Peter sat in the room with the other people, shocked as much as the rest of them were.
They had all combed the whole facility together in search of Zamuel but he wasn't in.
Zamuel was with Rose's teleporter, so he could be anywhere at all in the city.
Peter's began to heave. Maybe, just maybe, Zamuel had not done it right, maybe he was at the other end of the world.
"You did say that the teleporter can only take people to places that they have been before, right", Peter asked no one in particular.
It was Rose's grandfather that gave him the answer. "Yes. The movements are restricted by the brain and memories of the user".
"Okay, Zamuel has to be within the state then."
"You saw that smile. He had somewhere in mind. He must have thought of a place", Peter heard his mother saw.
"There's no way I can know that, is there?"
"He's your best friend, Peter. You should be able to know where it is that he might have gone'', Patrick chipped in, his hands over his chest.
Peter shook his head.
"Hey, Peter. You need to think, if you want your bestfriend back alive. The city is infested with zombies, hungry zombies that feed on humans. Zamuel won't last a minute out there, especially if he is at a place he isn't supposed to be at. You have to think".
Peter froze. That was the first time he had really heard her, Rose, speak with so much emotion. And something about her voice did help calm him down a little.
Her voice was real. That was the best way he could put it.
His brows furrowed in concentration and then they jumped higher in his face.
"Oh my God. I have a hunch, I hope it is right, or at least it might lead us to him", Peter shouted out, suddenly tapping the wooden table beside him.
"Where is that?", His father asked.
"Home! His home. He must have gone over to confirm if his parents were still there", Peter exclaimed.
It was starting to make more sense now, the way Zamuel had been behaving, talking, the look in his eyes when he got the teleporter, and the sinister grin too. That mixture of pain and the hunger for hope.
"Oh, that's true! We better get going now", Rose's father said, his own teleporter was already in his hands.
"I'd go with you and the kids", Peter's dad added, "the rest of you can stay here".
After holding hands, Patrick was about to press the button in the teleporter when Professor Hanan called out to Jack.
"Your guns"
And then, blackness.
They appeared in Zamuel's house, and that was when Peter thought about it.
"How were you able to do it? Have you been here before?", Peter asked Rose's father.
"You forget that your friend didn't walk down to our facility on his own. We were here", he replied.
"The door, it's opened. He was probably here", Rose pointed out. She was already running towards the exit at full speed.
Peter, Rose, Patrick, and Jack paused outside the house. It was strangely dark and the sight was a terrible one.
Peter heard a sound, a very tiny one at first. "Hey did you hear that?"
The rest of them did look at him strangely.
They didn't hear it. "There was a sound right now, a low grunt", I didn't pick where it came from tho.
And then there was a bigger one. This time, Peter was certain that the people had heard it because they all broke into a sprint for the corner.
Rounding the bend, Peter froze.
He was glad that his father didn't though.
There on the ground was his friend, eyes wide in fear, and his leg was in the grip of a zombie.
That was the first time that he, Peter, was seeing this thing out of his dreams, in the real world.
He didn't know what to do and his brain just went blank.
His father's brain didn't leave him too, he grabbed his Glock 19 and fired off two shots at the Zombie that already had its fangs bared. His shot was precise, sending bullets flying into the skull of the green skinned zombie.
They all watched the dead zombie fall onto Zamuel, who pushed it off before collapsing onto the grassy floor.
Peter smiled and began walking towards his friend, but Rose's father's grip on his arm stopped and restricted his movements.
"We don't know if he was bitten, or scratched. We shouldn't move to him so carelessly", he said when he saw the questions in Peter's eyes.
"What? Even if he was, won't he need our help!", Peter asked back and with that he wrestled his hand free and ran to his best friend.
He wasn't surprised that the rest of the team stayed back, even his father stayed back, but with a pointed gun.
He didn't need them.
His eyes were already clouded when he got to Zammy. "God please, let him be fine".
"Hey, Zammy", he called out, tapping the face of his friend. He had passed out, probably because of the face he passed through while a zombie was staring at him in the face.
"Peter...", Rose's father called out again.
Ignoring him, he continued to tap Zamuel's face. "Wake up, you idiot. Come on. Wake up, we haven't gone in the mission yet"
Or was he bitten? Peter asked himself as he began scanning around for a bite mark.
There was none, but there was blood all over Zammy. Was he scratched? Or was it from the hole when the bullet tore into the head of the zombie?
Peter was getting scared with each passing second. And several questions, thoughts and memories swam through his mind.
And then suddenly, Zamuel gripped Peter tight by the arm, and then his eyes shut open in the darkness.