"Tess." Joel had crept forward and laid the fingers of his right hand across her upper arm. Bill watched as she immediately reached up and gripped them, hard. "Tess, we can do it. Just two of 'em. And Bill's gonna give us everything." He raised his eyes for a second to catch Bill's. "Pretty near everything. Drugs and masks." Bill nodded.
"Yeah." Tess was clenching those fingers in her own. "We're going to do this." She released Joel's hand abruptly and shot her face towards Bill. "How far?"
Bill was so relieved that the smugglers hadn't already attacked him that it took him a minute to regroup his thoughts. The only predictable thing about this couple was their merciless violence, and, even given how unlucky he'd been recently, he was thanking his stars that he'd managed to redirect their homicidal urges from himself to the "traders" who'd ripped him off. "Couple of miles that way." He jerked his head in the appropriate direction. "Back in the day, there was a shipping warehouse out that way, and the folks who worked there used to live mostly in a little suburb. It's pretty bad, now. But that's where the assholes are holed up, right in the middle of what you'd call downtown. Office building right next to the old warehouse. Found 'em by following the sound of all the infected attention they were attracting. They weren't expecting to be found, so they got themselves entirely cornered."
Tess nodded thoughtfully and dug some rags out of her pack. "Show us the way," she declared, beginning to wrap her hands in the rough fabric. Joel, behind her, was smoothly checking over his own guns, his feet already poised to follow.
"Yeah," Bill agreed. He hoped, not for the first time, that the smugglers wouldn't jump him and tear out the gold fillings he'd received back before the world went to shit. They seemed normal, reasonable people at the moment, but that could change at the drop of a hat. "Little bit of a hike. Just follow me."
The path, an old suburban thoroughfare, was reasonably quiet. Bill could even remember the time when it had been busy twice a day, groups of people going back and forth to the warehouse. It was oddly deserted now, considering how many of those workers were still wandering the outskirts, infected and clawing at his barbed-wire walls. He was betting that its emptiness meant that most of the usual runners had been drawn towards the commotion caused by the traders passing through, which meant those infected weren't gone, just ahead of them somewhere. Still, he was glad for the temporary rest from attacks, and almost enjoying the company. Their conversation was limited, but civil, and it was a novelty to hear a voice that wasn't Frank's or his own.
"We're cutting left," Bill said, softly, as they neared the outskirts of the first abandoned set of townhouses. "We're going up, but we've got to get to a roof where we can make our way over. C'mon."
He heard the duo behind him check their magazines in unison. "Better know what you're doing, Bill," Tess hissed at his back.
He didn't bother to respond, just tapped his tongue against the roof of his mouth, a little thing that helped him remember patience and his routines, while he led them left, left, right, left, through the short maze of the only sizeable buildings this place had to offer. Its "downtown" was, of course, also the only place full of infected, but that was how most urban spaces had ended up after the infection spread. The moaning of runners was audible somewhere in the near distance, but its location was difficult to pinpoint.
Bill paused as they padded their way up the second-to-last alleyway before the path that would take them up to the roofs and Frank's sniper position. "We should be quiet," Bill murmured, motioning his followers forward. He'd sunk into a crouch to make himself less noticeable, and the smugglers had followed suit. "Lot of runners around. You hear 'em? They're usually over by the east fence, but, oh shit."
They'd rounded a corner into a blind alley, the end of which held a knot of stumbling infected. Bill immediately started backing up, trying to get himself safely hidden again, and nearly tumbled as he felt Tess' palm on his back. She was already vaulting over him, using him as an obstacle, and he was still reacting when she drove a blade right through the eye socket of the first runner who turned towards her noise.
The rest of the runners turned and screamed, almost in unison, and dove for her; her mad, nimble dash through their grasping hands brought her right up to the dead end brick wall at the end of the alley. She didn't seem alarmed, however, and was employing now both her pistol and that long blade with deadly purpose. Joel was already flashing by while Bill automatically wiped the blade of his kukri on his pants in two swift swipes, bracing himself for impact.
"Ya fuckin' maniac!" Bill screamed at Tess, while reluctantly forcing himself forwards to deal with the crowd. Joel was already harvesting his way towards her, alternating between a lazily hoisted shotgun and a baseball bat with some kind of knife fastened to the end. He didn't even pause to see if his strikes were successful, and some of the walking wounded he hadn't taken all the way down were sprinting straight towards Bill.
"Christ," Bill blurted, and sank his own blade into the first one's face. He was running on body memory now, a body memory that told him not to waste ammo as long as he could keep swinging the kukri. The second runner, missing a shotgun-sized chunk of its body that Joel had blown away, was already dying, and Bill managed to shove a foot against its staggering thigh so he could pull his weapon out of the first runner just in time to bury it in his new threat's forehead. He was beginning to kick into high gear, he could tell. Beginning to reach that stage that Frank called, "Kill Bill."
*thunk* He got the kukri in and out of the next runner's head.
*thunk* He'd decapitated the one that Joel had shot in the belly and was still clawing at his feet.
*thunk* He'd brained the one Tess was leveling her pistol at before she could even pull the trigger.
*thunk* Bill dimly registered that he'd raced his way past Joel, and was now level with Tess. The last infected still moving had tripped over the corpses of its fellows, but he had that solid, heavy blade in its brain just the same.
"Well," Bill heard the slow Texas drawl behind him, "All right." Bill turned, panting, spitting, afraid he might have swallowed infected blood.
"Joel, I broke my fucking bayonet," Tess declared, and it was only then that Bill realized what she'd been fighting with: the bayonet from a rifle, only without the rifle. She'd been punching her way into skulls with it, and she'd lost the tip in one of the runner's brains. She had those rags wrapped around her hands for support, but her palms were still sporting some bloody cuts from managing the heavy blade.
"Got a shiv," Joel grunted at her. "Not gonna last long." He pulled a mess of knives and tape out of his backpack in one smooth movement, holding it out handle-first for Tess, checking over his shoulder as he did so.
Bill could already tell that Tess was ten types of high over the fight she'd just initiated, but he was so pissed off he couldn't keep his mouth shut. "You happy now?" he asked.
"Good fuckin' job, Bill, leading us into a massacre." Tess had slid the shiv into her waistband, was briskly reloading, and Bill tried, without success, to remind himself how dangerous it was to mouth off to her.
"I didn't do shit." Bill was so ramped up himself that he wanted to kill something else, but had no viable targets left. Instead, he began verbally blasting his way at Tess. "All I know is we've got to get to that fire escape, that one right there." He gestured with the kukri, and wanted to vomit at the smell it was giving off, that sick sweet smell of infected brains. "You're the dumb bitch who decided we had to cut our way there."
As soon as the words left his mouth, Bill knew Tess was ready to take him down. He had his blade out, she was empty-handed, and they stared at each other for a few seconds, bodies coiling in anticipation, before Bill was being yanked back onto his heels, Joel's heavy hand grabbing the back collar of his shirt, the barrel of a revolver pressed against his skull. He'd known exactly how Tess was at the moment, but hadn't realized that Joel was ready to kill him just because he'd called his partner a bitch.
"'Pologize," Joel said, and Bill could feel the hot spit on his neck that was spraying from the other man's mouth. The tension broken, Tess paced in a small, quick circle, like a nervous animal.
Bill, however, was not about to do so, only partially because he wasn't thinking particularly rationally. If he gave these crazy fuckers an inch, they'd demand a mile. "Fuck you," he replied.
"Joel!" Tess was rolling her eyes, splaying her fingers. "I'm over it. We've got to go up. Up that way." She jerked her face at the rusting fire escape. "Let's just get this done."
Joel mechanically released his hold on Bill and shoved him lightly away, his gaze already fixed upwards. Bill spent about half a minute stumbling, coughing, before he realized that the smugglers really didn't give a shit about him any more, they just wanted up onto the roof.
"I got a ladder hidden," Bill told them, and both of their heads jerked towards him, alert. "One minute."
They had a lucky path cut out for them, as long as they kept their heads down. It was ninety percent of the reason Bill had been able to keep watch on the traders, been able to stash Frank up there.