"Woah! Hold up!" The girl, whose dirt-smeared face and tattered clothes made her look almost like a zombie, held her hands in the air before dropping them to her sides and dissolving into giggles. "'Hold up'...get it? Like a hold up? But also, hold up like don't shoot me!" The girl giggled some more, oblivious or unconcerned about the weapons aimed at her.
"Who are you?" Blake asked, one finger lightly squeezing the trigger of her pistol.
"Me?" the girl replied, gesturing to herself. "I'm Nora! Who're you?"
The three of them shared a look at the question, each of them wondering who the hell this person was. Where had she come from? Could they trust her? Most importantly, why did she look like a talking zombie?
"Uh...we're super zombie slayers," Yang replied, but her attempt to conceal personal information was met with a gasp and wide eyes.
"Super zombie slayers? That sounds cool! Can I join?" When the girl stepped forward, her giant smile filled with excitement, the three of them hastily stepped back to match.
"See, Weiss?" Yang whispered out of the corner of her mouth. "Told you it was cool."
"How did you get here?" Weiss asked, ignoring the comment entirely. "Were you following us?"
"I was up there!" Nora pointed at the crow's nest on top of the truck, where a heavy machine gun was mounted. "I saw it in the parking lot and thought 'wow, I need that truck!' but the doors were locked so I climbed up there instead. Then I took a nap, and a big explosion woke me up. That's when I saw a sports car fly out of the building, then we drove here!"
"Guys! Watch out!" Finally out of the restroom, Ruby sprinted over to them while drawing her weapon.
"Woah!" Again, Nora raised her hands only to drop them and smile. "You're really fast!"
"You're...human?" Ruby asked, lowering her pistol and shooting Weiss a surprised glance. "But why do you look so...dead?"
"I'm blending in! Zombies don't attack zombies, so I'm a zombie." While Nora grinned at her plan, the four of them shared dubious looks.
"I don't think that's how it works…" Blake replied.
"Sure it is! Watch."
Before they could say another word, Nora searched for a zombie to test her theory on. Finding a group of four stumbling across the street several hundred feet away, she jogged over without hesitation - and without a weapon drawn. A safe distance away, she slowed her pace to a crawl and held up her arms in a pretty poor zombie imitation.
Regardless, Yang watched raptly as Nora shuffled towards the group. The zombies almost instantly noticed her presence - a moan calling others to the area as they moved to greet their dinner - but Nora carried on without fear.
"Should we help her?" Ruby whispered as the zombies grew closer.
"She's crazy," was Weiss' response. "She's going to get herself killed."
"Who is she?" Blake asked, her gaze never leaving the scene playing out in front of them.
The first of the undead didn't ignore Nora as the zombie makeup implied. Instead, it grabbed one of her outstretched arms and dragged it towards its mouth for a bite. Unperturbed, Nora punched the ghoul in the face with her free hand before pulling out a humongous handgun and putting four bullets in four skulls. As the corpses collapsed to the street, she turned around, yanked a grenade off her belt, pulled the pin, and tossed it over her shoulder - giggling like a madwoman before a giant BOOM shook the ground.
"Ok, I like her," Yang said while Nora flounced back to them. Noticing Blake's raised brow, however, she quickly backpedaled. "I mean, as a person. I don't like her like that, you know?"
Before Yang made the situation better (or worse), Nora returned with a big smile. "I didn't like them very much," she explained while holstering her weapon. "But it works!"
"That...didn't work..." Blake pointed out, but Nora's attention was already elsewhere.
"Maybe you can help me!" she said, clasping her hands together in a pleading gesture. "Someone stole my Ren! I need to steal him back, but I can't find him anywhere."
"Your...wren? Like a bird?" Weiss asked. It was a serious question, but Nora burst into laughter (which Weiss did not appreciate).
"No, silly! Ren! He's tall, skinny, with dark hair and dreamy eyes." Nora clasped both hands together and lifted one shoe in the air as she said the words. Seconds later, her expression clouded and she stomped that foot on the ground. "But someone stole him, and I have to get him back."
"What do you mean 'stole?'" Ruby gently asked.
"They took him! He went into this room, then there was a loud noise, then he was gone." Thinking about the memory, Nora frowned. "It's all the dumb paper's fault."
The four of them shared another glance at the remark, then Weiss asked the question on all of their minds: "What paper?"
"This one."
After rummaging in her pockets, Nora found a crumpled piece of paper and handed it to Yang. Smoothing it out, Yang discovered that it was another advertisement of sorts - this time for a finished cure. "A cure?" she asked, handing the page to Blake for closer inspection.
"Yeah! It said there was a cure, so we went to check it out. Then all the bad things happened." Sticking out her lower lip, Nora looked like she might cry. Instead, she sniffed and smacked a fist into the palm of her hand. "When I get my hands on whoever did this…"
"They kidnapped him?" Weiss asked, looking up from the flier in her hands. "They didn't just trap him and leave him to die?"
"Or try to blow him up?" Ruby added.
"They better not have done any of that! If they did, I'm gonna - I'm gonna - I'll do something worse than turn them into a zombie!"
While Yang stared at the weird zombie-girl standing in front of her, Blake touched her elbow and whispered, "We should continue this conversation elsewhere…" before nodding towards the other side of the street. A glance confirmed the danger building at the edge of the forest; the spaces between the trees moved too much, the effect of creatures slowly stumbling their way through the vegetation.
"Yeah, we should get going," Yang said before gesturing to the truck.
"But what about her?" Weiss asked, not even bothering to lower her voice while nodding at Nora.
"We should check this place out and see if her friend is still around!"
As soon as Ruby made the suggestion, the rest of them knew that they couldn't do anything else. Not because they had to do what Ruby wanted, but because...well, none of them wanted to be the one to tell Ruby 'no.'
"Let's just get out of here," Yang said before hurrying to the driver's side door and pulling herself inside.
"Sit between us," Weiss instructed Nora. The demand was made out of precaution - placing Nora in the most easily observable (and most uncomfortable) seat - but Nora had no problem hopping in first. As soon as she was inside, she gasped.
"Wow. This is even cooler than I thought it'd be!"
Grinning at the praise for her pride and joy, Yang started the engine and eased them out of the gas station, taking notice of the growing number of undead appearing out of the forest. The truck bounced over the newly created hole in the street (courtesy of a rogue grenade), but they quickly reached smooth sailing towards the city. With danger left in their exhaust fumes, she turned to her co-pilot for directions.
"Where're we headed?"
"According to this...the concert stadium they just built near the suburbs."
"Oh yeah! I went on a date there once." As soon as the words left her mouth, Yang wanted to pull them back in, especially when Blake's brow shot up.
"Is that so? How'd that go?"
The questions sounded nonchalant, but that was part of the danger. Even though the two of them weren't technically dating (and definitely hadn't done anything physical yet), they were kind of...sort of...well, there was something there. And if Yang wanted anything to happen between them, she knew better than to shoot herself in the foot (both literally and figuratively) by bringing up a past fling.
"Oh, you know, it went ok."
"Just ok?"
Chuckling (a bit nervously), Yang glanced in the rearview mirror and spotted Nora opening every container she could get her hands on. "How fast does this thing go?" she asked, unknowingly saving Yang from a precarious situation.
"Fast."
"Yeah, but how fast?"
"Really fast."
When Nora opened her mouth, Yang slammed her foot on the accelerator and the sudden burst of speed shoved them back in their seats. Hearing a delighted giggle from the backseat, she grinned and swerved around an abandoned truck before reaching open road. Their next destination: the concert stadium.
"So Nora…" Thankfully dropping the prior conversation, Blake turned around and caught Nora's attention. "Can you tell us what happened to your friend?"
"Sure! I found that paper stuck to a zombie's forehead and said we should check it out. Ren said 'I don't think we should,' but I said, 'I think we should,' so we went. We thought there'd be survivors handing out a cure or something, but there were only zombies."
The beginning of the story sounded eerily similar to the situations they'd found themselves in today - lured to locations with nothing but zombies.
"We walked around for a bit," Nora continued. "Then the ground started shaking, then everything fell apart! I don't know what happened, but the floor collapsed and Ren disappeared. Then a helicopter appeared - one of those huge ones - and picked up the big metal cage Ren was in and flew away."
Ok, the first half of the story sounded familiar. The second half was a little hard to believe. Sharing a look with Blake, Yang confirmed that the two of them were on the same page. Maybe Nora's friend was kidnapped, as she claimed, but when was the last time any of them saw a working helicopter? Those stopped flying around ages ago.
"A simple 'no' would suffice…" Blake muttered, clearly not believing a word of it. Shaking her head, Yang glanced in the mirror every few seconds and wondered if Nora would ever sit still. Weiss watched every movement with a wary eye, her hand very conspicuously on the holster of her weapon. Ruby, on the other hand, looked thrilled to have company.
While the girls in back monitored their new arrival, Yang drove on the shoulder of the road to avoid a traffic jam of abandoned vehicles. Once they made it around the corner, the massive stadium came into view.
"Here it - woah."
As soon as her mind registered the scene in front of her, she stopped the truck at the edge of the sprawling parking lot and stared at the stadium. Or, more accurately, she stared at what was left of the stadium.
"What happened?" Weiss asked while they looked at the smoldering wreckage of what used to be the main entrance. Now, the pile of concrete looked more like an avalanche than anything else.
"I told you!"
After sharing another look with Blake - this one more shocked than disbelieving - Yang drove towards the entrance to get a closer look. If she had to guess what happened...another set of explosives was involved, only this time in a building that wasn't Schnee-fortified beyond all means of destruction. As a result, the entire building caved in on itself.
"Look."
When Blake pointed at something in the distance, Yang squinted and then stopped the truck - this time for good.
"Yeah...don't think we're getting any closer," she said, her eyes never leaving the death ball of zombies in front of them. When the explosion and subsequent destruction happened, every zombie in the area came to check out the disturbance. The massive group of undead made a mosh pit look welcoming.
"Ruby -"
"On it!" Before Yang could even ask, Ruby slid open the roof-access to the crow's nest but yelped when a backpack fell through and hit her head.
"Sorry! That's mine."
Nora pulled the pack over to her, but the rest of them stared at her until Ruby shook her head and pulled herself up top. Once she was up there, several latches and metal components moved around while she pulled out the rifle she kept locked up top.
"Doesn't look like they're searching," she called down to them a second later. "A lot of 'em are just pacing, and...hold on - Yang! One of them's wearing an AchieveMen shirt! Actually...a lot of them are. Maybe there was a concert going on when the outbreak started? Oh yeah! There's the bassist! And the guitar guy...and the lead singer - the band's all here!"
"Apocalypse AchieveMen…" Yang mused before solemnly shaking her head. "At least they'll be together until the end."
Feeling a hand on her shoulder, she turned and received a sympathetic smile from Blake.
"I'm sorry for your loss. Is there anything I can do to...comfort you?"
In a single question, Yang forgot what they were even talking about. Now all she could think of were ways Blake could 'comfort' her, preferably without an audience in the backseat. When Blake's fingers lightly traced her collarbone towards her sternum, however, she cared less and less about having bystanders.
"Didn't find anything," Ruby interrupted, dropping back into the cabin and sliding the roof closed. "If anyone's alive in there, they better be really good at hiding."
"Ren's great at hiding," Nora replied with a proud smile. "But he's not here - someone stole him!"
The expanding silence in the truck confirmed just how ill-prepared they were for this situation. Someone tried to kill them twice today - in very unique ways - but those near-death experiences seemed like a walk in the park compared to solving an apocalyptic kidnapping.
"Hold on," Nora said before suddenly reaching across Weiss to open the door.
"Hey!" Weiss yelped when Nora not-very-politely clambered over her and jumped out of the truck.
"What the -?" Craning her neck around, Yang tried to see where Nora went. "Where's she going?"
When Ruby shrugged, Yang sighed, grabbed the keys, and got out of the truck to follow. Fortunately, Nora hadn't gone far - she was just a few paces away, standing on the roof of a compact car and staring towards the zombies near the stadium.
"Nora?" Yang called out while everyone followed her.
For a few moments, Nora didn't respond. She just stared at the stadium, lost in thought about what happened there. "Ren and I have been together since it started," she eventually said, a hint of a whine in her tone. "I need to get him back. Otherwise, I don't know what I'll do."
"I'm sure you'll find him," Ruby replied with a reassuring smile. "And we'll help you! Right, guys?"
When Ruby turned to them for approval (and again, none of them would dare say 'no'), Yang and Blake nodded while Weiss softly said, "Of course we will."
"Really?" When they nodded again, some more hesitantly than others, Nora broke into a huge smile. "You guys are the best!" she said before her smile widened. "And after we save him, we can burn that building to the ground!"
The comment and accompanying finger jab towards the stadium were so serious that Yang burst out laughing. "Sure," she said before winking at Blake. "We'll host a big ol' bonfire - invite all the Z's and bring some s'mores."
"That's a great idea!"
Chuckling at the eager acceptance of the crazy suggestion, Yang shook her head and grinned at Blake. Blake, however, only met Yang's gaze for a second before looking towards the horizon, where the sun had disappeared minutes ago.
"It's getting dark…"
"We should get back soon," Weiss agreed, their internal alarms ringing as daylight faded.
Staying out at night wasn't impossible, but it was dangerous. They couldn't exactly see in the dark, for one thing, so they needed light to find their way around. Unlike sound, which traveled a limited distance (if they were quiet), a flashlight beam was visible from much further away. Turn it on and attract zombies from a mile away. Leave it off and stumble over half a zombie and nearly lose a foot; or, in Ruby's case, knock over an entire shelf of metal pots and pans.
That was a long night…
"Do you need a place to stay?" Yang asked Nora. "We can start looking for your friend in the morning."
"Yes, please," Nora replied with several emphatic nods. "We can super-slay some zombies tomorrow, too!"
Before Yang corrected the mistake, Nora hopped off the car and made her way back to the truck. Weiss shook her head, grabbed Ruby's hand, and followed, but whispered something in Ruby's ear as they went. Swinging the keys around one finger, Yang was about to follow when Blake pulled her aside.
"Yang." Gaze flitting towards Nora, Blake leaned close and lowered her voice. "Are you sure we can trust her? I mean, she's the first person we've run into in a long time, and on the same day we find out some crazy person's setting traps around the city."
"She doesn't seem that crazy -"
"Can we drive this thing into the horde?" Nora asked, negating Yang's argument while jumping into the backseat. "Let's go zombie bowling!"
When Blake gave Yang a pointed look, she waved her hands in defeat. "Ok, maybe she's a little crazy. But she doesn't seem evil crazy, right?"
The response was supposed to be reassuring, but Blake sent another wary look towards the truck.
"Blake," Yang added, grabbing Blake's hands only to drop them like hot coals when she realized they were holding hands. "We're in the middle of the apocalypse," she continued while her cheeks warmed. "We have to trust people to survive."
"I think you mean we have to be cautious to survive."
That strategy made more sense from a survival standpoint but nullified Yang's argument, so she had to reject it this time. "Either way," she fudged. "We'll keep a close eye on her. Between the four of us, there's no way she catches us off guard. Safety in numbers, right?"
"In that case...I guess you'll be staying with me tonight."
When Blake smirked and started walking away, Yang blinked and jogged to catch up.
"Uh, what?"
"You heard me." While trailing her fingertips across the hood of the truck, Blake sent a knowing smile Yang's way.
Way too aroused by that look, Yang stared for several seconds before shaking her head and clambering into the driver's seat. Then she spared one more glance at Blake before buckling her seatbelt and starting the engine.
"Bowl-ing! Bowl-ing! Bowl-ing!" Nora chanted from the backseat, getting Ruby to join in while Yang did a quick U-turn and got them out of there. The action was met with a disappointed "awww" from the backseat, but she didn't feel like cleaning body parts out of crevices for the next few days just to rack up an absurdly high vehicle kill count.
Although...with enough speed, they could probably make a sizable dent in that horde. She was talking about a super overkill - the kind only achieved with military weapons or collapsing buildings.
No. They should just go home. The last time she went for an overkill, Xander spent three days with a zombified hand stuck out of his grill. In a video game, that might be cool. In real life, it was the rotting, putrid hood ornament from hell.
"Is seven the closest?" Yang glanced at Blake for confirmation. Receiving a single nod in response, she mapped out a course to their safehouse for the night.
The day hadn't gone as planned, but it rarely did. This morning, they thought they were setting out to find a cure, led to that laboratory by a random piece of paper. Instead, they found themselves trapped in a cage by a lunatic, nearly blown up by a lunatic, before being solicited for help by a lunatic. Hopefully, those weren't all the same person, but time would tell.
For now, they deserved some rest. Fortunately, rest wasn't far away, as Safehouse Seven appeared through the front windshield before long. This particular safehouse could be considered a regular house, if a 'regular house' was actually a mansion perched on a hilltop with a ten-foot-tall iron fence hemming it in on all sides.
"Holy cow!" Nora exclaimed as soon as they pulled up to the gate. "Is this your place?" From her seat in the middle, she leaned over Weiss' lap to press her hands against the window - leaving dirty handprints Yang would have to clean later, but whatever.
"Yes," Weiss said, mildly disgruntled by the intrusion of her personal space. "This is one of our safehouses."
"One of them?"
When Nora returned to her seat, Weiss flipped her hair and unruffled her very-ruffled feathers.
"Yes. We have several around the city."
"That's so cool."
"And none of them have automatic gates," Yang grumbled as they stopped in front of yet another gate held shut by a giant chain and padlock.
"Trying to get rid of my job?" Winking, Blake hopped out of the truck and hurried over to open the gate. Meanwhile, a sigh slipped through Yang's lips while she watched Blake expertly undo the padlock and weave the chain out of the fence.
"She's pretty," Nora quipped from the backseat, catching Yang's startled attention. "Which one of you's dating her?"
If Nora said nothing else that made sense, she won Weiss over with that single question. "Yang's trying," she answered with a laugh. "Unsuccessfully."
Receiving a wave past the gate, Yang drove through before waiting for Blake to lock up behind them. "It's a process, Weiss," she added in the meantime. "I'm just...laying the groundwork."
"It's a long process," Ruby added, giggling while Blake opened the door and pulled herself into the passenger seat. "Good to go," she said, oblivious to the conversation they were having.
"Perfect." Shooting a glare in the rearview mirror, silently telling the three of them to be quiet, Yang drove up the drive and parked by the front door. As soon as the engine turned off and doors opened, she sighed and collected her belongings after a long day.
From the way everyone trudged through the front door, they were just as drained as she was. But there was nothing better after a long day of zombie slaying and nearly dying than coming home to a needlessly large mansion with beds straight out of heaven.
"I hope you don't mind handing over your weapons," Weiss said, gesturing to the pistols holstered to Nora's sides. "As a precaution…"
"Oh, sure." Nora handed over her two pistols, then a third one that had been strapped to her ankle, and her belt of grenades, a set of ninja stars, and a bowie knife.
"Is that all?" Looking amused by the collection of weapons in her hands, Weiss passed them to Ruby, who promptly dropped them on the nearest table.
"And we'd like you to stay in a safe place tonight," Blake added.
"Right," Yang added, throwing on a smile so as to not freak Nora out - not that she looked at all freaked out right now. "So we can all sleep easy, you know? We don't usually invite new people over for the night."
"A safe place?" Nora repeated. "You mean like, a cage?"
"No, no." Yang waved her hands while Weiss and Blake shook their heads at the misunderstanding. "Not a cage. Just a room with an alarm on the door. If you open it, the alarm goes off and we'll all know you're up to something."
For whatever reason, Nora giggled. "Like a fire alarm!" she said, looking a little too excited about the comparison. "I've always wanted to pull one of those."
"You realize that if you do, we'll assume you're the person behind the traps, right?" Blake clarified. It was a fairly serious charge to level, but Nora shrugged.
"I sleep like a log anyway. You'll wake me up?"
"Sure." Relieved by Nora's acceptance of their precautions, Weiss leaned over and pressed a long kiss to Ruby's cheek. "After today," she said softly, "I think we need to spend some quality time together…"
When Ruby grinned and nodded at the (inappropriate in current company) comment, Yang wrinkled her nose. "Jesus, Weiss. Can't you keep your hands off her for like a day?"
"I already kept my hands off her for a day," Weiss replied, leveling Yang with a look before adding, "Almost." When Yang's brow furrowed, Weiss grabbed Ruby's hand and waved towards the staircase. "Come on, Ruby. Let's show Nora to the guest room."
"Wait -" Yang called after the girls as they headed upstairs. "What do you mean 'almost' the entire day? When'd you two have time to do anything?"
Shooting a smug look over her shoulder, Weiss reached down and squeezed Ruby's butt while they headed upstairs. When Ruby hopped a step and giggled, Yang decided that this was the day her sister's girlfriend died. Sure, Weiss' endless resources had gotten them this far, but that didn't mean she could cross whatever lines she wanted - even if Ruby was more than willing to let her do so.
"Come on," Blake said, interrupting Yang's thoughts and walking towards the stairs herself. "We'll take the purple room tonight."
"Wait...you were serious?" Suddenly much less concerned about Ruby and Weiss, Yang hurried to catch up.
"Of course. Safety in numbers, right? And I think you're very safe."
Turning around at the top of the staircase, Blake took Yang's hands and pulled her into a bedroom with lavender walls. Heart suddenly beating out of control, Yang shoved the door closed with her foot and tried to stay calm. But they'd never shared a bed before, and the way Blake was smirking at her right now made her think…
"Can't wait to get out of these clothes," Blake muttered before dropping Yang's hands, walking over to the bed, and shrugging out of her jacket. Then she pulled off her shirt.
And Yang wasn't sleeping tonight.