Malevolent. The Walking Dead

[ 002 ] glove upon a drum

"What the actual fuck is going on!" she screamed, reaching for something to hold onto, before she looked to her right ━ a giant bus was headed straight toward them, and crashed into the side of her car, before they skidded into one of the stores aligning the streets strip. Her vision was blurry as she felt some blood dripping from her head into her eyes. Bill frantically collected himself and looked at her with worry. "Shit!" she slurred out, reaching up her hand to cease the wound.

"I'm okay, I'm okay," she pleaded, breathless, wincing as she tried to lift her head up. It felt as though her brain was filling up with water and she had to balance out the water weight, head swaying left and right. There were a few cuts from the shards of glass on her forearms, which led rivers of crimson down to her hands. Her right eye was starting to get filled with blood from when she hit her head, and Joey had to clamp her eye shut a few times to get it out, but it only seemed to make it worse.

"Then get out, now," Bill pleaded, unbuckling his seat belt and reached over to do the same to hers. Once she was free from the constraint, Joey reached to push the truck door open, but her arm was immediately caught by one of the men that had ambushed them. "Come here you little shit!" he growled, grasping her arm and seizing her out of the car. If it weren't for Bill grabbing chaotically at her feet, she would have been rotter bait ━ but he kept a firm grip as she frantically tried to keep her legs in the car, despite grasping at straws. "Let go of me you mother fucker!" she clawed at his arms, legs, anything she could reach, but another man had snuck up behind Bill and slammed his head down on the center console, which prompted him to let go of her. Joey shrieked, flinging her body around in the man's grip. "Shit! Bill!"

The man that grabbed Bill had thrown him out of the truck at that point, onto the dingy ground of the shop they had crashed into, pulling him up onto his feet and bashing his head through a window. A sharp, taunting piece of gas still stood straight up despite the destruction, and the man then tried to force Bill's neck down onto it. But, Bill pushed his elbow back into the man's face, and then forced his neck down onto the glass without warning. By the time he turned around to hear Joey's frantic cries, the man had cracked her across the face, and she fell to the ground with a hmph.

Bill saw red, before he ran up to the man, "I'll show you, I'll show you . . ." he muttered to himself, before kicking the guys face and slamming his face down twice on the nearby pile of bricks and ash. Joey, meanwhile, was hunched over on all fours, coughing up the blood that formed from the hit to her bottom lip ━ and trying to coax the burning pain in her neck from nearly being suffocated. He pulled her up by the arm.

"Jesus fuck . . . what the actual living fuck is wrong with these assholes?" she cursed, Bill dragging her back over to the truck. "Calm down, catch your breath," he urged, grabbing their bags from the back of the truck and loading them on while handing her her backpack. The song still played from the stereo.

"We're leaving," he coughed, and Joey tried to wipe away some of the blood that was all over her at this point. Some of it had clotted up, but the cuts on her arms had reopened when Bill grabbed her. It was still hard for her to talk, a bruise forming over her neck. She could see Bill was bleeding, too, but the adrenaline of the situation made them hardly feel a thing. Joey saw from the corner of her eye someone peeking up from behind an abandoned car, and she saw it was a woman with her hair haphazardly placed everywhere aiming a gun at Bill's head. "Get down!" Joey yelled, ducking near the front of the truck as the bullet shattered one of the windows. Bill dodged behind one of the fallen shelves, and frantically searched his bag for bullets to reload his gun. "Stay down, Joey!" 

Joey kept her head below the front of the car, heartbeat corresponding with the array of bullets ricocheting everywhere she looked. Bill was still placed behind the toppled over shelf, the sound of bullets clinking against the metal filling up his ears. He waited for when the others were reloading their guns to take the chance and shoot at the pair that had emerged, sending them to the ground writhing in pain. Nevertheless, it seemed as though the odds were not in their favor, as one more of the hunters crept around from the outside of the building to shoot their shot. Bill stood up and shot the guy two times in the shoulder before he was down on the ground with the others, and another bullet to the head. Joey flinched at the toppling amount of bodies on the ground - some that she wasn't sure was from Bill, rotters, or others. Whatever way they died, she didn't want to stick around long enough for it to happen to them.