So I urge you all to check out the reviews for this fic, because I recently got a very amusing one. I'm a bit confused as to why this person would continue to read this since they seem to hate slash so much, and I have explicitly stated that this is a GAY fic where two men are GAY and do GAY things together.
Next thing. I love Ellis, he is an amazing character. Yes, I write him as homosexual for the purposes of this story (because I am a self-confessed slash fangirl), but you can't deny the boy says some pretty gay shit in the game anyway. "I'd bear that man's children" comes to mind, for one.
But I can forgive this person for their "review". Because by their own admittance on another one of my fics, they are young. And young people are mostly careless and narrow-minded and have nothing better to do than troll the intarwebs.
And many thank-yous to Effective Immediately, who provided a very well-written counter to the flame which uplifted my spirits a great deal. You rock!
So, in honor of this reviewer, I will be including an especially gay scene in this chapter. Fangirls and fanboys of the world, rejoice!
"Buckle up, y'all, we're back on the road again!" Coach shut the door behind him, settling into the driver's seat with unexpected joviality.
"I swear to God, Coach, if you start singing fucking Willie Nelson..." Nick said sourly after taking his place in the back. Beside him, Ellis had already wedged himself onto the floorboards, studying the carpeting with bleary eyes.
"You wouldn't know good music if it came up and bit your white ass, Nick," Coach answered aloofly, resulting in a barely-contained snicker from Rochelle as she secured her seat belt. The Hummer rumbled to life with a turn of the keys.
"Goddamn Willie Nelson," Nick snapped, "that ain't good music, that's like if Ellis got shitfaced drunk in a room full of helium and decided to sing. As a Hunter."
Ellis lifted his head at his name, a piece of carpet fluff dangling from his lips. Nick sighed and reached down to remove it, paying no mind to Ellis' sharpened teeth and darkened disposition. Once the fuzz was removed, Ellis gave a mournful growl and buried his head between his arms. His cap, displaced, stuck up at an odd angle as its bill pressed against the floor.
"How's he doing back there?" Rochelle craned her neck to get a look. Nick was suddenly struck with the notion that one day, after all this shit, Rochelle would make a great mother.
"Crammed into the floorboards."
Rochelle gave Ellis a sad look, twisting in her seat so she could pat the back of his head.
"Poor thing...he's been grumpy all morning. Must still be upset about that Smoker."
"An amazin' thing," Coach shook his head and gave the steering wheel a turn, deftly avoiding a ruined car on the road, "it was like they was talkin' to each other. Communicatin'. I shoulda known, though, all those times I shoved back a Hunter just to be ambushed by a goddamn Smoker...there's a lot we don't know 'bout them things, I guess."
"And knowing is half the battle," Rochelle said with a grin on her face. Coach and Nick simply gave her odd glances, so she rolled her eyes and leaned against the door, her joke having fallen on generationally deaf ears.
"I wonder if he's not feeling well," Nick frowned down at Ellis, who hadn't moved from his position, "I mean, isn't that what all these zombies are, really? Sick people?"
"Ellis is strong, Nick," Coach answered, his eyes locked on the road before him, "he's been fightin' this thing from the very beginnin'. That's gotta take some energy, you can't expect him to be bouncing around all the time."
Nick grunted in response and they lapsed into silence that was only broken by Ellis' shuddering sigh.
"Hey Nick. I ever tell you that I love you?"
"Only about twenty times a day."
"Well, I do."
"I gathered that," Nick gave Ellis a glance, mouth set in his usual frown.
"You sure are an angry old guy," Ellis grinned, leaning his head against Nick's shoulder. The bill of Ellis' cap prodded Nick's neck, so he snatched it off and threw it in the corner.
"I'm not old, sport," he answered, but put his arm securely around Ellis' sturdy waist.
"Only old people call people 'sport', Nick," the boy closed his eyes and allowed a happy smile to play on his lips.
They sat together on the little cot, alone in their dismally small tent. The winter was cold and the tent did little to shield them from it, but they had thick blankets and good jackets and each other. Ellis' hand found Nick's, and he threaded their fingers together, clutching the warm hand tightly.
"You make me so happy I could jes' die, Nick," Ellis murmured with a nuzzle against the older man's neck. Nick gave a huff of a laugh.
"Well, don't plan on dying yet. I still need you."
"Really?" Ellis' head snapped up in excitement.
"Sure. If you died, I'd have to find someone else to screw."
Ellis' face fell a little, and Nick couldn't help but notice. And it made him sad, goddamn it, that he could blatantly hurt the kid's feelings like that. But he did. He did it a lot.
Nick untangled their fingers and brought his hands to Ellis' face, cupping the smooth skin of his cheeks before he leaned in for a kiss.
Ellis accepted the silent apology with gratitude. Muscular arms wound about Nick's neck, loving and possessive. Ellis gave a little moan into Nick's mouth, something he often did simply because he knew Nick liked it. Then they separated, though Ellis still clung to Nick and kept him warm with body heat and whispered admonitions of love.
"You're a weird kid, Overalls," Nick muttered. His fingertips sought the warm flesh under Ellis's jacket and shirt, traced the ridges of his abdomen in a way that made the younger man shudder, "A redneck guy from Georgia who takes it up the ass from an older man, then says he loves him."
"I do love you," Ellis said, then smirked and raised a thin eyebrow, "you didn't never visit Savannah before the Infection, did ya?"
Nick allowed himself a small, and truthful, shake of the head.
"Figures," Ellis continued, "Savannah ain't no stranger to gay men, Nick. I mean, we got art schools and shit."
He settled back against Nick as if that explained everything, and gave the gambler a lazy nip on the neck.
"I still love you, y'know," his lips moved, soft and wet, against Nick's skin.
A cocky smirk and a pinch on the ass was all Nick gave Ellis in return.
Nick woke suddenly and world flared into sharp relief, all color and noise and movement. A cacophony of screams peppered with gunshots made his eardrums throb, his head ache. At first all he could see was Rochelle, shooting rounds out the passenger-side window from her AK-47, her eyes wild and her teeth gritted. Then he realized, they were surrounded. Through the bloodied windshield, masses of thin, pallid faces snarled. Curled hands beat the glass in a rage, but to no avail; and suddenly, the lesser zombies were thrown aside by a massive fist of flayed skin.
The Tank raised its enormous arms and slammed them down on the hood of the Hummer, causing the thing to buckle and lurch upwards before crashing back down. Nick, dazed by an abrupt knock to the head, heard Ellis' Hunter shriek beside him.
Coach, his hands free of the now-useless steering wheel, hefted up a semi-automatic and shot straight through the glass, round after round, right into the roaring mouth of the Tank. It spat and gurgled blood before keeling forward, laying heavy and dead against the Hummer's front. Rochelle's gun fired a few more times, mowing down any remaining Infected in her vision while Ellis lunged for the dashboard, growling and snarling through the broken glass at the Tank.
"Ellis, it's dead!" Coach yelled, and the boy hunched and growled and dug his sharpened fingers into the dashboard so deeply they left marks.
"Oh, shit," Rochelle sighed and pressed her back hard against her seat, closing her eyes and taking deep breaths in an effort to calm herself.
"What the fuck..." Nick finally sputtered, "what the fuck just happened?"
But no one answered, they were too busy trying to catch their breath and compose themselves. Ellis, content with the Tank's stillness, retreated to the backseat, a low growl sounding deep within his throat.
After a moment or two, Coach spoke up.
"Damn horde. Just like what happened when we was bein' transported to that base, Nick. Then that goddamn Tank...they all came out from the woods," he gestured to the area outside the Hummer; a desolate one-lane road surrounded by old pines and oaks. He turned and narrowed his eyes at Nick, who was nursing his bumped head, "didn't I tell you to buckle up?"
"When you said that, I didn't think we were actually supposed to!" Nick snapped back.
"How old are you, Nick?"
"Old enough to make my own decisions."
"Boys," Rochelle's eyes were still closed, browns drawn together as she spoke, "arguing won't get us anywhere. Coach...will the car work?"
"She's stopped dead, Rochelle," he answered mournfully, "and I reckon there's no way to fix her, not even if Ellis was still in his right state of mind."
Ellis snorted as if taking personal offense to the remark.
"So we're going to have to fucking walk," Nick said, "great. Just great. We never should have left that goddamn school. I can't believe we left."
After his muttering was complete, they were all silent and somber. Several minutes passed before Coach spoke again.
"We oughta salvage what we can carry and go on. We got the map now, we can make it."
"To where? What if there's nothing there, Coach?"
"Well, Nick, we just gotta try."
What supplies they could carry were quickly packed into duffel bags Rochelle had insisted upon bringing. They didn't speak much, and as they walked away from the metal ruins that had been their salvation, their silence deepened.
The incident seemed to have roused Ellis out of his gloom, however. He scampered a short way from the group and climbed a tall oak. As his human friends moved along the road, Ellis followed, leaping from branch to branch amidst yelps of joy and the upset screeching of the birds.
"Ellis seems happy," Rochelle offered in a quiet voice.
"If we could all be so lucky," Nick grumbled while readjusting the strap of the duffel bag over his shoulder. Between the bag over his shoulder and the rifle slung across his back, he had no room to move freely or quickly, something that he had found to be very necessary in survival.
"I hope he don't run off too far," Coach cast a wary eye at Ellis, who seemed to be chasing something through the foliage.
"I don't think we could get rid of him if we wanted to," Rochelle answered with a laugh.
"Yeah, that might be a problem later," the large man sighed, "but we ain't gon' talk about it now. Right now we just gotta keep on movin'."
More silence save for the creaking limbs of the trees.
"Shouldn't they be dead by now?" Rochelle's voice sounded sudden and clear amongst the stillness, "the Infected, I mean? It's been forever since the outbreak, shouldn't they have starved? Or been wiped out by the military?"
"Of course not. That'd just be too easy, wouldn't it?" Nick said, and the other two managed soft laughs.
"Well, Ro girl, it's like I said...we don't really know nothin' about these zombies, do we? That's why they was experimentin' on folks, why they got Ellis...they was tryin' to figure shit out."
Their conversation was interrupted as Ellis came crashing out of the woods, something small and furry dangling from his mouth. He gave a mighty jump and landed in front of Nick, dropping the dead and bloody squirrel at the gambler's feet. His teeth were red and bared in the semblance of a smile.
"Oh, how...cute," Rochelle stared in pity at the unfortunate little creature, "he brought you a present, Nick."
"Make sure you skin it before you cook it up," Coach advised with a grin.
"Ugh. I'm sure you could tell me how to cook a squirrel, Coach. Um...thanks, Ellis."
He mentally noted that he wouldn't be kissing Ellis again, drunk or otherwise.
Night was upon them by the time they were out of the woods. Exhausted, they settled down in the first intact building they had come across; a small Dairy Queen on the outskirts of a little town.
"Don't get your hopes up, Coach, I don't think there's any ice cream left," Nick smirked as the older man pried the planks off the door.
Soon they were inside, secure in the darkness. They rested on the linoleum floor, their backs against the duffel bags.
"We haven't seen any lone zombies in a while," Rochelle said tiredly as she massaged her aching feet, "they're always in a horde."
"There was that Smoker," Nick pointed out. He lounged against the wall, Ellis curled up and sleeping with his back tight against Nick's thigh.
"That didn't count. The Special Infected are different, they...they think differently."
"You mean they think." Coach mumbled around a mouthful of Twinkie.
"I guess...yeah. I'm just confused, why does this shit keep happening to us? I been, we've been good people, right? Well, Nick is up for debate, but..."
"Hey," Nick lashed. But as Rochelle and Coach laughed, he enjoyed the merriment, the normality, of the sound. Beside him, Ellis' back pushed against his leg with each intake of the boy's breath.
"Well, I don't know about you boys, but I'm worn out," Rochelle unpacked a couple of thin blankets they had managed to salvage from the Hummer, and spread them out on the floor in way of a mattress.
The old instinct of staying together had risen again within them, stronger than ever now. Nick lay down on the torn old blanket, Ellis still resting at his side.
These people were his family. He didn't ask for it, hell, he didn't even want it. But he couldn't change it. And now he knew what Ellis was thinking when the boy had gleefully insisted that they'd all be living near each other one day, visiting each other for dinners and games and celebrations.
Not even Nick could lightly dismiss the fact that he'd trudged through hell and back, then through hell again, with these people.
He turned toward Ellis, his chest against the strong muscle of the boy's back, and wrapped an arm around him. A content sigh escaped Ellis' throat, so human that it made Nick forget he was close to a monster. The last thing Nick saw before sleep took him was the moonlight casting beams in through a sliver of window, shining on Ellis.
Snarls and incessant scrabbling permeated his dreams. It wasn't uncommon. He had heard strange things since the infection broke out, noises he didn't know were possible, and these sounds were recycled in his mind, over and over again. Especially in the nightmares he insisted he didn't have.
There was the sound of splintering wood, then a low, thrumming growl.
Nick groaned once he realized these sounds weren't just in his head, but firmly set in reality, and pushed the heavy body against him in an effort to get Ellis to shut up. But the boy only gave a soft snort. Nick's eyes cracked open. Ellis was still asleep.
And on the counter above Nick, a darkened silhouette crouched, and all he could see as it lunged for him were stained and jagged teeth.
