Get Over It

Don't think, just do.

She regarded Ellis's answer. "Wait, if nobody knows what happens then how do you know that a disease spread around?" She asked. Ellis paused.

"Well then I guess we do know what happened." Chell stopped talking to him for a moment. She saw in the room that there were some canned foods so she began to eat some and drink some water. Maybe she could get used to this life. She hadn't died yet and they had gone pretty far already.

"If I had to guess I'd say it's around one o' clock or so, right?" Chell looked at Nick. He nodded.

"1:39" He said. Chell scoffed.

"I was pretty close," she chuckled slightly. She set her weapons to the side and said, "I'm pretty worn out from coming all this way… Can we wait for a few hours?"
"Sure," Coach said, "That's what we do anyway. No point runnin' out there all tired. It'll just get you killed."

So they waited in the saferoom for three hours or so before they started to get bored. Chell took out her handgun and shot some of the zombies that were trying to reach into the saferoom. "Time to go almost, right?" She asked. Rochelle nodded. "We should start heading out now." Chell picked up her weapons and said, "Hey, I'll take the rear this time." Coach's eyes widened.

"You sure?" She nodded.

"Positive." She said, grinning.

"Well alright then, if you promise you've got our backs." Coach replied. Chell held her AK up and pointed towards the saferoom door.

"Alright," She said, half-yelling. "Let's move!" Nick went out first, taking the front, then Coach and Rochelle in the middle, and Ellis and Chell took up the rear. They ran at a pretty fast speed up the mountain, shooting scarce zombies in the head along the way. There weren't as many of them up here, Chell guessed that was because there weren't as many people living in the mountains.

As they reached the top of the mountain, Chell looked out across the distance. "It's… It's beautiful!" she said in awe. She could see the forest stretch on for miles, and to one side could see that the forest was separated by the one they burned by a river or stream of some sort. In the greater distance, straight ahead of them and beyond the trees she could see a large gray building next to a body of water. Then she looked down and saw the zombies.

There were a lot of them concentrated in the area at the base of the other side of the mountain. She pulled out her AK-47 and started firing at them as the others did as well. A small hump-backed zombie tried to jump on Ellis but Chell killed it before it could. Ellis thanked Chell, telling her that was a Jockey and "when one of those things ride you it's annoyin' as hell." She didn't doubt that it was annoying as hell, all of the zombies were annoying as hell to her.

While the others were distracted with the many zombies at the base of the mountain, Chell heard a coughing sound behind her. She swung around and saw a zombie hiding behind a tree, smoke coming from it. Its tongue came out and shot at her, wrapping her up and covering her mouth and wrapping around her neck so she couldn't scream or breathe. She started to get pulled towards it and when she was within its grasp it started to choke her harder. She started to see her vision blur around the edges, and just before she was about to black out, the smoking zombie exploded. She fell to the ground and coughed, unable to get back up for a few seconds. Ellis and Rochelle helped her up. Ellis said something to Rochelle but she couldn't exactly hear what it was. Then her hearing started to come back a little. "…got you…. Careful…. Sorry…..watching…. Zombies, I mean…. smokers are…" She smacked him weakly. "It's fine," She said, coughing. "Let's get out of this smoke." So they pulled her back towards the top of the mountain, where she sat down for a few moments so that her head would stop feeling so light.

She got up when she was feeling her strength come back. Ellis explained, "That was a smoker. They'll get you when you least expect it. Luckily Rochelle and I noticed that you were gettin' choked."

"You alright?" Rochelle asked.
"I'm fine," She said as she looked down at the base of the mountain. Most of the zombies appeared to be cleared out by now. "Can we just go?"

"Hey Coach, Nick," Rochelle said. "Let's go now."
They started to head down the mountain, but the slope made it difficult to control their pace. So they sprinted down it and slowed down as the mountain leveled out.

The five ran through the forest, Chell took out her katana and began slicing at any zombies that got too close. After a while they finally reached yet another safe room. "That little walk seemed to be shorter than the others," Chell said. "The distance between safe rooms is really inconsistent…"

"That they are," Nick said. "Kind of weird that they're like that. Some safe rooms are less than a mile apart."

Regardless, they entered the safe room and covered the door they had entered with a shelf and the other door as well.

"Did anyone else see that building?" Chell asked.

Rochelle nodded. "We should go check it out. It's a long walk but it might be worth it." Ellis asked, "What building?" Nick said, "There was a building all the way out past the trees, Ellis, you should have paid attention." Ellis said, "I was more payin' attention to the zombies, not to some building in the distance. Oh! Speaking of buildins in the distance, one time my buddy Keith had this firework show on top of this huge building, you could see it for MILES. The thing is, he used too many fireworks so it was technically illegal…." Nick said, "Ellis, we don't want to hear another one of your stories." Nick sighed.

"I'm going to take a nap." Chell drowned out the others' conversations as she lay down and eventually she drifted off to sleep.