Chevlar Files: Book One, Chapter Eight

Chapter Eight
Desperate Escapes
Night turned into day, and the group got up and about in its early hours, loading up to move out. To accommodate the new comer, Keith was given one of Kevin's 38's and another kitchen knife from their temporary home. As for the one clipped sub gun, Kaolin held onto that for safe keeping. With everything packed and ready, the fateful five survivors headed out into the morning cooked streets, unaware of the danger that awaited them.
The group silently crept through the streets, and Kevin broke the silence, saying, "So, Kao, which town are we heading to after we get out of this place?"
Kaolin turned back and said back to him, "Hmm, not quite sure yet. We'll come up with something on the way out."
"Hey hey hey, don't try what I think you're trying with my sister man!"  , shouted Matt out back to Keith, who was busy talking to Rebecca in the back of the group.   
Keith looked up to him, and shouted back, "Relax Lord Montague! It's just some harmless small talk!"
Matt turned back around, and quietly scowled out towards Kaolin, saying, "Dude, that thing he just said didn't even make sense! Do we really need to bring this guy along? I thought that Kevin kid was annoying, but man he breaks the limit on that."
Kaolin took a look back at Keith continuing his conversation with Rebecca-which was truly harmless small talk to pass the time- and replied back, "He was making a reference from that play from Shakespeare, and it's not like we can just tell him to leave on his own with everywhere now being like this. Besides, the more people in our group the better our chances of survival right?"
Matt shrugged his shoulders in conflicting agreement, and said back, "Yeah, I guess you're right. I mean, we're only going to be together till we meet up with those other vigilantes in Pittsburg. After that, I'm taking me and my sister up north towards Canada, I'm sure that whatever this is can't survive in the cold; it makes sense if you think about it, I mean, why would this disease hit out of nowhere in the start of spring, when everywhere is warming up again? What are you guys planning to do; you, Kevin and that other guy?"
Kaolin was at a loss for words at realizing that they weren't going to be together for the rest of this event; he came back to reality, and gave him a semi surprised reply back, "Oh, uh, I guess we'll just stay with whatever people are there, and just, well, stick this thing out. Are you sure you two want to leave once we get there? I mean, more people the better right?"
Matt looked back at him, and sternly said back, "Yeah, but there's always the chance of somebody getting killed, and I don't want that for Rebecca. I don't care how risky it is, I'm going to take a chance and avoid this thing completely, because I don't want her to live her life like this…in fear of being next, never feeling safe; she's all I have left, and nothing you can say can make me change my mind."
At this point, Kaolin stopped Matt, which in turn stopped the others in their tracks; he was about to tell Matt off about the big risk he was taking over this mere assumption, but in the silence before making his case, Kaolin heard just that, silence. He leaned over, and whispered to everyone, "The dead ringer….does anyone else not hear it by chance?"
Kevin propped his ear out, and replied back shocked, "I don't hear it either, what does that mean?"
Keith had the answer for him, saying, "What that means is that we're screwed if we do anything rash." Everyone was on alert in response to that, and their walking was reduced to small creeps, none of them knowing where that mass amount of runners could be at, and all wondering why they haven't made contact with even one of them yet.
Suddenly, they heard something fall in an alleyway adjacent to them, which sounded like a trash can lid or something of the sorts. They all stopped moving as soon as the sound was heard; cautiously, Kaolin pointed to Kevin to check the alleyway. He pulled out his melee tool, and hugged the left side of the alley entrance; he tapped on the building wall a couple times, and waited for whatever it was to come out. Seconds passed, then a minute, then two; after a bit, Kevin looked towards the group, shrugged his shoulders in a mixed confusion, and crept back to the roadway. Suddenly, a runner burst out of the darkness of the alleyway, roaring at the top of its lungs; Kevin had enough time to turn back around, but not enough to get out of the way, and was slammed to the ground by it. It pinned him where he lied, and hung down its head, trying to bite his throat out, being just out of reach thanks to Kevin's' pushing its skull back.
The others rushed in to save him, but with his contesting of strengths not going his way, he felt there was only one way out; he pulled out his .38 when the runner leaned back for another head thrust, and armed it to fire.
Kaolin reached his hand out, and screamed, "Kevin, don't do it! We're almost-", but before he could finish his sentence, Kevin's action was carried out; the gunshot rang far and wide across the being-less landscape, and the runner fell off of Kevin and slumped over beside him, the entry wound of the round shown clearly on his forehead. Everything remained silent at first, then the thundering of hundreds of bodies could be heard, all going to meet at where the loud sound was heard; the marches came from all sides, and with no escape, the group formed a diamond like formation, ready to fend off whichever side throws a wave at them first.
"Damn, there's no way we'll be able to take down a whole city, it can't end like this, it just can't…I still have something I need to do!" Keith thought to himself in a desperate rage. He looked all around him, scanned everything he could see as a means of escape; he took sight on a manhole, and shouted out to the group, "Hey, that manhole! Let's open it up and duck in the sewer system!"
They all took a liking to the plan and to get it open; Matt and Kevin both took turns trying to lift it out, but find any way to get any kind of grip on it. Kaolin pushed them both aside, drew his knife out, and rammed it in the crevice between the lid and the street; the moment he began to slowly lift it up, the main body of runners came into view; hundreds upon hundreds sprinted at them in full force, knocking aside any clutter on the streets whether it was postboxes, parking meters, or even parked vehicles, nothing stood before their stampede. Turning the task into a rush job, he lifted up fast and suddenly; the sudden force bent the blade on the verge of breaking off, but he managed to grab hold of the manhole lid before it fell back into place. He placed it to the side of the hole, and shouted to the others to get in as their enemies closed in a mere few feet away from them. First Matt went, followed by Rebecca, then Kevin; when it came Keith's turn, he just jumped straight down, saving Kaolin enough time to skip down to the fifth step on the welded ladder. He was eye level with the ground of the street, and he yanked the lid back to him; he pulled it completely over the hole, and covered it back just short of the first of the runners intercepting him.
He stepped down rung by rung on the ladder, till he could audibly hear the others below; he took it as a sign that he was close enough to the bottom, and he dropped down the rest of the way, trying for some personal dramatic effect. He hit the floor with a sound thud, not particularly hurt except for having to embrace the sudden smell of the sewer area invade into his nostrils; to that effect, he tried to cough it out, but to no avail, so he attempted to distract his nose, saying, "Hoo boy what a stink. Is everybody all right?"
"Well, except for the pretty boy here spraining his ankle from his leap of faith, nobody's hurt," Kevin replied smugly back, referring to Keith and his method of escape down their most recent conquest.
Keith wags his finger at him, and interjects on his logic, saying, "Hey, you call it a leap of faith, I call it a tactical risk. It was either me getting hurt, or us all dying because of our slow pace. Me and Kao here had the right idea; you were the one taking your sweet time climbing down like a pansy boy."  He glances to Rebecca giving him a mild glare as he continues on, "Of course, it was no trouble at all that you had to climb down Rebecca! Heh heh, it's only Kevo's here for not taking the manly initiative that's to be expected from a boy his age."
Matt gave a low grunt, and spoke up, "Doesn't matter now does it? No matter how you word it, you still got your stupid ass hurt showing off."
A glaring contest begun against the two; before they could fire up into a debate, Kaolin broke them both up, and pointed out, "Okay, enough squabbling, we've got something else to worry about. We need to find another manhole ladder to climb out safely away from where the bulk of those runners are at. We might as well start to search for it now then bitch amongst ourselves no?" The others came to an agreement, and Kevin pulled a flashlight out the supply bag, and led the way down the dank waste tunnels.
During their journey, Keith strung up another conversation, saying, "So lady and gentlemen, have you all ever stopped and wondered what the hell that gas shit was? I mean, turning regular people into flesh eaters, and that stretchy armed crazy in the prisons….this is straight out of a damned sci-fi novel, or a conspiracy theory."
Kaolin was the first to answer physically with a shrug, and verbally as well, saying, "Well, for all we may know, this could be a terrorist attack, or a first strike by the Eurasia forces. If that was the case, we would have expected their troopers to roll in any minute now, and put us into submission."
"Well, why would that not be the case then dude? It sounds pretty alright to me." Replied Matt as he kicked a rock into the flowing sewage water next to him.
"Well, thing is, if this was an attack from our nation's enemies, it wouldn't have taken this long for them to follow up. The more time we would have to regroup, the worse for them, so they would've invaded mainland first chance they had." Kevin pointed out to him, continuing his search for another ladder for them to climb out of. He continued on, saying, "Still though, it doesn't explain why those soldier types attacked us on site…maybe this is their way of launching their offensive, with recon squads but… it just doesn't all add up."
Rebecca looked to the others, and spoke out, "Wait, if it's not our enemies across the ocean and the terrorist idea is faulty at best, so maybe we could've done this to ourselves? I mean, that chopper Kao and Kevin stole, it was an American issued one for military recon missions, maybe this was an new experimental weapon, and before they could test it, it was leaked or something, and now they're trying to contain it?"
Everyone stopped, shocked at how privy Rebecca was at thinking up the cause of this; Kaolin nodded to her deep in thought, and replied back, "Hmm, maybe Rebecca, but I doubt it "leaked" out like you said; that stuff was rushed into the whole Madison area, it came out of nowhere and flowed out onto the streets, the buildings, even closed rooms inside the buildings. There was quite a bit of force behind it, so it was definitely something that was intentionally planned to happen. If the thing about our government and higher ups creating this is true too though, this will be one hell of a thing to explain…"
Matt interjected on the discussion, proclaiming, "Well, it's not like this'll help us either way if we know the truth or not. Let's just deal with our current situation right now, and leave thinking like that to eggheads like Kevin and Keith here." After a brief glaring match between the mentioned three, they continued down their way.
Kaolin motioned for Rebecca's attention, and whispered to her, "Hey, that was some smooth thinking back there Becca. Do you mind if I ask how you knew so much about the military?"
Rebecca, acknowledging that he had now given her a nickname of sorts, let out a soft giggle, and replied back, "Heh heh, it's thanks to my family really; we're-well, we were, a real military type of family if that makes any sense. A girl raised around that all her life is sure to commit a thing or two to memory." She finishes off by giving Kaolin a lightly formed grin; he smiled back, and turned back ahead to continue on their journey.
One minute of silent travel then went to two, then five, and finally climbed up to ten minutes of nothing but the silent of voices and the cluttered thuds of footsteps. They all wanted to break the ice with a conversation, but for now, nothing came to mind for any of them; despite this, they all had something to worry about when they began to hear a loud, sloshing sound coming from behind them in the darkness; the sounds themselves coming from what they believed to be the murky, translucent waste water hiding whatever was moving below.
The group looked back in silent wondering of what was behind them, and how they could have missed it; Kevin was the first to speak, proclaiming, "Hey guys, what do you think-," was all he could get out before the splashing movements picked up speed at an alarming rate; they took that as a sign to hustle as well, and they bolted as fast as they could to get away from whatever it was, but to no avail; it's progress was slowed, but it was still slowly but surely gaining on them, like a hunter stalking its prey in the twilight before the morning. Realizing their plan wasn't working, Kaolin stopped short, and readied his weapon at the flowing sludge below him; the others followed suit, and mobilized around his lead, and lied in wait for the creature to fast approach, whatever it may be. Kevin shined the light down the tunnel, seeing not the thing, but the splashes instead, watching as the upchucked water caked the walls and ceiling behind it, and oozed back down to the floor.  When the front of the waves reached ten feet from them, suddenly and without warning, all the movement under the waters…stopped; the water rocked back and forth along the walls before coming to a rest, leaving Kaolin and the others baffled at what had just happened.
Matt readied his shotgun, and fired a round into the water without warning; he cocked if for another before Kaolin stopped him, saying in an annoyed whisper, "Don't waste your rounds! Yours is the best weapon we have so far, and we don't want to waste a single shot if we can avoid it." He turns to Kevin, motioning him to shine the light into the murky depths of the sewage. Kevin complied, and moved the light directly into the water, but to no avail; the water seemed endless and the light didn't even pierce through the first layer of the water's septic coating.
Kevin peeled his eyes towards the water, focusing himself in order to better see into it; he leaned inwards towards the water, when suddenly an outstretched limb blasted out of the water, and slammed him up against the wall, pinning him there by his throat and choking him out as a result. The others jump back shocked, unsure of what had just happened; Matt was the first to come to his senses as he drew out his hammer.  He took aim at the spindly appendage, and brought his weapon down hard, effectively breaking its hold on Kevin, and the arm itself. A deep moan was heard from the watery pit as the arm retracted into the waste pit, violently twitching as it was pulled back. Matt laughed out loud, and proclaimed, "Ha! Is this those stretchy armed guys you keep telling me about? They may have reach, but their bones are brittle from that condition! This is going to be a-"He was interrupted by the ground shaking beneath their feet as the unknown biomass slammed against each side of the drainage ditch in response to the pain.
As the roaring began to subside, many other arms sprung out of the water, latching onto the edges of the walkways, making Kaolin and the others back up towards the wall; they could only watch in shock and awe as they saw the amorphous mass of flesh slowly rise out of the depths. It was easily the size of around thirty people, evident by the all the limbs and heads that were spaced out all along its combined central body, sewer water still dripping off of it in thick globs to its origins below. The group armed themselves, but couldn't make the first strike, as the mob of bodies , using all of its combined heads,  wailed out a cry that forced them all to cover their ears. It followed up by pulling back all of its spare arms, seven in total, and sweeping them across to attack the group; Keith and Matt took direct body hits from the first two while the others violently swept them all off of their feet with great force.
Kaolin was the first to collect himself when he saw the gelatinous mass attempt to crush them all with its immense weight. Alerted to this, he ordered to the group, "Everyone! Roll out of the way now!!" They followed his command, and dodge rolled out of the beasts' range in time to just get caught in the dusty cloud caused by its massive girth; Matt and Rebecca were stuck on the dark side of the mob, and the others were on the opposite side, Kevin's flashlight dimly lighting up the enemy before them.
Before it could recover, Matt fired some shots off at its body; the shotgun spread went in clean and blood was flowing out it like it was a normal body, but it didn't seem to effect it any, nor did it seem to care; all it focused on was squirming back to a ready position. Matt shouted out to Kaolin, "Hey! We can hit this thing just fine, but it has a lot of body to spare! What are we going to do?!"
After thinking it all over for a split second, it all became clear in his mind; this type of monster follows the same principals of a runner, it's just bigger in size and number of limbs and heads. It could attack and consume more, but it was just like any other human, kill the brain, and you kill the body. Not wasting another moment in this short break, he shouted back, "Matt! It's just like any other runner; we'll just kill all its brains or turn it to swiss cheese so it can't do anything! You have the flares in your bag; break them out so we can have some light! Let's kill this Mob off!" Matt complied, and pulled out three red sticks; he motioned Rebecca to fire at them, and she did, lighting all three of them with a luminous red glow. He dropped one where he stood, tossed another one behind him, and threw the last on towards the others. With the battlefield now bright and enabled for clear combat, the Kao-Group was finally on equal fighting terms with this new opponent.
The Mob got back to a ready position, but was met with all their combined gunfire all oncoming at various speeds, taking out a couple of its heads; it leapt to the ceiling at an startling speed for its size to try and avoid the onslaught of gunfire, but to no avail. Matt and Rebecca ran out of heads on its body to target, so Matt jumped across to the other side of the sewer river to get a better shot at a head directly below it; the Mob saw this, and launched one of its arms out, connecting with Matt directly in the body, launching him off of his feet and making him fly five yards back. Rebecca stopped her assault, and ran back to attend to her fallen brother, who coughed up a bit of blood from may've been a broken rib or two; with its left side free of fire, it turned its attention to the other three, who were still vigorously on the offensive.
It dropped to a sitting position on the walkway directly below it, and brought two of its still outstretched arms for a clothesline attack; the first one aimed low, and all three of them got around it with no trouble, but the second one came right after; it knocked Kevin to the ground with a headshot, but the others managed to duck under it right in the nick of time. As they made their return to its body though, Keith grabbed hold of the second arm, and held it in place; he pulled his improvised combat knife out, and began to stab into it over and over again in a sawing motion in an attempt to remove its hand. The amorphous entity braced itself, and violently swung its arm towards the wall it stood against; the force of the swing ripped its hand off the rest of the way, but as blood began to flow out of the open end of his forearm, it still achieved what it had hoped for with its counterattack; Keith was pulled along with the arm, and as the hand was removed from it, he ended up becoming a human projectile, landing into the upper part of the wall with the entire backside of his body, and falling to the ground below just missing falling into waste river; as the beast spun around towards him, so of the blood flowing out of its arm showered on him in light sprinkles, staining his clothing, and coming just short of his hair and face. He tried to get back on his feet, but as he tried to lift himself to his knees his arms began to tremble, and eventually failed under his weight, and he plopped back down to the ground, noticeably suffering from being slammed into the unyielding stone wall. The beast prepared to draw another arm back to finish Keith off; before the final blow was struck, the head he was focusing on Keith with was shot dead by Kaolin, all but ignored from its last attack. Releasing a deep grunt from within its body, it punched its arm instead at Kaolin, who merely dodge rolled out of the way, and fired at it again from a kneeling position.
He laid down more fire on the beast till his other clip was empty; as he tried to reload, the Mob readied five more of its arms to punch at him this time. He managed to sidestep the other two with ease, and when the third came he ducked around at the right moment, feeling the air of the strike blow past him; the fourth attack grazed him in his left arm, and the fifth that came right after struck low, so he jumped it with ease. He took the time for it to pull its limbs back to reload his weapon; realizing that he was on his last clip of munitions, he shoved the clip in with some slight tingling from the fresh hit on his upper arm, and pointed his pistol at the beast, trying to steady his aim at what he assumed was one of five heads left.
Before he could take a shot, the Mob struck in low, but this time with an open hand; Kaolin didn't have time to dodge this attack, and it grabbed his left leg. He fired into it twice before it could follow up, but it was to no avail; the arm yanked him off of his feet, and slammed him back into the ground, the force of the hit making him lose grip of his gun. Before he could recover from the attack, it brought him up again, but this time more slowly, to what was to be assumed to the face part of it. He was dangled above of it, and as he slowly came back to reality in full, he realized the horrors of what was about to happen; a thin crease appeared along the center of its facial area, and opened up wider and wider, revealing a deep, abysmal like gullet. This creature intended to swallow Kaolin, whole body and all.
Seeing this, Kevin forced himself to get up, and checked his revolver for ammunition; seeing four at the ready, he took aim, and fired them all off. He put another of its heads out of commission, and he screamed out, "Hey you tentacled bastard, look over here! Toss that guy away and pay attention to me!" The moment he got those words out, he was swatted to the ground by one of its spare arms, and kept its grip on their supposed leader. Keith picked up Kaolin's pistol, and unloaded on the beast with dual wielding fury; Matt also followed up by limping into range with Rebecca giving her shoulder to him for support, and peppered its body with buckshot from the other side in an attempt to get its attention. The Mob, merely annoyed by all of this minor damage, roared out towards them all hoarse with rage, forcing everyone to cover their ears, and he let go of Kaolin to fall into its mouth. Right as he fell all the way inside, it slammed its jaws shut, and was preparing to resume its attack; the whole group was in disbelief in what had just happened, and Rebecca, overwrought with her sorrow, screamed out for him in tear ridden sadness.
Turning back the clock to look towards Kaolin's perspective, one could see a faint glimmer of hope; knowing it was only a matter of when on him being eaten or not, he looked about desperately on his person for anything that could help him. He saw that the SMG was still hanging around his body, seemingly unharmed from the slamming he received just moments before, and he still had his knife, now bent to the side beyond repair; unfastening both and putting one in each hand, he aimed the sub gun towards the arm that was constricting him in a desperate attempt at attain his freedom. His efforts were but a second to late, for it was then that the beast roared its skin-crawling battle-cry, and dropped him into its mouth. He bounced off of the bottom of its mouth when he first touched down, but he stopped himself from heading down its throat. As soon as he got his footing, it was lost from him again when it slammed its jaws shut, just short of crushing him flat, and leaping forward to what Kaolin assumed was to get Matt and Rebecca next; he tried to regain his footing again on the slippery surface, the muffled sounds of gunfire and shouting in the background reassuring him that they were still willing to fight.
The Mob moved suddenly again, this time to the right, and this sudden jostling made Kaolin fall flat on his face, and slide down the monsters' esophagus to whatever was to be his stomach below. He slipped through its throat at an alarming rate; he was eventually able to stop himself by stabbing his hooked knife into the lining of its throat, slowing his downward spiral to an eventual stop. He hoisted himself up, planting each of his feet on adjacent sides of the Mob's esophagus. Not taking a liking to his moist, dark settings, he worked a small key chained flashlight out of his pocket and looked around thorough its rather thin membrane; despite all the rounds he and the others have, and still are, putting into it, there was no signs of internal bleeding or any kind of organ rupture.
"Huh, so this thing does follow the same guidelines as runners in terms of how to defeat them, but this thing used every part of every person; shit, Goliaths are durable because of dense muscling, but this thing, it's just durable because there's just so much of it." As he said this, a most interesting discovery came to his attention; he had found the beast's heart, all organs from its patrons morphed together to form a singular, deformed beating mass. Seeing a spark of hope, he thought of a way to kill this thing, and save his friends from suffering the same fate as him; he dead-weighted himself to make the knife cut down the esophagus, creating a pencil-thin slit two feet long. He popped the SMG off of its strap, and pushed it through the opening, trying to aim it at the general of the heart.
He inhaled in an attempt to focus himself, and said aloud, "Okay, I have thirty rounds, just have to make them count….I may get digested in this things stomach regardless of it dying or not, but at the very least I can stop this thing from killing the others. Alright, here we go!", and on that notion, he fired a quick three round burst at its life support. Two rounds went into it and buried themselves inside of its aorta. At this, the beast stopped its movement, wailed out a deep cry of pain, and the skin walling contracted into itself; to Kaolin's guess, the Mob must be gripping its body in response to his attack, assuring him that his idea was having some effect. Following up on the monsters stillness, he flamed out another twelve rounds at its heart; the rounds went in all directions, hitting heart valves, the atriums and ventricle chambers, and missing entirely too instead hit other organs such as what seemed to be one of six lungs on the left side. Blood began pumping out of the wounds of the heart, the flowing force of it being enough to have split a valve off of the heart entirely, making the incoming blood waterfall onto the lower leveled organs.
Seeing his work there done, he aimed his weapon down, and fired some more rounds into what he believed to be its stomach, another organ formed from the combined walls of all of the Mob's victims and parts. He fired until the empty clip merely clicked in defiance to him continuing his attack. The final rounds spelt the finality of the creature, and stomach acids sprinkled out of the compromised stomach, and burned through all of the entrails below it, undeniably causing it a crippling amount of pain and suffering to his devourer. The Mob's body straightened up, making the esophagus tunnel turn into a straight fall to the acidic pit below, and it roared out with its toothless mouth agape, letting a faint, more natural source of light in. Making a last desperate attempt to attain freedom, he hooked the gun into the lining to steady his position, drew out his hooked knife, and stabbed it into a higher area in its throat. After it was set in snugly, he hung onto the handle of the blade, and pulled the sub gun out of the slit, and shoved it into the new opening to hold him there as he repeated the process once again.
As he went for a third time with the repetitive motion, the beast lost all of its will to live and, at that instant, fell flat on its side, turning the cliff-like drop and climb into a more curved, slide like one instead. Seeing this as an opportunity, he reached up and gripped onto the throat wall, and began to hoist himself up one grab at a time, and he looked down to his forgotten tools to try and retrieve them, but now seeing that it was an impossibility; the stomach acid, having no way of staying inside of its home now thanks to Kaolin's handiwork, began to fill up into the esophagus, slowly melting down both the sub gun and the crooked knife as they tumbled down the slippery slope. Seeing this, Kaolin rushed to pick up the pace, but the overflowing gastric sludge was faster. Luck was on his side though; as the stuff crept up, the tubing began to become weighed down with the stuff, turning it once again into a cliff climbing experience. This would not have been a problem for Kaolin moments before, but at the moment now he had no ways to ascend up a straight upwards climb; he began to rabidly move up the throat before it came to that, and without a spare second to his name, made it to the back of its mouth just in the nick of time.
He moved on all fours towards the open area of the mouth, and as he just made it halfway, his body collapsed from his exhaustion from the all of the dangling and climbing that he had to endure, and his body rolled the rest of the way out, with his left arm barely hanging out into the open. As he heard muffled cries on the topic of finding someone and pulling them to safety, he thought to himself, "Phew, damn, now I know I wouldn't have been able to have done that on my own power. There's no denying that that gas has done something to me….I'm not a crazed Runner, Strongarmer, Goliath, or whatever the hell this thing could be justified as…Mob will just have to do for now. But, if it helps me save others from an early death, its fine by me, I'll take whatever this will burden onto me…" As he lost his train of thought, someone grabbed on his arm, and hoisted him out into the light of the dim flares in the distance, and Kevin's flashlight; he was saved by those he had saved.
As he managed to sit himself up, Rebecca ran and nearly planted him back to the ground as she ran down and threw her arms around him; at this notion Kevin, the one who had pulled him out in the first place, said, "Uh Rebecca, I'm not so sure that's the best thing to do…besides him reeking of insides, he may be hurt or covered in acids." At this, she moved off of him, and sat on her knees in front of him, noticeably glad that he was all right after all. When that was taken care of, he continued on to say, "Okay now Kaolin, tell me, how in the hell did you manage this of all things? You did what five to six guns on the outside couldn't do."
Seeing a moment to crack a joke in order to break the serious air around them all, he gave a beaten laugh, and replied back once everyone was within earshot, "Nothing much, I just got a chance to carve up its heart directly. I guess you could say that I…..put it under cardiac arrest. Heh heh…"
The whole group just looked at him blankly for what seemed like forever; Keith started to break the silence by replying back, "Hmm, nice to see that this whole experience didn't mortally traumatize you for life, but damn, did you have to say something so cheesy man?"
Rebecca shook her head, and followed up, saying, "No Keith, I thought it was…um, pretty good. Okay, just a bit good maybe…"
Matt patted her on the head, and scoffed out towards him, "Don't flatter the berserker now sis, his favorite thing to do is the smashy-smashy after all; he's no good at shtick."
Kevin just merely shook his head, and proclaimed, "Hah, and you say my comedic genius is bad. You're just so 80's like man; that's only good in small doses, that is, if you wanna get the ladies like I did back in my school days."
Kaolin rolled his eyes, and rebuked back at him, "Uh huh, right Kev, taking your cousin to the dance doesn't count as being a womanizer."  To his surprise, he hit Kevin right where it hurt, because he jumped back in shock of how right Kaolin was in his statement; this made everyone break out in echoing laughter at how that ridiculous comment had turned out to have some truth to it. After it all was said and done, Kaolin was helped up by Kevin, and they lumbered to the first ladder exit they could find, taking extra effort to not make too much noise to alert anything else that may or may not have been down there. Keith opened the manhole, and signaled the others that the coast was clear, and they all snuck out of the sewers, and back into the outside world.
They took a quick look over their surroundings, and deduced that they were on the adjacent edge of the town, and heading east would take them closer to their final destination of Pittsburg, the hopeful vigilante safe haven. They found a parked mini-van able to hold them all and their supplies with ease; with a well-placed elbow into the driver's side window and finding the key in a dried pool of  blood nearby, they started it up, and with Matt driving, headed out on the open road eastward. With a chance to take a break finally arriving, the others breathed a sigh of relief, and they all took a chance to fall asleep; the first real rest that they had gotten in a while, since every night the distant screams of the pseudo undead always them half awake, if not that then always on the alert in case that that night could have been their last….