I.
The zombie got between them, for all their caution.
They were passing the entrance to the supermarket's stockroom. Erik walked point, the barrel of his rifle held steadily out ahead of him. Charles was following, but he had paused, glancing back at the directions on the wall to make certain that he had committed all the details to memory, and by consequence he had fallen a few yards behind Erik. Erik would not be aware that he had stopped until later.
It all happened very quickly.
The zombie came through the crash doors. It stood for a moment, almost as though in indecision, before lurching toward Erik.
Erik did not see this. He sensed the movement of metal as the PCV doors' hinges flexed, heard the doors open and the sound of dragging feet. And then there was a smell.
There was a grave smell and Charles shouting, "Erik - behind you!" and Erik felt stiff cold fingers groping at the back of his neck. They tore at the baby backpack, trying to take Lorna away from him.
There wasn't time to turn, no time to bring the gun around.
The barrel of his rifle was pointed in the wrong direction. Erik fired anyway.
He pulled the trigger and caught the bullet as it came out the barrel, turning it in the air, causing it veer around and come back in his own direction. Erik sent the bullet blindly over his shoulder, and heard the impact as it shattered through flesh and bone. The clutching fingers loosened.
Erik spun around and fired into the zombie again - then again and again. His rational mind understood that it was already dead - absolutely dead - but he was angry and did not care.
Lorna was howling. The sound of the gun had shattered the deep sleep that Charles had placed her in, and now she was screaming, and Erik couldn't see - couldn't see if -
His hands shook as he clawed at the strap that held up the baby backpack. Erik almost fumbled as he took her down from his shoulders, but he caught the carrier as it began to fall, holding it and the baby inside it steady with his ability.
"Erik," Charles said, his voice steady. "Give her to me."
Later, Erik would chew him out out for falling behind, though it had only been the smallest of mistakes, a few seconds of justifiable carelessness. Once they were back in the bus, Erik would rage and rage about what almost-nearly-could have happened for nearly half an hour, his voice low because Lorna was asleep in the bed at the rear of the bus, and Charles could let him.
Now though, words stuck in Erik's throat. He handed the baby over to Charles helplessly, without a word.
II.
Charles took Lorna and drew her into his lap. She clung to his arm.
She was clean - none of the fluids from the zombie had slashed back on her. Her green eyes were clear, if bright with with tears.
He thought that everything was alright - that everything was going to be okay - but he checked carefully.
Charles smiled at Lorna and gave her a slight emotional push, releasing a little beam of biochemical sunlight into her brain, and she stopped screaming. She loosened her hold on his arm and leaned back to smile at him too, a big silly grin. He worried about using telepathic suggestions, that he might damage her somehow with them - give her a neurosis, maybe - and he avoided it whenever he could.
"Owie?" he inquired, careful to keep the tremor out of his own voice, and she shook her head in an emphatic no. He spread her hands open anyway, checking their back and the palms and the webbing between her fingers for scratches or bites, for the smallest abrasions. He checked up her arms and under her shirt and at the junction where the bottoms of her pants legs and the tops of her socks left half an inch of exposed skin.
"Reload your gun," Charles told Erik while he checked, and though he didn't lift his eyes he could hear Erik fumbling with the weapon.
Charles said nothing of how he had felt the bullet wiz directly past his ear after it exited the zombie. It was a fact that he hoped to be able to keep to himself, since it would benefit Erik not in the slightest to know about it.
Erik was not trustworthy around guns. If Charles had not already known as much from personal experience, he would have worked it out very shortly after the crisis began. Erik panicked around guns, and what made it so much worse was that he refused to admit to this, even to himself.
Charles didn't like guns - had never liked guns, even before his own injury - and he liked the idea of Erik mixed with guns even less, but there were no better options. In the movies, people fought zombies with blunt weapons all the time, with no concern for the dangers of coming into close contact with something that infectious. In real life, nothing beat the stopping-power of a decent gun. Sometimes, Erik would wield found metal items, but that was not as dependable and using his ability too frequently could be draining.
So, guns. Guns were how one stayed alive in the world they were living in.
He finished looking over Lorna, and tousled her mop of green hair. "She's fine," Charles said. He smiled up at Erik. "Really, Eirk, she is."
Erik took Lorna from him and put her back in the baby carrier. "Let's get back to the bus," he said.
Charles nodded and wheeled after him, remembering the first time he had held Lorna.
