Nick woke up to gunshots coming from the other room and bolted out of bed. He half stumbled out the door and to the main room, where he saw Ellis holding a sniper and pointing it out the bars on the door. "Shit, Ellis!"
Ellis looked over and shrugged. "I figured we weren't going to be using the sniper since we need to use close range guns, and I really wanted to shoot some of them." Bang. Bang.
Deciding not to lecture Ellis, Nick walked around the main room in search for some food. "Any idea where some food might be?" He looked down a hall and saw it blocked off completely. The same was true for every hallway leading off from the main room.
"Already looked." Bang. Bang. Bang. "There's some chips under the counter, but not much else. I think they tried to cut off the rest of the motel when the infection hit. There's only one room left." Bang.
Nick suddenly felt guilty as he looked at the younger man. "Did you get any sleep?"
"Sure. Used one of the sleeping bags." Bang. Bang. Click. "Out of ammo. Any more sniper rounds over there? I think I might have used it all."
Nick shuffled through the piles of ammunition on the table. "None left. How long have you been shooting them?"
"Coupla hours, I think. Figured if you didn't wake up when I started, you probably wouldn't wake up at all." He examined the sniper in his hands and started to pull it apart. It looked like he just wanted something to do with his hands. "Think Coach and Rochelle are going to wait in that other safe house forever?"
Nick considered the back of Ellis' head and frowned. He hadn't put too much thought into the other two survivors before now. "I expect they'll assume we got overrun by infected and keep going to find a way out. It's what I would do."
"Think we went the right way?"
Nick didn't respond for a while, having no idea what to say. He himself had marked them off for dead when they had set out on their search, and was now convinced they had gone the complete opposite direction; there had been just too many dead bodies on the way for them to have been going forward. "I don't know, Ellis. Maybe."
The remaining pieces of the sniper rifle fell from Ellis' hands as the mechanic slumped in his chair. "That means you think we went the wrong way, doesn't it?"
Nick placed a hand on Ellis' shoulder. "Sorry." He said, not knowing what else to do. It was his fault, really. They should have just searched the area until they found Rochelle and Coach. Now they were stranded and had no way of knowing which way was their best bet for safety. "Hey, i saw some clothes in the other room if you want to get out of that. That witch tore you up pretty bad."
Ellis looked down at his shredded and bloody clothes and shrugged. "I'd rather die in my own clothes than someone else's. Especially since they probably got infected."
With nothing else to say, Nick walked away and examined every inch of their safe house. Ellis had been right; the room Nick had slept in was the only room with a bed remaining, but the place had originally been an old motel. He found more bags of food and tossed them into a pile in the middle of the main room for later. He found doors that led to brick walls. He found children's toys. He found bloodied and ripped clothing. He found more sleeping bags. Then, finally, he found some suits. After selecting one that was approximately his size, Nick changed out of his disgusting, blood-soaked suit and into a newer white one. Hoping to brighten Ellis' mood, Nick grabbed a pair of overalls and a shirt and walked back to the seat in the middle of the room. Ellis was now trying to reassemble the sniper rifle.
"Hey, overalls! I found you clean clothes." He tossed the garments at Ellis and smirked when Ellis started laughing.
"Well, hell, Nick. How'd you find my size?" Ellis lifted the overalls up and held them in front of himself, showing that they had probably belonged to a much smaller man before the infection.
Ellis spent the rest of the day in his usual too-happy state that Nick had found irritating on the walk over, but was grateful for now because it offered him a reason to stop thinking about their imminent doom. "Nick, quit looking so doom and gloom. It's not like the end of the world or anything."
Nick actually laughed and shook his head to try to clear his thoughts of the whole 'infected are going to eat my brains' problem. "I suppose we could make a run for that store across the street and see if there's any food left there."
Ellis sat up straighter. "Can I shoot them while you get the food?"
Nick laughed out loud at the excitement on Ellis' face; the kid really loved shooting these infected guys too much sometimes. "I'm bringing a few guns too, just in case."
Ellis jumped up and started sorting through guns until he had found two that he approved of while Nick grabbed a few bags that didn't have too many holes in them. Looking over at Nick, Ellis started laughing at the other man trying to situate the bags so that they weren't in the way. "You know, this reminds me of this one time my buddy Keith and I-"
Nick glared and Ellis shut up, pretending to be occupied with checking his gun's ammunition. "This store better be worth it." Ellis cheerfully unlatched the door and swung it open, shooting blindly into the alley for a second to be sure that their immediate path was clear. "If there's a witch out there, we're dead."
"That's why we wait to see, Nicholas." Ellis berated him. "If there's one of those whining witches, we shut the door and lock her out." No witch came down the alley, so Ellis decided it was time to raid the store. He slammed the door shut behind them and hurried to beat Nick to the end of the alley. The store was just across the street, but Ellis could see a smoker and a hunter inside and a spitter walking along the street right outside the store. "Just shoot them all? Or wait and see if we can sneak past?" It was one of those rare moments where Ellis actually spoke quietly.
"Shoot them, I think." Nick responded, tightening his grip on his own gun just in case. Just then, the spitter turned and saw them hiding in the alley and launched her acid spit at them.
"Spitter goo!" Ellis screamed, shooting the spitter and running away from the green acid eating through the trash can he had been sitting on. Nick followed him quickly outside and they shot their way into the store. Once in there, they couldn't see a single infected, not even the two special infected they had spotted before. Nick darted around the store, snatching anything and everything edible and stuffing it into the bags until he was carrying four full grocery bags. "Hurry it up, Nick! I hear a witch coming this way."
"Done!" Nick ran out past Ellis and they raced each other to the safe house. They crashed through the door and Ellis dropped the latch into place with a joyful whoop. He collapsed into his chair laughing hysterically. "What's so funny, overalls?" Nick said.
"We just went grocery shopping in the middle of the zombie apocalypse!" Ellis finally controlled his hysterical laughter long enough to say that one sentence and then collapsed into another fit of the giggles. Nick couldn't help it; he started chuckling at the absurdity of the situation too. For a long time, neither of them could stop laughing once they had both started.
When the two finally regained control of themselves, they were both clutching at stitches in their sides. "Hey, Ellis, help me find a place to put all of this crap." Nick was attempting to sort through the food that they had gotten, so Ellis sat beside him and helped pile the different foods around them. They sat beside each other on the floor for hours, just sorting through their food and debating whether or not they would survive long enough to figure out how to signal a rescue from here. Ellis decided that it was possible and Nick, being unable to crush the joy out of Ellis' face had said he agreed, although he really didn't see how it could be possible.
The lightbulb above them flickered and they both looked up, having completely lost track of time. "I call the bed tonight!" Ellis yelled, jumping up and sprinting into the room. Nick heard the bedsprings squeak as Ellis catapulted onto the mattress and shook his head at the kid's ridiculous happiness.