Hey guys!! Sorry its taken me so long to update, finals have been ruling my life for two weeks now O.o This kinda popped into my head one day and I thought it was kinda funny so here ya go lol! Poor Columbus, I really can't leave him alone =p
Columbus hated stairs. It wasn't the exercise or the fact that he lived on the third floor of a dorm with no elevator that made him hate them. No, it was the fact the stairs cause more household injuries than just about anything in the house. You can up the stairs, down the stairs, side ways on the stairs, over the stairs, hell, he was pretty sure you could under the stairs too. Stairs were dangerous, like a multi-step booby trap just waiting to happen. His parents didn't have stairs in their house, they were just as bothered by them as he was, so they lived ground level with no area more raised than a sidewalk curb.
Stairs were even more dangerous in Zombieland. You had two choices when it came to stairs in Z-land: run up the stairs and get eaten or run down the stairs and get swarmed then eaten. Either way, it made stairs even more of an enemy to him than they already were.
Tallahassee and Wichita preferred houses with stairs though, they said it gave them a good look out point, almost like an elevated fort. Little Rock didn't care and Columbus pretty much left his intense dislike of the stairs alone; there was no point in adding them to his growing list of phobias. Did you know that in 2008 alone there were an estimated 1,300 injuries in the U.S. related to falling down the stairs? Well, there were, and maybe if Tallahassee and Wichita knew that they'd avoid the stairs too.
The house they were scoping out now was like a damn fun house; there were stairs everywhere! There were stairs leading up to the house, stairs leading to the garage out back, stairs inside, it was like a freakin' Escher painting! Tallahassee was already on the second floor and Wichita was trailing up behind him, guns in their hands. Little Rock was in the room across from him and he had ended up in the kitchen, the smell of rotten food filling the small room. He had his gun clutched in both hands, swinging it out in front of him as he walked in case anything happened to pop out at him.
There was a door right outside the kitchen, lingering in the hallway like an unused closet. He opened the door swiftly, mentally preparing himself for any kind of attack that sprang out at him. To his surprise, nothing happened. He waited a few seconds before reaching into the dark hallway and flicking on the light. It was a basement, wooden stairs (again with the stairs!) leading down to a concrete floor with cardboard boxes and plastic storage containers covering every square inch. The light flooded into all corners so he could see that nothing, dead or alive, was down there which was a relief. He was getting tired of zombies popped out of every dark corner they came to.
"Columbus!" Little Rock cried just as she fired her shotgun at something that rushed toward her. Apparently he'd thought too soon. One had been hiding somewhere in the house, he wasn't sure where, but that didn't matter. It was in the house and a zombie was still a zombie. Little Rock fired again, taking out a chunk of its arm as it got closer. She was working at reloading her gun but it was taking too long, the thing would be one her in seconds.
Thinking quickly, Columbus fired above her head, taking off the top portion of the zombie's skull and splattering blood all over the ceiling. The zombie staggered a bit, a gurgled groan coming from its mouth. Columbus prepared to fire again just as another shot ripped through its throat, separating the head from the rest of the body. He looked up to see Wichita and Tallahassee on the staircase above them and was about to call out a thanks when the zombie toppled backwards, on top of him, and sent both of them tumbling down the stairs into the basement.
Columbus felt every thud and crack of the stairs as he fell, hitting his shoulder, back, chest, shoulder again, head, more than once, (Jesus Christ, how long were these stairs?!) and finally landing with a heavy and painful thud on the floor. There was a very dead, very heavy zombie bleeding on top of him, thick, sludge-like blood staining his shirt and jeans. Normally, he would have been terrified, scrambling to get away from the horrible thing, which he totally would have been doing had he been able to breathe. The fall had knocked all the air out of him and his chest felt like it was on fire, an intense pain burning along his ribs. He gasped a few times but that only made the pain worse, each breath feeling like a knife wedging into his lungs. He could hear the others rushing down the stairs (fucking stairs) and calling his name but he was in too much pain to answer.
Columbus now had another reason to hate stairs; tumbling down them like a rag doll kinda leaves you with a feeling of intense dislike. He wanted to get the zombie off of him, he could feel long-dead blood clinging to his clothes and skin and it was making him sick. Or maybe that was because he couldn't breathe and he could feel his own blood in his hair. Either way, he wasn't feeling too hot at the moment.
"Columbus!" A gruff voice called from the top of the stairs. "Jesus kid…!" There was a thump-thump-thump as the older man scaled the steps like a pro and suddenly appeared at his side. He looked down at him worriedly, noticing the startling paleness of the younger man and the shock of red staining the skin behind his ear. "You okay, kid? Can you feel your legs?"
"I could feel them a lot more if you get this fucking thing off me…" Columbus ground out between his teeth, his voice sharp with pain. He was right on the verge of panic and the persistent weight on top of his chest was making it worse.
Without a second thought, Tallahassee flipped the remains of the zombie off the younger man and tugged him away from the corpse. Noticing the way Columbus grit his teeth as he was moved, he looked down at him again. "What hurts?"
"Everything." The younger man groaned, taking a slightly deeper breath but wincing as the movement irritated his aching ribs.
"You gotta be a little more specific than that kid." Tallahassee muttered, his fingers combing through the younger man's hair and feeling a shallow gash behind his ear. It wasn't deep enough to worry about but it was bleeding like crazy which wasn't comforting either.
"My ribs…" Columbus groaned finally, squeezing his eyes shut. "I feel like I've been kicked in the chest…a lot…" Before he could say anymore, Tallahassee grabbed a handful of his shirt and ripped it straight down the middle, exposing the younger man's chest. "The hell-!?" He gasped at the sudden exposure.
"Sh." Tallahassee muttered, his hands ghosting over the bones and prodding lightly. Columbus gasped suddenly in a few places and there was almost always the tell-tale give of a bone that had broken. All together, he was looking at two that were certainly broken and three that were maybe broken. "I really can't leave you alone for more than five minutes, can I spit-fuck?" Tallahassee mumbled, brushing his thumb along the younger man's cheekbone affectionately.
"You could if there weren't any stairs…" Columbus tried to joke. Breathing still hurt so joking wasn't really in the cards right now.
"Point taken." He gathered Columbus in his arms as gently as he could and lifted him slowly, trying to ignore the younger man's painful whimpers. Wichita was already at the top of the stairs with an armful of bandages and first aid supplies and Little Rock had a bag full of ice she'd found in the freezer. Rule 32: Enjoy the little things, like the fact that there was still power in most of the houses. Keeping a gentle grip on Columbus, he climbed the stairs, meeting the girls at the top.
"You're going to have to deal with stairs for a little bit longer kid, because with the broken ribs you have going on right now, I don't think you're going to be much for travelin' for a few days." The older man said as their little group climbed the second set of stairs up to the second story.
"I think I can handle that…" Columbus mumbled, keeping his jaw clenched tightly against the pain. He still hated stairs, they were a bitch in a half, but curled against Tallahassee's side, breathing in the scent of the older man's shirt, he couldn't really bring himself to care about much of anything.
Poor thing =/ Ah well, you guys wouldn't read it if you didn't like it lol! Let me know if you have any idea you'd like me to write about!! I'd be happy for the ideas and would definitely credit you for the plot bunny =P