The Dead, The Living and The Broken

Chapter 10: People or Monsters

           The teenagers finally decided to finish the project they originally left the cabin to complete, patching up the house. They gather their looted supplies which consisted of hammers, nails and planks of wood.

        Elijah stood from the couch and reached for a hammer. Piper swatted his hand away from the tool. "No, you need to rest," she chided him.

        "I'm fine now! I can help," Elijah insisted but Piper shook her head and pushed him back towards the couch where Elijah had laid for the last two days.

        "You've been through a lot," she said. "You should just take it easy."

        Elijah sighed. "I've been taking it easy for two days now and I barely left the couch. C'mon, please," he said and pouted playfully.

        Piper shook her head again and turned away from Elijah before he could counter her again.

        Elijah sighed and flopped backwards onto the couch. I didn't expect some zombie virus to go around and I definitely didn't expect to be bored during it, he thought.

        "Alright," Cassandra said. "We've got 6 planks of wood, one box of nails, 4 hammers and one bloody circular saw. That means we don't have enough hammers for everyone and we'll need to cut the wood."

        The group planned their repairs and got to work.

        Oliver turned the battery powered saw on an began cutting through the wood, the low rumble of the machine ringing through the forest.

        Kiara and Erin had gone inside to repair the stairs and patch up the floor while Piper, Damien, Cassandra and Oliver were outside working on the porch and walls. They had already covered most of the holes in the walls but they had yet to figure out how to patch the roof.

        "What if we lifted Damien up onto the roof to fix it?" Cassandra said.

        "We can't lift him that high up, he's too heavy," Piper countered.

        "Why don't we lift you up then, Piper?" Cassandra suggested.

        Piper paled. "No way, you know I hate heights," she said. "Why don't you go up Cass?"

        Cassandra eyed the unstable roof uncertainly. If she made one wrong step onto a weak point in the roof she could possibly fall right through it but she was fed up with have rain dripping onto her while she slept inside. She agreed and tried to forget about all the things that could go wrong.

        Damien hoisted her up onto the roof of the porch. Her arms strained to grab onto something but she only succeeded at pulling off the few remaining shingles.

        "There's nothing to pull myself up with," she shouted down to Damien. "You'll have to lift me up higher."

        "I'm not that tall Cass, I can't lift you up any higher," Damien replied.

        "Get Oliver or something," she said.

        Piper walked off to retrieve Oliver and soon the sound of the saw ceased.

        "How's it hanging, Cass?" he laughed, mocking her current situation of dangling off the porch roof.

        "Shut up and help me," Cass said.

        Oliver grabbed her waist and lifted her up higher. She swung her leg onto the porch roof and secured her foot in the roof's gutter. Using the momentum, she was able to pull herself up enough to grab onto a groove in the roof. She pulled herself to her feet and tried to balance herself.