The crack of the bat connecting with its hardened skull echoed its way down the hallway. Its head snapped back, and if it had been a regular human, Joey would have just put it in the hospital if not the morgue. But, unfortunately for them, this wasn’t a human, it was a monster. Ellie turned her head to see the dead staring directly at her, black drool coming down in a thin disgusting line from its face. A single line of black sludge that must have been its brain at one point, she could only quickly assume, made its way down its forehead, dribbling and mixing into the saliva. Ellie definitely would be content with puking right now but right now was about survival, and the weak would not be victorious.
Ellie didn't waste any time, there wasn't any to be wasted. The Dead almost never roamed alone, and unfortunately this case was not different in any way. A second hand came out, but this time she was very well prepared. When it reached out she gripped down to it sliding to the side and pulling the Dead up against the shattered glass. She leaned to the side, hoping she was on the same page as everyone else and thankfully for her they were. Yassa had a pistol already pointing at the Turned’s skull. He squeezed off two shots simultaneously, ignoring the kick and recoil from the shot and put the Turned to rest.
The doors at the end of the hallway exploded outward. Yassa pulled Pete behind him, not wanting to lose anyone especially someone educated, and that could very well be helpful. Pete screamed, thinking that it could be the dead pulling him backwards, but alas luckily for him, that was not the case. When Pete saw Yassa and not one of the Turned looking like he was going to try and eat Pete, he rested a bit easier. He was definitely not used to gunshots, and the ringing in his ears was making it hard for him to follow directions. Pete was pretty confident though the word ‘fuck’ was being used repeatedly and the word ’down’ so Pete knelt down, not on his knees but looking like he was doing an awkward duck walk, and stayed behind the group, hoping his luck had not ran out.
Yassa and Ellie fired at the Turned as they made their way towards them, quite literally bouncing off the walls as they raced towards them. The Turned seem to only know one speed and right now they were using every ounce of it. Ellie knew if she didn't shoot the ones coming that they wouldn't have to worry about finding the formula ingredients because they’d either be what they were fighting against or not have enough to turn.
Ellie sent rounds as quickly as they could pull or squeeze the trigger at the Turned. Hitting moving targets was hard enough, but going after headshots made it that much more difficult. Ellie was doing her best to not necessarily aim for their head but something even more difficult, she was trying to aim for where their head was going to be. She wanted to just toss a grenade down the hallway, but it wasn't going to do any good because doing that would just guarantee that any of the Turned who didn't know they were there would sure as hell know it then.
A second reason why that was a bad idea was that the entire point of coming in this building was to get precious scarce supplies that were probably only available in so many places. The last thing she wanted to do was find out that there was an answer to this Hell and that she had taken any chance of a large amount of the cure to kill and blown it up because she was being selfish and putting herself before the rest of the world. She couldn't really justify such a thing.
Ellie screamed, “We need to get the hell out of here! We need to get to Joe’s group and get moving!”
Yassa replied, “No fucking shit, Ellie. We need to leave this place; it has zombies coming out of its ass.”
Joey yelled, “You’re not supposed to talk like that, Yassa, Mr. Clary told you, I'm going to let him know that you're being mean. Ellie's telling you the truth!”
Yassa didn't say anything further; he knew this kid had a heart of gold and if any of it rubbed off on him it would not do his heart bad.
Within a few more shots, they had the hallway cleared. Everyone felt hyper aware about everything. They just wanted to get the shit and to get out of there. Ellie always wished if she could have one wish it would be that she'd at least know if this thing would end. She didn't want to fight this hard to end up falling or becoming one of the Dead. The idea of it turned her stomach and as little as she believed in it. Ellie checked that all of them had been shot in the head at least once. She didn’t want to worry about walking by them and having one bite her ankle. She had pledged and promised to herself that if that happened that she would save her last bullet for herself. She would never allow herself, if it was in her control, to be one of those.
Ellie didn’t flinch to Yassa’s words. Until these things were dead, there would be nothing she was going to focus on except the Turned coming her way. When the last one fell to the ground in a bloody skid, she realized she hadn’t taken a breath in quite a while, or at least what had seemed to feel like a very long time.
Ellie looked behind her, making sure that Joey was
