Path of the Dead - Working Title

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Zach woke up with one hell of a migraine and regretted that decision. He slowly sat up and noticed that he was still on the couch and was still lying on it the same way he way placed with one leg hanging off the edge, firmly planted on the floor and his arms were bound around him now as if he was wrapped within a strait jacket. He groaned and tried getting out of the jacket, but was unable to, unsure whether it was because he was still too tired and weak to actually do so or if it was done so he couldn't get out of it, either way, neither sounded pleasant as it went through his mind. He slowly stood up and felt that his equilibrium was still a little off as he felt himself almost lose balance just from standing. Taking slow and steady steps, he made his way around Jacob, who was still asleep, and made his way to the kitchen, because that was normally where the girls gathered to mingle together. He made his way into the kitchen and saw that they were in fact in the kitchen.

Revy looked over and saw Zach standing within the doorway and wasted no time to run from where she was and embrace him in a tight hug, "Thank God. I thought you weren't going to make it. I grew so worried when you didn't immediately wake up."

"You make it sound like we've been asleep for weeks."

"You've been out of commission for five days thirty minutes and seventeen seconds." Emma was standing further away than the rest of the girls, as if trying to hide something about her.

Zach noticed this and approached her, "And why are you so far away from the others? Are you trying to hide something?"

"No more than you and Jacob need to know about." She moved further away from Zach as he approached her, determined not to reveal to Zach what she was hiding.

After a minute trying to figure out what she was hiding, Zach turned around and was about to leave the kitchen when he noticed that Revy was bandaged around her arm and he faintly saw bandaging around her chest only because he saw some of the bandage peeking out of her tanktop, "Revy, what happened to you? Why are you bandaged?" He then noticed something else was up, "And where's Jessica?"

Both girl's look away, trying to hide the sense of loss and disgust on their face.

"Things got...complicated when you two were unconscious. King's group kept coming for us at us, and we held them off for as long as possible. We held them off for two days, and killed several of them, but eventually we slipped up and Jessica got captured by them two days ago. We tried to get her back but we weren't able to get anywhere close to getting her back. However, yesterday was probably the worst of the five days. We got ambushed when we got to King's building and we were lucky enough to get away with the injuries that we were given." Emma walked out from the shadows and showed Zach that she too, was covered in bandages, more so than Revy was, primarily her entire upper torso and her left eye was covered and it was obvious that she had been wearing that roll of bandages for a good bit because her blood from her excessive movement was beginning to bleed through.

Zach could tell that those injuries were going to leave scars and was probably going to be looking ugly, at least for a couple of years, depending on whether or not they survive long enough for that to even be a thing to consider. He felt a sense of guilt and responsibility for what had happened to them and that had fired him up to the point that he was now able to push through the stiffness of his joints and the throbbing migraine that was still ever so present and persistent. He walked over to the guns that were propped against the wall and picked his shotgun up and was about to go outside when he was stopped and looked back at the girls, "Well are you coming or not?"

"Not when we're in this kind of condition. Besides, it's become clockwork that they come here at around fourteen hundredish."

Zach looked at the clock to confirm the time.