Time frame: Early March
Rating: T
Description: Another mission
"So I was on this date, and we went to a really nice place, at my suggestion. He was cute so I thought we'd have a good time, but the guy was a real douchebag. He went on and on about his expensive car and 6-figure salary before the server even came for drink orders. But I dealt with it, and when my food finally came, I was like, "Look, you're talkin like you've got a micro-dick, okay? Like, I'd be willing to pretend you didn't if that job was real, though. But judging by your $30 immitation Armani, you're full of shit."
"I've been on a lot of dates, ya know what I'm sayin?" Danny explained, hefting a box down the trail.
The group was working on moving ALL of the salvageable supplies from the burned down Zone to the donut shop, their temporary home.
"Yep, yep." Derek answered.
"But, this cloud had a gold lining." Danny continued.
"Don't you mean silver?"
"No, honey. This line was gold. See the wait staff saw him leave, but didn't hear that I was being a bitch. So I didn't have to pay for any of the expensive shit that he asked for, AND I got a complimentary tiramisu. Plus, there was this cute waiter, and…aren't you cold?" Danny paused in his story.
"Nah, I'm okay." Derek replied, adjusting the weight of the mason jars he was lugging.
Danny looked skeptical.
"Your shoes are wet."
Derek's old, holey Converse shoes were soaked through and the white material was no longer white. The bottom few inches of his hospital scrubs were also wet, being that this area of the country was on-and-off rainy on this March morning. Derek's old hoodie had a tear in the right shoulder, and the front pockets weren't pockets anymore. It looked like this article of clothing had been worn for a year straight.
Derek looked down at his shoes, pausing in his walk. He pushed a toe up through one of the holes at the top of his shoe.
"Looks like I need some new shoes."
"Looks like you need some new everything. It's cold as fuck here." Danny replied, making a quick jerk to where his coat's hood would come up, so that he didn't have to reach for it with his hands, having no hands to spare.
In the last week, the group managed to locate two more of their missing friends. Francis and Rochelle were holding up in the woods, covering ground everyday and they just managed to be close enough to notice the donut shop, finding their friends by coincidence.
The group was thinking about finding a bigger place to hold up, being that they hadn't the foggiest idea where the next zone was, but nobody was from the area. Nobody knew where to go, so the shop had the windows blocked off and everyone stayed cramped inside.
Once they arrived back at the shop, each member of the group made themselves busy with trying to make the place a little more habitable.
Without angry dead people constantly tearing things up, surviving the cold and being constantly hungry was the main focus of most days.
"So I was thinkin," Keith started, "We should try to find more people tomorrow. It's been a couple of days since we looked."
Nobody argued, but nobody offered to go with.
Ellis was preoccupied with Nick, being that he hadn't been feeling his best since the day they found him. He was weaker than usual, sweated more often, and moved quite stiffly throughout his days. He always attributed it to sleeping wrong, but still found himself winded, taking more breaks than he needed in the past. Even at this moment, he finished the work he had to do and was now laying down in the men's bathroom.
"Guys?"
"Sure, Keith. Derek, are you busy?" Rochelle asked.
"Tomorrow? Yea, I'll go." Derek replied, sitting on the countertop, trying to file his toenails down with a piece of rough sandpaper. His hair and nails seemed to be growing at an incredible rate. He managed to find kitchen scissors the day prior, and spent much of that night trimming his beard down to where he looked far less like a crazy homeless man.
Keith groaned.
Yes, he knew that bringing Derek with had to happen if any searching was to be done. He was the only one that knew where people were. Bringing him with was the only hope he had of finding Jared or any of his friends. But he didn't have to like it.
"You want to go too, sugar?" Rochelle asked Francis, without needing to. Francis went where she went.
Then it was settled.
The following day, the group of four were going to go scouting for more people. It was too late to go today, even though they happened to find Nick after the sun already set.
"Do we have to wait until tomorrow?" Keith asked, hopefully. His question was directed at Derek, but he refused to make eye contact.
Aware of this, Derek replied.
"Hell, if you want to go running around in the dark, okay. The next living, breathing person is not far from here."
"Who?" Rochelle asked.
"I'm not sure. Unless I'm already familiar with their scent, I can just tell that they're not undead. It might be one of your friends. It might not. But this person is moving…very slowly."
"What if they're injured? We gotta go, right now." Keith demanded, coaxing his friends and his worst enemy to their feet.
They prepared quickly and hit the trail, heading back in the direction of the zone.
Keith was quick on his feet, hoping that this time they would find Jared. Even if he was injured, it would be a relief to find him and get him to safety. It was very cold at this point, and quite damp after the rain.
"Not long, now." Derek noted, being that the group jogged the first mile.
The sun wasn't even visible today, but it was still obviously getting darker, and luckily for everyone, Francis hated the darkness and brought a flashlight.
Coming into the zone roughly 30 minutes later, the group decided to move more quietly.
"Derek, go poke around and see who it is." Keith commanded.
"What if it isn't one of your friends and I get my head blown off?" the soaking wet, poorly dressed man questioned, "I can smell, but I honestly can't see that well in the dark."
"That's a risk I'm willing to take."
Derek scoffed, talking off into the dark, his shoes making a little splish splish sound with every step.
Several minutes later he returned, alone.
"Do any of you know a red-haired woman?"
Ylaina. The doctor.
"Does she have a Russian accent?" Rochelle checked.
"I don't know. I didn't talk to her. But she's in the supply shed. Her leg is broken."
The group approached the food shed as quietly as possible, just in case this red-haired woman was not the same red-haired woman that they knew.
"Ylaina?" Rochelle called in a whisper.
"Ro?" Came a heavily accented answer.
It was her.
Rochelle was the first person in, having bonded quite well with Ylaina being that they were both girls. Rochelle was a tough woman, but often grew weary of the constant sausage fest around her.
The two exchanged hugs.
"I'm glad to see you, girl." Rochelle exclaimed.
"Me too, I have been alone for days. During the fire, I followed the other girls. But I fell down a steep hill, and Evie…didn't come back for me. I don't think she saw that I was missing until they were far away and I was lost. I've been crawling through the woods. I finally made it here, because I needed water."
"Well, we have a bunch of people that made it. We're gonna take you back to our shelter, okay?" Keith assured her.
"Did you find Evie?"
He shook his head.
"Sorry, doc. Not yet, but we have been lookin' for more of our people. Day by day, we find more. It's just a matter of time."
"I can't walk." Ylaina motioned down to her leg, clearly broken just above the ankle, "I can't set the bone by myself."
Rochelle assured her that they were going to help her as soon as they returned to their shelter.
"Sweetie, do you think you can carry her? You're bigger than the other two guys." Rochelle asked Francis, buttering him up to where he felt invincible.
"Can I?" He winked, hoisting Ylaina onto his back as gently as he could.
"I need my bag." She asserted, "It has all of my medical supplies in it."
Keith carried the quite heavy messenger bag along with the group as they made their way home.
"Can't tell ya how glad we are that you're alive. We are gonna take care of that leg." Keith was trying to be as nice to her as he could, knowing that she had to be upset at still being separated from her partner, just like he was.
"Doc." Ellis smiled, helping Ylaina onto the countertop as the group poured in from outside. The counter was the cleanest place in the shop, and seeing her leg, he knew the drill.
"We got some booze." He offered, handing Ylaina a half-empty bottle of rum.
"It will have to do. Coach, you've likely got the most upper body strength. Can you set this?"
After assuring the older man that he would do just fine if he followed her directions, he agreed, waiting until she was liberally drunk before prepping for what was going to be very painful for her. He hadn't set a bone in over 20 years, and that was just a broken nose one of his students sustained.
Ylaina stuffed a wad of clean socks into her mouth, smothering her face with her arms before lying back. She had Rochelle on one side to hold her hand, and Francis was at her shoulders to restrict her movement.
She tapped the table when she was ready and Coach jerked the broken leg as hard as he could.
Ylaina's horrific screams pierced through the socks and through her arms, loud enough to wake Nick in the other room.
"What the hell was that?" He called, poking his head out of the room.
"Oh, the doc is back." He approached the area, greeting the now exhausted, unrestrained young woman.
"Hello Nicholas." She was the only person that called him Nicholas.
"You good, doctor?" He questioned, smoothing her wet hair from her forehead as Coach stabilized the now correctly set leg, wrapping it with a broken mop and broom stick. It was all they had by way of straight pieces of wood.
"I'm fine. You, however, look like shit." She was blunt when she was drunk.
"I'm just not feeling too hot after this damn burn." Nick assured.
"Tell me your symptoms."
Nick looked at her quizzically.
"You're pretty hammered, hun."
She waved him off.
"I can diagnose an illness if I was in a coma. I can do this drunk." She sat up, but kept her leg perfectly still.
"Okay, well. I'm tired, doc. I'm tired no matter how much I sleep. I think I might have pinched something in my back, because it hurts and my arms feel like…kind of like I'm getting gently shocked all day long."
"Are you sweating?
Nick nodded.
"Nausea?"
"Yea, I'm doing a bit of puking."
"Any chest pain?"
He nodded again.
"How long as this been happening?"
"Since the fire. Like right after, I felt really disoriented, and I passed out in the woods. I was there, feeling weak for a really long time before I got up sometime the next day. I got lost because I started just wandering around."
Ylaina nodded, reaching forward to feel Nick's heartbeat.
"I don't have any of my big equipment, otherwise I would do an ECG right away. I'm a fertility doctor, but I'm fairly confident that you just suffered a heart attack."
Everyone in the room grew quiet.
"It can't be that bad. I'm just tired, is all." Nick assured, hoping she was wrong.
Motioning for her bag, she pulled a stethoscope out of it once it was close enough. Putting the buds into her ears, she placed the receiving end against Nick's chest and waited, holding up a hand for silence.
"It's still quite likely that I'm right. Your heartbeat is irregular. You need medical attention. You need medication, and you definitely need more rest."
After going back and forth for nearly 20 minutes, Nick decided not to argue with the doctor. Ylaina knew more about the human body than Nick did. And he really did feel terrible, but didn't want to draw attention to it for fear of Ellis worrying himself to death.
Now that the cat was out of the bag, Ellis coddled him like never before.
"I need to get Nick his meds." He said to the group the next morning.
"Ellis, come on." Nick pleaded, taking the younger man's hand, "I'm okay, babe."
Ellis shook his head.
"He's not okay."
"I agree, but where on Earth are we going to get a prescription for treatment medication?" Ylaina questioned, hung over from the countertop, where she slept the previous night.
Nobody really had an answer for that.
"Could we check the last zone, Zone 15?" Francis asked.
It was possible that after the place was destroyed by the horde, that there would be medical supplies still at the hospital.
"I worked at that hospital. They didn't keep the place stocked with cardiac medicine, except to treat high blood pressure." Ylaina clarified, cutting through any hope of finding help.
"I don't want him to die." Ellis stated, saying what everyone was afraid to say themselves.
"I am NOT gonna die, Ellis." Nick tried to assure him, but in truth, he didn't know.
The room filled with a heavy, hopeless air. One of their group was desperately ill, and there was nothing to be done for him, short of forcing him to quit drinking, smoking, and exerting himself.
"John used to grow all the weed I could smoke. It kept me quite chill." Nick explained.
"Marijuana helps with high blood pressure, not with healing the heart after an attack." Ylaina clarified.
"I know where to find some." Derek offered.
"Weed?" Nick asked.
"Heart medicine, I mean."
Keith held back a sigh threatening to heave the world away. Of course he did. Of course he knew where to find life-saving medication. He seemed to know every fucking thing lately. Each little good deed he performed won more and more of Keith's friends over.
"You do. Where?" Ellis of course took the bait.
"CEDA. They've got all kinds of heart medication, what with those experiments frequently stopping hearts." He explained, sounding genuine.
"Would you be okay taking me back there?" Ellis asked.
"I mean, I could go back. But I really think you should stay here with Nick. I'll be okay." Derek replied, painting the best of concerned faces on.
"Keith, could you go with him?" Ellis knew they didn't get along with each other.
You asshole. This is not the time for one of your team-buildin tricks, El.
"Sure." Keith replied hesitantly.
I couldn't have just said no. Not when Ellis asked, not when the reason behind all of it was Nick. If I said that I wouldn't go, Ellis would have never forgiven me.
"We might need a few more, though" the redhead added, "Rochelle and Francis? That way if we have any issues at CEDA…"
"We won't have any issues at CEDA." Derek replied.
"If there's people in the area, you might run into trouble." Ellis mentioned, in agreement with Keith.
"There are no people at CEDA anymore."
"Are you sure?" Ellis asked, skeptical.
Derek approached the younger man, whispering something to him.
"Oh." Ellis said flatly.
"But, it might help out to have more people, so if you two aren't busy it would help to have you." Derek noted, coming around to the idea of having more people.
Relieved, Keith nodded his agreement and the others seemed fine with joining.
The group spent the next couple of hours planning their trip. They were going to walk the back roads around the donut shop, out to the main highway where they'd check any of the stalled cars on the road for possible use. They'd follow the main roads, but stick back behind the tree line as often as possible.
Ylaina explained, with pictures from her medical books, what supplies to look for, and offered a list of different medications to bring home, if they were in stock.
By noon, the foursome was on the road, heading south along a gravel road.
"Should take us two days there, and two days back."
The group had very limited weapons: Keith still had his hunting knife, Derek still had that metal bat, Rochelle had a handgun with about 18 bullets left, and Francis brought a machete.
They had enough water to last the trip and dehydrated food. They didn't have a shelter planned, being that there was not a not to work with in that department. They hoped that they'd have a car to sleep in by the first sunset.