Wane's POV

I slowly woke up from my rest and slowly let my eyes open up to see where I was. As soon as I opened my eyes I could see that I was no longer hanging over Nathan's shoulders. Instead, I was in a safe house. Good thing too, I didn't have my guns with me like I remembered, and I would have been a burden to Nathan if a horde, hunter or tank was chasing us. I stretched my arms out hearing snores all around me. I looked around and saw Nathan laying down to the wall to my left with Harry directly to my right. His snoring was right in my right ear and I quickly moved away from him. I saw Hunter silently sleeping in the corner of the safe house, but I couldn't find Casey anywhere. I looked around for a bit before I saw her, but she looked different somehow, I didn't remember her being blond. I approached the blond and touched her shoulder before she started shouting muffled screams and started shacking violently. I jumped out of the way from surprise.

"What the hell" I half whispered half shouted trying not to wake everyone up. She had scared the daylights out of me with that. I toke a closer look at her and saw that she was tied up with thick wads of grey duct tape around her mouth and calves. Her eyes were red, possibly from crying with a running nose. The first thing I thought for her was that it must have been hard for her to breath. I then unwrapped the tape around her mouth as she started struggling against me screaming her head off. Not that it was very load though. "Shhhh, shhhh" I whispered to her as calmly as I could "I'm trying to help you." She didn't seem to believe it at first until after I had removed a few layers of tape around her mouth. "Just stay calm for me." I said trying to make her scared. Her bright green eyes seemed reassured as I got down to the last couple layers of tape. "The tape is in your hair" I told her "this might hurt a bit." I then as gently as I could, got the sticky tape off her hair without hurting her too much. When the final layer of tape off her mouth her immediately spat out a dirty white rag and started coughing and made retching sounds as she started spitting a frenzy of spit out. This was probably Hunter and Casey's doing from the looks of it. I studied her face closer, there was a couple of red marks on her right temple, her bright green eyes were filled with water, and snot running down her lips from her nose. "You ok?" I asked knowing that she possibly wasn't.

"Thanks" she coughed "I thought I was going to die because of them."

"Who?" I asked, she then looked angry as she said

"That trench coat wearing bastard and that red haired bitch." Hunter and Casey, just as I thought.

"Yeah" I said sitting down next to her "They would be the ones to do this." She then looked at me with a startle.

"Oh, I thought you were dead." She commented. I was about to ask why she'd think that before she started talking again "you were so pale when they brought you in, and you weren't moving, in fact, your still pale." Figures I thought I was pale enough to be called a ghost and on Halloween, Hunter said that it only needed to be a cold night for me to scare kids, but I never thought that I'd be pale enough to be called dead.

"Yeah" I said "I'm really pale. It's kind of funny how you thought I was dead, I was just sleeping on Nathan's shoulders."

"The black guy?" The girl asked.

"Yeah" I told her before pointing to Nathan. "That's the giant over there, he's the cautious person in the group even though he's also the strongest." I then decided to introduce everyone to her. "That over there is Harry" I said pointing to the other blond besides myself "He doesn't talk as much as the rest of us, but we still listen to him just as much. You've already meet Hunter" I pointed to Hunter who was in the corner waving his arms around in his sleep "He can be aggressive like you've seen, but he's still a good person, like Casey, I can't find her right now but I can tell you that she can also be aggressive, and a smart ass at times but she's also a good person."

"Your Casey is under the table" the girl told me. I looked under the table in the safe house and sure enough, I spotted her red hair alongside the wall.

"So I see." I then turned to the new girl and said to her "Well, I've been outside the world of the living for a bit, who are you and what happened?" The girl then sighed and started explaining herself.

"My name's Elisa, I was traveling with my sister and some of our friends before they were killed and I got separated from my sis. I lost my weapon while running away from a jockey and found myself here. I then found a revolver with six shots before you and your friends arrived." She then turned angry as she explained the later parts. "And then that bastard flipped me into the air, nearly broke my arm, hit me with the revolver, and slammed my head onto a table. That bitch also slammed me into the wall before tying me up and letting that bastard stuff a filthy rag into my mouth before his bitch taped my mouth shut and tied my up with wire and tape." I couldn't help but notice that when she said bitch and bastard, she seemed to say it with extreme anger and hate. I tried lightning the mood by saying

"Could have been worse, Hunter could have shoved his boot up your mouth." The reaction I got from the girl wasn't the one I wanted to get because she then muttered

"I bet he was thinking it." That sure didn't help the mood, not one bit. I also didn't want to say to her that Hunter wouldn't have done something like that unless she was doing something to him or us. I'd find out later what she did to us later when everyone was up anyway, so I wasn't going to make the mood worse then it already was.

"Want something to eat or drink?" I asked. The girl, Elisa, nodded happily at me and said that she'd love something to eat to get the taste of the dirty rag out of her mouth. I then walked over to one of our backpacks and unzipped it to see what we had. "We're not exactly a five star restaurant" I said trying to pull off a lame joke to make her laugh, or smile, anything. "But this is what we've got." I then pulled out canned green beans, canned black olives, canned sardines and a can of mushrooms. The rest of the foods were just duplicities of these. "What would you like?" I asked showing her the contents.

"Don't you have anything else?" Elisa asked.

"Like I said little girl, we're not a restaurant"

"I'm not little I'm seventeen" she hissed at me

"Oh, sorry" I said in mock apology "It's just that you have the figure of a ten year old." It wasn't true, but I found it kind of funny when she started grinding her teeth together and was practically snarling at me like an animal.

"You also don't have a teenagers body either" she growled at me.

"Charmed" I said popping open the easy open lid of the black olives and placed it in front of her. "Here" I snickered "enjoy"

"I'm tied up you idiot" she then growled at me "how am I supposed to eat?" I then smacked my palm to my forehead like I hadn't noticed

"I'm sorry" I laughed "I didn't notice." I then saw her glare at me with a I'm not in the mood look on her face. "Geez" I huffed "tough crowd."

"Who are you trying to please anyway?" Elisa half growled half asked me "If you're trying to humor me don't, I don't want to be."

"I don't really try and please anyone" I told her picking up the can of olives "I do this for my sake." She then looked at me confused like.

"Truth be told, I'm physically the weakest person in the group, and I probably have the least mental strength as well."

"You don't look dumb to me" Elisa said seemingly calming down "I mean, not to stereotype, but usually the one's that try to act tough are the dumb ones."

"It's not smartness I'm talking about" I explained knowing where she was going "I mean, I think I'm the one that's most vulnerable to becoming mentally unstable in this type of environment. And Hunter and Casey don't try to act tough, they are tough, and they're not dumb."

"If you say so" she answered. I then placed the rim of the can to Elisa's lips and let her drink the liquid out of the can as she drank greedily sucking the liquid back. After she drank about a quarter of the liquid I stopped her from drinking the whole can all at once and made her focus on eating the actual olives. I placed some in my left hand and hand feed them to her one at a time which she ate without complaint. After all, you can't really be fussy about what you eat now a days. At first I was afraid that every time Elisa's teeth grazed on my palm that she was going to bite my skin off, but after going through half the can I got pretty comfortable with her. "These taste so much better then that dirty rag they stuffed in my mouth." Elisa commented "thanks for that."

"No problem" I told her. I then began tossing single olives at her mouth seeing if she could catch some in her mouth, but they just ended up hitting her in the face.

"What the hell?" She asked after getting hit about ten times.

"Nothing" I told her. Man, it was hard to get to her laugh or anything, she was a total hard case. I then silently fed her the rest of the olives and let her drink the juice back before throwing the can to the ground. I then used my blood stained rain jacket that was now half red half green to clean her face from the olive juice, her snot, and her tears. After I had wiped her face clean she looked a lot better then she did a minute ago.

"Hay, rising dead" Elisa said to me before I interrupted and told her what I should have told her a while ago

"Wane, that's my name"

"Wane" Elisa said before pausing. I waited for her to finish. "I want to save my sister, who's in charge here?" I then had to think about that, nobody was really in charge of us. We acted as a group with usually Hunter telling us what to do in a combat situation, but there was also Nathan who usually lead us when he had to, and there was also Casey sometimes. But most of the time we toke a vote on what to do. A democracy that might not be among all survivor groups.

"We're all in charge in a way" I told Elisa "but if I had to choose a leader and your not going to like this, I'd choose Hunter."

"What?" Elisa said like she couldn't believe the words coming out of my mouth. "You'd want that psycho as your leader?"

"Hunter has his flaws" I explained "but to me, he's the best choice besides Nathan who's sometime too much on the caution side." Elisa then gave out a humfp before asking me

"So what do you mean by all of you are in charge?"

"Voting" I told her "If a majority votes on whatever subject, we go for that one, and while you might not like it, you follow everyone else." I could see her eyes practically light up and I knew she had came up with a plan.

"Tell me, do you want to get out of this swamp?" What was she talking about? Of course I wanted to get out of this dumb, away from the swamp water, the mud covered hunter wannabes, the bugs.

"More then anything" I told her. She then gave out a big smile before telling me

"I can get you out of here, I can be your guide, but you have to help me save my sister, that's my only condition." My savior I thought, I was going to jump at this chance, we could get out of this swamp sooner if we had guide rather then the five of us running around in circles for hours getting chased by hunter wannabes, common infected and special infected.

"I'll try to convince the others" I told her happily "but how to I know you're telling the truth?"

"Look, I couldn't get away from you guys even if I wanted to, and besides, what would I gain from that?"

"Our food and weapons" I said

"But I'd be stuck if a hunter, smoker or charger got me, and I'm not going out there by myself" she said looking outside the safe house. I then sighed and said

"I'll see what I can do." I then picked up a bottle of water from the backpack beside me. "But while talking to us, don't call Hunter bastard or Casey bitch." I then held the water bottle to her face and asked "still thirsty?"

Hunter's POV

I ran as hard as I could but the hunter was still on my tail. I could hear it's snarling and growling behind me and I didn't need to look back to know that it was almost on me. I was badly injured, and the only thing that kept me running was the natural adrenaline coursing through my body. I felt the sweat all over my body soaking through my clothes as I ran. Around me was darkness and only darkness. It was only me and the hunter. I slowed down for a split second before a heavy weight slammed onto my back before flipping me over for me to face the enemy that was about to kill me. The hunter with its half covered face growled at me before taking a swing at me with it's razor sharp claws and slashed at me chest. The burning pain coursed through my body as it toke another slash, then another, and another. I raised my hands and defense and started swinging them as hard as I could, but I was too weak, and he was too strong. The hunter then toke another slash at me tearing into my ribs.

I woke up with a start swinging my arms around like a mad man still seeing the beast that was on me. But as soon as I calmed down, I noticed that there was no hunter on me, there was no hunter anywhere. I heard my heavy breathing and felt my heart racing in agony as I wiped the sweat off my head. Just a dream I thought, just another nightmare. I looked around the safe house and thought that everything was fine, I saw Harry was sleeping, but Wane was keeping a look out on the girl while Nathan got his well deserved rest while Casey was sleeping under one of the tables. Everything was fine, they were all ok.

"Can I have some more water?" I heard an unfamiliar girl's voice ask. I looked towards where the voice had came from and saw that the girl Wane was sitting beside didn't have the tape around her mouth. But the other things restraining her were still on, so this wasn't too bad.

"No" I huffed out of exhaustion and stress "you can't."

"Oh" I heard Wane say "you're awake"

"Yeah, I am" I answered getting to my feet.

"I'm just wondering, what did Elisa do to deserve this?" Wane asked. Elisa, I thought, that must be the girl's name. I then told Wane what had happened and the Elisa girl said that she wasn't trying to kill us, just get our weapons.

"Yeah" I said specially "then why did you try shoot me?"

"You were charging at me" the Elisa girl answered with a start "what was I supposed to do? Take it so that you could tie me up and shove a rag inside my mouth?"

"Bitch, you tried to kill me"

"And you tied me up and shoved a dirty rag in my mouth and threw me around and hit me" She challenged

"How about I do some KGB torture on you" I challenged back "Then you'll consider yourself lucky that me and Casey only tied you up"

"No. No, no no no no no" Wane said standing up "nobody's going to pull anybody's nails out, look, Hunter" Wane started explaining to me "she can get us out of here." I wanted to laugh at this, Wane had been tricked, this girl tried to take our stuff and he was defending her, what had she ever done for us other then give us trouble?

"When she couldn't even get out herself?" I head Casey's voice ask from under one of the tables "I doubt she's telling the truth."

"I can't get out without my sister" the Elisa girl said "I won't leave without my sister, that's why I'm not gone yet"

"Yeah" Casey snorted "and I've got a brother that's a tank that we need to rescue."

"It's true bitch" I could see that Wane shaking his head in frustration.

"I told you not to call her that" he groaned

"What kind of bull crap has she feed to you?" I asked Wane sharply "for all we know, for all you know, her sister could be waiting for her someplace safe and sound"

"She says she can lead us out of this swamp" Wane argued "don't you want that? I'm sure everyone wants that"

"Without some girl that I think will shoot us in the back as soon as we finish the objective?"

"I'm not lying!" The girl screamed out "I can lead you out! But I want to save me sister! That's why I tried to take your weapons! Look! I'm sorry! But can you either give me a gun or help me out!"

"I'll see what the others think" I told her. I was going to ask the rest of the group what they wanted. I didn't know if sending her out was the best idea, if we should trust her or not. If she really could get us out of the swamp and I made the decision to get rid of her, then we could be wondering these swamps. But on the other hand, if we bring her around and she was planning on betraying us, we probably wouldn't get out of these swamps either. I wasn't the one to make the decisions anyway.

Just before sunset was when the last of us, Harry, woke up. After everyone had a quick snack consisting of canned food I lined everyone up in front of the girl and let her explain herself. We listened to her talking about how she wanted to save her sister and how that if we helped her save her sister, she'd get us out of this swamp. That won Nathan, Harry and Wane over instantly while Casey and I were still skeptical about the situation. I then told them to remember about last night before making a decision and gave them a few minutes to decide. While they were thinking, Wane told us how valuable she could be and that she could really save us. Then a few minutes later I then asked them wither then wanted the girl to tag along, or if they wanted to leave her. "Raise your hand if you want her to stay." I moment of truth I thought, would you stay or leave. I then watched as Wane's hand went up, followed by Nathan's. I then felt relief knowing that the girl would leave, she'd be nothing but trouble having to look after her every second making sure that she didn't shoot us in the back. "Raise your hand if you say she leave." I raised my hand along with Casey. Harry hadn't raised his hand at all, it was a tie. "Harry" I said "do you want her to stay or leave?"

"Let her stay" Wane spoke up "let's get out of this shit hole"

"If she doesn't shot us in the back first" Casey said

"I do want to get out of this place" Harry said "but I don't know about her."

"We out number her five to one" Wane told him "if she tries anything funny, she'll have to face all of us, plus she can't survive on her own"

"But what she can take is our weapons" I explained "with a good assault rifle you could fend off a horde"

"Special infected" was all Wane needed to say. We all turned to Harry waiting anxiously for his decision. After a tense decision on his part, he finally said

"I don't know what's going to happen from now on" Harry started "but let's hope for the best, because I choose for for her to stay." I heard Wane and Nathan saying that he made the right choice, but I wasn't sure about that, but everyone had spoken and that was that, she was going to be with us for better or worse.

"Cut her loose" I told Casey. Casey didn't like the idea of the girl who tried to take our stuff away traveling with us, but maybe, just maybe, we made the right choice. Casey cut off the duct tape, wire and zip tie off the girl Elisa who jumped up with satisfaction. I then asked Nathan who hid the weapons for them back. Nathan went and fetched them from the bathtub in the corner of the room near where I slept. Not really the best hiding place, but, it was good enough I guess. We all got our weapons back except for Elisa. I got her Webley revolver and only placed three rounds into the six shot chamber before handing it back to her. "Three shots" I told her "that's all you get."

"Fine" She said clearly irritated with me "whatever."

"Now" I said wanting her to understand clearly where we stood "we'll rescue your sister, but you have to get us out of here."

"Will do" Elisa smiled as we exited the safe house. I hoped we made the right choice.

A/N: I had a lot of free time at school the last few days, so that's how I managed to get this done so fast.

To Kindra D: Wouldn't surprise me, a lot of movies have stuff like that happening, but I only remembered that because of your comment. What do you mean? I didn't say anything bad to you did I? I know how you feel. But I'm also thinking that if the game was realistic (don't get mad at me now) you'd be dead within ten seconds of the first horde. I mean, first aid packs don't heal you that good, and there are like, fifty super zombies charged by extreme red bull energy drinks that claw and bite you and the one's that crush, hollow you out and strangle you. But if you mean realistic like...something else, I don't know, tell me or something. I want to know how to make this better.