Notes from missCanary
Squee! I am so excited about this chapter. I had a lot of fun writing it :) please review!
Disclaimer: I own none of the Walking Dead characters. None at all. Zilch.
Scarlett
BOOM.
BOOM.
A plastic bottle of saline shook from a supply shelf, landing heavily on Scarlett's shoulder. She stifled a scream, scrambling backward blindly and bumping into Shane. He wrapped his hands around her shoulders reflexively, steadying her.
"What are we supposed to do?" She spoke in a harsh hiss of a whisper, shaking. Outside, the two walkers scratched and bumped at the door, trying clumsily to break in. "They were eating Allison. That woman upstairs; oh god, how the fuck are we supposed to get out of this?"
Another boom shook the shelves in the dark supply room. Scarlett felt Shane fumbling around, and then the bright light of his flashlight clicked on. "This ain't smart, Sky." He studied the room apprehensively. "One of them assholes could've been waiting in here for two sitting ducks like us. And now we're trapped. I don't see another door out of here."
"Yeah, but we can at least get our bearings now." Scarlett ran her fingers through her hair, suppressing an urge to vomit. Walkers threw themselves against the door in a rage. The nurse tried to think, but nothing logical would form in her head. Her tongue felt numb in her mouth.
She'd felt this feeling once before, shortly after she learned that Carl had died; that impending doom feeling, like she couldn't catch her breath. She was about to have a panic attack.
To try to hold it off, Scarlett talked. "I thought you were Rick when you first came up beside me; haven't made that mistake in a while. Th-this whole thing…do you think it started with Mr. Hicks? How can it possibly work? How can dead people walk? They're so violent." Scarlett's voice was trembling. She kept shifting her weight, trying to shake off the panic.
Shane looked at her funny. He grabbed her hands. "Shh shh shh; hey. Stay with me Sky. Don't lose it just yet, we'll get out of this. I didn't drive through a city of undead assholes to rescue you and then die. I ain't giving up that easy, Miss Grimes."
She looked into his eyes, which were trying so hard to be kind. Soothing people wasn't typically Shane's forte. She took a few deep breaths. Slowly the tightness in her chest dispersed. The hot feeling in her cheeks crept back downward.
Another slam against the door by the two walkers. This time they heard a crack in the door frame. Like that fateful night with Mr. Hicks, Scarlett managed to pull herself out of the fog and back to reality. Her thoughts cleared a bit. Soon there would be two hungry dead people in this supply room. Who knows what else is going on out there, she mused.
She pinched the bridge of her nose, assessing what to do. Looking up, she noticed Shane pick up a piece of tubing, casually wondering what it was while he kept track of the door. The next step instantly became obvious.
"Holy fuck, we're in a supply room." Shane cocked an eyebrow.
"Well no shit, sweetheart. You led us here."
Scarlett jumped to the other side of the room, drawing her badge down to swipe across a big box with an attached computer. The screen flickered on with a three toned beep. It has a battery life! She almost laughed, she was so happy. The two walkers cried out with hunger at the sound of the beeps.
"What are you doing?" Shane hissed, hovering over her and eyeing the door.
"I'm stocking up." It was a medication cart that Sky accessed, and it had only a few hours of life left. She methodically clicked on each patient, scrolling down the lists of medications and pulling out whatever she thought might be useful: penicillin, vancomycin, IV Tylenol, morphine, hydrocodone; the list went on. Every button she clicked elicited a loud beep from the machine.
"Okay, not only is what you're doing blatantly illegal, but every time you push a damn button you excite those fuckers outside. I only got one bullet left, Sky. That ain't gonna fare too well for us."
"Just bear with me, Officer Walsh." Scarlett kept beeping along until she was satisfied, her pockets now filled with vials and pills. She then unlocked the very bottom drawer, hoping she would find the most important object of all.
Another slam racked the frame almost completely through. Shane threw himself against the door, fighting the strength of the two walkers outside. "Goddammit!"
Scarlett spun around, holding a Glock 22 into the light. "Will this help?"
Shane looked totally bewildered as he pushed against the door. "You tryna tell me this hospital stocks guns now?"
She removed the magazine, checking that it was loaded. Thank god Rick taught me all this. "When that incident with Mr. Hicks happened, administration had one of these put into every med drawer. I'm sure it would have been a big uproar on the news if the world hadn't gone to shit. I'm surprised no one took this." She snapped the magazine back in, unlocking the safety.
Shane swiped it from her hands. "Well we ain't waiting around to ask why. Get behind me." He handed her the flashlight and they backed up. One more shove by the dead and they were in. The door swung open with a bang, revealing the two ugliest people Scarlett had ever seen. These two looked nothing like the reanimated dead from upstairs. Scarlett realized that she'd been spoiled, seeing only the freshly dead wake up. At least those people still resembled humans.
These two looked like they'd died three days ago and sat in the hot sun. One of them no longer had lips. Scarlett tried not to imagine how he'd lost them. The other one had an open, gaping stomach. Whether he had just popped from the heat or someone else chewed on him for a while, Scarlett didn't know. Both of them had several chunks bit off their limbs.
The smell was gag-worthy. "Good god." Shane stumbled back a couple more steps, pinning Scarlett against the wall. The walkers shuffled toward them.
"Shane, shoot them!" She felt Shane's shoulder blade jolt as he took two shots, followed by two thuds. He swore, and then there were two more shots.
10 seconds of relative silence passed. Slowly Scarlett realized that she had two handfuls of Shane's shirt, her face buried in his back as she heaved air in and out in terror. It took a minute to gather the courage to let go. When she did, Shane swerved stiffly and pulled her into a tight hug.
"You okay?" She nodded, noting not two, but four bodies contorted in a heap at the doorway. "They came in as soon as I knocked out the first two. Do not get away from me, understand?" Scarlett nodded again, sobered by the danger of the situation. As quickly as her courage and resolve came back to her, it left again. She felt like a small child.
Shane crept toward the door and peered out both sides to make sure the hallways were clear. They were. He waved her forward. "Here." He pulled out his own Glock and handed it to her. Dislodging the magazine from the hospital's gun, he divided the bullets evenly among the two weapons and put a bullet in each chamber.
"I seen you shoot. You ain't bad; all that range time did you good. Think you could catch one in the head if ya had to?" Scarlett swallowed. She hadn't been to the range with the boys since before Rick and Carl died. Add in her total and utter exhaustion, and she figured popping a moving person in the head was a crapshoot, at best. But she had no choice.
They advanced from the safety of the supply room, hopping over the bodies quickly. As brave as Scarlett wanted to be, she couldn't bring herself to walk out from behind Shane. He didn't seem to mind. "My squad car is on the other side of the parking lot. Closest I could get. I got no idea what the fuck is going on out there, but if it's chaos, we run in the opposite direction. Sound good?"
"My gut tells me there's going to be chaos," she said.
They came to Allison's body. The only intact part of her left was her lifeless head. Scarlett made a point not to look. They jumped down from the docking garage and into the parking lot. It was vacant of moving bodies, but positively full of dead, motionless bodies. Shane put his shirt up over his nose, gun still out in front of him. Scarlett kept her hand over her mouth and nose; she felt like crying with fear. They crept past the white bundles.
A massive commotion carried on overhead at the top of the hill. They couldn't see what was happening, but Scarlett saw smoke billowing up from the hospital. "They bombed the ER…" Shane tensed his jaw in response, grabbing her hand and leading her to the far end of the hill, toward the back of parking lot. There was so much yelling and screaming. Rapid gunfire rang out every few seconds.
"I came down this way," he muttered. "There was a huge herd goin' straight for that crowd of people at the ER." He led her up the hill slowly. They kept low to the ground to avoid being seen or shot.
A harsh voice barked above them. He sounded close. "St Clair, 2 Zekes, on your left!" The static of a walkie-talkie crackled and a muffled voice answered. Shane tentatively stood, grasping Scarlett's sweaty hand tightly. Scarlett's gun trembled in her hand as she stood.
Before them was a scene out of World War II. Huge looming tanks rolled around the hospital parking lot with their monstrous barrels swiveling in every direction. The apache helicopters looked immensely bigger on the ground; Scarlett had watched them land before she noticed the woman in the hallway. All around the machines swarmed green military men, civilians, and dead people. The thought of dead people still made Sky shudder. Flashes of gunfire burst at every corner of the lot, mimicking the crackling fire of the now-burning ER to their right. The only thought that came to Scarlett's mind was we're fucked.
She jumped at the sudden sound of tornado sirens going off. This alerted the distracted soldier. He swung around instantly, pointing an AR-17 right at the two of them.
"Wow wow, easy soldier." Shane dropped Sky's hand and raised his own, gun dangling from his finger at the trigger. Scarlett did the same. "We're just tryin' to get somewhere safe, same as err'body else." The soldier lowered his weapon quickly. Clearly the military man considered anybody alive as safe.
"Sir, unless you get out of Atlanta you ain't gonna find nowhere safe." He swung his weapon to the right, shooting two walkers in the head. "They're multiplying like goddamn rabbits. Take your girl somewhere else; camping, in the woods, anywhere but here." Scarlett blushed at your girl. She still considered herself Rick's, even after a year and a half.
Shane didn't like that answer. "The news been sayin' nothing but 'Get to Atlanta' since this shit started. You're tellin' me not to go to that FEMA camp?"
The soldier considered his next response for a moment. "Listen, I ain't exactly authorized to say this, but there's a threshold."
Shane crossed his arms. "A threshold?"
"Yeah. We're under orders to act once the ratio of infected to non-infected hits a certain point. And nobody will say it, but that ratio will happen, and soon; before the end of the week. Wanna know what happens when we hit that threshold? We napalm the streets. Situation becomes futile, and the need to take out these fucks outweighs the duty to save whoever else is still lingering in the city; refugee camp or not."
Scarlett's hands floated to her mouth as she let the man's words sink in. Shane rubbed his jaw in disbelief. People were dying all around them. A woman screamed, audible over the howling sirens. "I just gotta keep her safe, man."
The soldier nodded. "Better move now, partner."
At that, Scarlett laced her fingers securely around Shane's. They broke into a trot, headed toward the road.
Shane
A walker stumbled toward them as they ran. It was small, childlike. Shane aimed and pulled the trigger, ignoring his gnawing suspicion that he had seen the dead kid once before, in a car, with his two siblings. No time for guilt. He tightened his grasp on Sky's hand as they jogged along the road, making a wide perimeter around the warzone that used to be a hospital. He had to get to his squad car.
They rounded a particularly large tank and skidded to an immediate halt. "Aw you gotta be kiddin' me." The herd hadn't moved far from the ER rubble. In fact, it had regrouped right in front of it, albeit a little smaller from the gunfire and multiple explosions. Shane's squad car sat square in the middle of dozens of walkers.
Scarlett moaned. "No way Shane. No way." She backed up a few steps, pulling on his hand.
A soldier popped his head out of the top of the tank. "Are you guys crazy? Fall back!" He waved his hands violently and retreated back into the tank.
Shane growled and erupted into a royally pissed off yell. Images of Rick popped into his head, of the moment in the squad car when his best friend made him promise he would keep Scarlett safe. They had just emerged from a gun fight, and Rick's Kevlar vest proudly held a failed bullet over his bruised ribs. It had shaken them both enough to plan for the moments when they might not be around.
The sirens howled on. A walker smelled the two and began making its painfully slow journey to the potential prey. Shane cursed and turned to Scarlett. Her petrified look made him sick with guilt. He kissed her roughly on the forehead. "This way, Sky. Just keep going."
They retreated, running clumsily into the middle of the road. Shane had to think. A neighborhood outlined this side of the hospital, but it was a crowded one, one that Shane didn't trust. There were bad people in these houses on a good day; he'd dealt with them before. He didn't want to imagine how they'd act in this mess; or even worse, as one of those roamers. He just needed to find another car…
At that moment, a maroon Honda Civic roared down one of those neighborhood roads, right toward them. It had a neon sign on top; one of those pizza logo things. Shane instinctively pulled Scarlett across the road and onto the grass. But then, he had another idea.
"Shane? What are you doing? Shane!"
He darted back out into the middle of the road and held his hands in front of the approaching car. It continued to blaze toward him. "Aw Jesus Christ, stop brother." At the last second it skidded to a halt, rocking back on its little wheels.
Shane glanced back over at Scarlett to make sure she was okay. Her hands gripped her head as if she'd expected a collision. The Glock jutted out between her fingers into the Sky.
He turned back toward the car as the driver stepped out of his seat. "Dude, what the hell? That's how you want to die?" In a split second, Shane knew the kid was harmless. He motioned for Scarlett without taking his eyes off the driver, fearing he'd hop in and drive away.
"I'm gonna kindly ask you for a ride, sir." The hint of sarcasm was not lost on the man, but regardless, he threw up his hands and let Shane and Scarlett fall into the Civic, muttering about not having a choice. "You're gonna want to back up." Shane nodded toward the parking lot of the hospital, buckling himself in tight.
"Yeah, you aren't kidding." The stranger whipped his car around, starting down the road the way he'd come. He stole a sideways glance at the cop in his passenger seat.
"Listen buddy, we 'ppreciate the ride. My ridegot over run by walkers back there." He glanced back at Scarlett, who gripped her gun with white knuckles and kept her gaze on the road.
"Walkers; fitting name. You can call me Glenn." Glenn held out a hand as he drove, which Shane accepted with a firm shake. He peered over at the kid, and a kid he was. Not a speck of facial hair graced his face. He wore a dirty hat with the same pizza logo, which covered thick black hair and shaded his slanted eyes. He was skinny, couldn't be older than 21.
The kid shifted in his seat. "I guess we have to find another way to the FEMA camp. Is that where you guys were headed?"
Shane sat forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "Nah man, you don't wanna go there. A soldier gave us some enlightening information about plans to drop napalm all over Atlanta."
Glenn swerved around an abandoned suitcase in the road and looked at Shane in disbelief. "Napalm?" He groaned. It was clear to Shane that this kid had less of a plan than he and Scarlett did.
Scarlett suddenly sat forward. "Turn left here." Glenn obliged, squealing around the corner last minute. Shane raised an eyebrow and studied Scarlett quizzically. "Glenn, my name is Scarlett and this is Shane. I've got lots of supplies at my house and a sturdier car, no offense. If you'll take us there, I think you should come up the mountain with us. It's the least I can offer after taking us away from the hospital. The woods will be safer at this point."
To reinforce her point, a woman with a missing arm and no lower jaw stumbled into the street, attracted by their moving car. A living man came up behind her and bashed her in the head with a shovel. Shane craned his neck as they drove past. The man dropped to his knees next to the lifeless body, sobbing. A few houses down, two teenagers watched their house erupt in flames. Shane wondered if their parents were inside. Everything was slowly falling apart.
He fell back against the seat, defeated by the circumstances. He had stolen Sky away from a sure grave, but everything had gone wrong since then. He couldn't accept being so out of control anymore. Their lives depended on being smart and alert.
Shane readjusted his hat, wishing for a stiff shot of whiskey. "Take a right on Chestnut."
Finally, Glenn! Stay tuned, peeps.
xoxo
missCanary
