191 Days After the Initial Outbreak

Axel spent the next morning in an excited stupor. He was so excited, in fact, that he nearly forgot to go through his routine checking of the hotel room. Thank God no undead had managed to sneak in (but really, how could they?) or he more than likely would've become a Human Happy Meal.

After he remembered to do his checking, he remembered that he had forgotten to eat breakfast. Of course, in his excitement, maintaining healthy eating habits wasn't really his main priority. A quick piece of toast would suffice.

Then it was to the balcony. A quick glance at his clock told him that the time was 9:34 in the morning, which was unnaturally early for him. He chalked it up to being unable to wait to see those other people again, confirm that he didn't dream about them and that they actually existed.

So he picked up his sniper rifle and looked through the scope, quickly locating the building they had retreated into. There were probably thirty or forty of the infected in front of it, doing what they did best: absolutely nothing. He looked down at the door and the ground-level windows, noticing that the windows were boarded up and the door was shut (at least they had common sense enough to barricade the place.) He scanned the horde of creatures that had amassed on Fifth Avenue, looking for a pair of blonde heads that looked more…alive than the rest of the heads. No luck.

That didn't matter. He would sit on the balcony looking for them for days if he had to (but he really hoped he wouldn't have to.) Plus, he easily could've missed them. In this crowd that had grown to nearly one thousand seemingly overnight, accidentally skipping over two blonde girls definitely seemed like a very distinct possibility.

So he looked. He looked, and he looked, and then after that, he looked some more. By the time he finally felt safe enough to turn away from what was going on the street and glance at the clock, over three hours had passed with no sign of them. He checked the apartment building's door again, and the windows, and….what was that? On the…roof?

He narrowed his eyes and moved his sight up to the roof and, sure enough, there stood the same girl who had waved at him yesterday. She was holding a pair of binoculars up to her face, and when he noticed her looking at him, raised his hand.

He watched as a smile slowly spread across her face, and she raised her hand back. It was the first human interaction he had in over six months, and it felt amazing. This simple gesture was accompanied by the knowledge that yes, he could interact with these people. He could talk to them. He could get to know them, and what they were like, and who they were before the infection spread.

Slowly, the girl on the roof lowered her binoculars and bent down to pick something up. Axel's eyebrows knitted together as he watched her through the scope of his rifle. She picked whatever it was up and held it above her head, and he understood immediately.

It was a white board. A big white board, at that. On it, she had scribbled the words, 'Hi, I'm Naminé. Room for two more?'

Okay, he needed something big to write on. When she picked up her binoculars and looked at him, he gave her the One Moment Finger and stood up, looking around frantically for something, anything large enough for her to see. He ran into the room and grabbed a magic marker off of some table and looked around, seeing his journal, knowing it wasn't big enough. He went into the kitchen and looked for anything - some piece of paper stuck to the refrigerator, the toaster, the sink…

The placemats. Perfect. He reached into a bottom drawer beneath the countertop and pulled out four or five single-use disposable paper placemats, then went back out onto the balcony. He scribbled his message as quickly as possible, looked at her through the sight, and held it up. 'I'm Axel. I'd love visitors! Be careful - they only react to sound.'

Naminé (he wasn't really sure how to pronounce that, but assumed it was something like café) read this and erased what she had written before, began on her knew message. 'We know. We came from the Atlanta int. airport.'

When he read this, a few things passed through his mind, the first of which being awe. Had they driven? The highways had been really backed up, he knew, but that was for people leaving, not coming in. He could understand wanting to leave an international airport, too. But why come to New York City, where the infection would be just as bad, if not worse?

He crossed out what he had written on his placemat, and just below, wrote the only thing he could think of. 'Why here?'

She looked, erased, then wrote. 'We are from Russia. We flew in six months ago, and when we found out about the infection, we came to NYC. Our mother and father live here.'

Ah, so they were sisters. That made sense, of course. Sisters would travel together, sisters would stay together no matter what. Even in the face of such a horrible disease, they accompanied each other to the northeast from Atlanta, Georgia. It was touching, really.

He crumpled up the used placemat and tossed it aside, grabbed a new one from his short stack, and began writing. 'So you drove all the way here for your mother and father? That's pretty impressive!'

This message put a confused look on her face, and as she watched, she shook her head and made hand motions like she was moving a steering wheel. Then she began nodding as she made walking motion with her middle and index fingers.

Holy shit. They had walked, in the height of the outbreak, from Atlanta all the way to New York City just to see their parents? Forget impressive. That was just nuts. He gave her a thumbs-up to show her that he understood, and she set her binoculars down and picked up her white board.

'You have food? We are hungry - all food here is spoiled.'

'Yes, I have food. I also have hot, running water and TV. Use the service elevator behind the front desk. It will bring you up to me.'

She read this and nodded, scribbled 'See you soon' her whiteboard, and retreated off of the roof. Axel leaned back from his rifle and sighed a sigh of relief, a smile spreading across his face. Yes, this girl and her sister were definitely real. And he was going to be seeing them soon. He would be talking to them in person, eating with them, watching movies with them, making jokes with them.

A very small and very selfish part of him hoped that they either gave up looking for their parents, or never found their parents, or had already found their parents and realized they were infected. The opportunity - the opportunity that he had to connect with other human beings - was impossibly lucky. And he had no intentions of letting it slip through his fingers.

oOo

A few hours passed before they left their little hideout and started moving slowly, cautiously toward the hotel. They kept their faces down so he couldn't see them very clearly, and he assumed it was so that they didn't have to look at the horde of undead that they would be mingling with and passing through.

Each held onto the other's hand for dear life, and they moved so carefully. It was stressful for Axel, watching them in his scope. Occasionally, they would bump against one of the infected persons and freeze in their tracks, waiting to see if this was all it took to get them noticed. When nothing happened, they continued on their slow journey.

He watched them until they were beneath the balcony, where he had to lean over the rail to see them, and that didn't feel safe at all. So he set his rifle down and walked into the room and sat in front of the service elevator, watching the little numbers on the top that indicated at what level the elevator was sitting. The little 'one' stayed illuminated for a painfully long time, and watching it, he realized something terrible - that he had forgotten to tell her which floor he was on.

Yes, he had burned the shit out of and tried to knock out the stairs to the first and second floors. But they hadn't been completely destroyed - thus creating his paranoia that an undead individual could potentially make its way to his room - and if they stopped on any floor in between, they could potentially be met with quite the unpleasant scene.

Of course, Naminé had seen him on one of the top floors, but how was she to know that he was on the top floor? This thought created a nervous pit in his stomach that wouldn't go away no matter how many times he checked the elevator light of walked out on the balcony to see if he could see them. No matter how much he paced in front of the elevator wondering what the hell was taking them so long, he couldn't help imagining them being devoured by the infected in a desperate attempt to meet him.

Then the elevator dinged. It dinged the ding of life, Axel's attention immediately snapping to the numbers. The one was still illuminated, and as he watched, the light shifted from the one to the two. Then from the two to the three, to the four…all the way up to fifteen. And it stopped.

He exhaled slowly, realizing that this was both a blessing and a curse. His floor was twenty. Her guess had been close, but not close enough. He waited, listening as closely as he could for any small sound that would clue him in to what they were doing. Did they get out of the elevator? Were they walking around? Talking? The drone of that constant moaning made focusing a bit difficult, but no focus was required to hear what he heard.

First, a very loud scream that belonged to one of the girls. He assumed it was Naminé, simply because she was the only one he had seen, and from what little information he had gathered about her, she seemed like the screaming type (okay, this was a completely baseless assumption, but it made him feel just a little better.) The scream was immediately followed by gunshots, which would inevitably draw more infected to the hotel.

And the little light that was currently illuminating fifteen moved up to sixteen, and stopped. It stayed there for five minutes, then ten minutes, and Axel told himself that if something had happened there would probably be another scream, so he shouldn't worry. They had weapons, and they knew how to use them. They would probably be okay.

Then the little light moved to seventeen. The ritual was repeated, with Axel watching it with apprehension, waiting to hear something, praying he didn't. He did this with the next two floors, too, which couldn't possibly be good for his health.

The light came to a stop on twenty, and the elevator dinged, and the doors opened. The redhead's grin was met with a gun in his face, and he raised his hands slowly. Standing with her back pressed against the wall of the elevator was Naminé, white as a sheet, looking at him like he was about to jump her.

Standing in between her and Axel was definitely not her sister, but most likely her brother. Axel blinked down at him, trying to wrap his mind around the fact that this person he had spent the last twenty-four hours thinking was a cute blonde girl with pixie-cut hair and a slight frame was a boy. This task proved rather difficult.

"Say something." This boy hissed at him, cocking his gun. Axel realized that he was holding the gun steady. He wasn't shaking, and his voice wasn't shaking, and there was a cold calmness in his eyes that was frightening, at best. "Say something!"

"Uhm…" Having a cocked gun stuck in his face definitely wasn't encouraging intelligent speech at the moment. "Hi?"

The boy sighed slowly and lowered the gun to his side, putting the safety on. No part of him relaxed, though. He watched Axel carefully, closely, muscles tensed in case he would have to fight.

Naminé, however, stepped forward, her hands shaking, studying Axel with more curiosity and less hostility. "A-Axel…?"

"Ah, Naminé." He stuck out his hand and smiled. "Am I saying that right?"

She chuckled. "Yes, you're saying it correctly. It's nice to meet you."

He noticed a touch of an accent on her words, which was completely adorable, and shook her hand gently. Really, the whole situation was laughable. They were going through all of these standard formalities that one went through when meeting someone new, yet outside, creatures incapable of complex thought wandered around aimlessly, their only desire to consume living flesh.

He turned from Naminé to her brother, giving the best grin he could manage. "I'll forgive you for sticking a gun in my face."

The boy watched him closely, skeptical, but after a few moments broke down into what could only be described as a radiant smile that seemed to come completely naturally. "I'll forgive you for failing to tell us that those things were in here, all the way up to the fifteenth floor. Oh, and for failing to tell us which floor you were on."

The elevator doors started to shut, and Axel slammed his hand against the one, prompting it to open back up. He stepped aside and gestured for the two to enter, keeping his grin on his face. As the stepped out and into the large space, their expressions became identical ones of awe.

He remembered that awe. It was probably the same feeling he got when he first entered this place that he had claimed as his own. He couldn't believe how huge it was, couldn't believe that there were people in the world who were wealthy enough to pay for it.

"I'm Axel, by the way." He stuck his hand out in front of the boy, who looked down at it and then looked up at Axel.

He smiled a smile that lit up his whole face, and a warmth came over him that replaced the cold hostility that had been in his eyes not moments ago. His hand slipped into Axel's for a gentle handshake, and when he spoke, his words were soft, without a hint of the accent that had been in his sister's voice. "It's a pleasure to meet you. My name is Roxas."

A/N: Funny, isn't it, that right after I say I'm going to try to update every day I miss...what...three days in a row? Really sorry about that. I hope you can forgive me and continue reading my fiction. xP

So, finally! A real chapter! I'm hoping now that Roxy and Namine have been introduced the chapters will get longer, because it won't just be, "Oh, this is how Axel's day is boring." Like, there's actually going to be real dialogue! 8D I hope everyone else is as excited as I am.

Please read and review! I only got two reviews on the last chapter! (But they were really good so I'm not complaining or anything...xP)

~Sara