Chris POV
"Jeez, this is the longest fuckest driveway I've ever been on," Kuza grunted, looking bored as we drove down it, only a few minutes away from the house. Neither of us could drive stick well, so I'd vetoed the coupe and grabbed a random car that had enough gas to get us to the house, if not back.
"Yeah, I know," I muttered, wishing more then one headlight worked as I leaned forward, having a hard time seeing the road for the fog.
We'd been driving for hours now, and I was getting tired, my eyes blurry.
I was missing my guys, too.
It felt weird going back without Kelsey, this was her home after all, not mine, or ours.
I hoped none of those dumbfucks had messed with her bedroom.
And that they agreed with the plan, though I don't see why they wouldn't.
"Here we are," I said in relief as we came around the trees, and the cabin rose up in all its glory in the moonlight, lights burning in the windows.
"Shit!" Kuza's eyes widened as he saw the beast of a vacation home. "Motherfuck, how did you find this place?"
"It's Kelseys, her family's," I sighed, parking the half-wrecked car in the driveway, seeing shadows moving in the windows as the guys realized someone was outside in the dark. "They all died here, so she's kind of touchy about it."
"They all died HERE?"
"Yeah, she offed them." I turned the car off, pretty sure it would never turn on again from the groaning sound it made. "But It's big enough for all of us, so come on."
I kicked the door open, and Kuza climbed out the window on his side, his feet hitting the gravel loudly.
I heard the front door open.
"Yo, dudes!" I called, grabbing my pack from the backseat.
I didn't need Balz shooting us on accident.
"Chris?"
"Yep."
"Chris!" I heard Ricky's excited voice, and I hurried over to where everyone was crowding in the doorway.
Ricky nearly shoved Balz out of the way to get on the porch, Devin and Kylie quickly following him.
"Dude, you're okay! It's been like two weeks! We were fucking worried!" Balz burst, and his eyes flicked to Kuza's form as he trotted over.
"Kuza?"
"Hey, bitches," Kuza grinned at them as he came up on the porch, the swinging door suddenly fixed; they must've been doing some housework while we'd been gone.
"Where's Kelsey?" Ricky asked immediately, frowning when he didn't see her. "What happened? Ryan?"
"Let's all go inside," I sighed. "It's a long story."
Two hours later...
"You fucking want to what?" Balz squawked in horror. "Are you fucking crazy? Those tunnels ---."
"Are the only shot we have," I told him, sitting on the coffee table, the rest of them on the couch or hovering behind it, Kuza by my side. "Kelsey can't climb, Ryan can barely walk --- we need them out of there before they become experiments. It's the best plan we could come up with."
"But it's suicide!" Kylie gasped at me. "You can't make it through them, Chris! All three of you will die!"
"Not if we can get some night vision, remember?"
"You make it sound so easy, but you know it's not going to be," Devin sighed, pressing his face into his hands. "We're all going to risk our lives for a plan that might not even succeed."
"It's the only chance we have, unless you want to just abandon them."
"Of course not," Ricky frowned at me. "Kelsey would find a way to fucking haunt us. Deaders I can deal with, poltergeists are another story."
That she would.
"So, Ryan's okay, though?" Balz asked, sounding slightly hesitant. "I mean, he's not dead?"
"Not... technically." I shrugged; I wasn't sure how to explain it. "He's still Ryan, and all, just... different."
"He can only eat raw meat," Kuza said bluntly, all of their eyes flicking to his face. "He can't stand light, it hurts his eyes. He's even bitchier then he was before, and if he can't eat, he's going to deteriorate and probably go full zombie after a while."
"Kuza," I growled; he wasn't helping.
"They need to know what they're getting into." He replied, crossing his arms. "He'll go eventually, there won't be enough food for him. His death has just been prolonged, is all. This gives you more time with him, but he's a ticking bomb of disease, basically. We don't know what he's going to do."
Everyone just stared at us.
Great, now they would never agree.
"Where are we going to find raw meat?" Ricky asked after a moment, looking hesitant. "And keep it fresh?"
"Kels says there's a large freezer in the basement," I informed them; none of us had really gone down there, it was dark, and kind of creepy, to be honest. "It can go down there, he only seems to need to eat a pound of raw a day, from the way he's going at the hospital. So we can supply it for him, and we can hunt animals here too, and ---."
"But where are we going to get raw meat, Chris? We can only hunt so many animals," Devin frowned, Kylie's hand clutching his shoulder from where she stood behind the couch worriedly.
"There's some stores in the city," I spoke after a moment, fishing the map out of my pack where it sat at my feet. "Three of them run off solar power, so they're back freezers might still be good. It doesn't matter if its freezer burnt, he doesn't seem to mind. If we can get to their freezers, we can get all the meat, toss it in a few coolers, and transport it back here. We'll have to make runs so it doesn't spoil, so we'll need all the cars."
"What if they don't have any meat left?" Kylie asked after a moment when the silence started to grow. "What if ---."
"We don't have time for what ifs," I interrupted her in irritation. "We only have time to fucking do it. We're gonna have to scavenge all the meat as well as supplies from these two outposts and the police station here." I pointed at the map. "We'll break into groups. Kuza goes with one, me with the other, that way the immune of us can go check out the places."
"And we're doing all this tomorrow?" Ricky asked, sounding worried. "Who's gonna watch the house?"
"Kylie."
"What? I'm not leaving ---."
"Look, I need all my guys," I knew she would be an issue. "We're all coming back, so don't worry. We need someone to watch the house, and you're gonna have to deal with being by yourself here, got it?"
"Chris," Devin narrowed his gaze. "Don't talk to her like she's stupid."
"I'm not, but we don't have time. At the crack of dawn we gotta roll out of here, got it? Kels and Ryan don't have much time in that hospital."
I was anxious for some reason, and it was only increasing the more the night wore on and we tried to fine tune the plan, breaking off into groups.
Me and Ricky were going after the police station, while Kuza, Devin, and Balz were going for the outposts. Ricky was the smallest out of us, he could squirm between places if he needed too, and I didn't doubt the station would be boarded over.
The outposts were going to be more heavily surrounded by deaders, I figured, and Balz was definitely able to hold his own against them; they would end up needing Devins medical knowledge more then we would, and Kuza's immunity.
We would meet up with them as soon as we finished at the station getting all the things we needed. When we had gotten all of the supplies we could gather from those three places, we were going to move it all to the cars. Kuza and I would return to the city that night and get a map for the tunnels from the Hall of Records, and the next day was when we would set out, heavily geared up, to find all the food we could carry back to the cars.
The guys would all leave back to the house then, leaving me and Kuza behind, and the two of us would return to the hospital like everything was normal.
And then we would get our friends the fuck out of there.