Can't Be Saved (Saving Elliot OneShot)

The White Rabbit

The glass of the once large windows had been replaced with plywood and the door was boarded shut, reinforced on both the inside and out; the only way into the old pub was to climb in through a window two and a half meters above the ground. It kept infected out and proved a safe place for many survivors who decided to stay in the city. Since no one typically traveled alone, it was easy to boost a partner up and then have them lower the other a ladder. I hope Tamara found herself a companion like I did and is waiting for me inside...

"Come on, munchkin, we haven't got all day." The boy called to me. My thoughts were causing me to fall behind.

"My name is Elliot." I spat at him, picking up my pace and meeting him below the window.

"No kidding?" He got down on one knee and cupped his hands. I placed my foot on them and in one swift movement I was hanging from the window.

I pulled myself up. "Do people kid about their names in America?" I called down to him.

"No. I just don't know a lot of 'Elliot's."

I stepped into the crates stacked near the window, finally inside. The room was dark and seemed empty. No Tamara. I pulled the ladder up and extended it through the window to the boy on the other side. He seemed so small from up here...

"What's it like to look up at someone for once?"

He didn't answer at first, too busy climbing faster than I expected him to. He was eye level in moments.

He paused. No, not paused, it was the like time buffered for a half second and everything was still, just for that half second. It happened so quick that I hardly got a chance to notice how dark his eyes were, like looking into a dying star, fleck of brown and gold that I know I wouldn't have noticed unless he was this close to me. The strangest part was that somewhere, in the deep corners of my brain, a little voice whispered for him to notice the color of mine.

"About as awkward as it is to share a name with a condescending munchkin like yourself. Let me in."

"Share a name?" He couldn't possibly mean...

"Nice to meet you, I'm Elliot. Now move." He pushed past me and I nearly fell the 2 meters, but he grabbed my arm to steady me.

"If I have to save your life one more time today, munchkin, I think I'll lose my shit."

"You shoved me," I swatted his back as he walked down the makeshift stairs to the floor. "You bloody twat!"

I continued to grumble to myself as I pulled the ladder back inside, by the time I had made my way to solid ground the boy... Elliot, had turned on the generator and lights. The pub wasn't clean, and it was freezing cold. There were stray boards and boxes scattered on the floor, and many dusty liquor bottles.

"So how did you know I was American?" Elliot asked me.

"Your accent... And your rudeness," I added under my breath. I think he was going to ask me what I had said, but I interrupted.

"How did you know about the White Rabbit? If you're not from Manchester."

He walked behind the bar and checked to see if anyone had left rations on the shelf. It was customary that people who came to stay here would leave something for whoever came after. Food, water, blankets, medicine, sometimes you could find a knife or pistol, but that was rare even to find outside. It would never be enough for a person to live here forever, but if someone was really in need, this was the place to go. I don't know how or when it started, but everyone seems to knows to do it. I guess we all just believe in good karma; bad karma could really ruin you nowadays.

"I got stuck here as a foreign exchange student three years ago, when they closed the airports. They were keeping everyone who got off those last planes in Liverpool, I didn't even actually make it to the host family. I've been in Manchester for a while now. Word travels slow, but it travels." He continued to search cabinets and shelves, never looking at me. He seemed a bit desperate to find something.

I wondered what that must have been like, to begin totally alone. Even I had my family in the beginning. To know your family was on the other side of the world while this was all happening. To know you would never find out what happened to them, that you would never see them again. That they're wondering the same thing about you, if they're alive... the good kind of alive... I think about twins sometimes.

The sound of him kicking the counter wrecked my train of thought. "Damn it! There's nothing!"

"I'll bet no one's been here in weeks," I notice the thin layer of dust on my hands from the ladder. "Sometimes there are lots of people, other times it's empty for months."

"I was just hoping there would be something so I could get out of here." He ran his fingers through his dark hair, frustrated.

"Get out of here? Like, Manchester?" I laughed at him. "And go where?"

"Anywhere but here. What's left of this city is falling apart. It's not safe anymore, if it even was in the first place."

"There are people trying to group together in a farm mansion outside the-"

Suddenly there was yelling. Cries for help, just outside the window. I climbed back up the crates and took a peak below. There was a crying girl frantically trying to jump up to the window, she couldn't have been more than 11 years old. A group of groaning infected was trailing not too far behind her.

"Give me the ladder!" she pleaded, but I was way ahead of her. She was climbing the ladder before it was even steady on the ground. She stumbled clumsily through the window, and lost her footing when she was finally inside. I began pulling the ladder up quickly, not even thinking about the limited space on the top of this box tower, and bumped her accidentally. Before I could gasp in horror at myself I was watching her fall back, and then into Elliot's arms. I sighed a short breath of relief before continuing to pull back the ladder. I closed the window without thinking.

"How is it I keep saving people, Munchkin?" He called up to me. If he wasn't holding the little girl, I probably would have dropped the ladder on him. He tried to put the frightened child down, but she clung to him like a vice. "First you, now the kid. What next? A cat in a tree?"

I rolled my eyes. "Someone should give you the key to the city."

I searched through the foggy glass, waiting to see if the clan of dead had noticed the girl climb to the window. She continued to sob, and I could hear Elliot trying desperately to shush her on the floor; he didn't have to be told that death was slowly trudging toward us.