"This is the downtown area?"

Maeve observed the destruction around her, even more before her. She stood on a slab of tiled concrete—she was sure it would give away at any second and would send her into the pit below. The road—or what was left of it— had been swallowed into the earth. Vehicles, and other buildings, partially or fully collapsed. And if she squinted hard enough, she could make out a train wreck in the subway beneath all that rubble.

It definitely was a long way down.

"What's left of it," Tess answered. "The military bombed the hell out of this place, including the surrounding area hoping to kill off as many infected as they could — worked for a little while. There's our building." She pointed off toward the horizon.

A golden dome boldly displayed itself above the wreckage, like a beacon of hope. A golden light reflected off the round top.

"Wow..." Maeve marveled at the sight, but her attention slowly diverted back to the sunken hole in the street. She realized the collapsed ground wasn't just some hole, it was damaged by a bomb. A big ass one, by the looks of it.

Oof.

She wasn't scared of heights, but it would be one hell of a way to die, that was for sure. Her stomach churned the more she kept looking down.

"Saved your life!"

A pair of hands latched onto her shoulders and jolted her forward and then forced her back. A scream escaped her, or at least she thought it was a scream. It sure in hell didn't sound like a scream as it echoed through the wasteland.

Her heart painfully thumped in her chest as she whipped around to her cackling sister.

"Oh, man! You should've seen your face!" The younger girl held her stomach, teetering on her heels.

"Dammit, Ellie! You little shit! What if I fell?!" Maeve growled at her abrasively.

"Pssh! Chill your tits," Ellie smirked and folded her arm over her chest. "You're fine, see?"

"Ugh! You're such a dick!" Maeve glared at her and moved away from the ledge.

That remark only made Ellie laugh.

"Ugh! You're so—" the older girl went to say, but Joel's voice interrupted her.

"Hey, Tess? This way!"

You're safe...for now...Maeve eyed her sister sourly as Tess called for them to follow her. They hurried after her and TJ while they jabbed each other with their elbows and poking each other's sides.

"Would you two stop that?" TJ sneered at them with annoyance.

"You want what she's having?" Maeve looked at him, balling up her fists and punching the air, pretending to box fight.

"I ain't scared of you."

"Not yet." Maeve glowered.

"Not yet." Ellie mocked her sister, deepening her voice to try and sound like her.

"Shut up!" Maeve blew a raspberry at as they approached a skyscraper.

Well, it was a ruined skyscraper. It leaned dangerously, but it was being held up by another identical building. She could hear the building wheeze and groan from where she was. The uneasiness she developed just by looking too long was through the roof, no pun intended.

Was there such a thing as a fear of looking at tall objects?

"Hey, Tess!" Joel called again, watching from a grassy slope that built up into torn wall from the building.

"Comin'!" The four hurried to the man as he entered the ruined building wall.

"I guess we're going inside a collapsing building with some odd floors above us..." Maeve warily hugged herself.

Joel opened a door led into a hall, only to find a mangled corpse leaned against the door across from the way they came in.

"He's been ripped apart." Tess clicked on her flashlight with a frown.

"That bad?" Maeve asked and glanced between the adults.

"Could be. Body's pretty fresh."

"Let's not stick around." Joel said and Tess nodded in agreement.

"Yeah..."

On their way to the second set of stairs, they stumbled across another body. This one was a dead S.W.A.T uniform. The body was slumped against the wall and a gun was clutched in its dead hands. Maeve felt remorseful for the guy. He obviously didn't die peacefully, his body was surrounded by fresh blood and old blood. She scooped up a paper that she spotted under the guy's leg, despite it being bloody, she opened it and read it, furrowing her brows.

"These guys died waiting for backup...poor dudes..." Maeve looked back down at the corpse and returned the letter.

She hurried up the stairs, after the others who left her in the dust. Well, not really, but she was at TJ's heels.

"What the fuck is that?" Her face contorted seeing another body stuck to an office door. It was obviously an infected person, but it wasn't any kind of infected she had seen before. Its face was split open, which started its cleft mouth. Its skull had fungus sprouted from it, like a mushroom that grew apart. The smell wasn't easy for her nose either. Like hot-cold garbage that had been sat in the sun and then rained on.

"It's a Clicker, dumbass," TJ rolled his eyes.

"What's wrong with its face?" She pinched her nose in disgust as Joel grabbed the body and broke it off the doorway and pushed it aside.

"That's what years of infection'll do to you." Tess beat TJ to the punch.

Maeve glanced over the caved in floor. Seemed like the inside of the building was just as damaged at the outside. Her stomach dropped and she backed away from the broken floor and the terrifying height. Great, there was nothing to worry about! Just a rickety building on the verge of collapsing.

"So what, are they...blind?"

Maeve stepped into the room everyone filed into and walked around personal cubicles meant for office workers. There were still pictures and computers at the desks. Some even had children's drawings. It made a wave of sadness wash over her.

"Sorta. They see using sound."

"So...like bats?" Ellie asked.

"Exactly," Tess responded. "If you hear one clicking, you gotta hide. That's how they find you."

Maeve heard it before she felt it. The whole building groaned, every metal beam within the walls, every pillar that held up the ceilings, everything shook. The jostle of the structure caused some of the office furniture to shift, rolling to the dip and knocking against other office stuff.

"Ah!" Maeve squealed fearfully and latched onto the nearest thing to her while she squeezed her eyes shut. Unknown to her, she grabbed TJ by the arm.

"Man, you're such a wimp!" TJ bemused, but shook her off until the tremor stilled.

"Excuse you! I'm in distress, and I am entitled to panic!" Maeve huffed and regained her composure, though she found it difficult to be calm.

"It's okay, Mae!" Ellie joined her, giving her a comfort pat on the shoulder.

"Whole damn building feels like it's about to fall apart." Joel commented warily.

"Ya think?" Maeve peered at the older man, and the let the sarcasm slip out by accident.

"It's cool," Ellie took her hand. "Everything's totally cool."

"Pssh, totally!" the older auburn-haired girl laughed her fears off nervously. "We're totally not gonna die here."

"That's the spirit!" Ellie grinned and bumped her shoulders against Maeve's.

"Okay, ladies," Tess called for them. "We're moving up, keep with the pace!"

With heavy feet, the girls followed after the trio, waiting for Joel to open up a door. He seemed to have troubling getting it opened. The door was jammed and the man couldn't open it.

"TJ, gimme a hand with this."

Together, the males forced the door open, having to bang their body weight with all their strength against it. The door refused their momentum the first few hits, but the hinges creaked terribly when they got it to open. Metal scraped metal, and something fell as the door was forced wider the rest of the way.

"Joel!"

A body flailed at the two, smacking TJ away as it tackled Joel. The infected clicked loudly and tried to wear the man down with powerful whacks.

"Get off him!" Tess kicked the Clicked in the face, which knocked it off Joel, and shot it twice in the head.

And that was the end of that.

"You okay?" The sisters watched Joel pick himself up off the floor.

"It's nothing," He brushed their concerns off and walked across the hall into the area the Clicker came through, as if trying to appear tough.

Tess sighed heavily. "Okay...let's uh, let's search for supplies. There oughta be some around."

"Oki doki!" Maeve tiredly saluted the woman and approached a broken, low-set cabinet. She pursed her lips and tried to calm her heart from that sudden attack. "That shit was intense."

"You said it."

Oooooo...The auburn-haired teen bent over and opened the cabinet doors. Alcohol...Jackpot! She grabbed the bottle, giving it a good shake and frowned. Huh, It wasn't much, but it could be of some use later. She slipped her bag off and put the bottle inside, carefully placing it between her Walkman and journal.

"Psst..." Ellie nudged her with her elbow. "I found some rags, and an empty bottle."

"Seriously?" Maeve took the items from Ellie with a raised eyebrow. "That's awesome possum!"

"Yeah it is! You can make one of those fire bottles!" Ellie grinned.

"I don't have enough alcohol, E," Maeve stuffed the bottle and clothe into her bag and zipped it up. "I need more."

"You know how to make molotovs?" TJ questions from his place by an overturned soda machine.

"Uh...yeah?"

"How?"

"Oh—uh," Maeve stood and put her bag back on. "That's noneaya."

"Noneaya?" his face screwed up in confusion.

"Yeah—none ya business."

Ellie snorted into her sleeve. Even Tess chuckled from her place across the room. Maeve had to toot her own horn for that one, it was pretty clever.

"Tch!" TJ clicked his tongue, unamused by her joke.

"Chill, dude," she dismissed his frustration. "A...friend taught me. I can even make pipe bombs."

"Pipe bombs?" The blond repeated. "What kind of shit are you into?"

Maeve smirked, shrugging. "The badass kind."

"Okay, folks," Joel reappeared, his pistol in his hand, the magazine to the gun in the other. He slipped new bullets into it. "Let's get goin'."

"Aye, aye!"

Of course, the older man saw no amusement in Maeve's somewhat chirpy input. Right. They weren't used to having comedic relief quite yet.

As they followed Joel through some more of the ruined building, they just so happened to come across a catwalk that had collapsed, and there was an out on the floor it led to.

"Up there, look." Tess pointed to the upper floor, specifically to the ledge that seemed perfect to climb on.

"Damn...how many bodies are we gonna find in this place?" Maeve eyed the a dead body that hung by its thighs on broken railing.

"Yeesh..." Ellie, too, grimaced and eyed the leaking cadaver.

It wasn't the dead bodies that bothered her, okay, maybe a little, but it was the fact that they saw at least three human bodies already. And they were armed to the teeth. Needless to say, she was just concerned about how many infected would be in the building. They've already come across two Clicker, though one was dead when they arrived.

Still, it was unsettling.

Joel got close to the wall, hunching a little and lacing his fingers together so he could catapult Tess up to the upper floor. The woman grabbed his shoulders and put her foot in his hands and was instantly lifted.

"Just see if there's a way through."

Tess climbed up, huffing with the cardio. She disappeared for a moment and reappeared, crouched near the ledge. She reached out her arm.

"Okay, it's clear. C'mon, Ellie."

Maeve and Ellie approached the wall so Joel could toss them up with Tess.

"Alright kid, you're up."

Ellie's lifted up and she took Tess's arm.

Maeve felt down right impressed by the woman's upper body strength. Man, she needed to step up her own game.

"Okay, now you." Joel looked at Maeve when Ellie was in the clear.

"Oh. Right." The teen grunted, grabbing his shoulders and putting her left foot into his palms. Her stomach did a loopty loop when he thrust her body upward. Taking Tess' hand proved a little more difficult than she thought. Her hands were all sweaty from her anxiety, but Tess didn't seem bothered by her clammy palms.

Damn! That was awesome. Maeve looked at Tess in awe while she moved away to give the others room to climb up with them.

"Come on. You got it!" Tess struggled as she pulled up TJ.

Whew. He must've weighed a ton! Maeve giggled to herself.

"Okay, big guy," Both Tess and TJ turned to pull Joel up. "Give us your hand."

Clank!

"What was that?" Maeve snapped her head at the entrance behind them, a bad feeling tickled her skin.

And then there was ominous clicking.

"Clickers?"

"Oh shit!" Tess and TJ hurried pulling Joel up. "Go, go, go!"

The five of them hurried into the entrance, sharply making a left into a small cafeteria. The clicking became louder and clearer. A Clicker ran into the area and sniffed the air as the group hid behind the serving counter by the windows.

Well, shit! Maeve frowned at their predicament.

"That's our way out," Tess pulled their attention, speaking in a whisper loud enough for them to hear, and low enough the Clicker couldn't. "Over the scaffolding."

"Okay, and how do we get to it?" Maeve wondered aloud.

"Um..." Tess peered around their limited hiding spot and suddenly grabbed something off the ground.

A bottle? What was she gonna do with a—

Tess threw the bottle across the room, ultimately causing the Clicker to screech and click louder, but it rushed for the area the bottle shattered in.

Oh.

That was pretty smart.