Yassa said, “Well, this is a really invigorating conversation and all, but uh, we still have those out there. We also still have a shopping list we need to take care of. I mean if that is still important to anyone.”
Ellie handed the list over to Bethany, “You have any idea at all where this would be, Bethany? We grabbed a map but I’d say that they didn’t have an updated version after a zombie apocalypse happened. You guys seemed to have had a few plans going for you that had worked. I mean you’d be dead if not, right?”
Pete who was trying to regain his composure said, “Well, not all our plans worked. We had a lot more of us. The buses were already lined up; we just let the air out of the tires. We didn’t realize that those things weren’t just strong but that they smelled blood, that they could jump higher than anything I’ve ever seen. I mean once I saw…”
Joey said, “So did you get the stuff on that list? What about the vending machines?”
Bethany said, “Look, we didn’t take everything on campus. There’s a lot of stuff going on here. I can’t even pronounce half of that stuff.”
“Neither can we,” Ellie replied, “But we still need it. If you didn’t mess with your science department, do you know if it is safe? It wasn’t one of the buildings you locked down to keep the zombies from getting out, did you?”
“No, after the first building, we realized what the chances of us getting all of them in one place were. But what chances do you have of stopping all of these things?” Beth asked.
Ellie shrugged, there had to be twenty or more people in the hallway by now and she wondered how many people there really were around? Not just at the college but in general, globally, she wondered. She replied cautiously, “I don’t want to say yes, but I’ve heard from a very reliable person that it is going to take care of these things. It could be a real game changer that could put the ball back in our possession.”
Bethany asked, “How reliable, I mean what are we talking about?”
Ellie was going to tell him someone who knew these things better than anyone but Joey cut in first. He said, “Her boyfriend left a year ago and came back on a plane as long as this whole building. They said that they killed a bunch of the Turned, that’s what we call zombies. See, they came back so that they could make a huge batch of the cure. I guess it isn’t really a cure, it is more like the opposite.”
A girl who just barely had purple left in her hair said, “So you are going to commit genocide on them? You don’t think they have a right to…”
“You’re an idiot, kid. Just shut up please, I can’t be held responsible for what I do next,” Ellie warned.
Bethany looked over her shoulder saying, “Really, Claire, you really needed to bring that up. Have you ever had anyone not call you an absolute idiot when you said that? No, I know that because you’re the only one who says stupid shit like that.”
“I don’t have to take this,” Claire replied.
Yassa was smiling ear to ear and said, “You know if you’d like to, we could take you up to the second floor and lower you down. I mean if you think they have such a right to live then I’m sure that you’ll be just fine with them.”
“They’d rip my face off, psycho.”
“But you’re okay with them living,” Yassa replied.
Claire’s shoulders sunk and she took a few steps back, disappearing into a crowd of college students who were shaking their heads in disgust. Ellie said, “Okay, Pete, if you don’t have any of these things then can you tell us if the building we are going to is safe, or did you use it as a small prison for the dead like the first building that we entered?”
“You’re probably okay. We didn’t lock it down, we don’t know if there’ll be anything in there, but we can hope that there isn’t. Some of the kids used ladders to get across the buildings, there still might be some up there that you could use to walk across the buildings.”
“Isn’t that like twenty feet across?” Joe asked.
“At least,” Pete replied, doing little to make anyone feel more confident.
Yassa said “I’ll take heights over the ground if we got a choice.”
“Just be careful; a fall like that could kill you.” Pete said, his words not needed.
“Thank you for that, Pete,” Yassa replied.
Joey walked over, awkwardly leaning into Bethany’s ear and asked, “So, when you say that you raided everything, does that mean you hit the vending machines and food supplies?”
“Yeah, we are getting very low on everything.”
“So...you don’t have any cookies or anything like that?”
“Uh, no, we ran out of meat months into it, all the sweets are gone and we have been surviving on giant cans of vegetables. No one is looking forward to their next meal.”
Joey, in true Joey fashion, walked forward wrapping his arms around her saying, “I am so sorry. I feel really bad that you are having to be a vegetarian with crappy canned food. We are going to try and not go die and see if we can make it back to our base.”
“Can we come with you? I mean to the base?”
Ellie said, “Why don’t you let us see if we can manage to not get ourselves
