Dell hit the brakes and managed to stop his truck mere centimeters before he would have hit Patrick's van.

"Patrick, you ok?" Dell checked his walkie-talkie twice, but all settings were correct.

"Ludvig is injured. The impact knocked him over into one of the storage boxes. He's bleeding like crazy! What do I do?"Patrick put the transmitter away, and focused on the task at hand. Gently (but with a lot of difficulty, he laid the Russian down on the floor, disturbed at the amount of blood that was streaming out of Patrick's head. He removed his shirt and tried to wrap it around Ludvig's head, in an attempt to stop the bleeding, or at least slow it.

Meanwhile Dell informed Günther of what had happened. Immediately Günther leaped over the front set of spikes, and ran over the car's hood.

"Hey! I cleaned that yesterday! " Dell let out a grumble at the clear dirt imprint that Günther left behind.

A lot of zombies were closing in on him from all sides, but Günther flat out ignored them as he climbed onto the back of Patrick's van.

"Patrik, let me ein!" He banged on the valve. From the inside Patrick could only hear the banging, so he immediately reached for a nearby shotgun

The sound continued, and suddenly stopped. Patrick only realized who was on the roof when he recognized the human sound of German insults

Quickly, Patrick opened the valve and let the still-swearing German in. As soon as Günther realized the state that Ludvig was in he immediately fell silent. Patrick closed the valve again. "Doc, how is he?"

Without any emotion on his face Günther turned around and glared at Patrick. "Drive. Get us out of here. NOW!"

The sudden change in tone even caught Patrick off guard, and he immediately sat back down into the drivers seat, reaching for his walkie talkie. For some reason it was extremely slippery, and it took quite a few attempts to firmly grasp it. As he reached for the button to talk he realized why it was so hard to grab on to it. His hands, his arms, were all covered in blood. Somehow, he had completely missed this detail, or his mind didn't want to accept it. It was far worse then that though, he also felt somewhat weak. Was the blood on his hands from Ludvig, or was he critically injured without noticing it, either.

"I don't have time for this." Multiple zombies surrounded the two vehicles, climbing from underneath and inside the massive car crash ahead of them. He ignored how he felt, and pushed the button of the walkie-talkie

"DELL! FOLLOW ME!" Patrick put the car in reverse, bumping into Dell's truck. Dell wanted to yell insults at Patrick for damaging his car, but the urgency of Patrick's message made him put his truck into reverse as well.

The two vehicles moved backwards, distanciating themselves from the oncoming horde and the hell of cars that was blocking their way. With quick gear change Patrick's van started moving foreward, and took a left, leaving the road back onto one of Australia's many dry riverbeds. The van shook up and down violently before setteling into a soft pattern of vibrations.

Patrick's mind was nothing less than pure focus. With seemingly boundless confidence he dodged tree after tree, making sharp turns left and right. From the back of the vehicle he could only hear German insults because Günther wasted another one of his syringes. He couldn't tell when the next turn was coming so he simply tried to continue treating Ludvig's wounds despite the horrible circumstances. Dell was doing his best not to bring any more injuries to his car, but he noticed he was falling behind. He put the pedal to the metal, his truck suddenly bursting forward. He was not going to face this apocalypse alone. Especially not since the sun would be setting soon.

Eventually the tree line ended into a flat sandy road. But to the right of them the highway, and it's massive pile-on of cars continued for quite a while. Eventually they passed the last few houses on the lower outskirts of Alice Springs and an airport on the left. Patrick kept driving for half-an hour until he finally decided to pull over onto an empty stretch of road.

Günther was too busy still treating Ludvig that he didn't notice that they had stopped driving. Patrick stepped out of the van, feeling quite unsure if he was dreaming or not. He couldn't even feel his feet any more, yet he still managed to walk up to Dell's truck and open the door.

"That was bloody close, wasn't it?" Patrick smiled widely.

"It was fine until you decided to crash into a massive roadblock." Patrick stopped smiling. "Though, really, you did a damn fine job leading us so far. But.."

"What?"

"How is ludvig?"

"Oh, right." Patrick's mood darkened. He suddenly wanted the feeling of uncertainty back

. "Don't know. Doc's still busy with him."

Dell nodded. "What exactly happened?"

"When we hit the…stack of cars, Ludwig was standing. He toppled and fell onto a corner of one of the ammo boxes we had."

Dell cringed. "That's not good."

"He was bleeding like crazy." Patrick reached for a bottle of water stashed on top of Dell's dashboard, and started to wash some of the blood from his hands.

`Its getting cold. I´d better get a fire started.` Dell reached for something he had taped underneath his seat. From underneath he pulled out something that looked like a very small flamethrower. With a flick of his hand it started to produce a small starter flame. Dell walked up to one of the nearby trees, and selected one that had the furthest distance from the others. One click later and they now had a tree-shaped fire.

`I didn´t know you know about pyrotechnics…or whatever the thing is Pyro does…did.` Patrick struggled to form complete sentences. All of a sudden he felt dead tired.

`You´d be surprised how much you can do with engineering.` Dell put his pocket flamethrower back into it´s hiding spot.

`yeah , whatever. Can you engineer some dinner? I´m starving.`

Dell was about to knock on the door when Gunther opened.

`How is he?`

´Not good. Not good.` Gunther let out a small sigh. He sat down next to Patrick, and reached for one of the soup cans they had been cooking on the fire.

`You know vhy I barely ever can save anyone from your head-shot?`

`Because without a brain you die.`

`Zat…is one vay to say zis. My medigun is

not good at repairing ze brain. It is ze most complicated part of our body, and after five-hunderd years of science ve do not know all about ze vay it vorks. Ze body is simple, ze soul…is not. Ludvig has a hole in his skull, and I haveve been able to repair it as much as I could. I do fear zat he has permanent brain damage. He is in a coma, und…perhaps he might recover. Ve vill have to track down his process.`

Patrick let out a deep sigh. `Ok then…` From one of his pockets he unfolded a map of Australia. Somewhere to the left of the middle lay Alice Springs. He pointed to where he estimated where they were. `We´re about here. We need to follow this road down for quite a while. We´re in luck though, this was the last big city for miles and miles ahead. We´re safe…for now.`

`If only Ludvig was avake to be here.` Gunther idly stirred his soup.

`Hey, if you think like that he´s never gonna wake up. If you don´t have faith, you´re dead inside.` Dell placed his hand on Gunther´s shoulder.

`Danke.` Gunther nodded. `I need to check up on him.` He walked back to the van, his soup still left untouched.