Thirty - Kyle

Three minutes, maybe four, I hadn't been counting but I knew we hadn't been out of the room long before all hell broke loose. She was just fine. Not fine. Sick. Horrible fever. Totally unconscious. Yeah, that wasn't fine at all, but it wasn't seizing on the bed - foaming from her mouth.

I'd seen so many awful things. People I called brothers die. Horrible things happen to good people. Innocent people - some children - in the wrong place at the wrong time. So many from this sickness and then the zombies that came with it. Seeing Hunter and Ella strung up and left to die - that easily topped the list. But this, this was up there. Seeing someone who is closer than family break and being powerless to change any of it is one of the worst feelings.

I stood in the doorway, not knowing what to do. There wasn't much I could do. Miles and Joel looked equally clueless and Hunter... shit, he was out of his mind. He was lost. The sounds that were coming from him weren't completely human and none of them were coherent, just panicking noises of someone terrified and hopeless.

While all of us stood helplessly to the side, observing but taking no action, Ella didn't hesitate. If she was phased at all by seeing Zero seizing or Hunter breaking, she didn't show it. We'd underestimated her. Time and time again. We all thought, hell, I'd told her, that she couldn't handle the world without me. That she panics too easily and would die. But here she was. All of us standing around, incapable of helping and Ella was taking charge. We were so out of our element, but hell, so was she.

She barely even paused in the doorway, only stopping long enough to take in exactly what was happening. And then she was pushing through everyone to get to Zero. Miles and Joel jumped quickly out of the way, but Hunter hadn't even realized we'd entered the room. I don't think anyone existed in that moment. Not bothering to deal with him, she went to the other side of the bed and grabbed Zero, pulling her body to one side. Ella grabbed some pillows from the bed and positioned them behind Zero to keep her up on one side.

"What are you doing?" Hunter demanded, his voice cracking. He reached forward like he wanted to touch her, but he was too scared and pulled back. Biting his fist, Hunter tried to compose himself. "Wh-what's happening?"

Ella looked up, her mouth in a firm hard line, her eyes filled with compassion.

"She's having a seizure. I'm just making sure she doesn't choke on anything," she told him, remaining remarkably calm.

"Ah, no," he said, shaking his head as he sank to his knees, leaning over the bed. Though Ella had been calm when she said it, we were all thinking the same thing. It was only minutes ago that she explained seizures happened toward the end. "Come on, Sweetheart," Hunter begged, stroking her hair. "Come on, Sweetheart," he repeated, his voice choked and thick as his shoulder's shook uncontrollably. Hunter's head dropped while sobs wracked through his body.

Ella's eyes filled with tears as she watched the man who had gotten her through the worst moments of her life fall to pieces in front of her. I was sure she wanted to help him someway, like he'd done for her, but words seemed to run short. Like the rest of us, there was little she could do for him.

"Hunter," Ella said quietly, her own voice was thick but she didn't cry. She forced a smile for his benefit. "Hunter,"

she repeated, a little more firmly until he finally looked at her. "I need you to go get the ice packs. Okay? And the Tylenol."

"I'm not leaving her."

Patiently, Ella nodded. The breath she released when Zero's body relaxed was the only sign that she'd been anything but calm. She grabbed the washcloth that had been tossed aside when Zero began seizing and carefully wiped the girls mouth. After repositioning the pillow under Zero's head and allowing her to lay back flat, she again, persisted with Hunter in a gentle way.

"It's over," she assured him. She wasn't a doctor and I knew she didn't have much training, but she must have spent more time in the clinic than she let on, because Ella knew how to handle scared loved ones. She was more compassionate than and of us could have been and she barely knew him - barely knew either of them. It was possible the compassion came from guilt that she had been with Zero when the girl was bitten, but I didn't think so. In the short while that we'd known them she'd come to care for the pair and she hurt for Hunter. She reached across the bed and squeezed Hunter's hand.

"I know you want to be here for her, but what she needs is to get this fever down," she told him gently. "I'm going to stay right here while you and Kyle go get the Tylenol and ice packs." She glanced my way, making sure I heard the order and I nodded.

She wanted him out of the room, and I wanted to know why. Did she think this was it and not want Hunter to have to be the one to end it?

"Please," Hunter said. "You have to help her."

"I know," she said emphatically.

Walking over to Hunter, I placed a hand on his shoulder to get his attention, though I was preparing to physically have to drag him out of the room. I wasn't sure why Ella wanted him gone, but if it was the end... he shouldn't be there for it. Thankfully, Hunter didn't put up a fight. Nodding, he stood from the floor and leaned over to Zero. He whispered into her ear something too quiet to hear and then kissed her forehead before following me out.

We had only just made it out of the room before he stopped. I thought for a moment that he intended to go back to her, but as if he couldn't bear to hold his weight, he leaned against the wall just outside the door, looking up at the ceiling. I didn't rush him as he pulled in several ragged breaths. On the last exhale, a bitter, humorless laugh joined the breath and he leaned over, supporting himself with his hands on his thighs.

"She has to make it," he said quietly to himself. "This is... it's too many." Hunter dragged his eyes to mine. "I've done this... watched people die too many goddamned times. I can't—she has to make it."

"She will."

Without humor, he laughed again as he straightened. "How many people you know get bit and live to tell the story?"

"Ella thinks it's possible," I said when there was nothing else to say. "Lets get what she needs. She'll wake up in a couple hours, max."

Zero didn't die.

Not right away anyway and not in the time it took Hunter and I to find what Ella had requested.

Time however, seemed to stand still. Minutes extended as infinitely as the quiet stretched.

Hunter planted himself by Zero's side with no plans of moving until she woke up. One way or another, we all knew she was waking up. Ella, too, seemed resigned to staying exactly where she was. There wasn't much she could do, but she couldn't pull herself away.

Sleep was out of the question. So was leaving anytime in the immediate future. There wasn't much to do but just... wait.

"You tell them to keep that light low?" Miles looked up from where he'd been cleaning his guns.

"Yeah. Blinds are closed too."

"Still, the sun's going back down. There's no way they haven't realized something happened to their guys. They'll be looking out for us."

We had disposed of the bodies Zero and Ella left behind them, made it look more like the zoms had gotten to them than our girls. But if we'd heard the gunshots, chance are they did too so there was no telling whether or not they bought that a handful of their people had succumbed to zoms or not. We would err on the side of caution.

"I still can't believe Ella almost shot us," Mile said after a moment while his hands worked, putting his gun back together.

"Scared girl, twitchy finger," Joel said shaking his head, "A lot of people have gotten shot like that."

"She killed one of those guys."

Miles stopped what he was doing, his gaze snapping to my face, checking for honesty. Seeing that I wasn't making up some sick sort of joke, his eyebrows lifted. "Ella did?"

Nodding, I walked to the chair and sat down. The leather bound journal, still sitting on the coffee table, caught my eye. I wondered if the pages within held what Ella hoped for. I didn't know exactly what it was she hoped filled the journal. Maybe she wanted to read that her father regretted what he'd done. Or that he hadn't had much choice. Maybe she hoped it would reveal a way to stop this. Maybe she just wanted to know he cared for her and hoped he'd mentioned it in the pages.

"I didn't push for details."

I leaned forward and picked the book up from the table. There was a chance she didn't want to know what it was he wrote about. My fingers thumbed over the pages.

"Not your place, Ky," Joel said, drawing my attention. When I shot him a questioning look, he nodded toward the book in my hands. "You can't protect her from what's in that. But you can piss her off by reading it."

"Probably right." Shrugging, I tossed the journal back onto the table though that didn't prevent me from continuing to wonder what was inside.

"You think she's gonna be alright?"

"Anything's possible, right?"

"Not Zero," Miles corrected. "Come on, Kyle. We know that girl ain't pullin' through."

"We do?"

He sighed. "Don't make me a douchebag for saying it. We've been running around out here for the last year and no one's ever heard of anyone surviving a bite."

"Jamie's alive," Joel pointed out.

"That's not the same and you know it. Jamie's missing an arm and the only reason she survived is because of how quickly you acted. We can't exactly chop off Zero's shoulder. She's up there dying and we need to be thinking of how the fuck we're going to deal with Winston after that happens."

"Hunter," Joel corrected absently.

He rubbed his hands over his face roughly with an accompanying groan of frustration. "Right." He slumped over. "I'm exhausted. This has been a fucking run from hell."

"Go get some rest, Miles."

"I'm not pussying out, here. I can deal."

"And we can deal without you. Get some sleep." I looked at Joel. "You can go too."

Joel nodded, standing he stretched his arms and then cracked his neck. "I'll check on them. Try to get Hunter out of that room."

Miles, giving in, stood to go find somewhere to sleep as well. "Don't hesitate to yell for backup."

AN - If you're having to read this out of order, I sincerely apologize!