Sure enough, it was Lucas. I had abandoned my dolly to investigate, but brought the lantern with me. Lucas was on the ground surrounded by a bunch of fallen boxes, some leaking fluid onto the floor. I sniffed as I got closer. Beer.

"Really? Alcohol is a necessity?" I said.

He looked at me from the floor. His face was scrunched up in pain and I spotted a fresh stain of blood on his previously new shirt.

"My damn arm gave out," he growled.

He started prodding at the area where the blood was coming from.

"Wait here," I said running back toward the side entrance.

I had spotted a first aid kit fastened to the wall by the door when Rose and I were waiting around for the guys to return with a battery. It was just a simple metal box on the wall with a red cross on it. I pulled at it but it wouldn't come off. I lifted it upwards and strained. The box came off with a yank, almost throwing me off balance. I ran back to find that Lucas had propped himself up against the shelf, a bottle of beer already at his mouth.

I wanted to run my hands down my face, but the box in my hands was preventing me from it. This had to be the worst group to go on a run with. Pain in the asses the lot of them.

"I still can't get over the fact that they sell alcohol at grocery stores in America," I said as I approached Lucas.

His stopped sucking down the bottle's contents. "They don't do that in Canada?"

"Not in any province that I've been to."

"Province?"

"Yes, they're on the map and everything," I said sarcastically.

He glared at me, then winced. I kneeled beside him and put down the box, flipping open the lid. I scanned through the contents and pulled out the basics-antiseptic spray, gauze, and large compress pads.

"You need to take off your shirt."

"Thought you'd never ask," he said with a grin.

I rolled my eyes. Worst. Group. Ever. Rose was a pain in the ass. Leo was nice, but a little doe-eyed. And Lucas was a douchebag.

I heard Lucas take in a sharp breath as he pulled of his shirt. I moved the lantern closer so I could get a good look-at his wound. His shoulder was an angry mess of red, fresh blood dripping down his torso.

"How bad is it?"

"Uh ..." I trailed off.

"That bad, huh?"

I leaned in so close that I could feel his breath. There was something in the wound.

"Gross."

"What?" he said, panicked.

I hadn't meant to say that out loud. "I'm not sure."

I went back to the first aid box and dug around for some tweezers. There was a plastic pair in a mini Ziploc bag. I ripped it open and returned to Lucas's nasty shoulder. It looked like the infected had really chomped down hard. The skin was shredded. He was going to have a hell of scar to add to the ones already smattered on his neck and arms. There was even some scar tissue where his lower abdomen met his pant line. The hospital had really done a number on him. If it was just from the hospital.

I decided to focus on the nasty task at hand instead of speculating about his many scars. I bit my lip as I prepared to dig into the wound to remove whatever the yellow thing sticking out was. Please don't be a part of Lucas. The wound didn't look deep enough to have hit bone or anything like that, so I had no idea what the tiny object was.

"This is probably going to hurt," I warned.

Lucas nodded and took a deep swig of the beer he had started in on. I put my left hand on the unharmed part of his chest to hold him in place and squeezed at the object with the tweezers. He hissed in a breath, but to his credit, didn't move. The blood was making it hard to get a good grip. I was starting to push it in deeper. I pushed the ends of the tweezers together and gave up trying to pull the object out. Instead, I would dig. I placed the closed end of the tweezers beside the object and pushed.

Fresh blood started to dribble down, but I kept going. I got in and behind the object then dug it out with the flick of my wrist. Lucas let out a strangled sound as the object dislodged from his wound and fell into his lap. I had gotten it out. The wound was now bleeding anew, so I grabbed a wad of gauze and pressed it to his mangled shoulder to try and stem the bleeding.

His free hand went to his lap and pulled up the object. We both peered at it.

"It's a fuckin' tooth!" Lucas said flinging it away from him.

Ugh. The infected must have lost it while biting Lucas. I debated making a joke about keeping it for the tooth fairy, but I thought better of it. He looked pretty angry. Lucas finished off his beer while I peeked behind the gauze to see if the bleeding had slowed. There was no point in wrapping the wound up because he would just bleed through the bandages. So, I sat there pressing on his bleeding injury while Lucas stared down the neck of the beer bottle as if willing it to refill.

"Can you pass me another one?" Lucas asked.

"No." I wasn't about to let him get drunk on a run.

"Two beers ain't nothin'."

"Well, your beer here is weak compared to Canadian stuff-" He raised a brow at that- "But we need you alert and focused-not buzzed. It's our asses on the line too," I said, choosing my words carefully.

He muttered something along the lines of me being a buzzkill, but in this situation, I was fine with that. He could drink all he wanted when we got back to the motel. I removed the blood-soaked gauze and sprayed some antiseptic on Luca's shoulder, then patched him up with a large bandage. I quickly packed everything back in the first aid kit. This was something we could definitely use.

Lucas got up and put his bloody shirt back on. He picked a new case of beer off the shelf and while I half expected him to just dig right in, he just placed it under his arm on the uninjured side and kept moving.

He turned back to me. "You comin' or what?"

I got up with my lantern in hand, hauling the metal kit with me. Lucas went to deposit his find in the back of the cube van and I went back to my dolly.

We spent probably a good two hours packing up everything useful we could find. Yes, this trip was supposed to be more of a quick run, but who knows when we would get a chance to find so many supplies in one spot. Most commercial places had been picked clean, dwindling our choices for supply runs. We hadn't run into anymore infected inside the warehouse, but I could hear some mulling about outside every time I passed near the tiny opening we had snuck in through. That would be fun to deal with later.

I was giving the aisles one last run through for spotting some last-minute items when I heard the sound of a bag rustling the next one over. I pulled out my knife and quietly investigated. With the lantern, I could see pretty well, but I couldn't spot where the noise was coming from. About halfway down the aisle, I heard the noise again and it sounded like it was higher up on the shelf. I jerked the lantern up, almost smacking myself in the forehead with it.

Some tiny rocks fell from the middle part of the shelf, clanging against the rungs as they fell. I walked over and kneeled down, picking up one of the tiny pebbles. It was pet food. I looked up again to see two red eyes reflected back at me. I stumbled back, my heart racing. What the hell? I heard a soft meow and placed a hand on my chest, willing my heart to slow back down. It was just a damn cat. The grey fur ball stared at me while it continued to make sounds. I wasn't a pet person so I had no idea if that meant it was mad or happy. At least it wasn't hissing-I knew that one.

"Jesus girl, we're ready to go!" Rose said yelling at me from the end of the corridor.

I just pointed to the cat. Rose froze when she finally spotted it then a grin broke out on her face. She walked at a normal pace toward me and tried to coax the cat from the shelf. At first the cat was wary of her, then it let Rose pick it up.

"Who's a cute little thing?" Rose said in a baby voice.

The cat was in her arms letting her scratch it behind the ears as it purred away. I watched her with my mouth hanging open. It was weird seeing her like this. She looked up at me and her smile fell away. "Grab a bag of cat food."

"We're not taking it with us," I said.

"And why the hell not?" She held the cat away from me like she was worried I'd try to grab it from her.

"There's no place for pets in the apocalypse. It's just another mouth to feed." It was cold, but true.

"That's why I said to bring cat food."

"And when that runs out?"

"Then you better bring a couple bags of food," Rose said.

She cooed at the cat and walked away. I jammed my knife back into its holder and started to stomp away, but stopped after a few feet. There was no way Rose was just going to leave the cat here and if I didn't bring the cat food, she'd be using our supplies to feed the damn thing. With a deep, resounding sigh, I headed back to the cat food and grabbed as many bags as I could lift. This would be the last time I went on a run with this group. Rose shot me a haughty look when I reached the truck with the cat food in my arms. I barely resisted the urge to fling them at her.

The back of the van was stuffed. I got a little giddy just looking at it. We would be set for quite a while and that meant I could leave to find Zoe ASAP. Lucas took the bags from me and squished them into the pile.

"Why the hell did you let her bring the damn cat?" he asked.

I held up my hands. "Hey, I argued against bringing it, but she wouldn't listen." I just wanted to get back to the motel and start planning out our rescue attempt.

"I'm allergic to cats," Lucas grumbled as he pulled down the door to the back of the van.

We all piled into the cab. Lucas was in the driver's seat, me next to him squished in the middle with Leo and Rose-and the cat-sharing the passenger seat. Lucas was about to start the truck when Leo suddenly yelled, "Wait! I'll go start the mower."

The plan was to use the back way out instead of the main road we had come on. There was a tiny alley running behind the warehouse that would lead us back to the motel, with a few twists and turns along the way. Leo hopped out of the cab to start up our distraction. We waited for a few seconds until we heard the roar of the lawn mower and saw Leo sprint back toward us with an infected or two on his trail.

Lucas started the truck. Leo had barely closed the door when Lucas gunned it and we were flown against the dash. The cat hissed and clawed as Rose was forced to squeeze it tighter. The feral cat caught the edge of her eye when it raked its claws down her face.

She managed to calm it down by the time Lucas had swung the truck around and started going forward down the alley.

"Real nice," she yelled at Lucas.

He didn't say anything but I could see that he was smirking as he stared out the windshield. His face stiffened, then he let out a sneeze. I looked at Rose who had a nice raised scratch that started above the left eye and stopped at the apple of her cheek. She was lucky the claw didn't actually get her eyeball.

"You look like a James Bond villain," I said.

The cab was dead silent, then to my utter surprise, everyone-including Rose-started to laugh.

************

A/N: Another friendly reminder here that if you don't like waiting for updates, you can buy the complete and edited version on all eBook retailers! Also the complete series is now available in a box set for those of you who want to save a few bucks :)