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Chapter 4 - Race

Slowly trickling down, glinting in the morning light, skipping over the chunks of bile coagulating on the smooth steel blade, the murky drop of walker blood fell to the ground, staining the sidewalk as they continued on. Looking vaguely behind them, eyes darting about distractedly as he kept an eye out for the signs of a mob on their tail, Glenn softly edged Jeanie's trembling arm further over his shoulder, letting loose a gentle whoosh of air as she tripped over an abandoned suitcase, instinctively shifting closer to him for support.

In truth, she was holding him up as much as he was holding her, both still exhausted and broken, muscles chafing against bone and aching terribly as they walked, limping with a deeply throbbing pain penetrating every movement. Deciding that he had caused enough agony to her gaping shoulder wound, guiltily observing as she tried to pull a sweater on when they stopped for a brief reprise back at an abandoned MARTA station, grimacing with the pain, he had softly pushed the scavenged garment over her head, gently moved her quaking hands aside and taken her right arm, hooking it over his back and around to his front, pulling her against him and allowing her head to fall to the crook of his sweat-drenched neck, pale and silent. Wiping at his saturated forehead, Glenn sighed.

It was going to be a long day.

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That morning, sunlight already beginning to blind his resting eyes, Glenn had stirred to find her awake, at the edge of the roof, holding stiffly onto the brick. Something in her stance alarmed him, and he snapped up, his dazed head going lightheaded for a moment as a rush of blood flooded his brain.

Opening his mouth, about to croak out a question, she snapped around with an abrupt swivel, her eyes widening as she heard him, a hand flying up to her mouth, immediately silencing him. He stared at her, confused, his eyes suddenly catching on the machete glinting in her hands, his entire body tensing with an unexpected spurt of fear. However, instead of betraying every trust in humanity he still maintained, she carefully walked back over to him, handed him the machete, and whispered to him as low as humanly possible, eyes giving him a meaningful push, "We're leaving. Now."

Instead of giving into temptation and sitting back for an explanation, her sharp, tense gaze and sickeningly pale skin stirred him to clumsily stand, ignoring any lingering pain in his limbs, throwing his blanket over his shoulder before stuffing it into his bag, heaving his load onto his back. Turning, he found her doing the same, her giant hiking bag haphazardly flung over her uninjured shoulder. Suddenly remembering his attempt to mend the giant gash carved into her flesh, he glanced down to the bandage, finding the gruesome sight of a dripping pool of blood, discolour spreading across her collarbone and trailing down her arm, still more poisonous looking veins strangling the flesh it covered.

Panicked, he looked up, ready to stop her from jumping down the vent she was already standing before, but she stopped him in his tracks, her knowing gaze flickering away as she stuffed her bag down the gap, "No time. Come on." With that, quickly giving him a final fleeting glance, she swung her legs up, pushed them into the vent, and slid down, a muted thump telling him she'd fallen into the room below. Alarmed by the suddenness of her exit, he quickly finished packing, gingerly shoved the intimidating weapon in his hands through his belt loop, and, wasting no time in following her, jumped down the vent, hoping that there would be a stable landing in the cards for him.

With a loud thump, he fell to the dirty carpet, a cloud of dust flying up from where he had impacted, rolling slightly with the height of the fall, a quiet, muffled groan coming from him as he bashed his leg against a grimy cleaning trolley. Looking up, wiping a smear of dirt from his face, he found her anxiously pacing before the door, silently strumming her fingers on her thigh. Finally coughing past the dust swarming his gullet, he gasped out, "What's going on?"

Not turning around, she answered, bending down to fiddle with the doorknob on the cheap wood, shaking it insistently, "We don't have any time, Glenn – they'll be done soon." Pausing, she cursed softly, a hand flying up to scrape her hair away from her sickly looking face.

Eyebrow flying up as she tore her bag open, rummaging within, he stood, leaning partially against a pile of abandoned boxes which smelled like urinal cakes, distractedly fixing his lopsided hat, "What?" She didn't reply immediately, still insistently searching her pack, and so he repeated himself, coming forward with a hesitant stumble, "Who's going to be done? With what?" Muttering under her breath, she shoved her bag away, fumbling in her pockets, hands flying over her jeans for any possible storage space. Glenn, unnerved by her continuing lack of explanation, pushed himself off of the boxes, coming forward and insistently hissing to her, "Jeanie, come on, talk to me for God's sake!"

"We don't have time." She had swivelled round to him for only a brief moment, teeth clenched, gaze strained. Taken aback, Glenn shifted away, eyes widening. She only looked on for a second more before turning away again, rummaging once more amongst her belongings with vigour. After a few minutes of silence, Glenn staying quiet as he let her work, struck by the sudden flash of desperation he had seen in her eyes, she clearly realised she would not find the elusive thing she was seeking and cursed again, hands clenching into fists, finally turning to him, voice cracking slightly, "– I don't have time." He stared at her, alarm widening his eyes as he held in his clumsy bundle of questions, gaping uselessly as she pointed swiftly to the door, swallowing thickly, "Listen, I don't have any more bobby pins – I can't pick the lock." She paused, grimacing, biting her thumb. Then, moving her hand away to stiffly gesture backwards again, she informed him heavily, "We have to knock the door down."

Eyebrows furrowing, Glenn felt his head shaking of its own accord as he vehemently protested, his hasty whisper clogged with the thick dust that was beginning to cloak them, settling into the crevices in his itchy, sweat-stained clothes, "It's gonna make too much noise – they'll hear us."

Shaking her head, she breathed out a deep sigh, "I know, but there's nothing else for it." She moved her right shoulder against the door, waiting for him to shove his bag off, nervously edging over and pushing himself up next to her, their breaths mingling in a humid haze. Eyes boring into his, she nodded steadily, "We go at the same time." There was a brief silence, where they tensed their muscles in anticipation of the impending collision, before she spoke once more, swift, "3, 2, 1-" Both of them shifted back and then slammed themselves into the wood. Grunting in pain, Jeanie's eyes squeezing tightly shut as she took an unsteady breath, they moved back, "3,2, 1-" Again, they smashed their full body weight against the door, an audible crack reverberating about it, the wood straining. Looking at each other, gasping, recognising the quickly breaking wood, they prepared themselves once more, hastily coming back, "3,2,1-"

Abruptly, the door gave way, collapsing beneath them, fragments flying off as the majority smashed against the wall with a thunderous crash. Barely holding themselves back from flying after the broken obstacle, grabbing each other for a weight to hold onto, they heaved the dusty air into their lungs for a scarce few seconds. Pausing for the slightest of moments, they looked at each other, hearing the ominous moan in the background of their shared hesitation, and then, suddenly, Jeanie furrowed her brow, shakily heaved her bag up again, and moved on, her uneven footsteps echoing down the corridor. Immediately, Glenn was behind her, his rucksack flung back in its resting place between his shoulder blades as he shifted the machete she had given him back into his grip, fingers tensing with the sudden, familiar rush of adrenaline filling his head, edging him on.

The trip down through the building was uneventful – shockingly so. Despite the largely unaffected appearance of the candy store front, he had been certain that the small block of offices shoved atop it would be house to at least a few overly dedicated workers that chanced an ultimate death in order to maintain their busy urban lifestyle. However, no walkers forced their hand as they carefully strode forward, ears and eyes primed for any hint of danger – and the only rotting smell permeating the place was that of an abandoned, rotting lunch trapped within a defunct fridge.

He stayed close to Jeanie, who was determinedly carving a path for them both despite only having a faint idea of where they were going, eyes fixed ahead and swivelling about to every open door they passed. With each step they took, despite her dogged attempt at focus on getting them out, pushing through the bizarrely long corridors lengthened by his overly alert mind, he could sense her injury catching up to her, chasing her down and gaining quickly. He had to push aside the burning urge to stop her, just for a minute, to get her to eat something, if only to bring some colour back to her frighteningly drained features – instead, remaining quiet until they reached a lone set of stairs to the ground floor, pausing. Only then was when she stopped, her legs coming to a halt as she stared down the perfectly ordinary set of steps as though they were the stairway to the depths of hell – and, he supposed, they were. Their brief reprise atop the building had come to an end, and now they were about to go back amongst the monsters that were intent on devouring them. It was an altogether disheartening thought.

Taking a deep breath, they both glanced at each other, eyes dark, and began the painfully slow descent to their exit. The steps creaked in such a excruciatingly loud way that his teeth set on edge, biting his tongue sharply as Jeanie nearly stumbled, catching herself on the banister and his immediately present arm. They walked the rest of the way down like that, her strained breathing muffled slightly as she braced herself from making too much noise, Glenn gently keeping hold of her arm, fearful that, after all she had gone through to get this far, she would be ended by an ill-timed step and tumble down some stairs. As they reached the end of the steps, he rested his free hand on his belt, tugging at the machete slightly, ready to pull it out at the slightest movement, Jeanie shifting slightly in as she turned to glance behind them, making certain that there was nothing following. Reaching the bottom of the staircase, swivelling around, they found themselves alone apart from the armies of mindless drones outside.

Smiling with some measure of relief, surprised that at least something had gone right for once, Glenn turned to Jeanie, ready to devise a plan of attack for getting across Downtown and back to Shane's Hummer – when, abruptly, she shoved herself out of his soft grip, stumbled backwards, and vomited all over the stairs they had just vacated.

Horrified, he looked on for a moment, stunned into inaction, before his senses kicked in and he hastily moved to her side, clumsy hands scraping her sweaty hair back from her all-too warm scalp, hesitantly patting her convulsing back as a spray of what basically amounted to water with a few sad flakes of salted chips floating around in it violently expelled itself from her. Uncertainly, he murmured some quiet encouragement, pulling her obstructive bag away, his own stomach, although churning at the cloying, acidic smell, slightly resistant from dealing with his suffering friends after overly wild binges. When the torrential, endless gagging stopped, gradually petering out to wet, quiet coughing as she slumped back, exhausted, he caught her again, pulling her back slightly and away from the pool at her feet, leaning her against his front and nervously putting his hand to her head, feeling the clammy heat that suffocated her temple and blurred her unfocussed gaze.

Alarm growing as the tense seconds crawled agonisingly by, he whispered to her, wary of alerting any nearby geeks, who he could hear stumbling about on the street outside, voice insistent, "Jeanie?" No response came, her eyes blinking owlishly, slow, before he repeated himself, worriedly shaking her for good measure, trying his best to avoid her injury, "Jeanie, speak to me, please."

Just when he felt the terrible panic starting to intensify, overwhelming him, she suddenly shifted, eyes coming back into focus, hands twitching. Silent, he watched her, waiting for her to speak as she looked up at him, features strained as she slowly came back to life and murmured quietly, "That's why I gave you the machete."

"What?" His quick response wasn't met with a swift answer, "What do you mean?"

"I don't think I can do this much longer," she suddenly grimaced, groaning, "It hurts." She sighed heavily, breaths strained as she continued, right hand shakily trying to reach across to her left, "My arm – shoulder – it-"

She didn't get any words out before Glenn immediately shifted her, carefully but quickly pulling her arm into his grip. He didn't even need to see underneath the bandage to assess the damage – some frightening yellow liquid had started to seep out from the sides, a steady trail of blood smeared across her arm, dripping down intermittently, veins popping around the wrapped area. Glancing away, he paled. Placing her arm gently down again, he stared at the ground. Then he looked up, a weak attempt at comfort uncertainly eeking out from him, "It'll be fine."

"…That bad, huh." He stared at her, silent, completely lost, as she elaborated, "I can see it in your face." She paused. Looking away, her head shook, her eyes straining, voice dropping to a quiet whisper, "What are we going to do?"

Wordless, his eyes flicked away, unfocussed and wide. The moans outside the cracked, blood-splattered window floated through the humid Georgian air, the intense sunlight outside pouring in and reflecting off of the coloured glass jars full of candy, a spectrum streaking across the linoleum floor, brightening a few stray leaves, withered and crushed on the hard plastic. Without thinking about it, he began to gently stroke the hand at her injured side, fingers catching in the sweat pooling around the popping veins. It probably comforted him more than her. In truth, although he couldn't say it aloud, he had no plan – he was stuck. This was why he never took anybody with him into the city, he thought dazedly to himself, thumb dragging slowly over her clammy palm that shook in his grasp. He couldn't protect anybody but himself. He could go alone – nobody to lose, then. But he couldn't – he just couldn't – do this. He wasn't a hero, despite how much he wanted to be.

Her hand abruptly gripped his, pulling him back to reality, his head flicking down, suddenly meeting her tired eyes. He vaguely wondered why she was smiling when the situation they were in was so unimaginably bleak, and managed a weak, 'What are you-' before the grip she had on his hand intensified, and she tugged his arm, rolling unsteadily away. Before he had even had a chance to protest and settle her back down again, she had grabbed a hold of a nearby counter, filthy with dust and muck that had come through a crack in the nearby window, and slowly pulled herself up.

Dumbstruck, he stared up at her, silenced by her sudden burst of strength, when her voice reached him, soft, "Your face is like an open book, you know. You should try to hide that more." She looked to him again, a saturated bang slipping back to fall across her temple, roughly cut just above her eye-line, "If you weren't such a good guy, I would tell you to leave me – but there's no point in trying, is there?" He blinked, nodding slowly, and she continued, "Well. We better get going, then."

Glenn took a moment before her words sunk in, and then jumped up, ignoring his aching legs, rejuvenated by her determination. She flicked her eyes across the countertop she was leaning heavily against as he gathered himself, her weak smile strengthening slightly upon sight of a jolly looking jar filled with little green candies, a hand reaching out to grasp it, pulling it towards her. As he came up beside her, heaving her bag atop his own, she managed to clumsily open it, plunging her hand in and grabbing as many of the things as she could, quietly looking down at them, a soft 'used to like these' drifting through the air before she gently popped one into her mouth, shoving the rest into one of her jean pockets, heedless of the grime. Looking across to him as he waited patiently, adjusting the straps on her rucksack, she frowned, brow furrowing as she gestured to the pair on his back, "Both bags?" She shook her head at his nod, "It'll kill you – physically and maybe even literally. Let me take mi-"

"-No." Her head shifted back, surprised, as he shook his own, "You can barely stand up." He paused, shifting about for a moment, "It's not too bad-" that was something of a white lie, as it was already straining his tired, weak muscles, "-it'll probably hurt tomorrow, but I can take that." Awkwardly, he smiled in an attempt at reassuring her, and she frowned, unconvinced, halting in her consumption of the much-savoured sweet. Sighing inwardly as he looked to the window, seeing a stray walker stumble jerkily across the sidewalk across the street, his smile fell slowly. Turning back to her as she finished her candy, looking out at the same one as he had been, grimacing lightly at the rotting arm that barely clung to it's decaying torso, he murmured sombrely, "Let's go."

Silent, she hesitated again before nodding, pushing away from the counter and taking the arm he outstretched, free from her machete, which stood ready in his reinvigorated right limb, an intent in mind. Helping her to reach the door, he looked at her for a final fleeting moment before they stepped out into hell, allowing them one last moment of safety and quiet.

With a forcibly optimistic 'We'll be back before evening' which neither of them really believed, he bashed the half torn off lock away, opened the door, and they hobbled out into the morning sun.

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It was evening. And they still were not back at the camp.

Unluckily for them both, despite the strange, relative emptiness of the streets they quickly made their way through, they still had to hop down alleyways whenever a walker sprouted up on the horizon. Every so often, they had to dispatch one that just wouldn't shuffle away from where they needed to go, hastily smashing their heads and quickly departing from the scene without checking if they'd been successful in their attack – as long as it was out of the way, they didn't care if the walker was dead or not. Jeanie sensed the danger before he did, oftentimes, ducking both of them down side alleys with a tug on his arm, and throwing a rock to distract the odd walker if it was possible to do so, prompting him on. It was all a bit haphazard at those moments, what with Glenn lugging along two heaving bags and a grown woman in one arm, a gleaming machete in the other - but they managed it.

By the time the sun was setting, they had just pressed themselves into a small lane at the side of the main Downtown street, both glancing up as they waited for a small group of walkers to pass. They were only a few minutes away from the car by that point, Glenn was sure – he checked the map repeatedly to make certain – and the street they had to go down to get to the abandoned train yard was usually quite empty. Though, as Glenn had quickly learnt in his solo adventures throughout the dead city, that could change in a moment.

Beside him, Jeanie leaned against the grimy cement, her eyes closed, having started to droop in the hour before, the effects of the last couple of days finally catching up to her. The sun was starting to fall away for the moon, enhancing the ever-present danger all around them as geeks melted into the shadows, cloaked by the darkness. A little while before, walking down what looked like an empty alleyway, they had received a rather unpleasant surprise in the form of a decayed walker stuck in the middle of two dumpsters, who grabbed at Glenn's leg, unseen by them both in the dying light. Glenn had immediately smashed face first into the filthy brick path, machete nearly stabbing him before he just managed to move it out of the way, narrowly avoiding the fatal point. Struck frozen by panic as the walker leaned out, clawing at his limb, he had no time to even ready his weapon before Jeanie, quick as ever, regained her balance and kicked it straight in the face with her steel-toe capped boots without hesitation, whacking its head off of the stainless steel dumpster with a thump before walloping it once more for good measure, splattering yet more gore over her caked shoes with a final stomp. Looking at each other, a breathless Glenn and Jeanie both grimaced: they were running out of time.

Shifting closer to him as he read the map for a final time, paranoia niggling at his tired mind, Jeanie whispered softly, "Are we almost there?"

He paused for a moment, staring down at the giant intersecting lines and arrows across the life-saving paper in his hands, silent. Then, folding it in again, he finally tucked it away, nodding quietly, "Almost. One more push."

She looked indescribably relieved at this, her pale, dogged expression melting a bit as she thought of being able to lie down for sleep once more – in an actual bed, rather than her ratty, scavenged sleeping bag, Glenn told her. Nodding to herself, she pushed against the wall, automatically hooking her arm around Glenn's neck as he bent slightly for her, gently taking her hand and straightening as they made their way forward once more. They started down the alley, carefully scanning the horizon, glancing behind themselves every so often as they rounded the corner, feet quietly shifting around the detritus of long-gone refugees. A couple of streets down and the sight of a familiar sports shop flooded Glenn with no-small measure of joy: they were only a minute away at this steady rate. Thinking back to all those hours ago, with Jeanie sprawled out on the floor before a pool of her own vomit, he had to admit that this rescue effort had gone far better than he ever thought it could. Coming to the end of the second last street they had to travel through, he smiled exhaustedly to himself – they just might make it out of this.

Just as that hopeful thought passed through his mind, a loud clatter behind them sent Jeanie's swift reflexes flying, swivelling her around and distracting her at the exact moment Glen stepped around the corner, a split second too late to stop him – and he halted.

Before him, stumbling around over the corpse-strewn street, black bile leaking from every orifice, heads slowly turning around to look at him, stood a horde.

He had barely enough time to jerkily gasp at a half-devoured walker a mere few feet away as it turned slowly on its broken, gnawed leg, lumps of congealing flesh brushing off against the stained cement, a low, demonic growl starting to fill the air around them, before he felt a movement at his side, a tug at his arm, and a breathless 'Run.'

Without thinking, he pulled Jeanie close and started to sprint off down the street, as she, seeming to pull herself together somewhat with a burst of adrenaline, hobbled quickly along, breathing heavily as they raced against the sudden swelling of monsters chasing them down. Backtracking on themselves, they ran past walkers previously avoided, adding more to the mob at their backs as Jeanie, not bothering to whisper anymore with the awful, all-consuming noise reverberating around the city as they were pursued, hollered, "Go around! Go around! Circle to the other side!" Glenn followed her prompting blindly, his abruptly on-the-ball brain throwing up carefully memorised directions in his mind, shooting them both down alleyways and side streets, the ground vibrating beneath them as thousands of walkers started to march in their direction, awoken by the noise.

A block away from the abandoned train yard where their only means of escape lay in wait, they quickly scurried through the maze of towering city-blocks like two trapped mice, doubling back around the huge line of dilapidated buildings. Glancing back only put more heated force in their steps, desperation setting in as the quicker and less decayed walkers slowly but surely started to gain on them. Jeanie had given up on bellowing instructions, gasping heavily, breaths short and hitched, sweat dripping off of her, feet starting to tumble over themselves. Stumbling a bit as they came round another sharp corner, she almost fell to the wayside, saved only by Glenn's re-tightened grip. His arms were starting to scream with the increasingly dead weight of Jeanie as she quickly declined in health, his back collapsing as the bad decision to lug two people's loads started to catch up to him and his scrawny, overwrought muscles.

Heaving a breath in as their speed decreased with each step down the last few streets, he tried to gasp out encouragement to both himself and the girl clinging tightly onto him, eyes widening and voice hitching upon seeing the swiftly closing-in horde, "Come on, you can do it, you can do it – just a little bit more, a little bit more-"

He didn't have time to finish his hurried sentence as, just at that moment, the rotting remains of what was once a man lurched before them, head stuck facing the distance. With a harsh intake of breath, struck silent with shock, they tumbled into it with such force that they tripped over it, plummeting into the pavement, Glenn rolling slightly away, Jeanie's arm unhooking from him, as he smashed his head against the solid kerb.

Staggered, he tried to get up, blood dripping down his face, the sound of panicked yelps muffled as his head rung, vision an indistinct blur. Coughing up a glob of bile, arms shaking as he tried to push himself up, the looming moans approaching quickly towards him juttering numbly around his head, he looked up, breaths slow and unsteady, blinking heavily as he tried to clear his eyes, making out the hazy figures of Jeanie and the walker struggling on the ground. Pulling himself forward to them, crawling as his legs shakily moved about, heard a devastating crack followed by a blood-curdling scream that pierced his ears, shifting everything about into focus again.

Gasping for air, seeing Jeanie yell desperately as she pushed against the rotting thing trapping her against the cement, left arm crushed beneath them both, Glenn struggled forward. His feet swiped forward, straining with his weight, his knees bashing the ground as he pulled himself up, shaking as he tried to stay upright, blinking rapidly against the intense pain he felt looming before him. Pushed by the terrifying cries of Jeanie as she started to lose the battle for her life, the walker's snarling maw snapping a few inches above her face, he lifted the machete he suddenly remembered was in his hands, and, with an almighty burst of strength which he had never before possessed, he swung with a furious shout down on the its putrid, rotting skull.

The thing immediately went limp, collapsing against Jeanie, who finally buckled under the dead weight, crying out for help, right arm shuddering with uncontrollable spasms as she reached for him, lungs compressed to the point that she was unable to breath. Glenn hurriedly shoved the corpse off with some effort, taking no time to panic at the scarlet blood dripping from her arm and streaked across the street, instead taking a hold of her by the waist, turning, and continuing on, Jeanie stumbling next to him as they hobbled onwards, the closest walker now only one stray tumble away from feasting on them.

They were almost there, almost to the fence, almost home free – he could see it, it was right there right there just a BIT MORE.

…they made it.

They stumbled against the building in front of the hidden yard, Glenn smashing the window on their right with a firm strike with the butt of his machete, giving Jeanie a foot-up as she struggled through to the other side, tumbling in after her with an exhausted jump and narrowly avoiding the shards of glass at his feet. Behind them, he heard the walkers bash one-by-one against the brick, so base that they couldn't think to just climb through the window frame to pursue them further. Jeanie had pulled herself somewhat upright, a cough filled with bile hitting the desk she was gripping, retching up the last of what she had ingested. Staggering up, slicing his palm against a stray fragment of the filthy glass at his feet, he lurched forward to her side, taking her hand and pulling her with him through the building, the growing thumps against the wooden door tensing his legs up as he brought her to a back corridor with a hidden exit, shutting the conjoining door behind them as quietly as possible.

Turning to the exit, eyebrows slanting at the quiet murmurs of Jeanie as she softly talked to herself, her dazed words merging together into an unintelligible mess, he twisted the handle to let them out, heaving her ahead of him as a loud bang from behind them brought forth a storm of moans, the walkers finally in. Hobbling as quickly as he could over to the final obstacle they faced, a giant chain-link fence with one gap sliced through the side, he whispered exhaustedly to her, as gentle as he could be as she struggled to keep pace, "Come on, Jeanie, you need to keep moving. Keep walking with me," she gagged again, spitting at the ground, bent at the waist, and he had to pull her up, whispering urgently into her ear, panic at the increasing groans cracking his words, "Come on, we've come so far. Just a little bit more, please, I need you to listen to me, Jeanie, come on."

She seemed to listen to him somewhat, her incoherent monologue halting abruptly as she groaned, half-consciously shuffling her legs forward, leaning heavily on Glenn as he continued to murmur to her, swiftly pulling the razor-sharp wire of the torn section of fence up to let them stumble through to the other side. Through it, they unsteadily crunched over the pebbly ground to the blessed sight of Shane's Hummer, Jeanie plummeting into the passenger seat, Glenn throwing their bags in beside her as he threw himself into the driver's seat, fumbling desperately around in his pockets for the all-imperative keys. Finding them, he shoved them into the ignition without a pause, twisted, and shoved the gearstick forward, flattening the gas with a loud roar from the engine.

Beside him, Jeanie jerked slightly forward from where she leaned against the bags, face twisted as her blood slowly seeped into the leather seat, bandage torn. Just barely above the snarl of the car as it plunged ahead, her weak outward monologue started up again, breaking and cracking as her whispers wavered in the air, "We bet them. We bet them."

Speeding away from the city of the dead, the droning moans of the monstrous inhabitants fading into the distance, his hands clenched on the wheel.

They were now racing against time itself.

Description
Chapter 4 - Race

Slowly trickling down, glinting in the morning light, skipping over the chunks of bile coagulating on the smooth steel blade, the murky drop of walker blood fell to the ground, staining the sidewalk as they continued on. Looking vaguely behind them, eyes darting about distractedly as he kept an eye out for the signs of a mob on their tail, Glenn softly edged Jeanie's trembling arm further over his shoulder, letting loose a gentle whoosh of air as she tripped over an abandoned suitcase, instinctively shifting closer to him for support.

In truth, she was holding him up as much as he was holding her, both still exhausted and broken, muscles chafing against bone and aching terribly as they walked, limping with a deeply throbbing pain penetrating every movement. Deciding that he had caused enough agony to her gaping shoulder wound, guiltily observing as she tried to pull a sweater on when they stopped for a brief reprise back at an abandoned MARTA station, grimacing with the pain, he had softly pushed the scavenged garment over her head, gently moved her quaking hands aside and taken her right arm, hooking it over his back and around to his front, pulling her against him and allowing her head to fall to the crook of his sweat-drenched neck, pale and silent. Wiping at his saturated forehead, Glenn sighed.

It was going to be a long day.

-----------------

That morning, sunlight already beginning to blind his resting eyes, Glenn had stirred to find her awake, at the edge of the roof, holding stiffly onto the brick. Something in her stance alarmed him, and he snapped up, his dazed head going lightheaded for a moment as a rush of blood flooded his brain.

Opening his mouth, about to croak out a question, she snapped around with an abrupt swivel, her eyes widening as she heard him, a hand flying up to her mouth, immediately silencing him. He stared at her, confused, his eyes suddenly catching on the machete glinting in her hands, his entire body tensing with an unexpected spurt of fear. However, instead of betraying every trust in humanity he still maintained, she carefully walked back over to him, handed him the machete, and whispered to him as low as humanly possible, eyes giving him a meaningful push, "We're leaving. Now."

Instead of giving into temptation and sitting back for an explanation, her sharp, tense gaze and sickeningly pale skin stirred him to clumsily stand, ignoring any lingering pain in his limbs, throwing his blanket over his shoulder before stuffing it into his bag, heaving his load onto his back. Turning, he found her doing the same, her giant hiking bag haphazardly flung over her uninjured shoulder. Suddenly remembering his attempt to mend the giant gash carved into her flesh, he glanced down to the bandage, finding the gruesome sight of a dripping pool of blood, discolour spreading across her collarbone and trailing down her arm, still more poisonous looking veins strangling the flesh it covered.

Panicked, he looked up, ready to stop her from jumping down the vent she was already standing before, but she stopped him in his tracks, her knowing gaze flickering away as she stuffed her bag down the gap, "No time. Come on." With that, quickly giving him a final fleeting glance, she swung her legs up, pushed them into the vent, and slid down, a muted thump telling him she'd fallen into the room below. Alarmed by the suddenness of her exit, he quickly finished packing, gingerly shoved the intimidating weapon in his hands through his belt loop, and, wasting no time in following her, jumped down the vent, hoping that there would be a stable landing in the cards for him.

With a loud thump, he fell to the dirty carpet, a cloud of dust flying up from where he had impacted, rolling slightly with the height of the fall, a quiet, muffled groan coming from him as he bashed his leg against a grimy cleaning trolley. Looking up, wiping a smear of dirt from his face, he found her anxiously pacing before the door, silently strumming her fingers on her thigh. Finally coughing past the dust swarming his gullet, he gasped out, "What's going on?"

Not turning around, she answered, bending down to fiddle with the doorknob on the cheap wood, shaking it insistently, "We don't have any time, Glenn – they'll be done soon." Pausing, she cursed softly, a hand flying up to scrape her hair away from her sickly looking face.

Eyebrow flying up as she tore her bag open, rummaging within, he stood, leaning partially against a pile of abandoned boxes which smelled like urinal cakes, distractedly fixing his lopsided hat, "What?" She didn't reply immediately, still insistently searching her pack, and so he repeated himself, coming forward with a hesitant stumble, "Who's going to be done? With what?" Muttering under her breath, she shoved her bag away, fumbling in her pockets, hands flying over her jeans for any possible storage space. Glenn, unnerved by her continuing lack of explanation, pushed himself off of the boxes, coming forward and insistently hissing to her, "Jeanie, come on, talk to me for God's sake!"

"We don't have time." She had swivelled round to him for only a brief moment, teeth clenched, gaze strained. Taken aback, Glenn shifted away, eyes widening. She only looked on for a second more before turning away again, rummaging once more amongst her belongings with vigour. After a few minutes of silence, Glenn staying quiet as he let her work, struck by the sudden flash of desperation he had seen in her eyes, she clearly realised she would not find the elusive thing she was seeking and cursed again, hands clenching into fists, finally turning to him, voice cracking slightly, "– I don't have time." He stared at her, alarm widening his eyes as he held in his clumsy bundle of questions, gaping uselessly as she pointed swiftly to the door, swallowing thickly, "Listen, I don't have any more bobby pins – I can't pick the lock." She paused, grimacing, biting her thumb. Then, moving her hand away to stiffly gesture backwards again, she informed him heavily, "We have to knock the door down."

Eyebrows furrowing, Glenn felt his head shaking of its own accord as he vehemently protested, his hasty whisper clogged with the thick dust that was beginning to cloak them, settling into the crevices in his itchy, sweat-stained clothes, "It's gonna make too much noise – they'll hear us."

Shaking her head, she breathed out a deep sigh, "I know, but there's nothing else for it." She moved her right shoulder against the door, waiting for him to shove his bag off, nervously edging over and pushing himself up next to her, their breaths mingling in a humid haze. Eyes boring into his, she nodded steadily, "We go at the same time." There was a brief silence, where they tensed their muscles in anticipation of the impending collision, before she spoke once more, swift, "3, 2, 1-" Both of them shifted back and then slammed themselves into the wood. Grunting in pain, Jeanie's eyes squeezing tightly shut as she took an unsteady breath, they moved back, "3,2, 1-" Again, they smashed their full body weight against the door, an audible crack reverberating about it, the wood straining. Looking at each other, gasping, recognising the quickly breaking wood, they prepared themselves once more, hastily coming back, "3,2,1-"

Abruptly, the door gave way, collapsing beneath them, fragments flying off as the majority smashed against the wall with a thunderous crash. Barely holding themselves back from flying after the broken obstacle, grabbing each other for a weight to hold onto, they heaved the dusty air into their lungs for a scarce few seconds. Pausing for the slightest of moments, they looked at each other, hearing the ominous moan in the background of their shared hesitation, and then, suddenly, Jeanie furrowed her brow, shakily heaved her bag up again, and moved on, her uneven footsteps echoing down the corridor. Immediately, Glenn was behind her, his rucksack flung back in its resting place between his shoulder blades as he shifted the machete she had given him back into his grip, fingers tensing with the sudden, familiar rush of adrenaline filling his head, edging him on.

The trip down through the building was uneventful – shockingly so. Despite the largely unaffected appearance of the candy store front, he had been certain that the small block of offices shoved atop it would be house to at least a few overly dedicated workers that chanced an ultimate death in order to maintain their busy urban lifestyle. However, no walkers forced their hand as they carefully strode forward, ears and eyes primed for any hint of danger – and the only rotting smell permeating the place was that of an abandoned, rotting lunch trapped within a defunct fridge.

He stayed close to Jeanie, who was determinedly carving a path for them both despite only having a faint idea of where they were going, eyes fixed ahead and swivelling about to every open door they passed. With each step they took, despite her dogged attempt at focus on getting them out, pushing through the bizarrely long corridors lengthened by his overly alert mind, he could sense her injury catching up to her, chasing her down and gaining quickly. He had to push aside the burning urge to stop her, just for a minute, to get her to eat something, if only to bring some colour back to her frighteningly drained features – instead, remaining quiet until they reached a lone set of stairs to the ground floor, pausing. Only then was when she stopped, her legs coming to a halt as she stared down the perfectly ordinary set of steps as though they were the stairway to the depths of hell – and, he supposed, they were. Their brief reprise atop the building had come to an end, and now they were about to go back amongst the monsters that were intent on devouring them. It was an altogether disheartening thought.

Taking a deep breath, they both glanced at each other, eyes dark, and began the painfully slow descent to their exit. The steps creaked in such a excruciatingly loud way that his teeth set on edge, biting his tongue sharply as Jeanie nearly stumbled, catching herself on the banister and his immediately present arm. They walked the rest of the way down like that, her strained breathing muffled slightly as she braced herself from making too much noise, Glenn gently keeping hold of her arm, fearful that, after all she had gone through to get this far, she would be ended by an ill-timed step and tumble down some stairs. As they reached the end of the steps, he rested his free hand on his belt, tugging at the machete slightly, ready to pull it out at the slightest movement, Jeanie shifting slightly in as she turned to glance behind them, making certain that there was nothing following. Reaching the bottom of the staircase, swivelling around, they found themselves alone apart from the armies of mindless drones outside.

Smiling with some measure of relief, surprised that at least something had gone right for once, Glenn turned to Jeanie, ready to devise a plan of attack for getting across Downtown and back to Shane's Hummer – when, abruptly, she shoved herself out of his soft grip, stumbled backwards, and vomited all over the stairs they had just vacated.

Horrified, he looked on for a moment, stunned into inaction, before his senses kicked in and he hastily moved to her side, clumsy hands scraping her sweaty hair back from her all-too warm scalp, hesitantly patting her convulsing back as a spray of what basically amounted to water with a few sad flakes of salted chips floating around in it violently expelled itself from her. Uncertainly, he murmured some quiet encouragement, pulling her obstructive bag away, his own stomach, although churning at the cloying, acidic smell, slightly resistant from dealing with his suffering friends after overly wild binges. When the torrential, endless gagging stopped, gradually petering out to wet, quiet coughing as she slumped back, exhausted, he caught her again, pulling her back slightly and away from the pool at her feet, leaning her against his front and nervously putting his hand to her head, feeling the clammy heat that suffocated her temple and blurred her unfocussed gaze.

Alarm growing as the tense seconds crawled agonisingly by, he whispered to her, wary of alerting any nearby geeks, who he could hear stumbling about on the street outside, voice insistent, "Jeanie?" No response came, her eyes blinking owlishly, slow, before he repeated himself, worriedly shaking her for good measure, trying his best to avoid her injury, "Jeanie, speak to me, please."

Just when he felt the terrible panic starting to intensify, overwhelming him, she suddenly shifted, eyes coming back into focus, hands twitching. Silent, he watched her, waiting for her to speak as she looked up at him, features strained as she slowly came back to life and murmured quietly, "That's why I gave you the machete."

"What?" His quick response wasn't met with a swift answer, "What do you mean?"

"I don't think I can do this much longer," she suddenly grimaced, groaning, "It hurts." She sighed heavily, breaths strained as she continued, right hand shakily trying to reach across to her left, "My arm – shoulder – it-"

She didn't get any words out before Glenn immediately shifted her, carefully but quickly pulling her arm into his grip. He didn't even need to see underneath the bandage to assess the damage – some frightening yellow liquid had started to seep out from the sides, a steady trail of blood smeared across her arm, dripping down intermittently, veins popping around the wrapped area. Glancing away, he paled. Placing her arm gently down again, he stared at the ground. Then he looked up, a weak attempt at comfort uncertainly eeking out from him, "It'll be fine."

"…That bad, huh." He stared at her, silent, completely lost, as she elaborated, "I can see it in your face." She paused. Looking away, her head shook, her eyes straining, voice dropping to a quiet whisper, "What are we going to do?"

Wordless, his eyes flicked away, unfocussed and wide. The moans outside the cracked, blood-splattered window floated through the humid Georgian air, the intense sunlight outside pouring in and reflecting off of the coloured glass jars full of candy, a spectrum streaking across the linoleum floor, brightening a few stray leaves, withered and crushed on the hard plastic. Without thinking about it, he began to gently stroke the hand at her injured side, fingers catching in the sweat pooling around the popping veins. It probably comforted him more than her. In truth, although he couldn't say it aloud, he had no plan – he was stuck. This was why he never took anybody with him into the city, he thought dazedly to himself, thumb dragging slowly over her clammy palm that shook in his grasp. He couldn't protect anybody but himself. He could go alone – nobody to lose, then. But he couldn't – he just couldn't – do this. He wasn't a hero, despite how much he wanted to be.

Her hand abruptly gripped his, pulling him back to reality, his head flicking down, suddenly meeting her tired eyes. He vaguely wondered why she was smiling when the situation they were in was so unimaginably bleak, and managed a weak, 'What are you-' before the grip she had on his hand intensified, and she tugged his arm, rolling unsteadily away. Before he had even had a chance to protest and settle her back down again, she had grabbed a hold of a nearby counter, filthy with dust and muck that had come through a crack in the nearby window, and slowly pulled herself up.

Dumbstruck, he stared up at her, silenced by her sudden burst of strength, when her voice reached him, soft, "Your face is like an open book, you know. You should try to hide that more." She looked to him again, a saturated bang slipping back to fall across her temple, roughly cut just above her eye-line, "If you weren't such a good guy, I would tell you to leave me – but there's no point in trying, is there?" He blinked, nodding slowly, and she continued, "Well. We better get going, then."

Glenn took a moment before her words sunk in, and then jumped up, ignoring his aching legs, rejuvenated by her determination. She flicked her eyes across the countertop she was leaning heavily against as he gathered himself, her weak smile strengthening slightly upon sight of a jolly looking jar filled with little green candies, a hand reaching out to grasp it, pulling it towards her. As he came up beside her, heaving her bag atop his own, she managed to clumsily open it, plunging her hand in and grabbing as many of the things as she could, quietly looking down at them, a soft 'used to like these' drifting through the air before she gently popped one into her mouth, shoving the rest into one of her jean pockets, heedless of the grime. Looking across to him as he waited patiently, adjusting the straps on her rucksack, she frowned, brow furrowing as she gestured to the pair on his back, "Both bags?" She shook her head at his nod, "It'll kill you – physically and maybe even literally. Let me take mi-"

"-No." Her head shifted back, surprised, as he shook his own, "You can barely stand up." He paused, shifting about for a moment, "It's not too bad-" that was something of a white lie, as it was already straining his tired, weak muscles, "-it'll probably hurt tomorrow, but I can take that." Awkwardly, he smiled in an attempt at reassuring her, and she frowned, unconvinced, halting in her consumption of the much-savoured sweet. Sighing inwardly as he looked to the window, seeing a stray walker stumble jerkily across the sidewalk across the street, his smile fell slowly. Turning back to her as she finished her candy, looking out at the same one as he had been, grimacing lightly at the rotting arm that barely clung to it's decaying torso, he murmured sombrely, "Let's go."

Silent, she hesitated again before nodding, pushing away from the counter and taking the arm he outstretched, free from her machete, which stood ready in his reinvigorated right limb, an intent in mind. Helping her to reach the door, he looked at her for a final fleeting moment before they stepped out into hell, allowing them one last moment of safety and quiet.

With a forcibly optimistic 'We'll be back before evening' which neither of them really believed, he bashed the half torn off lock away, opened the door, and they hobbled out into the morning sun.

------------------------

It was evening. And they still were not back at the camp.

Unluckily for them both, despite the strange, relative emptiness of the streets they quickly made their way through, they still had to hop down alleyways whenever a walker sprouted up on the horizon. Every so often, they had to dispatch one that just wouldn't shuffle away from where they needed to go, hastily smashing their heads and quickly departing from the scene without checking if they'd been successful in their attack – as long as it was out of the way, they didn't care if the walker was dead or not. Jeanie sensed the danger before he did, oftentimes, ducking both of them down side alleys with a tug on his arm, and throwing a rock to distract the odd walker if it was possible to do so, prompting him on. It was all a bit haphazard at those moments, what with Glenn lugging along two heaving bags and a grown woman in one arm, a gleaming machete in the other - but they managed it.

By the time the sun was setting, they had just pressed themselves into a small lane at the side of the main Downtown street, both glancing up as they waited for a small group of walkers to pass. They were only a few minutes away from the car by that point, Glenn was sure – he checked the map repeatedly to make certain – and the street they had to go down to get to the abandoned train yard was usually quite empty. Though, as Glenn had quickly learnt in his solo adventures throughout the dead city, that could change in a moment.

Beside him, Jeanie leaned against the grimy cement, her eyes closed, having started to droop in the hour before, the effects of the last couple of days finally catching up to her. The sun was starting to fall away for the moon, enhancing the ever-present danger all around them as geeks melted into the shadows, cloaked by the darkness. A little while before, walking down what looked like an empty alleyway, they had received a rather unpleasant surprise in the form of a decayed walker stuck in the middle of two dumpsters, who grabbed at Glenn's leg, unseen by them both in the dying light. Glenn had immediately smashed face first into the filthy brick path, machete nearly stabbing him before he just managed to move it out of the way, narrowly avoiding the fatal point. Struck frozen by panic as the walker leaned out, clawing at his limb, he had no time to even ready his weapon before Jeanie, quick as ever, regained her balance and kicked it straight in the face with her steel-toe capped boots without hesitation, whacking its head off of the stainless steel dumpster with a thump before walloping it once more for good measure, splattering yet more gore over her caked shoes with a final stomp. Looking at each other, a breathless Glenn and Jeanie both grimaced: they were running out of time.

Shifting closer to him as he read the map for a final time, paranoia niggling at his tired mind, Jeanie whispered softly, "Are we almost there?"

He paused for a moment, staring down at the giant intersecting lines and arrows across the life-saving paper in his hands, silent. Then, folding it in again, he finally tucked it away, nodding quietly, "Almost. One more push."

She looked indescribably relieved at this, her pale, dogged expression melting a bit as she thought of being able to lie down for sleep once more – in an actual bed, rather than her ratty, scavenged sleeping bag, Glenn told her. Nodding to herself, she pushed against the wall, automatically hooking her arm around Glenn's neck as he bent slightly for her, gently taking her hand and straightening as they made their way forward once more. They started down the alley, carefully scanning the horizon, glancing behind themselves every so often as they rounded the corner, feet quietly shifting around the detritus of long-gone refugees. A couple of streets down and the sight of a familiar sports shop flooded Glenn with no-small measure of joy: they were only a minute away at this steady rate. Thinking back to all those hours ago, with Jeanie sprawled out on the floor before a pool of her own vomit, he had to admit that this rescue effort had gone far better than he ever thought it could. Coming to the end of the second last street they had to travel through, he smiled exhaustedly to himself – they just might make it out of this.

Just as that hopeful thought passed through his mind, a loud clatter behind them sent Jeanie's swift reflexes flying, swivelling her around and distracting her at the exact moment Glen stepped around the corner, a split second too late to stop him – and he halted.

Before him, stumbling around over the corpse-strewn street, black bile leaking from every orifice, heads slowly turning around to look at him, stood a horde.

He had barely enough time to jerkily gasp at a half-devoured walker a mere few feet away as it turned slowly on its broken, gnawed leg, lumps of congealing flesh brushing off against the stained cement, a low, demonic growl starting to fill the air around them, before he felt a movement at his side, a tug at his arm, and a breathless 'Run.'

Without thinking, he pulled Jeanie close and started to sprint off down the street, as she, seeming to pull herself together somewhat with a burst of adrenaline, hobbled quickly along, breathing heavily as they raced against the sudden swelling of monsters chasing them down. Backtracking on themselves, they ran past walkers previously avoided, adding more to the mob at their backs as Jeanie, not bothering to whisper anymore with the awful, all-consuming noise reverberating around the city as they were pursued, hollered, "Go around! Go around! Circle to the other side!" Glenn followed her prompting blindly, his abruptly on-the-ball brain throwing up carefully memorised directions in his mind, shooting them both down alleyways and side streets, the ground vibrating beneath them as thousands of walkers started to march in their direction, awoken by the noise.

A block away from the abandoned train yard where their only means of escape lay in wait, they quickly scurried through the maze of towering city-blocks like two trapped mice, doubling back around the huge line of dilapidated buildings. Glancing back only put more heated force in their steps, desperation setting in as the quicker and less decayed walkers slowly but surely started to gain on them. Jeanie had given up on bellowing instructions, gasping heavily, breaths short and hitched, sweat dripping off of her, feet starting to tumble over themselves. Stumbling a bit as they came round another sharp corner, she almost fell to the wayside, saved only by Glenn's re-tightened grip. His arms were starting to scream with the increasingly dead weight of Jeanie as she quickly declined in health, his back collapsing as the bad decision to lug two people's loads started to catch up to him and his scrawny, overwrought muscles.

Heaving a breath in as their speed decreased with each step down the last few streets, he tried to gasp out encouragement to both himself and the girl clinging tightly onto him, eyes widening and voice hitching upon seeing the swiftly closing-in horde, "Come on, you can do it, you can do it – just a little bit more, a little bit more-"

He didn't have time to finish his hurried sentence as, just at that moment, the rotting remains of what was once a man lurched before them, head stuck facing the distance. With a harsh intake of breath, struck silent with shock, they tumbled into it with such force that they tripped over it, plummeting into the pavement, Glenn rolling slightly away, Jeanie's arm unhooking from him, as he smashed his head against the solid kerb.

Staggered, he tried to get up, blood dripping down his face, the sound of panicked yelps muffled as his head rung, vision an indistinct blur. Coughing up a glob of bile, arms shaking as he tried to push himself up, the looming moans approaching quickly towards him juttering numbly around his head, he looked up, breaths slow and unsteady, blinking heavily as he tried to clear his eyes, making out the hazy figures of Jeanie and the walker struggling on the ground. Pulling himself forward to them, crawling as his legs shakily moved about, heard a devastating crack followed by a blood-curdling scream that pierced his ears, shifting everything about into focus again.

Gasping for air, seeing Jeanie yell desperately as she pushed against the rotting thing trapping her against the cement, left arm crushed beneath them both, Glenn struggled forward. His feet swiped forward, straining with his weight, his knees bashing the ground as he pulled himself up, shaking as he tried to stay upright, blinking rapidly against the intense pain he felt looming before him. Pushed by the terrifying cries of Jeanie as she started to lose the battle for her life, the walker's snarling maw snapping a few inches above her face, he lifted the machete he suddenly remembered was in his hands, and, with an almighty burst of strength which he had never before possessed, he swung with a furious shout down on the its putrid, rotting skull.

The thing immediately went limp, collapsing against Jeanie, who finally buckled under the dead weight, crying out for help, right arm shuddering with uncontrollable spasms as she reached for him, lungs compressed to the point that she was unable to breath. Glenn hurriedly shoved the corpse off with some effort, taking no time to panic at the scarlet blood dripping from her arm and streaked across the street, instead taking a hold of her by the waist, turning, and continuing on, Jeanie stumbling next to him as they hobbled onwards, the closest walker now only one stray tumble away from feasting on them.

They were almost there, almost to the fence, almost home free – he could see it, it was right there right there just a BIT MORE.

…they made it.

They stumbled against the building in front of the hidden yard, Glenn smashing the window on their right with a firm strike with the butt of his machete, giving Jeanie a foot-up as she struggled through to the other side, tumbling in after her with an exhausted jump and narrowly avoiding the shards of glass at his feet. Behind them, he heard the walkers bash one-by-one against the brick, so base that they couldn't think to just climb through the window frame to pursue them further. Jeanie had pulled herself somewhat upright, a cough filled with bile hitting the desk she was gripping, retching up the last of what she had ingested. Staggering up, slicing his palm against a stray fragment of the filthy glass at his feet, he lurched forward to her side, taking her hand and pulling her with him through the building, the growing thumps against the wooden door tensing his legs up as he brought her to a back corridor with a hidden exit, shutting the conjoining door behind them as quietly as possible.

Turning to the exit, eyebrows slanting at the quiet murmurs of Jeanie as she softly talked to herself, her dazed words merging together into an unintelligible mess, he twisted the handle to let them out, heaving her ahead of him as a loud bang from behind them brought forth a storm of moans, the walkers finally in. Hobbling as quickly as he could over to the final obstacle they faced, a giant chain-link fence with one gap sliced through the side, he whispered exhaustedly to her, as gentle as he could be as she struggled to keep pace, "Come on, Jeanie, you need to keep moving. Keep walking with me," she gagged again, spitting at the ground, bent at the waist, and he had to pull her up, whispering urgently into her ear, panic at the increasing groans cracking his words, "Come on, we've come so far. Just a little bit more, please, I need you to listen to me, Jeanie, come on."

She seemed to listen to him somewhat, her incoherent monologue halting abruptly as she groaned, half-consciously shuffling her legs forward, leaning heavily on Glenn as he continued to murmur to her, swiftly pulling the razor-sharp wire of the torn section of fence up to let them stumble through to the other side. Through it, they unsteadily crunched over the pebbly ground to the blessed sight of Shane's Hummer, Jeanie plummeting into the passenger seat, Glenn throwing their bags in beside her as he threw himself into the driver's seat, fumbling desperately around in his pockets for the all-imperative keys. Finding them, he shoved them into the ignition without a pause, twisted, and shoved the gearstick forward, flattening the gas with a loud roar from the engine.

Beside him, Jeanie jerked slightly forward from where she leaned against the bags, face twisted as her blood slowly seeped into the leather seat, bandage torn. Just barely above the snarl of the car as it plunged ahead, her weak outward monologue started up again, breaking and cracking as her whispers wavered in the air, "We bet them. We bet them."

Speeding away from the city of the dead, the droning moans of the monstrous inhabitants fading into the distance, his hands clenched on the wheel.

They were now racing against time itself.