Disclaimer: Sadly enough things haven't changed since the last chapter and as such I still don't own Valve, or their characters. I do own Shale though. ;)

Sorry it's heen so long since my last update, I've been really busy and stuff.

But anyway, here's the next chapter so tell me what you think, regardless if its good or bad, as long as its not some mindless flaming rant.:D

"Speaking of which, how come you can talk all of a sudden?" asked Louis.

I blinked.

"Well, my headache's gone…." It was the only thing that had changed since then.

"So, you were grunting before because of a headache?" Francis laughed, the disbelief in his voice evident.

I frowned, "Well what's your excuse then?"

Zoey and Louis laughed, while Bill merely chuckled and said,

"He got yah there Francis."

Francis frowned, "Yah yah, very funny."

"Anyways," I said, "What's going on? I can't really remember anything, but it couldn't have been like this."

It wasn't really a lie. All I could remember were feelings and emotions; and nothing that would have been associated with this kind of hell.

"Well," Zoey seemed to be interested in filling me in, "At first it was just some sickness people heard about in rumors, like "The Green Flu" and "Super Rabies". And then it went from washing hands more often and being more careful about coughing, to riots and lots of people disappearing in just a few days! When it mutated enough to be airborne, millions of people died or became those infected out there. It was out of control. The only ones left as far as we can tell are immune. Even some of the immune are only resistant to the virus in the air; they can still lose it if they're scratched or bitten."

At the end her voice took on a bitter tone, as if she had seen the effects firsthand.

Not wanting to dwell on that last part I prompted her further.

"What about the different ones? There was the one that grabbed you…"

"We call them Special Infected," she said, "There's the Smoker, they give off that smoke and have those nasty tongues-."

"And the Boomers," interjected Bill, "The big fat ones that barf everywhere, and the others are attracted to."

"Tanks," added Louis, "Like a gorilla on steroids."

Francis simply muttered, "Hunters."

"And Witches, you know them," finished Zoey. "The other Hunters scream right before they tackle us to the floor and…yah….."

I glanced down at my claws, awkward.

"Anyway we're trying to get to Mercy Hospital, a chopper told us to go there for evac."

There was silence for a few seconds, before I picked up the sound of the Witch's breathing in the other room.

"So… what now?" I asked.

"Well," said Bill, "We're gonna get ready for tomorrow and then catch some sleep."

"I'll see yah tomorrow, then." I said as I turned.

"Where are you going?" the worry was obvious.

"I'm going to stay with the Witch, to make sure she doesn't lose it," I paused, "Goodnight Zoey."

I heard her, "Oh, g-goodnight then," as I walked down the hall.

I froze at the doorway as the Witch growled, but relaxed when she caught me in her fiendish gaze.

I slowly edged over to where she was kneeling and sat down next to her with my back to the wall.

She was still, and appeared as though she would remain that way, so I leaned back and closed my eyes.

I don't know exactly how long it was, but after what seemed like a few minutes I felt a slight movement in the floor. I cracked my eyes open in time to see her scoot towards me, and then lean on my side.

About ten minutes after that her breathing evened out and she went limp.

She had fallen asleep!

I remember feeling her skin next to mine, and how we both seemed cold, before I leaned back and closed my eyes. There was a bluish haze in my mind as I drifted off to sleep.

xxxxxxxXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXxxxxxxx

I woke up slowly, like trying to get out of a tub of molasses. I felt drained, even though I had just woken up. I was stretching my arms, my eyes still closed, when my arm bumped something. My eyes were immediately open and my pulse quickened, before I remembered where I was. The breath I had been holding escaped with a sigh. The Witch had leaned over during the night, and her back was on the lower part of my torso.

I blinked. Something was different.

The chalk white hair that was there yesterday was gone. Her hair was now a dark brown, almost black. At first she seemed like Zoey, but then she shifted, and I could see her claws, twice as long as mine and razor sharp.

"Mmmmm…." She muttered in her sleep.

I leaned my head over, till I was in view of her face. It had changed to, and looked less gaunt, more peaceful.

She brought one of her claws up and started to rub her eyes with the back of her hand.

"My head….owwnn…" She murmured.

I blinked.

She was still growling, but growling in English… that's the only way to explain it.

She opened her eyes, which were a nice brown, no longer an unnatural yellow, and yawned. Her claws spread wide as she stretched her arms out.

Her double-take would have almost been funny if she hadn't screamed right after.

The sound lasted only for a second, however, because, in her haste to get away from the daggers her hands used to be, she jumped backwards. Her lower back hit my side and her head hit the floor, hard. She must have blacked out, because she went limp. I picked her up under her shoulders and legs, and set her down on the floor in front of me. She was really light.

As she began to stir I kneeled next to her.

"Hello?" I said in what I hoped sounded like a soft voice, "Are you okay?"

Her eyes open a crack.

"Wherrrrrr amm I?" she asked.

"A safe house. Are you okay?"

"Sorrrtaaa…..awwwwm….headaaache…." She slurred her words.

She looked up at me and gasped.

"Yourrrr eyes!"

My eyes? I guessed since we were so close the shadow from my hood didn't hide them. "What's wrong with them?" I asked.

She put her head between her claws.

"I can rrrremember themmm……frooom……lasst nnight?...yahh.. Last night…you saved me." Her slur faded to nothing in the end, she was speaking plain English now.

Then her eyes widened with sudden realization and she looked at her claws, still stained red with blood.

"I….I ki-…..I killed…!" Her eyes filled with tears as she started to hyperventilate.

"Shhh!" I pulled her closer. "Shhhhh…. It's okay….. Shhhh…."

Her frame shuddered as she buried her face in the side of my jacket. I heard the pounding of footsteps coming from the hall before the four Survivors from yesterday skidded to a stop at the door, guns drawn.

They stood there, their looks going from determination to confusion.

"Wha-? Where's the Witch?" Francis seemed disappointed by the lack of something to shoot at.

I looked up, to my right, at the four, but mostly at Francis.

"She's right here. What did you think, she disappeared or something?"

Francis was having a hard time comprehending something that wasn't in your face obvious.

"But that girl's not a Witch," he said it as though I didn't understand something.

I held up her one of her huge talons. "Guess again."

They all jumped.

"Whoa!" Louis pulled up his gun, along with everyone else.

"What the hell is going on kid?" Bill cried.

I could smell the sudden fear come off them in waves. They feared Witches more than almost anything else, so it seemed. She was still shaking too.

"Its fine," I said raising a claw of my own in a gesture of peace, "She's changed, like me."

"What happened?" asked Zoey.

They all relaxed a bit.

"I don't know, but she was like this when I woke up."

"So, what, is she still a Witch then?" Louis asked.

I recalled my first encounter with Zoey, and shuddered inwardly at the memory.

"We're both," putting emphasis on the word, "hanging somewhere in between, I think."

"Hmph," Bill grunted, "Well, in between or not, we need to get goin'. Now."

"Alright, alright. Just give us a minute," I grumbled.

As the sound of their footsteps faded down the hallway, I looked down at the girl trying to bury herself in my hoodie. I figured this wasn't going to be as easy.

Her dark curtain of hair parted as she peered up at me. The chocolate pools were sad, and scared, but no longer filled with tears.

"We have to l-leave," her voice caught a little, "now?"

"Yes, we have to keep moving toward the hospital, they're going to be evacuating people from there," I had overheard the other four discussing it yesterday. "That means we will be able to get out of here; hopefully to somewhere safe, okay?"

She nodded and we got to our feet.

"So," I said as we walked through the doorway, "what's your name?"

"It's….. It's Angel," the sound of our footsteps grew more prominent as she paused, "Um, are we going to have to kill those….. Things?

I pulled my hood farther over my eyes before I answered.

"They've lost their minds. They're infected, no longer human, just monsters who want to kill, so it's them or us."

Even with the reasoning, it was too hard to look into her eyes and tell her she would have to do something that had caused her so much pain in the first place.

I never wanted to hurt her, ever.

Keeping the truth would only hurt more, but I could do something to help.

"Don't worry, I'll protect you. You won't have to do anything except hold on; I'll carry you on my back."

As we walked into the room Angel hid herself behind me.

"This is Bill, Zoey, Louis, and Francis," pointing to each in turn, "We're going to work with them to get out of here."

"Done yet kid, or did you want to have a welcoming party first?" teased Bill.

I rolled my eyes. "Yah yah, Bill, we'll go, I just need a gun, and she needs some clothes."

I handed Angel a jacket from a bunch of clothes under the table, then started going through the pile of assorted weapons and ammunitions.

Francis seemed troubled. "What about her?"

"Don't point, it's rude," I said without looking up as Angel cringed next to me, "She's not fighting, end of story."

"How did you-"

I spun around, brandishing two oversized pistols and slapping in two clips from the small pile I'd just stuffed in my pouch.

"I'm a Hunter, remember? I could smell you raising your arm!"

"You little-"

"Alright!" interjected Bill as he unbolted the steel door, "Let's go kick some zombie ass!"

I kneeled down as the others burst into the sunlight, guns blazing, to cut down some wandering infected. Angel wrapped her arms around my neck, claws hidden by the extra large jacket. As I moved into the bloody sunlight, she put her head down on my shoulder. I assumed the sight of newly slain infected scared her as she shuddered.

I caught up with the others, pistols drawn, as a horde of the zombies came sprinting in our direction. I fired a bullet into the heads of the closest infected, who fell like bricks and tripped up a good deal of the others. They fell like dominoes. I turned to Zoey.

"Do you have anything that explodes?" I asked.

"Well there's a pipe bomb-" she started to say.

"Perfect," I grabbed it and activated it, then lobbed into the infected.

The mass of bodies instantly moved toward the beeping cylinder. Since they were already so close together, the initial explosion obliterated ten of them, and broke the bodies of twenty more in the shockwave. We picked off the stragglers with bursts of fire.

"Great tactic kid," said Bill as we continued through the streets, "but how did you know they'd go for them?"

I glanced over at him, "I didn't."

xxxxxxxXXXXXXXxxxxxxxx

Later that day we all crawled into the next safe house, exhausted from the day's slaughter and survival game. I let Angel down for what must have been the fiftieth time that day. She flopped down into a chair and hid herself in the extra large jacket, with the hood up, looking like a little kid. I stretched my arms and back out, stiff from holding her all day, except for the breaks we took on occasion after a large horde had swarmed us in an almost desperate attempts on our lives.

The Special Infected had steered clear of us for some reason, possibly planning their next move. Not that they were exceptionally intelligent, but they definitely had the instinct to survive, and not thrust themselves upon us like their common brethren. I had smelled Smoker a few times, and heard the growling of a Hunter somewhere off in the distance, but they had yet to show themselves.

We each settled into our corners for the night, Angel and I sitting on a blanket I had found in a closet. Zoey kept casting furtive glances over at us, before she too fell asleep.

I didn't know where to end it but meh...

Flame on! 8[O]