His first run-in with a biter goes a lot like his three-hundred-fifty-seventh run-in. Lots of screaming, a few slashes, and eventually ending with him shirtless and stuck in a Prius. He doesn’t catalog either as a high moment. Although the latter is much more enjoyable than the former. He holds the door closed next to him, motioning for the woman to his right to do the same. When strangling arms get stuck in car door handles the dead can manage to do a lot more than just bang on the window. How he had managed to get into this mess is actually a pretty funny story. Once you got past all the bullshit of course.
After being officially inducted into the group, mostly thanks to Kevin, he was practically forced into an expedition with what the group had deemed the ‘away team’. He had been informed by many of the members of the group that if he were to step out of line, at all, Yan would find his head on a stick. Kevin had made the groups, clearly the head honcho in the pecking order, sorting people out with fidelity. He put Yan with Kelly, the self (and group) proclaimed ‘hot lesbian’.
Her waist length hair flowed unnaturally around her body, especially considering showers have been out of the question for about five years. Short and cute were the first couple of words he thought of when she smiled up at him, but then she opened her mouth.
He couldn’t remember the woman’s name, but whoever that chick was back at the Safe Zone, she would have a run for her money when it came to Kelly’s dirty mouth. Every word of curse ever spoken in the English language came out of her mouth in less than ten minutes.
And as much as he enjoyed it in the beginning, once they got to the nearest town it was really a nuisance. She was loud, proud, and nasty. She attracted ever biter in a five-mile radius, put them both in a very bad situation, and chose a god damn Prius to hide in. Yan pulled the door harder, trying to break off the walker’s arm that had stuck itself in the handle. Kelly beside him is cussing up a storm, smog practically dripping from her lips with each word. Around her arm is most of Yan’s shirt, covering the wound she had accidentally given to herself.
They had been running from a handful of walkers when she tripped and (literally) shot herself in the arm, right below her shoulder. Which obviously didn’t help their whole ‘walker’ situation. He ripped her off the ground by her arm pits and started tearing his shirt at the bottom hem, focusing more on her wound getting infected rather than getting somewhere safe quickly. She reached her own hands over and just ripped the whole damn thing off, her nails sharp as they pierced through the fabric.
Then she threw him in that goddamn Prius and now they were stuck.
Vaguely he wonders if they’ll just die here. Run out of strength and been torn apart by rotting teeth and gray lips. He wonders if the others will come looking for them, probably assuming that Yan had gone off the deep end and killed Kelly. Holding the door closed with one arm, his muscles tightening and veins popping out of his skin, he reached down to remove his belt and tie it to the handle. Kelly watched him out of the corner of her eye as he wrapped the leather around the steering wheel a couple of times and tugging on it as hard as he could.
He managed to free his hands from holding the door, the biters outside only able to pull it open slightly. “We’re gonna crawl out the trunk.” He said, jumping to the backseat. Yan started ripping at the back seat, removing the cushions slashing at the fabric with a knife. Kelly watched him in silence as Yan wiggled his hips through hole to the trunk that he created.
Barely popping the trunk open, he held onto the glow-in-the-dark cord as he stuck his nose and eyes outside of the car. He inched backwards into the cab of the car again and leaned over the seat to talk to Kelly. “The back is clear. Just continue holding that door shut. I’ll cut up one of the seatbelts.” She nodded, taking a deep breath and gripping onto the door harder.
Yan didn’t spend much time cutting the seatbelt out of the car and tying it to Kelly’s door. He pulled the smooth fabric across the front of Kelly’s chest and wrapped it above where his own belt was. Kelly snaked her way into the backseats next to Yan, her feet kicking around as she fell into the leather seats. “Shit,” she hissed out, watching the windshield of the car crack under the pressure of twenty pounding hands.
“When we’re both out just start running. Don’t care where, just do it. But uh, stick by me? Okay? If you get yourself lost I’m not turning around to look for you.”
Yan shoves himself back into the trunk, curling up into a ball so Kelly can to the same. They both put their palms on the ceiling of the trunk. “One, two,” they jump at the same time, throwing the trunk door open and leaping from the car. A few of the dead around the car shambled in their direction, clawing outwards in hopes of catching any tasty flesh from the pink sacks of meat trying to get away from them. No such luck. Yan and Kelly were ten feet away before their rotting counterparts could even curl their fingers.
He wraps his hand around her arm, tugging her along so she doesn’t fall behind. Her hair flows behind them like a horse’s mane, catching the wind and flicking around her head like hundreds of tiny brown legs. How she hasn’t been grabbed from the behind and tugged into a crowd already was beyond him.
They turned and Yan was whipped in the face by Kelly’s hair, spitting out a few strands to focus himself back on running. They come to an apartment building where Kelly jumps up to grab the fire escape ladder so they can climb up on the roof. “We can get to the edge of the city on the roof tops. The others should see us there.” She grunts as her whole body is flung up farther on the ladder. He climbs up after her. He kicks the ladder down behind them, running up the stairs behind Kelly.
“You familiar?” He wheezes as they come to the roof. She nods.
“Grew up in a suburban nearby. Kevin kept us close to home, ready?” She backs up from the side of the roof, then launches into a full sprint. He watches her jump from the apartment building to the pub next door. The town was small enough that the building weren’t high rises, which was nice, but it was still certain death if they missed their jump. The fall itself would most likely break their neck, and if they were unlucky enough to still be alive then, they’d be chewed apart by wandering phalanges and chompers. Yan jumps the small distance a few moments after Kelly lands.
His legs kick wildly in the air and his arms move in circles. He rolls to break his fall. “We’ve got eleven more of those.” She says with a grin. “Hope you’re up for it.”
“Oh, I’m just itching to break a leg.” Yan grumbles, watching Kelly repeat the process from the pub to the ex-boutique.
Making it to the edge of the city is much more time consuming than previously thought. They come across a few rotten walkers on the roofs, only a few muscles and patches of skin making it possible for them to move their mouths in a chewing motion. He cringes and puts the heel of his boot into their soft skulls. Kelly ties her hair up into a bun with part of Yan’s shirt, cracking her neck as she leapt to the local inn. “Only a few more.” She says between breaths. “I can see the highway.”
Yan jumps next to her, landing on his feet. Phantom needles stab into his calves and he leans over at the waist to regain the feeling back. “Ouch, fuck,” he mutters, leaning backwards and catching his breath. She waits. “Random question, are there like, more towns nearby?”
“Not really. There’s a couple of small little neighborhoods. Nothing too big or fancy. Why?”
“Just…wondering. Where exactly are we anyways?”
She purses her lips to one side as she thinks. “South of Alexandria. Probably fifteen miles from it.”
“We’re still in Louisiana?”
“You didn’t think you walked far enough to get out of the bayou, did you?” Yan shakes his head. No, but he figured he’d at least be closer to the border. Not only had he walked for a week or so alone, but when he met up with Kevin’s group they had packed up their campsite and drove for at least two hours. How were they still below the capital? “C’mon, we don’t have much daylight left.” Kelly reared up and launched her body from the inn to the knickknack store. Yan shakes out his shoulders, and follows.
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