"Rochelle!"
There was fog, so much fog. Coach did his best to try to keep an eye on the young woman as she rushed ahead, becoming no more than a blur in the thick haze that surrounded them. If it wasn't for the pink shirt she wore he might've lost track of her completely. Still, he wasn't satisfied with that. Too much weird had been going on lately; the zombies were more aggressive than usual if that were possible, the whole city was covered in a fine layer of ash and soot. Looking around one would expect the buildings to be burned but they were perfectly fine. Deserted, but fine.
It unnerved him.
Behind him he could hear Nick's and Ellis's rounds go off. Short, quirk bursts to conserve what ammo they could. There were very few ammo dumps in this town and even less medical supplies and food as if the place had been abandoned long before the apocalypse. He looked back, keeping track of the two as they hurried forward to catch up with him and he picked up the pace as much as he could. His knee was bothering him again but he was doing his best to walk it off. He began calling for the woman again when he turned forward..and saw nothing but a sprawling parking garage.
"Roch— Aww shit, now. Ro! We gotta stay toget—"
Never during all of this had he come across such a quiet Charger. It rushed at him from the left, hitting him with the force of a semi, carrying him across the ground and into a parked Honda. Somewhere in the white noise hissing in the back of his mind he swore he heard something crack, echoing with the sound of the car's tires hitting the ground again, righting itself after nearly being tipped over from the impact. The scent of copper and sour meat burned at his nose as the Charger bellowed his triumph and slammed him harder against the car. He felt the word go dark and topsy turvy as he was lifted but when he dropped it was gravity that carried him, not the huge fist of the Infected.
"Oh shit, Coach! C'mon man, you gotta get up!" Ellis cried, tugging at his arm, doing his best to pick up a man that was twice his weight. He felt Nick's hands pull at the Charger's stubbornly clinging fingers, his face setting grimly as they refused to let go. Their combined effort eventually got him to his feet. He was shaken, hurting, but he was alive.
"You alright?" The gambler's poker face was easy to return when Coach's vertigo eased and he met the big guy's darker gaze. With all that was happening around them he was somehow still able to hide his concern, but with each siren that warned them of hell approaching, it was becoming increasingly difficult. More than once Nick felt an almost irrepressible tremor in his hands and his heart in his throat.
"I can walk this off. G'on boy, I'm good. Ro's up ahead. Go get her before she gets herself into some shit."
Nick's jaw ticked, something Coach had come to recognize as barely repressed anger, and he nodded once, firmly, then stalked off to find the young woman. Ellis had noticed the tight grip the conman had upon his machine gun but spoke nothing of it. Instead of running off with him he decided to stay back with Coach whose limp was worse and pace was slower.
"You sure you alright, Coach? Ya limpin' real bad." Picking up the rifle that Coach had dropped, Ellis easily caught up to the older man and pressed the weapon into the grasp of his partner's weak fingers who mumbled a thanks. He could hear the other two up front. Their voices were heated enough and they reverberated off of the walls around them.
"I'm straight. We better get on before they strangle each other or attract every damn zombie around here."
Ellis nodded but still didn't leave Coach's side. His eyes barely strayed from him as he watched him, his brows furrowing with concern.
"Coach went down because of you!" He couldn't remember a time when he heard Nick yelling so loudly. He followed behind Rochelle who was doing her best to keep her distance from him, though she matched his fury with equal fervor.
"I'm sorry, okay! I didn't mean to get him hurt!"
"Sorry? Sorry?! He could've been KILLED, Ro!"
"Y'all, I'm fine." With the world going to hell they needed to depend on each other, not sit there and argue. Tension was high, terror was higher. They were all barely holding it together. He might've been hurt, but he had to keep strong for them if not for himself.
"Stop yelling at me!" Rochelle's cry bounced off of the fog covered buildings around them, sending a horde into a frenzy. It was only a small group, one they mowed through quickly, but it could've been worse.
"You deserve to be yelled at! No. You deserve more than that!" Nick slammed another clip into his machine gun so fiercely Coach swore that he felt the magazine vibrating from where he stood. He glanced between them then looked back at Ellis who was utterly lost and impossibly silent. The optimism of the young mechanic was shaken and he had nothing to say to try to get them to stop arguing.
Coach did, though. And he did so with a sudden flare of his own temper.
"WILL YOU TWO SHUT THE HELL UP!?"
UP— Up— up— The last of his snarled yell echoed in the air, stunning his companions. Even the zombies seemed to grow quiet in light of Coach's anger.
"I said I'm fine. I wanna get out of here as much as y'all and we ain't gonna do it with all this bickerin'!" Limping still and swallowing down a bit of blood from his mouth — he must've bitten the inside of his cheek when the Charger got him — he followed Ellis down a flight of stairs, leaving the two behind him.
He hadn't seen the thump of Rochelle's shot gun into the back of Nick's shoulder, nor did he see the return elbow to her stomach — they had conveniently stopped when he turned around to eye them. They grinned warily only to hit each other again when he looked forward and kept moving.
Sometimes he couldn't help but feel like he was babysitting these people.
