Author's Note:
I'm trying to keep the chapters consistent in length, but I'm not so sure about the pace, be sure to let me know what you think once you read this chapter!
Thanks for any Follows/Reviews/Favourites/etc.
-MON 9th SEPT/ 15:20-
"Are we seriously doing this?" Rafe asked sceptically, his eyes darting around the nearly empty store.
It was nearing sunset and the streets were quieter than before, but it didn't help the fact that they could run into a pack of Infected at any moment. They needed supplies and some quick fix medicine, but their options were becoming more and more limited.
"We need some stuff before we head back" Navarro reminded him, trying to find his way past the series of fallen shelves towards the back of the store.
"What if we run into something out here? What then?" Rafe questioned, moving to stand in the corner so he could watch all the shadows moving around the room.
"We're already stuck, we might as well make the most of it" Talbot interrupted, but Rafe just ignored him.
"Hey, over here, I think I found a way through" The dark haired man told them, shouldering his rifle before ducking down to crawl through the gap under the shelves.
"Alright, Rafe, you go first, I'll watch the back" Talbot insisted, watching the way the ghastly fluorescent bulbs flickered on the ceiling.
"Sure, whatever" He took a deep breath in, slowly lowering himself down, cautious of the low overhead space as he crawled through after Navarro.
"You alright?" Navarro asked as he reached the other side and Rafe just gave a short nod, but Navarro didn't stick around to hear him say anything anyway and so he went on.
Talbot came up behind him, brushing dust off his pants and shouldering past him. "Come on, let's not fall behind" He encouraged, and Rafe glared at his back.
He didn't even know why he was with these two but considering the fact he had zero ammunition and no car, he would have to bide his time and see what this camp of theirs was like. He had heard of some areas being quarantined on the news- in fact, there had been reports of the mysterious virus but only as a strange increase in violent behaviour and then some kind of plague spreading which required safe cities to become cut off for containment.
Nothing they said on TV or in the papers had ever prepared him for what it was really like.
"Navarro?" Talbot called as he reached the staircase leading up.
"Shh-" The man indicated for them to be silent, retrieving a multi-purpose switchblade from his pocket and pressing up against the wall.
Talbot crouched and gestured for Rafe to do the same as he slinked across to the adjacent wall, listening out for whatever it was that had alerted Navarro.
Rafe watched with a growing feeling of uneasiness in his stomach as it came through the door.
Click. Click-click. Click-click. Click.
The Clicker continued to make the horrid noise as it slowly descended the stairs towards them.
One movement and it would catch them and possibly even bring any others roaming around the area here.
Rafe's stomach churned, his fingers curling. How could they stay so calm? Why didn't Navarro take it out yet? His eyes searched the small space for anything that would be useful, landing on the revolver tucked behind Talbot's belt. It would have to do.
Talbot instantly tensed when he felt the gun snatched out, whirling around to grasp Rafe's wrist before he could fire, trying to wrestle it free as quietly as possible but by this point he could feel the Clicker breathing down his neck.
The Clicker had reached the bottom of the stairs and seemed to be heading towards them. It was moving like it knew that something living, breathing and scared was in its territory.
Navarro shifted closer carefully, coming up right in front of it, blade glinting dangerously in his hand.
Rafe felt light headed with anxiety.
Oh God. Oh God.
Click. Click-Click.
Rafe couldn't stay put, his nerves were frayed and his heart was beating so fast, he thought it might stop at any minute. He moved, preparing to run.
Talbot tensed beside him in shock as the creature suddenly veered on Rafe and screeched.
Rafe cursed loudly, stumbling back and landing flat on his ass.
"Merde!" Navarro struck, sinking his knife into its vulnerable neck and locking his arms around its midsection as it tried to chew Rafe's face off.
"Navarro!" Talbot yelled, trying to help Rafe slip out from under it.
"Move, God damn it, move!" Navarro snapped at them, managing to swing the Clicker around and slam his shoulder into its back to give it a hard shove away. A quick grab on the back of its shirt and he rammed its head into the wall, bits of brain matter and blood bursting all over his clothes.
"Navarro, behind you!" The British man warned as he pulled Rafe up and began making his way towards the shelves they had just passed, stopping short to take a few down with his gun.
Navarro whirled around to see a herd of Infected coming at him and he left his switchblade in favour of saving himself, scrabbling quickly after Rafe. Once he was through, Talbot followed but the thundering of footsteps shook the old building, sending the shelves in a heap right over him.
"Talbot!"
-MON 9th SEPT/ 17:34-
"Okay, up here. This should do the trick nicely." Charlie sighed as he finally reached the top of the ladder, clambering up onto the roof of the hotel.
"Oh yes, nothing more romantic than this" Chloe remarked sarcastically as she took his hand to get up faster. Once there, she brushed herself off then kicked the hatch closed after them.
"Aw, bloody hell…"
The remark got her attention and she walked over to look out across the cityscape. "Holy hell"
The city was a wreck. Fires blazing sky high and turning the sunset sky into a murky grey, the highways were crowded with cars, some still driving, trying to get through the mess of Infected running rampant and tearing into anyone still living. There were helicopters in the distance, but somehow there was a silent knowledge that they weren't out looking to help stranded civilians.
"Okay, so… what now? You got a plan?" Charlie asked, being bought back to reality by the sound of a woman screaming and gunfire not too far away.
Chloe moved to the other side to inspect for a way down. "There's the fire escape" She pointed out.
"Uh-huh. But then what?" He prompted, following her gaze to see a potential route out of the city.
"We might need to haul up somewhere until the majority of it clears… I can't see us getting across that bridge any time soon" She admitted.
The bald man nodded in silence, seeing her point, though he doubted things would settled down while those hellish creatures were running around the streets.
"Come on, I think that pub will be a good place to camp. Plenty of things to use in there, might even find a working vehicle nearby" She spoke as she hopped down the ladder leading towards the fire escape so they could reach ground level.
"Alright, fair point" He shrugged, following her down.
He only hoped that the rest of the group was making better progress.
-MON 9th SEPT/ 18:00-
"Come on, Nathan, pick up…" Sam grumbled, shouldering his shotgun as he pushed the kitchen door the slightest bit open. There was a sound coming from the bar's lounge. Something like someone walking on broken shards of glass.
'The person you are trying to contact is not available at this moment. Please leave a message after the tone.' The operator's voice told him.
"Damnit, Nathan!" He was hoping against hope that it was just the battery being dead. "Hey, Nathan, if you get this message, make sure to call me back as soon as possible… ASAP. Alright, little brother?" He recorded before finally shutting off his phone and peering out through the gap.
No sign of anything moving from this angle and the sound had also stopped.
All he wanted was a drink that afternoon and the next thing he knew, he was breaking glass bottles over the head of the wonderful woman who he had been talking with because she had suddenly decided to attempt eating him.
Not in the pleasant way either.
The tall man had at least managed to get a double barrel shotgun from behind the bar counter and hide in the kitchen where there were only two cooks and no panicked crowd to deal with. Everyone else had either turned or ran for their lives and now several hours later, after picking off the Infected posing a threat, he decided it was time to relocate.
One would have thought that after months of running around with Nathan Drake and hearing about cursed treasure, he wouldn't have scoffed at the TV presenter and protests about the inability of the WHO to treat some unknown plague that had been dubbed the CBI, but here he was.
"Didn't think anyone was still around here in all this"
Sam tensed as he heard the unfamiliar voice in the seemingly empty lounge, light eyes looking across to where a man was currently enjoying a beer and lighting himself a cigarette. "Yeah? Well, me neither" He admitted as he moved closer slowly, cautious in case this stranger had already been bitten.
"Cheers to us then, hm?" The man with the British accent leaned back across the counter to retrieve another beer bottle, using an army knife to pop its cap before holding it out to him. "Name's Flynn" He introduced with a quirky smile.
"Uh, alright, Flynn," Sam stepped over to take the offered drink. "I'm Sam." He held it up, the glass bottles clinking together before the two men took big and much needed gulps. "So, really crazy shit out there, huh?"
"I think crazy is putting it nicely, mate" Harry pointed out, leaning his arms back on the bar behind him as he surveyed the room idly.
Several Infected Runners lay dead, empty shotgun shells and glass littering the floor.
"Worst out there, huh?" Sam prompted, checking his watch. The sun would have set by now and he would really rather wait till morning to navigate the streets, but that would mean he would have to work on sealing off the place for the night.
"You have no idea… nice place to stay in, this. All the booze you could possibly want too." Flynn seemed to have caught on to his idea, although perhaps not for the right reason.
"Yeah, maybe for a couple nights. Should probably do something about the doors and windows though- hey, where you going?" He cut himself off to ask as the other left his seat to head off into a side room.
"Doing something about the doors and windows" Came the answer which strangely reminded him of Nathan's remarks.
"Alright, smartass, wait up. Some of those things could still be around here." Sam huffed, checking how many shells he still had left. Four still in the box and two in the barrel. Ammunition wouldn't be difficult to come by if they were in the right place, but he somehow doubted that said right places hadn't already been visited by everyone who had made it through the initial craze.
"Relax, all you have to do is-" Flynn paused to finish the last of his beer before throwing the bottle against the screen of the arcade game against the wall.
The screen and bottle both shattered loudly, a tense silence following before a loud bang was heard from somewhere in the bar.
Sam and Harry exchanged glances before following the brief noise towards the door marked as the women's toilet.
"Never thought I'd be walking into one of these to check for crazy chicks" Harry remarked casually, moving quietly to one side of the door and signalling for Sam to ready his weapon.
When the older Drake gave a nod to indicate that he was ready, Flynn pushed the door open quickly to ensure that they could see all the way around the room without any blind spots.
The only thing more concerning than the dead body and the smashed ceramic on the floor which had obviously caused the death was that the place looked empty.
Sam didn't like this, letting out a shaky breath as he carefully stepped around the growing puddle of blood that was seeping into the gaps between the tiles, pushing open one of the stalls.
Nothing.
Harry had paused to inspect the dead body, pulling a face upon discovering that it was a Runner. "Sam-"
"Shh!" Sam shushed him, checking the second stall.
"Sam" Harry whispered more urgently, prompting him to pause and glare at him, but the crouched thief indicated the last stall.
That was when it occurred to him. Being low to the ground, he could probably see someone's feet- but no. When Sam lowered himself too, he couldn't see anything from the gap under the stall. What was Flynn indicating then? Did the Infected hide too?
The thought was very unsettling and he very slowly shuffled into the second-to-last stall, flinching when the wooden lid creaked under his weight as he stepped onto it. He held his breath and waited a full minute, the blood pumping so quickly that all he could hear was his heart throbbing loudly in his ears.
Okay. Here goes nothing.
Sam held his breath as he leaned across- more creaks of protest from the wood- peering over the top of the stall to look into the last one.
It must have been his shadow which alerted the occupant, but the next thing he knew there was a loud shriek which shocked and nearly knocked him off balance.
"Sam!" Harry sounded desperate again, and a quick look back over his shoulder told him why.
While the bottle shattering earlier had been loud, it wasn't quite the same as a living human yelling, and this was apparently loud enough to attract attention from everything still breathing in the vicinity.
Quickly, Harry bolted the bathroom door closed, jamming a mop across the handle to make it more difficult to open, but other than that, there was nothing else in the small space that would help them out.
"Let's hide, come on" Sam slapped his back as he slid into the stall that he had just left, heaving himself over to the next one.
Harry followed him while saying something about this whole thing being ridiculous.
Indeed, it was.
"Shh, shh, shh" Sam tried to calm the girl down, though admittedly he could tell that she was utterly terrified just from the fact that there were two grown men squeezed into a bathroom cubicle with her- that was other than the fact that there were Infected pounding on the door.
Harry looked a little bit freaked out as he looked between Sam and the unknown woman, just about keeping his balance on the ledge of the toilet lid. If he or Sam slipped, that would be a serious problem, but at least the young woman seemed to have calmed down upon realising that they weren't human eating creatures that had developed the motor functions to climb over stalls to get her.
Marisa Chase did not plan to be stuck here with Harry Flynn and Samuel Drake; all she had wanted was to meet Nathan and Sully again to catch up and yet here she was, stuck in a bar that she had only been intending to get water from.
Maybe an alcoholic drink would have at least helped her nerves and prepared her for what was to come.
Author's Note:
If you've never played Uncharted: Golden Abyss, don't worry so much about knowing Marisa, but a quick Google search will help if you're curious. More importantly, it appears like the groups are slowly forming, right?
Let me know who you would like to see through a quick Review!
Thanks for Follows/Reviews/Favourites/etc.
WritingLevel-Meh