Yay! Chapter 2 is here!

HOWEVER. It is very important that I inform you guys of some small changes I made to Chapter 1... I know, I'm sorry. Y'all don't want to read the first chapter again, you just want to get to the new stuff. Trust me, I'm pissed at myself for changing stuff I had already written, both because it took up time I could've been spending on this chapter (if I didn't do the rewrites, I probably would've had this chapter out a few days earlier; I really didn't want to work on the rewrites, so I just kept putting it off) and because I really don't want to piss off my readers.

But I suppose you don't need to get too mad at me because it's not like I rewrote the whole chapter. There are changes only in the second half of the chapter, the parts from Rochelle's POV (excluding her flashback). The reason I made these changes at all is because of a lack of proper planning on my part (I'll try my hardest not to let it happen again). I wrote about a third of this chapter only to realize that certain things didn't quite fit with the previous chapter (namely, Rochelle's behavior). I also decided to make tiny edits to Ellis's injuries. Not too much, just smaller details.

Oh, and I also changed the chapter title to fit better. But that's not all that important.

Obligatory copyright disclaimer. I don't own L4D. If I did, I would be the happiest fangirl in the world.

Left 4 Dead, Left 4 Dead 2, All Official Content © Valve

Original Characters © Me


Nick walked quickly and quietly down the ship's corridors, his eyes focused on the smooth floor and his bruised hands buried in the pockets of the drab khakis all carriers were made to wear. Heeding Rochelle's advice, he avoided attracting any unnecessary attention from the soldiers that guarded the airlocks separating the quarantined quarters of the ship from the clean ones.

He normally made it a point to avoid the soldiers anyway, but the fact that he had specifically been advised to make himself inconspicuous unsettled him. He wondered if perhaps they had taken a step up in their usual carrier-persecuting activities, which were normally somewhat harmless.

They were notorious for singling out individuals on a whim and finding various ways to harass them, especially if other carriers were nearby. "You gotta make an example out of a few, show that disease-carrying lot that we're in charge, or you're gonna lose control of every single one of those goddamned carriers faster than you can say 'infected'," as he had once overheard their reasoning crassly elaborated.

He hated those soldiers with a passion, and he had only been on the ship for four days. He wasn't sure how long exactly he would be able to tolerate them before a stray insult managed to slip past his lips, and he consequently found out what exactly the punishment was for retaliating. He knew it couldn't have been very pleasant, given that even the most resentful of carriers swallowed their pride and submitted quietly, and Rochelle's warning only reinforced that notion.

Not even the carrier medical staff was safe from being mocked or threatened, something that he somehow wasn't surprised to discover.

He found that out the second night they had spent on the ship. He was sitting alone at dinner but one of the nurses, a particularly young and attractive one, was sitting a few seats away on the opposite side of the table and picking dispiritedly at her tray. He noticed one of the soldiers nearby meandering up behind her, and said nothing.

He had been curious as to what the soldier would do to someone had had assumed up to that point to have some form of importance or protection as a crew member.

He kept his face downturned and continued to push around the slop on his tray, but listened intently as the soldier leaned onto the table and nonchalantly told her all of the ruthless and carnal things he would've done to her had she not been a carrier, speaking loudly enough to ensure that he was able to be heard by the room's other occupants.

Two other soldiers stood behind him, snickering. Nick kept silent, watching out of the corner of his eye as her entire face flushed and a tiny whimper escaped her throat, but she gave no other response.

"Eh, sometimes I wish they were allowed to fight back. It's not as fun when they just sit there and take it," commented one of the observing pair.

"Yeah, no arguments there," the one tormenting the nurse replied as he stood. "Let's go."

Before he left, he deftly slipped a gloved hand into the back of her thin shirt and snapped her bra strap audibly against her skin. She gasped when he did so, and the soldiers guffawed through their muffling masks as they moved into the nearest hallway, disappearing from sight.

The nurse promptly picked up her tray and sent it back to the kitchen before making her escape through a far door, her face buried in her arm and her sobs apparently too difficult for her to stem.

Nick was glad that she left; he hated listening to women cry. Besides, she had no real reason to cry in his opinion. The soldier wasn't going to actually do anything he had said he would.

She was a carrier.

Nick learned that night that being a carrier was ironically the only protection he and all of his fellow survivors were going to get on the USS Gettysburg from the very people they had expected to save them without question. Or so he had thought.

He eventually reached the carriers' cafeteria, pushing the double doors open to see that he really was late for dinner. "Damn it."

He stepped inside the room only to have his senses abruptly assaulted with the sharp, head-filling scent of heavy-duty cleaning agents. He began to wrack his brain for possible explanations, but remembered Rochelle directing him to Coach for information.

Glancing around the cafeteria, he observed that some of the corner tables were misplaced, and the scent seemed to be emanating from their general direction. He turned his gaze to the center of the room to see that there was still one person seated, a full tray of what barely passed for food in front of his large form. The man looked up towards him as the doors clicked shut again, the small noise ringing out in the silence and echoing around the large space.

The man patted the side of the table across from him welcomingly. "Come on, Nick. Your supper's gettin' cold."

"Thanks, Coach." Nick sat across from the older man as he passed the tray across and leaned over onto his folded arms.

"Sorry we kept ya waitin' so long. There was… a little bit o' commotion in here earlier." The hesitation in Coach's voice didn't escape Nick's keen ears. He was now convinced of the severity of the event, even if he didn't know what exactly it was.

"So I heard," he said as he removed a plastic spoon from the small utensil package. "What kind of commotion?" He gathered up a spoonful of off-white mush and tasted it as he awaited Coach's response, quickly regretting it as he forced the disgusting substance down his throat. Not only was it unappetizing like Rochelle had said, it was also unpalatably cold.

Coach glanced nervously to his right before he elaborated, bringing Nick's attention to the lone soldier silently standing watch over them from against the wall. His stiff and bulky bodysuit muddled his body language and his gas mask gifted him the ultimate poker face, another reason why Nick disliked the ship's ever-present military personnel. It was nigh impossible to read what they were thinking, what they were planning to do next.

This advantage they had over the conman was one he wasn't used to, and the one he hated the most. Having weapons when he didn't, he could handle. Having backup in the hundreds when he had only three people he knew for certain would stand behind him, he could handle. Being the guards while he was the prisoner, he could mostly handle.

But being unable to read them unnerved him to no end as one who had previously built his entire life upon being able to do just that to anyone he pleased. He felt so helpless in their presence, so robbed of his abilities.

He hated it.

"Let's just say that someone…. Wasn't entirely willin' to cooperate with the guards when they asked him to do somethin' for 'em." He chose his words carefully and spoke quietly. Nick could tell that he wasn't enjoying relating the event to him in front of the soldier, and didn't press the issue. He could grill him for information later, when there were no soldiers around.

Coach took his silence as an opportunity to change the subject. "So… Anything happen with Ellis this afternoon?"

"No. He had a couple of coughing fits, that's it. Didn't really wake up." They hadn't been exceptionally large bouts of coughing, but they were enough to rouse Ellis into semi-consciousness and cause him visible pain until he passed out again.

Nick wouldn't admit it to anyone, but he never failed to find himself feeling genuine fear for his young friend when they occurred. He would snap back into reality immediately upon hearing them and prepare to call for help as he watched the mechanic being subjected to the torture of his own broken body.

He hadn't had to alert the doctors yet, something that he took as a somewhat positive indication. It was evidence that Ellis's condition wasn't really worsening, at the very least.

Coach replied with a small grunt as he absentmindedly glanced around the room, avoiding making eye contact with the soldier. Nick tried forcing down the other unappealing portions of the meal, but found that none of it was remotely edible to him. He disappointedly dropped the spoon into the pale mush and washed the horrid gunk down with room-temperature water from a small plastic cup.

"I'm sorry, Coach. I know you stayed down here to save this for me, but I just can't eat this."

His elder held up his hand in sympathy. "I understand. It was hard for me to eat when it was warm." The fact that Coach had difficulty eating it was an undeniable testament as to how awful the poor excuse for a meal was.

He picked up his tray and brought it to the tray return as Coach stood and stretched. Nick noted the fair amount of weight he had lost since their group first met in Savannah.

Back then, he had still been stuffing his rotund face with king-sized chocolate bars and packages of potato chips. Though Coach had made himself out to be a kind and supportive man in most other respects, his apprehension was only thinly-veiled when he had to share his precious junk food with his hungry teammates. Not to mention, his less-than-stellar health frequently caused them to stop and take risky breaks as he caught his breath and attempted to mitigate the growing ache in his injured knee with their steadily-dwindling supply of pain pills.

Nick remembered how disgusted and resentful he had been of the overweight man. He fully expected, and initially almost hoped, that the hypocritical health teacher would soon die of a heart attack, relieving the ragtag group of all of his perceived dead weight. But as Coach's health improved, he demonstrated his abilities as a leader, and he earned Nick's respect as a reliable teammate, he began to regret ever having such thoughts about him.

They left the cafeteria together and made their way to their sleeping quarters in silence, continuing to avoid garnering suspicion from the guards. When they made it to their cramped excuse for a room, they found their two roommates already there.

A spindly youth was lying on his bed, the lower one on the left set of bunks. He was staring quietly at the underside of the upper bed, his bony hands clasped over his chest. Seated on the floor against the small section of wall between the bunks was a man much closer in age to Nick. His knees were drawn up against his chest and he seemed to be studying them out of boredom.

"Alex, Rich. Y'all okay?" Coach asked as he sat on his own bed, the lower right bunk. It creaked and sagged under his weight, something that all of the beds did no matter who was in them. The carriers were evidently given the oldest and least supportive bunks to sleep on.

"Yeah, we're okay, Coach," answered Alex, the younger of the two. "Or at least, I'm okay. Rich, are you okay?" He rolled onto his side and propped his head upon his hand.

"Yeah, yeah. I'm fine," Rich replied gruffly, picking at a scab on his knee.

"Alright." Coach stared at his folded hands for a moment and then looked up at Nick, who was leaning against one of the support poles of the bunks they shared. "Now that we ain't gotta worry about no soldiers, I can tell ya what happened in the cafeteria."

"What, he doesn't know? How could anyone not know?" Alex seemed utterly shocked that someone could've possibly not known of the incident, but changed his tune when he registered that Nick was the one still in the dark. "Although I guess that since you're you, I shouldn't be too surprised that you missed something so obvious."

Coach and Rich both glared at Alex, sensing the argument that was about to come about because of his unnecessary and haughty comment. The conman, unwilling to accept such disrespect from someone like Alex, purposefully took his bait to show him up.

"Well, unlike a certain lazy and useless piece of shit that I'm forced to share a room with, I was in the medical bay all this afternoon, actually doing something commendable." Nick wasn't incredibly fond of his mutually hateful antagonist, a fact that he didn't bother to hide.

The boy was younger than Ellis by a few years and wasn't quite as talkative, but Nick found him to be far more annoying. While Ellis insisted on telling incessant and pointless stories of his old buddy at the most inconvenient of times, at least he was useful to the group and could think of someone beside himself. Alex by contrast was intolerably selfish and spoiled, two traits even more unwanted in the current times.

"Oh, yeah. Because sitting around for hours by some dying dude's bed is so helpful. Don't give me that crap." His comment plainly struck a nerve inside of both Coach and Nick, and Rich jumped into action as he tried to smother the growing fire.

"Alex!" he growled as he stood from the floor. "Look, I know you insist on pissing Nick off as much as you possibly can, but don't bring their friend into this. That's crossing the line a little, don't you think?"

"No, I don't think so, Rich. I'm just stating a fact. That… Eddie, or Eric, or whatever… He's as good as dead." The smug way he talked about Ellis while indifferently examining his revealingly neat fingernails left Nick seething. It took all of his self-control to keep himself from punching Alex square in the face. Even if doing so would've painfully irritated his bruised ribs, the satisfaction of seeing the smug brat clutching his bleeding nose and crying in pain would've been worth it.

"I've heard you two talking about how bad off he is. I personally don't see why you don't just pull the plug on him. He's gonna kick the bucket soon anyway, so why prolong the inevitable?"

Before Nick could tell him off, Coach stepped in and attempted to smooth over the argument, evidently handling his anger in a much better manner. "It's because we have hope, Alex. We have hope that he's gonna pull through," Coach said calmly, trying to subdue himself just as much as he was trying to subdue Alex. "Is that so wrong?" His chosen counterargument didn't serve quite the purpose he had hoped it would.

"Pffft. I had hopes of going to a good college and helping the world start over, but Nickie over there had no qualms with informing me of just how wrong my hopes were," he retorted, recalling a recent exchange where Nick had rather tactlessly torn down the boy's naïve hopes for the future. His condescending and self-centered attitude was burning through Nick's little remaining patience almost impossibly fast.

Rich knelt down beside the boy's bed, looking like a tired father trying to reason with his upset child. "Alex, you should be able to recognize that those are two completely different things."

"Oh, of course they are. Whose side are you even on, Rich?" Alex folded his arms tightly, only making him look even more like a child.

Rich exasperatedly ran a calloused hand through his messy black hair. Dealing with Alex really was like dealing with an overgrown toddler sometimes. "I'm not on any side. I just don't want a fight breaking out in here, because then we'll all end up like Marcus… You don't want that either, now do you?"

Nick recognized the name and was able to connect it with a face; it was square, pock-marked, and always angry for some undisclosed reason. Nick had judged from his limited experience with him that he was quite an unpleasant character. He concluded that Marcus must've had something to do with the incident, having never heard mention of ending up like him before.

"Rich is right, son. Now let's just put aside our differences before the guards hear somethin' they don't like and come bargin' in," Coach prompted, glad to have Rich there to help deal with Alex.

The boy silently averted his gaze as the rest of the room's inhabitants stared him down expectantly. "… Fine," he eventually mumbled, rolling over onto his opposite side and facing away from the others. Something about the way Alex resigned at the mention of the incident in the cafeteria struck Nick as odd. Now he was more curious than ever as to what had transpired.

After determining that the room's youngest occupant was through causing trouble, Coach returned to the previous subject. "Anyway. Back to what I was sayin'." He shifted on the bed to face towards Nick, the worn springs of the mattress screeching in protest.

Rich settled back into his seat on the floor, joining the discussion. "I'm personally not all that surprised you hadn't heard about it, if you left the med bay without talking to any of the other carriers," he remarked. "In fact, I wonder if the medics even know anything about it, yet."

"The first I had heard of anything happening was when Rochelle told me to watch out for the soldiers, but she didn't specify why. She just told me to ask Coach." He turned to look expectantly at his elder. "But even your explanation was pretty vague." Rich grunted in response as he scratched his goatee.

"Well, you know who Marcus is, right? Tall guy, muscular, lots o' pocks on his face." Coach's description rang the same bell as the name.

"Yeah, I think so. Always pissed off?"

"That'd be him," Coach confirmed with a nod. "Everything happened at the beginning o' supper. We were eatin' like normal, nobody causin' any trouble, and the guards weren't actin' too different than they usually do, either. Marcus was sittin' off by himself, like he always does. But tonight, one o' the soldiers felt the need to go up to him and ask him why he always sat alone. He told him that he just liked being to himself, and… Well, I guess the guard just didn't like that answer." He looked off to the wall as he remembered the scene.

"Huh. 'Didn't like' is an understatement," interjected Rich, a bitter note to his voice.

"Yeah…" He continued to stare at the wall for a brief moment before looking back to Nick and continuing. "He told Marcus that he thought he was hidin' somethin', and ordered him to let himself be searched. Now, Marcus wasn't none too happy 'bout that, and said that he wasn't gonna do it. 'I ain't hidin' anything,' he said. That guard called two more of his buddies over, and asked him if he would do it then. Marcus still said no and sat there. Just like a rock.

"Then, the first guard smacked him hard across the face with the butt of his gun, and Marcus went to work punchin' the stew outta him. It took four of the other guards to hold him down, and several of the ones without somethin' else to do just started kickin' him and punchin' him and beatin' him with their own guns…" Coach looked down with his eyes closed and ran his hand over his bald head. "Shit… Even I started to get sick from how long and hard they went at him."

The room fell into silence as Nick imagined the event.

"… They didn't look all that different from the zombies," Alex commented somberly, still facing away from the group and curled into himself. Nick could tell from his voice that he was bothered by the event. Not surprising, considering that even adult men were shaken by it.

Nick didn't quite feel sorry for Alex, but did register the pull of some strange emotion he couldn't quite place. Before he could delve inside himself to identify it, Rich picked up the conversation.

"It was awful, Nick. You should be thankful you didn't have to actually see it happen… By the time those bastards were done with Marcus, they had beaten him to death and then some."

That caught Nick's attention. "Wait, they actually killed him?" The event was truly severe. Not only did they actually cause physical harm to a carrier with what seemed to be very minimal provocation, they had murdered him. Nick now knew what the punishment for retaliating against the soldiers was, and he fully understood why most everyone simply fell in line.

"They sure as hell did… Blood was fucking everywhere. All over the walls, the floor, the ceiling…" Rich slowly shook his head. "The soldiers were covered in it too, but none of them ran off straight to be decontaminated. I guess the thrill of killing a carrier was all they cared about, possible holes in their suits be damned." He sighed and repositioned himself comfortably against the wall. "But I guess that since the ship's not swarming with zombies, those suits are pretty damn reliable after all."

"Mm-hmm," Coach quietly concurred before continuing. "After they decided they were through beatin' him, they checked his pulse and declared him dead without even tellin' the doctors. They just got a bed sheet, wrapped poor Marcus up in it, and carried him right out the door."

Rich crossed his arms and legs. "We don't know for sure what they did with his body, but we reckon they just tossed him overboard."

"So who cleaned up the mess?" Nick asked, doubting that the soldiers did it themselves.

"Not long after they got him out, they made the cooks clean up while they lectured the rest of us about how the same thing would happen to us if we ignored their orders. They held us in there until the mess was completely gone, which is why Ro was so late getting' to ya."

Nick sighed as he took everything in, absentmindedly picking at the stiches across his chin. "So. First, the military starts shooting carriers trying to get into safe zones. Then, they decide it's better not to immediately kill us and drop all survivors they can find off onto this goddamn boat in the middle of the ocean. Then, they take care of us and make sure that we feel safe and welcome. But now they kill off the ones that just slightly piss them off. Just what in the hell do these bastards even want with us? If they wanted us dead, they could've shot us on sight like they had been or kept on abandoning us and hoping that the zombies would get rid of us for them."

"I've just kinda come to the conclusion that this is their way of punishing us for being carriers," Rich replied sourly. "So what if we're the best hope humanity has left, essentially being immune to the apocalypse and all? We accidentally spread the Green Flu to some people who were probably gonna get it eventually anyways, and that automatically makes us criminals. Traitors."

Nick sneered in agreement. The feeling of being spurned by society was a feeling he was already deeply familiar with.

"Hell, non-immunes have even gotten the idea in their heads that either we're a special kind of zombie that doesn't go batshit crazy, or that we have a strain that doesn't turn us for weeks on end even though everyone else turns within an hour." He scoffed. "No doubt, the military started that bullshit as propaganda to make sure that everyone still uninfected considers us the enemy."

No one could really argue with Rich's logic. It made a fair amount of sense, given that the larger percentage of the human population apparently wasn't immune. No matter which group of people had the better chance of survival in the grand scheme of things, leave it to whatever was left of the United States government, and quite possibly every other government left with some semblance of power, to decide that it would look much better for public relations to persecute the useful few, rather than the doomed many.

Zoey picked the last scraps of tender meat from the small pile of bones on the tin plate in front of her, and reveled in the wonderful feeling of a full stomach as she hungrily slurped down the tiny shreds of flesh.

"I can already tell a difference from when you first cooked fish, Louis. These taste amazing." She licked her fingers clean and unfolded her crossed legs, which were falling asleep. She noted the stubble covering both of them as she absentmindedly scratched at a scab on one, and realized she no longer felt any shame at the minor self-grooming deficiency.

She couldn't decide whether she wanted to be happy or disgusted with herself.

"Thanks! I tried out some different seasonings this time. We're lucky the people who prepared the boat thought to include so much." Louis smiled at the compliment and asked the pickiest of the three for his opinion as well. "What about you, Francis?"

"What about me?" the biker retorted with his mouth full, still working on the largest of the fish. Small flecks of the meat had collected in his beard as he greedily devoured the fish, and the analyst tried to ignore it. He hoped that his growing whiskers didn't look similarly grubby.

He knew that he likely wasn't going to get an incredibly positive response from pessimistic Francis, but asked again anyway. "Do you think I'm getting better at cooking fish?"

"Eh. You're not getting worse at it, I guess." Francis took a large, shredding bite, causing even more scraps to fall to his beard.

Louis merely shook his head at his typical answer. "Why do I even bother?"

"Yeah. Why do you bother, Louis? Bothering is more trouble than it's worth." Francis finally finished tearing away at the whole fish, and proceeded to begin picking through its bones.

"I guess it's just in my nature." Louis shrugged as he stared into the dancing orange flames in front of him.

Their energetic and mystical performance reminded him of an obscure musical he had seen once as a child with his music-loving parents. He could remember neither the name of it, nor the plot, nor even any of the tunes from it. He could just see the beautiful dancers gracefully moving about the stage in their glittery costumes, and he mentally filled in the silence with simple melodies of his own creation.

Francis examined an interestingly-shaped bone before flicking it into the fire, like an unruly audience member tossing his trash onstage. "Well, your nature sucks ass."

Louis rolled his eyes and sighed. "Yeah, you've told me." He turned his gaze upwards while twiddling his fingers, his hands resting in his lap.

The sky was a rich navy, with not a cloud in sight. The stars twinkled magically like flakes of diamond and the moon shone bright and silver and full, rather like a spotlight. The waves sang their gentle and hushed song, and the crackling fire provided its own erratic beat to match its performers' unpredictable dance.

Zoey, done picking through the remains of her meal, laid back onto the warm sand to join Louis in stargazing. "The sky is really beautiful tonight," she quietly noted as she folded her hands over her stomach.

"Yeah, it is."

The trio settled into a pensive silence, each absorbed into themselves as if the others had never been there at all. Zoey began counting the stars, and lost track quite a few times. Whenever she realized that she had counted certain ones twice or skipped over an entire section, she would start back over without complaint, happy to have something to occupy her mind.

Then, slowly and unwittingly, she found herself converting the stars into infected she had killed.

The innocent and sparkling specks of light morphed into the screaming and hideous and mutilated creatures that charged at her relentlessly in her sleep, desperately tearing away at her and pulling her away from safety. She counted the thousands of human beings that didn't have the good fortune to be immune like her.

Or could it even be considered fortunate to be immune? On the one hand, one didn't devolve into a hideous, bloodthirsty beast that ran on only the most primal of animal instincts, thinking only to kill and to eat. But on the other, the world's remaining trials become so much harsher when the most imminent threat is the least of one's worries.

Danger. Danger is everywhere. Almost no place on Earth is free from something, or someone, that only desires to kill. Whether it be ferocious beasts or desperate humans, the threat of death is omnipresent.

Hunger. Not knowing how to capture and prepare an animal or grow and gather edible plants spells certain doom when one can no longer subsist on processed junk. Not knowing when one's body would submit to starvation and torturously consume itself is a terrifying thought for people who had never experienced famine.

Pain. Even something as seemingly harmless as a small cut can turn into a life-threatening affliction without proper medical care. A broken bone or maimed limb can heal incorrectly, leaving a victim permanently disabled and a liability to anyone trying to help them. Leftover illnesses and injuries from before the Green Flu, previously stabilized by medicines and therapies, are now free to take over their victim's body.

Insanity. Whether it's the simply the stress of witnessing the end of the world or the overwhelming silence from the lack of normal human interaction that is to blame, going mad is a very real possibility for anyone. Not even people in a group and protected in a safe zone or on an island are immune to losing their minds.

Suffering. Everyone suffers in some way. Whether it is the pain of an injury or the regret of a fatal mistake, the loss of a loved one or the longing for the past, suffering has an iron grip upon what's left of humanity and doesn't intend to let go.

Lost in her thoughts, she felt her own suffering swallowing her whole and suffocating her. She struggled against the darkness closing in on her, wishing for it to go away. She just wanted peace. She just wanted to live her pointless life. She just wanted to be free from death.

Why couldn't she just let go of what plagued her so horribly?

"Hey, Louis. I think your fish is makin' Zoey sick."

She quickly opened her eyes at the sound of Francis's voice, and lights jumped wildly about in front of her vision as she registered her surroundings. She had been scrunching them noticeably tightly, and her knuckles were white from clenching her fists so strongly that her untrimmed fingernails had been digging into her palm.

"Zoey? Are you okay?" Louis looked at her worriedly as he gently laid a hand upon her shoulder. She could feel herself shaking, and inwardly cursed herself for being so pathetic.

She sat up and began to knock sand loose from the back of her once-white tank top, attempting to save face. "Y-yeah. I'm fine. Of course, I'm fine. Why… Why wouldn't I be?" Showing weakness was embarrassing enough. She couldn't let them worry unnecessarily about her. The bad times were over, she just needed to move on and forget. It's what she had been trying to do ever since they made it to the island.

"Well for one thing, you ate Louis's fish."

"Oh, great. On top of almost having a mental breakdown, I get to listen to them argue," she thought, wrapping one arm around her waist and propping her head upon the opposite hand.

Francis stood and brushed the sand from the seat of his pants as Louis glared at him. "Francis, can you please be serious for just a minute?"

"I am bein' serious!" The biker moved around the fire to his companions, his tattooed arms crossed sternly.

"It's kinda hard to take you seriously when you're pretty much blaming me for the problem, when you were the one who-"

"Look, can both of you please just shut up?" Zoey interrupted harshly, not happy to be in the middle of a fight between them. She turned her gaze downward and ran a hand through her hair with a sigh before looking back to them. "I'm sorry I snapped. But I just… I need some time to think."

She got to her feet as quickly as she could, ignoring Louis as he reached up to stop her. The men watched silently as she jogged over to the beached sailboat and clambered inside without a word. They knew what she was doing. She always did it when she got upset.

Zoey slunk below deck and maneuvered around the remaining supplies to the back left corner of the cabin, ducking slightly to avoid hitting her head on the low roof. She quickly spied two cardboard boxes atop a small plastic chest.

She picked the boxes up and set them aside before opening the chest to reveal what it protected. She procured a folded piece of ragged and stained pink cloth, her track jacket, and then gently unwrapped it to uncover the one object in the world that she truly treasured.

A well-worn green beret, speckled with mud and slightly grayed with age.

She settled down next to the chest, tenderly cradling Bill's beret in her hands as if jostling it in the slightest would cause it to disappear or crumble away into dust. She began to delicately trace the shield-shaped golden patch with her finger as she studied the silver pin upon it for the umpteenth time.

She admired the attention to detail on the small piece of metal. The ribs on the hilt of the central sword, the texture on the vanes of the crossed arrows, all were beautifully rendered. The silver had long since dulled to a light gray, but she imagined how beautiful it would look freshly polished and shimmering in the light.

"De oppresso liber," she whispered, reading to herself the motto engraved on the ribbon flowing elegantly around the sword and arrows.

She had never asked Bill what the motto meant. In fact, she had never even paid enough attention to his hat to notice that there was one at all. Only once she held it in her own beaten hands did it make itself known to her.

Only once he was no longer able to tell her its meaning did she wonder.

She could easily infer that the motto had something to do with liberty and oppression, and tested out possible translations. "Liberty to the oppressed. Liberate the oppressed… Liberation of the oppressed…?" She shook her head and pushed a stray lock of brunette hair back behind her ear. "I guess it doesn't matter which one it is. They're all pretty much the same thing."

She leaned her head back and closed her eyes, listening to the waves beat slowly and quietly against the hull of the tiny boat. "They all really are the same thing."

"Well if they mean the same thing, then why the hell are you drivin' yourself crazy tryin' to tell 'em apart?" When she opened her eyes, she saw a familiar figure sitting calmly in front of her, looking at her expectantly with his piercing blue eyes.

"I don't know, Bill. Gimme a break." She pulled her knees up to her chest and hugged them, laying her head atop them tiredly. "I have to think about something that doesn't involve zombies, or death, or pain, or… Or the past."

He pulled a cigarette from his shirt pocket and held it in his mouth as he rummaged in his pant pocket for his lighter. "… Zoey. You're tryin' too hard. The more you try to not think about somethin', the more likely you are to think about it."

He finally found the lighter and brought it up to light the cigarette. She watched him for a moment, studying the cloud of smoke he exhaled as it floated about him aimlessly. "I know. I just… I can't help it, Bill. Whenever I don't try, I end up going back to all of that stuff anyway… And it's awful. I hate it."

"That's 'cause even if ya think ya aren't, you're still tryin'. And you're not even tryin' to forget, you're tryin' to cover up, to hide from what you don't like." He gestured to her as he spoke, like a father trying to explain a lesson to his daughter.

And like a father comforting his daughter, his expression softened as she internalized his words, and he placed a calloused hand upon her arm. "You just gotta move on, kid. I know it's hard, but you just gotta let go of all the bad shit that bothers ya. You'll be a whole lot better for it, I promise."

"I'm trying to. I really am… You know I am. It's just… I don't know if I can even do it… I'm starting to think that it's too hard. That it's impossible." She looked away as she said the last word.

"Nothin's impossible, Zoey." His hand moved from her arm to her face, and he turned her towards him. "You're too strong to let bad thoughts trip you up like that. So cheer up and smile." The way he encouraged her gave her strength, rekindled the smoldering fire within her. She cracked a small smile as he pulled his hand away and exhaled another puff of smoke.

"'Nothing's impossible', huh? Well, what about you coming back to life? Because that would be pretty nice." He laughed quietly, shaking his head.

"You know what I mean."

She chuckled as she closed her eyes. When she reopened them, she was once again alone, the waves still thumping the boat from outside.

She looked down at the battered hat in her hands. "Just look at me, Bill. I'm pretty pathetic, aren't I? Talking to your hat and pretending it's you… You're not even entirely in-character…" She pulled the beret to her chest with a tired sigh. "God… I guess I'm going crazy after all."

"Y'know, you wouldn't look so crazy if you were actually talkin' to someone who was still alive."

She jerked her head upwards to see Francis standing in the doorway, his hands in his pockets and a surprisingly solemn expression on his face.

Her face flushed brightly and she hugged Bill's beret even closer. "Francis… How… How long have you been-"

"Long enough to know that you really need to talk to someone besides Bill's dirty old hat." He stepped inside and navigated the room's contents, bent almost comically forward to fit under the short ceiling. When he reached her personal corner he plopped down in front of her with a grunt, one hand on his hip.

"So where do ya wanna start?" She merely looked at him, her eyebrows slightly furrowed. "Look. I'm in a good mood, so I'm willin' to play therapist for ya tonight. This is like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, so I'd take it if I were you." She was angry at him for carelessly barging in upon her as he did, but at the same time was touched and surprised by his apparent thoughtfulness.

But she was still mostly angry. "Francis, why did you come down here?"

"Oh, well obviously it's because I like to come down here and talk to the boxes. They're fucking riots, man. You really need to listen to 'em some time. They're much better conversation than Bill's stupid hat."

She glowered slightly at him, prompting him to lighten up on his sarcasm. "Look, Zo. Believe it or not, you're not the only person who has problems on this godforsaken island. Louis has plenty of 'em, too." She raised an expectant eyebrow. "Hell, even I might have a little problem or two. I know it's hard, but sometimes you just gotta, y'know, swallow your pride and talk to someone. And unfortunately for you, Bill's hat doesn't count as 'someone'."

Her gaze drifted slowly back down to the beret in her hands, and she sighed. "I know… Thanks, Francis."

"Don't mention it… And I'm serious, really don't mention it." He raised one hand to the side of his face and whispered as if hiding a secret from the boxes. "My reputation's already in enough trouble."

She tittered quietly at his seriousness. "Sure thing, tough guy. But only on one condition."

The biker narrowed his eyes at her in suspicion. "What?"

"Don't ever call Bill's hat 'stupid' again." She warmly gave him a lopsided grin, but he knew that she wasn't joking.

"Sure thing, crazy chick." He placed a hand on her knee and gave her a small, playful shove. He was happy to see her cheering up somewhat.

"Ah, stop it you big softie." She pushed on him with her foot in return, but was unable to move him even an inch. He was still a wall of solid muscle, just like when she first met him.

"Don't push it." And he was still just as conscious of his image.

She laid Bill's hat in her lap and raised her hands in mock surrender. "Okay, okay. I'm ready for my therapy session, Dr. Powell."

He looked up and to the side while scratching his chin thoughtfully. "Huh. Dr. Powell. I actually kinda like the sound of that. Maybe I should have gone to college." He sat in thought for a brief moment before waving the idea away with his hand. "… Nah. Never mind, college is too much work."

"I know, right?" She felt the twinge of pain and longing return as she remembered how she had spent her first semester of college. She remembered her parents, how they argued over her future. She remembered the last dinner they shared, which had been interrupted by the first infected she had ever seen.

And she remembered telling her father that she loved him right before she planted a bullet in his forehead.

"I… I think I know where to start now."

"Okay. I'm all ears." He leaned back, settling in for a lengthy story.

"I think I want to start with the night that this whole thing really kicked off for me…" He watched her in silence as she collected her thoughts. "That was the night that my parents-"

"Francis! Zoey!" came Louis's frantic shouting as he limped down into the cabin, eyes wide and fearful.

"Goddammit Louis, I thought you were too much of a pussy to come down here and actually-"

The analyst ignored Francis, much more pressing matters on his mind. "You guys. There's something you need to see, right now."

"What is it, Louis?" Zoey was rather unsettled by the look of horror on his face. It wasn't too different from when he had first laid eyes on a Tank.

Something as frightening as a Tank couldn't possibly be good news.

"Just… Just come and look for yourselves." He disappeared onto the deck of the boat, Francis and Zoey quickly jumping to their feet and following behind him.

When they arrived topside, Louis was already standing at the stern of the sailboat and looking intently out to sea. The pair joined him and scanned the ocean for signs of trouble.

"What the hell's wrong? I don't see anything," Francis said impatiently.

"Look out there. Not far from the horizon." Louis pointed in the direction of the disturbance, directing his companions to look out and slightly to the east.

"Oh my God…," was all that could escape Zoey's lips when she finally laid eyes upon a great ship sailing in the distance. It was a huge ship, and none of them doubted that it belonged to the military. "Do you think they came here to set up a base or something?"

Louis sighed. "I wouldn't doubt it. I'm pretty sure there's a fort nearby."

"You're shittin' me…" Francis stumbled backwards slightly as he registered the fact that the military was in the Keys with them. "Goddammit, you are fucking shitting me!" he yelled at the top of his lungs, his hands thrown up in the air in rage.

Louis and Zoey did nothing to stop him as he stomped furiously and kicked the side of the cabin. The pain that consequently shot up his leg only served to further incense him, and he began to growl deeply, unable to express his anger in any other way.

Zoey couldn't hide the fact that she was terrified. They had come so far, fought so hard. They had made it to safety at the cost of a friend's life. And now that they had gotten through the hardships and thought they had finally escaped both their infected enemies and their uninfected ones, they find the military on their doorstep. She wanted to scream, to cry, to shoot herself then and there.

Instead, she turned to Louis. "What are we gonna do?" Her voice was quivering, but she didn't care anymore.

Louis seemed frozen as he stared out at the ocean. The only movement she could see was his clothing whipping about in the wind. After a lengthy silence, he finally spoke. "I… I don't know what we're gonna do…"

"Oh, God…" Zoey sat on the guardrail, pressing her hands against her face as if doing so would give her the solution to their problem. As if it would wake her up from her latest nightmare. "We can't stay, or they'll find us and do God-knows-what with us… But if we leave, where are we gonna go?"

"… I don't know…"

She remembered that she still had Bill's beret gripped in her trembling hands. She held it out where she could see it and her eyes reflexively fell upon the silver pin. "… We need Bill, Louis… We really need Bill…"

"… I know we do…"

His slow and hopeless answers frightened her almost as much as the ship itself. "Louis, please talk to me."

"… I don't have anything to say, Zoey… I'm sorry…" He leaned over onto the guardrail and covered his own face.

"Goddammit…," she whimpered as she pressed Bill's beret against her face. It soaked up the hot tears she futilely attempted to withhold as they streamed down mercilessly. "Goddammit, goddammit, goddammit…"

There really was no such thing as hope. If there ever was, it was no longer alive. It died the moment Zoey pulled the trigger on her father.

No. It didn't die with him. It died in Rayford, when three Tanks smashed it to a bloody pulp.

Hope was an old man. Hope was a soldier. Hope was a leader. Hope was a second father to her. Hope's real name was William Overbeck.

She held the last remnant of hope in her hands, but it just wasn't going to be enough to save them this time.


God, those soldiers are such dicks, aren't they?

So this was actually the point I had originally planned to end chapter one at. LOL Yay for writing way more than I planned to!

I'd like to thank the four peeps who reviewed the first chapter, you guys are freaking awesome. Special mention goes to my guest reviewer because that fourth review, simple as it was, was what gave me an excuse to get back to work when I kept putting off finishing the rewrite (I kept checking back every day to see if I could bump past three reviews, and I almost shouted in joy when I saw that that three had finally changed to a four). Thanks, whoever you are! ;)

I told you guys that reviews/follows/faves are great incentive for writers! If you want more of this story, do me a simple favor and keep providing me with that delicious positive reinforcement! Condition me to keep writing!

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