(Meghan)
Meghan didn't like the look on Ray's face when he came back.
"Oh no," she said, "It's that bad?"
Ray merely nodded.
"How many?"
"Too many…"
"Shit!" she exclaimed, "Are there a lot of them near the car?"
"I couldn't find it. I saw how many Deathless there were and I—I don't know. Kinda felt it was pointless to try…"
"Oh my god, Ray! Don't say that. You were the one who said that we were almost there. Don't you dare give up now!"
"You haven't seen the parking lot yet. You won't be saying this if…"
"I'll just go check it out then." She said, cutting him off.
Meghan got to her feet and slowly walked towards the F Block entrance and lowered herself to avoid being detected.
The sight made her gasp in shock.
The parking lot was full of Deathless. There were around thirty of them that Meghan could spot from her position. She was sure that there were even more of them hiding out of her line of sight.
'Oh my god, he wasn't kidding.' she admitted to herself, 'How the hell are we going to get to the car?'
Meghan turned her head to the left and spotted her mother's red Hyundai. There weren't any Deathless near the vehicle but the path leading up to it was blocked by at least a dozen of them. It was impossible to run past them and it was even more impossible to fight them all. Meghan understood why Ray got disheartened. But she hadn't lost hope yet. They had reached the basement after a great ordeal. She even had to kill someone in order to make it here. She wasn't about to lie down and give up now.
"Ray," she whispered, "come here a sec."
Ray poked his head out and asked, "What?"
Meghan waved her hand frantically, indicating to come forward.
Ray came out from the behind the wall and crouched next to her, "Yeah?"
She pointed in the direction of her vehicle, "That's my car. See? That's our ride out of here."
"I see it" he acknowledged.
"There aren't any Deathless near it. There's a bunch of them in the middle but they are mostly just standing still or walking around aimlessly. If one of us can somehow distract them and lure them in the opposite direction, the other should be able to rush inside and start the car. Then they can use the car to drive past the Deathless and pick up the first person."
She turned towards him with an anticipating smile, clearly proud of the plan she came up with in the spur of the moment. Ray, however, didn't look convinced.
"Do you know how extremely risky that is?" he started, "Its fine for the person in the car but the one being the diversion will have an army of Deathless chasing them down. Neither of us are in any state to outrun this many of them."
Meghan's expression fell, "But it could still work..."
"Yeah, one of us will make it. The other won't."
"What's wrong with you? Why are you being so negative suddenly?"
"Meghan, it's a terrible plan." Ray said louder than he needed to.
She immediately stopped arguing. He called her 'Meghan'. He only called her that when he was angry or upset with her. She wasn't a big fan of being called Momo either. It meant Chinese dumplings after all. But she was so used to it that hearing him utter her real name was slightly scary.
"First of all, there is no guarantee that the first person can lure away all the Deathless from the middle. If even a few stay back, then the plan has a much higher chance of failing. If the second person can't get inside the car and start it fast enough, that would put both parties in unnecessary danger. And second, this isn't like luring one Deathless into an empty room. We're talking about a horde of them. One misstep and you're done for. With numbers like this, it's exceeding easy to get surrounded and then trapped. The plan sucks."
"So what, you want to just give up? At least I'm trying to come up with something, Ray! You've always told me not to be so pessimistic and to think on the brighter side of things. Now you're the one who's down in the dumps and crying that it's all over when it's not. We're still alive! As long as we're alive, it's not over."
Ray looked at her with an unfamiliar expression. For a second, she was concerned that she might have said too much. But then, Ray swung his hand and slapped himself in the face.
"Woah," Meghan uttered in shock, "that was—are you…"
"I'm fine," Ray said simply, "I'm better than fine. I needed that. You're right, of course. We are still alive and it's up to us to figure out how to stay that way."
Meghan smiled. He was back.
"So we're going with my plan?"
"No, the plan still sucks. It's too risky."
Meghan frowned at him.
"We aren't splitting up. We're both going to get into the car at the same time. We have to watch each other's backs. Can't do that if too far apart. We made it this far by sticking close together. That's how we should move forward too."
"Okay but what should we do? How are we going to get to my car?"
Ray sighed loudly and went into one of his thinking trances. He remained silent for several seconds while Meghan waited for him to start speaking again.
"Hmm… No, too dicey." Ray started mumbling in a low voice, "Can't seem to… But maybe—yes, that! Could work… definitely could work… all we need now is—"
"Oh, you came up with something?" Meghan asked hopefully, "Is this the part where you use your nerd knowledge to devise another gaming related strategy?"
"I have a feeling I should be offended by that but strangely I'm not."
"No, no. It wasn't an insult. I'm proud of your geeky brain. So anyways, what's the plan?"
"Well, we will definitely need a distraction but it can't be one of us doing it."
"What does that mean?" she inquired.
"We're going to need Rody's help." He said simply, "He's going to give us an assist from inside his apartment."