I feel like it's been forever since I've done an author's note, so I'm gonna do one and just say thanks to everyone who's sticking with this story and all the awesome reviews from those of you that still review. It means a lot to me and it helps me push out the next chapter when I have writers block so thanks.
"Don't freaking move or I swear I'll blow your brains out all over this concrete."
"What are you doing? We just saved your life remember." The dark-haired girl says.
"Yeah." I nod. "After you put it in danger." I snap.
"Well it worked didn't it?" She smiles a cocky smile, shifting her weight. Aiden's weapon quickly points in her direction.
"Easy there pretty boy, I'm unarmed remember." She smirks, holding up her hands.
"Don't talk to him like that." Glen pipes up.
"Oh!" She says, looking back between Aiden and Glen. "I get it." She points to Glen then Aiden. "You two..." She trails off, letting the statement hang in the air.
"How about you mind your own business." I snap at her.
She shrugs, "No problem." She turns back to me, smirk still planted firmly on her face as her and her partners hands stay above their heads. "But if you haven't noticed, we're kinda about to be attacked, and I'd like to not die today." She nods behind us. I turn and see a massive herd of zombies headed right this way.
–
One Hour Earlier
"This is never gonna work." Aiden whispers beside me as we watch the hospital from a hilltop across the street. There are hundreds of walkers strolling around in the hospital parking lot.
"There's gotta be an entry point." Kyla says, looking through the binoculars.
"We're gonna need to figure it out soon, we're losing daylight." Mr. Carlin chimes in. I look around, searching for something, anything to help us get inside this building.
"Got it." I say, sitting up a bit, grabbing my bow off my back.
"What is it?" Kyla asks from beside me.
"Let me see those for a sec." I tell her, taking the binoculars from her. "There." I point down the hill.
"I don't see anything." Glen and Aiden say in unison.
"That drainage pipe." I point. "We can go under the hospital, I'm sure it'll lead us right inside." I tell the group with a smile, handing the binoculars back to Kyla.
"You want me, Kyla Davies, to go in the sewer?" She quirks a brow at me.
"That's our only way in." I say rolling my eyes.
"Nope, not gonna happen." She shakes her head.
"It's not that bad." Angel tells Kyla.
"You guys go, I'll be the look out." Kyla suggests.
"You wanna stay out here?" I question, she nods. "By yourself?" She nods again. "With all these zombies?" I add. She turns and looks at the all the zombies and how easy it would be for them to get to her.
"Fine." She sighs. "But I'm no where near happy about this."
"And you think we are?" Glen asks with a raised brow.
"Right. Let's just get this over with." Kyla rolls her eyes and checks the clip on her gun.
"Don't kill anyone with that, please." I turn to her and say.
She turns to me and smirks, "Well it is my first time." She says, then gets up and starts to crawl down the hill with everyone else.
"She's turning into you." Angel smiles and says as she follows behind her.
"Right." I sigh and shake my head, doing the same as everyone else. When we all got to the bottom of the hill, Aiden and Glen lifted the sewer gate and we all crawled down one by one. "Close that." I tell Aiden as he climbs down.
"But we plan on coming back this way don't we?" He asks, looking down at me.
"Yeah." I nod, shinning the flashlight up at him. "And I'd like it not to be surrounded by zombies if that's okay. If they see the hole, they may get curious. They're not as dumb as we'd like to think."
"Oh." He says and pulls the sewer gate closed. He jumps down off the ladder, splashing water on me, Kyla and Angel.
"Nice, ass wipe." Kyla whispers, punching him in the arm. Mr. Carlin and Carmen are adults and although we've been on our own forever, we still respect adults enough to try not to curse around them.
"Ow." Aiden shrieks rubbing his arm.
"Ashley tell your sister to stop hitting my boyfriend." Glen rolls his eyes as he comes back to us and ushers Aiden past us.
"Tell him to stop being such a douche." Kyla shrugs and walks away.
"That's nothing like me." I whisper to Angel. She smiles and walks away.
"Which way do we go Ashley?" Carmen asks, shinning her light back to me.
"Um..." I say shining my light up at the pipes. "This way." I say, leading the group through the sewers on a hope and prayer that the pipes will lead us where we need to be. "I think this is it." I tell the group shining my light above my head at another sewer gate. It should lead us into a bathroom within the hospital.
"I got it." Aiden volunteers to go up the ladder first. He climbs up the ladder and slowly opens the gate. Looking from left to right, he whispers down a clear, then climbs through. The rest of the group follows.
"I'm not sure where the pharmacy is in here, so we need to stay tight so we don't get lost. Everyone ready?" I ask as I place a hand on the door to the bathroom. They nod as I pull it open. I'm the first into the hallway, bow up and ready to shoot anything that moves. But...nothing. There's nothing, no one around, the hallway is completely clear.
"Where is everyone?" Angel questions.
"Maybe the hospital was evacuated before the outbreak." Glen chimes in.
"Or maybe they're all hiding somewhere waiting to jump out and attack us." Aiden pipes up.
"Really?" Kyla looks up at him and asks.
"What?" He asks in a serious tone. "You don't know, they could be." He shrugs.
"Let's just get what we came here for and go before they decide to stop hiding and start seeking, shall we?" I ask my friends who nod. We make our way down the hall, looking for signs that will tell us where the hospital pharmacy is.
"There." Angel points to an overhead sign. "It's this way." She points at the arrow and we all head that way. It wasn't long before we reached the pharmacy. "You two keep watch and we'll search for the Heparin." I tell Glen and Aiden. They stand guard outside the door while the rest of us go in.
"This is like a freaking gold mine." Carmen practically squeals as she starts dumping medical supplies into her bag from the shelves. "If we stock up enough we won't need to do another medical scavenge for a while, well... barring a catastrophic incident of course." She chuckles and continues to stuff things into her bag.
"Got it!" Angel says from behind a shelf, holding it up for me to see.
"How do you know?" Kyla questions.
"Cause it says Heparin right here." Angel smiles, pointing to a word on the small glass bottle.
"Great, let's grab a few and get out of here. Carmen you got everything you need?" I turn and ask her.
"Yup." She smiles widely as she zips up her bag.
"We all done?" Aiden asks when I open the door.
"Yep, let's get out of here." I tell him, taking off in the direction we came from.
"Well that was the easiest run ever." Glen says.
"Way to ruin it, Glen." Kyla says and I can hear the annoyance in her voice. Everyone knows you never say things like that because the moment you do... things go...
"Shit." I mumble as I slide to a halt. A couple dozen walkers are standing outside the bathroom we need to go in. The bathroom that holds our only exit strategy.
"See!" Kyla shouts softly, hitting Glen in the back of the head. "All your fault."
"I guess they were tired of being the ones hiding." Aiden chuckles.
"How do we get out of here?" Carmen asks.
"Did you see another way out when we were outside, Ashley?" Mr. Carlin asks.
"No." I shake my head and sigh. "This is it." I reply softly.
"Then what do we do?" Angel asks.
"I don't know." I shrug, wracking my brain for an answer. We can't just walk out the front door. There's way too many to fight off.
"Ashley..." Kyla calls me.
"Ashley..." I think that was Aiden. They're all waiting. They're waiting for me to be the hero, the one that gets them out of this mess. This time I don't know if I can.
"Maybe we can..." My sentence dies in my throat when the gun shots ring out. The walkers all hitting the ground. I turn to my group and see none of them have their weapons raised, we're not shooting these zombies, so who is?
When all the zombies are down, we take the defensive and raise our weapons, still not seeing where the bullets originated from.
"Ashley, what's going on?" Kyla asks from next to me.
"I don't know, I don't see anyone." I whisper. A few seconds pass as we aim our guns at no one in particular. We wait for the assailants to emerge, to show themselves, but they don't. We hear footsteps behind us. I turn and see a herd headed right this way, they must have heard the gunshots. This is why we use silencers.
"We need to move, Ash." Aiden says when he sees the herd coming.
"We can't go in the bathroom, they'll just follow us, we won't all have time to get down the ladder." I say.
"So what do we do?" Glen asks in a panicky tone.
"Run!" Is my only solution. We take off to our right, maybe if we circle back around we can lose enough of them to make it back out the way we came in. As we make it around the first couple of corners I realize that these aren't walkers at all, they're runners. They only zombie's I've seen go this fast is the newbies, or ones that have recently devoured tons of human flesh, so maybe the hospital wasn't cleared after all.
"Ashley we can't outrun them." Carmen says from the back of the group. I turn just as she shoots a zombie that was right on her heels in the head.
"I know. We're gonna have to split up, take out as many as we can, then meet back at the bathroom."
"I don't think splitting up is such a great idea." Kyla pipes up.
"We don't have-"
"We shouldn't." Kyla cuts me off.
"Okay fine." We're gonna have to get some of them off our tail, on my mark we turn and fire." I tell the group. Tossing my bow back over my shoulder and taking my two pistols from the holster. "One, two, now!" I shout. The group stops running, everyone turning around quickly, firing off round after round. The first one I hit, hit the ground with a loud umph, several others that were behind it, tripping over it. We dropped at least forty zombies but it's like they're never ending. "Enough!" I shout. "Let's go, we'll circle back to the bathroom." Everyone changes clips, taking out a couple more zombies before we take off running again. We make it back around to the bathroom, the zombies that fell in front of the bathroom door have been pushed to the side. I open the door to see the sewer gate is open. We all quickly get inside and barricade the door with whatever we could find, just to buy ourselves more time.
"Ashley someone else has-"
"I see." I cut Angel off as everyone climbs down into the sewer. The door won't hold for much longer. I'm the last one down, closing the gate behind myself. We run back through the sewers the way came and see that gate is open as well. I'm the firs one out. I see two people running away.
"Stop!" I shout, raising my gun at them. "Stop or I'll shoot you in the back." I tell another warning to them. They both stop, putting their hands in the air as they turn to face us. The rest of my group climbs out of the sewer and we make our way over to them. "Who are you?" I question the dark-haired girl.
"Does it matter?" She asks with a smirk. "We were just leaving." She smiles, dropping her hands, her male friend does the same and turns to walk away.
"Don't freaking move or I swear I'll blow your brains out all over this concrete."
"What are you doing? We just saved your life remember." The dark-haired girl says.
"Yeah." I nod. "After you put it in danger in the first place." I snap.
"Well it worked didn't it?" She smiles a cocky smile, shifting her weight. Aiden's weapon quickly points in her direction.
"Easy there pretty boy, I'm unarmed remember." She smirks, holding up her hands.
"Don't talk to him like that." Glen pipes up.
"Oh!" She says, looking back between Aiden and Glen. "I get it." She points to Glen then Aiden. "You two..." She trails off, letting the statement hang in the air.
"How about you mind your own business." I snap at her.
She shrugs, "No problem." She turns back to me, smirk still planted firmly on her face as her and her partners hands stay above their heads. "But if you haven't noticed, we're kinda about to be attacked, and I'd like to not die today." She nods behind us. I turn and see a massive herd of zombies headed right this way.
"Crap, we gotta move guys." I tell my group, they all turn and see what I mean.
"What do we do with them?" Glen ask nodding towards our two captives.
"Take the zip ties from my bag and tie them up, we're gonna have to take them with us." I instruct him.
"We can't take them back to camp with us." Aiden protests.
"We can't leave them here, they won't make it." Mr. Carlin speaks up. Glen takes the zip ties from my bag and tie them both up.
"So what do you suggest we do?" I turn to Aiden and ask.
"I don't know, but taking them back to camp should not be an option."
"Um guys..." Angel says tentatively as the herd gets closer.
"We don't have a choice." I shrug. "Let's move guys." I yell and the group runs towards our vehicles.
–
Present
"What are you guys gonna do with us?" The dark-haired girl asks as we make our way into the building.
"Just shut up and keep walking." I nudge her forward up the stairs with my gun.
"I don't see why you guys are so angry, it's not like we tried to kill you or anything."
"You almost got us killed, you killed those zombies in front of that door, knowing it would attract others so you could steal our escape plan. How do you even know about it?" I question her as we continue to ascend the stairs, the rest of the group behind us.
"We saw you guys come out of the bathroom. We'd been staying in that hospital for weeks, no food or supplies, none of the consuming variety anyways, we never knew about that sewer gate, not until we saw all of you come out of the bathroom. We went in and saw the sewer gate and were gonna use it to get out but we left to go gather up our supplies and when we came back it was surrounded by walkers. We don't even know where they came from."
"So why wait until we were back to shoot them, why not kill them before we got there?" I ask as we exit the stairwell on our floor.
She stops and faces me with a smirk. "We needed a diversion for the dozens we knew would be coming once they heard the gunshots."
I narrow my eyes at her and push her forward to start walking again.
"Who are they?" Spencer asks as the rest of the group comes down the hall to meet us.
"We found them at the hospital, they almost got us killed." Glen speaks up.
"The words I believe you're looking for are we saved your lives." The dark-haired girl corrects him.
"I don't see it that way." Glen says, stepping right into her face.
"Why are they cuffed?" Mrs. Carlin asks.
"We don't trust them, we don't know what to do with them yet." I answer.
"Ashley we're not savages, we don't lock people up." Jo says.
"I know." I nod. "This is just until we figure out what to do with them." I assure them. "Put them in there until I figure something out." I tell Glen and Aiden, handing the girl over the them. They escort the pair of them into an office to our left.
"Did you get what we needed?" Eric asks coming up to me.
"Right here." I smile, handing him my backpack.
"We should get started then." He smiles and walks away with my backpack towards the lab.
"I'm gonna go help Eric." Angel says and walks off. The rest of the group slowly making their way back to wherever they came from.
"Dr. Johnson almost walked into the lab earlier." Tim says and I walk... he rolls... down the hall towards the lab. "You really should tell him before he finds out some other way Ashley." He says and I nod.
"I will." I assure him.
"Good." He nods and wheels off in his chair back to the room he shares with his wife and son. Spencer kicks up from the wall she'd been leaning against and walks over to me. Everyone else has dispersed.
"You came back." She says simply.
"Yeah." I nod and half-smile. "I told you I would." I add.
"Don't do that again." She shakes her head and turns to walk away.
"Do what exactly?" I grab her wrist and spin her back around to face me, moving closer to her in the process.
"Leave." She states simply, barely even batting an eyelash. I swear this girl has skills when it comes to keeping a straight face.
"And why exactly do you care again?" I ask smirking. "You broke up with me, remember."
"Doesn't mean I want you dead." She narrows her eyes at me and turns to walk away again.
"Spencer wait." I say, grabbing her and spinning her again.
"What now As-" Her sentence dies in her throat when our lips connect. God, how I've missed these lips. I feel like we haven't kissed in forever and as much as I don't want to, I pull back. Her eyes are still closed and I can see a small smile playing at her lips. When she finally opens her eyes to look at me, the smile dissipates.
"I promise to never leave you again." I lean in and whisper to her. She stumbles back a little, almost like my words are too much for her. I know I just caught her off guard, she's probably mad at me right now but I don't care. I had to kiss her. It's been too long...way too long.
"I...I...you should um...um..I..." She trails off, shaking her head before turning on her heels and walking away quickly. She tries her hardest not to turn back to look at me. A smile creeps on my lips.
Round two: Ashley.