Fight Or Flight

Tatiana was awoken by the phone ringing noisely on her bedside table. She had just gotten into bed after looking at the stars on the balcony (oh, don't forget gazing at Eli, too.) and she was just snuggling into her warm comforter when it started ringing. The electric clock on the table next to the phone read 1:10 am.

Groggily, she lifted the phone off the hook and up to her ear. "'Lo?"

"Hey. Hotel meeting in the lobby In 5 minutes," Rosita's voice came through the other end. Before Tatiana could think of anything to say, Rosita hung up. The Spanish woman's voice rung through Tatiana's ears. Tatiana set the phone down back onto the cradle and she sat up in her bed. She rubbed at her eyes for a moment, stalling. She wondered what it could be...

Maybe one of the metal sheets attached to the windows had somehow come loose and maybe there were zombies running around the lobby? No, she told herself smartly. I would probally hear gunshots or something. Maybe a little screaming too. She needed a reason to be getting out of bed at 1 in the morrning. A logical reason.

Maybe something was wrong with Amelie... Or Dylan. Okay, freak, stop thinking and just get your ass out of bed.

Tatiana pulled on one of her sweatshirts over the tank top she was wearing and slipped on a pair of generic fluffy hotel slippers over her chilly feet and she headed out into the hallway, towards the elevator.

When she arrived downstairs with pajama clad Lexi and Bryanne in tow, she spotted Rosita sitting at the front desk with the black, dusty CB in front of her crackling with white noise. On her right side was Jimmy and on her left side was Amelie wearing a light pink nightgown. She looked almost like an aged fairy. The queen of the fairies.

Tatiana, Lexi, and Bryanne solemnly pulled up chairs as the rest of the group groggily appeared. When everone was present, Rosita started to explain the situation.

"A few minutes ago a girl radioed in on the CB" - Something that hadn't happened in a while. Slowly, some of the correspondence they had made with survivors around California had basically died out. The CB hadn't roared to life in a long time. "She is a 16 year old student at a school in Lakehurst, about 30 or 40 minutes away from here. She is trapped in a truck with 3 other girls and well... They are basically trapped."

Tatiana listened on with interest and horror. She couldn't imagine herself being 16 years old, by herself basically with 3 girls probally younger than her that are crying and scared with insane flesh eating zombies running around. She couldn't imagine it at all. She felt absolutely scared for them and her stomach dropped as Rosita continued.

"They haven't seen anyone to help them, they think the town is deserted. No help is comming. I think... we should help them. Rescue them," Rosita concluded her, her maternal instincts kicking in at the end. Her brown hands clasped together nervously, expectantly.

Everyone was silent, maybe contemplating all of this.

"40 minutes away?" Scott said, his thick strong fingers running through his dark beard. Rosita nodded her head.

"I don't know... What if something happened to us? What if the truck broke down?" Scott replied, his thick brows furrowing. Tatiana kept silent, just like the others. She felt that they needed to rescue these girls like Rosita felt... but then Scott continued his arguement, which made another part of her mind agree with him.

"What if one of us gets bitten? I don't think we can risk it..." Scott continued. Rosita looked at him as if he was insane.

"What are you saying Scott?" Rosita said, sounding disgusted. Her cheeks began to flare. "Are we going to let 4 young girls just sit and die out there?"

"No, I'm not. But between that 40 minutes, something could happen. Either to us or to them. What if they are already dead when we get there?" He said, his tone still calm but his words sharp.

"I don't know! We can't just let them sit and die. We can't just not try," Rosita said, glaring at him. Tatiana agreed with both sides but she felt ashamed. Rosita was right, they couldn't just let those innocent girls die without trying to help save them. But on the other hand, they couldn't risk it. In that 40 minutes they took to drive there, what if one of them got bitten and turned into one of the zombies? And then they use alot of their ammo? And then they arrive to find the girls are dead?

It couldn't work.

"I agree with Scott," Alex chimed in. His arms were crossed against his chest, a serious expression on his features. Tatiana couldn't believe him as she stared at his defiant face but she couldn't believe herself as half of her agreed with him.

"I think we should do it." Bryanne said, her reasoning, girlish drawl calming the hot tones of Rosita and Scott. They both glanced at her, forgetting their heated debate for just a moment. Bryanne had a way of doing that to people.

"We are running low on supplies and food," She said, pulling her knees up onto her chair and under her chin, "We're all sharing clothes and we barely have enough. I think that along the way we could find a walmart or a sam's club or something. Maybe even a gun store. We could replenish all of our supplies while going to look for those girls!"

Rosita and Scott both glanced at her as if they were just looking at her in a new light. They looked as if gears were hard at work in their heads, looking over Bryanne's plan in their minds. Tatiana glanced at her friend, with her messy curly white-blonde hair surrounding her head like an afro. She looked up at Tatiana and smiled goofily. Bryanne seemed like a goofy, fun girl but she was smart. She was more deep than she appeared.

"I think... that would work," Rosita said, tapping a long nail on her chin. She slowly glanced at Scott and he gruffly nodded and crossed his arms across his chest similarly to Alex before standing up.

"Okay, we have work to do."

Tatiana sat on her bed, pulling her running shoes onto her feet. Instead of being pajama clad this time, she was dressed in a pair of jeans and a the teal colored sweatshirt she had worn the day she had seen her Dad die. She felt a little shiver as she thought of the sweatshirt as "the sweatshirt she had worn when her father died." Sure, she would always remember it this way but the blood had all washed away in the washer. Somewhere, deep in the soft cotten fibers, little bits of memory was stored there. She knew it.

They had split the group up into 3 parties: The party going for the girls, the party going to the nearest department store, and the party staying at the hotel waiting.

Using the computer at the front desk in the lobby, Rosita used the the internet (Suprisingly, the internet was still useable. They checked news websites everyday but it was always the same old thing. They listed sites of military help and told you to stay in your homes and all of the things that they already knew. But. Well... all of the articles were dated from about 2 or 3 weeks back.) to map out exact directions to the school in Lakehurst for the second party and exact directions to the nearest Wal-Mart in Raven Heights, which was only 10 miles away from the hotel. She had also found the directions to a hunting store in the town which was near the department store. They were running low on ammunition as well as food and liquids to drink.

Tatiana was in the party going to the department store. Along with her was Bryanne, Lexi, Lleyton, Antoinette, Lucie, Eli, Scott and Natasha. The party going to actually get the girls were Alex, Maria, Jeff, Brandon, Aiden, Ethan, and Hilary. The ones staying at the hotel were Jimmy, Rosita, Anna Lena, and Amelie.

Tatiana pulled her thick hair into a ponytail. Her hair was dying for a good cutting. She glanced at her coffee table and spotted some of the polaroids she had taken recently. A picture of her playing cards with Amelie and Bryanne, her cheeks puffed up and her tongue sticking out. Scott and Jeff teeing off on the roof using their "golf clubs." That picture was perfect. You could see only their shadows against the setting sun.

There was a picture of Antoinette drinking a magarita, lounging on her blow up chair in the pool with a nasty look aimed at the camera and one of Alex looking very handsome and solider-like, a rifle over his shoulder and a ciggerette dangling out of his mouth.

The camera itself was laid next to the scattered photos. Lately, this was her only source of joy besides maybe Lexi and Bryanne. She was just depressed about alot of things. Tatiana was sick of waking up everyday and seeing zombies gazing up at her like she was a fresh piece of meat. Every day it seemed to be gray and miserable or raining and chilly. This was California but the weather sure wasn't acting like it.

She had alot of time on her hands when she wasn't doing chores around the hotel and spending some time with some of the other survivors. She either sat in her bed, curled in the covers or laying out on her balcony wrapped in the jacket she had found in the utility room. It was utterly depressing. Revolution, change, the smell of blood and pure death in the air every single minute. It was really getting to her.

Tatiana tried to shake this as she pulled herself up from her unmade bed. She couldn't be thinking of only herself at a time like this. She had to think about her friends here and the job she had to fufill. She also had those 4 girls trapped in the truck on her mind and it was eating at her. The sooner they got this over, the better.

She quietly turned the lights off in her room and pocketed her key card. She made her way silently into the hallway and she was met by no one as she bee lined towards the elevator and down to the first floor. When she got on the first floor, Tatiana seen everyone geared up and ready for the journey ahead.

Jimmy and Rosita were re-loading and checking the various guns and handing them out to everyone who was leaving while Amelie had Dylan on her lap and was reading to him from a battered Curious George book. Anna Lena had her white bible clutched in her pale hands and she was talking to Lexi and Eli and Alex was sitting by himself in the dining area, a ciggerette between his fingers and his rifle leaning against his leg. He looked deep in thought.

Tatiana made her way over to him and put her hand on his shoulder, startling him from whatever had him so lost in his own world. His dark hair fell into his eyes as he glanced up at her, a small, barely there smile appearing onto his lips.

"Hey," She said as she pulled up at chair next to him. She cupped her face in her hands and gazed at him as she did so very often. If she was an artist, Alex had the face she definately wanted to paint. He had perfect wispy, brown almost black hair and the deepest, mature brown eyes to match. He had a strong, square face and handsome features to go along with it. "What were you thinking about?"

"Oh," He said slowly, "Nothing much."

Tatiana smiled at him thoughtfully. Alex never really did tell her much about what he was thinking. She was 19 and he was 27, his thoughts were probally very complex and adult-like anyways. He had told Tatiana that he was married once before, a few years ago and he was working on a law degree during his marriage and was just about to start work at a good law firm when all of this broke out. He probally had alot of things going on inside of his head.

"Just be careful out there okay?" She said, a bit of laughter in her voice. "No heroics, 'kay?"

"Well, I guess just this once," Alex said, putting his ciggerette out into the ash tray and then putting his hands behind his head. Tatiana hated the smell of smoke and hated that he smoked and she had told him this many times before and whenever she did come around, she did notice that he put out his ciggerettes almost 100 of the time.

"Really." Tatiana said as Rosita came over with a gun for her. The piece of dangerous metal felt reassuring in her hands but still. Having a gun didn't mean that everything was going to be okay. The zombies could be everywhere, they could leak out from any corner or any shadows without so much as a shuffle or a grunt. Anything could happen, it was taking a risk to dare go out.

"Don't worry, I'll come back in one piece. Just tell me you will too," He said, looking at her serious with his ice cold gaze. Tatiana could guess he could be a whole mess of trouble in the court room. He could cut stone with those eyes of his with their deep, intense looks.

"I'll come back. Don't worry about that," She reassured him, touching him lightly on the shoulder again as she stood up to go over to Lexi and Bryanne.

Author's Note: Happy Halloween everyone!