Disclaimer: Majority of characters included in this chapter belong to Valve. They're not mine. Though I wish they were!

Wow... It's been just about a year and half since I've updated this story... Whoops. Good news is that I'm back! I've decided to make finishing this story my project for NaNoWriMo this year, so be looking out for very frequent updates!
If you've been reading since I posted the previous chapters, thanks for sticking around!

'So I'm standing in a bullet / Staring down a greasy gun / And I'm rubbing people'e shoulders / But I'm miles from everyone. / We're hugging without touching / Accepting by refusing / And that awkward sound of silence / Isn't awkward if it's soothing.'

Cosmo Jarvis - The Talking Song

Over the next couple of days, Kendall's comments continue to sit idle in Ellis's mind. While he could see why Kendall might think he had a romantic interest in Rochelle (who, after all, was the only female in their group) he just couldn't figure out why he would imply such a thing about Nick. Was it because of the way Ellis had acted when they went to see him? Or maybe it was because Kendall swung that way and was interested in the gambler? Ellis had a thousand and one ideas, but none of them really seemed to make sense.

His thoughts are still bothering him when he sneaks through the ventilation shaft once again to visit Coach and Rochelle. Contrary to Kendall's belief, Ellis's clearance to leave the dormitory area had yet to be granted.

"I dun know, Ro. I mean, I dun know a whole lot about this Kendall guy. I can't figure him out!" Ellis lies on his back among rows of budding tomato plants, hands tucked away behind his head. The entire deck of the ship has been turned into a makeshift agricultural farm. The ship's sunchairs have been replaced by mountains of harvesting basets; mojitos by freshly picked cucumbers. Rochelle has her loose hair tied back in an orange hankerchief and hikes up her cut off overalls as she works around Ellis, squatting to tend to the plants. She nods in response as she works, humming a tune that Ellis can't quite remember the title of.

"What do yew think?" He asks, trying again to get a reponse. Rochelle snips a dead leaf off a plant.

"I honestly don't know, honey. Could be he was just teasing you."

"Really? Ya think?" A leaf tickles Ellis's face and he wrinkles his nose. "Honest?" Rochelle clanks down the watering can she had been holding.

"Or maybe what he said has some ground to it." Ellis squints his eyes at her.

"Some ground?"

"Swamp saferoom. That's all I'm going to say." Rochelle says, reminding Ellis of that time he had rolled himself all the way across the saferoom and somehow ended up all snuggled up beside Nick. Ellis had woken up to a firm, ring-enhanced punch in the jaw.

"That ain't even fair, Ro! I was sleepin'!" Ellis pushes himself up onto his elbows. "'Sides it was real cold that night! I woulda froze to death!"

"That's all I'm going to say." Rochelle repeats. She returns to watering the plant.

"I ain't gay or nothin'." Ellis says after a moment. "Was just cold, is all..."

"Okay. Your friend was just mistaken, then. He thought we were dating as well, right?" Ellis nods. "Well then just dismiss this like you dimissed that assumption. You know the truth. That's all that really matters."

"Yeah. Guess yur right."

"As usual!" Rochelle chimes, earning a laugh from Ellis. He reaches up and plucks a tomato off the plant directly beside him, ignoring Rochelle's attempts to swat his hand away. His face instantly shrivels up when he drops the orange colored orb into his open mouth.

"Those aren't even ripe yet!" Rochelle says, laughing.

"Duly noted." He sticks out his tongue.

They spend the rest of the afternoon talking about the ship. Rochelle talks about chasing the seagulls away from the freshly planted rows of corn seeds. Ellis talks about Kendall and life in the bunks. The remainder of the day goes by slowly and peacefully. There's no need to find a saferoom as the sun goes down and Ellis watches the sky change from blue to pink with a carelessness he hasn't felt in a long time.

"Bliss."

. . .

Nick was never much of a 'people-person'. There had been multiple times in grade school where he had been called to the counselor's office because he played by himself too often. Then there had been trips to the principal's office after the almost weekly fistfights with his classmates. When his peers got girlfriends, he got one-night stands. When they went to college, he went to Vegas. So, when he was told to sit behind a public service desk, Nick laughed.

After being assured multiple times that the guard was, in fact, not kidding, Nick takes a seat at his new desk. On the surface of the sad piece of furniture there is a stack of blank paper, a clipboard, and a single pen. From the briefing he had just recieved from a uniformed guard, Nick had gathered that basically his job was to listen to people's complaints about how the ship was being run, pretend to write down a few notes, and then to get them to leave and go back to work.

His first 'customer' is an older woman of about seventy who speaks no language that Nick can understand. He nods while she waves her scrawny arms at him and pretends to scribble some notes. Ends up the pen doesn't work, so actually writing anything down was never even an option.

The hours progress slowly. The only other people who show up ask for trivial things. In return Nick gives them some heartfelt advice.

"There's no toilet paper left in the bathroom in the E17 wing."

"That's nice. Go steal a roll from another bathroom."

"My daughter is allergic to the nuts we get in our daily food rations."

"Don't let her eat them."

"I need to switch rooms. My bunkmate snores."

"Ever heard of earplugs?"

"Where can I get earplugs?"

"How the hell would I know. NEXT!"

Nick continues to be highly helpful for the remainder of the day and then slinks back to his room feeling more mentally exhausted than he has in next few days pass similarly and Nick quickly discovers that certain people show up several times a day to leave their 'comments'. These regulars immediately pick Nick out as a newcomer and ask questions about the infected land, making Nick recall memories he has been trying to push to the back of his mind.

They were safe now. It didn't help anyone to be reminded of what was really out there.

On the third day of Nick's adventure into the land of public service, he decides to ditch work. What were they going to do, fire him? From a position he was forced into? Nick isn't overly concerned.

Making his way onto the deck of the ship for the first time, he finds it covered in plants of all shapes and sizes. On his walk down the starboard side railing, he even passes an orange tree, which is teetering hazardously in the 3 feet of Florida soil that blankets the deck.

He finds a shaded corner and sits right in the dirt, back against the cold outer wall of the ship. Nick figures the loose fitted jeans he had ben given had seen worse treatment. With nothing much to do, he closes his eyes and lets himself be taken by dreams of neon lights and leather miniskirts. If Nick missed anything about the pre-apocalyptic world, it was the casinos. He had always found a certain comfort being among shallow people. Simple minded people who wanted simple things. Money. Booze. Sex. He misses things being so predictable.

A few gardeners come across him, but pay him no mind. Nick continues to drift in and out of dreams until a determined index finger begins prodding his forehead.

"Hey, mister! This is my sleeping spot! You gotta go find another place."

Nick slowly opens his eyes and then quickly wishes he hadn't. A teenage girl, no older than fifteen, is standing over him looking incredibly sassy. With hands on her denim-shorts-clad hips and chestnut colored hair curling around her freckled face, Nick is, for some reason, reminded of Ellis. The Southern twang in her voice furthers the notion.

"Mister, didja hear what I said?"

"Sorry, sugar. Finders keepers." Nick closes his eyes, disregarding the five foot tall intruder.

"Well, if you ain't leavin', then I guess we're sharing." The young girl plops down next to him, raising a small dust cloud in her wake. "This is the only place where the teacher folk ain't found me yet. You'd think that with the zombie thing and all, they would give up tryin' to cram algebraic equations into my head. No such luck!" Nick snickers.

"So what's your name, then?" The girl asks, poking his thigh.

"Nick. Don't touch me."

"Not very nice, are ya?"

"So I've been told."

They sit together in silence. Nick doesn't really understand why she won't won't leave. He's obviously not going to indulge her in conversation anytime soon.

"My name's Meghan. My friends used ta' call me Meg." She fiddles with the hem of her shorts. "After they turned into zombies and all they couldn't really pronounce 'Meg' anymore. Sounded more like 'MRREEAAWG'. Figured if they can't even pronounce my name, then I needed some new friends, right?" It troubles Nick a bit to hear how casual her tone is.

"I heard you got a friend over in Defense and Rescue?" Nick looks over at her. "Word travels pretty fast on this here ship. My brother's over there, too. I don't like that 'cuz they gotta go back to the mainland. He says he don't mind too much 'cuz he gets ta smash some zombie heads once in a while. But it's still pretty dangerous, ya know?"

"So they really send them back to the mainland, then?" He's suddenly very interested in what the little nuisance has to say.

"You bet! But my brother ain't had to go over in a while. Been, like, two weeks or something. Last time, though, there was this guy who went and a one of them long-tongued guys got 'im. Pulled 'im straight out a third story window and dropped 'im right down on the sidewalk. Not a real pretty sight for all them other guys."

Nick flinches at the thought.

"This other time a hooded zombie jumped my brother, but one of the guys blew his head clean off before he did nothin'. My brother's usually pretty good at dodgin' 'em. Probably was just havin' an off day or somethin' like that." Nick subconsciously folds his arms over his chest. He had felt the claws of a hunter a few times in his life. His torso still felt vulnerable whenever he thought about it.

"Everyday is an off day when the world is full of zombies." He says. Meghan looks at him for a second.

"That's real deep." She says. "Kinda true, though."

"Yeah, well."

"So how did ya meet your group? My brother and me was traveling for while with this girl from Washington. Ya know, like, the capital? Said she was hiding out for a while in that big white buildin' you see on D.C. postcards for a while. The one with the dome on top."

"The Capitol." Nick interjects.

"Yeah that. Said there are underground tunnels connectin' all them big official government buildings. I thought that was pretty freakin' cool. I reckon my brother fancied her a bit but he won't admit it. Anyway, we ran into her while we was lootin' a grocery store lookin' for food and she near clean swung a ball bat at my head! Anyway, how'd you meet your friend in the Defense and Rescue?"

"Happened over in Georgia." Nick starts talking simply so that Meghan will shut up. The southern accent isn't the only thing she has in common with Ellis. She could run her mouth nearly as much as he could. "We were all heading to the same evac site. Some roof of a random hotel. The thirty flights of staris slowed us all down a bit on the way up and we all ended up missing the helicopter." He looks at Meghan. "Ellis calls them 'whirleybirds'. Nearly punched him the first time he said it, too."

"Yur friend's name is Ellis?" Nick nods.

"Since the area was infested with zombies and the next evac station was pretty far, we all stuck together. There was no helicopter there either, though. Shittiest day of my life. Traveled south and eventually got picked up and brought here."

"So what's Ellis like? Is he tough? He must be if they went and picked him for Defense and Rescue."

"He can handle himself." Nick says. But a worried feeling begind spreading through his body.

"It gets pretty darn dangerous out there. Still a bunch of freaks runnin' around out there. I hope he'll be okay." Meghan pokes Nick again gently but he doesn't feel it this time. A tight feeling rises in his throat.

"I hope so too."

. . .

Kendall has a solemn look on his face when Ellis finds him at breakfast. Munching on a sad looking carrot and a peice of toast, Kendall's eyes blankly stare at the wall across the room. Thrown off by his friend's suddenly serious vibe, Ellis sits down at the table across from him.

"You like like you've gone and seen a ghost, man." Ellis says, stealing Kendall's untouched carrot and taking a big bite. The other man seems to take no notice.

"They're shipping us out. Tomorrow morning." Kendall says. Ellis stares at him.

"What do you mean?" Kendall shifts his eyes to meet Ellis's.

"Tomorrow morning. Sqauds 7 and 10. That's you and me. We're being sent on a mission to the mainland. Somewhere in southern Florida." Kendall slumps in his chair. The depression is contagious and Ellis starts to feel its effects. He tries his best to shake it off, as he always has.

"Don't worry about it none. We'll be alright as long as we look out for each other!" Ellis gives him a forced smile. "We'll be fine."

"You never know." Kendall says quietly, picking up his toast and munching on the corner. "Either way, I need to go tell my sister I'm going out there again."

"Sister?" Ellis asks. "You ain't mentioned her."

"She's 14. Living over on the other end of the ship."

"Let's go see her, then. I gotta go see my friends, too." Ellis doesn't even want to think about how they'll take the news. They eat the rest of their breakfasts in silence. Spitters and Smokers tango around in Ellis's head, foreshadowing things to come.