I fought the Law...the Law won {Sera}

[sera]

She didn't really like that he had the sack with all the guns but it was the heavier of the two and well...like it or not, they were stuck together right now. Hopefully his sense of self-preservation would mean he wouldn't double cross her. She still had the keys for the truck on her belt. He wouldn't get too far without her anyway. It was one small, cold comfort.

Pulling the tools from her backpack she dropped them on the table just long enough to refold the blueprints and stash them in the thigh pocket of her BDU pants. Grabbing them up again she was rocked back at the shoulder bump and had to place her foot back to maintain her balance, shooting a glare at the huge man as he walked past her, and gritting her teeth. Oh he was going to be one great big pain in her ass wasn't he?

Grabbing the tools she started off in the same direction, hearing the Walkers closeby, creeping silently on the balls of her feet as she neared an area that was close to them. Even in the heavy combat style boots she work she made no noise, no sound to alert them to her prescence. She was like a mouse, slipping through the dark areas without a sound. It had helped her stay alive this long. She hoped it would last a little while longer.

Luckily the door between them and the supply closet was sealed off, the Walkers on the other side of it trapped out there. Stepping into the closet she nodded to him and whispered as she took out her flashlight. "Get the flashbangs out of the bag. We'll need them at the ready when we get topside and there won't be any room to get them out in the access tunnel." Her eyes looked him over a moment, not voicing the concern she had about his size and the access tunnel. They'd cross that bridge when they got there.

Moving to the hatch at the back of the closet she put the small flashlight in her teeth as she dropped to her knees, the tools working on the bolted hatch. In the dim gleam the sweat on her arms show the strain her her muscles as she forced the bolts to turn, never once asking for help, nor expecting any. She worked at the bolts steadily until one by one they eventually gave and came loose. One hand quickly pressed against the metal of the hatch as she got the last bolt loose to hold it in place before she reached back over her head and dropped the tools into her stuffed backpack.

With both hands she eased the metal hatch off and set it on the floor, scooting it to the side before slipping out of her backpack and holding it by the straps. The small flashlight was plucked from her mouth and slipped into a pocket as she looked back at him. "Just follow my lead. When we get to the upshot you might want to take point. I know I'm stating the obvious here but you'll be able to lift the manhole cover off faster than me and that's when we'll need the speed. I'll be right on your back." She nodded toward the grenades he held. Keep those where you can get to them fast. You know how to use 'em right?"

She was glad of the darkness. It hid the fine tremor of fear and over exertion that swamped her. if they made it out of this alive she felt as though she could sleep for a week and still not be recovered. But the odds of getting out of it alive...they weren't great.

"One more thing. If I get bit...I expect you to do the right thing. End me right there and then. I'd rather be dead than be one of those things and I promise...I won't hesitate to do the same for you." It was hard to say of that was a promise or a threat. Either way it was a fate that was better than living on in that mindless existence of the plague that walked all around them.

[orourke]

The smirk on his lips for the little payback faded quickly as he contemplated what they were about to do. Who would say he would be teaming up with a cop? If it was before, he’d tell her to go to hell, but as things were…he needed her help just as she needed his. Odds were bleak and they could very well not be able to pull it off, but what was the other choice? No, if he would die, he would take down as many as the undead bastards down with him as he could. It was time to push differences aside and work as a team, so he could live to be a jerk another day.

His steps were as soft as he could manage it, trying to make no sound as he moved, which was somewhat hard for such a heavy guy, he wasn’t exactly used to be stealth. His eyes scanned everything on the way thoroughly, making sure there were no surprises for them along the way that would jeopardize everything, but so far seemed luck was on their side for the moment even if he could hear them wandering about in the other room, besides that door.

When she spoke of the flashbangs, he placed sown the bag he was carrying and unzipped it. Hallelujah! Those would sell on the streets for quite some money, but with the world gone to hell, who would he be selling it to, or what money would be worth for anyways? At least they had a good amount of firepower.

Grabbing a couple of the flashbangs, he pushed them on his jeans pockets before zipping back the bag and pulling the strap over his shoulder. His jeans, muscle shirt and boots didn’t exactly serve much as protection, but it kept his movements unrestricted.

“You keep your head focused on the task girl,” he said in a whisper, “I saw you coppers use those enough to know how to use them. You better be worried to keep up when we’re on the run.”

Yeah, he was impressed how she worked on that panel, when she was visibly strained, but he kept his mouth shut about it, not once offering to help. O’Rourke respected her attitude, maybe she would live instead of being appetizer for the walkers as he made a break for it.

“Don’t worry about it, I won’t hesitate before putting a bullet through your head,” he replied with a smirk, “I’m the bad guy remember? That is what I do best.”

Turning his head towards the access tunnel, he groaned. It would be a tight fit for him. A small thing like her would go through without trouble, but him? That would be a pain.

Following her lead, he moved into the darkness, his muscles straining as he forced himself further down, damned small assed whiners that made that passage. But he squeezed himself the best he could and kept his complaints to himself. Luckily it wasn’t all that long before they reached the manhole to the parking lot. His fingers grasped it and pushed forward slowly, peeking outside he could see the dragging feet of the dead as they wandered around aimlessly, none of the looking down towards them, he waited for a break in the right moment to make a move, placing the manhole cover down silently and pushing himself up he saw as Arcenaux showed in his field of view before he reached for one of the flashbang grenades, pulled the pin and threw it as far as he could. As the explosion sounded off and the dead stirred, running towards the sound like a pack of rabid dogs, he was already on the run, pulling as much distance from the stenchies as possible.

But as the girl had mentioned, it also attracted the others from the other direction and he could hear their screams, hear their steps running towards them. Grabbing the other grenade, he pulled the pin and threw it to the right before pulling Arcenaux’s hand and pulling her down with him behind one of the parked cars just before the first batch of walkers run past him, screaming like mad towards the noise.

One of them however, stopped and smelled the air as if it had spotted something. O’Rourke hand moved to grab hold of the pistol tucked away in his belt and waited to see if the walker would keep on or not.

[sera]

"My head is focused on the task you jackass." she growled a bit as readied herself for the journey ahead, the most dangerous part of this escape plan. She was irritable, scared, exhausted and still had miles to go before rest was even an option. It made her a bit snippy. She didn't even look back at him as she spoke those words through her gritted teeth. His reassurances of taking her out weren't very reassuring. She hoped he was smart enough to realize they were better together than apart and not just try to grease her as soon as they reached the SWAT truck. It was just a chance she had to take.

Without another word she slipped into the shaft with one last glare at his bald head, dragging her backpack along with her. At least he'd be a bit uncomfortable in this shaft. It was a small thing, narrow and confining and dark and she had to bite back the bile that threatened to rise along with the instinctive panic of being in a small dark space once more. It would seem the Universe was just playing one huge terrifying sick joke on her over and over, making her face horrors upon horrors and her worst fears coming to fruition.

There was a brief moment in the shaft when she froze, fear paralyzing her muscles as the darkness closed in around her and she gulped a deep breath, counting in her head back from ten to calm herself, hoping he just thought she was making sure which direction they needed to go as she crawled ahead of him. But her determination was stronger than her fear and her survival instinct more fierce as she got her paralyzed limbs moving again. It had been all of a few seconds but to her it seemed like she'd been frozen there for hours.

Breath coming in shallow gasps she saw the faint light ahead and moved faster, going past it so that he could take point. She was already slipping the backpack on as he began to climb up to the manhole cover and had one gun pulled, silencer on it and ready, the safety off. She climbed with one hand on the rungs and the other wrapped around the gun as they went up, pausing as he listened and waited.

The instant he was moving up and daylight shone through the hole above them she felt re-energized moving fast and agile up the rung to stand beside him a moment before he threw the grenade, taking off at a sprint toward the chain link fence that housed the secured vehicles. It was chaos up here, worse that it had looked on the monitors inside the safety of the dispatch room. Somehow even though she knew it was real then it just hadn't sank in completely until she was out here and experienced it.

This world was no longer the world she knew. It was as if she'd been dropped off on some unfamiliar planet that was a cruel parody of her own. She saw deteriorating faces of people she had known, seeing their soulless and and mindless eyes glazed over and milky, wounded, walking, corpses on their feet. These were the people she saw everyday. People she'd smiled to and talked to and cared about. Old folks, kids, they were all there. No one, it seemed, had been spared. No one....but them.

She was a few steps ahead of him when he reached out and grabbed her hand, pulling her down hard to the ground behind one of the parked cars, watching with a hyper intensity that only a panic and adrenaline laced blood can create. The kind of intensity that makes you hear the sweat seeping from your pores. She watched the Walker through the glass of the car's window as it sniffed the air, looking for them, knowing they were there. She could feel it. She'd seen what had happened to the others on the monitors. She knew what would happen if it did spot them and come for them. The others would follow, like bees following pheromones.

Their window of opportunity was wearing out, the flashbangs wouldn't keep them covered for long. Making a decision in that instant she came up to a standing position, raising her gun in one fluid movement as she did. Without flinching, without hesitation, she squeezed the trigger on the silenced gun and put a slug of lead right between the eyes of the man that had once been one of her co-workers and friends. She'd spent many nights beside him in the radio room. Had seen the pictures of his kids, had mourned with him at his mother's funeral. But in her mind she knew, she was doing him a favor. The thing before her was no longer her friend. It was a shell, a walking husk a human being. Mindless.

The second after the shot was fired she was running again, not even looking back to see if O'Rourke was following. She didn't need to. She heard his boots hitting the pavement as they raced to the fence and to relative safety. Chain link wouldn't hold a mob of them long. She had to move move move! The gun was tucked into her holster as she ran. As the fence approached she lept for it, fingers curling into the chain link, biting into her skin and making her hands bleed but she didn't stop, muscles straining as she pulled herself up, climbing for the top.

Out of the corners of her eyes she saw them coming. They'd seen them. They were coming at them en-mass. As she reached the top of the fence she hauled herself over and sat atop it, one leg on the free side and one on the Walker side for balance, pulling her gun and starting to pick them off to buy O'Rourke time. She was smaller, faster. She'd scaled the fence far quicker than he and now, she was covering the back of a convicted felon. What world was this?

[orourke]

After being caged for weeks, the nightmare around him had become a familiar scene. Walking, decomposing bodies, a maniacal hunger visible in their eyes and nothing else, no trace of humanity left. But he was wide awake on this nightmare and there were no bars to keep him safe this time around.

His hand grasping the pistol, his finger sliding onto the trigger as the walker sniffed the air around them, a snarl growing in its lips. It wasn’t walking away, it knew they were there. But before he could move, Arcenaux took initiative and shot the undead right between the eyes. A perfectly aimed shot, this girl knew how to fire a gun and she was already running again towards the fence. O’Rourke was quick to follow, but being the big guy, his movements weren’t as fast or fluid as hers. He could hear them screaming right behind him, feel the hot breath in the back of his neck, it all urged him to run faster even if his legs begged him to stop, the starvation from the last weeks weighing heavily on him. The ominous sound of thunder making the skies flash momentary with the lightning bolt, a storm was coming, probably the last he would see in his life.

And then he heard that noise, looked back for a split second and saw the walker right behind him falling. Turning his face back to the fence, he saw the cop girl there, firing at the dead. She was helping him, doing the right thing. He didn’t have time to think if he would do the same in her place, probably not, but he had bigger pressing problems at the moment as climbing that fence.

His hands grasped at it, pushing himself up, his feet following with great effort when he felt hands grabbing his boot, teeth trying to chew through the material. O’Rourke reacted quickly, kicking backwards, hearing the sickening noise of a breaking skull and felt the pull on his feet disappear and continued to climb the fence.

“No dinner tonight asshole!”

He was tired, starved still, but he refused to stop. The indomitable spirit of survival personified, it was relentless, and only one thing mattered…survival.

Once he reached the top, his large arm enveloped Arcenaux’s waist and pulled her over the fence with him, both landing onto the other side with a loud thump, O’Rourke falling on top of her, his eyes locking into hers for only a moment before he blinked and pushed himself up, his respiration heavy as he tried to collect his breath, he waited for her to get up as well. The walkers were already pushing the fence, trying to topple it, attempting to climb it with clumsy coordination.

O’Rourke grabbed the pistol from his belt, pointed it towards Arcenaux and pulled the trigger. He felt the flash of heat reverberate through his arm as the bullet left the barrel, hitting its target with deadly accuracy, the body falling with a silent thud, motionless, dead.

Heavy rain started to pour from the skies, a merciful soothing effect to his strained muscles, helping him to breathe easier as he stepped over the still corpse and finally saw the SWAT truck, he never figured he would be happy to see one in his life. He could have left the girl there, let her become snack for the dead, just get the keys and get the hell out of there, he knew she would be trouble, trying to do the right thing, like she had done saving his ass back there.

Looking back over the walker’s corpse, he saw Arcenaux still standing there looking at him.

“What is the matter girl? You better don’t get cozy because I saved your life, I was only repaying your stupid stunt, now let’s keep moving.”

[sera]

She was firing even as she was tackled and that big arm wrapped around her waist, making her fall backwards. She heard the thud of their bodies and the crack of her own skull as she hit the pavement behind her, seeing bright spots in her field of vision briefly. He'd almost knocked her unconscious. Was it intentional? She blinked as she looked up and her eyes registered his locked on her own a split second and his heavy body pressed down on her own, stealing her breath. But she was in survival mode now, the adrenaline pumping through her veins, screaming at her to get up.

As she stood hastily she saw O'Rourke raising the gun towards her and panic and disbelief flashed through her eyes as she began to raise her own gun toward him but his shot fired off before her own could even be pulled and she looked at him in stunned shock and waited for the pain to hit her. But there wasn't any. It seemed like time had crawled to a stop in that small space of seconds, spinning out to hours as she looked behind herself, hearing the sound of something hitting the ground and saw the Walker he'd taken down behind her.

She stood there, processing it all as he walked past her and his heavy footsteps sounded, looking at the fence where the Walkers clawed and pushed on the chainlink, trying to get to them, the face of all the people she once knew, now soulless and hungry.She had to look away, it broke her heart too much, chilled her to the bone. Tears welled in her eyes.

Her gaze turned back to the retreating back. He'd saved her. She hadn't even heard the Walker creeping up behind her. Why? Why did he bother? He could have just left her there to die and gotten away. One less cop to be a pain in his ass. It didn't matter that she really wasn't a cop. He didn't know that. So why?

His words dragged her back, making her angrily wipe those tears away from her eyes as she turned toward him and began to jog to catch up. "Cozy is the last thing I'd think about getting with you O'Rourke." she growled as they ran toward the huge behemoth of a thing was the SWAT truck, her hand hand already slipped the GLOCK back into her holster and was grabbing keys from her belt loop and had the right one out by the time they reached it.

The fence was starting to give. The top was buckling downward. It would be a matter of seconds now. She got the passenger's side open and ran around the front to the driver's door, waiting for O'Rourke to open it, key in hand just in case he didn't. But to her surprise he pulled the lock up just as she was getting to the door. Hauling herself up into it and the ignition key fitting into the slot as she slid into the seat she cranked the engine and gunned it to get the fluids going.

"Hang onto something!" she said as she dropped the engine into gear and peeled out from the parking space, aiming for the gates. The fence was down and the Walker's were coming at them. She didn't hesitate as she hit the accelerator and aimed straight for the locked gates. She hoped she was right about this truck. She knew it's specs. Knew what it should be capable of but she hoped it wasn't just hype from the company as the locked gates got closer. Clenching her jaw She gunned it and the gates rushed at them. She didn't even look over at O'Rourke as she hit the gates and they popped open like a twig snapping, the sound of metal grating against metal loud and sparks flying from the chain that had held the padlock closed.

They were free. At least from the station. She let out a trembling breath as she guided the SWAT truck through the streets, navigating it towards the smaller backroads. Less traffic meant less people which meant less chance of Walkers. "We made it." she breathed as she plowed past a car that was parked out in the street, smoldering and abandoned. They still had to get out of town, that was true but she had honestly never thought that she would make it out of the police station alive.

[orourke]

O’Rourke raised his face and let the rain wash down his face, it was a welcomed sensation after being hauled up in a hole for weeks, baking in the merciless heat of Baton Rouge. The storm carried with it the stench of the rotting corpses around them, a wide awake nightmare…not that his life was that great before anyways, at least he was still human. And hadn’t lost his touch of getting under the skin of others it seemed by Arcenaux’s reaction.

He was a world class jerk, kept people on edge, kept them from getting too close. He didn’t want to owe the cop girl, hell, he didn’t like to owe anything to anyone. Always took care of his own problems, never asked for help…it always had been Jeff and him against the world, they had each other back. Now he was alone, it meant he had to be tougher. And sure as hell he wasn’t going to have to be in debt with a cop, no matter if she did have a cute hear.


That fence wasn’t going to hold forever, it was obvious they wouldn’t have long before the dead swarmed in, but by that time they were already locking themselves into the SWAT truck and he eased himself into the seat. The girl had the engine running and before the stenchies came too close to try to eat through the truck’s armor, they made a break for it, his muscles tensing only slightly as they smashed through the gate and gained the streets.

“Who would figure that I would bust out of prison with a damn cop?” he asked with his voice tainted by sarcasm, a smirk coming to his lips.

The world outside seemed grim, dark, a real pos apocalyptic site where the only ones he’d see still standing were already dead. In a way, it wasn’t all that different from what it had been before. He was still rolled into a steel cage and everyone out was just dying to get a piece of him. This time around however, his cage had wheels.

“Wake up and smell the corpses princess. All we did was getting out, now where do we go from here? If there was anything left, don’t you think they would have reclaimed the city? Or at least blow it to kingdom come? We need to get away from the cities as possible, the country, the swamps, the woods…any place where there might be less of those freaking stenchies around.”

His head leaned back heavily onto his seat and closed his eyes for a moment. O’Rourke felt like he could sleep for a week if he could, the sound of the engine seemed like a soft purr after all the freaking moaning, if he never heard any more of those damned walkers, it would still be too soon…but chances were he would still see many of them.

One of his eyes opened and he peeked at Arcenaux. Stupid girl had stopped to save his ass, he was sure she would play the hero again if she had the opportunity, and like Ramirez, being a hero only got you dead. He knew that, didn’t he? And yet he saved her back…stupid. But no, he was no hero at all, he believed he knew enough of the world to know if there was anyone alive out there, they would try to kill them to steal the weapons and the truck…and that would be their last mistake.