Chapter 3: Rescue Me

"How near are we to Amelia, Sam?" Paula questions as we run, sweaty and slightly breathless as the sun slowly starts to rise over the hills, bringing light to the world once again.

"Not too far. See that huge clump of trees on top of the hill?"

"The huge clump that is..." Tony squints at the gray puffs of air that are coming up from them, "smoking?"

"Yes, we rather did some damage as we crashed," Amelia cuts in, forcing out a laugh. "Pilot bailed out. Rather rude, I thought. I had a little trouble with my parachute, but still. All's well that ends well."

I can almost see Sam rolling his eyes. "Yeah, it's ended with you up in that tree."

"Yes... So that thing-the device-it looks quite useful."

Tony shrugs. "To put it mildly."

"Fill me in as you go. What's it do?"

"What's it do?" He scoffs. "The zoms."

"The zoms?"

"He means it wards the zombies off," Summer explains. "We're not really sure how, but they won't come within twenty feet or so while it's powered up."

"Remarkable," She says in awe. "I'd love to have a closer look at it."

"Well, here's your chance," Tony says as we get closer-well, somewhat closer, and I raise my hand up to wave and get her attention. "Can you see us? Five's wavin'."

"Oh, yes. Far away, but there you are. Excellent. Excellent. Quickly please. The zombies are gathering and-" She let's out a small gasp as the trees rustle slightly. "And it seems they're rather pushing at the base of this tree. If it sways anymore, they'll have me out of here. Do hurry."

I pick up the pace, prompting the others to do so as well. My eyes sting and my body is beginning to ache from lack of sleep, but I guess that's my own fault for staying awake before being called out here.

But it's okay. Once Amelia's safe, we can all come back home and get some sleep, if our minds will let us. I doubt any of us will really get any rest seeing as we've found out something that is actually useful. Those people-Diana, Comansys, whoever they are-have our people. Or at least they have Maxine. And if they have Maxine, then they just might have Caleb and everyone else who left that day. We might actually have a chance at finding them again.

I want to smile at that. I really, really do. But I don't want to jinx it. I've accepted the fact that things go awry with me, so hoping on it too much will most definitely cause something to mess up or go haywire.

We're approaching the trees where Amelia sits in her helicopter. There are... maybe twenty zombies all huddled around one of the trees, all clawing at the bark of the tree and growling at the chopper above them.

Until Tony gets close enough.

Their heads snap up, almost as if they're startled by the sudden sound before they start cowering away, turning and trying to get as far away from that little box as possible. Some of them can run while others can only limp and stagger off. It's entertaining to watch either way.

"That thing is brilliant!" Amelia exclaims. "Look at them all cowering away like that. Alright, lookout. I'm going to drop a rope."

A rope plops down with a thud, and down she slides, somehow finding a way to do so gracefully. She's not exactly how I thought she'd be, appearance wise, anyway. She doesn't look much older than thirty-two, and is only a few inches shorter than me, I notice... And is she wearing makeup?

I knew the Ministry had high end stuff like guns and food and shit since they're supposed be like the government or whatever, but I didn't know makeup was still a priority. That's cool, I guess.

"Stay back, you hellions!" Tony exclaims dramatically, to which Summer snorts in laughter.

"Are you alright, ma'am?" Paula asks, and Amelia smiles, her blue eyes shining.

"Oh, call me Amelia, please. And yes, I'm fine. You must be Twenty-three? I recognize Runner Five from the files."

I raise a brow, my insides churning. "Files?"

"Yes, we have files on all runners in Abel. Yours were the ones that were originally in Mullins Base. That is the first base you resided in when coming to England."

I breathe out a sigh of relief. Praise God Almighty.

"And you're Seventeen, I believe." Amelia nods at Summer before swinging around towards Tony, her short blonde hair spinning around and nearly whacking her in the face. "And this is the device, is it?"

Tony nods and grins. "It's alright, innit?"

"Oh, it's alright indeed. I think I should probably take it now. Safe pair of hands and all that."

"What the-hey! Careful."

She's already snatched it from him, her eyes narrowed as she examines it with a not-so-gentle hand. We know this because it makes that noise again-the one that signals it isn't working properly.

"Not again," Paula groans while Summer spits out a curse.

"What a clever little thing," She says. "How do you-" The box suddenly lets out an odd sound, almost like when your cable isn't working properly and the sound has a weird echo to it. "That doesn't sound quite right."

"Oh, you done it! You done it, you muppet! You gotta treat her like a lady," Tony exclaims, glaring at her with a look that could kill. I look ahead and see that the zombies are slowing down. Actually, they've already turned and-shit.

Amelia looks down at the device. "I'm sure it's just a matter of um..."

"We need to move right now," Paula says, also having taken notice of the zombies that are heading for us, some of them working up to a sprint. "Run!"

"Don't need to tell me twice," I mutter before taking off. The others follow, running with all their light in effort to get sone distance between us and the zoms.

Tony's still glaring at Amelia. I imagine he's choking her in his mind. I don't blame him, since that device is crucial to us and it might help in finding our people, and Amelia may have just broken it.

We've only just met her and she's managed to get one person in our group to dislike her. That's really not a good sign.

The other red flag was the fact that she wanted to see the device then, instead of doing things like protocol and waiting until after we were all safe to look at the device. I'm a reckless smart ass, sure, but even I know you leave wait before testing that kind of thing out for yourself, especially if we already have someone who knows how to work the device and keep us safe with us.

Did the Ministry send us a newbie or something? I mean, we all know no one will be able to live up to the Major and how she ran things (except maybe Janine, but she would never believe so) but this seems a bit odd that she made such a mistake right away, even if she did just crash land. Because I crash landed, and while I was scared and angry and all kinda of other things, I was smart and thought about the consequences of things before I did them.

Unlike how I do most things now...

Hopefully she'll be more professional and... well, less thoughtless in her further decisions.

"This is a hell of a first day," Amelia pants.

Paula shrugs. "I've had worse."

"The problems with the device aren't helping any."

The scowl on Tony's face deepens. "Yeah, well if you hadn't broken it in the first place..."

Amelia raises a perfectly sculpted brow. "You are Antony, was it?"

"It's Tony," He replies, a look of disgust clouding over his features at the name, "and if you'd just left it to me, we'd all be safe."

"He's not wrong," I say with a half shrug.

"Please focus," Paula cuts in. "They'll be plenty of time for bickering later."

Tony and I both send her an annoyed look.

"Runner Twenty-three is right," She says. "We need a distraction. Lure the zoms away and still figure things out. Isn't that the usual way of dealing with these situations."

Paula nods. "You catch on fast."

"That's fine then, isn't it? Problem solved. There's a case of signal flares back in the helicopter. They'd be perfect, yes?"

I choke on my own breath.

"What?" Tony spats.

"Back into the helicopter?" Paula questions, and she nods.

"Yes, is there a problem?"

Summer face palms. "Oh, my God. Our new leader is an idiot."

Amelia stiffens. "What did you just call me, Runner Seventeen?"

"See? She can't even hear correctly!"

"You couldn't have thought of this while we at the helicopter?" Tony questions, looking like he's two seconds away from punching this woman in the face.

"I wasn't to know that this would happen," She argues back defensively. "You had a perfectly functional zombie deterring device, and so I just assumed-"

"Seriously? I mean... seriously?"

"You can't just assume," I say, wondering how someone who looks so pretty and professional can be so stupid. "You never just assume. You're our boss-our commander. You're supposed to look at every angle, see every possible way this could go wrong and plan for it. Do you know nothing about being a leader?"

"Do you?" She asks.

"No! That's exactly why I'm a runner and not a leader."

"And it's exactly why you shouldn't question me or my decisions."

I laugh mockingly. "Hun, I'm gonna question everything you do. It's part of who I am, and now that you've already made two dumb mistakes on your first day, I don't have a very good first impression of you. So, Sam?"

"Please don't bring me into this," He says.

"Too late. Do me a favor and get Janine if she's not already in here. She'll know what to do."

"I already know what to do," Amelia says in irritation, and I turn and give her a hard look.

"Then tell it to us like a leader, and act like someone who actually thinks things through before she speaks, because I will not follow someone who doesn't know what they're doing."

She doesn't glare or send me any dirty looks. She just smirks, and I can guess she's going to make my life absolutely miserable when we get back to base.

But do I care?

Right now, not one bit.

"Alright then, action plan: Runner Five, Tony, you head back to the copter. Runners Seventeen, Twenty-three and I will head in a circle, keep the zoms on our tail, and then meet you back at the copter, alright?"

Paula sighs. "It's as good a plan as any."

"Unbelievable," Tony mumbles. "Guess there's no point in arguing-"

"Agreed." Amelia claps her hands together. "Come along then. Best foot forward."

Tony rolls his eyes but says nothing more on it before turning and splitting apart from the group. I follow not too far behind. I'm still annoyed over that Amelia waited to tell us about the helicopter, even if we don't have to run much of a distance to circle back around to it. It's a waste of time and could've helped save it so we could get back to Abel faster and safer.

Every second is valuable now that we have a bit more information about where Maxine and the others might be. It's already been so long... Every second we don't spend trying to find them is a second wasted. Every second I'm out here, trying to get back home because our new leader can't keep her hands away from interesting things-because she likes to assume-is a second that's put to waste instead of use.

You'd think she'd want to learn more about that since this is our number one priority.

But as Janine said, all of our operations were supposed to be on hold.

I'm glad they weren't, because if we were to start from scratch with Amelia, I'm not sure we'd actually make any progress. I know you shouldn't judge someone from first impressions, but I'm really, really not impressed.

We make it to the chopper, and Tony quickly scrambles up the tree and into it, searching around for the flares we were told about. The metal creaks and clangs as he steps around, and I tense my shoulders and take a wary step back.

"Hurry. I have a bad feeling about you stayin' in that thing for too long," I say cautiously.

"Just gimme a sec. I think I've got it," He responds. "Alright, Five. Here comes the box."

He drops it, causing me to let out a small yelp. I was expecting it, yes, but being around a helicopter in this condition makes me jumpy for many reasons.

"Sorry," He apologizes. "This helicopter doesn't feel safe. It's all sort of creaky, like the Millennium Bridge, remember? Wobble, wobble, wobble."

"Heh. You really known how to calm my nerves, don't ya?" I say, and he snorts in laughter.

"I'm comin' down now. Move that box out of the way."

I do as told, taking another small step back as he less-than-graciously slides down the rope, his feet hitting the ground with a soft thud. As soon as he lets go of the rope, a loud creaking noise comes from above us, and there's a slight movement in the branches.

"I don't like the sound of that. Let's get this crate unpacked quick. We need to get out of here."

"Heads up, Runner Five," Sam cuts in. "I've got Runners Twenty-three and Seventeen and Miss Spens insight. They're getting close to you now. Uh, oh."

I wince at his tone. "Oh?"

"There's a couple zoms on their tail. Well, a couple dozen."

Tony grabs a crowbar that's lying on the ground nearby, and uses it to crack open the crate. Throwing it down, he grabs some of the flares.

"Here you go, mate. Flares for you, flares for me. Flare is flare." He chuckles. "See what I did there?"

"A star comedian, you are," I joke, but he beams at the comment.

"How're you doing with the flares?" Paula asks over my headset.

"We could really do with that distraction pretty soon, actually," Amelia adds.

"We're ready," Tony says. "Just give me a minute and I'll set something up."

There's the creaking of metal from above us, and there's a loud crack that pierces the air as a large branch snaps. It would've hit Tony if he'd not jumped out of the way.

"Oh, I really do not like the sound of that." He grabs my arm and pulls me back. "Come over here, Five. Out of the way."

"I can see movement in the trees," Sam says. "Everything okay out there?"

"Nope."

"What's happening? I-I can't see anything."

"Copter's come loose."

He chokes. "What?"

More branches start to snap, and Tony nearly pulls my arm out of socket trying to get us both away from that chopper. It falls from the trees, crashing into the ground in a crunch of metal and a crackle of flame.

"Zombies comin' in. Quick, Five. This way."

"Five, Tony, you okay?" Paula asks, and a second later I look back at the copter that's broken and destroyed. The metal of all bent and ruined, and something  inside it is burning.

I freeze at the sight of fire, my blood seeming to stop where it is in my veins, my heart stalling, my feet refusing to move.

"Five, what are you doing?" Tony asks, pulling on my arm, moving me a foot or so. "We have to get-"

The two of us are blown off our feet by the force of sudden heat and the sound of an explosion.

I hit the ground, hard. My eyes are closed from the sudden flash of light, and pain shoots up the back up my head. And I feel fire above me. I see it. I see a parachute. I'm in a parachute. I'm in the air, falling. I'm falling. Everything's wrong. It's all wrong.

Tears are in my eyes. God, I'm so high up. It's hot. It's all so hot and I'm so high and I don't know what to do. I can't do this again. I can't-

"Woah, look at that chopper blow," Tony laughs, pulling me up and back to reality, back to the present. I blink multiple times. I think I am back in reality. I can still feel the linger of heat on my skin. I still feel as if I'm not safe on the ground, but instead in the air where death lingers at the slightest mistake.

"We got the distraction we wanted. Now everyone, leg it!"

•

"Come on. Come on," Sam says. "Keep going. Most of them are right behind you."

My heart is pounding in my chest, and the moans of the zoms echo against my skull. Apparently when I was blown back by the explosion, I hit my head. I felt the pain, but I was too absorbed into my little flashback to realize I was bleeding, and since head wounds tend to bleed quite a bit, the zombies weren't distracted by the fire and smoke for long.

"Runner Twenty-three, you've got some technical know-how, haven't you?" Amelia asks, stretching out the little zombie repelling device to her. "C-can't you get this thing working?"

"I promise you as soon as we get back, I'll take a look at it."

"Just a little bit farther," Sam says. "You can do it. If you can just make it to the gate."

I can see the tower, the red light still flashing in the early morning. Just a little further. There should be snipers in position, waiting for us-for the zoms. At least, I hope there is. It is pretty early.

I keep my eyes ahead, ignoring the trickles of sweat and blood running down my neck. My head is pounding, but the wound is thankfully only superficial. I'll just need to take some aspirin when we get back.

"Raise the gates!"

The alarms of the gates go off, and I try to push my legs to run just a little farther. We're so close now.

"Keep up, Amy," Tony says. "Almost there."

Amelia pants heavily. "I think I'm going to faint."

"Not today, you bastards!" Summer yells behind her as she runs into Abel, the rest of us quickly following.

"They're in! They're in! Lower the gates! Lower the gates!"

I drop to my knees as the gates close, bringing a hand to the back of my head, and as expected, I see blood on my fingers when I bring my hand back to look.

"You're gonna need to get that looked at," Summer says.

"I'll be fine," I respond. "Just need Kefilwe to give me some aspirin and a bandage."

"Alright," Amelia says, breathing heavily. "Let's see... Twenty-three, what were you saying about the device?"

"I'll take a look at it as soon as I-"

"Look at it now, please," She says curtly, her tone changing to something much colder than before. "No time to waste. Give me your findings in the afternoon."

Paula seems speechless for a moment. "What? Wait a m-"

"Runner Five, turn the resistance as necessary, but I'd like a written report of your discovers at the base on my desk by the end of the day. The same goes for you, Seventeen."

"Give 'em a break," Tony snaps, crossing his arms. "They've just run themselves ragged to save your backside."

She huffs. "Well, I've yet to decide what to do with you, Tony. First thing's first. Follow me. I need a full debrief on the London situation."

He raises a brow. "Debrief? Do I look like I debrief? I ain't debriefin' nothin'. Debrief yourself."

She tsks. "Now, now. Everyone in my town pulls their weight. All I want is a chat. Fair exchange for a safe place to sleep, wouldn't you say?"

"Ma'am," Paula says, "if I may speak to Tony about Maxine for-"

"That can wait. And really, call me Amelia."

Tony scoffs. "Fitting. Can't we have two minutes to catch our breath?"

"We need to make the most of our time. That's what a leader thinks about." She sends me a smug look as she says that, and I narrow my eyes at her in warning.

"What about protocol?" I question. "Everyone but Paula needs to be checked for infection."

"None of you were bitten. And the worst you received was that superficial head wound. Now get up. We need to get things done rather quickly."

"But-"

"Do you want to get your people back? Do you want to find out just what these Comansys types are doing to them, or do you want to laze around, putting your feet up while the scoundrels who stole your friends are getting further and further away?" She questions harshly, but doesn't give us the time to answer. "Now, you've all got your duties to attend to. Update me within the hour if you anticipate difficulties. You-Tony, come along. I need to find my office."

He rolls his eyes. "See ya later if I survive the interrogation."

"Just tell me quickly," Paula whispers desperately. "Maxi-what happened to her?"

"They were very keen on transferrin' her to a secure area. Said somethin' about two Comansys Safe Houses. That's all I heard, I swear,"

"Come along," Amelia says.

"Yeah. Yeah. I'm comin'."

"What a charmer," Sam scoffs as Tony reluctantly follows after the blonde.

"She's not wrong though," Paula says. "Maxi... We finally know who's got her. Finally. Now we just have to get her back."

I nod. "Yeah. I guess I should go. I've got work to do."

"Not until you get that head injury checked out," He replies sternly. "I know Amelia said you were fine, but... I don't like my runners hurt. You have until the evening. Go let Dr. Lobatse have a look at it."

I frown. "You know, you don't have to say her name like that."

"Like what?"

"Like she killed your dog or something."

"I wasn't-"

I roll my eyes, my eyes burning and my mind tired. "Yeah, okay... I'm gonna go. I need to get some aspirin at least."

A/N: Here you go, guys! I hoped you enjoyed this chapter. What do you think of Amelia? Do you like or dislike her? Or do you have mixed feelings? Be sure to let me know! Be sure to vote and comment! Thank you and have a blessed day!