A/N: I'm alive! I feel like I'm always apologizing for delays in updates. Juggling two jobs and making my own film kinda puts a damper on writing fanfic. Buuut, you all should be pleased to know that my particular film project is 100% dedicated to fanfic, so I figure a good way to promote it is by updating a bunch of my stories!

So, to do said little promo work, I started a company called FanFiction FanFilms (F4) that takes popular fanfics and adapts them to the screen. With the author's permission, of course. The first one I'm doing is my Losers fic called Wired, so any of my Losers fans, you might want to keep your eyes open for that. The films are all going on YouTube for free viewing, and we're doing fundraisers for every film not only to help cover costs of filming, but more so to raise money for charity. Wired's proceeds are going to Christopher's Haven, the children's cancer facility in Brooklyn that Chris Evans supports. If you'd like to donate please go to crowdrise (~dot~) (~com~) (slash) fanfictionfanfilmsfo (slash) fundraiser (slash) alexkruse. Sorry, had to get a little creative with the link. Hope that makes sense.

I plan on doing lots more of these, too. If I can get the funding for it, I'd love to do some M7 stuff somewhere down the line. You know the boys, though. Always have to put on a grand show, so I'll wait until I'm better established to do them proper justice. ;)

~~M7~~ZP~~M7~~

"'We should make Denver by tomorrow night,'" Ezra groused, his voice pitched in a mocking tone that Chris chose to ignore for the time being. It wouldn't due to start an argument now, especially not with the agitated Southerner who had already chosen to keep himself on the outskirts of the group as it was. Though there were plenty of seats between the bench, the mattress, and the little table where he could've sat, Standish chose to distance himself from them, preferring the floor where he leaned his back against the door to the workroom. Maybe it was just so he was out of arm's reach, free to continue with his litany of complaints where the others couldn't easily grant him with a well-deserved swat upside the back of his head.

"If those putrid, vile, pathetic wastes of human flesh damage my bike in any way-" he began anew, realizing he hadn't gotten any sort of rise out of his last comment.

"-It's a bike, Ez," Buck huffed. "What would the Infected want with a motorcycle? Not like they got enough brains left in 'em to ride it out of here."

"Besides," Vin continued, "you just got the damn thing, and I don't think the Captain meant for you to keep it. Doesn't exactly make it yours enough to treat it like some sentimental gift."

With a snort, the Pirate waved the comment away as nonsense. "The previous owner is dead, and as the last person that despicable Captain trusted the bike to, the ownership has now been passed along to me. It is a gift, a Pirate's most genuine method of sharing."

He smirked wickedly as the others rolled their eyes, but the grin quickly faded as the scrabbling hands of the Undead again tried to explore the mystery that was Weena. It was unnerving, but JD assured them that the Infected would not be able to breach the exterior, and if the seveon of them stayed still and quiet enough, in time the walking corpses would forget they were even there. The kid hadn't said much beyond that aside from offering a few mumbled apologies to everyone, and they chose not to push him for the time being. Explanations could wait until they were all out of danger, which was definitely not when they'd purposely chosen to park their vehicle in the middle of a Diseased-infested cityscape.

The decision had been made quickly following the explosion as Ezra barrelled his way back to rig, warning them of Pirates coming from several different directions. Knowing they still had some miles to cover before reaching Denver, and wanting to save what ammo they could for their upcoming raid on the Beast Masters Port, they opted to flee instead of fight this time. The only problem was, there was nowhere to flee to out in the middle of the desert. They're only option was to head to a place where the Pirates wouldn't dare tread, and that was up in Pueblo, a city long since abandoned to the nightmare hordes. They hitched Ezra's bike up to the back with a clever little lift that JD put together in all of fifteen seconds, then plowed their way through the Diseased, only stopping once they felt like they were deep enough into the city where the Pirates wouldn't think to follow. They'd been sitting there, mostly in silence, for the past two hours as they waited for the Infected to trickle away a few at a time once they'd lost interest in the moving box. If they couldn't eat it, it wasn't valuable to them, simple as that.

"Can we please depart from this detestable place now?" Ezra asked, turning his focus on Larabee. "Pirates are not exactly known for their patience nor their thoroughness. They probably gave up their hunt for any intruders in their territory within the first hour of searching."

Chris turned his attention towards the somber Toymaker. "What do you think, JD? We clear of enough of these things to take off?"

After a long moment of staring at the blips on his screen, the kid finally shrugged one shoulder. "Still a lot of 'em close by. They'll come right back at us again if I start her up now, and I can't exactly gun it with all the crap in the streets. If there gets to be too many of 'em, it'll be too hard for even Weena to push against 'em without blowing too much ammunition."

Larabee nodded, satisfied with the answer, and turned apologetically towards the rest of the men, all of whom seemed as eager as Ezra to hightail it out of there. "Sorry, boys, sounds too risky. Give it another half hour, then you make the call, JD."

JD looked at Chris, a bit of shock on his face as if startled by the notion of being left in charge of the situation. It was clear he didn't think they'd trust him after the little bomb incident, yet there was Larabee, giving him full reign over their wellbeing. With a shake of his head as if to rid himself of the emotions playing on his young face, he gave the Ranger a firm nod. Leave it to me, I won't screw up this time.

"...You know..." Ezra speculated after several quiet minutes had passed, once again being the one to break the silence. The boys had learned within the first twenty minutes of being in Pueblo that their resident Pirate was apparently uncomfortable with the concept of group quiet time. Either that or he just liked to hear the sound of his own voice. It could've gone either way with him. "...if it would help free us in a more timely manner, I could go retrieve the bike and-"

His words were cut off as Buck grabbed a spoon and threw it at the Rising man. Hard. Ezra batted it off its intended trajectory with a little yelp and a dark look shot in Wilmington's direction. Josiah chuckled at the antics while Nathan merely shook his head, a small smirk forming at the corner of his lips.

"Don't be stupid," Buck scolded. "You wouldn't make it two feet if you stepped outside that door, and opening that hatch even a hair would be like sending an invitation to those things. Like a big neon sign sayin' 'Dinner's on, fellas! Come and get it!' Go get the bike, my ass. What kind of idiot plan is that?"

Ezra opened his mouth to say something that was probably going to be rather heated based on how red his face was becoming, but whatever it was, he held it back at the last second with a snap of his jaw. Turning his gaze away, he settled on mumbling, "At least I was trying to think of something," and left it at that. Another second later he was on his feet and slipping into the back room, complaining that it was too stifling in there with so many people crammed into the small space...even though none of the others exactly viewed it as uncomfortably small.

"I think you embarrassed him," Josiah pointed out.

Buck merely shrugged innocently. "Stopped him from trying to do anything stupid like getting him and all the rest of us killed, didn't it?"

JD swiveled in his seat and did nearly exactly what Ezra had done only moments before, looking like he was about to say something, and quickly changing his mind as if afraid to voice his opinion on the matter. He glanced quickly to Chris, wordlessly asking the man's permission, which Larabee granted with a slight nod. Still, the boy hesitated to speak, clearly warring with himself over whether or not what was on his mind was worth saying.

"Go ahead, son," Josiah prompted. "We won't bite. The ones that do are all outside."

He threw the Toymaker a little wink, which seemed to put the kid at ease enough to talk.

"I was just thinkin' that Ezra's idea may not be so stupid, after all."

Chris held up a hand to halt whatever it was that Buck was about to say, and nodded at the kid to continue.

"Um...okay," JD stalled again, then sucked in a breath to spit out the rest of his idea with more confidence. "I was just gonna say that we probably have to get movin' sooner than later if we want to hit that Port when we're supposed to, and we could be waiting here for a lot longer if someone doesn't create a distraction. If I blow the torch out the front, it should give Ezra and maybe a couple of you others enough time to get out and up onto Weena's roof before the zombies swarm at us again. Then you guys could cover him while he climbs down to unhitch the bike. He just has to slide the bolt out. Shouldn't take him longer than a second or two. As soon as he takes off, I blow the torch again so the folks coverin' him can get back in here, and he draws the horde away. They're more likely to follow him, seein' as how he'll make the easier target."

Vin exchanged a look with Chris. "It ain't a bad plan," he stated, but Larabee shook his head.

"It ain't a bad plan to get to the bike, but I don't like the idea of Standish being so exposed after he takes off. He'd be on his own out there, and the streets aren't what they used to be. He gets caught at a dead end, it'll be a dead end for him."

"And if that's the case," Nathan piped up, "we might as well kiss this whole damn mission goodbye. I need him alive. For all we know, he may be the only Rising employee left, and that makes the man pretty damn valuable. Now that we know he seems to be on our side, ya'll should be protecting him like you do me."

With some hesitation in his tone, Tanner inquired softly, "And if it turns out he's not on our side?"

Nathan frowned casually, almost dismissively. "We do what it takes. The more he tells us and the more I think about it, the more I realize how much we need him. I need him. Whether anyone likes it or not, the key to this vaccine might rest in that man's slick hands."

At the back of the rig, Ezra slipped away from the crack in the door, no longer wanting to hear what it was that the others had to say on the matter. He had flown through so many emotions over the course of the short conversation that he could hardly untangle them all. There was the initial excitement about JD's plan and Vin's reply, then the disappointment at Chris having shot it down, to feeling oddly touched that the man in black seemed to be genuinely concerned for his wellbeing, which quickly turned sour as he realized that they all may only have cared about him because he was useful, then there was the heart-stopping moment when he feared Vin would give away his detestable alias as Mercury, followed by anger that they'd force his cooperation if need be, and finally by a sense of peer shock to be thought of as a potential savior of the entire human race. That thought was what was currently rattling him the most above all others.

Him? Ezra Standish? A man who had played a part in the demise of the known world could possibly be one of the people to set it right again? No, there was no way he could be that important. It wasn't like he knew anything about the virus, or chemistry or biology as a whole. The moment he would finish acting as guide to Dr. Jackson to get him where he needed to go within Rising, his role as a savior would be over. He wouldn't be remembered as a hero, not by any means.

Still...if this one act could set the world back on its proper axis, even if all he could do would be to play guide, he supposed it might help lift the guilt just a little. It was so heavy on his chest that at times he found it difficult to breathe. Maybe, just maybe, this little adventure would give him that small fraction of freedom he'd need to at least draw in the fresh air again.

"Careful, Ezra," he muttered to himself. "Hope can be a very dangerous obstacle to overcome."

He reached for his battered jacket and pulled a deck of cards out from the inside zipper pocket, then cleared a small space for himself on the workbench. If doing things like riding a stolen (gifted) bike through a horde of Diseased was no longer in the cards for him, maybe he would find out what was.

~ZP~M7~ZP~M7~ZP~M7~ZP~

Utter confusion was the next emotion Ezra felt as a rumbling voice coaxed him back into the waking world. He sat up, groggy and sore, and blinked his eyes at a widely grinning preacher.

"Something funny?" he asked, his accent thick with sleep. When Josiah merely pointed at his cheek, Ezra reached up to find that one of his cards was currently plastered to his skin, and the rest of his game of solitaire was in complete ruin beneath his arms that now rested on the bench. "Ace of Spades," he mused as he peeled the offending bit of cardstock off his face.

"If I'd known you had those," Josiah commented, "I might've come back to join you sooner. Been a long time since I played. I miss a good game, miss taking a sort of gamble that won't cost me my life."

"I would wager there is plenty a man who would argue that a gamble at the card table can be just as deadly as the foes we currently face outside this rig," the Pirate argued. "Of course, finding such a man in our current environs may prove to be a bit difficult."

Josiah chuckled at that. "No truer words, brother, no truer words."

It was then that Ezra finally realized they were actually moving, but he kept his relief in check. Not that he wasn't capable of sitting stone still when the need required, but having to do so among strangers who didn't know him nor fully trust him was unnerving. He'd always had a tendency to fair much better on his own, and the one time he'd found himself on a team he thought he could finally trust with his very life, they had taken the faith he'd placed in them and shredded it into a thousand tiny pieces. Probably more.

"So we are finally headed out of this wretched city?" he questioned, sounding almost bored as he stifled a yawn.

"Been out of the city for almost an hour now," the preacher corrected, much to Ezra's alarm. It wasn't like him to sleep so heavily, especially with his unguarded back to a door that led to potential hostiles.

Josiah laughed again. "You look like someone just convinced you that vampires were real."

"That I would almost believe, considering," Standish returned gruffly. "How long was I asleep for?"

"Waited out the storm in Pueblo for a little over two hours." Josiah didn't laugh this time as the dismayed look deepened on the Rising man's face. Instead, he gave Standish a friendly pat on the arm. "Shouldn't feel bad about catching some rest when you need it. Been a hectic couple of days. No one would think twice about it if you wanted to come out and sleep on the bed some. Can't imagine sleeping on that chair is doing you any favors."

Ezra unconsciously rolled back his sore shoulder and winced at the slight kink in his neck. "No, thank you, Mr. Sanchez. If we've been traveling for an hour, that means we should only have one more to go even at a snail's pace to reach the Port. I should probably be alert so I can properly help guide us to a safe position from which we can scout the area. The Pirates will no doubt be edgy and irritable after their previous failure to apprehend our vehicle. They will be expecting an attack."

Now it was Josiah's turn to be alarmed. "From us? Why?"

Standish quickly waived away the primary concern. "From other Pirates. They can be as cannibalistic as the Diseased at times. Any sign of weakness in a Port is an invitation for rival crews to claim more territory and resources. That is why I was suggesting we make haste in our departure from the city, so that we wouldn't run the risk of having to fight off not only the remaining Beast Masters, but the surrounding territory's crews, as well."

"Might've been useful information not to hold back on," the preacher stated with some slight irritation in his tone.

Ezra glared at him for a second. "I might have been more inclined to share if certain someones would have refrained from passing judgment on my level of intelligence before I had a chance to fully voice my concerns."

"Buck," Josiah grumbled, closing his eyes for a mere second before clapping Ezra on his good shoulder. "Let's go, son. We need to talk to Chris, start putting some protocols in place in case we get caught in one of these turf wars."

"But we may not need to. We haven't even formulated a plan as to how we're aiming to invade the Port and rescue the hostages. We know nothing until we get closer, as I have never set actually set foot in this particular Beast Masters safehaven. As I said before, the last I'd heard, they had established themselves in Reno territory before moving this way. I don't have enough information to go on that would be helpful to even begin setting up protoc-"

Without letting him finish, Josiah pushed open the door and called for Larabee. Buck, too, and anyone else who was available to listen, informing them that they may have a problem. Ezra stood up, doing his best in the now even-smaller space he found himself in to dissuade their concerns. It wasn't that he wasn't one for making plans, he just didn't like jumping to conclusions before all the details were known, or expending extra effort worrying over events that may never come to pass. He tended to have more success when he planned little and improvised a lot, and with his fellow Pirates, the only thing that would probably keep them all alive was some improvisation. There was nothing that a Pirate did better than creating chaos, after all...