2: Que sais-je?

Marlena fell asleep with her head on Dean's shoulder, rendering him temporarily immobile. Sighing, he leaned his head back against the wall and stared up at the ceiling, searching for a train of thought to follow.

It was hard to believe that just two months ago, he had been a graduate student completing his thesis for microbiology at Stanford University. Those seemed like the good old days now, but Dean could still remember all the stress, the all-nighters, and cup after cup of empty Instant Noodle containers littered on the floor. He could still remember the cramming, and the frantic typing every night on the old, nearly obselete laptop he'd kept promising himself that he'd replace. Being a graduate student had been nothing near as romantic as he'd imagined, and he would have given anything to escape the monotony. Well, he'd gotten his wish, but he wished he hadn't. He would've been a confident twenty-five year old with a Ph.D., a beautiful fiancée, and a well-paying job at the university. Now, he was a terrified, traumatized, shaken was-student with a dead sweetheart, robbed by a petty con man and cowering in an inner-city flat because he didn't have the balls to face what was outside and try to find safety. Now he had no real goal in mind, except to be able to wake up and see the next day.

He thought about the irony of the situation. He was, for all intents and purposes, a scientist. True, he had grown up on a ranch and true, he had been able to fire a gun since he was twelve, but he was not a combative man. When it came down to it, Dean would rather write research papers and read H.L. Mencken than fight. He had never intended to uphold the family tradition of joining the military, and had always fought the relatives who tried to push him that direction. He'd run as far away as California to escape it. On the flip side of the coin there was Kelly, a twenty-eight year old who'd attended a military academy straight out of high school, who'd been a squad leader for years, who would always rather fight than flee—and Dean was the leader of the group. How this had transpired was a mystery to him. "A level head," Kelly had said. "I'd rather you called the shots than me." But he wouldn't say any more than that. Kelly had made his living off leading people in times of stress. Now Dean was in charge, and he wasn't sure that maybe the Marine calling the shots was a bad idea after all. He'd fucked up so many times. Some things had been out of his control, and some hadn't. He could have killed Nick when he'd had the chance. He should have. But his bullshit morality had kept him from pulling the trigger. Now, he had barely anything to show for it.

Nick leaned back against the shivering wall of Virgil's boat, closing his eyes and taking a deep, shuddering breath. He was too goddamn tired for all this shit. What he wouldn't give for an aspirin, he thought. It felt like someone had stuck a knife into his head, twisted it, and stuck it out the other end. He massaged his temples, suppressing a small groan. Eventually, the pain became relatively bearable.

Rochelle and Ellis were nowhere in sight—probably on the deck, watching the accursed death trap of a mansion disappear into the distance behind them. Coach was gone, too, leaving Nick alone in the cabin. Alone. Huh.

At first, that was a little bit of a shock. The past few days hadn't allowed for much privacy—sleeping on the floor in a dingy safe room, shivering in sleeping bags that smelled like someone had died in them didn't inspire much talk for personal space. In times like these, it was an odd thing to wish for, but now he capitalized on his new elbow room like a con man at a blackjack table, stretching out his legs and arms for the first time in what seemed like years.

Nick's hand moved to the inside pocket in his jacket. His fingers found a thin plastic something; he pulled it out and examined it.

It was a California driver's license, a souvenir of his time in Los Angeles. He seemed to recall that it was falsified. Nick turned it over in his fingers. It had been clever enough of a forgery to get him to Georgia. Now, he wished that he'd been called out on the fraud. It was hard for him to remind himself that the west coast probably wasn't any better off in the status quo. And it wasn't as if he'd be any better off in a penitentiary. Prisons were often more secure than the outside, but they were designed to keep people in, not out. He sighed. If he'd known that any of this was happening, he'd have booked a one-way ticket to Israel and never looked back. If he'd known that a zombie outbreak was not unfolding and not the Swine Flu 2.0, he probably would have done a lot of things.

There was something else in his pocket. Nick extracted it from his jacket; it was a green piece of what appeared to be some sort of flimsy paper. It took a moment for him to remember what it was, and when he did, he had to mentally slap himself.

It was a hundred dollar bill, an almost-crisp Ben Franklin. The only flaw in it was the straight fold down the middle that he'd made so that it would fit in his pocket, but other than that, it served as a pristine relic of the world that he used to know. He couldn't help but feel nostalgic. He also felt a little ridiculous. There was a time in his life when his entire existence had revolved around cash. It was plentiful, it was versatile, and it was nigh impossible for the authorities to trace. Nick had worked as a solo con artist, occasionally enlisting the help of others, but he had made a fortune out of trusting nobody and cheating everybody. It was strange, now, to be so dependent on his allies. It also terrified him. They didn't seem like the type, but Nick was paranoid of the idea that one of them might stick him up and leave him for dead. It was the reason why he slept with a knife under his pillow. It wasn't the Infected at all. It was his fellow survivors. It disgusted him to think it, but he had nearly been screwed over once before. He wouldn't let it happen again.

Nick heard footsteps approaching over the hum of the boat and stuffed both items back in his jacket pocket. He leaned back against the vibrating wall of the boat and tried to get some sleep, but his rest was soon interrupted by an abrupt stop and someone shouting that the boat needed more gas.

She liked to think of the whole apocalypse thing as a war. It made the fighting easier, somehow. She could imagine that she was fighting on the side of humanity—on the side of good, even. It put a little perspective in what she was doing. When she was feeling particularly romantic, she could imagine that the survivors were just the remnants of a broken resistance fighting against a invading force of zombies. It was funny, really. There was really nothing to fight for. The zombies weren't out for justice, or conquest, hell, they probably weren't even angry. They were just hungry. That was it.

Zoey sometimes wondered if she could find a video camera somewhere and carry it with her wherever she went, like the reporter from one of the Resident Evil movies, and then film the gory parts of the outbreak. Then piece together a film out of it and become famous when it was all over. Then she remembered what had happened to the woman with the camera. She also remembered that Resident Evil movies were some of the shittiest movies ever made, and promptly dropped that line of thought. Surely she could think of better zombie movies?

She hated the whole debacle. She hated that she couldn't take any passing minute for granted, hated that she was so goddamn fragile, hated that the world she'd once known was gone forever. She hated that she'd somehow had the luck to escape the zombies only to be hampered by the military. She hated that the only people she had left in this world were a box office rat and a tough-shit biker. Sure, Louis was her box office rat and Francis was her tough-shit biker, but pre-war Zoey (for she continued to refer to the crisis as a war) would never have dreamed of associating with such people.

Most of all, Zoey hated how she could not think of anything anymore beyond zombies. They'd polluted her world and now they polluted her mind. In calmer times, she would have taken something just to think about something else, or to block the memories. In calmer times, though, she'd probably have imagined herself in a zombie apocalypse just to escape the drag of reality. The irony was not lost on her.

Retracing their steps back to the port and the boat would have been easy, if only they hadn't been so goddamn distracted. The roads seemed different. Zoey began to realize, with growing dread, that they might have made a mistake.

The hordes drawn from the double debacle with the bridge generator had wandered, but not far. As they neared the port, they began to notice that the number of Infected grew almost exponentially. Zoey felt the hairs on her neck stand on end. There were so goddamn many of them. Francis had quietly put away his shotgun in favor of a fire axe he'd found in an abandoned building, and Louis and Zoey followed suit, seeking out melee weapons until they were both adequately armed. A horde was the last thing they needed, especially in Louis' state. He was still limping. Although the thought of close combat made her skin crawl, she gripped her newly acquired machete and prayed that she wouldn't have to use it.

They hadn't spoken a word since they'd left the bridge, and for this there were two reasons. A part of it was instinct: the noise attracted the Infected and they knew to watch each others' backs anyhow. Instead, they communicated with hand motions. It was all they needed. There was no need for chatter, no reason for them to get to know each other better. That sort of thing was reserved for when they were safe. The other part of it was that there was nothing to talk about. With Bill's death had come the death of the casual banter that used to go on between them. There were no more one-liners, no more friendly jabs, no more conversation. That death had struck so close to their hearts, just when they thought they'd been so close to perceived salvation, was very shocking. Each of them was tangled up in their own thoughts, but nobody wanted to share anymore. It was just too hard.

Finally, unable to deal with the silence, Zoey spoke up.

"We are going the right way, right?" she asked quietly. Francis nodded mutely.

"We have to be," he replied tersely. "We've been following the signs for two hours."

"Yeah, with about fifty detours," she pointed out. "I think we need to get somewhere elevated, get our bearings."

Francis raised an eyebrow at her. "With all this?" He quietly gestured to a throng of Infected milling about on the next block. "I don't think we can take that risk."

"If we can get inside…"

"Let's give this route another shot," he cut her off. "We can take this road, I think, as long as we can keep visual contact with the water…"

He abruptly fell silent as he bumped into something very solid. Looking around, the three of them realized that they'd walked headlong into a dead end.

"Detour number fifty-one?" muttered Zoey.

Francis nodded grimly.

A/N: After a year's hiatus, Lynn is alive and updating this Left 4 Dead story! No need to thank me. ;) The title of the chapter is inspired by an old adage of skepticism, literally translating into "What do I know?" with the implied answer being "Nothing". I think it fits for the tone of the zombie apocalypse, don't you? By the way, I apologize if the jumping around of POVs is a bit confusing. I'll start jumping around way less once things really start getting under way.

If you've gotten this far, I sincerely thank you for giving me a chance, and I'd love you if you left me a review. You know you want to... I assure you that the plot for this story is more or less cemented in my mind; the hard part will be the implementation. Needless to say, updates will most likely be slow in coming, but I am unapologetic. If I'm not updating, there's a reason, and I'm not sorry. In any case, though, thank you for your time.