Guess who's laptop is out of the hospital :D

This is a short Chapter but its really late and I'm really tired. I promise the next chapter will be longer. This is also a little rushed, which I hate myself for doing.

Bill and Louis came through the door, carrying the guns we had left behind.

"What took ya so long?" Francis asked, snatching his gun from Louis.

"Got lost. Ellis ran two streets." Bill answered, throwing a bottle of water our way. I thought I had only ran one. Must have ran passed one without noticing.

"Kid, you can run." Bill sighed, tossing some magazines to Zoey, since her gun was running low.

"Two years of track in high school. Course, I think that Tank was getting slower." I yawned widely, trying not to wake Chip. Sure there was the fear of swelling in the brain with a concussion, but Lord knows he needed to rest.

That last sentence caught me off guard. It was something Coach would say, not me.

"Yeah, his legs looked pretty wimply." Louis chuckled.

"Wimply is not a word." Zoey corrected him. She reloaded her gun and gave Ellis back his own.

Nick was looking like a pissed five-year-old. Sitting next to me with his bottom lip sticking out and refused to help with anything. Chip was out cold, curled up against the wall now that I had joined Francis in looking through the rubble outside. My arm hurt like hell, and the ACE bandage did little, but I wouldn't let it slow me down. Bill had found the RPG on a dead CEDA agent, who had no doubt been caught in the bombs fumes.

The city of New Orleans had been completely whipped off the map. Some buildings stood, like the ones near the docks, but the closer to the Ocean you got, the more destruction you saw. From our high vantage point I could see that they had left some portion of it alone. It was some ways away, but it was definitely there. A perfect circle untouched around the blurry line of the bridge that would take days if not another two weeks to get to.

Francis was whistling as he dug around a blue tent, a CEDA tent. Which were becoming more frequent.

"Come on Horse-boy. If we don't get back soon, Bill will be mad, and if that happens, we will end up sleeping outside again."

"Again? That was only you, and only because you decided to get bitchy."

Nick was sprawled in the middle of the cement floor. Eyes closed and moaning slightly. Chip was awake and leaning over him. I had never seen Nick, the nearing middle-aged Conman who insisted I was childish, laying on the floor because Zoey had told him off.

Chip was more then happy to see me. Limping to my side and following me to the wall. Zoey had cleaned whatever blood was left on him, and he looked a helluva lot better. He plunked his head on my lap, moaning as his eyes closed. I was tired myself but didn't think I could sleep. Not with Nick whining.

"But they might be worrying. Who knows if they moved on or not. What if they did and we can't find them?"

"Shut your mouth and sit your ass down Nicholas." Bill grumbled, the war veteran easily over powering Nick in the sense of fowl language if he wanted to.

Keith whipped his hands on the rag that he had stuck in his pocket. I slid out from underneath Dave's pick-up, which he had nearly driven off the free-way when the deer ran ahead of him.

I whipped the back of my hand on my forehead, well aware of the grease mark that was now spread across it.

"Hey Ellis, ya hear 'bout that flu that's been going around?

"Yeah, man it sounds like a nasty bitch too."

"Did you fix yer Ma's heater?"

"Yeah, just the water line was broke, that all. Could'a swore she did it herself just to mess with me. I've fixed it three times already."

Keith chuckled as he replaced the tire that had blown when Dave ran over Carmen's fence. "I honestly thought Dave would have learned that those deer like her yard."

"She still have that apple tree?"

"I guess so."

….

….

….

I gripped the table tightly as the world seemed to turn. Keith became a distorted shape of garbled noises that disappeared as suddenly as they started. I was suddenly underneath another car, since Keith hated to sit on the old skateboard that we used instead of one of those fancy sliders.

"Keith?" I called, kicking the side of the car to propel my self into the front room. All was still, not a person was in sight and I thought I had heard a car alarm somewhere passed the street.

I stood to my feet, brushing of my one-piece work suit. Of course I didn't care about the dirt on my work cloths. My hands were filthy. Keith's work boots were thrown into the tool box since it was the only place he could remember where they were.

"Keith?" I stepped outside, seeing that the road was empty. A few cars were scattered but not a person in sight.

With a sharp catch of air in my throat, I awoke, looking over to Chip on my left and Nick on my right. Both snoring. It was still dark, the moon just barely filtering through the boarded windows. It seemed that the only one who wasn't snoring was Zoey, and I knew I wouldn't be able to fall asleep again if I tried. Whether it was echoing or not I could hear the thunder and the rain falling. Although I couldn't think of a reason it would be echoing. My mind was still playing tricks on me. It had been for the passed few hours.

I thought I heard Coach, and then Rochelle. Followed by Keith laughing about driving his car into the bog behind his property. He thought it was funny, but Dave driving his car into his girlfriends yard was hysterical.

I stared at the ceiling for awhile, watching for the patterns in the cement to change. Even though I knew it wouldn't, it still seemed to go from flat to a square texture. Looking over at Chip I could see he was wearing my hat again. Francis would usually take it from me in an attempt to make me mad, then Chip would take it and wear it until I noticed.

Nick did the same with my guns, but he did both. He would take my gun and keep it, but instead of just snatching it back, I would have to get Rochelle to make him.

I missed when things were like that. When we could pull some humour into an empty, dead world. We still could, Francis did that without fault, but it wasn't the same. I didn't like change, I admit it, so this whole thing has been a bit of a bitch.

I could be happier with this, but I'm exhausted and couldn't really think "Zombie".