Time frame: Three days later
Rating: T
Description: Trapped in the dark
"Zo…Zoey, I think he's waking up."
That sounds familiar.
"Don't crowd him. Hey, my man? Travis? Are you awake?"
Travis?
That isn't my name.
Travis is dead.
I think I'm awake, though.
Zoey watched as her patient's right eye slid open, then closed, then fluttered between and finally stayed open halfway.
"I'm awake…" He croaked. He sounded either sick or very dehydrated. Zoey would have put money on the latter, being that the man had not been in any state to eat or drink in days.
"Are you feeling any pain?" She asked, scooting a few inches closer to the man lying on the makeshift cot. He didn't look like he was strong enough to lash out yet, and she still had a gun at her waist, just in case.
"Easy Zoey." Said another voice, a man's voice.
"I'm good, Louis. Can you hear me, buddy?" She checked again, keeping her gaze on the man rather than looking behind her at Louis.
"I can hear you…kind of. My head hurts…a lot." The man answered slowly.
Zoey nodded.
"Can I offer you some pain pills?" She shook the bottle of pills with her free hand.
The man attempted to nod, moving his head very slowly.
Zoey stood, approaching her patient and offering a hand.
"Let's get you sat up. Louis, help me."
Together, the two managed to aid the very sick-looking man into sitting propped up against the wall, rather than lying on his back.
Zoey offered the man two pain pills and he was able to swallow them down without drinking any water, which he declined when offered.
When he appeared to be sitting as comfortably as possible, Zoey continued to speak.
"Do you remember anything?" She asked, trying to piece her words together slowly and as carefully as she could.
"I remember being outside. I was with my group, and I think I was…I don't know, cleaning up or something. It might have rained, and now I'm here." He replied, almost coherent. His responses were a little slow, a little confused, but for the most part, he was answering clearly enough.
"Is your name Travis?" Zoey asked.
The man shook his head.
"No, my name is Derek."
Zoey's nose crinkled in confusion, but then smoothed out again.
"Sorry, I was going by your tattoo."
He nodded only slightly with no other answer. His memories were not coming nearly as quick as they should be.
"Next question, do you remember who shot you?"
Derek's right eyebrow pushed toward the bridge of his nose.
"Someone shot me?"
Zoey nodded.
"When I found you, you were face down in the mud with a bullet hole in the back of your head. I was certain you were dead, but when I literally tripped over you, you made a sound. So we took you to our shelter. I did what I could, but I'm not a doctor. I couldn't save your eye. It was already gone."
Derek's hands slowly reached up to touch his face, rough fingertips coming in contact with the bandages that wrapped diagonally around the left side of his head, covering his now empty left eye socket. The area was tender to the touch. He traced his way to the back of his head, where the hair was shaved off and bandages were taped over the rear center of his skull.
"Sorry about your hair. I had to cut around the bullet hole to clean it and make sure the tape stayed." Zoey explained, hoping that saving his life would make up for the giant bald spot in the back of his head.
"How…" He started, then paused. Derek looked like he was trying to start a sentence several times, but the words were just not coming.
"How are you alive?" Zoey assisted.
Derek nodded.
"Beats me. By all accounts it doesn't make sense. I mean, I saw a story on I Survived once, where a woman got shot in the back of her head twice and managed to pull through. I guess the bullet hit just the right places to leave you alive, just sans one eye." She tried to explain as calmly as she could.
Having worked in her former Zone's medical team, she learned that informing a person of their injuries after the fact was still a delicate process. The patient was still able to panic even though the worst of it was over.
"How long have I been out?" Derek asked, his good eye still showing a wall of confusion.
Luckily the pain medication was starting to kick in. Hopefully it would take the edge off and reduce the anxiety that he was experiencing.
Zoey felt sorry for him. It must be difficult to come to terms with such a traumatic injury, especially while not being able to remember the incident itself. That bullet ripping through his brain may not have killed him, but it was absolutely no surprise that it messed some things up. His memory was likely to remain hazy for quite some time. From what she briefly learned about brain injury in school, the amnesia could be either temporary or permanent, depending on the degree of the injury.
"Three days. You have been unconscious for three days."
"Four days." Louis corrected.
"Three."
"No, you found him in the evening, so it has been almost four days now." Louis insisted.
Zoey sighed.
"Fine, you have been out for almost four days." She confirmed.
Derek sat for a moment, trying to force his thoughts to make sense, trying to figure out what that gnawing feeling was.
There's something I should be doing right now.
Am I supposed to go somewhere?
I was with my group.
But they're…not with me now.
"I have friends… It's been that many days. They might be wondering…"
Zoey's expression remained somber.
"When I found you, we were in the middle of one of the biggest hordes I've ever seen. We've been locked in here almost non-stop. They only just started to clear up within the last few hours. If your friends were outside…I might have bad news for you."
Derek's expression didn't change. He continued to struggle with his thoughts.
"We had a shelter, a donut shop…maybe they held out. I think they…knew you. I remember your name. You two. I remember you two. Your name…is Zoey, right? And yours is Louis, did you say?"
The two nodded.
"Yea, I'm Louis, and she's Zoey. That girl back there is Sid. She doesn't talk. You say your people knew us?" Louis questioned excitedly.
Derek made an mhmm in confirmation, trying again to remember what he was talking about as the wave of pain medication took over.
"Did you know Ellis?" Zoey asked.
Yes, that's it. That's my group.
"Yeah, I was with Ellis, and Nick. And Coach…and Francis. Also a doctor lady, Rochelle too. Also Keith and this guy that punched me in the face once. I think that's all of them." Derek finished, feeling exhausted again.
Everything went black.
His eyes fluttered and then shut and he slowly sank back down onto the cot and remained still.
"So, what do you think?" Louis asked, after checking to be sure that Derek was still breathing when he passed out again.
He'd been doing this for most of that day, waking up for a second and then fading out. This was the only time he spoke, though, and it was damn good news that he did.
Zoey listened for any sound indicating that the horde was nearby and when all was quiet, she stepped outside to have a look around with Louis steps behind her.
"You know what I think." She started, "They're our friends. If there's any chance that they're still out there, we should investigate. Maybe they need help."
Louis wasn't surprised. It wasn't unlike Zoey to want to expand her team. When several of her friends left their first Zone, she missed them terribly. As far as she was concerned, following them into the woods was a suicide mission back then, but it didn't drive them from her memory. She was always talking about them, and seemed very happy when they were reunited for a short time.
"It's possible. But you need to realize that it's just as likely that they're all dead. We'd be heading into a death trap if we went in without a plan." Louis asserted.
"You're right, but the horde broke off. I haven't heard anything in a few hours. Look around, the coast is clear. If we're quiet, we can go check on them, and if they're okay, we'll bring them all with us."
"And if they're not?"
Zoey shrugged.
"If they're not, we come right back. If we have any trouble with the number of zombies, we'll abandon quest."
Louis put up a fight for as long as he could in order to get Zoey thinking. It wasn't that he didn't want to help. He just was not a foolish, impulsive guy. Louis hated getting into anything that he was unsure of his exit strategy. Going in blind was never worth it, and this tactic always worked. The longer he kept Zoey talking, the better her planning was.
Eventually he surrendered and agreed to help her.
The pair took the time needed to prepare for a short trip. It wouldn't be nearly as long as walking the distance after Zoey found two dirt bikes nearly five days ago. They were propped against the side of a building several miles back. Louis figured that maybe someone was planning a ride through the woods before the outbreak hit, because they'd been apparently tucked away for quite some time. They ran, though not incredibly smoothly. They were able to make the trip shorter, but were not dependable for much else.
"Sydney," Zoey called into the 30ft storage shed they'd been staying in for the last few days, "while we still have a few hours of daytime, me and Louis are going to head over to where we found Eyeless Jack over there. We're going to see if we can find out where the others are staying."
The blond girl gazed over at where Derek was sleeping on the cot in the corner. He hadn't moved in a while and it was likely that he wasn't going to be awake again for a while. She gave Zoey a nod and continued to sit in silence, keeping watch over Zoey's patient as the shed door closed. She waited a few moments before crossing the shed to latch the door from the inside, just in case the psycho that was shooting people in the head happened to survive the horde like the rest of them.
"So my now ex-wife was arrested for assaulting me and the naked Batman guy she was cheating on me with was taken out of my apartment on a stretcher. And that's how I know that it doesn't take long to suffocate in a closet." Nick explained.
Everyone chuckled, but their laughs were weaker now than they'd been. It was dark in this cellar and tensions were starting to run a little high. None of them had seen the sun in days, and they were all on their last few mouthfuls of water. Food was scarce, being that there really was only enough for 1-2 people to live for a week on. With so many, they were all hungry and there was just not enough to go around.
"I'd have let the fucker die." Francis added with a chuckle.
"Oh I wanted to. Really it wasn't so much to help that asshole, it was to help me stay out of jail. I was on probation and any kind of shenanigans would have gotten me thrown back." Nick went on.
"I'm surprised that they didn't arrest you again just because." Coach added.
"They probably would have if the cop didn't see Carla being a psychotic bitch with his own eyes. I was so mad, I wanted to pop her one, but I'm lucky as all get-out that I didn't."
The room grew quiet again. Everybody was tired. It was cold and miserable in the cellar and when someone wasn't telling a story to keep everyone's spirits up, the group would fall into quiet despair.
As the hour ticked by, they started their own individual conversations, whispered in different corners.
"Ya know something?" Ellis asked Nick when everyone else made themselves busy.
"Hmm?" Nick grunted, acknowledging that Ellis was speaking but not really interested anymore.
"Keith has been actin up. Guy seems so depressed lately. I'm startin to wonder…" Ellis started, not exactly sure how to put into words what he was starting to wonder.
Nick shrugged.
"Maybe he broke up with Jared. They haven't been talking since we got trapped in this hell hole." Came the half-assed reply from the gambler.
Ellis shook his head.
"Nick, I've told you a thousand times that he's straight." The southerner insisted.
"You could tell me a million times and it wouldn't make you any less wrong." Nick countered, not hearing any of it.
Nick was an observant man. He'd spent almost his entire life being good at gauging his surroundings and he couldn't explain to Ellis any more clearly that his best friend was in love with him. Nick pushed past his annoyance when he came to terms with just how naïve Ellis was, he really didn't know. He really didn't see it. When Keith started spending so much time with Jared, his obsession with Ellis became so much more low-key and bearable. But the way they would look at each other now was as clear as it could be without words. Those were the stolen glances of two people that were doing it at one time, but weren't doing it anymore for…reasons.
"Come on, what do ya really think it is?" Ellis was concerned for his friend, not in the mood for Nick's games.
"I told you. I'll bet you the good handgun they were fucking at one point and aren't now because of some sort of unresolved argument." Nick asserted.
Ellis still shook his head.
"I don't think so. I know the guy. He's only ever shown an interest in girls."
"Right," Nick agreed mockingly, "you're lucky I love you, because I swear you have about as much awareness as a rich old white man that claims to be 'of the people.'"
"Nick-"
"Shh, goddamn it. What was that?" Nick cut his partner off, straining to hear.
He could have swore he'd heard something.
It sounded like…a growl?
No, it sounded like a motor.
At least he thought he heard it.
"Did anyone else hear that?" Nick called.
The group remained silent, also hoping to hear what their companion was on about.
"I don't hear-" Ellis started.
"You're not going to if you don't shut your trap." Nick finished.
There WAS a sound outside.
It was a motor. Some kind of motor. It was coming closer, and then it cut off.
"Shh, I think it's a marauder." Keith mumbled, the first thing he'd said that day to anybody.
There was a thudding sound rapidly approaching where the motor sound used to be.
Footsteps.
They were coming in fast. The pattered their way over the dirt outside, and then the sound changed when they approached the wood floor of the shop overhead.
"Someone's inside." Rochelle whispered.
The group withdrew as far into the darkness as they could when the hatch to their cellar was opened.
"Anybody in there?" A man's voice called into the darkness.
That voice was familiar, but who the hell…
"Louis?" Francis answered.
"Francis?" The voice replied.
"Yeah, we're down here, brother." Francis answered again.
Another pair of footsteps descended the stairs, shining a flashlight into the darkness.
"Is that you, Zoey?" Ellis asked, trying to peer behind the light.
"Did I ever tell you guys about the time my buddy Ellis got trapped underground by zombies and I had to come rescue him?" She answered with a laugh.