the elevator, a lump of dead weight clutched to his frame. His kid?
"Thanks," he breathed.
"No problem," she said as she let go of the elevator doors.
"So," the suited man continued roughly, shouldering a bag of his own. "We doing introductions or what? I'm Nick."
"Rochelle." A black woman called out, hands shaking ever so slightly.
"Ya'll can call me Ellis."
"Everyone calls me Coach," a heavy set man said, reloading his rifle. "I don't see why you guys can't do the same."
"How 'bout you, hot shot?" Alice finally looked up from her gun and to the man beside her. "You and the kid got names?"
Alice saw, frankly, every reason in the world for them all not to trust each other. It was rule number one of 'Zombieland'. It didn't matter that Nick had saved her, it only meant that, at that moment, she owed him. Perhaps it was the fact that both being defensive and untrusting was what made them equal partners.
It was their choice. They trusted them, or they didn't. She wouldn't. She didn't. However, going down this elevator was literally the way out. Literally. The odds of being inside it were better than out of it.
Her gaze followed back over to the kid on his arm. To an extent, she knew how he probably felt. Her only reason for staying alive, despite being able to be alive, was to help William get out of the school alive. It was her motivation. It was her reason. So, despite the fact William was just as old as her, bigger than her, and...blonder than Alice, she knew how the man felt.
It'd taken a full magazine to get to them. Walsh had one extra left.
His shoulder was starting to ache with the combined weight of Billy and the bookbag. They hadn't even gotten any supplies like planned. The cart was still on the floor they'd all just left. And now they were stuck in a small, closed off elevator with four armed, upset people.
"Jacob Walsh, and this is Billy, my brother. He's uh," he said, rubbing at his eyes awkwardly with the Glock and pulling the hood over the infected further, getting a murmur of weak chittering in return. "He's Autistic..."
"Just fucking lovely," Nick muttered, looking at the doors. "Someone incapable of using a gun."
Rochelle scoffed at him, lifting the baseball bat close to her chest. "It's not like I'd even know how to use a gun if given one either."
"Aw, it's easy, just point and pull the trigger!" Ellis exclaimed good humouredly, tapping his own shotgun and grinning at the woman.
"I think you missed out a few key steps there, overalls," Nick said, before reaching over and pushing a button on the panel, which elicited a bunch of cursing from behind him. He sneered at the lot. "To hell with that. Those goddamn things are right outside, you saw them coming in from the ledges! And we've being fighting them all over this place. The minute that door opens, they'll just flood from the lobby and we'll be packed in like sardines while they eat our brains!"
It was effective enough to quiet down any protest and Nick relaxed, spinning his bloodied axe and leaning against the wall. "Better we get to the parking lot, take a car and get out of this deathtrap."
At the mention of Grand Theft Auto, Ellis visibly brightened. "You mean like hotwire? Shit, can I do that?"
"No."
Ellis shook his head and turned toward the doors, muttering that he was going to be driving anyway. Walsh sighed, hushing Billy who'd started getting fidgety as Nick's voice had rose. He turned toward the big, middle aged man, currently holding a rifle. "Coach, right? I really hope you can spare some extra ammo."
"The guys I used to pal around with, well, we went across two states in a bus. Not to mention, Nick and I still rode about, like, six hours before our car died. So I'm sure we can find some gas, right? Or a few cars with gas?"
"Want to hear my prediction?" Nick asked.
"No," Rochelle and Coach stated.
"Watch, they'll be no gas, you just watch."
"That'd be our luck, Nicky, that'd be our luck," Alice sighed and cocked her double barrel. "Fuck this. Anyone find a chainsaw lately? No? Fuck."
"I got a baseball bat!" Ellis said. "You should try 'em, they're real fun."
"Nah, you keep it." She shrugged. "I'm more of a fryin' pan kinda gal myself."
"Since when?" Nick snickered.
"When I run out of grenades, bullets and fire..."
After a moment of silence, Alice's head began to turn again. "William's right. We're gonna run out of bullets eventually. My vote goes to building a van, but like a high tech one. You know, take a wood-chipper and bulldozer and stuff. That or we find a boat and go out in the ocean."
"My name is Walsh."
"I know that." He gave her a quizzical expression. "No seriously!" Though she didn't regret leaving the bus, Alice was beginning to miss her nerd.
"You know how to drive a boat?" Ellis asked.
"Dude, I come from an island off of North Carolina, anyone who doesn't know how to drive a boat... well, they're certifiably insane."