After an hour of waiting a couple of soldiers walk over to where Travis, Nick, and Frankie are sitting. They roughly grab them up and guide them over to the wall opposite to the tile wall piled with bodies. They also grab two other strangers being held captive and sit them next to the three.
Frankie still sits unmoving and silently in a dazed state, staring at the wall in front of her. Nick grabs her arm and tries to turn her gaze away from the corpses and at him. She ignores him entirely.
"Frankie? Frankie?" He groans and looks back to Travis. "What do we do?"
"I think I saw a sewer system when they pulled me in here. If we can overpower these two guys then we can probably make a run for it." Nick nods his head. "I just need to distract them so they don't expect an attack."
"Those two." A soldier points to the two people sitting next to them. They grab them and pull them to the other tile wall. Two gunshots ring out into them. Frankie remains unfazed. A few minutes of uncomfortable silence passes.
"Hey, what's up with the dead outside? Travis breaks the silence.
"Lowercase dead or capital "D" dead?" One of the soldiers laughs.
"The, um... the corpses in the front yard."
"Force field. Troy discovered it."
"What? Really?"
"Yeah. See, the infected have senses... sight, smell, taste, we think. They won't eat anything that's dead, so smell dead, taste dead, they avoid you. Depot smells like death, ergo they stay away."
"So, how many died for that little tidbit?" Travis's tone shifts to a darker tone.
"It's for our betterment."
"You're sick. What you're doing is criminal, but it doesn't matter."
"It matters. Someone dies, it matters how long it takes to resurrect. Before you put a bullet in their dome? How long you can sit with your loved ones... Put steel in their brains...before they come back."
"Come on, what you're doing is pointless. You, you, you're pointless." Travis raises his voice.
"Better to know than not." The soldier brushes off his argument.
"Oh, yeah? Do the rest know?"
"What rest?"
"The ones who don't come down here. Do they know what you're doing?"
"They know, but it's on a volunteer basis."
"So, why? Why don't they volunteer?"
"Cause they're afraid of what they don't know. Come on, it's the goddamn dark ages out there. We're just trying to shine a little light."
"No, they just don't get off on it."
"Shut up!" The soldier yells at Travis. Nick wraps his arms around Frankie from behind and pulls her away from the argument. Travis continues to poke at the soldier, despite his demands.
"Hey, why are you doing this, huh?"
"Science."
"Murder for science, huh?"
"Yes. Not a new concept." They both chuckle. The other soldier speaks up.
"Come on, be honest. Since this whole thing began, you haven't killed? You haven't murdered anybody?"
"No one who didn't deserve it." Travis says with a deadpan face."
"You know what, Blake?" The man smirks. "This is taking too long. Let's do another one." He bends over and grabs Frankie by both the shoulders, prying her from Nick's grasp. Nick leans forward reaching for her.
"Leave her alone! Take me instead!" His voice breaks.
"Getting emotional now, are we? Well, you can blame your friend who never shuts the hell up." Frankie looks past the two soldiers in front of her to Nick sitting on the floor. She seems confused by his distraught expression, like she still isn't fully aware of what's going on around her.
"I love you Nick." Is all she manages to quietly say.
"Isn't that sweet?" A soldier laughs. The other one pulls out a gun and points it at her chest. Instead of running away from the gun, she presses it deeper into her shirt. The man squints confused.
She steps forward more and the man lowers the gun entirely. She looks up into the soldier's eyes trying to read his next move. He gabs both of her shoulders and pins her against the tile wall to hold her still.
"What are you trying to do?" He snickers.
She remembers the last time she was in a similar situation. She swiftly sticks her head into the man's neck and bites her jaw down as much as possible.
"Help!" The man manages to scream, choking on his own blood. He falls to the ground leaking a puddle from his neck, since she managed to hit an artery. He has a matching blank expression on his face to Frankie's.
Frankie glances at everyone in the room rapidly with blood smothered around her mouth area. She spits out as much red liquid as she can, spraying it everywhere. Travis pushes the other soldier into the newly turned biter on the ground. Nick makes eye contact with Frankie, wide eyed in terror.
He bolts to his feet and runs up to her. He grabs her hand and sprints down the nearest hallway leading her behind him. Travis somehow gets split off from the two of them. Nick manages to find a sewer grate in the ground and opens it up. Sounds of other soldiers can be heard getting near.
"Frankie." She seems to be deep in thought about something. "Frankie, I need you to go down there. I'll be right behind you." She nods and climbs down the ladder into the sewer. Nick trails closely behind and covers the grate just in time.
Frankie stumbles backwards against a sewer wall. She looks at both of her hands and realizes how much blood is stained onto them. Her breathing picks up, as if she is finally taking in the situation.
"Oh god....oh god no." She mumbles through breaths.
"Hey, hey, hey," Nick climbs down the ladder fully and goes up to her. "It's gonna be okay, I'm gonna get you out of here." He says in a reassuring voice, and cups both sides of her face.
"I killed someone....again. I'm a murderer. I'm a bad person."
"No, no, not at all. It was self defense. Self defense." She slightly nods her head. He grabs her hand again and they both go down head down hallways and hallways of the sewers. Eventually, Nick finds a possible exit and pushes open a metal sliding door that streams sunlight in. The opening seems promising until it's revealed to have hundreds of the dead on the other side.
"Maybe not that way..." Nick mutters. They both begin running back down the maze of hallways, except this time they are being chased by many of the dead. One of the dead ends up catching up to them and attacks Nick. Nick falls to the ground with the biter on top of him, desperately trying to reach its mouth to Nick's flesh.
Frankie quickly looks around her for some weapon to use. A familiar woman's voice can be heard above her. Alicia.
"Frankie catch!" Frankie looks up and catches the knife that was dropped between the metal bars of a sewer grate. She stabs the biter and pulls it off Nick.
"Nick!?" Alicia calls out now seeing his face.
"Alicia!" He replies as she is taken away by soldiers above ground dragging her away out of sight.
"Oh my god where did they take her?" Frankie asks. "We have to go help her!" Nick nods and they find the nearest ladder to ground level. They climb up but are immediately met with soldiers to take them away.
"Damn it." Nick quietly groans. They are taken in a new direction instead of the showers, but to somewhere outside. Eventually they round a corner and see Alicia, Travis and Madison standing around by some soldiers.
"Nick." Madison says. The soldiers let go of them and Nick runs up to his mother and hugs her. Alicia and Frankie join the embrace and they all enjoy their reunion.