It's finally Sunday, and in a few hours we'll take Manhattan. Meanwhile in Zombieland, Emma and Hook move forward, and come a little closer. Thank you for all your input, and especially to those of you who gave this a shot even if you usually hate zombies. Enjoy the new chapter, and let me know what you think!
Hook throws his sword to the roof they're aiming for and it lands a few feet away from the rail. He offers Emma his hand, and she takes it, finding a weird sense of comfort in his firm grip.
"Ready?"
"Let's just get it over with", Emma says, imagining Henry's face in her mind, sending all the love she feels for him across the distance separating them, hoping he'll somehow feel it, and know how sorry she is for leaving him.
They walk to the other side of the roof, glance at each other and start running, the edge of the roof coming sooner than Emma expects. She doesn't have time to think or be afraid; they're already flying through the air and she can see that they're never going to make it, her empty stomach dropping with her.
Emma closes her eyes, but instead of the pain caused by crashing on the pavement, her arm feels like it's being ripped off. She looks up and sees Hook dangling from the railing by his, well, hook, still holding onto her, his fingers wrapped around her forearm so tightly she's going to have bruises. Emma tries to find purchase on the brick wall, but she can't and now that she's so close to dying, she realizes that she wants to live, no matter what world she's in, no matter what awaits.
"Stop. Trashing. About", Hook grounds out through gritted teeth, and Emma stops moving altogether, glancing up toward his hook and hoping to God it won't fall off.
She never considers that he could drop her, because his grip is like a vice, his fingers digging into her flesh painfully, but she welcomes it since it's better than the alternative.
"I'll swing you, and you better be ready to grab the edge because I can only do it once", Hook tells her, and she nods, her eyes locked onto his. "And Swan?"
"Yes?"
"Don't fall", he says, making it sound like it would be the end of the world if she did.
Hook swings her and Emma grabs the edge, pulling herself up quickly and almost weeping with relief at the feeling of uneven concrete of the roof beneath her fingertips. She gets up and leans over the rail, stretching as far as she can until she finally reaches Hook's fingers and wraps both of her hands around his, pulling with all her might until she guides his hand to the rail. When she's certain that he's got a firm grip, she pulls at the collar of his jacket and helps him up, his weight toppling her over so that they land in a heap, laughter bubbling out of her mouth because she's never felt more alive.
They lay there like that, Hook's face pressed against her shoulder, her arms still wrapped around him. Both of them are breathing heavily, and if the circumstances were any different she'd either be pushing him off or pulling him even closer. After what he just did, she's more inclined to do the latter, but she knows better than to further complicate an already complicated situation.
"You okay?" She asks him, and his response is slightly muffled by the material of her jacket.
"Never better." He rolls off her and sits up, and Emma watches as he takes off first his hook than the metal contraption that's covering his stump. There are three gashes on his forearm where their combined weight made the metal dig into his skin, but he smiles at her and shakes his head as if it's nothing.
Emma tears off half of her undershirt and gingerly wraps it around the wound.
"Tighter."
"Are you sure? This must hurt like a son of a bitch."
He just smirks at her, and she remembers the night he got hit by a car and still managed to flirt with her, so she doesn't argue.
They find canned goods in the first apartment they check and Emma begins to feel like their luck's turning. She finds a grocery bag and starts filling it up, adding matches and a pack of candles to the mix.
Meanwhile, Hook's looking around the rest of the apartment and Emma's heart almost stops beating when she hears a moan from the direction of the bedroom, followed with the sounds of struggle. She sees his sword on the kitchen table and drops everything else, grabbing it and racing down the hall, hearing him curse, the moans growing more insistent.
Emma slides into the room stumbles in the doorway, but regains her footing in time to bury Hook's sword into the half-rotten head of a zombie that's got him pinned against the wall. The thing drops down and Hook wipes his hand against his jeans.
"Did it bite you?" Emma asks him, taking his hand in hers and turning it over, shivering from head to toe from both adrenaline and dread.
"No. I stuck that horrible porcelain figurine in its teeth", Hook says, and Emma just stands there looking at his hand, her fear of dying completely gone, replaced with something worse; the fear of him dying and leaving her here all alone.
"Swan, c'mon. You know you can't get rid of me that easily", he tells her, and she lets out something between a chuckle and a sob, quickly turning around and going back to the kitchen before she makes an even bigger fool of herself.
They eat quickly, hit a few more apartments and snuck out of the building, cutting through various back yards and alleyways instead of the main streets. They come across a few more walls made out of cars and she wonders if the people who had built them are still alive or are they among the zombies shuffling along the streets of this dead city. Their progress is slow because they have to climb a lot of fences and at the moment Hook can only use his single hand, but it's a lot safer than main streets.
On their way to the suburbs, Hook only has to kill four or five zombies, because the majority sticks to the center of the city. The first time he faces one of them, he stabs it through the chest, which accomplishes absolutely nothing.
"The head!" Emma yells, pretty sure her heart has stopped beating because the zombie is snapping its jaw dangerously close to Hook's hand. Hook recovers quickly, pulls the sword out and decapitates the zombie like it's nothing at all.
"What?" He asks her because she's standing there with her mouth open, her hand pressed against her heart.
"Nothing", she says, and he gives her one of his charming smiles, wiping his sword on a clean part of his otherwise blood splattered jeans.
"Impressed yet?" He says, wiggling his eyebrows, and Emma moves past him without a response, realizing only then how close she had come to dying that day in the Enchanted Forest. In hindsight, it seems like he had spent more time trying to avoid hurting her than actually fighting her.
Once they get away from the enclosed claustrophobic spaces in the city center, Emma feels a little more relaxed. They're still in danger, but at least here there are more directions they can run, and it's harder to get cornered.
They reach the suburbs by mid afternoon, and Hook suggests they spend the night in one of the houses. Emma agrees because even though she's exhausted more emotionally than physically, they need to formulate some kind of plan besides the general "getting out of dodge" direction they've been taking.
The house they choose is at the end of the street, complete with its own driveway and a small copse of trees at the back end of the property. In case things get messy, they should be able to escape before they're surrounded, and at this point it's everything Emma dares to hope for.
The water in the bathroom runs muddy when she opens the tap, but after a while it looks perfectly clear, and she showers quickly, putting on the clothes she finds in the closet in the master bedroom. The owners of the house are gone, and in their panic they had left a lot of food behind. Most of it is moldy, but some of it is still good, and dinner actually tastes like dinner.
She sits on the bed, waiting for Hook to come out of the bathroom so she can dress his arm again, a thousand thoughts running though her head. She's mostly focused on Henry and her parents, because thinking about future is hard because she doesn't know what waits for them when they leave the city, and she'd rather not guess.
When Hook comes out wrapped only in a towel, she's so stunned that for a moment she doesn't know what to say. If she's honest, he looks too good to be true, but this is definitely not the time to be honest with him. He raises his eyebrows at her and it's clear that he knows she can feel the attraction; it's practically sizzling in the air around them.
"See anything you like?" He asks her, and Emma makes an effort to look annoyed. It used to come so easily, but lately, her heart just isn't in it. Or maybe it's too much in it.
"I've seen much better", she quips, looking him over, her eyes lingering involuntary on the soaked material of her undershirt that's wrapped around his forearm. He follows her gaze and his face falls.
"Ah, that", he says, and it's not the first time that she notices how much his missing hand is weighing him down, making him feel inadequate. He starts to move past her but she grabs his hand and stops him, regretting her decision the second her turns the full power of his blue gaze on her.
"I need to change that dressing", she says meekly, looking away, her eyes drawn to his chest, the urge to run her fingers through his chest hair and pull him close almost too great to resist.
Zombies, Emma, think about zombies, shetells herself, and breathes a sigh of relief when he sits down next to her and she has something else to focus on beside his state of undress.
She rummages through the first aid kit and finds the hydrogen and some bandages, then carefully unwraps her undershirt. He winces when she peels it off, and Emma makes a face because ultimately, she had caused him this pain.
When she dabs the gashes with hydrogen, he curses under his breath and Emma thinks how their situation now is exactly the opposite from what it was on top of the beanstalk. She's as gentle as she can be when she wraps a fresh bandage around his forearm, but makes it tight this time, all the while feeling his eyes on her.
"I'm going to go find you some clothes", she says, taking the first aid kit and dropping it on the chest of drawers, then entering the walk in closet and returning with a pair of black cargo pants and a couple of T-shirts and hoodies. The weather isn't that cold yet, but it's only a matter of time before the temperature starts dropping. Since it's anybody's guess how long before they find another house like this, they agree that it's better they take everything they could need.
She leaves him the clothes and goes to pack everything they have so far, which includes some food, bottles of water, clothes and first aid kit, but no weapons. It's making her very uneasy that they only have one sword between them, and she'd give anything for a gun right about now. She's so exhausted, missing the bag twice before she finally shoves the last bit of provisions inside.
"Time to go to bed, darling", Hook says, and Emma lets out a little shriek, his dark shadow in the twilight of the kitchen making her think he's one of the zombies, and it's enough to convince her that she really needs rest.
She lies down on the bed and watches him push the armchair between the door and the window, sitting down and setting his sword across his knees. If they weren't in mortal danger, the sight of him wearing civilian clothes and holding a pirate sword would make her at least chuckle, but they are and she's grateful for any kind of protection available.
"Wake me up when it's my turn to keep watch", Emma mumbles, sleep coming over her quickly, the last thing she sees before her eyes close being the flash of his grin in the darkened room.
"Good night, love", he says, but she's already asleep.
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