Silent Lucidity

By esmtz

Once everybody had woken up the next morning they quickly grabbed themselves ammo, health kits, and whatever else they could get their hands on that was in the safe room. Ellis noticed right away that Nick seemed to have calmed down since last night since he hadn't said anything about him (or he just didn't want to say it in front of Ellis) to Coach or Rochelle.

"Y'all just about ready?" Coach asked as he grabbed some pain pills and turned to look at the others.

"I'm good." Rochelle replied as Nick just nodded.

"What about you youngin?" Coach asked turning to look at Ellis who picked up an adrenaline shot.

"Ready as I'm ever goin to be I guess." Ellis said as he pocketed the adrenaline and walked towards the door where Rochelle and Nick were already waiting.

"Ok now try not to get too far from the group y'all." Coach told them as Nick opened the door.

Nick rolled his eyes as he stepped outside.

"The only one likely to do that, Coach is Ellis." Nick said.

Ellis looked at him slightly hurt while Rochelle just glared at him.

"Nick…" Rochelle warned him.

"Don't worry I'll just stay behind y'all." Ellis replied as he followed Coach and Rochelle out of the safe house.

Nick snorted.

"Since when have you ever stayed behind us? From what I remember you would always rush in and get yourself into trouble." Nick told him, "and then you would always get me to heal you afterwards."

Ellis looked at him even more hurt.

"Ok I get it. I promise I won't get ahead of y'all, Nick."

"Ellis, sweetie don't worry about it. Nick's just being an asshole as always." Rochelle said smiling at him and glaring once again at Nick.

"Talking to him like that Rochelle is only going to encourage him to get into more trouble." Nick replied as he looked at her.

Coach sighed.

"Y'all there's zombies out here and I'd appreciate it if y'all helped me out here."

Ellis, Nick, and Rochelle hadn't realized until just then that the zombies had been trying to get at them, but Coach had been holding them off.

"Sorry, Coach." Rochelle said as they killed the ones that Coach had shoved away.

As soon as they made their way past the zombies they found themselves looking at a park. Coach grunted.

"If this was supposed to be a park wouldn't they have at least put up sumethin for the youngins to play on?" Coach said as he saw nothing but tons of grass and bushes.

"That really isn't important right now, Coach." Nick said as he killed a few zombies that were in front of them.

"I know that." Coach said glaring at him.

"Let's just get going." Rochelle said as she started walking.

Coughing was heard a long with growling and something else. Just before they could see where it was at the smoker's tongue wrapped around Rochelle and dragged her towards it. The guys quickly caught up and saw that it had been hiding right on top of the gazebo and Nick quickly killed it.

Rochelle sighed.

"Thanks."

Growling was heard coming closer as they fought off more zombies that were right there next to the gazebo.

"Pay attention y'all I hear a hunter and a jockey." Coach said shooting off heads and limbs of zombies that were attacking him.

Ellis stayed close to Coach because now a horde of zombies started making their way towards them and Coach just happened to be closest to him. He started shooting at them and once they got close he shoved them away, but the moment after he did that the hunter pounced on him.

"Get it off!" Ellis yelled.

Coach shoved the zombies away from himself and quickly turned and started shooting at the hunter. He managed to kill it before it could do any serious damage to Ellis. As soon as Rochelle and Nick were done taking care of the zombies that were in their war they went to help out Ellis and Coach.

"Ellis, sweetie are you alright?" Rochelle asked worriedly.

Ellis nodded.

"Yeah thanks, Coach." He said turning his head to look at him.

"No problem. Did anybody see where the jockey went?" Coach asked looking around.

"Looks like somebody killed it." Ellis said as he saw that it was dead right behind Nick.

Nick shrugged.

"I didn't see it. Probably just decided to attack without jumping stupid idiot." Nick said.

"It's funny how sometimes the infected are so stupid!" Ellis said grinning and shaking his head.

Nick sighed as he looked at him.

"It's not funny, Ellis. This is exactly why you're always getting yourself into trouble because you never take anything seriously."

Ellis frowned as he looked back at him.

"I do take this seriously. I just think it's funny when the infected are stupid like when they accidentally kill themselves." Ellis replied remembering the one time that a charger tried to charge at him, but instead it ended up charging itself out of a window and it fell quite a distance until it hit the ground.

"That only happened once and you were lucky that the charger didn't take you with it." Nick told him.

"Well whenever sumethin happens to one of you I do take it seriously. I don't just stand around laughin y'know."

"No you don't because all you do is run ahead acting like a five year old killing everything that's in your sights without a second thought to our safety." Nick glared at him.

Ellis looked at him in shock.

"What are you…"

"The only times you've actually noticed when one of us was hurt was when a tank was headed our way and you finally decide to come back towards us or when someone alerts a witch. Other then that all you've been doing was just killing everything like it was a game to you!" Nick said clearly getting agitated with him.

Ellis bit his lip and looked away. He hated to admit it, but he did kind of think of this situation as being just a game to him, but he wasn't going to admit that to them especially not to Nick. He didn't know what to say so he just stood there and let Nick attack him. Rochelle went up to him and tried to get him to stop.

"Nick, stop it. He doesn't deserve this." Rochelle said looking at him.

"Like hell he doesn't. He doesn't even know how many times we've all gotten hurt just because he thinks its fun to alert more zombies to us!" Nick replied looking at her.

Ellis looked up in alarm.

"What?" Ellis's voice was getting quieter.

"Because of you, overalls Rochelle has alerted a witch three times, Coach it was just once, and me…" Nick shook his head glaring angrily at him, "I can't even begin to tell you how many times I've alerted her just to make sure you were ok."

Ellis winced.

"How is that possible? I saw when someone alerted the witch and it wasn't that often so why…?"

"How stupid can you be? Most of the time you were too busy yelling and shooting to realize that we had either taken pain pills, adrenaline or managed to heal up by the time you were done and came back to us." Nick replied as Ellis rubbed the back of his neck and looked away again feeling completely ashamed of himself, "Ellis, how old are you?"

"23."

"You're 23? Because you definitely don't act like it. Why don't you grow the fuck up for once so that way the next time that this happens you wont make another group of people suffer like this." Nick told him before he started walking again.

Rochelle looked at Ellis sadly and whispered 'it's ok' before following after Nick. Coach sighed shaking his head.

"Don't worry about it, boy. Nick's always been an asshole so I think it's just his screwed up way of showing that he cares." Coach said before following after them.

Ellis felt like he was going to throw up as he slowly followed after Coach.

'Nick's right. If I don't even care about his, Coach, and Ro's safety how am I supposed to expect them to help me out? I'm just gunna end up gettin them killed.'

Ellis looked at the ground sadly because now he had proof that he didn't deserve Nick helping him.

'I've helped them before, but it just seems like I cause more trouble then I actually help. I'm sorry, Nick. I thought I loved you, but if I did I would never have put my life first above yours.'

Ellis winced as he thought that knowing that he was never going to forgive himself for acting that way because he could have gotten him (and Coach and Ro) killed and if Nick ends up dying because of him he would know that he didn't deserve to live.

Author's note: I was going to wait till Tuesday to write this chapter but I changed my mind. I'm sorry if I don't update too often because for one I'm anxiously awaiting Gears of War 3 to come out and school is going to start again soon so I'm gunna be a little bit busy. I'd like to thank those who reviewed, favorited, or added my story to story alert because you guys really got me into writing another chapter. I hope this story turns out the way I want it too. The only part I have set in my mind really is near the end so this part just came out when I started writing. Let me know if there's any mistakes in this story so that I can correct it, unless you're talking about 'doin' or 'yers' basically when Coach or Ellis is talking I did that on purpose for their accent which I'm not so good at but I try.