DEAD TERRITORY

7 - Mud blood

A girl with a gun in her hand gets off a motorbike and takes off her helmet to reveal the face of Mathilda.
"Let him be. You're gonna need him alive a lot more than you think" she says and looks at Charlie.
"You're not dead?" Felix asks and looks at her confused.
"I know. Shocker" She says and Colton runs up to her and kisses her. He looks at her and sees her eyes are slowly turning back to normal.
"How? What happened?" he asks.
"Well first of all. You don't have the strongest aim. I stayed in the corridor and I slowly got better. When I was better I could fix up myself after the shot. Then I found the weapon room and got some stuff" she picks up two knives and throws one to Kevin and one to Felix. Then she picks up a smaller knife and throws it to Seven and keeps one for herself.
"Now I suggest you keep your hands off my boyfriend. He's the cure" she says and looks at Colton. Colton looks confused.
"The cure?" Logan asks confused.
"That actually makes sense" Felix says and takes a step closer to Mathilda. They all look at Felix.
"She got infected but since they've obviously shared DNA before she didn't get infected all the way through. When Colton fell into the pool his blood spread and Lory drowned in it, swallowing his blood and therefore she got better. Before I got bitten I swallowed a single drop of his blood and it cured me" Felix explains. Mathilda points at him.
"Wait, you're saying Colton is the cure to all of this and he can in that case help more people?" Lee asks looking at Mathilda.
"That's exactly what I'm saying" she says confidently.
"So, what are we gonna do with him?" Kevin asks.
"Excuse me, do with me?" Colton steps up to Kevin.
"We're gonna take him to New York. There is a city not yet infected. Before the infection even got there they built walls around the city. What we need to do is take him to that city and to the doctors and scientists working there so they can cure this fucking mess" she says looking at Colton.
"Is there more like me? Or is my blood gonna have to be enough for the whole world suddenly?" he asks and she smiles at him.
"There is more" she says and puts her hand on his cheek before she kisses him.

The walk along the dock looking for the boat. Logan sees the name Freedom on a big blue and rusty old boat. She picks up the key and looks at it noticing it matches the boat pretty well
"Well, that's a disappointment" she says and sighs.
"I'll take it" Kevin says and walks up to stand beside her.
"Do you think it has enough gas to take us to America?" Felix asks.
"Do you think it has gas?" Seven asks standing beside him.
"I don't think it knows what gas is" Lory stands beside them and looks at the pile of rust. Suddenly there's another gunshot behind them. They look at Mathilda but she's innocent.
"Who are you?! What do you want!?" a voice shouts behind them. They turn around and faces a captain with a shotgun in his hands.
"We're humans. We're good people" Seven responds putting her hands up and stepping in front of Felix.
"What's with her?" The captain asks and points his shotgun at Lory who still has black eyes.
"She's our friend" Seven responds and takes another step toward the capitain.
"She's infected! She's one of them" he says and aims at her. Lory takes a step back and Kevin, Charlie and Logan gets in front of her.
"No, she's not! She's not one of them. We have the cure. She's cured. She's safe" Seven says still holding her hands in the air.
"She's dangerous. She's gonna kill us all" the captain stands by his word. They can tell he's definetely drunk and has probably not seen another human being for at least a week. It does seem pretty lonely out here.
"No, she's not! She's okay. She's nice" Seven talks abck to him. The captain takes an aim on Seven instead and shoots at her. Charlie pulls her toward him and steps in front of her slightly. It's easy to tell that the captain is nervous by the way his hands are shaking and therefore he missed his shot.
"Easy. We're not gonna hurt you, okay?" Charlie says still holding his hands up a little to show that he's unarmed. But the captain can see the gun in his belt.
"She's gonna kill us!" the captain yells and aims at Lory again.
"No she's not!" Logan yells back and the captain quickly shoots aiming at Lory but as Logan has stepped in front of her Logan is the one to catch the shot intead. Logan is about to fall off the edge of the bridge they're standing on and Seven runs back to her and grabs the bag on her shoulder trying to pull her back by that. The bag slips off Logan's shoulder and Logan falls into the water shot in her stomach. Her heart has already stopped beating when her body his the water and she slowly sinks toward the bottom of the ocean. Seven sits down on her knees reaching into the water for Logan but it's too late. Mathilda sits down beside Seven and pulls her back into a hug. Seven looks at the water with an empty look in her eyes.
"DON'T MOVE!!!!" the captain yells and points the shotgun at Seven and Mathilda. Charlie quickly pulls up his gun and fires a shot at the captain before he can do anything else. The bullet enters right between his eyes and he falls down dead.

"Charlie... You killed a human" Kevin says and looks at him shocked.
"His head was no more human than the infected. They're humans too and we kill them without heistating. It was him or another one of us, maybe all of us" Charlie says and puts the gun back into his belt. Seven picks up the key to the boat from the bag and hands it to Felix.
"Who can drive a boat?" Felix asks and holds it up.
"My father is a sailor. I've driven many boats in my life" Lory says and Felix hands the key to Lory.
"You're gonna drive it? You only have one arm" Colton says judgingly.
"It never stopped her before did it?" Lee asks and looks up at Colton getting a bit sick of his shit.

When they have left the dock Seven walks into one of the bedrooms and looks at what more Logan had in the bag except for the key and the magazines. She finds a little note and picks it up to read it.
"Guys!" she calls for the others and Charlie, Kevin and Lee walks into the room to her. "This is the recipe. She figured it out" Seven says and holds up the note in front of them.
"The recipe?" Lee asks.
"To the cure. This is how we do it with his blood. I mean sure people can swallow his blood or kiss him but there is a different way. She figured out a way to transform his blood into some kind of vaccine so not only the infected could get cured but the humans can also be immune" Seven explains as she looks closely at the note.
"Let me see that" Charlie says and walks up to her. Seven holds the note away from him.
"You're gonna lose it within three seconds" she says and looks into his eyes.
"No I'm not. I just want to look at it" he says and she holds the note behind her back. Charlie tickles her stomach making her fold a little and put her hands up. When she does he easily takes the note from her hands and smiles at her. She rolls her eyes at him and he looks at the note. After a few seconds he widens his eyes slightly.
"It's true. It says here" he says and let's Lee and Kevin look at it. Kevin looks back up at Charlie.
"Colton will never agree to do this" he says and Charlie realizes he's right as his face slowly drops.
"Not in the mental state he's in at the moment" Lee fills in and looks at Charlie too.
"Then we'll mae him agree to it" Charlie says as his voice deepens a little bit.
"You can't force him to do something" Seven poin ts out and looks at Charlie. Charlie turns to her and looks down into her eyes.
"Yes I can. But that's not what I meant." he says not leading the sentence any furhter. Kevin sighs and walks out of the room. Lee walks after him crossing her arms over her chest insecurely.

Charlie and Seven are left alone in the room and Charlie hands the note back to Seven who puts it back into the bag.
"Why are you and Colton always so mad at each other?" Seven asks and sits down on the bed beside the bag.
"I mean I know it started when you were kids and all of that but that's past now. You're almost adults, can't you let it go?" she asks and he looks down at her and sighs as he debates whether to talk to her about it or not.
"Colton has always had things his way. Through all of school he was always biggest best and strongest. Everyone that messed with him got their ass beat in a second. The difference between him and me is that I can take a lot more than he can. I have so far been the only person he can't break and that drives him mad. That's why I'm a parasite to him. An annoying little shit" Charlie says as he changes the magazine on his gun before putting the gun on the bedside table.
"So it's all just a competition between you two? Who's the strongest? Who can take the most ass kicking? Who has the best comebacks? Who can break the other one down first?" she asks looking into his brown eyes.
"Yeah. I guess so" Charlie says.

Outside on the deck Kevin finds Lee looking out at the ocean.
"Hey beautiful" he says and she turns around to him.
"Hey" she says and smiles up at him. He looks at the moon above the water.
"It's nice, isn't it?" he asks and hugs her from behind as they both look out at the water.
"Yeah. I've missed feeling normal" she says and leans her head back on his shoulder. He smiles and kisses her cheek.
"How about we skip that date and just give in right now?" he asks and she turns around to him again looking up at him with a smile.
"I neevr thought you'd say that" she says and kisses him.