(Anne Marshall belongs to AquaDestinysEmbrace.)
(Chris Rudy, Misty Rudy, and Chelsea Jernigan all belong to Chris Rudy!)
(I DO NOT own The Walking Dead, Code Lyoko or any of the names or brands that appear in this story. But I do own my OCs)
Several miles up north somewhere, Ulrich, Chris, Chelsea, and Lee continued leading the newly-found group through the forest and back towards the motel. It was still some miles away from the church, so they all had a bit of walking to do.
Ulrich and Yumi had their hands locked together as they walked. They each had an awful lot of time together to catch up on...
The group then froze when they heard what sounded like a very distant gunshot...
A gunshot in the forest? The only ones who they knew were out here was that other search team...
Before they split up, the two search teams agreed to only fire their weaponry in case of emergencies and to only use blades if they ran into individual walkers. If they were actually in an emergency, for example being that they were getting overrun by walkers, then why was there only a single shot rather than a bunch going off?
Something certainly wasn't right. Something wasn't right at all...
Lee, Chris, and Chelsea all simply brushed aside the strangeness of the gunshots, and within moments they resumed leading the others through the forest to get to the motel. Yumi and Ulrich didn't really pay the shot any mind either, and even they likewise brushed it aside as being something that was probably just accidental.
One of the people in the other search team likely just forgot the agreement and killed a walker with a bullet rather an a blade. Just a simple lapse of judgement...
However, Kyra, also a bit confused by the gunshot they heard, paused for a moment and she went back to check up on Charles, who appeared to be very concerned about the shot. Charles noticed Kyra was approaching but he didn't turn to look at her.
"One shot...? Just one?" Charles asked in a way that made clear his confusion. "They wouldn't just fire one shot, Kyra. That couldn't have been accidental either... I've got a very bad feeling about this." he stated.
"I think it's weird too, but there's not really much we can do right now." Kyra reasoned with a shrug. "All we can really do is just head to their motel and wait for them to come back from wherever south they went... Odd and Chase will find the rest of our people down there and everything will be fine."
Charles appeared to be conflicted by what Kyra said, but after another moment he sighed and nodded in agreement. A single shot couldn't mean they were in trouble, although he still had no clue why it was just one.
So, reluctantly, Charles began to follow Kyra to catch up with the others ahead of them.
He hoped the others were okay... Like Kyra and Robert, he was anxious to see his friends again.
As he caught up to the others with Kyra, Charles failed to notice the pair of sinister eyes spying on him and the others from afar...
"MOVE IT, YOU DUMB MOTHERFUCKER!!! MOVE OR I'LL FUCKING END YOU RIGHT HERE AND NOW!!! DO YOU HEAR ME?! MOVE!!! MOVE!!! MOVE!!!"
An infuriated Dylan held the barrel of his pistol against the head of the man who shot Aelita, forcing the fucker to run with them. He had never felt so outraged in his life.
It took every ounce of personal will-power from the teen to just not pull the trigger. They only reason that the man wasn't dead by Dylan's hand already was only because they, especially Aelita, still needed his help.
The man, "Otis"... he was apparently out hunting for food when he came across the buck in the forest. He was opposite from the group when he aimed his rifle and fired. He claimed to simply not have noticed the pink-haired teen standing on the other side of the buck until he had already pulled the rifle trigger.
Carley and the teens were furious, but even so, they knew that now was not the time to lose focus: Aelita was nearing death's doorstep. They needed to find some help and Aelita was certainly going to bleed out long before they could get her back to Lilly and Mark. Whatever will happen with Otis can wait.
Otis remorsefully provided the search party with the location of where he was living. It was a cattle farm that was about five and a half miles from the place where Aelita was shot, and Otis said that there was someone there who might be able to help save her life.
If they were lucky, they may be able to get Aelita there before she bleeds to death...
Anne was keeping a tight hold on her left shoulder as she ran with the others. The graze from the bullet which killed the buck and hurt Aelita must've taken out a chunk of her flesh, because most of her left arm and now her right hand was covered by her own blood.
But despite the pain, Anne was ignoring her own wound for the moment. All that mattered right now was Aelita and trying to keep her alive.
Jeremie, with tears in his eyes as he felt absolutely terrified for his girlfriend's life, was personally carrying the unconscious Aelita in his blood-covered arms and he was running as fast as he could in the direction of the farm that Otis was from. Jeremie had to get her there no matter how tired he was getting...
His frustration and anger getting the better of him, Jeremie stopped in an open clearing for a brief moment in order to look back at Otis with an infuriated scowl.
"HOW FAR?!... HOW FAR?!" Jeremie demanded to know from the hunter as he struggled not to panic.
"FUCKING ANSWER HIM YOU PIECE OF SHIT!!!" Dylan roared as he pressed the barrel of his pistol firmer against Otis's head.
Otis was so tired from all the running that he was having a lot of difficulty catching his breath, let alone finding the breath to reply to the super genius. However, when Dylan pressed the barrel of his Beretta against the back of the tired and frightened Otis's head, the hunter managed to force himself to reply.
"A... A-Another half mile that way!" Otis breathlessly told the blonde teen as he pointed straight west. "Hershel! T-Talk to Hershel! He'll help these girls! I- I'm so sorry!" he managed to say.
Straight west. Another half mile. Find the farm. Find a man named 'Hershel.' Save Aelita.
Aelita had to last just that much longer, and she'll finally get the help she needs... and if they were lucky, then maybe she won't die today...
"GO! We'll catch up!" the bleeding Anne urged the supergenius to just push forward without them for now. Time was of the essence for Aelita, and she and the others would catch up to him when they could.
Jeremie didn't waste a moment. He returned to running as fast as he could due west with Aelita in his arms, leaving the others in the dust.
Normally, as he was very scrawny, Jeremie wouldn't have been able to lift Aelita even a mere inch off the ground. But with adrenaline coursing through his veins and knowing that Aelita was going to die if he didn't get her to that Hershel person as soon as possible, Jeremie forced himself to run while carrying her for over five full miles so far.
His muscles ached all over his body. His head was banging with terrible pain. His lungs felt like they were being lit on fire with napalm. He was completely drenched head to toe in his own sweat. His heart was beating so fast and hard that it felt like it was going to explode. His vision was even beginning to blur and tunnel a little thanks to how exhausted he felt...
But Jeremie was ignoring all of that as best he could, because he was simply not going to allow his princess to die in his arms...
He wasn't going to say goodbye to her just yet...
Not her...
Aelita wouldn't die if he had anything to say about it...
Jeremie ran and ran as fast as he possibly could, and to his credit he would have made even the best track runners of Kadic Academy jealous. The boy ran through the huge field and into the treeline on the other side. Soon he was so far away from the others that they couldn't even see him as a dot in the distance anymore.
His princess still unconscious and still bleeding to death in his arms, Jeremie made it through all of the trees and stopped for a moment on the rim of another large field.
In the distance he could make out Hershel's farmstead... he prayed he would be able to make it there in time.
Adjusting his grip on Aelita so that he wouldn't accidentally drop her along the way, Jeremie took a deep breath and he resumed running towards the cattle farm. Otis better have been right about Hershel being able to help save Aelita...
At the farmhouse, a young woman named Maggie Greene was out on the front porch with a broom and she was sweeping off some dust and dirt that had gotten on the wood in the last couple of hours. Spring cleaning had to be done even if the world had completely turned to hell.
The state of the world these days wasn't good, and Maggie knew a lot out there were suffering badly. It only made her more thankful that her father's farm was spared the absolute worst of the pandemic...
Aside from the death of the electrical grid, the farm was completely untouched. Generators provided their power now, water pumps and wells on the property gave them more than enough water. Their surviving cattle provided their milk and meat, their gardens provided all their vegetables, and whenever one of the sick people showed up, they all worked together to deal with it in the way her father Hershel asked them to.
Countless people out there were very sick... Maggie could only hope that a cure would come sooner or later. For all the sick people nationwide. Then maybe this county, this state, and this entire country could finally get back up on its feet.
All in all, life at the farm was okay for the most part. They were alive and well-fed and healthy, and that was all you really needed out of life...
But tragically, Maggie had lost several people in her family due to the outbreak... She at least still had the company of her half-sister Beth, Beth's boyfriend Jimmy, her father Hershel, the ranch hand Otis, and Otis's wife Patricia. Thank god...
She had no idea what she would do if she lost any of them... She just hoped that all of the losses in her life were behind her now.
Quietly humming a tune to herself as she pushed her thoughts of the world out of her head, Maggie set aside the broom and she went to work on cleaning the front windows with a washrag and a little bucket of soap and water. One by one, she cleaned off the windowpanes and briefly admired her reflection in them before she kept repeating the process.
However, Maggie stopped everything when she noticed something strange. On one of the windows she could make out a reflection of something far in the distance, and whatever it was, it was moving closer and closer toward the farm through one of their fields.
Maggie blinked and turned to see what it was. It was too far to make out what it was exactly, so she looked for her pair of binoculars that was usually on the porch.
After finding the binoculars, Maggie walked over to the other end of the porch since a tree was blocking the view of the approaching thing. Maggie brought the binoculars to her eyes and zeroed in on whatever it was that was coming toward them...
When she saw it was a teenage boy running with an unconscious and bloody pink-haired girl in his arms, Maggie's eyes widened. She lowered the binoculars and glanced back at the front door, which was wide open.
Her father needed to get out here now...
"Dad!"
Jeremie used what little energy he had left to run up the long driveway which led to the farmhouse proper. From a distance, he could see several people had already gathered on the front porch and were watching him as he approached their home.
He saw five people on the porch who were eyeing his approach... A young woman with brown hair, a boy who had a baseball bat in his hands, a blonde girl who looked close to the same age as he and Aelita, an older woman, and a man with white hair.
God, he hoped he wasn't too late... the man with the white hair had to be Hershel...
As he made it close enough to the farmhouse to actually see the faces of these people, Jeremie allowed his sprinting to die down to a bit of a slower pace. He had never felt so exhausted in his whole life, but at last he had gotten Aelita to the farm...
...
...
... Hershel Greene and his people eyed the boy and the unconscious girl, all unsure as to what her wounds were. All they knew was that if she was bitten, then she was going to end up exactly like the other sick people he's seen so far.
"Was she bit...?" Hershel cautiously asked the blond teen. It was a question in which the answer determined whether or not he would be able to give her any help.
"S- She got... got..." Jeremie trailed off breathlessly, struggling to speak in-between his desperate gasps for air.
After a moment or two, Jeremie managed to find his voice again. "She... she got shot... by your ranch hand..." he told all of these people.
"Otis...?!" the older woman next to Hershel gasped with horror when she heard that her own husband had shot a young girl.
Jeremie walked up to Hershel so that he could personally see how serious Aelita's condition was at the moment. Hershel glanced down at the poor girl and he saw where her wound was. There was blood all over her torso and all over Jeremie's arms and shirt...
This was bad... this was very, very bad...
"O- Otis told us to find 'Hershel'... is that you...?" Jeremie wondered, but then he spoke again before the farmer could actually answer. "H- Help her!... Please help her!" the boy had tears in his eyes as he begged to the farmer in a way which emphasized that Aelita's life depended on it.
"Get her inside!" Hershel ordered with a determined nod. He would do what he could at least.
Jeremie immediately followed Hershel and the other farm residents up onto the front porch and into the house. With a limp Aelita still in his arms, he followed closely behind Hershel and saw the farmer roll up his sleeves and prepare to get to work.
"Patricia, I need my full kit! Maggie?" Hershel asked, giving an instruction to the older woman, 'Patricia', and getting the attention of his daughter, 'Maggie'.
"Yeah?" Maggie asked as Patricia hurried into another room to find Hershel's medical kit.
"Painkillers, coagulates, grab everything..." Hershel instructed his eldest daughter of what to bring to him as he grabbed his old stethoscope from a nearby cabinet.
Maggie nodded and she hurried to an armoire in the living room where some of their extra medical supplies were stored at.
Hershel walked through a hallway as he put the stethoscope around his neck. Jeremie stuck close behind the farmer as they walked into the farmhouse's guest bedroom.
"Clean towels, sheets, alcohol..." Hershel listed off a few more things he needed - he didn't expect to operate on a gunshot victim today.
"A- Another person was hurt by the bullet, she's on the way..." Jeremie told the farmer as they walked.
Hershel nodded darkly at the new information. Two people shot today...
He trusted and respected Otis, and he's considered the man to be a good friend of his for decades. But the man better have a good reason for why this happened...
"We'll help her too. As much as we can at least." Hershel confirmed, then he asked, "How bad is that other girl's wound?"
"N- Not as bad as this is, I think..." Jeremie spoke. Anne was hurt but she was at least still up on her feet and totally conscious, which was more than he could say for Aelita.
That was a relief for Hershel to hear. He wouldn't have been able to help a second person if her wound was as bad as this girl's was...
"Patricia will take a look at her when she gets here." Hershel said about that for now. He'll look at that other girl's wound once he got this girl stabilized.
Jeremie stopped on the far side of the room for a moment so that Patricia and Maggie could hurry in and lay out all the medical supplies that were needed for Aelita. The teen boy, 'Jimmy' and that young girl, 'Beth', Hershel's other daughter, they helped by hurrying to find whatever clean blankets and comforters that were around the house. Hershel would need everything they could get their hands on for something this.
Hershel walked to a side of the guest bed and he fanned the blanket on it so as to make it neat and to dispel of the dust so Aelita can be laid down on it.
"Put her over here..." Hershel instructed the blond genius as he gestured towards the bed.
Jeremie immediately did as Hershel asked and he set Aelita down on the mattress as gently as he could. By then, Aelita's breathing had become extremely shallow, and it reached the point where Jeremie couldn't even tell if she was actually still breathing anymore, and she was also still completely unconscious.
He couldn't lose Aelita... he just couldn't...
"Pillowcase..." Hershel requested the teen to get one for him as he worked on cutting open the front of Aelita's clothing with some scissors, needing see the wound clearly.
"I- Is Aelita still alive...?" Jeremie nervously mumbled out a question. His exhaustion had already made him very dizzy, and it was only getting worse due to the pure worry and anxiety he felt his girlfriend's endangered life.
"Pillowcase! Quick!" Hershel sternly repeated his request to the teen as he cut Aelita's clothes open and revealed the gunshot wound on her diaphragm.
Jeremie managed to shake himself out of his trance and he hurried to grab the pillowcase Hershel asked him to get.
As Hershel put his old stethoscope around his neck, he told Jeremie to fold the pillowcase into a thick pad. Jeremie did so, and the boy made a mental prayer for Aelita's life to be saved as he waited for more instructions from the medical man.
Hershel slightly pushed aside Aelita's bra so that he could press the stethoscope down onto her chest and start searching for any sort of heartbeat. Despite the emergency, he took extra care to preserve her modesty for her.
If this poor girl had any kind of heartbeat left, he was damn sure going to find it...
"Put pressure on the wound..." Hershel instructed the teen as he tried searching for any sign of life from the pink-haired girl.
Jeremie firmly pressed the pillowcase pad down on Aelita's gunshot wound to try and stop some of the bleeding. As he put pressure on his girlfriend's wound, Jeremie could only watch with great worry as Hershel kept searching for a heartbeat. To his silent horror, he noticed Hershel was having trouble finding it.
...was Aelita actually dead?
"I've got a heartbeat... but it's faint..." Hershel finally announced to everyone in the room after he finally heard a weak heartbeat in Aelita's chest.
Aelita was still alive. The bullet hadn't taken her life, at least for now...
For the first time in what felt like forever, Jeremie let himself release a relieved sigh. But he was still deeply worried about that faint heartbeat, and he knew Aelita was still very much not out of the woods yet... But aside from hoping and praying there was absolutely nothing which he could do for her now.
From this moment on, it was all up to Hershel, and Aelita's life was truly in the farmer's hands like how it used to be in Jeremie's own...
"Maggie, IV!" Hershel told his eldest daughter.
Patricia gently pushed Jeremie away from the bed so that she and Maggie would have room to aid Hershel with Aelita. The two women held all the medical supplies they could find from around the house, and they carefully began laying them out next to the unconscious pinkette.
"We've got it, step back..." Patricia gently told the teen as she and Maggie had him move. She took over on pillowcase duty for him.
Maggie grabbed an IV bag full of fluids and also the line which went with it. She hurried over to Aelita's side and stuck the line's needle into a vein on her arm, then held up the bag so the IV line could do its job. Her father continued to work right next to her.
"We need some space." Maggie told Jeremie. She understood the boy was extremely worried for his friend here, but they needed him to clear out.
"Your name?" Hershel finally asked the teen as he checked Aelita's new IV line, finding that it was sending fluids into one of her blood vessels without any problems.
Jeremie didn't say anything to Hershel at first, his feeling of worry making him unable to look away from Aelita. So Hershel asked the blond teen once more for his name, and this time the farmer got through to the genius and got him to snap out of his daze.
"I- I... I-I'm..." Jeremie began to stammer, though after a moment he managed to get it out, "J- Jeremie..."
"Jeremie?" Hershel inquired just so he could make sure he heard the teen's name right.
The supergenius nodded, still keeping his eyes squarely on Aelita in the bed. She looked so fragile in the state she was in... a total contrast from the strong woman whom he met, freed, and fell in love with...
Seeing Aelita like this... he felt he had truly failed her.
"J- Jeremie Belpois..." Jeremie told the farmer and his family his name. Then, he gestured to Aelita. "S- She's Aelita..." he added the introduction of his girlfriend.
"Jeremie, we're gonna do everything we can for Aelita, okay? But I need you to give us some room..." Hershel assured the genius as he used a clean towel to wipe away as much of the blood on Aelita's gunshot wound as he could.
With a heavy reluctance, Jeremie turned to leave the room as Hershel requested them to do. He didn't want to leave Aelita's side but he knew they needed their space...
Before he could leave the room, Jeremie glanced out of a window and he saw that the others had finally made it to the farm...
"Jeremie!" he could hear a breathless Dylan call out from some distance away from the house. Dylan hadn't seen Jeremie through the window but he correctly assumed that he had already went inside with Aelita.
Wordlessly, Jeremie left the guest room and he stumbled his way back through the hallway and to the door leading out to the front porch. The boy walked in a daze caused by both exhaustion and disbelief that any of this was happening to begin with...
When Jeremie stepped outside to meet the others, they all froze a few feet from the steps.
Having been too focused and worried to get an opportunity to actually get a good look at Jeremie as they ran through the forest, everyone was unprepared by what they saw.
Jeremie was covered in so much blood which wasn't his own...
Otis panted with exhaustion as he and the others got to the porch. Carley was still pissed at the hunter, and despite Dylan doing the same with his pistol, she likewise kept a rifle aimed at him the entire time they were running, but she lowered it since they made it to the farm now.
Otis, breathless beyond all belief, remorsefully looked up at the supergenius and prayed to the Lord on high that he didn't become a murderer today...
"S- S... She's alive...? Is- Is your girl still alive...?" Otis asked as he tried to catch his breath.
Jeremie could only give a tired nod in response. He couldn't even look the man in the eye, not after what he did... even if it was truly an accident...
Otis closed his eyes and he sighed as a massive feeling of relief overtook him. That girl with the pink hair was still alive...
The farmhand knew that the girl was in good hands now, since if anyone could keep them away from death's doorstep, it was Hershel Greene and his family...
Carley and the injured Anne also looked very relieved to hear that Aelita was still alive, but Jeremie didn't look at them either. The boy simply looked down at his own hands and stared with wide, blank eyes as he saw how much of Aelita's blood covered them.
With a trembling hand, Jeremie reached up to wipe off some of the sweat from his forehead with the sleeve of his turtleneck, but alas he simply got a bit of Aelita's blood on his face now. The boy was a wreck...
The poor teen still looked so confused and so terrified over the events of the last couple of hours. Even after all that has happened so far, he kept mentally trying to convince himself that he was just in some kind of a horrible nightmare he couldn't wake up from. Or even some evil hallucination caused by XANA somehow.
Dylan saw all of his step-sister's blood that covered his friend, so he reached into his backpack to find a rag that he had stuffed in there back at the motel. He found it, and he walked over to Jeremie to try and clean him up a little bit. The boy clearly wasn't able to think straight at the moment.
Like Jeremie, Dylan was also trying to keep himself together... but Jeremie looked as if he was about to simply fall apart right in front of him, and Dylan didn't want the poor boy to suffer like that.
"You... um... Y-You got some blood on you, Einstein..." Dylan hesitantly told the teen as he raised the rag to wipe the blood from the blond's face.
Jeremie allowed Dylan to wipe away the blood that covered his forehead, and Dylan handed Jeremie the rag after this so he could clean off his hands as best he could. But when Jeremie looked down at the rag and again saw the blood that was all over his hands and shirt, he finally began to exhale shuddering breaths as the horror settled in.
Aelita's blood... Aelita's blood...
"I- I... I- I got Aelita's b-blood... all over me..." Jeremie finally managed to say as tears began to run down the sides of his face.
"I- I know, man... But she's gonna be okay, I swear..." Dylan swore as he wiped away the blood on his hands for him.
Jeremie didn't look away from his hands. Dylan could tell that his words meant little in the face of the reality hitting Jeremie right now...
"I... I- I got... A... A-Aelita's blood... a-a... all over me!" Jeremie stammered as he began to break down into sobs.
Carley, Anne, Otis, and Dylan all felt their hearts break at seeing Jeremie emotionally collapse.
Without hesitation, Dylan took the rag from the poor boy and he pulled him in for a much-needed hug. Jeremie didn't protest at all, and Dylan allowed him to wail and sob in his chest as he hugged him right back. The two held each other in a brotherly way as Jeremie's sobs were muffled.
Otis, feeling extraordinarily guilty for causing this ordeal, simply averted his gaze since he couldn't dare watch this.
After a few moments of this, Beth got their attention after she opened the front door. The sixteen year old girl informed the group that Hershel said they could come back in now, as he managed to stabilize Aelita for the moment.
Jeremie pulled away from Dylan and he was the first to hurry back inside. The others hurriedly followed close behind him.
When they returned to the guest bedroom, they saw that Hershel and the others had indeed stabilized Aelita. Although the young pinkette was still unconscious, her breathing had become a bit more noticeable.
Hershel kept the pillowcase pad pressed firmly on Aelita's gunshot wound as he glanced over and watched the group walk in together. Since Jeremie and that other boy were the closest, they were the ones he decided to speak to first.
"Do you guys know Aelita's blood type?" Hershel inquired the blond teen since Aelita definitely needed a blood transfusion. A glance at the girl who came in made it clear that she was the other who was hurt out in the forest.
Patricia gently took Anne off to the side and sat her down in a chair. She rolled up Anne's sleeve to see the wound as Hershel and the boys talked.
"Aelita's B-Positive..." Dylan told the old man. Unfortunately he didn't share Aelita's blood type - he'd gladly give every drop of blood in his body if he did.
"I- I'm O-Positive, so I can donate some of mine if she needs it." Jeremie wiped his remaining tears and cleared his throat before replying to the farmer. "H- Her other brother Chase is B-Positive too... he can donate as well." he further explained.
"I think my blood is B-Positive. Remember that from my school health records..." Anne added with a cringe as Patricia cleaned and worked on her shoulder wound. Luckily, it seemed like she only needed some stitches... though it fucking hurt.
Hershel was relieved to hear that Jeremie was available to give blood for Aelita and that there was others who could give blood to her too. That, at least, was one less thing which he needed to worry about at the moment.
"That's fortunate..." Hershel said. The more available donors there were, the better. Though he'll exclude the girl in the chair from the list due to her wound...
Then he looked over to Jeremie. "Jeremie, don't wander far, I'm gonna need ya in a little bit." Hershel informed the blond teen since he was going to start Aelita's transfusion.
Jeremie only nodded in reply before he walked to the other side of Aelita's bed. He pulled up a chair and sat, then he reached over to gently take Aelita's hand into his, giving it a small squeeze to let her know that he was there for her.
The teen lowered his head and he sighed, hoping with all his heart that she was able to understand he was here...
Hershel decided to let Jeremie do this since he wasn't interfering with his work just yet. When he needed the boy to move, he'll ask him, but that'll only happen later on.
"What're your names?" Hershel asked the other two teens in the room, along with the woman who arrived with them.
Dylan, Anne, and Carley all introduced themselves one after another. Hershel was glad to meet them in spite of the horrible circumstances...
Anyway, Hershel still had no clue how Otis managed to shoot two young girls in that forest, let alone one who had high-visibility pink hair and clothing like Aelita. His friend's explanation had better be a good one...
"What happened?" Hershel asked his farm hand as he kept the pillowcase pressed against Aelita's wound.
As the memories of the event came back into his head, Otis visibly cringed. The accidental shooter felt a pang of guilt hit him as he glanced at the unconscious pink-haired girl and her bandana-clad friend. He still couldn't believe he caused all of this...
"I was tracking a buck... Bullet went through it. Went clean through..." Otis somberly explained to the farmer in a genuinely-regretful tone of voice. "I- I didn't see either of 'em until I already pulled the trigger."
"The kids got separated from their people and they ran into mine a few days ago at our place." Carley added to the explanation. "The rest of the kids are still there and we went out with another search party to try and look for their friends today... But Aelita saw that buck while we were out, and for some reason she decided to try to approach it."
Carley then sighed. "Your ranch hand told you the rest of what happened..." she told him. "None of us saw Otis until Aelita was already on the ground..."
Hershel sighed and he nodded at the explanations he heard from Otis and Carley.
This was just a very terrible accident, no more and no less... but regardless, all that mattered right now was that Aelita wasn't dead. At least not yet.
As long as she still breathed, he still had a chance to save her life...
Given what he had seen when she came in, Hershel believed that Patricia could fix Anne's wound without too much trouble, although Aelita still needed a lot more work before she was going to be out of the woods. Her wound was gravely serious and it was honestly a miracle that Aelita wasn't killed outright or died on the way to the farm.
"The deer slowed the bullet down, which certainly saved Aelita's life... But it did not go through clean..." Hershel began to explain to everyone in the room. "It broke up into pieces. I gotta get the fragments out, and I'm counting six..." he told the group.
The explanation weighed heavily on the others in the room. Aelita was certainly very lucky to still be alive, but would her luck hold out enough to keep her alive?
Otis walked over to Patricia and the couple pulled each other in for a hug as Otis was close to breaking down in tears.
"I- I never saw her... not until she was on the ground." Otis managed to explain to his wife through his overwhelming guilt. "I- I don't know why I didn't see her... I swear I didn't see her..."
Jeremie overheard Otis's explanation from where he was sitting. He was normally a timid boy, but right now he wanted nothing more than to kill Otis where he stood for what he did to Aelita, exactly like how Dylan felt towards him earlier in the forest.
However, Jeremie managed to keep his anger in check since he was aware that this was nothing more than a freak accident. Aelita was simply standing in the wrong place at the wrong time, and Otis would make up for the accident later somehow...
The blond turned his attention away from Otis and back towards Aelita. There she was, still unconscious and still teetering somewhere between the fine line of life and death. As he held her hand and rubbed her knuckles with his thumb, Jeremie couldn't help but remember how they first met years earlier when he discovered the supercomputer while hunting for parts to build a robot.
Who knew that looking for robot parts would've led him to finding the girl he grew to love and to make so many new friends as well?
Jeremie thought back to all of the late-night conversations he had with Aelita while she was trapped in Lyoko. She was always so fascinated about everything he told her about the earth and the people who called it home.
His thoughts soon went to the day Aelita was finally rescued from Lyoko with Code: Earth. When he first saw her as a human she was so beautiful, and by then he knew he liked her, but it took months before the others finally willed him to gather the courage to ask her out on a date.
He then recalled that he took her out to get some milkshakes and see a movie together, and at the end of the day they found a photobooth in town and they took some funny pictures of themselves making faces at the camera.
Jeremie remembered how happy he was the first time he and Aelita told each other: "I love you." He remembered the shock of finding out that Aelita and Chase were related, he remembered how elated she was when they saved her mom and dad, and how they and the Lyoko Warriors fixed up the Hermitage together...
And of course, Jeremie remembered the times when he and Aelita discussed their future together once XANA was destroyed...
.......and it all leads to this? Her bleeding to death on a bed in an old man's farmhouse? Dying as just part of an already massive global death statistic?
It wasn't fair. Aelita deserved so much better than that. So much more...
The girl he loved didn't deserve to be shot in the middle of some random forest in Georgia. By now, Jeremie had convinced himself that it should have been him instead...
"We've gotta tell the others about this... they gotta know about what happened to Aelita and Anne." Dylan stated as he wiped away a tear that was building up in one of his eyes. It wasn't right that no one else knew what was going on. Especially Chase.
"We'll worry about that later, son..." Hershel said to the teen as he kept the pad on the unconscious teen. "Besides, I'm gonna be needing you guys here when she wakes up."
"Why?" Dylan wondered. He asked that question with hesitance and a sudden worry.
"I've gotta try to get those fragments out, and Jeremie's gonna need to give her some blood..." Hershel explained. Then, his expression suddenly turned dark. "If Aelita wakes up, then Dylan's gonna need to hold her down against the bed so I can work..." he explained.
"Oh my God..." Anne quietly gasped to herself as she realized what would happen if Aelita woke up in the middle of a literal surgical operation.
Jeremie visibly cringed and shut his eyes tightly. He knew what would happen as well...
If she woke up in the middle of being opened up and operated on, Aelita would feel an incredible amount of pain, she'd scream as loud as she could, she'd thrash and kick and try everything she could think of to make the pain stop... and there wouldn't be a damn thing anyone could do about it.
Most of the painkillers at the motel were already used up by Patrick, and when they looted the hospital they didn't get surgical equipment for wounds which were this serious, so heading back to the motel to find stuff for Hershel to help Aelita wasn't really an option. Lilly and Mark might be able to help Aelita, but without any surgical tools there probably wouldn't be much either of them could do for her... assuming they even could to begin with.
With a worried sigh, Jeremie simply looked down at Aelita and he gently brushed some hair out of her beautiful face.
He kept trying to hold out hope, but he was fully aware that the odds were against his girlfriend...
Odd and Chase continued walking through the forest to find the other search party. The two boys have been at this for about two or three hours by then, and they were having no luck finding any of their people out here.
The cone-haired teen kept a tight hold on his scavenged National Guard rifle as he made his way through the trees with Chase, who likewise had his pistol out just in case. Alas the two teens couldn't call out for their friends since they knew walkers in the area would hear them.
As they walked, Odd grew more and more bored with each passing moment...
... there was only one solution he could think of when it came to entertainment.
"Break Break Breakdance, Break Break Breakdance, Break Break Breakdance, Here we goooo-o-ooooo..." Odd began to mutter to himself since he had gotten his (annoying) old music video stuck in his head again.
"Oh Christ, please don't..." Chase sweatdropped. He didn't need to deal with literal torture on top of his own boredom.
"What?" Odd blinked.
Chase just looked at him like he had just asked something really, really stupid.
Don't get him wrong - Odd was one of his closest friends and he genuinely liked many of the antics he usually started. But that being said, it was baffling how Odd just didn't see how utterly bad his old mixtape was. It was like something you'd play endlessly to terrorists locked away in GITMO as a torture method or something.
Chase hated the song. Aelita hated it. Ulrich, Yumi, Jeremie, Dyl, Jenny - everyone in the group hated listening to it, but to Odd it was nirvana.
Well, nirvana, or the song was merely a ticket to getting a girl or two back at Kadic and he was damn proud of making the thing...
"... I refuse to even answer that question since it should already be obvious." Chase deadpanned.
"Oh, good - that means I can keep doing it then." Odd grinned. Now was his time to shine.
"What?! No, dude, I didn't mean for it to-"
Odd didn't even let Chase finish his sentence.
"Break Break Breakdance, Break Break Breakdance, Break Break Breakdance, Here we goooo-o-ooooo..."
Chase's eye twitched, the boy being annoyed beyond all possible belief...
Good lord, why didn't he just go south with Aelita, Dylan, Anne, and Jeremie? He'd probably still be just as bored with them all as he is now with Odd, but he'd at least still have the company of his siblings and his other friends and also the enjoyment of a far quieter walk through the forest.
Sighing, Chase shook his head. He just hoped that whatever they were all doing right now wasn't as unbearable as what he was being subjected to right now...
"Odd, please, I'm begging you to just sto-"
"Break Break Breakdance, Break Break Breakdance, Break Break Breakdance, Here we goooo-o-ooooo..." Odd interrupted with a grin.
Chase's eye twitched for the second time. "This song of yours is a fucking war crime, Della Robbia, and you-"
"Break Break Breakdance, Break Break Breakdance, Break Break Breakdance, Here we goooo-o-ooooo..."
"Oh my god, why the fuck did you ever write only one lyric for your so-"
"Break Break Breakdance, Break Break Breakdance, Break Break Breakdance, Here we goooo-o-ooooo..."
"If you keep this up, I'm gonna fucking puke. Please just-"
"Break Break Breakdance, Break Break Breakdance, Break Break Breakdance, Here we goooo-o-ooooo..."
"At this point I'm almost tempted to just put my gun in my mouth and pull the fucking tri-"
"Break Break Breakdance, Break Break Breakdance, Break Break Breakdance, Here we goooo-o-ooooo..."
"... Ugggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhh ..."
Odd was about to sing his (torturous) lyric again, but he froze when he suddenly noticed a walker come out from behind a bush that he had to pass along during his trek. Chase readied his knife so he could move in for the kill, but Odd held out his hand. He'll take care of this himself.
The teen continued muttering the song to himself as the walker approached, but Odd simply raised his rifle and hit the walker directly in the head with the butt end of it.
Almost immediately the walker fell to the ground. Odd walked over to it and he pressed his shoe against the back of it's neck to keep it down while he raised his rifle, holding it by its handguard as he prepared to hit the walker's head as if it was a golf ball.
"Della Robbia readies for a tee shot..." Odd said to himself, doing an embellished impersonation of a golf commentator as if he was at a tournament.
"Oh c'mon..." Chase groaned as he realized what his friend was about to do.
"Della Robbia, handsome as ever, is using a classic nine-iron for this tricky shot..." Odd continued, ignoring what Chase said. "The wind may alter the trajectory of his ball and the hole is about a hundred meters away from where he's shooting, but he shoots..." he trailed off.
Odd suddenly thrust the butt end of his rifle down on the walker's head and hit it dead on in the temple. Odd simply grinned and raised the rifle once more since the walker wasn't pacified yet, but another two or three hits finally took care of the creature.
"...and he scores!" Odd smirked to himself, proceeding to raise his rifle in the air and pretend that he was listening to an adoring crowd of fans made only of extremely hot women. "Tiger Woods doesn't have any hope against Odd Della Robbia in the championship finals! Italy earns the championship once again!"
Finally, Chase let out a chuckle in amusement. "Yeah, Tiger Woods has nothing on the man, the myth, the legend: Odd Della-"
Suddenly, Odd heard what sounded like a loud thunk of something solid hitting a skull. At the same time, he heard sound of something hitting the ground all as Chase went dead silent.
Before he could even turn, Odd felt something yank his rifle from his hands and within seconds he could feel a hand tightly cover his mouth so he couldn't yell for help. Not that calling for help mattered much - because out of the corner of his eye he saw Chase laying unconscious and face-down on the forest floor nearby, a large rock laying next to his bleeding head.
Someone just threw that at him. Someone was ambushing them!-
Before Odd could try to see who was attacking him and Chase, he felt the back of his knees were kicked really hard. This sent him down straight to the ground.
Feeling something proceed to pin him to the ground, Odd tried to resist against his attacker, but to his horror he heard the sound of a gun cocking. His own gun. The attacker just took his rifle while he was down...
... Odd was completely helpless right now.
Odd felt absolutely terrified as the cold barrel of his own rifle was pressed against the back of his head. One press of the trigger would be enough to end his life right here and right now...
The attacker, whoever they were, finally decided to say something to the helpless teen as they kept him pinned down and at their mercy:
"I've been watching you and your friends for a while now..." a person's voice said. "So just shut the fuck up, answer all of my questions, and maybe I won't put a bullet in the back of your head and the head of that guy over there..."
As he listened to the attacker speak, and as he felt the barrel of the gun against his head, Odd could only feel one thing...
Fear.