AN: Hey guys, just a short note to let anyone who has a problem with lots of blood and gory details know that there will be a lot of that in this chapter. Though, this story is about zombies, so you should be kind of used to it by now if you've gotten this far. Once again, thank you to everyone who is reading this story, and especially to the people who take the time to follow it and leave reviews.

And I'd just like to say sorry in advance for this chapter. So yeah, sorry guys.

Until Dawn

Chapter Twelve

I woke up to a scream, feeling the shock that was rolling through my body almost instantaneously turn into adrenaline as the sound registered in my sleep fogged brain. I hurriedly sat up in bed, my hand reaching instantly for the gun that I knew rested on my bedside table and regretted the motion immediately. The world spun sickeningly as a sharp pain shot through my skull and my body cried out in protest, curling in on itself in an attempt to escape from the agony. I barely registered the gentle hands on my shoulders, carefully pushing me back down on the mattress as the sounds from outside and the pain battered my brain.

"Wha-" I gasped out as another scream pierced the room, followed by the sounds of gunshots. There was a lot of yelling going on outside and as I turned my head to look at the motel room window, I noticed that there was no sunlight peeking through the blinds. "Oh shit, w-"

"Piper, calm down," A familiar voice breathed into my ear as gentle fingers stroked my shoulders in a soothing motion. "We've somehow slept through the alarms and I think we're in some trouble now, but you making moves like that isn't going to help us much in this situation, okay?"

I turned to look in Alex's direction, hardly able to make out her features in the almost pure black darkness of the room. I could see a slight reflection from her glasses and the paleness of her eyes, but her expression was lost to me though I could feel her hands shaking against my skin. "Okay."

I could see Alex smile in the darkness, though it was somewhat forced before she gently helped me sit up and swing my legs over the side of the bed. With efficient though shaky movements, she helped me put on my boots and strapped my holsters in place before I settled my guns in them, finding comfort from the weight on my thighs and back once the weapons were in place.

"We might need to move fast," Alex said as we both heard loud footsteps run in our direction. "And it's probably going to hurt you a lot, but I need you to move past that, Pipes. Forget about the pain and just concentrate on living, because I really need you to get out of here with me, all right? Don't make me have to carry you out of here, because you know I will and we'll both end up dead."

Despite the dire circumstances we were in, I couldn't help but smile. "I know. Its okay, Alex, I'll be right behind you."

It was at that moment that the door was thrown open; the florescent lights outside making Janae skin look even paler than she was as she stared at us with wide eyes. Her face was splattered with blood and her whole body was shaking as her eyes wildly searched the room before landing on us. "We need to move! Now!"

"We're coming," Alex said, her voice strained as she helped me off the bed. I had to stifle a groan at the pain that shot up my legs, but I quickly pushed it to the back of my mind.

Mind over matter, that's what they always say.

"Let's go," I said, glancing up at Alex worried expression and receiving a nod in return. We hurriedly made our way out of the room, with Janae leading the way and I couldn't believe my eyes at the sight before me.

"Fuck," the curse was pulled from my throat at the chaos that surrounded me. The once empty car park before the motel was a blur of movement as the undead flooded the once empty space and the ground was now scattered with fallen bodies, most of them unknown zombies but my heart stopped as I recognized a familiar face. "Jones!"

Her pale eyes were wide and unseeing as Alex pulled me past her unnaturally still body, her corpse covered liberally with blood from the gaping wound on her neck. "No!"

"She took down a guy who was going for Morello," Janae's voice was tense and full of emotion as her eyes lingered on Jones's body before falling away. "Didn't even see the bitch coming up behind her until her throat was being ripped out."

There was no time for grief as we were suddenly noticed and bodies were lunging for us from every direction. My reactions were slow due to my wounds and my shock, but thankfully, I wasn't alone as a man threw himself at me, only to have half of his head blown off with a bullet from Alex's gun.

It brought my head back to where it was needed, in this very moment, with this very real danger facing us. I let go of Alex's hand which was clenched in my own and reached from the double barrel shotguns strapped to my back, glad I had remembered to load them in the car before we'd gotten to the motel. I let my emotions go, pushing my thoughts away as I raised my arms and immediately fired at a woman who was reaching for Janae as she battled with another zombie attempting to make a meal of her arm.

I was conscious of Alex at my shoulder and vaguely aware of several familiar screams ringing in my ears, but I was lost in the fight for my life, for our lives. It was horribly familiar to the terrifying moment when we were locked in that basement, such a short time ago, when survival seemed improbable and death was only a moment away. Except now I was injured, and there were even more lives on the line and the numbers of our enemies were countless, coming from every direction. There were no walls at our backs, only more zombies and the chances of survival were even less than on that rickety staircase, where safety had been waiting for us just past that locked door.

I moved past the pain and just kept my body in constant motion, never stopping, even when one of my shotguns ran out of shells. I immediately sheathed it, pulling a long, sharp dagger from my waist and stabbing it into the throat of a woman who had gotten too close. I yanked the blade to the left, before steeling my muscles and wrenching it to the right, cutting through muscle and bone and messily decapitating the growling woman.

The area around me cleared for a bare moment, and I took in the sight before me with emotionless eyes. Alex was to my left, barely a foot away, grappling with a man almost twice her size, which was definitely saying something given her height. I watched with something like fascination as she managed to shove the barrel of her handgun into the zombie's mouth, dangerously close to getting her hand bitten off, before she pulled the trigger. A smug smile tipped her lips as the back of the man's head blew off, pieces of flesh and bone flying in every direction before she shoved the body away from her.

Another scream reached my ears and I watched as Janae darted away from my right and down the car park, towards where our cars were parked. I could hardly see the vehicles because they were so heavily surrounded by bodies clawing at the windows in an attempt to get at the women inside. But my eyes were pulled in another direction, as I heard an almost inhuman yell of anger and I turned to look at the doorway of one of the motel rooms. It was hard to see what was going on, in between the zombies that were grabbing at the person in their midst, but I was moving before I even thought about it as I caught a flash of dark skin and wildly waving limbs.

I knew I would be too late before I even started running, but I pushed that thought away as I let out a yell of my own, launching myself at the crowd of zombies with my knife gripped firmly in one hand. I sheathed my shotgun in mid leap, worried about using it in such close proximity to another living person, as I grabbed the closest zombie by the back of the head, driving my blade sideways through its throat. I let the man drop and moved on, a constant blur of motion and blood as I slashed in every direction, feeling the knife cut through skin and bone with sickening ease.

It wasn't too hard, considering that the zombies were so focused on their victim that they hardly even noticed me until my knife was entering their bodies, and then they were dead before they could even react. The constant yells of their target had died away by the time I was sliding my blade into the back of the last zombie, slicing through the spinal cord and dropping the snarling woman at my feet. My hands were shaking so hard that I almost dropped my knife when I finally turned to the barely moving figure that had been in the center of the undead men and women, feeling my heart drop into my stomach at the sight of the small figure crumpled on the motel room floor.

"Poussey," I breathed, stumbling over the corpses between us before dropping to my knees at her side. Her dark eyes were wide with pain as they stared up at the ceiling, her breathing rough as blood spouted from a jagged laceration on the side of her neck. I let my eyes travel over her body, noticing the bite marks that covered almost every inch of her exposed skin and the scratches from viciously grasping hands that had ripped her clothes and flesh alike. Blood was also pouring from a deep wound on her stomach, where it looked like a chunk of her flesh had been ripped out and I felt completely hopeless, despite my efforts to get to her in time.

She was dying and there was nothing I could do to save her.

In spite of that, I pressed one hand to the wound on her throat, feeling the warm blood immediately begin to seep through my fingers as my other hand pressed firmly but gently against her abdomen. Her eyes trailed to mine and I managed a smile for her, even as I felt the pulse in her throat, where my hand was pressed, begin to slow and weaken.

"Hey," I whispered, feeling the tears well in my eyes and knowing that I was leaving myself open to an attack, but unable to find the strength to care. I hadn't been especially close to Poussey back at Litchfield, but we had gotten along okay and she had helped me when I needed it. She was a friend and her antics with Taystee had made me laugh more times than I could count, back at Litchfield and since we'd gotten out.

"H-H-Hurts," Poussey managed to choke out, despite the fierce pain it must have caused her as her chest rose and fell with gasping breaths. "Those f-fucking bitches."

"I know," I could feel the tears streaming down my cheeks, mingling with the blood that I knew liberally coated my face. "I'm sorry; I couldn't get here fast enough."

"D-don't," Poussey's chest rose and fell erratically and she groaned in pain before continuing. "Just... take c-care of h-her...for me."

I nodded, knowing who she was talking about without even having to ask; Taystee, her best friend and my ex roommate, who she shared an incredibly close bond with. "I will, don't you worry about that."

She managed that contagious grin, the one that lit up her eyes and always seemed to be plastered to her face, before her breathing stopped and her body went still underneath my hands. I choked back a sob, almost biting my lip through to keep from crying as I slowly pulled my hands away from her body, knowing that I had to get up and move before the room was swarming with more zombies. I felt sick to leave her there, but I knew that in my condition and with the chaos outside that there was no way I could carry her body. I forced myself to my feet, taking one last look at her frozen, smiling face before I turned and left the room.

The sounds assaulted me the moment I stepped through the doorway and returned back to the destruction outside. I could see Janae and Alex desperately fighting off the zombies that still surrounded the Hummer, and caught a glimpse of the terrified face of Morello in the front seat. I could see the barrel of a gun through the wire that protected the windows, firing into any zombie close enough, but I couldn't see who wielded it as I made my way back into the action. With determined strides, I re-entered the fray, drawing the two handguns strapped to my thighs as I started firing at anything that was moving. The space between me and the car was relatively clear and it wasn't long until I was shoulder to shoulder with Alex, whose head turned from side to side wildly, until her desperate gray eyes landed on me.

"Piper!" I could hear the tremendous relief in her shaky voice as her eyes ran anxiously over my body. "Where the fuck were you?"

"I-" I started only to be cut off as an arm swung wildly towards my face. I dodged it and rammed my elbow into the nose of the zombie who swung at me, sending a spurt of black blood flying from its face. "Fuck, we need to get out of here!"

"Working on it!" I heard Janae's stressed voice over the noise, and I turned to watch as she stabbed a dagger into the temple of a man that was clawing at the wire covered windows of the Hummer. The door almost instantly flew open and hands grabbed at Janae's body before practically dragging her into the car. I pushed Alex forwards towards the open door, even as we continued to fight for our lives and clear the space around us. The amount of zombies that had been surrounding the car had been cut in half but there were constantly more coming from every direction as we fought our way towards the door.

I was almost out of bullets and extremely grateful when I felt Alex's hand close around my wrist, pulling me into the Hummer as the women inside continued to fire through the open windows. I slammed the door closed behind me and immediately locked it as a man flung himself at the door, his fingers tangling in the wire as he screamed in rage.

"Start the fuckin' car, woman!" I heard a familiar voice and felt relief flood my chest as I noticed Nicky in the passenger seat, her hands wrapped firmly around a shotgun. The car almost immediately roared to life before Lorna put the Hummer into reverse with violently shaking hands and stepped on the pedal. The feeling of the car hitting and running over the zombies that surrounded it was nauseating and I had to spend several moments concentrating on keeping the small amount of food I had eaten, in my stomach.

"Go, go, go!" Nicky's voice sounded loudly as the car reversed speedily out of the car park and onto the road, before Lorna shifted the gears and slammed her foot down on the accelerator, sending us flying down the road and away from any immediate danger.

I felt my body go almost completely limp as the adrenaline started to fizzle out, reminding me of the damage that I had done to my body. I felt tears well up in my eyes from the pain and from the hopelessness and the grief that I could feel begin to overwhelm me and I closed my eyes as I thought about the friends that we'd left behind.

Jones.

Poussey.

I felt an arm encircle my shoulders, pulling me close and I opened my watery eyes to find Alex looking down at me, the same emotions I was feeling reflected in her gray orbs. With a deep sigh, I turned to Janae who was sitting next to me, a haunted look on her pale face as she stared out the window. And then I remembered my last promise to Poussey and I sat up, looking around the car and at the women who were still with us. A distraught Nicky was seated in the passenger seat and Lorna was driving whilst Red was sitting in the back seat, alone, with eyes that were dark and stormy as she stared back at me sadly, her gun lying forgotten in her lap.

"Watson," I breathed, fearing the response to the question that I was about to ask. "Where's Taystee?"

Janae turned to look at me, her face blank but her eyes were full of emotion and I had my answer before she even spoke. "She... I think she was the first to go down. I woke up to screamin' and I ran outside and she must have gone out to wake us all up or something. And then everything went to shit... There was nothin' I could do for her."

I felt the metal band tighten around my heart and I let Alex pull me back into her embrace as I turned to bury my head in her shoulder. I let the feelings of anguish and loss overwhelm me as I collapsed in Alex's arms and my sobs echoed in the somberly silent car as we made our way down the dark, empty road.

We'd gotten out alive but it felt like we'd lost anyway.