Outside Of Life [WayHaught]

The Attic

Awkward. The was the word Waverly would choose to describe the last minute of her life. She'd never had to use someone as a ladder before and being so close to Nicole was... interesting. The Sergeant was far stronger than she looked as she helped push Waverly into the attic.

"Have a look for anything we could use, no matter how small. Even batteries are useful," Nicole said, her voice dying in the foam-filled attic space above her head.

Waverly nodded, crouching so as not to get rotting foam in her hair. The attic was packed tight with all sorts of trinkets and cardboard boxes, presumably full of sentimental things that meant a lot to whoever used to live there. One such box had its lid half open. Peering inside, Waverly saw a collection of photographs. The frames were dusty and the pictures faded, but she could still clearly see the happy family.

"What happened to you," she mumbled.

"Did you say something?"

"No," Waverly replied to the Sergeant. "Just talking to myself."

She returned to looking through boxes, most of which contained Christmas decorations or kids toys. There were a handful of batteries at the bottom of one of the toy boxes so Waverly put those in her coat pocket, just hoping they'd have some charge left in them. Aside from that, not a lot stood out as being useful unless, for some bizarre reason, someone wanted pictures of a family that had probably died.

Suddenly there was a creak from a far corner in the attic.

Waverly took hold of her shotgun and loaded it, taking a cautious step back. There were a lot of reasons an attic would creak and groan; birds, ageing, air pressure. It was usually air pressure, right?

"Is everything ok up there? Waves?"

The youngest Earp gulped and nodded her head. Nicole couldn't hear a nod but Waverly told herself that it didn't matter; she was going to walk back towards the hatch, climb down, and be safe again in Nicole's arms. She was safe with Nicole. Waverly felt her cheeks begin to burn until another creak echoed around the cramped space, aiming the shotgun towards the source of the noise in a split second.

"Waverly? Talk to me; I need to know you're ok."

"Y-yeah," she stumbled over her words. "I'm f-fine." Something bad was going to happen, whether it was something hiding in the corner or her falling through the hatch. Either way, Waverly had butterflies in her stomach and it didn't feel good.

"Do I need to come up there?"

"N-no."

"You don't sound so sure, Waves. I'll help you down, ok? And we can get out of this house."

"Ok, that sounds like a-" Waverly was cut off as she saw something move from the corner. The creaking floorboards got louder and more obnoxious as the thing moved ever closer. "What are you?"

She winced, trying to see better into the dimly-lit space. The main source of light was coming from behind her, up the hatch opening, though small seeds of light made their way through an ageing roof.

As the thing walked into one of the thin slices of light, blood-shot eyes glared at her, her grip immediately tightening on the shotgun. "Not today, zombie!" Waverly shouted, making sure her gun was fully loaded.

"Zombie? Waves! I'm coming up!" Just as Nicole pulled herself up, her torso just above the hatch opening, she saw the zombie no more than a meter from Waverly's face thought the Earp stood confidently.

"Eat shit, shit eaters!"

Four bullets made their way into the face of the zombie before planting themselves in the chimney breast on the other side of the attic. What remained of the walking corpse fell to the floor in an unceremoniously deformed manner, much to Waverly's amusement.

"Remind me never to get on your bad side," Nicole said slowly, pulling herself up completely to stand beside Waverly. The redhead was slightly hunched over with the foam padding out what was already a small space, and her proximity to Waverly was getting increasingly smaller as she attempted to stand up as straight as possible.

"You know, if you'd said there was a zombie up here, I would have helped."

Waverly laughed a little. "Sorry, I was kind of stuck in the moment."

"Well, I'm glad you can take care of yourself, even if I did want to be heroic and shoot it for you." The Sergeant winked and Waverly felt like a small part of her melted with it.

"You'd do that?"

"Oh, I'd do a lot of things to you."

Both Waverly and Nicole looked stunned at one another for a moment.

"For me...?"

Nicole nodded as she climbed down from the hatch opening, the movement causing her shirt to tighten perfectly around her arms, showing off just how well-toned the Sergeant was. "Yeah, that too," she said, disappearing from sight.

A/N: It's happening!!! Gahh!! You got feels? I got feels. And there's way more to come. Let me know what you think with the comments and I'll take any suggestions you might have :)