Part IV: Dead Air

"Their flight just got delayed. Permanently."

Chapter 39: Dawn

THREE WEEKS AFTER FIRST INFECTION...

Zoey wrapped her arms around herself tightly, but she could not stop herself from shivering uncontrollably. The situation was grim. They had no supplies, no weapons, no shelter, and had lost Louis and Francis in the events that had transpired on the fishing vessel. Fortunately, the shore that they had ended up on harboured no Infected, for the moment at least.

Bill looked to the east to see the sun beginning to rise. His teeth chattered with the cold. "Hopefully w-w-with the light, we'll be able to f-find the other two easier."

"They c-c-can't be far," Zoey agreed grimly.

With that, they set off down the beach in search for the others. They could not afford to call out in their defenceless state, in case danger lurked nearby. The two clung to each other for warmth, their clothes soaking wet. Fortunately, the hypothermia was mild. However, Zoey knew that if they did not find a way to warm up soon, it could get dangerous.

She looked down at the red bruising around her wrists and sighed. "I still c-can't believe those Slaters… They d-did a-all of that… for weapons?"

Bill simply growled dangerously. The mental image of John holding a gun to Zoey's head made his blood boil. The war veteran knew that if they ever crossed paths again, he would not hesitate to kill the man who had used her as a human shield.

"I m-mean, they must be p-p-pretty desperate," she continued. "Pretty d-damn desperate for them to steal all our stuff and then leave us t-t-to die!"

"The world is truly lost, when we are forsaken by our fellow man," he muttered.

The young woman shot him a strange look. "What's with the social commentary, Bill?"

"J-Just havin' a bit of an epiphany, k-kid. If this is w-w-what mankind has come to, then I d-don't want anything to do with it."

She gave him a hard squeeze playfully. "Just don't give up on people, okay? A f-few rotten apples doesn't mean the whole b-batch is bad."

At that moment, Bill noticed two dark figures on the beach further up ahead in the dim light of the early morning. "Hold up," he hissed warningly.

However, one of the shadows turned to face them. "Bill? Zoey?" a familiar voice called.

"Louis!" she cried out in relief, running forward. She flung her arms around him in tight hug. "Thank god you're both okay!"

"You too!" he exclaimed.

"When I saw Francis get shot – " Her words caught in her throat when she looked down to see the main in question sitting on the sand, with a hand to his right shoulder. He was obviously in pain.

"Let's have a look, son," Bill grunted, kneeling down beside him.

"It hurts like a motherfucker," Francis growled.

"Just be glad that Amanda only managed to hit you in the shoulder."

"I swear, when I catch up to that bitch…"

Bill grimaced when he saw the bullet-hole in the muscle. "We have to get that bullet out."

"How, though?" Louis asked. "We have no med-kits, no tweezers, no bandages…"

"Wrong," Zoey said dryly, pulling out a pair of medical tweezers from her pocket. "It's the one thing those assholes were nice enough to leave us with."

"Okay, but we're not going to go digging around in Francis' shoulder for the bullet in the dark." Bill looked westward to see a highway running away into the distance, littered with abandoned cars, several of which were on fire. "Francis, do you still have that pistol?"

The biker grimaced and handed over the group's only remaining firearm. "The barrel has to be drained if you don't want it rupturing on you."

"I fought a war in a damn jungle – no need to warn me about wet guns," the former military man said over his shoulder as he led them toward the road.

The sky brightened as the survivors slowly made their way to the broken highway, happy to be reunited again. The dark thoughts of their current predicament were pushed to the backs of their minds as they concerned themselves with the immediate tasks of getting warm, and then tending to Francis' gunshot wound. Fortunately, the first issue was resolved almost immediately, when the four soon came across a wrecked car lying by the side of the road, still burning furiously.

"Yes!" Louis cried out, running forward.

"Wait, you moron!" Francis exclaimed. "What if the fuel tank explodes?"

"The fuel tank has already exploded, Francis," Bill cut in, walking toward the car. "That's why the fire has engulfed the entire car. There's no more danger here."

The four shivering survivors gathered around the flames gratefully, warming themselves and drying their clothes. As the core temperatures in their bodies gradually returned to normal, the old man scavenged a crowbar, along with a forgotten t-shirt, lying by the roadside. Zoey checked herself over as she dried. Perhaps the only upside to her unwilling swim in the river was that it had washed away most of the dirt and grime on her skin and clothes.

"How are you feeling?" she asked Francis in concern.

"I've felt worse," he replied with a shrug. However, it was obvious that he was in pain.

"It's time we got that bullet out," Bill spoke up, motioning for Zoey to hand him the tweezers while he gave the pistol to Louis. "Drain the barrel, and then keep watch and make sure nothing sneaks up on us."

With that, Francis sat down near the burning car and Zoey held him still, while Bill slowly and surgically inserted the tweezers into the bloody hole in his shoulder. The biker gave a sharp intake of breath, but he put on a genuinely impressive act of not showing his pain during the ordeal. Bill pushed the instrument further into the soft flesh, until they came up against something hard and metallic.

Bingo...

He carefully eased the bullet forward and squeezed the tip of the tweezers together, getting a hold of the projectile.

"Easy..." he muttered, more to himself than anyone else.

The throbbing sensation radiating throughout Francis' shoulder was intensified by periodic sharp stabs of pain, and his face twitched. Son of a bitch, get it out already...

"There!" Bill said triumphantly, carefully extracting the tweezers from burly man's shoulder. A metallic ping could be heard as the bullet fell to the roadside, but no one paid it any mind. The wound in Francis' shoulder held their attention as it gushed blood.

"Shit, that's a lot of blood..." Louis said nervously.

The biker grasped his shoulder as the warm liquid flowed freely through his fingers. Zoey moved forward to make a tourniquet, only to be waved off by Bill. He gave the tweezers to Louis and used the discarded shirt to pick up the crowbar he had found earlier.

"We're going to have to cauterise that wound, son," he said to the biker, thrusting the end of the metal member into the fire.

Zoey stared wide-eyed at the crowbar. "You're going to cauterize Francis' shoulder with that?"

Louis looked equally horrified. "Uh, maybe we should try and find a medical clinic or something – "

"Oh, a medical clinic!" Bill snarled, gesturing at the emptiness around them. "There's nothing around for miles Louis! If we let that wound bleed, or get infected, it's gonna get a whole lot worse for him."

"Bill – "

"Zoey... you're going to have to trust me on this."

After a moment of hesitation, she finally nodded gingerly. Bill let the crowbar heat up for several minutes, being sure to remove it from the fire before it started to glow red.

"Hold him steady," he instructed the others. "Louis, take off your belt."

The other man gave him a bewildered look. "What?"

"Do it!" he snapped. His tone of voice brooked no argument.

Louis quickly unbuckled his belt, handing it to Francis when he was done. The stocky biker watched nervously as Bill knelt down next to him.

"Bite down on it," the veteran ordered, to which his unwilling patient complied. "If you have a place where you are at peace, I suggest you go there."

"Just do it, old man," Francis growled through gritted teeth.

His cry of pain was muffled by the belt as Bill thrust burning-hot metal member to his shoulder, searing his skin with indescribable agony. Sweat poured down the older man's face, which was crinkled in concentration as he manoeuvred the crowbar onto the bullet wound carefully. Zoey and Louis held their companion in place as he writhed in agony, their faces contorted in horror at the ordeal. The searing hiss of sizzling skin was awful.

Francis knew pain, but this was just fucking terrible. Amidst the fiery burning on his shoulder, he felt sharper stabs as Bill moved the rod around, being sure to seal the hole properly. Hissing, burning, stinging.

It felt like an eternity before the crowbar was finally removed from his joint, but he knew that the burning pain in his shoulder would last a lot longer than that. Bill tore off a strip from the scavenged t-shirt and wrapped it around the newly-sealed wound just in case.

"There," he said, satisfied that Francis was no longer in danger of bleeding to death. He looked over at Louis with a trace of sympathy. "I know that Zoey got those tweezers to pull out the shrapnel in your arm, but they're covered in Francis' blood now. You're gonna have to wait until we can sterilise them before they can be used again."

"That's okay," the younger man replied, handing the group's only gun back to him. "Hell, these are only shallow wounds anyway."

Bill opened his mouth to say something else, but was interrupted by a low rumbling in the distance. The group looked over to see bright flashes behind some hills far off in the distance to the west, moments before the shrieks of jet engines could be heard from somewhere overhead.

AUTHOR'S NOTES:

Thank you to all the terrific readers of this story – your support and kind words always make me smile!

Also, I understand that I have been writing Zoey slightly OOC for a lot of this story, but my (very weak) justification is that it is what I feel would be a normal reaction from someone in her shoes. You need to get used to the fact that you are living in a zombie apocalypse. But now I am looking forward to bringing out the cheeky, mischievous Zoey from the game who we all know and love.

Please keep the reviews coming. And remember: "It's just Dead Air".