#nbecollapse

Celeste could not hide it any longer -- she was scared out of mind. When she had seen the hospital her spirits had risen. That hospital meant hope for her. She was only carrying an oxygen tank with her. That was all that was sustaining her life right now, but she needed more. Medicine, injections, inhalers. If she did not get them soon, all of this would be for nothing. All of those things could be in that hospital. Maybe not. Nevertheless, the brunette had thrown her head back and released a smile of happiness. 

One that did not last. 

The moment the infected came running into the hospital, her smile disappeared. If even a brush of them came near her, she was dead. Her body was too weak to fight off a cold let along the virus that was taking many. She had not taken the necessary meds, meaning her immune system was weak. Every system in her was crashing. Celeste had stood in a room full of people she did not know. People that would rather take a bite for someone they loved than for a stranger. She held a gun with two bullets in them. No military training would save her now. A year ago she would have ran straight for the fight. Now, she ran for her life. That alone could almost kill her. 

The brunette was curled up in some corner, fearing that any moment that door open, she would die. Her hand was shaking as she held on to her gun with two stupid bullets left. “Breathe, Celeste, breathe,” she chanted her little mantra over and over again. Having a panic attack while her lungs and entire system was slowly crashing was not something she could afford. But how could she remain calm when every sound, every gun fired, every loud noise made her jump. Reminding her of her time in the war, except this time she could not defend herself. 

When the noise began to die down, she got on her knees and began to prepare her oxygen tank, connecting it to her nose. She was trying to save it up, but she needed it now. But that oxygen never came. She had run out. Even though she knew that it was empty, Celeste kept trying to inhale. Hoping, waiting, for some remaining oxygen to enter her burning lungs. At some point reality crashed on her, and she ripped the tubes from her nose. The usually calmed girl grabbed the oxygen tank and tossed it across the room with the little force she had left. 

@loyaltobias

Hollow.

That was how Rebecca felt as the new group of Fall City residents joined them at the hospital. All around her were joyful reunions, shouts of joy and cries of relief, and the fifteen-year-old didn’t even pause to look over the new faces. It would hurt too much, to scan each new arrival until there were none left, only to find that once again her brother was not among them. The hope she had felt when that first group found them at the barn, and again when they’d come to the hospital to find it full of other survivors, had finally abandoned her. 

She was not alone, not entirely. There were Jesse and Aiden, who looked out for her and cared for her in Toby’s absence. Ivy, who was strong and fearless and everything Becca wished to be herself. Ada and Lily, bursts of light and friendship in the darkness --

But still she felt empty. They did not know her, they did not understand her, and the only person who could was gone, gone, gone. 

Her families’ screams, the high-pitched sound of bombs falling from the sky, the pounding of undead bodies against a door that was not strong enough to hold them off -- a symphony of terror played through her head as she ducked into an empty exam room, biting the inside of her cheek until she tasted blood on her tongue. 

Grasping at an abandoned clipboard and pen like they were her lifelines, she looked like a character out of a horror movie as she huddled in on herself in the corner of the room. Pale cheeks and sallow skin, blood from the infected still staining her clothing as she drew dark, angry lines right across the surface of the clipboard for lack of any paper attached to it, freeing the horrors from her mind into something more tangible.

Rebecca sat far removed from the rest of the people in the hospital. All around her, people reunited with friends and loved ones they had been separated from when Fall City was destroyed -- but still there was no sign of Toby. No sign of her big brother coming back for her, and it was becoming harder and harder to hope that he might still be out there looking for her. Shouldn’t he have found her by now? Shouldn’t he have been with the other groups of survivors that had already been holed up in this hospital?

Toby would have felt right at home here, she thought, but for Rebecca the dimly lit hospital halls were only a harsh reminder of the last fragment of her family, gone forever. It was only a familiar pattering that had her getting to her feet, poking her head out of the room she’d hidden herself away in -- and a smile pulled at her lips when she saw the familiar dog trotting up to her. She knelt down, patting it gently on the head and smiling wider when it licked her cheek, her eyes moving to search the halls for its owner, who surely was not far behind.

@sergeanthart

It was selfishness that had Liam tearing out of the hospital to help fight off the horde of infected that appeared alongside a large group of newfound survivors from Fall City. He knew, without a doubt, that if Jesse was out there, he would be in the thick of things. Holding back the clickers as long as he could, until they were gone or they overtook him, all for the benefit of everyone else in his group. Because Jesse was a better person than Liam, whose sole concern as he ran straight into the throng of clickers advancing toward their refuge was to find his older brother.

Thank God the group he was stuck with had already started to settle in the hospital, though, or Liam would have been useless. As far as he could tell with his busted memory, it was his brains that had kept him alive this long, and he wasn’t content to be stuck with just a baseball bat for protection. Especially given that he wasn’t even sure how long he was going to be sticking around this place. The plan was to wait it out a few more days, see if Jesse showed up, and then bail to seek out his brother on his own. So he’d gotten straight to work, fashioning a couple of smoke bombs from rolled up newspapers and the ammonium nitrate from an ice pack, along with a couple improvised fireworks in that would hopefully blow some shit up if he needed them to. 

They were stowed in the outer pockets of his backpack as he ran outside, baseball bat swinging at a clicker that tried to get too close. The problem with his improvised weapons was that he needed to get farther away, needed to make sure they only hurt clickers and not the people who were helping to fight them. Liam just wasn’t sure he had the skills necessary to do that. 

Good thing he knew someone who did. 

His eyes had barely begun to skim through the chaos for a sign of familiarity when they caught sight of the very person he was hoping to see. A wide grin spread across his face in spite of the circumstances, in spite of the fact that his older brother was currently engaging a couple of the monsters. Liam pushed forward, managing to fight off another clicker with a couple swings of his bat until his brother was in earshot. “Hey, Sergeant!” He called out over the din of the fighting. “Wanna help me blow some shit up?”

@hunterjaeger

A bloodied scalpel clutched tightly in her fist, Rebecca wove her way through the dim halls of the hospital. Wide, haunted eyes searched the new faces that had arrived, taking in joyful greetings between loved ones reunited. So many eyes shone with relief, with happiness, even after facing the horde of monsters that had followed them there. 

There was blood on Rebecca’s clothing, and she had the vague recollection of an infected trying to corner her even after she’d thought she was safely in the hospital -- but she did not remember finding the weapon she clutched in her hand, did not remember how it had become splattered with blood. Nor did she care. There was only one truth she cared about as she wove her way through the bodies -- some dead, some alive -- that filled the hospital. 

Toby was not among them.  Toby was not here.

It became painfully evident the longer she searched the crowd of newcomers. Because if her brother was here, he would have found her. If her brother was still alive, he’d have come for her back at Fall City. He wouldn’t have left her to flee their house alone, with nothing but the clothes on her back. He certainly would have come for her by now, as everyone else seemed to be reuniting with those they thought they’d lost.

Rebecca was alone, and the thought hit her with such force that the scalpel she was holding clattered to the floor. She jumped at the sound, skittered away from the weapon before she remembered she had been the one to drop it. But she wasn’t sure she wanted it back, and her feet remained rooted where they were, her gaze locked on the weapon as she tried to process what she had or had not done with it.