Devon bit her lip. What'd did smart-aleck think she was trying to do, charade as a pendulum? Grabbing the rope with one hand, Devon leaned back and wrapped a leg around the rope above her. She hooked her ankles and let go. Now truly upside down, she could see the fish she had inadvertently lured in and the rescuer she wished she didn't need.
"I refuse to be made into a freakin' damsel," Devon muttered under her breath. Where was Thomas?
"Hey! That's no way to speak to a lady!" Thomas shouted down as he descended quickly into the collapsed building. There he was, being his usual ass-self at that.
BANG!
The infected thing closest to Devon stumbled.
BANG! BANG!
The thing stepped forward too far. It rolled down the debris pile in front of it.
Devon placed her hands on hips. "Those were really close to my head Thomas." Thomas just shrugged. He waved his pistol at the young opposite the zombies.
"Thanks for helping out my ungrateful girl here. You think you can hold them off long enough for me to get her down?"
Matt had snorted at Thomas' yell. Chivalry four months into a zombie apocalypse? That was novel. As the would-be spiderman descended downwards and spoke again, the younger boy shrugged his shoulders. "Don't have much bloody choice now, do I? They can stumble down a hill faster than climb it."
Indeed, it seemed the semi-brainless infected were at least smart enough to take the path of least resistance, and were clumsily making their way down the rubble pile towards him. There were three left, since another had joined ponytail-guy in a crumpled mess at street level. The teenager started to backpedal carefully down, doing his best not to escape the zombies only to suffer death at the hands of gravity.
His first shot missed - firing while moving, probably not the best idea for someone who hadn't fired a gun at all before this mess, and had hardly had to do it since. The second - taken after a pause to steady his aim - struck true, shearing off a good portion of a female infected's upper face and dropping her like a sack of potatoes.
Matt wasn't sure he'd be able to take the other two out like this, however. Every time he stopped to shoot, they were rapidly gaining on him - they weren't quite the shambling, trivial threats of classic dawn-of-the-dead rip-offs. They were clumsy, but more than capable of keeping up.
"Aaany time now..." he called up to the pair at the top of the pile.
Thomas dropped quickly down to Devon as the other boy seemed to take charge of the situation. "Ah-hah, look! You really are upside down!" He got an ugly look from Devon.
"Just get me down, Thomas. This isn't any fun,"
"I disagree." But the dark haired young man had already lowered himself below his survivalist partner. He looped his arm around her and she sat back up, untangling her legs from the rope only to wrap them around Thomas's waist. Thomas waggled his eyebrows at Devon. She snorted ungracefully and reached around him to the pocket knife strapped to her ankle.
"And why couldn't you have used that before?" Thomas asked as Devon made quick work of the rope suspending her.
"If I could've survived the fifteen plus foot fall to rubble sideways, I would've cut myself down a while ago." Devon freed herself as the teen below let off his second shot.
The pair dropped to the broken, zombie littered floor. Thomas cut himself free from his line, and the two scrambled after their helper. They paused only long enough for Thomas to retrieve Devon's own pistol from her backpack.
Devon aimed for the infected closest to her and squeezed. Its shoulder jerked forward from the momentum of bullet hitting it. She pulled the trigger again. The zombie jerked forward again. Unable to regain its footing, it went tumbling down the side of the pile.
The last infected lurched down the rubble, kicking up loose rocks, as it moved towards Matt. The teen went to fire his gun, only to be rewarded with the 'click' of an empty magazine. He swore under his breath, reaching to try and pry free the spare he was carrying in his pocket. It was a tight enough fit, though, that tugging it out was proving challenging.
"Mother fuck god shit balls damn fuck, come on, come on-" he cursed.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
The infected fell still at the third teen's feet. Thomas clicked the safety on his gun then twirled it around his finger. He grinned. "Got it. You're welcome."
Devon rolled her eyes. "You can be such a cocky prick sometimes, Thomas."
Thomas shrugged. "So, uh, now they're all dead, can we leave?" He looked at Devon and the new teen pointedly.
Matt shot Thomas a dry glance, finally wresting the new magazine free and moving to reload the gun. He ejected the old magazine, slipped the new one in and pulled the slide back in a smooth movement.
Smooth apart from the part where he caught his finger in the slide snapping back, biting back a curse and nearly dropping the gun. He wasn't exactly well practised. "Yeah, uh, thanks." he muttered, before his eyes went over to the girl who'd been hanging upside down.
They widened in recognition. "You've got to be kidding me," he said, gaping, "Devon?"
The brunette paused, her hand halfway through her hair. "You know, I knew I remembered that accent," Devon commented almost bitterly. "Hello again. Matt."
Thomas glanced between the two teens. "You two know each other?"
Devon nodded. "You remember that guy I was telling you about on the way here? Well, he's him." She gestured towards Matt.
Thomas looked at Matt in disbelief. He laughed. "Oh, this is too good to be true." He extended a hand out to Matt. "I'm Thomas."
"You were talking about me?" Matt raised an eyebrow, "We're in the middle of a zombie apocalypse, and you were talking about... me? Like, really? Come on. Aren't there more pressing matters?"
Matt took Thomas' hand and shook it, before shaking his head. "Matt. I'm Matt. Soo... what version of events have you gotten?"
"Not much. Just that-"
"You know what! It doesn't matter," Devon interrupted. She ran a hand through her hair again. "Can we just get out of here already?"
Thomas repressed a grin. "Whatever Devon. You know we're gonna talk about it at some point." He looked at Matt. "Although she is right, we should probably get out of here. What do you say?"
Matt nodded his head with an awkward glance away, back down at the trolley across the street. "Er..." he sighed, "I guess if you two want to come back to my place, you can. I think I'm the only person still around my neighbourhood. I have things fairly well set up."
He turned and started to make his way carefully back down the pile of rubble, shoving his pistol away.
"Yeah right-"
"We're definitely up for coming." This time it was Thomas who did the interrupting. Devon shot Thomas a dirty look. He just grinned broadly. "We have some dried food and Devon has granola bars I know she'd be willing to share."
Thomas side-stepped out of range of Devon's swing. She was brooding furiously.
"Maybe while we eat we can talk about what life was like before the outbreak, eh?" Thomas watched Devon for a reaction. He chuckled as she merely crossed her arms and looked the other way. "What's the matter Dev? Not feeling sociable today? That's fine. I'll just talk with your old friend, Matt, here."
Thomas stepped forward and clamped an arm around Matt's shoulders. "So Matt. You - uh - play any video games?" Thomas chuckled again at Devon's attitude.
Matt raised an eyebrow for a second time as Thomas caught up to him and slung his arm over his shoulder. He glanced up questioningly at the slightly taller man. "Uhh, yeah? Yeah, that's pretty much ninety percent of what I do these days. I figure going outside isn't as healthy as it used to be. A lot more death going around." The teen flashed a lopsided grin, "The other day I caught myself playing left for dead. It was a weird moment, playing a zombie apocalypse game in the middle of the zombie apocalypse."
He glanced away with a laugh, "I'm just glad there aren't any tanks in the real version."
It had been a fair while since Matt had had any company - close to the full four months since the outbreak - and he was quite happy to finally have people to talk to ... even if one of them was Devon. As a result, he was decidedly less disgruntled than the girl herself.
"Yeah. Tanks would be kinda bad. I'm jealous though! I haven't played any video games since this whole thing began. I haven't even stayed in one place long enough to try and scavenge for things like that." Thomas paused to reflect. "I think since Devon and I have joined up, the longest we've stayed anywhere has been four days. We're constantly on the move. Isn't that right, Devon?"
Devon nodded. "Yeah. It's always seemed safer to just keep moving," she added.
"When we get back to your place, you've got to let me play something with you. Although I'm sure by now you're hella awesome at everything and will kick my butt." Thomas grinned at Matt. "Sound like a plan?"
"Sure," Matt said, grinning back, "But, just to note, I was already hella awesome before all this. I'm just sayin'."
It took around fifteen minutes for the three to walk from the gas station where Matt retrieved his trolley of supplies to the smaller suburban neighbourhood where his house was. The area seemed, as he had said, totally abandoned. The few cars left there had clearly been ransacked for whatever was inside, as had many of the buildings.
Matt led the other two teens to a two-storey house about halfway down the road, much the same as all the rest on the street. The only oddity was that the house next door was entirely barred up on its bottom floor - the windows, the door, everything was barricaded shut.
The door to the house they approached wasn't locked, and Matt left his trolley outside, hauling one of the propane tanks out, before glancing at the other two. "If you guys wanna take the other two, that'd be great. Would save me making three trips."
Devon and Thomas each grabbed a propane tank. They followed Matt towards the house, but Devon stopped before entering. She glanced at the house he was leading them into and the boarded up house next door.
"What is it, Devon?" Thomas asked, turning around to face her.
"Matt, I thought that was your house. Not this one. Why are we going in here?" Devon gestured to the boarded up house.
"I haven't lasted this long by making it easy to get in," Matt replied, heading straight for the stairs of the obviously not lived-in house, "Most people would consider a house that boarded up too much effort to try scavenging from, and would assume nobody lives there. Haven't been murdered in my sleep yet, to my knowledge, so I'm guessing it works."
He led the way up the stairs and across to a room on the side of the house facing his home. In the hallway outside was a long stretch of wooden planks, nailed together. Matt set his tank down and maneuvered the haphazard D.I.Y project over to the window.
"I made this myself. Can you tell from the jutting nails and unevenness that I'm a natural at woodwork? They should hire me to rebuild this place if they ever get rid of the zombies." he said as he slid the boards out towards the opposite window.
"That's really smart," Thomas commented after Matt explained why they were entering the empty house and not his.
When Matt pulled out the planks, Devon couldn't hide the worried look that came across her face. She put down the propane tank she was carrying. "Umm, Matt? Are you sure that's going to hold all three of us crossing?"
"You just dangled in the middle of a building, multiple stories up and down, but you're scared to cross a wooden plank only one story above the ground?" Thomas asked Devon, his eyebrows raised.
Devon shrugged. "I'm just... You know, worried, is all. I'd rather not break a leg here of all places."
"If you're worried," Matt said, giving Devon a dry look, "Then, I dunno, maybe wait and go one at a time? I mean, that seems really obvious to me, but I'm sure you'd have figured it out in about five minutes, so don't feel too bad."
The boy rolled his eyes as he turned, grabbing his tank and pulling himself up and out the window onto the plank. He carefully made his way across, staying low. The plank creaked a few times, but held as he reached the other side and slid the window of his house up fully and dropped in.
"Alright, follow across," he called back over, "If you've trodden in zombie, leave your shoes at the door... window. I don't want dead person walked into my carpets."
Thomas glanced at Devon then the plank. He grabbed both propane tanks and rolled them ahead of himself as he crossed. Thomas passed the propane tanks to Matt before dropping into the window. Despite her inhibitions about the makeshift bridge holding up, Devon crossed the plank quickly. Thomas helped her through the window. The two unlaced their hiking boots and deposited them by the window, as requested.
"Now that that's done, where would you like us to put these tanks?" Thomas asked Matt. "And is there some place we can possibly put our backpacks? I need a break."
Devon just rubbed her shoulders. The straps were digging in and she was ready to cut the remaining harness off as well. She was going to be bruised everywhere tomorrow.
The interior of Matt's house was, by and large, fairly normal for a small house in the suburbs. It was also, as one might expect from a house lived in by a lone teenager for the last four months, somewhat cluttered. There wasn't a great deal of order to where various supplies, tools and other belongings had been shoved, and the rooms that Matt didn't use were immediately apparent as the majority of their floors were covered in such things.
"Just uh, shove them in that room there," Matt said, pointing off in the direction of the smaller room that had been his before he moved everything into the larger room that had been his mother's. "And you can dump your packs... uh, wherever. Maybe downstairs in the main room, there's plenty of space there."
Matt himself made his way through into the bedroom, where a mid-sized propane generator was perched by the window - the edges of which were slightly stained black from exhaust fumes. A few moments of fiddling with the fuel line and the new tank was hooked up, and power reacquired. Of course, he didn't switch it on yet.
The teen peered out of his window down at the yard below, grinning as he spotted something. A lone zombie, both of its arms sheered off at the elbow, had trapped itself inside a few weeks ago, and he hadn't had the heart (or the spare bullets) to finish it off. He just let it wander around the fenced and barricaded garden, and occasionally tossed it a piece of jerky.
Thomas took the propane tanks into the room Matt pointed out. He happened to glance out the window after putting down the tanks. What he saw made him take a second look.
"Uh. Matt? Is that? In the back? What-? Uh? Is that an infected?" Thomas asked, half aghast, half laughing at the zombie's plight.
"Oh, that's just Derrick," Matt replied cheerfully, "He's harmless, mostly, unless you get through the planks all over the back door and decide to feed yourself to him. I figured it was easier to leave him there than go out and deal with him."
"You have a pet zombie?" Devon asked in disbelief. Thomas just laughed.
"I'm starting to like you more and more," Thomas said to Matt. His sides were beginning to ache from laughing so much.
Devon shook her head and let out a breath. "You boys are so weird. I'm going to put my backpack down. And I'm taking this harness off, too." She left the room and went downstairs.
"Oh, yeah! I'd forgotten about that." Thomas looked down at the harness still wrapped around himself. "Oh well. It can wait until later. Hey Matt. Where are those video games you were talking about?"
Matt grinned as Devon left the room, shaking his head after her. "What is there not to appreciate about a pet zombie? It's like ... a guard dog. Yeah. And it probably makes more people think this place is deserted."
He turned his attention back to Thomas, nodding towards a cabinet off to the side. There was a TV set against one of the walls of the room, hooked up to an xbox, with a variety of other consoles laid nearby. "Right here. I've uh, expanded my collection a bit since things went to hell. Nobody else seems to be looting Gamestop. Can't imagine why."
Priorities, maybe? Psh. What were they?
Matt pulled the cabinet open to reveal a not unimpressive stack of games, most looking like they'd been pulled straight from the shelf - a lot still in their wrappers. "So... Thomas," he began as he started to flick through the games, "I already know Devon, unfortunately, but if you're both gonna be hanging around here, I figure I should get to know you too. Where're you from?"
Thomas was mightily impressed by the sight multiple consoles and the many, many games. He unclipped his backpack and let it drop to the floor with a solid thud before moving to browse through the games along side Matt. The harness was forgotten about again.
"Me? I'm from Kansas originally. But then my grandpa died and my mom got some huge windfall from that - she was an only child. And my dad apparently made some good stock investments, so we moved to New York, New York. The Big Apple, baby. That was when I was six or seven. Huge change, but one I liked. Lived there until, well, all this happened. Couple days in, maybe a week or so, I ran into Devon, and she and I joined up. We've been traveling around ever since." Thomas paused in his browsing and talking. He turned towards Matt. "You're actually the first person either of us have run into. I mean, there was this one person a month or so back, but she ended up infected like the rest of 'em."
Matt listened with interest to Thomas, nodding along at appropriate moments. "The same with me. That you guys are the first people I've really met since everything happened, I mean. I've run into a few people here and there but never for long and I never trusted them further than I could throw them."
Thomas shrugged. "But enough about that. Your turn to answer a question." He continued browsing through the games, repressing a grin. "What exactly happened between you and Devon? I want to know your side of the story. I'll never get it with her around, and, well," he pauses and gestures, "she's not up here right now."
A dry smirk found its way to Matt's face at Thomas' question, and the teen shook his head with a sigh. "It's ridiculous, honestly. Petty, stupid, high-school drama that I'm embarrassed to be involved in." he said. "The long and short of it is this: we had a science project together last year, she had a thing for me but I bat for the other team. She didn't take it very well and decided she was going to be a bit of a bitch about it from there on. Used to get on my case all the fucking time for the stupidest things."
He rolled his eyes, "I like to think maybe we've grown up enough to just pretend it never happened, but I don't hold out much hope."
Thomas looked blankly at Matt. "Bat for the other team?" he repeated quietly. He thought it over a second. His hand resounded smartly on his forehead when he realized what Matt meant.
"Right, right, right. Makes much more sense now." Thomas chuckled, he couldn't help himself. "I can definitely see Devon overreacting over something like that. Dang. That sucks that she's still grudging about it."
Thomas grinned, bemused, at Matt. "That must mean she was crushing hard on you. Wow, and you completely put her down, too." Thomas chuckled again. "Now I understand why she got so worked up when I teased her about it earlier. You know, when she first brought you guys up."
Thomas dropped down to a squat. The tightness of the rope around his thighs reminded Thomas of the harness he had still yet to cut off. "Ah, crud. Forgot about this thing again." He checked his pockets quickly. "And Devon took the knife with her."
Thomas looked at Matt. "You wouldn't by any chance have a knife on you, would you? Or be any good with untying knots? That's typically Devon's domain. I just tie them. Undoing them is not my thing." He let out a short, embarrassed laugh.
"I have a knife downstairs, but I mean, I can't imagine untying a knot can be that hard," Matt raised an eyebrow, smirking, "Since by the time I go down there and get the damn knife Devon will probably come back anyway, with hers, I might as well give it a shot..?"
He shrugged, "What's so bad about them anyway? Are they like ... monkey-pigmy-barrel-sailor's-windsor-gordian knots? I uh, never did scouts, if you can't tell."
Thomas laughed. "Something like that. Did I mention that my other grandfather was a scout master? I never did scouts either, or at least, not officially. Heh."
"That beats my granddad," Matt replied, snorting, "All he ever did was swear at nurses and fail to recognise us when we visited. Grumpy old git." He crouched down beside Thomas, taking an experimental tug of the first knot at the older boy's waist. "Hrm. I'll give it ago, but no promises."
The thing was fiddly and the rope was thick, which only made the job harder. It was after about a minute of tugging and adjusting the thing a few millimetres at a time that Matt finally managed to undo it. "You know," he remarked as he moved onto the next one, "From the door, this probably looks dodgy as fuck."
"What in the hell are you two doing?" came Devon's dumfounded voice from the door. Her southern drawl was amplified by the slow drawing out of her question.
Thomas's face turned red, but he burst into laughter anyway. "Matt, you must've had some sixth sense she was coming up or something."
Devon leaned against the door frame, arms crossed. "Why, Thomas. I didn't know you swung that way, too. Things make so much more sense now."
Thomas shot Devon a nasty look. "It shouldn't matter to you whether I do or not. But, for the record, he's helping me get my harness off since you ran off with the knife."
Devon just shook her head. She took the pocket knife out of her back pocket and tossed it to Thomas. "Here then."
Matt had half-turned, half-fallen to the side when Devon appeared in the doorway, ending up sat cross-legged next to Thomas with a goofy grin on his face - only ever so slightly tinged with red. "Would that be making it a theme, I wonder?" he asked nobody in particular, chuckling. He gave Devon a mock salute, "Just helpin' out, y'know?"
Devon rolled her eyes and stepped away from the door. She joined the guys on the floor. "I thought you two were going to play video games. I wasn't going to come back up here except I'm cold and I don't remember where you keep your blankets, Matt. Plus, I'm hungry and I kinda figured we'd all want to eat together."
"Ah, yes. Your weird thing about eating alone," Thomas commented, flipping the pocket knife open. He cut through the rope still holding on to him. "Although now that you mention it, I'm hungry, too. Matt?"
Matt nodded, "I'll cart the generator downstairs then, microwave something. Shame I can't figure out how to hook the oven or the cooker up to it, but I guess hot food of any sort is better than what most people have these days. Not looking forward to the day I can't find any more fuel..."
He grimaced. "No more microwave, no more video games. A sad sad day." He made his way over to the generator and hefted it, and the small tank in his arms. "Let's go then, ladies first."
Devon placed a hand on Matt's arm. "Thank you," she told him honestly. A half smile was all Devon could truly muster for Matt, but it was more than she'd given him in a long time.
Matt looked back at Devon with genuine surprise, hesitating for a moment before nodding. "... I'm just doing what anyone half-decent would." he replied, before returning the half-hearted smile.
Thomas raised an eyebrow at Matt as Devon left the room to return downstairs. "Is it bad if I say I'm impressed?"
The other boy gave Thomas a confused glance, obviously somewhat bemused by Devon's uncharacteristic moment of sincerity. "Impressed?" he questioned.
"Mmhmm. By both of you, really. Mainly Devon though. It took a lot for her to suck up her pride and do that. In the few months that I've known her, she has never done that. Hell, she almost died today because she refused to put aside her pride and wait for me. So yes. I am very impressed with my partner." Thomas nodded as he reflected.
"By the way, you want help with those?" Thomas gestured to the generator and propane tank.
"That'd be helpful, yeah," Matt laughed, "I'm sort of a wuss and this is kinda heavy, so, y'know."
He nodded his head slowly, "Yeah, you're right, I guess. I mean, it was hardly a big deal... Or, it never should have been. Maybe a few months apart in the middle of an apocalypse helped put it in perspective. I think romance is far from anyone's priority these days."
Thomas took the generator from Matt. "Yeah. Romance. Definitely not a priority." Thomas cleared his throat and shifted the generator under his arm. "C'mon. Let's get downstairs."
Name: Matthew Walker