DISCLAIMER: sadly, I do not own any of these characters, no matter how much I would like to.
I apologize for anything you think is OOC…. I tried my best, but sometimes my best just isn't good enough. :)
...
"Everyone get in the safe room!" Rochelle's voice echoed and suddenly, the sobbing stopped.
The door slammed shut against a flood of infected bodies, but there was only three survivors inside. "Shit." Nick muttered, glancing out the door. Sure enough, there was Ellis, running as fast as his legs could carry him away from a witch, her claws outstretched and bloodied.
"Come on guys!" Ellis was yelling as he attempted to reload his gun. He tripped over his own foot and crashed to the ground, rolling a few feet before skidding to a halt. His pants were torn and bloodied before the witch even got to him.
"Shit, Nick he's not worth it!" Rochelle grabbed Nick's arm and tried to pull him back as Nick snatched a few extra guns from the shelf and kicked the door open again. "Come on, just forget it. Don't risk your own life for the kid."
Nick decided to not grace that comment with a response and merely yanked his arm away from her to set off at a run towards the screaming witch. Blood was flying in all directions and Ellis' gun was lying a few feet out of reach. The first shot hit the witch's head, making her stop mauling Ellis for a second before the rest of Nick's bullets shot through her body, leaving her shredded and completely dead.
"Aw, hell." Ellis moaned as he tried to push himself up and slipped in a pool of his own blood.
"Understatement of the year, Ellis." Nick grumbled as he knelt beside the kid and grabbed the health pack on his pack. "I was saving this for myself, but…" He opened it up and pulled the bandages out. Ellis twitched away slightly when Nick's hands touched the deep wounds left by the witch's claws, but sighed appreciatively when Nick rubbed the disinfectant on the cuts and covered them with the bandages.
"Shit!" Ellis grabbed one of Nick's guns and yanked it out of the holster on Nick's hip. He aimed at something above Nick's shoulder and shot several times. Nick felt the heat of the bullet as it whizzed by his face and turned to see several dead infected collapsing to the ground. "There's more coming. We gotta get inside." Ellis drawled, attempting once again to get up, but only managing to slip on his own blood.
Nick stood up and offered a hand, which Ellis gratefully took and rose with only a few slips on the way. Once Nick let go of Ellis, the younger man tried to take a step and, again, forgot his blood was slippery and almost fell flat on his ass. "Shit, Ellis, can't you even walk?" Nick asked, but he didn't sound angry as he swiftly stretched out an arm and caught Ellis by the back of his shirt. He tossed the younger man's arm over his own shoulders and shifted his grip on the gun so he could comfortably hold it with one hand.
There was a bubbling sort of growl and Nick pulled Ellis back just in time; a steaming pile of boomer bile splattered onto the pavement in front of their feet. Although the creature had failed to hit the targets directly, the survivors' feet and lower legs were splashed with the vile-smelling liquid. "Shit. Shit, shit, shit." Ellis muttered, tightening his grip on the katana he was holding and taking a few steps away from Nick. Hurried footsteps came from every direction as wave after wave of infected came rushing out of their hiding places to swarm the puke on the ground. Nick took aim and shot the offending boomer once in the stomach, causing it to explode and blow a few infected away into an alley just as the first fell on them. Ellis beheaded it with a sing that almost knocked him off balance.
"Just stay on your feet, Ellis." Nick growled, turning to annihilate as many infected as he could before reloading. Ellis's eyes flew in every direction as he slashed at the bodies surrounding them. The piles of dead infected kept growing around them until, finally, the stench of the boomer bile disappeared and they were allowed to lean against each other in relief. Ellis groaned as he took his weight off of his left leg, which was sticking out at a strange angle from the fall, and Nick decided that now would be a good time to make a run for it. He hurried Ellis along as best he could toward where he thought the safe room was. As it turned out, he had gotten confused during the hoard attack and had run the wrong direction.
"There's got to be another safe room around here, right? There's always more." Ellis was trying to sound hopeful, but his eyes saw nothing but dead bodies and burned buildings surrounding them.
Nick turned around and scanned for any evidence of the safe room Rochelle and Coach were waiting in, but couldn't see a single making that pointed him in the right direction. "Best to keep going in one direction, so we don't go in circles." He said quietly, leaning Ellis against a building. "Let me finish patching you up." He added, pulling the rest of the bandages from the pack and wrapping them tightly around Ellis' busted up leg. "Sorry." He mumbled when Ellis cried out in pain from Nick popping the bone back into place. "I think you should be able to walk on that."
Ellis tested his weight on his leg and laughed when he hardly felt any pain. "That's better! Hey, this reminds me of this one time my buddy keith and I went joy riding in his truck and I got thrown out the back, man his mom was so mad at us, but I landed on my leg and it got busted real bad. He had to take me to the hospital and I needed surgery to set it right again. Man, I'm glad I don't need doctors now."
Nick rolled his eyes. "The nearest one might try to gut you, Ellis so let's try to avoid those kinds of injuries again."
Ellis nodded and grinned, bouncing off the wall and switching his katana to his other hand. "Let's find that safe house." He jogged ahead, but Nick caught up to him and grabbed the back of his shirt tightly in one hand as a warning to not run off alone like usual. "No taking risks, 'cause we haven't got any more med kits." Ellis attempted to impersonate Nick's voice and failed miserably, somehow succeeding in making the other man smile a fraction before turning serious again.
"Seriously, Ellis, if we get injured out here now, we're dead."
"Or infected."
"Either way, we're dead."
They walked in silence for a while before Ellis decided to voice a question he had been worrying about for a while. "What happens if we can't find a safe house?"
Nick, who was currently walking in front of Ellis, shrugged but didn't say anything. The response did nothing to boost Ellis' confidence in their search. Total darkness had fallen sometime during their walk and they were now searching the streets with their feeble flashlights for a sign pointing them to a safe house. Ellis was the one that finally spotted the tell tale arrow pointing down a side street that finally gave them new hope for their lives. As they had been forced to fight swarms of the infected, both men were now limping and carrying only melee weapons, having run out of ammunition several hours previously.
"Safe room up ahead!" Ellis yelled gleefully, pointing to the orange arrow on a wall about an hour after the sun had started to rise again. "Ammunition, health packs, guns, and beds!" He laughed and picked up his pace, causing the older man to shake his head and hurry to catch up.
"You need to keep your voice down, Ellis. The safe house could still be several miles away."
"Naw, Nick! It's right there!" Ellis broke into a run. "See?" He grabbed the handle of the door and pulled. "Shit!" Nick heard his slashing with his katana and a screeching wail coming from the room. "Witch!"
Nick ran full out for the room, raising his ax in his hands. The witch was trying to get past the katana to maul Ellis, but the kid was keeping her back, if not injuring her very much. When Nick got there, the combined effort of the two melee weapons finally did the witch in and she crumpled to the ground in a bloody mess. "Some safe house." Nick growled, kicking the body out of the way and pushing Ellis into the room first. "Where are we anyway?"
"Some sort of motel, I think. The sign was broken and I was too busy killing that bitch to really care where I was." Ellis laughed. "Got that door blocked? Cool, let;s look around."
"Ellis, this isn't some sort of vacation!" Nick was tired, hungry, and seriously lacking on patience. He had heard enough of Ellis' stories about him and his buddy Keith to last him a lifetime. If any of it was true, Nick would eat Ellis' hat. He figured that Ellis just didn't realize how serious the situation was and had decided to treat it like some sort of game that he had to win. "We are separated from Rochelle and Coach, have no way of contacting them, and can't tell whether we've just gone backwards or forwards to figure out where we need to go in order to get the hell out of here! Maybe paying attention to a few details wouldn't kill you!" He stormed off into a room and slammed the door shut. There were sleeping bags all over the floor and writing on the walls, but Nick ignored all of it and fell onto the bed. He was asleep before he even shut his eyes.