Time to Survive

We Do What's Best for the Group, Not Just One Person

  Chris POV

Kelsey was sleeping, like she had been for the past two days. She'd woke up only a few times, and Devin was making sure to stick around her side constantly since he and the others had gotten back.

They'd brought supplies, but there wasn't enough to sustain all of us here for more then another two days.

And Kelsey wasn't going anywhere soon.

Carol had made the comment that we shouldn't move her until we were sure she wouldn't start bleeding again; all the bumps in the road could jostle her too much, and walking for her was still out of the question since her burns were still healing; I was relieved they were getting better, some were already starting to get some new skin.

The minor ones, at least.

That lotion Carol had worked magic.

So if she didn't starve to death or bleed out first, she would be fine.

Turns out, Kelsey's birth control was some hardcore shit. Apparently, if it decided that it didnt want to take, it just... well... came out. And when it came out, it released quite a bit of blood with it, apparently.

She had looked resigned when she'd mentioned it.

It was a side effect, and since the birth control was a fairly new type, it was still prone to having issues. She was supposed to go back to the doctor after so long to make sure it was going to continue to take, and considering that was no longer an option...

Guess I would just have to suck it up and find some condoms.

Because she was going to get better.

And we were going to use every single fucking one of them in the future.

She'd just rolled her eyes at me when I'd mentioned it to her, though I was pretty sure her lips had twitched.

And now she was just sleeping.

Sleeping beauty.

I sighed, leaning my head back against the crate, staring up at the holes in the ceiling where the sun was creaking through.

This situation was absolute shit.

We were fucked.

And we couldn't stay here anymore, it wasn't safe.

Too many deaders were starting to appear around the fence, and I could only stand killing so many more before my stomach decided it needed to empty its contents, be it just water or not.
At least Ryan was getting something out of it, though.

Some of the deaders that had come through had been... well, as fairly recently turned as they could be and not be rotting. Turns out if you just kill the new ones, their flesh was still good enough to eat.

For some of us, anyway.

Honestly I just think Ryan was getting desperate.

He couldn't eat our flesh, so he would go for the next best thing.

Eating zombies.

Who would have thought that?

At least he had a constant supply of food then, no worries of him running out.

I wasn't about to let the rest of us try it, though.

I dont even see how he did it.

It was like he was immune to the gore and the rest of the shit that still seemed to get to us. He didnt seem to mind dismembering the bodies, it was like he actually got a kick out of it.

But that could just be Ryan.

It might not have anything to do with the fact he was basically a thinking deader.

A loyal, thinking deader, at least.

So, out of all of us, Ryan would make it.

I had hope for that.

As long as he had a steady supply of semi-decent, non-rotting flesh to devour, he would make it.

So until humanity was just completely wiped out, he would be okay.

That's what I wanted to keep telling myself, anyway.

"So, what's our next plan?" Ricky asked as he plopped down beside me, his hair in an actual braid down his neck. I raised my brows as I rolled my head to look at him, but he didn't seem bothered that he looked like a girl right now.

Looks like Janie had gotten to him after all.

"Plan?" I asked. "You expect me to have a plan?"

"Of course I do, Mr. Lead-Singer-Controlling-Motionless," he said, his voice retaining a chipper edge. "So, what's the plan?"

"I have no fucking idea, man," I sighed, looking back up at the ceiling. "I'm up for ideas."

"Well, idea one, we get the hell out of this place. It kind of sucks, the bathrooms don't work, and the walk to get fresh water makes my calves hurt," he whined, looking down at his thin-soled boots.

I hadn't forgotten he needed a new pair.

"Well, is there any maps around here?" Kylie asked, walking around the edge of the crates with a few granola bars in hand. She tossed us each other before sitting across from us indian style. "We could just pick a spot to go. It could, could be like a road trip."

"A road trip of death, you mean," Kuza grumbled, joining us. He looked exhausted, and his arm was covered in gauze where some of the deaders had jumped him from the looks of it. It was blood-stained, but it wasn't like we had a lot to spare to wrap it again, either. "We gotta be careful where we pick to go next, just in case its too populated and we run into more assholes."
"You realize we're in the middle of California, right? Where are we going to go that's not heavily populated?"

"There's gotta be somewhere," Ricky sighed, grimacing when he bit into his granola bar; the thing was so fucking hard he was having trouble getting a bite off of it. "If we stay along the lesser populated roads, we could make it. I mean, we have so far, right?"

"Most of us," I mumbled, staring down at my own bar. I hadn't opened it, I wasn't really feeling hungry right now, which I knew was a bad sign. But if I wasn't hungry, I didn't see a point in wasting supplies. "We haven't had the best of luck."

"Hey, it's a fucking miracle that all of us are alive right now," Kylie snapped at me, and I glanced up at her. "Suck it the fuck up already. I am so tired of hearing all this whiney shit from all of you. Yes, there are zombies everywhere waiting to tear our flesh to pieces, and yes one nick of their teeth can infect us and make us into one of them. Yes, we're all starving and most of us aren't going to make it two miles down the road. But you know what? We've made it to this spot, all of us together, all of us alive, and we're going to make it to the next spot, all of us alive. Stop being so fucking morbid all the time! If you keep an attitude like that, I'm surprised you're not dead already!"

"Kylie, what the fuck?" Ricky snapped, glaring at her.

I just stared at her.

She was right, at least. We... most of us had made it this far. The fact we were more then just one or two people was kind of a miracle, too. Someone had to be looking after us.

Or playing a cruel game with us.

aww fuck.

"Who wants to search for a map?" I muttered, letting my eyes drift over to a different circle of crates. I knew Kelsey was sleeping there, pale as the moon and almost comatose. She hadn't eat yet, and I was starting to believe she really wasn't trying much anymore.

She needed a doctor, an actual fucking doctor to take care of her, not pathetic losers like the rest of us.

But of course we'd blown our chance of ever getting into the hospital ever again. I wasn't even sure it was still standing considering we'd let the deaders inside, and there was no telling how far they'd gotten into the facility.

I hoped that old doctor was still alive, he'd seemed like a good person.

And that kid Charlie, he shouldn't have died like that. He had helped us out and we'd gotten him killed.

Which seemed to be the trend around here anyway.

"I'll see if I can't find one," Ricky said after a moment, crawling to his feet. He tossed what remained of his bar at Kuza, who looked down at his doubtfully. "See if you can eat that rock. No point in wasting it."

"They didn't feel this hard when we got them originally," Kuza grumbled, gnawing on it. Ricky disappeared around the crates, and I heard his footsteps echo across the floor as he started for the managers office.

I hoped he found something.

Because we really needed somewhere to go.

"Where's Kera, anyway?" Kuza asked after a few seconds. "She's just skulking around the edges of the room."

"She's... she's where she is," Kylie replied after a moment, shaking her head. "She's not right. Not now. those guys... they messed her up pretty bad." her voice had dropped as she started speaking so it wouldnt echo. "I don't know what to do for her. I don't... she won't even talk anymore..."

"She went through some bad shit, she just needs time," I mumbled, feeling even more weary then before. "But we can only drag her along for so long until something happens to her, or she gets bit because she can't keep up or ---."

"I'm pretty sure she knows that," Kylie glared at me. "She's not stupid."

"Could've fooled me the way she acts," Kuza snorted, earning a smack to the chest that made him bite down too hard on the granola bar, and I hoped it was the bar that cracked and not his teeth.

I chuckled. "Where's Ryan at, anyway? Still outside?"

"Yep, he's decided to be on guard," Kuza informed me, feeling of his teeth quickly. "Took over for me so I could join you assholes here, which now I'm starting to regret."

"At least you don't have to be with the Brady family," Kylie grumbled, no doubt speaking of Devin.

He was staying a lot with Carol right now, not because he actually liked them, but because she had offered to teach him some of the medical stuff she knew to help us out.

I knew her little family had intentions of moving on as soon as they could get away from us, and I couldn't say I would miss them. Thomas would sacrifice every single one of us if it meant taking care of his family, and Carol was most likely the same. Janie seemed like a good kid, she had a massive crush on Ricky right now, and for her sake I hoped her siblings made it long enough to take care of her.

Though they needed to teach her how to survive on her own.

"Okay, so it looks like this area is just woodland," Kuza's finger traced the area, all of our eyes scanning it. "But the main highway arks through here, it looks like an overpass. We could take it, follow it all the way out of the state and to the next one. I don't see a point in staying in Cali anymore."

"Cali is done," Ryan shook his head. "There's nothing here. But I doubt that it'll be better anywhere else. We need to find somewhere remote, kind of like how it was at the house. Build it up, plant some fucking corn or some shit, do like that."

"Some corn and shit? Thanks, Farmer Brown," Ricky snorted. "How are we gonna do that?"
"We'll figure it out. You just plant the stuff, right?"

"I have no idea. Maybe there's some Farming for Dummies we could find."

God.

"Thomas and his sisters are still heading for the water," I said after a moment, tapping my fingers against the table. "Going for a boat. This looks like an intersection where we could probably split up." I pointed. "They can go on from here, and so can we. We'll need to make sure all of us have enough supplies to break up. We need to restock our arsenal too, so maybe if there's any small towns left we can raid their police stations like we did the other one."

"Sounds good," Kuza nodded, bracing his hands against the crate that was currently serving as our table. "We should head out as soon as we can, though, at the break of dawn so we have as much daylight as possible to travel by."

"Right," I muttered, hesitating.

Kelsey couldn't be moved right now, and everyone knew it.

But we couldn't stay here any longer. We had to get out of here as soon as possible.

So we had a choice to make.

Move her and risk her going into another bleeding, or wait here to make sure she was
okay and risk all of us starving.

Or option three, the two of us stay behind and the others go ahead.

I didn't like any of the options.

Was there another one?

Fuck fuck fuck.

I rubbed my jaw, searching my brain for another alternative. If I knew Kelsey, she would just tell me to fucking go, all of us pack up and get the hell out of Dodge while we still could. She wouldn't want anyone to stay behind, and if it was someone else who was injured, she would still be that way.

She wouldn't expect any of us to be hurt or sick because of only one member.

She was a survivor, and so were the rest of us.

So we had to leave.

It was basically the only option we had.

Goddammit.

"We'll leave in the morning," I said after a moment, clenching my hands as my eyes searched the map, knowing everyone was staring at me. They'd all been waiting silently for me to protest, to say we'd go in a couple days, but we didn't have time for that, we didnt have a couple days. "Head for the intersection. We should reach it by noon if we leave by dawn. It's the only choice we got."

"Er, are you sure?" Ricky hesitated as he looked at me, the only one to speak after the silence had started to stretch a few seconds. "What about ---?"

"She'll be fine," I snapped, straightening abruptly. "We can't wait here any longer. Go ahead and get all the shit packed up, we're leaving. Someone tell Thomas and Carol. I'll... I'll deal with Kelsey."

god let this be the right decision.

Don't let anything happen to her.

I couldn't stand the thought of losing her now, of not being able to be ....

I'd grown way too pathetic during this apocalypse.

I wasn't like how Kuza and Francesca had been, able to make the best of it. I think that had been more because they'd had each other, and now that Kuza was down his other half, I wasn't even sure how he was making it.

He'd been fucked up in the beginning, but Kels had seemed to help him through it, and some of his harshness was starting to melt away the longer time went on without Fran.

I didn't want to end up like Kuza, losing my best friend.

Hell, I didn't want to lose any of them.

They were my family, had been for years.

I turned away from the crate, feeling all of them stare at me as I made my way to Kelsey.

I had to think about what was best for the entire group, not just one person. They still looked to me as their frontman, their leader, and I got that, I got what it meant.

It meant even at the cost of one member, we all had to keep going, we had to survive.

So, as I knelt down beside her sleeping form, I prayed for the first time in years that she would survive it, make it through this.

Because I wasn't going to if she didn't.