"Hey, this place looks a lot like the clinic you worked at before, huh?" Shachi commented quietly, pointing up at the large sign proclaiming the building to be a clinic. The two-story, white-brick building almost blended in with the rest of the structures surrounding it, but the handful of remaining letters on the sign was the only indication of what it was, really. That, and the ambulance parked right outside the doors.
They had chased across it, though they could certainly use the medical supplies if it still had any. Their own reserves were gradually depleting, to where Law was getting a bit antsy every time they went scavenging or killed zombies.
In reply to Shachi's words, Law shrugged. "Almost all clinics look the same."
"I was just trying to make conversation, but ok." Shachi gave a bland look to Penguin, who merely grinned in return. Sometimes Law was too literal to actually enjoy talking to. "Don't you ever think back to times before the world ended?"
"Not really." Their leader admitted, eyes still scanning the area around them.
The area was relatively clear of zombies, though a few stragglers lingered, groaning at their surroundings with each shuffled step. The three men walked up the street, loosely holding their weapons just in case they needed them, approaching the medical facility.
Penguin spoke this time. "What? Why? Don't you miss the way things used to be?"
Sighing deeply, Law shook his head. "Of course I do. But thinking about it isn't going to magically bring it back, so what's the point?" The grip on his sword tightened, though the other two didn't seem to notice, nor see the pained look that Law carefully hid. "Wishing and hoping for something that is never going to happen is a waste of time."
His two companions shared a long look before shrugging and basically ignoring what he'd said. "Well, I for one wish that we were back in the days of functional plumbing and air conditioning."
Penguin nodded vehemently, raising his arms above his head in a stretched as they walked. "And twinkies. I haven't had a twinkie in ages." He protested. Beside him, Law raised a brow but said nothing, the only sign of his amusement the slight uptilt of the corner of his mouth.
"Man, what I wouldn't give to get my hands on some old Victoria's Secret catalog right about now."
"Can't keep it in your pants?" Penguin shook his head ruefully, as if disappointed in his friend. Shachi guffawed and sputtered a moment, before rounding on his companion.
"It's not like there are any women around or anything!" He pointed an accusatory finger at the grinning man. "Don't act all innocent or anything. I've seen you look at Lexi all weird before."
Penguin shrugged defensively. "What? She's attractive! And like you said, we haven't seen another woman in awhile. Is that such a bad thing?" He turned away with a grumble. "I'm not a savage, but we've all got needs."
While Shachi and Penguin conversed, Law had continued searching the area ahead as they got closer to the medical facility. Most of the time, like at that moment, he just tried to block out their arguing and useless talking. It was exhausting sometimes, but he preferred having them around to being completely alone.
Still, this was no time to let their guard down. In the middle of a good-sized city, there could be zombies and other survivors anywhere. It was strange, though. There didn't appear to be very many of the undead walking the empty streets around them. Of course there were a few stragglers, but nothing life-threatening so long as they remained aware and watchful. He also took note of unmoving corpses littered along the streets. Zombie corpses, killed before they'd even gotten there. They looked recent.
Every other town had been infested with the flesh-eating monsters, no doubt from the thousands of people trying to escape to a less populated area when the infection first started. To walk through a mostly barren city with little sign of the undead, it left him with an eerie feeling, that sensation like they were being watched every step they took. Eyes narrowed, he scanned the nearby buildings carefully, always mindful of what was going on around them.
So it was no surprise that Law spotted the figure at the top of the roof prop up the long rifle on the edge of the railing and aim it towards his group down below. Running purely on instinct, he snapped into action.
"Go! Keep low!" He shouted, pushing roughly at his friends to run to the closest cover, startling the two of them from their discussion. Expressions displaying their confusion, regardless, they crouched low to the ground and ran towards the nearest building and swinging behind the wall. A mere second after they swung the corner, a loud shot rang out, and a chunk of the edge of the concrete wall exploded off in a shower of bits of cement.
"Where are they?" Shachi puffed out, kneeling on the ground behind Penguin and Law respectively. Law, who was closest to the edge of the wall they hid behind, looked around and spotted a few zombies coming their way. Even if there hadn't been a lot of them before, having all of the nearest ones converge on a single location could certainly become dangerous.
"Shit…" He muttered, thinking that things had taken a steep turn too quickly for his liking. Pulling out his sword, he stood and waited for the zombies to come closer. "He's on the roof across the street. And that shot just attracted all the zombies in town right to us." He explained, stepping forward and slicing the head off the first shuffling undead that came near. Another followed close behind it, unaffected as it's brethren was killed in an instant.
Shachi and Penguin recovered from their shock and surprise quickly, standing and mindful of where the building's wall ended as to avoid being shot, took up a defensive stance against the zombies that began to gather towards them. The moans of the undead increased in volume and number further down the street, and Law looked behind them to see the alleyway was not fenced in or blocked at all, and several more zombies shuffled around the corner to spot them. If they waited too long here they'd be cornered in no time.
Leaving the two to deal with the undead for a moment, he looked around for some kind of way out, spotting a fire escape ladder above their heads. It was the best chance they had, and it was out of view of the sniper across the street too.
"Climb up! I'll follow after." He pointed above him at the ladder, rejoining the fight as the number of zombies continued to grow. Where had they all even come from anyway? They must have remained hidden in alleys and inside buildings, because Law wouldn't have thought there were this many in the area. He swung left and right, decapitating groaning undead with relative ease, though where one died, another two took it's place.
His friends took one glance at the ladder and nodded, holstering their weapons quickly and running underneath the metal ladder. Shachi gave Penguin a boost up, cupping the bottom of his shoe with his hands and lifting up enough for him to reach the bottom-most rung. A zombie got a little too close to them for Law's comfort, and he swiftly thrust his sword through its head, stopping it in its tracks as it fell to the ground with the other bodies.
The stench of dozens of the undead things together, rotting flesh and meat mixed in with something moldy and disgusting, was nauseating. Their moans set his teeth on edge, that hungry keen that was all he heard nowadays.
Law spared one glance backwards to see that Penguin had made it up the ladder and was now reaching down to help Shachi up. Good, at least they'd made it. He refocused on the undead around them, slowly being pushed back by the sheer numbers. What had started as two or three had quickly grown to nearly two dozen groaning and shuffling monsters surrounding him.
A shot from the opposite roof rang out again, followed by a much smaller-sounding gun, and Law worried that they'd seen Shachi or Penguin climbing up the fire escape, but neither of them called out in pain, and thankfully a few of the zombies at the back of the group began to wander away towards the noise, giving Law a moment to gain the upper hand.
"Law! Come on!" Shachi called from the ladder, reaching down to help him up. Above him, Penguin was already climbing up the rest of the fire escape.
Law sliced the heads of a few that came closer, backing away from the outstretched hands hoping to grab on and never let go. While they hadn't come grouped together, as they all arrived they slowly formed a rough semicircle around him, closing in with a slow persistence.
"Hurry!" His friend called again.
Killing a few more of the monsters around him, Law sheathed his sword and jogged the few yards of space between him and the fire escape, using a few of the bodies closest to jump off of and reach out for Shachi's hand.
Their hands connected, and with a loud grunt, Shachi pulled Law up to reach the bottom rung of the ladder and to safety. Grabbing onto the metal rung, Law began to pull himself up out of reach of the zombies down below, feeling rotting fingers scratch at the bottom of his shoes in desperation. Below, the rasps of the undead grew louder, angry that their prey had escaped out of reach, leaving them hungry another day.
Now that he was safely out of danger from the zombies down below, still reaching upwards to try to grab him and his friends, Law could feel the loud and insistent thump of his heart against his ribcage. The adrenaline was still freely-pumping through his veins, but he hadn't noticed just how tight of a situation they'd been in until right then.
"Everyone ok?" Shachi asked them. Law nodded and Penguin gave his affirmation.
"Should we go to the roof?" Penguin called down at the others. He'd paused halfway up, remembering the sniper across the street from them. In the minutes previous, they'd almost completely forgotten about their original problem. Law breathed heavily, taking a moment to gain his breath back after that harrowing moment.
"No, try to open…some of the upper-floor windows." He managed between breaths. "If he's still…on the roof then he may see us."
"Got it." He grinned with a thumbs up, resuming his climb up the ladder and towards the top story.
"Urgh…" Lexi hissed through gritted teeth. It was all she could do not to scream in pain from the bullet wound in her arm and the long jagged cut running down her leg. As far as the cut went, well, falling from a second story window and hitting a jagged piece of metal on the way down, it couldn't have been much better or worse.
She was lucky the bullet had missed a more vital spot, but the shooter must have had an unsteady aim or he couldn't hit moving targets very well. If she hadn't already been running, eh, limping, to begin with, spooked by the first shot, or managed to duck behind the wall of the clinic any sooner, she probably would have been dead.
At least she'd managed to pop off a shot of her own with her pistol, hopefully keeping the shooter at bay for the time being. She doubted it actually hit him or even was aimed in the right direction, but whoever had shot at her didn't know that and would have taken cover out of reflex.
Though now, faced with a new problem, perhaps shooting back hadn't been the smartest move either.
The blood seeped from her wounds, dripping onto the pavement and onto her pants and shoes, but she had more pressing issues to attend to, like the two zombies now facing her and blocking the entrance to the clinic. Wiping away the tears that pricked her eyes with her sleeve, she let out a strangled breath.
Biting back a sob, she pulled her knife from the holster with her other hand and held her injured arm to her chest, trying in vain not to put too much weight on the banged up leg. With a small groan of pain, she stabbed upwards into the creatures eye, hitting the brain through the socket with ease.
The first fell to the ground, falling in the path of its companion, causing it to stumble. Lexi used the opportunity to jab her knife through the side of its head when it tried righting itself. She pushed past the two now-dead zombies, noticing a few more approaching from behind, and before the second had even hit the ground all the way, she pushed her way through the side employee entrance.
"I think I could take this guy out from that window." Shachi said, unstrapping the rifle of his own from his back and keeping low as he approached the window facing the opposite block. Laying the barrel on the lip of the sill, he clicked the safety off and tried pinpointing exactly where the hiding survivor was.
Law crouched down beside him and pointed to the building where he'd originally seen the man. "There. He was at the left-most point, the corner."
"Let's see if our friend is still there then." Shachi nodded, pressing the stock of his gun against his shoulder and peering through the scope. Law and Penguin took up positions further back, hidden in the gloom of the dark bedroom, trying to help spot the shooter.
For a minute or so, there was no movement from the building's roof. No sign of anyone even there, and Law frowned. He was sure that was the correct building, and the right spot on top. Even at a glance, he'd been sure of that. Then, after that tense minute of no activity, the man reappeared from beneath the small wall around the roof, hoisting his gun to point in the direction of the clinic.
Law then recalled the additional shots he'd heard while in the alley, and wondered if there was another person around that the shooter had seen that they hadn't. Shachi tightened his grip on the stock and made minute adjustments with his scope to aim. Then, slowly, he moved his finger to the trigger, hovering just above it for a split moment.
Covering their ears, Law and Penguin tensed when Shachi's shot vibrated the window they peered through, watching as the roof beside the man was splattered in blood and his body dropped to the concrete, his gun falling beside him.
Shachi ejected his spent casing and reloaded the next, moving to stand from the window, but Law held out a hand to halt his movements.
"Wait." He instructed, eyes still glued to the roof. "There may be more."
It took a few seconds, but just as Law predicted, the door to the stairwell further back opened timidly, and then someone burst out running to the dead man's side, crouched down and visibly upset with what they'd found. After a moment, the new person, a woman as they discovered, grabbed the discarded rifle and hid behind the wall.
"Really?" Penguin muttered, shaking his head. "We wouldn't even have known they were there if they just let us get to the clinic in peace."
"No need to go shooting up survivors left and right." Shachi whispered his agreement, readjusting his grip on the rifle once more to aim in the general direction of the second person.
Slowly, a head popped up from the wall of the roof, slowly turning left and right as the woman tried to assess where the shooter had come from. Law, Penguin, and Shachi crouched low to avoid detection, Shachi being sure to keep the barrel of the rifle inside the window sill so as not to be obviously sticking outside.
The woman didn't see them at their position, and must have decided that the shot came from below, as she stood up a little more and began pointing the rifle down at the street. Shachi sighed and shook his head at the stupid decision she'd made, before zeroing his aim in on her.
Just as before, Shachi's shot vibrated the window and his companions tensed. The woman suffered the same fate as her partner, with blood spraying across the edge of the roof and the gun falling from her hands. Unfortunately, she'd been leaning out over the edge of the roof just a little too much, and when the bullet impacted, she was sent forward and tumbling over the edge of the roof, falling to the street below along with her rifle.
The three men looked away at the sickening splat her body made upon impact. The rifle landed just a second behind her with a jarringly loud crash, the stock and other parts shattering as they hit the ground and sending pieces everywhere. The zombies nearby began to shuffle closer to the noise, wondering what had caused it. It didn't take long for them to notice the fresh corpse to snack on, and all of those that had been nearby began to converge onto the woman's ruined body.
For several minutes, the three remained in the apartment, watching the roof for any sign of other occupants, but no one emerged. Satisfied that if there was anyone else inside, they would not come out, Law nodded.
"That should have attracted all the zombies close by," he indicated the zombies milling towards the broken gun and the woman, "so we should be able to sneak our way over to the clinic."
Shachi slung the gun across his shoulders and stood along with the others, cautiously making their way to the stairway to descend to the bottom floor, weapons at the ready for any zombies or hostile survivors that may be lurking inside.
With a strangled cry out, Lexi bit the edge of the crude bandage and pulled with her teeth, pulling on the other end to tighten the material around her bleeding arm. An immense pain shot through her body, but despite the tears streaming down her face she ignored it. It was the best she could do given the circumstances. The angle was awkward and hard to reach. Being alone, however, didn't present her with a lot of other options.
Sitting on one of the stools that had been overturned in the ransacked clinic, Lexi tried breathing steadily in hopes of not passing out from the pain. The place wasn't exactly ideal for medical attention but it had at one point been constructed for that purpose. The empty cabinets and drawers left open, broken glass littering the floor, didn't feel much like a place of healing, but hey. Technically it was a clinic.
After attending to her arm as best she could, she looked down at the towel covering her leg, soaked through with blood. Damn, it was a lot worse than she thought. Added to that the piece of metal, some broken piece of a fence or something, hadn't looked very clean. It was probably swarming with germs and bacteria. She'd be lucky if infection didn't set in.
She cursed under her breath as she slowly lifted the towel, the dried blood beginning to stick to the fabric. Though her pants soaked up most of the blood, the stuff that dried into a temporary clog began to hold fast to the towel. Parts that stuck pulled and sent tendrils of pain shooting up and down the limb. Biting the inside of her lip, Lexi managed to remove it entirely, viewing the long, ugly cut starting halfway down her shin and up past her knee. At least it hadn't damaged her knee itself, otherwise she would have been out of commission permanently.
There were bits of rusted metal flakes still left in the wound, and she reached for the pair of tweezers that had been one of the very few items left behind in the clinic. Or at least in the four or so cupboards Lexi had bothered to check.
Leaning forward, she winced as it caused her arm pain, and shakily lowered the metal tool to pull out the few bits she could see. God, it hurt. Even worse than that broken arm she'd gotten in eighth grade, and she'd thought that had been painful.
Once as many of them as she could get were plucked from her wounds, Lexi reached for the dirty needle she'd found on the floor and the fishing wire from her bag. There hadn't been any stitching thread, seeing as anything of medical use had been taken long ago. With a grimace, she inspected the surface of the needle again, seeing the red-colored stains with disappointment. Her search of the examination room had yielded no other sharp objects, and this needle was all she had. It would have to do.
A noise at the front of the clinic alerted her to someone or something nearby. Her head snapped up, and she immediately dropped the needle and thread on the counter and reached for the pistol on her belt, cocking it just to be safe. Holding it up at the ready, here eyes flicked back and forth as the sound of a door opening somewhere echoed through the empty building.
Another glance down at her leg reenforced the fact that she couldn't really run, and with all the blood everywhere it would be difficult to hide. Her best bet was to shoot first and ask questions later. It wasn't her favorite tactic, seeing as you never knew who would come through that door, but right now it was all that made sense.
The sound of men's voices, several of them, whispering to each other was easily distinguishable in the empty air. Whole body shaking both from the pain and from fear, Lexi swallowed several times to try calming her own nerves. Footsteps, whispers, and the very distant sound of groaning outside.
"…can't deny that…thing better…Secret…Playboy." Lexi could only pick up a few of the words being spoken. As they came closer, Lexi's grip tightened on her weapon. The tears threatened to blur her vision, and she quickly wiped them away.
Something loud crashed in the hallway outside, causing her to jump in her chair. Her injured arm smacked into the counter beside her, and she hissed loudly in pain, squeezing her eyes shut out of reflex. The voices outside had stopped, as did the footsteps. Damn it all to hell, she'd just blown her element of surprise.
Before she had any time to react, the footsteps picked up and three figures rounded the corner and into the room, pointing large guns and a rather long blade in her direction. Frightened by the sudden appearance, she raised the pistol to defend herself from-
She paused, recognizing that sword and the gray eyes of the man that held it.
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