Kya looked at Jon on the floor. His brains were spread out and he did not look well or like he was at peace...in any type of way. Kya whispered, “It’s okay, you know...these things don’t usually go as expected. Don’t beat yourself up over it. With the exception of driving around in a tank, which isn’t even guaranteed to be safe, we don’t always all come back.”
Joe looked over, trying to figure out exactly what he was looking at. He saw what was probably a sixteen or seventeen-year-old girl looking at him. But he was pretty sure she had the soul of a forty-year-old. He replied, “Thanks, I just hate feeling...feeling like a failure. I should have never brought you kids with; I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“You were thinking that these kids, who are heavily armed, know what they are doing. They know the land. They know where they are going, and that if I...being you were to go alone that there would be almost no chance of living. You’d never make it. We can’t do this thing alone. Almost everyone who has tried has failed. There’s nothing else to it but that.”
“What do you mean, almost everyone?”
“Shaun, he’s the kid that just keeps going. It doesn’t matter, he’s the most hard headed person I’ve ever met and he doesn’t give up. He doesn’t let up; he doesn’t know how to fail.”
“I’m glad that we ran into him then.”
“Not everyone on his team makes it. But then again, anyone who has made it this long is still lucky to have been alive.”
Joe was going down his list. He said, “I hope that this trick does it. I mean, those guys better be as smart as they need to be. If I find out that we did all this for nothing then I’m going to rip that little nerd a new one.”
She laughed and said, “Why don’t we go and find the others. Let’s try not to get ourselves murdered in the meantime.”
By the time they headed down they had two duffle bags that were packed to the brim. Each of them realized if they needed to try and go back across the ladders, they would more than likely die because of their want to save the world, or at least save their own lives. They didn’t skimp and got as many doubles and triples of things as they could.
******
Ellie’s group made their way down to the second floor. After the gun fight, they were trying to deal with the after effects of the adrenaline rush which had been racing through their bodies. Ellie could feel her heart pounding in her head and she was thinking, if she didn’t settle down soon, that puking was in her very near future. They had barely made it down to the middle of the second floor before the halls echoed with gunfire.
The hallway, which had been almost peacefully quiet, quickly changed. Ellie had already been ready with her rifle shouldered. Clary had told them more times than she could remember that if the barrel isn’t pointing in the direction of what you would like to shoot then you might as well be carrying a paperweight. The Turned seemed to materialize out of nowhere.
Ellie could feel the adrenaline racing through her veins for a second dose. She knew if tonight actually happened and she lived that she was going to feel about as good as dog shit.
She walked by the closed doors, not making the same mistake as the first group. The issue at hand was just that as the glass that said professor Bryant on it exploded out through the words stenciled on the glass. A bloodied blackened hand protruded from the glass gripping on to the side of Ellie's hair.
Ellie immediately tried to pull away, but the hand was motivated and the Turned behind it was hungry. She could only assume the longer this Hell on Earth went on, that the longer these things would go in between eating. If only they would starve to death, then possibly the world could get a second chance at life.
Unfortunately for Ellie, the hand was not letting go and even as hard as she tried to pull away from it, she was easily losing the fight. Joey felt his heart in his throat knowing how he felt when his sister and brother had been lost so long ago and so early in the zombie apocalypse that he sure as hell was not going to lose Ellie. Ellie was the one that made sure if he had bad dreams that he was told everything was okay, that life would go on, and that if anyone was going to survive it was going to be them. Joey had promised her on more than one occasion that she would not become one of those things. Joey would not let such a thing happen.
Joey let out a warrior's cry, not using any hesitation to save her. He swung the bat with precise accuracy. Ellie could feel the wind being split in two above her light hair. She knew that that wind she was feeling was going to save her life. She couldn't think of anyone more suited than Joey that she would trust more than him to accomplish what he was going for. When people made promises to keep you safe, to keep you alive, to look out
