Survival Inc.

Chapter Sixteen

A bullet pierces the ambulance roof close to my head, alerting my senses. I press on the injury and moan in pain, but roll off the roof and onto my knees on the ground. I crawl over to the driver's side door and open it. With the rest of my strength, I throw my bag inside and pull myself into the seat, then shut and lock the door.

Taking a shaky deep breath, I wipe my eyes from hot tears of pain. The keys are on the dash and I grab them quickly as a bullet cracks through the windshield. Turning it on, I put the car into reverse and back out of the spot, then speed away. I maneuver through the streets before pulling into a dark alley and slugging into the back.

I stuff more medical supplies I find into the bag then pull my shirt up a bit to look at the open injury. Warm blood is seeping out of it but it's not untreatable. I press a pad of gauze the size of my hand on it and then seal it with medical tape. It'll bleed through soon enough, but that'll have to do for now.

Quickly exiting the back, I keep the gun clenched in my right, most accurately shooting hand, and the scalpel in my left hand, ready to cut. I press myself to the back walls of all the buildings and then find myself in a hotel. This is where people stay!

I can't risk their lives, I don't want that on my shoulders... no more than the lives of the people who had turned and I was forced to kill. But they were turned because of my mother, and that's why I'm rebelling. I hug the walls as I make my way to the back of the hotel and let the automatic doors open for me.

"Well, well, well, what've we got here?" I hear a comical voice ask and I raise my eyebrows, spinning around, noticing a figure with an AR standing in the shadowy hallway.

"Who the hell are you?" I demand, taking a step back and holding my pistol tightly.

"Noah Washington, and you must be the leader's daughter who saved her sister's life... I saw you run in here and figured I'd ask you to help me," the figure steps forward and I narrow my eyes at him.

"If you couldn't notice, I have... other... things to be taking care of at the moment," I hiss and he chuckles.

"Please, it's my mom, she just gave birth and she's not looking good. My house is one of the ones in the small neighborhood next to the wall, you'll have protection from whoever is after you," he says and I put my face in my hands.

Either I stay out here and have a large likelihood to get caught or I go with him and it be safe... or it could be a trap and he could either kill me or bring me in...

"What's with the gun?" I ask warily and he looks behind him.

"You never know who you're going to run into. My dad's a bad man... the right hand man for your mother... whose ideas I don't exactly... agree with. The people who do stay in the hotels, the people who don't are put in the mostly-broken houses in the neighborhoods, I'll explain more later, but please, my mom needs help," he explains and I sigh and nod.

"Lead the way, I guess," I say and take a deep breath, feeling a sharp pain in my hip. I ignore it and take a step forward before getting a horrible pain in the same place.

"For a doctor, you do not take very good care of yourself," he jokes, strapping his gun to his back and stepping into more light to help me and I see his appearance way more clearly as cute, not my type, but cute, with jet black hair and light chocolate skin with shocking bright blue eyes that pierce my gaze.

Rolling my eyes, I raise the side of my shirt a few inches to inspect my injury. It's swollen and very red, almost so that it becomes nearly impossible to distinguish the swelling red and the blood red. The strings of the stitches I put in are ripped jaggedly and I gingerly pull them out, hissing at the sting, and lower my shirt back down, promising myself that I'll clean it later. I put my gun in the right (uninjured) side of my waistband and hold the scalpel to my wrist with my extra hair tie.