Maeve jolted awake. The truck abruptly stopped, practically throwing her out of the dreamless slumber she was in. She yawned a bear-like yawn before she realized she was using TJ as her pillow. He was just as startled as she was when the truck jerked forward. They both looked at each other but averted their gazes. Though, she was sure he didn't know because also woke up from Joel's sudden brake check.

"Now what?" Ellie yawned.

They were on the freeway, which was clogged by dozens of abandoned cars. Joel grumbled under his breath as if debating on what to do: turn around, or use the ramp that led into the jungle of buildings of whatever city they were in,

"Screw it," Joel grunted and drove the truck down the turnpike.

All was going smoothly when there was suddenly a man limping toward the truck. Joel stomped the brake, causing everyone to be thrown forward.

"Easy!" the younger specimens looked at Joel, but his only focus was the man that limped toward them.

"Please...help..." The man called out pitifully.

"Holy shit..." Ellie glanced between Joel and the man. "Are we going to help him?"

"Put your seat belts on, kids," Joel ordered.

They hurried to put their seat belts on.

"But what about the guy?" Maeve asked warily.

"Oh, he ain't even hurt." Joel gunned it.

The truck shot forward and at the man. Everything happened so quickly. The limping brought out his gun, missing his shots as he was hit by the truck, getting tossed over the hood like a rag doll. It wasn't seconds after, many other guys tried shooting the truck, their bullets cracking against the doors and even shattering the windows.

"Not good!" A loud squealing of metal deafened the gunshots for a split second as a turned-over bus tore through part of the street and t-boned their truck.

"Hold on!"

Maeve grabbed on both of the men as they crashed into a storefront, breaking the entrance and then some. The pickup collided with an iron beam that ended their spiraling. For a moment, everything was still.

"Ugh..." Maeve groaned and unbuckled herself.

"We're good...I think..." TJ peered at the sisters in slight disorientation.

"Then get out quick," Joel told them.

"C'mere, you!" Suddenly, a buff and grunge man ripped Ellie's door open and seized her.

"Let go of me, you chickenshit! Joel!" She cried out as the man pulled her from the truck.

"Ellie!" Maeve yelled out, scrambling over TJ and out of the truck to aid her sister. "Let her go, asshole!" She snatched a broke four-by-four and charged at the man who was choking her sister and swung it as hard as she could at his head. The rotten wood broke on impact. Already pissed off, the man growled, turning his wrathful attention onto Maeve, who throw the broken piece of wood at him, which hit him in the face. That seemed to piss him off more. He lunged at Maeve, tackling her before she could dodge or run away to safety.

"I'll show you," The man wrapped his hands around Maeve's throat, squeezing her flesh. "I'll show you."

She gasped for air and clawed at the man's arms. Black dots filled her vision and the pain in her trachea was excruciating. He was trying to crush her windpipe or break her neck. Or both. She wouldn't last much longer, but...before she would let her consciousness slip, she managed to pluck her knife from her pocket and jam it in the guy's left elbow. He yelled out, releasing her to get the knife out of his flesh.

"Sayonara, motherfucker!" TJ kicked the man in the side of the side Maeve could hear his jaw crunch as it broke. The man fell onto the broken debris of the store, but TJ went at the guy, standing over him and beating the shit out of him. The auburn-haired girl gasped and tenderly rubbed her neck as she looked at TJ. He seemed to be more oriented now. He peered down at her and offered his hand, his hand that was covered in that man's blood. "You okay?"

"Yup, never better," she coughed out, still rubbing her neck as he helped her to her feet. "How about you, Ellie?"

Ellie was on her feet, she glared at the man who choked her, sauntered to his body, and kicking him in the groin, "Motherfucker!"

"Feel better?" Maeve scanned her over for any other injuries.

"I'm fine now, thanks for saving my ass," The girls shared a fist bump.

"I guess that means you owe me now."

"What—?"

"Come on." Joel interrupted them, going to the truck and pulling out all of their bags.

"Hey—what's wrong with these guys?"

"Catch your breath," Joel thrust their bags at them. "We're leaving."

"'Kay...Watch out!"

There were other men, shooting at the group. They were yelling serious profanities and going after Joel and TJ.

"Eek!" Maeve ducked, protecting her head with her arms as she scrambled behind the store shelves.

"Come out, little piggies!" A gruff voice called, his voice full of malevolence.

Shit...Maeve peeked around the corner of the shelf by a little bit.

"Piggy, piggy, where are you?"

"Gotchu!" Large hands grappled her from her blind side, and she screamed. She'd been too concerned about the large man waving around the rifle than watching her own ass, that she hadn't seen another man creep up on her. "Ain't you pretty, little Missy?"

Maeve cringed and kneed him in the gonads, causing him yell out and let go of her. She thrust her hand at his neck, hitting a vital pressure point. The man's eyes rolled into the back of his head and dropped to the dirty ground.

"YOU LITTLE SHIT!" The rifle man pointed the gun at Maeve, who accidentally stepped out of cover.

"NO!" Ellie screamed as the trigger was pulled, but Joel forced her behind the counter again so she wouldn't be shot at.

Miraculously, the older girl wasn't harmed, the bullet missed when she bolted out of sight. Her heart hammered in her chest. Holyshitholyshitholyshit! Her breathing was erratic, and she felt a panic attack coming on. No! You have to calm, Maeve! She didn't feel the slightest bit calm.

"Fucker!" KABLAM!

A shotgun went off and then there was a scream. She couldn't tell if was one of the guys or the rifle guy. It was too low to be Ellie.

"Maeve!" Ellie called out in panic.

"Stay where you are, Ellie!"

Maeve just so happened to find a baseball near the guy that grabbed her. It didn't have wires or nails accessorizing it, but she figured she could use it to defend herself. She gripped the neck of the bat and brought up near her face, readying it for the next man trying to sneak around the shelf. She saw his shadow creeping wider on the floor.

"Come out, come out, wherever you are," he said sickly sweet. "We ain't gonna hurt you."

"Not today, bitch!" Maeve swung the bat at the man's face, bashing his jaw with such an impact, he was sent to collapse on the floor. Luckily for her, her arm was strong enough to knock the dude unconscious.

"Bitch!" Bullets ricocheted off the shelves, as if the hunters were trying to shoot at her but didn't have a clear shot.

Joel and TJ and the hostile men have a short shootout before they gained the upper hand. All was silent for a moment.

"Oh my god!" Ellie raced to her, "You're okay, right?!"

"I'm fine, dude," Maeve nodded briskly. "It was a little better than being choked to death."

"It's gonna leave a mark." Ellie creased her brows together and reached to touch her sister's reddened neck.

"I said I'm okay," the older girl caught her hands before they could touch her tender flesh. "No need to get all touchy."

"But—"

"I am okay." Maeve said dismissed her, though her throat hurt and throbbed. She was sure she'd have bruising. Hell, her trachea still had phantom hands circling around it, just aching terribly as the pressure of the man's hands.

Joel warily surveyed the area, his gun at the ready. "Alright...I think that's the last of 'em. Y'all okay?"

"Yeah..." Ellie rubbed the nape her neck and glanced at her sister. "I guess so."

"Good, 'cause we need to get the hell out of here," he stepped out of the store to look around more. "You know the drill. Look around, see if there is anything we can use."

The girls saluted the man and began to look for anything to scavenge. There wasn't much on the bodies of those hunters. Maybe mostly used gauze, a rag or two, some bullets. Other than that, they couldn't much of anything.

Maeve entered the street, the sun shined bright and seared down on her like fire. She fanned herself with her hand. Sure, she liked summer, but it was too damned hot, and too humid. Her jeans were beginning to feel itchy against her thighs as she walked. Not to mention, her socks were still damp from their little swim in the subway that morning. With the heat and her soggy footwear, she was sure to develop smelly feet.

"Whew, it's hot!"

"You're not the one wearing long sleeves," Ellie joked.

"Ugh..." the older groaned. "You got me beat. Get anything good?"

TJ had just come from an old and abandoned motor shop office with Joel—or maybe it was an old gas station? Any who, they came out and looked around a bit more, to try and figure a way out of the open. The blond barely looked at her as he reached into his back pocket and held out his hand. She hesitantly reached out and dropped a few nails into her palm.

"Oh," she blinked at the rusted metal. "Thanks."

She got the jar of nails and razors from her bag, and added the new—well, not new, but new nails to the jar. It wasn't much, but she was a little but closer to more lethal bomb. All that she needed now was some explosive powder and a canister.

"Hey—maybe we can go through here?" Ellie kicked at a closed garage door.

"Well, we sure as hell ain't back this way," Joel gestured toward the bus, which was the way they crashed through. He went to the garage door and went to lift it with TJ. "Aggh...Alright...go. See if you can get it propped open with somethin'."

Both sisters ducked under the door, freezing when they saw the inside. The garage was small, probably from all the stuff. There was this huge pile of shoes, a pile of clothes, a few crates with other items Maeve didn't care to look at. What she was most concerned about, was the cut-up body on the metal table off to the side. Her stomach churned at the sight, not to mention the smell. She thought it was just the one body, but she spotted more behind the table the first was laid on. She covered her mouth and nose.

Damn...

"Um...there's some pretty gnarly stuff in here..." Ellie looked around; her brows furrowed.

"I don't care which one of ya holds this door, but you don't it right now—"

"Okay, jeez!" Maeve snapped back into reality, looking away from the body. "Don't get your panties in a twist!"

She and Ellie hold the chain for the door, gripping it with their hands and keeping the door just open enough for the guys to duck underneath it. They straightened up as observed the mess before them.

"Fuckin' hunters," TJ sneered.

"See, this could've been us," Joel gestured to the dead bodies and then all of them.

"Man, that is a lot of people that didn't make it." Ellie frowned and kicked an old boot that strayed from the shoe pile.

"I knew I should've turned the damn truck around." Joel muttered and began to look around a little, eyes narrowed into slits.

"We lived."

"Barely," the older man retorted and went for a door to the far left. "C'mon, let's get outta here."

They left the garage, free of the damage the "hunters" collected. Maeve felt her mind reel. So...those guys—hunters—killed all of those people? What did they want to achieve, anyway? Killing anyone who traveled through the city just seemed...cruel and totally unnecessary. Were they trying to be alphas and "protect" their territory or kill for the hell of it?

"How did you know?" She felt herself asking, her voice echoed throughout the stairwell they climbed.

"Know what?" Joel replied.

"About the ambush," Ellie responded.

"I've been on both sides."

"Oh," the younger girls pursed her lips as they made it to the top floor. "So, ah, did you kill a lot of innocent people?"

He sighed. Maeve figured that was a yes.

"We'll take that as a yes."

"Take it however you want." Joel said as they reached some rudimentary quarters.

"I guess this is where the assholes sleep," Ellie cringed. "Er, slept."

Old mattresses were scattered across the floor, dirty piles of what looked like clothes, or covers, Maeve couldn't differentiate between them. It was dusty and smelled of sweat and terrible hygiene, it wasn't as terrible as the bodies in the garage. She spotted some salvageable stuff around there. Items that could be of worth, not to mention. She treaded to one of the shelves, which had some alcohol and a wad of rags. No nails, unfortunately.

"What's this?" TJ asked aloud, sounding confused.

Everyone turned toward him. He had seemed to find a pouch with a fuse.

"Let me see that." Maeve approached him and took the bag from him. She groped the pouch, shifting the grains inside. She sniffed the pouch next, "It's a smoke bomb."

"How can you possibly know that?"

"It's got explosive powder and sugar inside it," Maeve explained and returned the pouch to TJ's hand. "Igniting it will cause the sugar to become a smoke screen."

"I know what a smoke bomb does, thanks." TJ put the pouch into his bag.

"Just making sure you do." Maeve flashed him a smirk and continued to search the room a little more. Perhaps she could find some more rags or something.

"You know how to make smoke bombs, don't you?"

"She knows how to make everything," Ellie commented, hooking her thumbs around her backpack straps.

"Do you know how to make bombs?" TJ looked at the younger girl.

"Eh...just simple first aid and Molotov's. I don't usually make them 'cuz I always manage to burn the shit out of my hands. Maeve's been at the school longer than I have, she knows a lot more than me."

"Sounds like you were an ideal soldier-to-be." TJ snorted and eyed Maeve's form as she stood from the pile of clothes she dug through.

"Ha ha. Very funny." She glared at him.

"Just sayin'," he shrugged. "What else can you do? What other explosives can you make?"

"Eh..." Maeve trailed off as she racked her brain for her amazing intellect. "Well...I mean, you've got the nail bombs. Pipe bombs. Maybe a stun grenade, though with resources being so low, I doubt I'll be able to make one—and then I have first aid down. I know how to suture and clean a wound, how to set a broken bone. Though, it's all simple survival things."

"Any other bombs we need to be aware of?" TJ pressed further.

"I think if I get my hands on some...eh...what's it called...damn," the older girl clicked her tongue. "Whatever, I'll probably remember it later. But I was taught basic self-dense, I can incapacitate some just by applying a certain amount of force onto their vital pressure points."

"That's what you did back at the store we crashed in." TJ recalled.

"Yeah, sometimes I forget I practically raised by soldiers. Slips my minds sometimes."

"How does something like that slip your mind?" the blond eyed her weirdly.

"I told you, untreated ADHD." Maeve shrugged and then looked at Ellie who grinned back at her.

"C'mon, children," Joel appeared from a doorway Maeve hadn't seen before. He fidgeted with his pistol. "Let's get."

"Aye, aye, captain." The girls saluted the man.

They leave the building, using a metal set of stairs to the small backyard area. The grass was dry and dead...speaking of dead, there was plenty of dead. A dozen or so bodies burned in pile, their charred skin or skeletons still smoked. Only thing was...

"I don't think these guys were infected..."

Maeve nodded in agreement. Though fire would burn off the exterior first, she didn't see any signs of fungal limbs. There were just regular human victims of the hunters. She felt bad for the lives lost, but at the same time, she was grateful it wasn't her or her sister. It was selfish thinking, but it was, nonetheless, true.

"It don't matter," Joel dismissed the burning, charred pile of bodies and peered around for an escape hatch. "Let's just keep moving."

Ellie had approached a tarp-covered wall, it went no high than below her shins. It was the only part of the back area that didn't have barbwire covering it. Below was a street with several cars with rotted tires and busted windows, some were even overgrown with wild vegetation.

"After you," Maeve smiled cheekily as she peered down at the small drop.

"Why, thank you." Ellie feigned a posh accent and leapt over the wall.

"Hey, ladies. Slow down!" Joel just barely managed to catch a glimpse of the sisters going ahead of them. "Wait for us."

"What? We're right here." Ellie responded with the tiniest bit of irritation after they dropped onto the street.

"How 'bout you let us go first? And keep your voice down." The guys dropped onto the street.

"Okay." Ellie lowered her tone mockingly.

They continued down the car infested road, most of which had skeletons inside them. The window-shields of the vehicles had been shot, Maeve figured they'd been shot through the glass, but then again, her assumptions were too obvious.

"What happened here? Your fellow hunters do this?" Ellie spotted a corpse hanging out of one of the cars.

"Cute," Joel rolled his eyes. "And no, my money's on the military."

"Why would they kill all these people?" Maeve asked before Ellie could.

"Can't let everyone in."

"So they killed them?"

"Dead people don't get infected. You sacrifice the few to save the many."

"It's kinda shitty." Ellie cringed.

"Yeah."

As they walked further up the road, a gunshot blasted through the air. A gaggle of birds took immediate flight.

"What was that?"

"Where did you learn to shoot?" A voice echoed from behind a crashed bus.

"Get down!" The guys hurried the sisters behind some cement road blocks just as a quartet of hunters climbed to the hood of the bus.

"Man, screw you." The one with the rifle flipped one of the others off.

"You had an entire flock and hit nothing." They joked with him.

"I'm about to hit you." The gunman threatened.

They hopped down from the bus and sauntered the way the group came from.

"Wow...yeah, you're upset. Well, if you want some lessons, I'm more than willing to help you." One of them offered.

"Yeah, whatever." The gunman holstered his firearm as they stood in the middle of the road.

A painful minute passed and one of the hunters grunted irately, "Where the hell are those guys? They're supposed to be here."

"They're on the highway shift. Wouldn't be surprised if they caught another batch of tourists."

"Spot's a goldmine. Lucky bastards."

"See if there's anything you can forage while we wait for them."

"Ain't nothin' here. Let's keep going."

"Yeah, screw this," the hunter with the goggles agreed. "I ain't waitin' any longer. Let's go see what those assholes are up to."

"They pull this crap every time," the gunman complained. "I swear to God, if they're holding out on us again..."

"Yeah. And you'll do what?"

"You'll see."

"Yeah, I will see."

They descended down the road, eventually disappearing through the cars.

"There's no end to them, is there?" Maeve stood up, her brows creased with concern.

"I'm not too eager to find out their numbers." TJ dusted himself off after he stood.

"I figure we can get up there," Joel pointed toward the bus, the way those hunters came through and they started toward the transportation vehicle.

"Aggh...we need to lighten the mood," Ellie broke the silence and pulled something out of her bag, she grinned. "Ready?"

"What is that?" Maeve caught a glimpse of a small book in her sister's hand, though she was moving too much for her to read the title.

The younger girl cleared her throat, "It doesn't matter how much you push the envelope—it'll still be stationary."

"What is that?" Joel repeated Maeve's question.

"A joke book," the girl replied cheekily. "No Pun Intended: Volume Too by Will Livingston."

The man sighed and went to climb the car next the bus.

"What did the Confederate soldiers use to eat off of? Civil ware."

Maeve snorted, but the males didn't to seem to find it funny at all.

"What did they use to drink with? Dixie cups." Ellie read another. "I walked into my sister's room and tripped on a bra. It was a booby-trap."

Maeve howled out and smacked a hand over her mouth to muffle her outburst of giggles, "That actually happened once, remember?"

"Oh, yeah!" Ellie recalled and giggled with her. "I broke my Polaroid that day."

"You mean my Polaroid."

"Sure, sure," Ellie shrugged that off with a grin and looked at the pages again. "A book just fell on my head. I only have myself to blame—oh wait, I said it wrong! Hold on, lemme read it again. A book just fell on my head...I only have my shelf to blame. Heh...ruined it."

Maeve grinned at her little sister in amusement.

"What is the leading cause of divorce in long-term marriages? A stalemate."

"That's awful." Joel peered down at her from the roof of the bus.

"You're awful." Ellie shot back.

"Do you even understand what that means?"

"Nope," she closed her pun book and put it back in her bag. "Doesn't matter. Alright, I'm done...for now."

"Dear God..." TJ rubbed his face at her words.

The girls climbed the car to the get to the bus' roof, and then they saw a large yellow bridge in the distance. It appeared to be leading out of the city, which they wanted. For now, they would have to zip zap around the city and avoid those trigger-happy hunters.

"That bridge looks pretty far."

"We'll get there," Joel dropped into the abandoned QZ checkpoint. There were sandbags lining cement road blockers, which seemed to be purposely placed to direct of line of people.

"Whoa," the girl's gap at the surrounding area. "It's strange seeing a checkpoint with no soldiers.

"This is what most zones look like. This place has been abandoned for a while now."

Maeve nodded. It made sense that this place of empty. She wouldn't be surprised if those hunters drove the military out somehow.

""Give us our rations."," Ellie read some white graffiti on the right gate. "Why wouldn't then give them their food?"

"Sometimes they ran out," Joel responded gruffly. "Most time they just held onto it."

"That never happened in Boston."

"It happened everywhere, El." Maeve glanced at her before they proceeded through the processing turnstile.

"Oh..." Ellie trailed off and then suddenly perked up. "I hear hunters."

"Yeah, us too," Joel grunted lowly. "Let's keep it down while we're going through this area. Okay?"

"Aye, Aye, Captain."

The crept out of the processing area, keeping low as a few hunters were conversing out in the open. They had no idea they were there, and Maeve hoped they didn't spot them.

"Aggh...I'm so fucking tired!" One of the hunters groaned with exhaustion. "We were up all night chasing this tourist."

"Oh, you were part of that? I hear about that." Another one answered.

"What're we gonna do, Joel?" TJ whispered.

"I don't know," the older man narrowed his eyes and wiped his mouth. "There's no tellin' how many of them there are."

"Should we flush them out?"

"We could sneak around them," Maeve interjected TJ's idea. "Do what we did at the Capitol building?"

"No," Joel shut her idea down real fast. "Too risky."

"Well, then what the hell do you wanna do?"

While they were in the amidst of discussing their escape plans, they hadn't seen a tatted hunter round the fence and stumble onto them. Not in the literal term of stumbling, but their cover was exposed, and he yelled out to his buddies.

"Shit!"

The war began. There were more of them than the small group could believe, probably about forty men in total. It was an absolute disaster, on their part if they were to be honest. While the sisters dodged the bullets ricocheting around, the distracted some of their hostile hosts with bricks or bottles to their faces, which gave Joel and TJ the advantage against them. The bookstore seemed to have no shortage of enemies, but nonetheless, they were dispatched, but not without ease.

Maeve didn't know how the long the shooting back and forth lasted, or how many yells were cut off by immediate death. She should've been used to the death by now, but she wasn't. Handling infected was one thing but having to kill non-fungal beings made her stomach churn. The last hunter went down, dropping to the library floor, wheezing out his last breaths.

"That was too damn close, Joel," TJ recounted his bullets.

"I know."

"To the edge of the universe and back. Endure and survive."

The guys looked at Ellie weirdly, they obviously hadn't understood the reference.

"Excuse me?" Joel backpedaled.

"Savage Starlight," Ellie informed him. "That comic I've been reading? Yeah, it's what the hero says after a big battle."

"Endure and survive?"

"Yeah."

"Okay then."

Taking this time to look around, Maeve wandered away from the group and into a small room with lockers. She looted what she could, and then moved onto the next room, though that room was practically bone dry.

After a moment of packing her bag of the items she found, she rejoined the group upstairs. It surprised her that there were still books in the library, she figured the hunters used most of them to start fires in the barrels around the upstairs area. It was kind of sad, really, all those stories, lost to fire. On the second floor, there were more shelves than the first floor, shelves lined the walls, with an additional shelf in the middle of the walkway here or there. With those hunters camping, er, camped, out here, there were a few mattresses set close to the burning barrels, some of the reading chairs, or the shelves.

"Man, look at all these books," Maeve peered around and approached the closest bookshelf. "I wish I had more room in my backpack."

"Same," Ellie agreed.

"So you're readers, huh?"

"When we're not running from hunters or infected? Yeah, we read all the time."

Maeve skimmed the scarce shelf. It'd been too long since she was able to sit back and relax with a good book. Her chest ached a bit.

"Okay, it's time to lighten the mood," Ellie announced and brought forth her pun book. She could have sworn TJ cringed when she saw him. It was whatever. "Bakers trade bread recipes on a knead-to-know basis. Get it? Knead?"

"I get it," Joel searched behind the coffee counter, which was to their left.

"A moon rock tastes better than an earthly rock...because it's meteor," Ellie read another joke. "Oh man, that made me hungry. A backwards poet writes inverse."

"Do you even get that?" TJ shifted his weight between his legs.

"Of course not," Ellie responded blatantly. "I used to be addicted to soap, but I'm clean now."

The sound Maeve made just then; it wasn't human. It was a mix between a choking goose and a clogged toilet. Though the sound that she made earned her weird looks, Ellie seemed to grin, proud she made at least one person laugh. She needed to up her game, those jokes were not even funny, and yet she laughed. God, she was so childish.

Still grinning, Ellie closed her pun book. "That's it...that's all I got. Now what?"

"Get out of here, duh." TJ walked past her, to the exit, which lead to the back alley.

"Oh, great." They followed the blond out of the bookstore, back into the furious blazing of the sun.

"Jeez..."

Just before the alleyway, which was their way out, there were several corpses with military clothing. One was hanging from the streetlight. They had been killed savagely.

"You gotta be crazy to string up soldiers."

"You get people desperate enough, they'll do just about anything." Joel answered and continued into the alley, climbing over a cement roadblock.

"And that people that rose up...they're the ones we've been fighting here?"

"That'd be my bet."

The rest of the small group hopped over the roadblock and entered into a flooded street. By flooded, it was flooded. Probably more than flooded. The upper street they walked on, surprisingly wasn't submerged. Like at the Capitol Building, there were dragonflies soaring around and croaks and crickets everywhere. The water seemed to get deeper the steeper the street became. Speaking of, the surrounding buildings that were half drowned, were so fucked. The water seemed to damage their supports and walls, and God knows how long they were bathing for.

"Shit, down, down, down! There's more of them!" Joel ushered the younger humans behind a rotted vehicle.

"Careful with that plank," There were two of them, they crossed from a semi-truck trailer to another.

"Let's get out of here." The second hunter pulled the plank onto the right trailer, and they walked into the damaged hotel entrance.

"Alright," Joel warily stood back up. "I don't think they saw us."

"Whew!" Ellie let out and then spotted the bridge in the distance, it seemed a little closer than before. "We're a little closer, I think."

They neared the edge of the flooded area; Joel having pointed out the plank the hunters moved.

Maeve cringed, knowing it would be another swim. She didn't know if her face showed it or not, maybe she was that transparent, but Ellie saw it.

"Want me to take your bag?" she offered with a small smile.

"Please." Maeve took her bag off and handed it to Ellie, who put it on over her own.

"What is with you and wanting to keep your bag dry?" TJ glanced at her.

"I have valuables," the older girl emphasized. "How hard is it to understand that?"

He scoffed and rolled his eyes and entered the water. It was deep enough for both of them literally swim. But once Ellie had Maeve's bag on, Maeve slipped into the translucent green water, the surface rippling at her movements.

An odd noise filled the air. It sounded like screeching tires against the hot asphalt on the not-so-submerged bridge a little way before them. And then screams pierced the air just as an array of machine-like bullets shot out. This bulked out and armored military truck sped through, the gun on top never ceasing its firing.

"What the hell!?" Maeve gasped.

"Oh, this place is bad."

"No, shit! We gotta get outta here!" TJ swam toward the left trailer, which the doors were open, and it gave an entry way to an old coffee shop.

Maeve followed him and they hurried out of the water. Together, they got to the top of the trailer.

"I think I can make that jump." Maeve murmured, ready to use whatever muscles she had in her calves, but...

Ellie was already climbing onto the second trailer. She smirked at her before pushing the plank toward them. TJ grabbed it and secured it so he could walk over. The younger gave her sister a raspberry.

"You are such a—"

"Badass? Ninja? The best sister you could ever have?" Ellie cut her off cheekily.

"Sure," Maeve went along with her and took her bag back.

"Do you think those hunters are gone?" the younger sister peered into the broken sign of the hotel.

"I reckon we're about to find out."