Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Campaign one: death college
Chapter one: the dorms

I really don’t remember much of what life was like before this happened. One day everything's fine then the next thing you know you are finding yourself bludgeoning your roommate, Stacy because she is now a strange undead creature. It also doesn’t help that you have been locked in said dorm with the dead girl for almost a week because a zombie apocalypse has taken over the world. You have thought about leaving but you don’t have anything to protect yourself from those things out there, no guns or knives, you really only have things that were yours or whatever Stacy had lying around. You also had the door barricaded and the window curtains pulled tight so as to not draw any attention to you or your little hiding spot that you have. You have been living like this for a week or two now. It was torture living like this, your food was dwindling and the wails of the outside infected just tortured you. It wasn’t until the day you heard a strange cry and a manly scream did you finally find salvation. You wake from a dead sleep and rip open your windows when you hear the confrontation. You see a man in a white suit leap and run away as a blur of white/grey jumps from the ground.
“We have a witch and she is pissed !”, the man yells to who you think are his group mates.
They all switch focus to the witch and start shooting, you duck to the floor since she was still in front of your window. When the shooting stopped you got up from the ground and cried out, “wait for me...please…im safe” after this you broke the window of your dorm away with a baseball bat you had sitting next to your bed and ran over to them.
They look at you strangely but mostly tell you to stick close by. It isn’t long before you and your new group reach a safe room on your campus site. They all look at you as if they all wanna ask the same question, ‘who the hell are you? Where the hell did you come from? And why the hell are you alone?’ instead of bombarding you with questions they simply introduce themselves.
The girl in the pink shirt starts off, “I'm Rochelle,” she warmly smiles at you, ”that one over there is coach,” she gestures to the man in the purple and yellow polo, ”that one is Ellis,” she points to a man in a yellow shirt and he tips his trucker hat,” and finally we hav-”
the man in the suit cuts her off ,“Nick. I can introduce myself, Rochelle…”, he gives her a dirty look which she then reciprocates.
“Anyway, do you have a name ?” says Ellis.
“I think, I've just been in so much shock lately that I don't even think I can remember it.”, you say in all honesty," until you guys came along I've been stuck in a tiny dorm room with the dead body of my dorm mate…”, you blurt this out as you try and choke out an answer.
“Well, we could just give you a nickname for now.”, Ellis said while grabbing more ammo for his gun off the table.
“I wouldn’t mind that,”, you said.
The older man, coach, laughs,” a nickname...how about, red ?”
You ponder it for a bit and then finally respond with a small head nod.
“Alright then, red, how did you survive that long in that room ?”, Nick questions, “and did that roommate of yours bite you?”
“No, I can be sure of that,'' you said “I put her down real quick with a toilet lid.”
“That reminds me, did I ever tell you guys the story of the one time my buddy, Keith and I were fighting this fat chick in a parking lot and-”, Ellis blurted out
“No one cares about you or your stories, Ellis…”, Nick said bluntly.
“Nick, is it ? Are you just a dick for fun or ?”, you questioned.
He brushed you off and went and took a seat in the one of the office chairs that was strewn against the ground. We all look at each other as if to say should we stay here for the night since it was getting dark or should we keep moving. This question stirred the most thought out of the coach.
“let’s rest up for tonight, we have had a long day and deserve a little rest but we should barricade the doors.” , Coach insisted in a leader-ly like tone.
Each one of us took something heavy and placed them in front of each door. A desk in front of one door and some boxes and the other door was only being held by two or three boxes. There wasn’t much in the safe room but it seemed to work pretty well. In the beginning of the night, the shifts for night watch were said, coach by himself ,then nick and Rochelle, and finally you and Ellis as the last shift.

Chapter Text

The night went fine and everyone was sleeping or doing their shifts. You and Ellis’s shift went pretty well, even though you got sacred by several noises that came from outside. You really only knew of the common infected and maybe witches but you didn’t see many infected because you were locked in your dorm room. Ellis had filled you in on the many special infected that were roaming around from the puky boomer to the terrifying witch and tanks. He also talked about some stories that were from pre-infection from what you could tell he was one strange man.Also while in the safe room during your shift, you had found a gun which Ellis then taught you how to use because let's be honest here when was the last time you, a college student, used or owned a gun. You two got pretty close that watch shift and found out you had quite a bit in common. It was kind of weird that you guys got to know each other like this but at least it was a shiny coin in this shitty apocalypse.
When the morning came, you removed all the barriers that you guys had put in place the night before. After this you left the safe room and began a trek across the quad and courtyard of the school. The school you had chosen was a huge college that spanned at least several blocks and that was just for the main campus. The once lush and lifeful courtyard was now filled with disgusting undead creatures, some of whom happened to be your friends, classmates and professors. You felt horrible as you shot at each zombie, but because of the rapid degeneration and mutation of some of the zombies that were there it was hard to recognize some of them. While you were busy being filled with existential dread you failed to notice the large tongue that was now pushing in your general direction. This slimy tongue wrapped around you pulling on your waist and dragging you closer to the rotten fiend that it belonged to. You grasped at it widely trying to get it off, yelling, “Help!”
Rochelle who was standing near you at the time started smacking at the taught part of the tongue in order to try and break it. It took a couple hits but it finally broke and you were loose. You had never felt so relieved or slimy in your life. “I owe you one,” you said looking at Rochelle.
“Don’t mention it, red,'' Rochelle said while holding out her hand to help you up," we should get to the next safe room quickly.”
The rest of the group caught up to you and Rochelle. You were just off the ground when the smoker that just had a hold of you was now charging at you guys full force. You were guessing since it didn’t have it’s main source of attack it was going to attack with what it had left. With a few quick shots it was quickly dispatched but that didn’t mean it was done with you yet. When it died the smoke quickly absorbed your group, the smoke was like tear gas. Your face and eyes burned, the air tasted of hot poison. All of you were choking and tearing up making it hard to see anything. You all ran out of the smoke but were still disoriented by its effects. It makes you split and the group split slightly. You and Nick went in one direction and Coach and Rochelle in another which left Ellis alone. You and nick went the farthest while disoriented, you two were by the lunch gazebos while the others were still in the grassy area. Nick pulled you into the bathroom to wash out his eyes. You followed suit and decided to make small talk. With water all over your face you said, “ what in the world is this virus?”
“CEDA still hasn’t classified it yet and I doubt they will anytime soon.”, Nick said.
You look around and notice it is only you and Nick in the bathroom, “Nick, where are the others?”
“They are still outside, I couldn't find them so I grabbed the first person I could sorta make out and brought them here.”, he said condescendingly.
“Well now that we have this stuff out of our eyes, we should go back and help them.", you say while wiping the rest of the water off your face with the back of your hand.
You both leave the bathroom being sure to check your surroundings and listen intently for infection. Nick spots Rochelle and Coach being crowded by the common infected and you two rush over guns blazing. While fighting off the rest of the small but deadly crowd you notice that Ellis isn’t with them.
“Have you guys seen Ellis?”, Rochelle says.
“We thought he was with you…”, you say while scanning the area.
All of a sudden you hear a scream and gunshots, you all look over to see Ellis being chased by a shit ton of zombies and he is just covered in disgusting green bile. You all get ready for the larger hoard of zombies as he draws nearer to your small group. You fight off as many zombies as you can until your gun suddenly runs out of bullets. You quickly grab the bat you had attached to your belt and start swinging. You get a couple of infected down until you get too swarmed. Coach comes over and starts helping get some of them off of you while you keep swatting with the bat. You guys finally get rid of the hoard and stop to catch your breaths. You all run to the nearest room and rush to close the door behind you. It isn’t a safe room but a small storage shed. It is kind of cramped but you all fit, after a couple of minutes you guys catch your breath and leave. While leaving you point out graffiti of a house with a cross in the center.
“Safe house ahead.”, you say aloud.
Everyone nods and you continue to walk toward the safe house. It takes a bit to get across the quad without alerting every infected within the general area but you somehow do it. Your group is just in sight of the safe house when you all hear a crying girl. None of you can see her but you all sure are on the edges of your seats. Coach and Rochelle both tell you it is a witch. You continue to walk forward but more quietly then with the regular infected. Nick spots her walking in front of you as you are just about to knock into her. He grabs the back of your tee-shirt and you reactively flail your arms tapping the witch slightly. She slowly moves her hands from her face and looks at you dead in the eyes. When you get a full view of her face you recognize it but now is not the time to be remembering things when you are so close to being gored. She throws her arms up and you all start running, she seems to be only following you, screaming and running away from her. You don’t shoot since you are out of bullets. She finally catches up and knocks you down and starts hacking away. You try to hit her with the bat but you soon realize you had dropped it when you had fallen and is now too far for you to reach. You put your arms up to protect yourself from her nails. Her nails are like dull box cutter blades against your arms and hurt like hell. You cry out for help and then like an angel had listened you were now under a dead witch with a bullet wound on the back of her head. You push the dead body off and jump up quickly and grab your bat. You also take one last look and the witch and try to think who that might be but with your wounds it might be hard to try and remember anything.
“Thank you, Ellis.”, You say while nodding at Ellis, he was your savior in that moment. He doesn’t really make eye contact with you though. You look down at what the witch had done to you, not only were you covered in your own blood from the giant wounds on your arms your shirt was also extremely ripped. You tried not to pay attention to that since you were now practically a buffet for the infected right now. You soon meet up with the rest of the group with Ellis helping you stay balanced because with the amount of cuts you have you are bound to be losing tons of blood and be slightly woozy. You guys get to the safe room and are quickly rushed to the table. Nick tries his best to patch you up, but with only having duct tape, gauzes and some water it isn’t going to be the best patch up. Rochelle offers you some pain pills to help, and you take them. You are finally patched up and sit in the corner of the safe room away from everyone, you feel bad making them practically save you around every corner.
“You got pretty beat up out there,” Ellis says while walking over to sit with you,” this reminds me of one time my buddy, Keith and I were chilling by the water and he got sucked under by a gator and i didn’t do anything about it because i thought he was playing a prank on me, i should have known by the third time he resurfaced.”
You laugh slightly, but your main thoughts are the witch and on how you are going to survive this apocalypse. With you being too injured for your own good coach lets you sleep the entire night and you don’t have to do a shift.

Chapter Text

The safe room that you had made it to was the break room area of some building on your campus. It was larger than the last and had less items in it. Thank god it had more bullets and med kits though, you really needed them. You felt slightly better after a good rest but your arms and torso were still covered in large wounds. You woke up the earliest out of the other three who were sleeping. When you had awoken you had realized you were still in the same corner you were in but now with your head resting on Ellis’s shoulder. It seems you may have fallen asleep while talking with him, it must have been those painkillers Rochelle had given you. Ellis was on watch when you woke up, so he must have even fallen asleep next to you. You took your head off his shoulder and rubbed the sleep out of your eyes.
“Morn’, sunshine.”, he said in a tired voice, you could tell that either he hasn’t talked in awhile or he was just asleep a little bit ago.
“Morning…” you say back to him. You scoot up a bit from where you were sleeping and stretch out a bit. You wince slightly because of the cuts.
“How are you feelin, you know with your cuts and all?” ,he asks, concerned, “ that witch really got you good.”
“No I'm fine, it is just those claws hurt like hell.”, you said while looking at the duct tape.
“Oh quick question, what were you dreaming about?”, he asks.
“What do you mean?”, you say.
“Well you were kinda jerking around in your sleep and you kept saying something but it was really quiet, you just kept saying you were sorry.”, he said with a concerned face.
“Honestly I don’t even remember it,” you look at him matching his expression," if I did I would probably have told you when I woke up, if I was moving and talking.”
“That’s fair.”, he says while stretching out his legs and then standing up. After he is up he holds out his hand to you, “wanna come sit and talk by the desk so we don’t wake these guys?”
You grab his hand and he pulls you up slowly, he is gentle with you as he knows you are still pretty dinged up. You both walk over to the desk and just chat while the others sleep. When they awaken you and Ellis are just laughing as he tells stories of post-infection things him and his buddies did. It was really nice to hear about his friends, you just wish you could talk about your friends and family but thanks to the shock of this whole thing you have pretty much forgotten anything before all this happened. You lost all the memoirs of any family and friends, hell you even forgot your own name. You too look over and smile at the others, when they walk over to you.
Rochelle nudges you on the shoulder and asks you, “morning chatterboxes.” she then asks, ”how are you feeling, red?”
“I have definitely felt better.”, you say jokingly.
It is moments like this that make you forget the situation you are in.
Coach then blurts out, “I hate to ruin the mood but, red you need to re bandage your wounds.”
Nick sighs as he walks over to help both him and Rochelle help you with the bandages getting new gauzes and duct tape on them.
“I can’t thank you guys enough,” you say while they bandage your right arm.
“I mean if you had just looked where you were going you would have needed our help in the first place,” Nick bluntly said, “ you could have gotten us all killed because you startled that witch.”
“I didn’t mean to startle the witch, it was just I thought she was just a normal infected…”, you say.
“So what you are saying is that you have a death wish and are willing to just bump into any infect you see.”, Nick scolds you for being stupid.
“To be fair you made me startle her,” you yell back," you grabbed me and I got scared…”
The zombies near the safe room heard you yell and ran to the door. They shoved their nasty arms through the rebar on the broken window. Coach being the closest to the door started bashing the arms of the zombies, then Ellis quickly jumped up to help him. They got rid of their arms quickly but then had to shoot them to be able to open the door later. Nick shook his head but kept doing your right arm, while Rochelle finished your bandages on your left arm. You and Nick glare at each other and you give him a cold thank you. Coach opens the safe room door when everyone is ready and you all head out.
This trip outside the safe room is different from the last since you are now on the main street that is by your college. It is a long stretch of road that has many different shops, from corner stores and banks to restaurants and nightlife spots. You look at one building and get a memory back, you remember that you used to go there with your friends and have pizza pre-infection. You remember the pizza was the best you have ever had and now you will never get to have it again which kind of sucks. A small tear runs down your face as you seem to remember as much as you can but you wipe it away and keep moving down the road trying not to seem weaker than you already are or at least in Nick’s eyes. The journey down main street goes pretty well until you hit a large roadblock. From what you can tell this was made after everything, this is mainly because of the two CEDA trucks and multiple CEDA tents. The place behind it seems to be infested with the zombies. You all look around and notice a gun shop and you all run in to try and scavenge to equipment. once inside you are greeted by a man on the loudspeaker inside the store. “Listen if you want my shit, leave….”, he sounds angry, “I'm not gonna give it away, the last guy who was in here took most of my crap anyway.”
“Dude, we have to get around a roadblock!”, Ellis yells back.
“Not my problem.” the speaker man says.
“Please help us out, man.”, Rochelle says.
“No way, the last person I helped left me stranded for dead and I had to help myself.”, he yelled at you.
“ If you just give us some supplies, we will be out of your hair,” Coach says, “someone in our party is terribly injured and we need to get them better bandages and maybe even some stitches if we can find that stuff.”
“Well, does this look like a hospital to you, jackass,” the man sounds angrier, ”I will come down there and kill you all if you ask me for supplies again.”
“Can we at least just stay here for a bit? It said there was a safe room around here and we need to catch our breath.”, Rochelle says.
“Absolutely not,” the man said, “ I ain’t lettin any of you in this safe room! This is my safe room! Get out! Get out!”
The man just kept yelling at you to leave. Little did you guys know that the yelling was attaching a horde of infected. You all look out the window and see them run towards the shop. You all freak and try to tell the guy to stop yelling.
“Look what you made me do you guys made me summon a horde!! You motherfuckers need to leave, those infected fuckers will take care of you!”, he yells over the loudspeaker.
The infected now rush the shop and you all start shooting. There must be hundreds of them out there and they just won’t stop coming. This is mainly because the man on the loudspeaker keeps yelling. It isn’t until you hear glass breaking on the side of the speaker does the man stop yelling at you to get out but yelling at you to help him. You then hear him and his dying yells over the loudspeaker. When he is dead there aren't as many infected rushing the area. Your group looks around to find supplies in the already picked over shop. You are able to find some pain pills and a med pack with a small amount of antiseptic stuff in it. You all keep looking around until Ellis finds a door to an upstairs. He tries to open it but the door won't budge, he then kicks it. It took a couple of his kicks before it fell, behind it was stairs the lead to a small living area full of zombies. Your group quickly dispatches them and then starts checking the upstairs out. You find a shit ton of supplies up there and you alert the others. You realize that it is starting to get darker out, you had been stuck in this shit hole store for a whole day. Coach looks for things to board up the broken window upstairs and you, Rochelle and Ellis go to board up the downstairs door that he broke in. when everything was all fixed up, you were next on the list, you took the duct tape and gauze off and cleaned each wound with antiseptic. It stings but it feels better than blood poisoning. Ellis asks to help wrap your arm this time and honestly he does it better than Nick.
With your cuts all patched up you are ready to take on a shift. It is the same as usual, coach first, then Rochelle and Nick and then finally you and Ellis.

Chapter Text

The night goes quickly and the sun is soon high in the sky. You and Ellis talk and watch the sun rise from the small cracks in the wood that is covered in the windows. Another semi-decent morning in this shit hole place. It always seems that is how these days start, they always feel airy and nice until you have to go fight those disgusting infected. You try to push those negative feelings of the past and the future away and try to focus on the now. You look over at Ellis who is standing in the small kitchen drinking a bottle of water. You walk over to the kitchen and realize this is the first time you have had any real privacy in a safe room. The kitchen has a wall between it and the small living room and just a cut out for a door there. It is kind of nice.
“Ya’know I don’t think I ever gave you a proper apology for getting that witch off of me…”, you say to him.
“It was no big deal, you were stuck and needed help.”, he said.
“Well it would just seem nicer to actually thank you, rather than just let it go unsaid.”, you said. One part that you seemed to have left out of the thank you was the growing feelings you have for him. They started the first day you met him and they have just been building up over time.
“Hey , red, you okay ? Your face looks a little red… no pun intended.”, he said to you, laughing a little.
What you didn’t realize is that you had started blushing when thinking about you having feelings for him, while trying to say thank you for saving your life. “Uh yeah I'm fine, Ellis…” you say as you quickly walk out of the kitchen to the living room area where everyone is sleeping. You go over to one of the non-boarded up windows and you peek behind the curtain to survey the area. It looks like there is a train track with several box cars piled up on it. It seems like that is something you will be traversing today. At least it is better than the zombie pit that is sitting on the other side of the store. Once you get bored with looking out the window you start looking through the papers on a desk that is near the window. Nothing too important on the papers, they are mainly just stuff that was for post-green flu so like boring transactions, you look through them anyway because you are bored and also to try and get rid of the blush on your face. You seemed to have just got your mind off him when he came in the room to wake everyone up.
“Come on everyone, we can’t be stayin’ here all day,” he says and then throws a pillow at Nick, “ we have some zombie ass to kick.”
He lets out a fun laugh and then goes over to the window you were just at. He peaks out and sees the train tracks. “This reminds me of that one time my buddy Keith and my buddy Dave were playing chicken on the tracks and Keith almost got run over by the train was pretty funny.”, he says.
“Hey Ellis, if I hear one more story about your friends, I might lose it.”, Nick says while rubbing the sleep from his eyes.
“Aww, Nick, are you just jealous that none of them are about you.”, Rochelle says in a mocking baby voice.
You laugh and shake your head at her. After everyone has woken up a bit more you all get a move one. Ellis pulls the planks off the windows and you all head down the conveniently made ramp that leads down to the tracks. When getting down to the track Rochelle finds a paper, “guys, you are gonna wanna see this,” she holds it up and reads it aloud, ”it says there's a quarantine zone not too far from here. It says we just have to keep following the tracks and we should be there.”
Everyone agrees to see if the zone is there since we are so close to it. We start walking when we feel a rumbling on the tracks. The rocks of the ground tremble and the tracks themselves shiver a little. We look all around and see a large train coming. It is just about to hit you when Ellis grabs your shirt and you both fall to the side. The train that passes is on fire and full of zombies. It is coming the opposite way of the zone. With everyone thoroughly confused, you start trying to get up. It seems like Ellis on the other hand does not want to. You try to figure it out but with the way you guys are laying, you are pretty much pinned between him and a large rock. Pretty soon you hear the others yelling your names.
“ Over here!”, you say telling Ellis to let you go so you guys can go back to the others.
Ellis shakes his head and moves a bit. You feel awkward lying there but it is kind of nice. From your perspective you can’t really see how you are laying. What you can see is Ellis underneath you and you can feel Ellis’s tight grip around your waist.
“Ellis, let go!”, you try and get up but he won’t let you. You are soon able to get up after he lets you go. As you get up you see something that catches your eye. Ellis has a huge gash and is now bleeding profusely. You look over to the side he was holding and see the blood on you and your shirt. You run back over to Ellis and go look at his arm.
“Here let me patch you up.”, you say pulling the med pack off your back and opening it. You pull out the antiseptic and some gauzes and proceed to wipe down the cut. He jumps a little as the antiseptic burns. You then gently wrap his cut with the gauzes, you smile while doing this and he smiles back.
During this time you finally have the courage to tell him, you weren’t sure if the courage was from almost getting run over by the train or seeing him hurt but you took your chance while you two had privacy.
“Hey, Ellis…”, you start, “ I know we haven’t known each other for very long but I was thinking…about you the other day and well I think I like you...”
Ellis looks a little shocked and doesn’t know what to say, “ uh… like a crush…” he says as he laughs a little bit.
“Uh...yeah,” you say.
“Well...uh,” he scratches the back of neck and smiles shyly, “ I think I like you too.”
You both let out nervous laughs and after a small awkward silence the others meet up with you. Before they get to you, you and Ellis are sitting on the ground, talking quietly to each other about things. Your soft blush turns bright red when the others find you guys. You quickly cover your face and Ellis starts laughing. Little do the others know what just went down. Ellis gets up first and then extends his hand down to you. He holds your hand as you get up and you both turn to the others.
“What were you two idiots doing ?”, Nick says.
“Thank god we found you guys.”, Rochelle says as she playfully punches Nick,” I don't know if y'all could tell but Nick was really worried.” Everyone but Nick laughs at her joke.
“Lets get a move on,” Coach says.
You and Ellis both pick up your things and you all start heading towards the quarantine zone. Up the tracks you fight a lot of zombies, it is concerning the amount of infected you have to fight off but you manage to do it. The one thing many of you are on the look out for is witches and other modified infected. It isn’t long before you run into one though. It was a tank and it was rushing towards your group. It rushes as fast as the train did and scoops up Nick. Everyone trains their fire at the thing that is currency slamming Nick into the ground. It finally gives up on Nick when he is pretty hurt, after it is done with him it starts to go after Rochelle. It picks her up and bashes her a few times before Nick finally ends the tank with an axe to the head. Nick helps Rochelle up off the ground.
“Does anyone have any pain pills?”, Rochelle asks.
You hand her and Nick some of the pills that she gave you after you got attacked by the witch.
“Thanks,” she says as she takes them.
You all continue forward, everyone but you and Coach is pretty dinged up. You are hoping to find a safe room up. You notice the graffiti on the wall that shows it pointing to a safe room. You move on ahead of everyone else to go see if there really is a safe room. What you don’t notice is the hunter that is slowly stalking after your group. It leaps from the sign it was perched on to a nearby rail and almost like a cat pounces on you. Of course you scream as it slashes at you. Ellis comes rushing towards your aid but when he gets there you are able to knock it off. It isn’t dead but it most certainly wants to kill something, it then proceeds to rush at Ellis.
“Oh no! No one lays a hand on him,” you say as you start shooting at it.
Before it can reach him it falls limp, you had just killed it. With one last breath, it tries to swipe as Ellis but he steps on its hands before it can try and touch him. The crunching noise it makes is horrific to say the least but it won’t be bothering anyone anytime soon.
“How did you end up all the way over here, red?”, Ellis says to you.
“I saw something about a safe room. I wanted to be sure it wasn’t overflowing with the infected.” You said
“You have to be more careful. I don’t want to see anyone else hurt, okay.”, he says.
“Lets meet up with the others and tell them about the safe room.” you say as you walk towards him.
The others were just slightly behind Ellis.
“What did we miss?” ,Coach says.
“Nothing much, just put one of these hooded guys down.”, you say, “also we found a safe room.”
You point over to the safe room, it is a box car that is on the farthest track from you. You all rush over there and quickly close the door. You and Coach quickly put a barricade in front of each door. There isn’t much to put to use but you make do. Everyone sits down to catch their breath and think of a game plan for reaching the zone.
“Lets just rest for the night and get an early start in the morning. Since Rochelle and Nick were just beat to the ground they can take a break from having to be on shift.”, Coach says.
You and Ellis do two shifts and coach does one.

Chapter Text

It feels like the night drags on as you and Ellis do Nick and Rochelle's shift. You two can’t really talk because of how small the saferoom is. You look out one entrance and Ellis is looking out another. You two don’t talk but you still feel okay with what happened the day before. When the small battery operated digital clock says 4:00 am, you walk over to coach to wake him up for his shift. He starts awake when you touch his shoulder, he nods and gets up for his shift. You sit on one side of the saferoom and Ellis joins you. You both sit down in the same cubby and fall asleep. You with your head on his shoulder and him with his arm wrapped around you. When you fall asleep you have a horrible nightmare. It is about your sister who looks like the witch that had nearly killed you. In the dream you see her turn and become the witch creature and after fully turning she kills you, it startles you awake. As you flinch awake, you nearly head butt Nick in the face.
Nick looks confused but just shakes his head, “get up and get ready we have a long trek ahead for the zone.”
You wake up Ellis and start to get ready for the journey to the quarantine zone. From what the paper says it is right outside Kevy city. you all take stuff for our cuts and bruises before we leave. We traversed a lot of the track the previous day and now all we have to do is cross the 10 mile long bridge. When you first step on the bridge you can see the amount of damage that has been left by others trying to get there or by the infected. You and Ellis walk side by side while the others walk ahead of you two. It doesn’t take long to find infected but when they come near you guys are able to get rid of them pretty quickly. When looking around you notice something strange in the distance. It is a trail of neon green fluid that is sizzling on the pavement. You point it out to Ellis.
“Guys, be careful we may have a spitter in the area.”, Ellis says loud enough of the others to hear.
It isn’t too long before you hear a gargling noise. There she is standing behind a train car on the bridge. She spits out her acid almost hitting you and Ellis but you get out of the way in time. Everyone starts shooting and she is killed almost immediately, once dead she spills the rest of the acid she had left in her onto the train car and everything below. The metal on the train car creeks and melts underneath her, she falls in with a resounding thud that seems to attract several infected to hers and your location. They are just common infected so they are easy to kill or so you thought. Some of them were wearing normal clothes but others were wearing police riot gear and some with hazmat suits. The ones in the riot gear were the hardest to kill because of the bullet proof vest that they were wearing. What you had to do to kill them was to take your bat to the back of their head where the neck was slightly exposed. Each one was killed with a horrific cracking sound. The hazmat infected were also difficult to kill, They could take multiple hits and still be standing. It took a couple more bullets than usual to put them down, they usually were dead when the hazmat suit popped. Seeing these kinds of infected worried everyone, you were all praying for salvation but it may never come if there are these infected wearing hazmat suits and riot gear. You are praying that Kevy city is safe, it seems like your only hope for any salvation. As you get closer towards the zone you start to notice it seems quiet, like too quiet. Walking forward coach notices that there is no one at the check point area.
“Hello? Is anyone there?” ,Coach yells out.
The only thing he is met with is silence, he walks closer to the gate way. Soon on the other side of the gate is a single infected. It runs towards him and tries grabbing it through the fence with its arm. It is making these disgusting gurgling noises that seem to attract the attention of the others. Soon at least 20 over infected join and start climbing the fence. They all get to your side.
“Start shootin’!” , he yells as he runs back to where we are standing.
Everyone starts shooting and running back to where we came. There must be at least 200 zombies chasing after you at this point; they had been stragglers on the tracks and ones from the other side of the fence. It was horrible there were so many following after you guys, you all kept running and shooting the best you could. One thing that didn’t help is that you were now out of running extremely low on bullets. It didn’t take long for you to run out of them, you soon had to switch to your bat. You were doing good until one infected got too close and was able to knock the bat out of your hand. At least ten were now surrounding you and beating you down. You yell out for help but you don’t know if the others will hear you. Finally Ellis rushes over and starts taking them down.
“Get away from her!”, he yells as he kills the infected.
Once they are dead he helps you up quickly and you two are rushing for some sort of cover. You finally find cover and hide behind it, you hug Ellis quickly and look over the cover. You don’t see any infected rushing towards you. All you two can do now is to try and find the others. You get out of the cover first and see Rochelle running towards you with Nick.
“Where is Coach?”, you yell.
“We don’t know we lost sight of him a little bit back.”, Rochelle says while try to catch her breath.
“We are going to have to go back and find him.”, Nick chimes in.
You all start going back to the zone check point, you see many dead infected but you still don’t see Coach. It seems like all hope is lost in finding him when Ellis yells from where he was looking.
“I found him!”, he says.
Ellis helps Coach up, he is horribly injured, but it seems like the quarantine zone had a small area where new people would go. You all help coach into the room and put him on the bed. You and Rochelle barricade the door, while Ellis and Nick cater to Coach’s wounds. You and Rochelle help Nick and Ellis with him. He is in pretty bad shape but you hope he can pull through. There weren’t any shifts this night since everyone was so on edge about what happened that no one could sleep. Rochelle seems the most upset by Coach being this hurt so you comfort her most of the night while Nick and Ellis are nervous wrecks. By morning you guys choose to stay another day in the makeshift shelter. This day you take shifts for sleep, it isn’t like you’ll be getting much anytime soon though, with everything that has happened. You have only been traveling with this group for about a week now, but you can’t imagine the group with one less person. You try and rest with Ellis when it isn’t your turn on shift, he is holding you tighter than ever and you to him. He feels like your anchor right now and that without him holding you, you feel like you would die from all this stress. That day you don’t get much rest but you get enough to keep trying to find your memories and a safe place to live away from these creatures.