Leah blew his mind. Thinking about Clint Eastwood, dead somewhere, definitely killed whatever was left of Jude's inner child. "Oh man," Jude paused mid-climb. In another situation, playing 'Living, Dead, Really Dead: Celebrity Edition' might have been a great time killer. He continued his climb, promising to remember it. "Eastwood would be a zombie. He played too many tough birds to go down like breakfast." The more he thought about it, the more he was sure that Stone was right. "He was definitely old. Well... fuck. Statham though, he's definitely alive. And Jackie Chan, too. Jackie's pretty slick."
There was another pause. "And now I'm thinking about how bad this must have been in Asia. God, is conversation with you this depressing?"
It turned out, it kind of was. The moment Stone brought up her family, the moment Jude let the gravity of the situation hit him.
"Hey now," Jude said, eyes casting up to catch her gaze. He would have said more, but the ladder groaned hideously-- and worst yet, the noise sounded canned and straight out of a horror movie. He paused, letting the fire escape adjust to his weight again. When it didn't do much else but groan, he sent a cursory look to the brackets and bolts that kept him from plummeting down. They were firmly in place. Well, as firmly as Jude was going to get. Before losing what little bolster he had left, he climbed the last few rungs. "Of course I will-" Jude continued, where he'd intended to before the ladder made him choke back talking in favor of focusing. He wondered if that family consisted of the baby she'd been carrying. God, he'd been so sure that the baby was dead from the moment they wheeled her past him in the hospital. But maybe if she'd been immune, so had the baby. The thought that they had each other winded him, but in the best, most bittersweet of ways. "Will 'Stone' be enough to find them?"
Promising that she'd get out of here was pretty pointless. They were both presumably immune and they both knew eventually their ticket was going to get punched. Chances were, it was going to be punched in a situation that looked exactly like this one.
She joked humorlessly about using his body for bait, earlier. He couldn't help but think he'd be posthumously okay with that. "You do what you gotta do to get back to your family-- whatever that means for me." It was weird to talk about himself like that, but he meant it.
When the escape swayed, he responded out of the human body's mechanism of instantly preparing for the worse. "Whoa," Jude shuddered, one hand reaching for the window frame himself, the other jutting out grab Leah's bicep. He doubted that either of them stopped it from moving, rather, the escape resettled under their combined weight on its own. Had it wanted to take them, their heads would have bursted like watermelons in the street.
"See," he relaxed his hands, releasing her arm only to nudge her gently with his elbow. The touch was light enough that he doubted it would disrupt her. It was also apologetic, because he didn't make a habit of randomly grabbing strangers. "This is why I don't worry too much about Plan B."
The thing was, Jude was already frantically scrambling to form a Plan B. "Stop frowning, your face is going to stick like that."