Joe let off the gas, trying to take in the neighborhood. He’d worked Chicago his entire career and he knew a ghetto when he saw it. Houses that seemed to be from the fifties, souped up cars that might be worth more than the houses. Lawns were unkempt, which during a zombie apocalypse was probably more normal than not. He actually laughed at the idea of someone going out and using their riding mower while holding a shotgun in one hand. Ellie saw him smiling but didn’t care. She said, “You need to take a left onto Forest Avenue.”
Joe couldn’t help himself and asked, “So, no offense, I mean not that you have anything to do with the college or where it is, but this is a real legit college that we are going to? I mean it isn’t just a shack in some ghetto?”
Ellie knew that there was, at one time before all of this, a well-kept breathtaking college university located down here. She’d been down with her mom for the Drake Relays and thought if it wasn’t too expensive it might be for her. Ellie replied, “Funny fact, the college was here a very long time ago, like a hundred and fifty years ago. How was Chicago a hundred and fifty years ago? Was Wrigley in a better place back then?”
“I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that you might be a pretty sharp kid. A complete smart ass, but a wise kid for your age,” Joe said with a smirk.
Ellie said, “I can give you a better history lesson on the finer facts of Iowa that I know, later, if we get through this.”
Yassa said, “It is really interesting what you are saying but...maybe we ought to be focusing now that we are close, and our once four door set up is now that of a tripod. As much fun as it’d be to get ripped out of here by one of the Turned, I would have to say I’d be okay if that didn’t happen.”
Ellie, who had been more focused on the conversation than anything else, was going to reply with more than a smart-ass comment when she took a hard, long good look at the school. The campus itself was enormous and covered multiple blocks. She was trying to decide if, when all of the shit had hit the fan originally, it had been during the Drake Relays, and she was starting to think that she quite possibly was right in thinking that it was. There were buses everywhere surrounding everything in front of the school. Something looked off about them and all the same at the same time. She couldn't quite comprehend why her brain didn't like what it was seeing.
Ellie asked, “What in the hell is wrong with those buses?”
Joey who had noticed it as well but had figured it out quicker said, “I think the other side of the buses are all flat.”
“Why the hell would they go and do that? It's not like the Turned can't jump. I don't understand what they were thinking?” Ellie questioned.
“Well, if any of those people are still alive, maybe we can ask them. It'd be nice if there was someone who knew what we were doing and could send us to go the right way,” Joey replied.
Yassa wasn't too enthusiastic about having to deal with new people. They typically were a pain in the ass and it was a rare occasion that he met anyone who understood his way of thinking. When Joe got up next to the buses, he used it to his advantage. Yassa asked, “Did you want to get a little closer to the bus, Joe, I mean you're not actually scraping metal just yet. I think you got a few inches. Do we not like the doors anymore?”
Joe was well aware he didn't care for him and more than likely never would. Being a police officer usually meant you did not have many friends who either were not fellow police officers or who at the very least were usually upstanding individuals. It was part of the trade-off of being a police officer. Joe replied, “You remember that tripod joke you made, you know when a teenager was ripped out of the car and eaten alive falling to his death? Right, so I thought maybe just maybe it might be a smart idea to lock this thing down in any way that we can. Last thing, personally, that I want to do is actually succeed at doing this and then die and then go through all that shit just to make it back here and have some goddamn zombie in the backseat leap out and tear my head off.”
Yassa was picturing his own head, not so much Joe's, being torn off and thought it would be a cool way to go, but he definitely still had plans for this life. Joey asked, “So how are we going to get up over those buses? They're like a hundred feet tall.”
Brett couldn't deal with the stress of the situation, especially after losing his friend Lucas and said, “There's no way in hell those are a hundred feet tall. Are you an idiot?”
Ellie finally regained her position in the front
