To The Shucking End

Chapter 33

One foot in front of the other.

That was all Tanya could think about after she'd buried everything she felt deep down.

After she'd made her promise to Newt, Gally had appeared at her side, lifted her up as if she'd weighed nothing and taken her to his room.

She'd told him all about her promise and Gally's heart broke for her. She shouldn't have to shoulder such a burden, but he understood where Newt was coming from. Frankly, he'd do the same as unfair as it was. There was no one else he trusted more with his life and with his death.

Deep down, Tanya knew that she'd have made the same decision if she was in that position.

She only started to feel better when she'd asked Gally to stop talking and telling her harsh truths and he'd listened and then she'd joked about him being able to follow orders so well after joining Lawrence.

She felt even better when Gally presented her with a problem.

How the shuck were they going to get in, get the kids and get the shuck out without getting shot, killed or kidnapped.

And as usual, they were impressed and slightly terrified with some of her solutions, specifically the one about how to get the other immunes outside the walls. They really only had Newt to blame though, after he'd said that she and Thomas loved trains and she began rhyming things with the word out of boredom as she thought.

She was holding onto that as she marched, through the parking lot beside Gally before slipping through the door and joining Newt, Thomas and Teresa, all of them except Teresa dressed in guard uniforms naturally.

"Hold on. Hold on," Gally called after they'd gotten through the steel door that led to the stairwell that would take them to sublevel three. He'd stopped in front of a bunch of electrical boxes that were all locked shut. "I can get in here," he said as he pulled off his mask. "Tan, gimme the drill."

The girl simply dropped the bag from her back as she pulled out a handheld drill and tossed it at Gally who began drilling into one of the electrical boxes, a task he had to do for Lawrence.

"Stay there," Thomas ordered Teresa as he made her stand against the wall on the stairs that headed down to the sublevels. "Tan, throw me the walkie."

Tanya stopped rooting around the bag at her feet as she reached forward and unclipped the walkie from Gally's waistband and tossed it back to Thomas before her hands went back into the bag as Thomas raised his gun and went to scope out the way to level three.

"Newtie? Newt, are you good?" Tanya asked worriedly as he leaned on the stair railing and began coughing.

"I'm good," he promised as he saw Teresa staring at him and Tanya followed his eye line.

"What the fuck are you staring at? You lost the right to care about any of us," she spat at her, and the girl's eyes dropped to her feet, the sound of Gally's drill still whirring through the air.

"Frypan, we're in. How you doing?" Thomas asked into the walkie as he came back up the stairs and checked the door they just came through, listening to the response before he said, "Hang in there buddy."

"This'll work," Gally announced as he opened the electrical box and began fiddling with the cables. "Tan?"

"I'm getting there," she said as she fiddled with something in her hands and Thomas radioed Brenda to check her status.

"It's live! Let's go," Gally announced as he put the device Tanya had assembled onto the door of the electrical box and plugged it in, the machine lighting up green as it transmitted information to Lawrence's team.