█ Chapter 7: Friend or Foe

"Don't drop the cans," Kyungsoo repeated to make sure the command had gotten through Baekhyun. With Baekhyun's arms full of canned food, he doubted the boy had any gap to reach for a weapon, let alone budge without spilling all of the supplies he had grabbed on a whim. With his good arm, Kyungsoo searched Baekhyun's pockets thoroughly, checking and double checking to make sure he wasn't armed.

A boy lurking in a biter-infested hospital unarmed? It was crazy. How had Baekhyun gotten all the way to the second floor undetected, let alone alive?

Baekhyun grinned widely when Kyungsoo lowered his weapon. "Oh, whew, guys, yeah, all good things, right? We're all friends, I'm so glad you didn't stab my eye out with that screwdriver—mphh!"

Kyungsoo slapped a palm over Baekhyun's mouth before his excessive talking could attract the biters roaming the area. They were in a narrow passageway, so being cornered was the last thing Kyungsoo wanted. Unarmed, oblivious, and chatty? Kyungsoo couldn't believe this guy had survived for so long without a single scratch on his face. "Shut up," he whispered low enough for Baekhyun to get the message. "Shut up."

With Minseok taking Baekhyun's back and Kyungsoo leading the front, the three managed to sandwich themselves around their new hostage and leave the storage room in one piece.

Coco was the one really leading the group as it wove past fallen bodies to make sure they weren't undead traps, then turning corners to make the gutsy move most humans couldn't. The hound never barked, as if it knew making any unnecessary loud noises would only draw lethal attention to the humans. With Coco escorting them towards Jongin and Sehun safely, Minseok and Kyungsoo focused more so on their prisoner and had Baekhyun carry the looted items like a pack mule.

What they would do to him after leaving the hospital was up to the group to decide.

Jongin watched over Sehun like he had offered to, since the blood of Sehun's mother was all over his hands. He felt an obligation to be there and owe up to the crime Sehun would probably never forgive him for. Jongin thought that the boy had a heart of gold and there was everything stopping him from believing in the silver lining. Oh Sehun was someone who couldn't kill a zombie because he considered it murdering in cold blood.

"Sehun, I'm sorry," Jongin apologized sincerely, keeping his distance because the corpse really gave off a horrible stench. He couldn't imagine how much worse it was right beside it where Sehun was.

The reeking scent of decayed bodies and all things spoiled didn't stop Sehun from reaching out to his deceased mother, just so he could her hair back... or what was left of it. Jongin had practically mutilated her face from the nose up, leaving nothing but the gory remains of her jaws. "You did what you had to do," Sehun whimpered and turned away, his face red and damp. "I couldn't do it."

Jongin pulled Sehun to him if only to muffle his sobbing, so he might have pressed Sehun's face into his shoulder a little harder than he needed to. Being compassionate and keeping the biters at bay—it was killing two birds with one stone.

"You know that wasn't the way I wanted to greet your mother," Jongin sighed. "It's better. Your mother's in a better place now." There he went using that same bull excuse everyone else had told him when he had mourned for his older sister. Pathetic. He rubbed Sehun's back comfortingly with the hand that held the wooden block and sighed. He hadn't signed up to be the bad guy in a zombie apocalypse, but it seemed like that was fate's way: to make the bad guy do all the dirty work.

Kyungsoo walked right in and nearly bumped into the two having a "moment," but he was obviously less interested in what Jongin and Sehun were doing and more invested in leaving.

"Oh, hi," Baekhyun greeted Jongin and Sehun. "I'd shake your hands, but my arms are a little full, and I'm technically being taken hostage at the moment—something tells me you two are also affiliated with my kidnappers. Please tell me I'm wrong."

"I said shut up," Kyungsoo hissed and turned to Jongin. "Found this guy, food, and these." He held up a ring of keys he had stolen from Baekhyun's pocket when he had pat him down earlier.

"You're good," Baekhyun looked amused more than cheated. "Barely felt that."

"Let's take the food and leave him," Jongin said.

"Wait, what? I found these. They're for my friend, I told you we haven't eaten for days, and we need this stuff, come on, man, don't you know sharing is caring?" Baekhyun took a step back and the cans stacked at the top of his pyramid fell and clattered loudly on the floor. There was a long period of silence before the hallways were filled with noises—biter noises.

"Are you ing serious?" Minseok groaned in despair. Was it just him or were they running into a death trap every single time? He swiped the cans from the floor and shoved them into one of the extra pillowcases, quickly taking some from Baekhyun's arms. By then, the biters had blocked off the stairs coming up the first floor and more were crowding the end of the second floor hallway. They were starving, and not for canned beans and peaches, either.

"There's a window at the end of the hallway there, it's gonna have a lower roof attached to it where all of you can jump down," Baekhyun rambled. "From there, you can jump on top of the dumpster lid and head right, not left, or you'll be pitted against more of them." He gave directions like he had a whole map of the city drawn in his head.

Even though Baekhyun was a stranger, Jongin figured it was their best bet to trust a stranger's escape plan than sit and wait to become dinner for the hungry zombies.

They rushed towards the open window Baekhyun had told them to take, with Baekhyun crawling out first and even helping Minseok, Coco, and Kyungsoo to reach the outer roof. Jongin hoisted Sehun up, before barely managing to escape the clutches of the biter hoard in the nick of time. A second later and one of them would have taken a chunk out of Jongin's leg.

The second they were on ground level again, Baekhyun stuck one hand out to Kyungsoo. "Keys," he rushed him. "Give me the keys!"

Reluctantly, Kyungsoo passed him the stolen keys and felt a wave of relief when Baekhyun jogged up to a banged-up Nissan Altima parked near a chain link fence. As long as it was operational, he couldn't care if it was a rusty Ford. The boys and Coco slipped into their getaway vehicle and steered out of the hospital's parking lot, albeit a bit... or very dangerously because Baekhyun drove like a lunatic.

No one could blame him, though, since there were so many biters walking about and Baekhyun had no headlights to help him avoid the hoard. Playing 'Don't Hit the Zombie' was a lot harder than anyone could give him credit for.

"Whoo-hoo!" Baekhyun screamed when they spun around a curb and practically drifted onto the main road.

Jongin wasn't sure whether they were safer with the biters or in Baekhyun's car. Either way, they hadn't become biter bait and Jongin still had Sehun breathing (although barely) next to him. While Baekhyun was heading wherever he was heading, he turned to Sehun sitting beside him and placed a hand over his forehead. A few days of rest had certainly helped his fever to decline, but his head was still warm and face still as pale as a sheet.

"Why'd you save us?" Jongin finally asked Baekhyun, because, by all means, the other male could have left the group for dead and saved himself.

Baekhyun took a good look at Jongin through his rear-view mirror and chuckled. "That's a pretty stupid question, and trust me, I hear a lot of those from my buddy. You ever question a doctor why they save patients in need? Huh?"

"Well, you're not a doctor as far as I know, and it's his job," Jongin retaliated.

"Yeah, isn't it our job as human beings to save each other's asses?" Baekhyun grinned and tossed a pack of beef jerky he took out from the glovebox, a treat he had initially saved for his friend. He grabbed a stick himself and the others followed, sating their hunger if only for a little while.

Despite Baekhyun ignoring and violating every traffic law known to man, they made it safely to some old garage on the outskirts of the city, right next to some greenhouse of some sort that looked like private property. The interesting part of this private property was that Jongin hadn't seen a biter from at least a mile around. The Nissan slowly rolled into the open garage when it opened, and it closed shut behind them.

The man who opened the garage aimed a handgun straight at Jongin's head.

"Chanyeol, dude, they're friends," Baekhyun hopped out of the car and lowered his friend's raised arm. "I was surrounded by walkers, they got me out."

"We don't want any trouble..." Sehun had his hands raised to his chest level, trying not to aggravate a man with a gun.

"I'm glad you're okay, Baekhyun," Chanyeol sighed. His hands were trembling as they held Baekhyun's arms. He was wearing a leather jacket and faded jeans in pretty mild weather and his hands were quivering so badly that everyone noticed it.

Kyungsoo and Minseok unloaded the stocked pillowcases from the car, but Kyungsoo's attention was more on Chanyeol who looked like he could faint any second, due to how emaciated he appeared. "You look bad," Kyungsoo said on a whim. "I have medical supplies."

When Chanyeol and Baekhyun gave Jongin's group skeptical looks, Jongin murmured. "He's a nurse."

Once all of the guys hunkered down and sat around an oil lamp in the middle of the cozy garage, sharing three whole packs of instant ramen, it was easier to bond with strangers. After administering the vaccine to both Sehun and Chanyeol, the two looked to be in higher spirits and with a horse's appetite to boot. Jongin kept thinking how much better this get-together would be with cans of beer, since he hadn't had alcohol in his system for close to a year now. Who knew a zombie apocalypse would be his reason for sobering up?

"Where'd you get the gun?" Jongin asked Chanyeol.

"My brother. He left me a lot of ," Chanyeol chuckled. "His garage, his stash of ramen, his car, his gun."

"Biters?" Jongin asked.

Chanyeol pursed his lips. "Car accident. Thank God it was, too."

Minseok and Baekhyun were mindlessly helping themselves to their fourth helping of ramen, while Sehun was stacking their canned food and Jongin was trying to get a good grasp on where Chanyeol stood on the good and bad spectrum. If the guy had welcomed them into his brother's garage and fed them food, that was worth some "good" points, wasn't it?

"Were you guys alone this whole time?" Jongin inquired again.

"No," Chanyeol answered. "There were two other girls, but they didn't last a week. One girl shot herself in the head right over there." He pointed over to a corner next to a tool bench, and there it was: a deep crimson stain where the girl's head had probably landed after the shot. "Attracted a whole bunch of walkers here, so Baekhyun and I have been laying low for a bit. Ramen only gets you so far on nutrition, even then, those were for emergencies."

"Oh," was all Jongin could say, and it was after a long pause that he added. "I'm Jongin, by the way. This is Sehun, that's Kyungsoo and Minseok. We've been through a lot of , just like you and your friend."

Chanyeol ruffled his own hair and laughed. "I'm Chanyeol."

Jongin picked up a low snarl coming from the end of the garage. "What was that?" he asked, subconsciously pulling Sehun's hand closer. Only when Baekhyun reassured him that it was probably the faulty air vents groaning did he relax and release Sehun's hand.

"We're heading to Namsan tomorrow," Jongin sighed. "I'm not sure how, but we'll figure that out in the morning."

"Namsan?" Baekhyun parroted. "That place th' government's calling a refuge and stuff? I mean, I don't mean to rain on your party, but we haven't heard about that in months. I'd be surprised if a government was still standing."

"We'll figure it out in the morning," Jongin said.

As soon as Minseok, Sehun, Jongin, and Kyungsoo were fast asleep in the Nissan and on the floor, Chanyeol slipped into his family sleeping bag behind Baekhyun and slung an arm around his boyfriend's middle. The two laced fingers and Chanyeol tucked his head on top of Baekhyun's head. "What are we gonna do about them?" Chanyeol murmured low enough for only Baekhyun to hear.

"I brought them back for their supplies," Baekhyun mumbled. "Just do what we did to Soojung and Sunyoung."

"There's four of them," Chanyeol chuckled and kissed the shell of Baekhyun's ear. "We take em' out with a gun and the walkers might hear. You help me, I've got a knife."

Baekhyun smiled and placed a hand on top of Chanyeol's. "We'll eat that dog for breakfast, too."

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Author's Note: I love the comments you guys are leaving! It helps me update faster knowing you guys are as excited as I am for new chapters. Another comment game for a new chapter! If you were stuck in a zombie apocalypse, which character from WWM (Walk with Me) would you take? Tao also counts.