Move
The first sign that there was trouble was the burst of static that crackled from the radio in Korra's hand.
She had wanted to go in immediately. Her seatbelt came undone, her hand went to the door handle. The moment her fist clenched around the handle she was rudely reminded exactly why she was waiting in the car and not breaking into the clinic.
Her hand relaxed at her side. "Trust me." Mako had said before any of this.
She'd sent in Mako as lead, seconded by ever observant Kuvira and third as Kai. Mako was a good leader with killer instinct; he sized things up faster than anyone, even herself. More importantly he could keep Kuvira in check. Kuvira was a dogged fighter. No one wanted to survive more than Kuvira. And Kai, well he was the kind to throw himself on a grenade. Not that Korra would ever allow him to do so, but his loyalty was always good in tough situations. Plus, he could improvise with the best of them.
Outside the jeep, Bolin was lighting a cigarette and shaking out his legs. Her could hold off any assailant for a good bit if need be. He liked being a guard. Protecting someone was always Bolin's favorite pastime.
They had parked a small ways from a veterinary office in the mountains. The road here had been made of dirt and gravel. From her vantage point was a wide gravel road flanked with forestry and a dipping sun. The gravel road disappeared with a sharp turn, concealed with dense forest. She sat in a jeep that had no windows, and the doors were low. Metal bars went up from all sides and the top was supposed to crank up or down. Key words being "supposed to." It had one position: down.
She knew they could hold their own but she still wished she could have gone in with them. They were only risking so much to get her medication after all. Not for the first time she regretted not seeing the crowbar in time. She'd been caught off guard and if she hadn't dodged as quick as she did it would have cracked her skull in half on the spot. Instead, it left a nasty gash on her shoulder which had readily accepted all kinds of bacteria. Bacteria that liked spreading infection to all of her body hence being covered in sheen of sweat even though it was a breezy sixty degrees. Her muscles hurt. Breathing hurt. Her - well, her everything hurt.
She rested in the passenger side of their jeep a pistol in one hand and a machete slumped against her leg.
Just as she was about to find restless sleep a shot rang out. Bolin spun to her eyes wide.
"Korra-," He began. But Korra had already seized her radio.
"Mako, status! Are you guys alright!" She shouted, "What's happening!"
Static.
"Kuvira, Status."
Static.
"Kai, status!"
Sweat now dribbled down her forehead and it had nothing to do with her infection. She desperately clutched the radio. Her heart throbbed faster with each question that crossed her mind. Human or undead? How many undead? Were they surrounded? If so, how badly outnumbered? Two to one? Ten to one? And finally, how many causalities?
Her heart broke in half. She had tried to compartmentalize what had happened to Opal, same as everyone. But she couldn't lose anyone else. Not even Kuvira.
All of these questions poured in a fraction of a second until she released the radio.
Static.
Then…
Three more shots rang out. Without hesitance Bolin raised his machete.
A quiet beat followed. Where they both waited for whatever shit storm brewed in the sky.
It happened so fast, blink and you missed it: The front of the veterinary clinic swung open and out poured the undead. What had to be at least two dozen. Some limped past others with broken limbs, others grabbed aimlessly for prey beyond their reach. They oozed from the building, unaware that their pale rotting faces were home to maggots. Their jaws were bloody from past victims, broken by escaped victims and, most pressingly, hungry for more victims.
"O-oh man. This is not good!" Bolin observed, adjusting his hold on his machete to a brutish hold, no time for fancy slashing, just heavy handed blows, "Not good!" He repeated.
They were a small ways down the street but the damned things moved fast.
Korra leapt from the passenger side of the jeep to the driver side. Her muscles ached in pain. Simultaneously her muscles begged her not to move, preferably not ever again. She ignored them and twisted the key in the ignition. It stirred unhappy, "Dammit!" She swore twisting the key and hearing the engine let out an unsatisfied belch.
"Korra, I don't mean to rush you-,"
"I'm working on it, Bo!"
The first and fastest wave made it to the jeep in less than twenty seconds.
Bolin raised his machete and sunk it into the first undead. Then a second. He spun and caught a third. Korra turned the key and gave a little gas. "Commoncommoncommon," she chanted like a gambler at the slots. She twisted and gassed. Nothing.
She tried again...
She hit the jackpot. The engine sputtered to life. Not pretty, but it would do. Bolin didn't hesitate with finishing off two undead, and leaping into the jeep.
"Get us out of here, now! Now!"
Korra's foot slammed the gas. They blew past a short wave of fast moving undead.
Just as she moved to radio in a pick-up location to her hopefully living crew her eyes caught sight of four bodies, three of which she recognized, one of which she had never seen before climbing out of a small window from atop the veterinary clinic.
In her rearview she spotted Mako and Kai waving her down.
"Bolin," Korra grabbed Bolin's attention as he cut through the neck of an undead who had managed to climb into the jeep, "Grab onto something!" He obeyed, grabbing the side of the jeep with one hand and firing a gun with his other.
The swarm rushed the jeep as Korra slipped the jeep into reverse, breaking fast and re-accelerated in the opposite direction. They bound across the street, the military sized jeep smashing against the threadbare bodies of the undead. Finally the wheels found purchase in the softer lawn of the office building and began shredding the grass.
Korra had only just began breaking in front of the building when an undead managed to pounce through the passenger window. Unhinging his jaw, he moved to sink his teeth into her forearm.
Judiciously she lifted her pistol, slipped the barrel against the underside of its jaw and pulled the trigger. Brains exploded across the windshield and her face as she hollered, "Move it!" She'd maneuvered the jeep just below them on the roof of the office.
Mako turned to Kuvira and all but thrust her head first into the jeep. Followed by more than ready to go Kai and a dark-haired newcomer.
Mako made to jump into the jeep only to be stopped by a hand grabbing him around his ankle. He tripped and fell forward with a cry as the stealthy undead unhinged his teeth ready to chomp down. Mako spun, moments too late. His eyes widened in absolute horror as he witnessed the beginning of his own end. The rotting teeth and scarred face suddenly dropped backwards pinned against the roof by a dagger. Mako turned an appreciative gaze to Bolin whose arm was still in position from throwing the precise shot. Quickly, Mako scrambled into the jeep, his eyes still wide from the realization of how close he'd been.
Korra's foot was already on the gas. Bolin swung his gun to take out the undead closing in on the front of the jeep as Mako made a defense for the left side with Kuvira on the right. They broke through the undead much slower than they had managed to get in.
In one minute they'd barely cleared forty feet from the building.
They were surrounded heavily on the front and sides. Easily two dozen of them. Other undead began emerging from the woods having been called by the gunfire. A clustering effect began with the undead steadily closing in on all sides. In seconds they'd be completely overrun.
"We need to get out of here!" Mako shouted over the heavy breathing and wild swipes of the undead. Taking aim of a close undead he released a bullet clean through its skull.
"Working on it!" That was becoming her catchphrase and she didn't like it. Korra grit her teeth as she drove over the corpse of an undead the jeep rattling and slowing even further from the effort.
"We might need to abandon the jeep at this rate!" Bolin added pulling the trigger of his gun, "Shit." He said realizing it was empty. He dropped the weapon and rearmed his machete.
"Shit!" Korra echoed to herself. If they died right now, outside the clinic, it would be her fault. They wouldn't be here if it weren't for her.
"The only thing keeping them at bay is this goddamned jeep!" Kuvira paused and reloaded before continuing to shoot.
Of course there was another option Korra knew. And she'd worked it out before they had even left their base:
If the situation got bad enough she could give herself to the undead.
It would offer enough distraction for them to get away. She unlocked the door. Besides, even with the medication she'd have three long weeks of recovery ahead of her, that was if she responded to the meds. For all she knew her body was already too far gone. It certainly felt like it. Worse, she'd be a vulnerability, a liability that might very well get herself and her crew killed.
She turned her eyes to Kai, as he released a specialty arrow and sent it spinning steadily into the chest of one - no, two undead, skewering them both together with enough force that they were pinned into a nearby traffic sign. They struggled around one another too dumb to work together and dislodge the thing. Kuvira was firing two .45 caliber handguns at once. Mako had taken two machetes and was hacking at anything that moved outside the jeep. Bolin had his six, banging two undead heads together and clobbering a third with a machete.
She watched them. Proud they were fighting so hard. Proud to have lead them for so long. Her fingers found her mother's torn betrothal necklace which she'd carried in her pocket since she'd passed. An awkward sounding prayer to the gracefully dead began forming in her head.
She resigned at that moment completely ready for the gruesome death awaiting her.
Just as she prepared to exit the car a hand seized her arm. She spun, expecting an undead but instead found green eyes concealed in long dark bangs pinned behind the head of a beautiful woman. Even in a coating of dirt the face still took Korra's breath away, "Move." The beauty said climbing from the back to the front.
Korra climbed aside into the passenger seat. If someone thought there was an option, Korra would try it before she ended her own life.
The girl put the car in reverse first.
"Uhm, I think we're trying to go the other direction," Korra mentioned.
But the wind was already beginning to howl in her hair. Behind them was only lightly dense. But it was enough that they were rushing at the building hitting high speeds. The distance between the jeep and the building began closing quickly. Way too quickly. Mako began hollering for them to slow down or they would-
The newcomer yanked a hard left on the wheel. Mako toppled into Bolin. Kai missed a shot he'd made with his arrow, only taking off an ear of an undead rather than its head. Only Kuvira had anticipated the unexpected, she barely stumbled and continued firing rapidly.
Undead hit the side of the jeep as they spun what could be described as a dizzying 180 degree turn with them facing right instead of forward. They'd cleared the building with mere inches to spare. This path was not nearly as dense as going straight forward. Why had Korra not seen it?
The newcomer sent them forward again. She course corrected facing away from the office once again and towards a better path all of five yards from where they'd started. The only difference was that the cluster of undead now clustered around gravel instead of their jeep. In fact it took them a moment to realize their prey had moved away. If they weren't brain dead their expression might have said, "Where'd they go?"
In the midst of this, the green eyed newcomer had never bothered to break. Instead, she hit the gas causing them to toggle back and forth from one side of wheels to the other. All of this in under thirty seconds.
Bolin and Mako clanked teeth. Kai turned green ready to puke. No one had signed up for a rollercoaster ride. Except maybe Kuvira who spun around no longer interested in the light population on her side of the jeep. She took up shooting over Korra and the newcomer's head. The sound was deafening. Seriously. Two .45 caliber handguns methodically dinging off in her ears? Korra's teeth were rattling in her skull. She looked over at the newcomer, whose face was intense with concentration, not even flinching from the sound in her ears.
Stomach in her throat Korra raised her pistol and fired taking down the last of opposition if only to make Kuvira sit down and shut up with all that racket. As they sped past what had once been a death trap she turned to the newcomer with jet black hair in a sloppy bun. She wore a green pendant around her neck which hung over her confident shoulder blades and matched her lovely emerald eyes.
Guilt suddenly consumed Korra. This girl - whom they had known for all of ten minutes - hadn't given up even when Korra had.
Clearing ground quickly and jetting past the arriving undead who emerged from the forest, the girl hit the bend at full speed, coasting the car as opposed to breaking into the turn. It was like she had watched too much "Fast and Furious" growing up.
"I don't know who you are!" Bolin said as everyone took up proper seats in the jeep, "But I love you!" He leaned forward and planted a big, wet kiss on her cheek.
The girl smiled. Stress oozing away and her expression softening. And when that happened she became even more gorgeous, "My name's Asami."
"Thank you," Korra smiled at the driver a bit too dreamily, the next word putting butterflies in her stomach, "Asami."