Ten - Kyle

Well, holy fuck. Winston Harris wasn't someone I ever expected to see again. The asshole had been like a brother to me overseas, saving my ass more times than I could hope to keep count of. I knew that Miles called him up back when he called all of us, to get us up to Hudson. Winston didn't make it and honestly, we knew there was a chance he was dead. But there was just as good a chance that he just didn't want to fucking be there.

Which it seems was the case, since he was standing in front of me.

I didn't give two shits that he hadn't spoken to any of us in two, hell, closer to three years. We all handled FUBAR in different ways, I never judged him for distancing himself. That's what he needed to do. And hell, the end of the damn world as we knew it seemed to agree with him. He seemed happy. Winston was a generally happy guy, always the optimistic one, but the last time I'd seen him, he'd been different. Not happy. Not the way he is now.

And it was damn good to see a familiar face in this middle of all of this.

"This is super heartwarming, but we should probably get out of here," Winston's girl deadpanned. She called herself Zero, which was... interesting. I lifted my eyebrow in question and Winston subtly shook his head. Later. I shrugged because she was prickly little thing and I was pretty sure we were already on her shit list. Speaking of shit lists, I was also sure I was back on Ella's. I could feel the daggers she was staring into my back. Something told me she wasn't thrilled with me at the moment.

"We're about a mile out," he explained. "Probably best if we take the roof. Gotta jump a couple gaps, but it'll get us to the end of the street fire escape without running into the creeps." Winston paused in his thought and looked over at Ella. His face twisted as his eyes looked her up and down. I knew what he saw, it was the same thing we all did. Ella's hair had been pulled into a tight pony tail this morning but after the excitement and the running and just the day, the band holding her hair was loose and strands were hanging out around her face. She was tall and thin, and the bag she wore on her back looked awkward and was obviously too large for her. Her shoulders were slumped and she leaned forward to help support the weight of the bag. Her skin was still flush from all the adrenaline and she was chewing on her bottom lip, watching us with angry eyes that did little to cover up how scared she was. I knew there was more to her than that.

"I mean... if she's up for it?"

Shit. I didn't think Ella was up for much of anything, least of all skipping across the roof with people I could tell she didn't even want to try to give a chance to. One of them had pointed a gun at her, I couldn't really blame the bitterness. Maybe she would let it go, forgive and forget. I turned to face where she was standing awkwardly, avoiding eye contact with Zero. She was already exhausted from the long day and the end of an adrenaline rush probably wasn't helping. Looking back at Winston, I ran a hand through my hair.

"If she can't, it's cool. Z can draw some of the creeps away and we can take the road. Hell, she's probably jonesing for a near-death experience by now," he said rolling his eyes, but he was more amused than annoyed or scared. There wasn't a hint of the darkness in his eyes that I'd last seen. Almost three years was a long time, but I don't know, I expected we'd get a call when he was up to it. "It's been what?" he asked louder to catch Zero's attention, "Nine... ten days since you last tried to get yourself killed?"

She narrowed her eyes on him and though she didn't smile, her lips twitched. "What you're thinking of was seven days ago, but I'd hardly call it trying to get myself killed."

He smirked and then looked back at me. "She spotted a group while she on night watch and decided to kill all four by herself in the middle of the night instead of waking something."

Having overheard him. Ella's jaw nearly hit the floor. To be honest, mine did as well. It was reckless, sure, but it was damn amazing that this girl could do something like that so confidently and with no backup. Color me fucking impressed.

"But you're so cute when you sleep," Zero said to Winston without so much as cracking a smile.

"What do you think?" He said to me after flashing his girl a wide grin.

"Gimme a minute." I walked over to Ella and wrapped my fingers around her wrist, towing her away from Zero and Winston for a little privacy. I needed to ask her what she was comfortable with and I didn't want her to lie because she felt like she needed to impress new people, but I also needed to make sure she was okay. Really okay. Something I had failed to do because I'd gotten distracted. We stopped and I faced her, looking her up and down for any sign of a wound. Ella looked away, her focus on the shelves around us. Most of the food and snacks had been pillaged, but all the trinkets were left behind, abandoned. She picked up a bobble-head cat figure and held it in her hand. She brought one finger up and poked the cartoonish cat head, watching as is jiggled from side to side. She carefully set it back on the shelf in the same spot from where it'd been removed. When she reached for another, I stopped her.

Cupping her cheeks in my palm to get her to look at me, I guided Ella to look at me, waiting until her big, brown eyes met mine. Giving in, she sighed.

"We're going with them, aren't we?" She sounded resigned, and not at all thrilled by the idea. I ignored it for the moment.

"Are you hurt at all?"

I hadn't seen any signs of injury, but I wasn't sure. Ella shook her head against my palms and reluctantly I let her go.

"No, I'm oh—I'm not hurt."

"What happened?"

Her bottom lip quivered a little and she bit down on it. She waited a long moment, gathering herself before she spoke. The words came out quickly, as if they were all part of one word.

"I don't know. One of them got between us and then I tried to kill it—" Her eyes grew impossibly wide. "Oh my God, I lost your knife. I'm so sorry. I missed and then I panicked and I just... What? Why are you looking at me like that?"

"Here." I grab the knife from where I'd tucked it away when I found it. I'd never been so grateful to see my knife sticking out of the neck of a living dead person. It meant that she'd fought. And hopefully that she was okay. I'd finished the job she couldn't and took my damn knife back. I held out the knife to her, handle first. She'd tried to use it. Her first instinct hadn't been to run. Ella looked at me, shocked and shook her head, brown tendrils of hair swaying around her face. I caught one that settled in front of her eye and moved it out of her face.

"No. I can't take it. Miles and Joel were acting like it was some special knife and I lost it in a matter of hours."

"Miles and Joel need to keep their damn mouths shut," I muttered. "If I didn't want you to have it, I wouldn't have given it to you, alright?" I waited for Ella to nod and then pushed the grip into her hand. "I'm sorry, Ella." Her lips turned down into a frown. "I got distracted and I turned around and you—It doesn't matter. I told you I'd keep you safe and I didn't. I'm sorry."

Unexpectedly, Ella stepped forward and wrapped her arms around my waist. Her head settled against my chest and, delayed, I returned the hug. She sighed when my arms went around her and her muscles relaxed. "I was really scared," she said, her voice muffled in my shirt. "I'm glad you came to get me."

A chuckled rumbled through my chest. "Did you think we'd just leave you behind?"

She pulled away and looked at me, her brow furrowed. "I," My stomach sank as I was sure she was about to say that yes, she did think that. But then she shook her head. "No. I knew you'd come back." The corner of her mouth tilted into a smile. She glanced around me where she could see Winston and Zero.

"Your friend," she lowered her to a whisper, "he threw knives at their heads. Like a freaking ninja."

A smile spread across my lips. Fuckin' showoff. She was obviously scared at the idea that he could do that, so I didn't mention that it was one of a variety of skills that he - that we all had. Instead I redirected the conversation and explained what we'd need to do to get out of here. I knew the prospect of leaping across the rooftops scared her when her bottom lip began to tremble again. She quickly sucked it into her mouth and worried the lip with her teeth.

"You really think we should go with them?"

My brow pulled together. Maybe it wasn't the idea of playing Spiderman that had her scared. She stood on her tiptoes to look back around me and took a half step closer, lowering her voice to a whisper again before she spoke.

"Bitchy Barbie over there wanted to shoot me."

I laughed out loud at the name. Ella's hand shot out, smacking into my chest hard enough to get her point across, but come on, the girl couldn't hurt me. I stifled the rest of my laugh. Didn't need Ella tiring herself out trying to hurt me. Yeah, it may have been a little too much to hope that she'd let that one go.

"It's our best choice for the night."

She thought about it for a long minute, giving herself one of those internal peptalks that I'd seen more than once since we left. I about started laughing again when she reached into her pocket and pulled out a damn tube of lipstick. It wasn't that I hadn't noticed she'd still been wearing it, I had. Every morning since we'd been gone she donned the lip stick. It was strange, but I let it go. But applying lipstick right then? Sure it had worn off over the course of the day, but it wasn't exactly the time to be reapplying her make up. Yeah, it was more than just a little strange. But, I didn't say anything as she turned her back to me and slyly put on a coat of the red lipstick. I figured she knew it was odd behavior so I didn't bother to call it out.

"So," she breathed. "How do we get to the roof?" She asked the question loud enough for everyone to hear and Winston's face filled with relief that his girl wasn't going to have to act like bait to get us out of here. When she stepped out, I saw each of their gazes move to her lips, it was impossible not to notice the color. They each made a face for a split second, but thankfully didn't say anything. Ella had found some semblance of confidence and somehow I thought it had something to do with the lipstick so the last thing I wanted was for someone to make her feel awkward for it.

"I promise, it's not as awful as it seems," Winston assured her with a smile. Ella didn't look so convinced, but she forced a smile. "I'm Winston, by the way. People call me Hunter now, though."

"Thanks for, uh, saving my life, Hunter. I'm Ella."

He shrugged off her thanks. "I have a thing for helping pretty girls who seem determined to get themselves killed." He not-so-discreetly nodded his head to where Zero stood and winked at Ella as if she were in on the joke. She laughed and relaxed, seeming suddenly more at ease with him than she had been with any of us for the last couple days. I shouldn't have been surprised, he was always better with people than me and while I failed to protect her, he'd just saved her life.

"Hunter?" I asked as we walked toward the back office. A door opened into an alley similar to the one we ran through and a few feet down the wall was a ladder to access the roof. Zero climbed up the ladder first and I sent Ella up after her.

My friend smiled. "It's better than Winston, right?" He laughed, shrugging off the question. "The names are... I don't know, a way to start over."

I actually got that. We'd been doing runs long enough to meet plenty of people and everyone seemed to have some way of letting the past go. A few people held on to the old world; most everyone at Hudson was like that. Out on the road it was harder to pretend that you were still a school teacher or lawyer, or whatever you were before. So you found a way to shed the past.

We followed the girls up the ladder and trailed behind as Zero led the way to the edge of the roof. A ledge meant to keep people from accidentally walking off the roof was raised a couple of feet in the air. Zero stepped up onto the wall and without hesitation, like she'd done this often, she leapt to the next building. I walked to the edge; it was only three feet or so between buildings. It'd be easy.

Ella didn't look so confident anymore.

"You're next," Hunter said to Ella.

She walked over the edge slowly and leaned over the small wall. Beneath a few zombies wandered between buildings. Ella stepped back shaking her head. "Uh-uh. I can't do that." She looked ready to make a run for it.

"I'll go first, okay?" I told her before she could run back to the ladder and climb back down the ground. "If you don't make it, I'll catch you. I promise." That seemed to be an acceptable compromise to her, so I climbed to the top and jumped across the space to the next roof. "Just a big step, really."

She nodded and started to climb up.

"Wait," Hunter said. "Take the bag off so your balance is centered."

Ella quickly followed instructions and then climbed to stand on the edge. She stood there for a long moment, staring down into the space between the buildings.

"Ella." I had to say her name twice before she looked up. "Just look at me." I reached out a hand, my arm long enough to cover half the space she'd have to cross. She reached her own hand out but our fingertips didn't quite touch and she frowned. She mutter something to herself quietly enough that I couldn't make out the words and then leapt, grabbing onto my hand the moment our fingertips touched. I pulled her toward me and as her feet settled on the rooftop, she looked up grinning.

Hunter tossed her bag and was over seconds later. We kept moving, thankfully each building was no further apart than the first two had been. Hunter offered to carry Ella's bag and after looking at me for approval, she let him. He had another, but the small backpack looked mostly empty. Ella shouldered it much easier than she had the larger bag.

"This is the last one," Hunter said as we looked at the next jump. The next building over was several feet higher than the one we were currently on. To get to it wouldn't be an easy step or a little leap across. We'd be jumping up to get to the next building. From the looks of it we'd have to jump and grab onto the ledge with our hands. That would be the easy part. Then we'd have to pull our weight up and over. I didn't foresee this being much of a problem for Hunter or me. I still found time and way to get in a workout and from the looks of it and the amount of muscle he'd kept up, Hunter did too. I was less confident about either girl's ability to pull it off.

Hunter and I tossed the bags over with ease and then Hunter stood on the edge of the roof and jumped. Ella gasped watching like she expected him to fall, but of course, he didn't. Hunter grabbed onto the other ledge and pulled himself over. Behind me, Ella let out the breath she'd been holding, but didn't relax. I stepped forward to make the jump but Zero caught my eye. Subtly she shook her head and then looked at Ella.

She didn't think Ella would do it.

I wasn't so sure either. So I stepped back and let Zero stand on the edge. When she jumped, she didn't aim for grabbing onto the concrete overhang of the next building over, she aimed for Hunter. He'd extended his arms and the second she was within his reach he closed his hands around her wrists and she did the same. Putting her feet against the wall, she helped climb herself up as he pulled her over. That. That was complete trust. Zero hadn't hesitated at all, and it was a good thing she hadn't because hesitating in that moment might have caused a misstep. More than that though, they looked practiced. Made sense because they obviously knew this route, they'd been here and done this exact thing more than once.

Turning to face us, Zero smiled. I got the feeling she was trying to encourage Ella - like what she'd just done was no big deal - but the smile was too forced to convince anyone.

"This is it," Ella muttered to herself. "I'm going to fall to my fiery death."

I cracked a smile. "Fiery?"

"It's a figure of speech."

I didn't think it was.

"I'll catch you, Ella," Hunter said and her eyes immediately darted to me, a little wrinkle forming between her eyebrows. I'd be lying if I said the look in her eyes - the one that said she wanted me to catch her - didn't make my heart pound a little harder. I thought that losing her back there meant losing the little trust we'd built, but maybe it hadn't. It made me want to go first so I could catch her, but I knew there was a good chance that if I did, one of us would have to come back and force her across.

"Maybe we should have practiced those trust falls, huh?" She said, joking over her fear with a breathy laugh.

I grinned remembering the way she'd rolled her eyes and asked if we were going to do trust falls the other day - was that just yesterday? It seemed like so much time had passed.

"Just think of it as an extreme trust fall," I said, but she didn't look amused. I shrugged. "I can throw you across if you want."

"Please don't," she said quickly. Her eyes turned horrified and she took two steps back from me like she was concerned I would actually pick her up and toss her across. I probably would have if she hadn't then stepped toward the edge. Hunter, more patient than I could ever be, stood at the opposite side. He leaned over the half wall, his arms extended to catch Ella. His smile was encouraging, but she looked over at me one more time. I nodded. The distance she had to jump wasn't all that far, but I got that for her it was terrifying. It would be for anyone, to put that amount of trust into a stranger.

She took a deep breath, squeezed her eyes shut and jumped. Her squeal died off as Hunter's hands wrapped around her forearms and her fall came to a halt. Forgetting to have her feet ready to catch herself against the wall, Ella's body hit the side of the building and she let out a little groan. Hunter coached her up so that he wasn't dragging her body up the side of a brick wall. It wasn't graceful in the least, but it worked and Ella was pulled safely over the wall. She bent forward, resting her hands on her thighs and tried to catch her breath.

By the time we made it to solid ground, Ella looked like she might kiss it. Hunter started to lead the way, but I stopped him.

"Miles and Joel are waiting down that street."

Hunter grinned. "No shit?"

He slung one arm around Zero who gave him a look that told us all exactly what she was thinking without having to say a word. She didn't trust us and she really didn't trust that we were now leading them somewhere else toward other people. He leaned down and whispered something in her ear as he lead her toward the street I mentioned. My attention was pulled from them when Ella's fingers locked around mine. I looked at our connected hands and raised an eyebrow.

"I'm not..." She shook her head, squeezing her eyes shut as she battled for the words she wanted to say. "Please don't let go of me." Embarrassed, she didn't look at me while she whispered the words in a rushed breath.

Something about the words or the fact that she couldn't look at me when she said them, like she was afraid I'd judge her for being scared, did something to me.

I wanted to. I wasn't a guy who enjoyed the whole damsel thing. Miles, he got off on being the hero. He liked to rescue girls... or let girls know that he could rescue them and reap the benefits. It always seemed weak to me. Maybe before I liked that, a girl thinking she needed me, but not anymore. Weak people didn't survive this world. Ella was definitely not strong.

But then, I couldn't exactly call her weak anymore either.

She'd been terrified since we'd left camp, but she'd done it anyway. She was practically defenseless and on her own she probably wouldn't have lasted a day. But despite being so out of her element and scared, she did everything we'd asked of her.

I didn't hold hands and reassure people that everything would be okay. But when Ella grabbed onto mine, I felt like The Grinch when his heart expanded three sizes. She needed me right then, but that didn't make her weak. She was probably braver than any of us. We were all used to this.

I squeezed her hand to let her know that I wouldn't let go. And some part of me didn't want to.

A/N- Soooo... What'd you think?? Hope you're enjoying so far! The fun is totally starting now - I can't wait for you guys to keep reading! Also... I've been updating twice a week, but for the foreseeable future I'm gonna be able to update three times a week! So starting Monday, keep and eye out for Updates on Monday, Wednesday & Friday evenings! :]