Behind the walls that surround cities, some people have long since forgotten the severity with which the infection struck the world. It was easy to become lost in the secluded world that removed one from the harsh reality just beyond the gates that separated cities from the dead world. Most people Elliot's age had not left the walls, even fewer had stepped into a dark zone. The Dark Zones were meant for the PMCs, raiders, Peacers, and mostly the infected. Of course even in those four groups, two of them tended to avoid dark areas unless it was a necessity or unless there was something particularly worthwhile out there. Elliot had been an exception since he joined the Peacers some years ago, his eyes set on the world that mankind had lost to the raiders and the infected. It wasn't easy, learning to live in a world where everything wanted to kill you. A world where the lights ignored the flicking of a switch. Elliot spent months reteaching himself how to exist in this world. Learning how to navigate when light abandoned the world, learning how to scale a wall while relying almost entirely on the strength of your fingers, learning how to exist on his own. Even now the loneliness still creeps in from time to time.

Today's work led Elliot to Franklin, a small city that sat directly in one of the dark zones surrounding Nashville. It wasn't Elliot's first time coming to Franklin, nor would it be his last. He had a hole in the wall in an apartment complex, one that could only be reached by scaling a collapsed stairwell. Something most people weren't foolhardy enough to do. Elliot's first steps into the city were cautious as always, the streets being as calm as they were when he last left. The apartment complex, Altman heights, was exactly as he left it, though there was a sign of a break in at the front door. The previously planked over door frame was now agape, cracked planks strewn about the concrete entryway. No real shocker there. Everything was up for grabs in this world, especially in a dark zone. Elliot would've shrugged off the display as something that happened in the past few weeks that he had been away, but it seemed that wasn't the case. At least that's what the group of infected making a round about the apartment complex said. Whoever took down these planks must've done so recently. [i]And pretty fuckin' noisily[/i]

Elliot initially planned to slip into the building and pick off the three that turned the corner. Plans are rarely made to last, especially when a guttural cry rips from the bloated throat of an infected approaching from the opposite side of the building. Elliot could see the other group now, a little under a dozen of them, excited from the cry of the bloated one, the piercing white eyes telegraphing their intentions to Elliot. "Christ." He spat, kicking in into fullspeed into the now open apartment complex, the sound of stomping footprint in now hot pursuit of him. Elliot knew time wasn't on his side and neither was his own body. The only mark of safety straight ahead was his hide-away on the seventh floor. A race that required him to run up five stories, then run across the length of the building and scale the secondary staircase that only led to the sixth and seventh floor, a staircase that was primarily footholds and rubble. The fifth floor was mostly boarded up as well and incredibly difficult to see during the middle of the day, even more so at dusk. This would be a bit of a pain to say the least, Elliot grimaced.

His feet met the ground with the rhymic thump as he ran through the entry hall toward the staircase, infected pouring into the building behind him, lusting after his very being. Elliot's knowledge of the building's layout was useful when dealing with the living, but a rather moot point when racing from the dead. They relied on sight, sound, and scent. They weren't hindered by an over reliance on sight. In a matter of minutes he had made his way up the stairs, short of breath and pupils wide. A sound of rattling metal coming from a nearby room snatched the Peacer's attention, reminding him that there was still at least one living being in his place. "If you can hear me, get out here!" He called, moving quickly down the hall, constantly looking back for anyone who moved like a normal human being. "You'll die if you don't follow me!" He now yelled, standing in the doorway of the staircase to the sixth and seventh floor. He could scale it and bring someone up with him and the infected wouldn't be able to follow them up, but in this equation time was the biggest bastard.