Rae’s promise that she’d get them there was probably the closest he was going to get to assurance that she would be there with them. Miriam had stopped tugging his arm long enough for the exchange with Rae, but the instant the Immune was off again, the deaf woman resumed leading Elliot toward the nearest bus. Retreat was the only option for survival, and getting on one of those buses was paramount to anything else. They shoved their way onto a bus, and only then did Miriam release Elliot’s arm. The EMT stayed as close to the door as possible, craning his neck to see over the sea of people. Aaron and several of their other friends were close behind, all shouting for the driver to just leave now while they had the chance. Elliot fought an internal struggle against agreement and wanting to make sure the Alghrens were with them.
When the man moved to fight his way off the bus, Miriam tugged on his arm, signing for him to sit down. Elliot shook his head, too frazzled to bother with signing and instead trusting his friend’s ability to read his lips. “I’m just going to stand outside. I can’t see from here.” The woman didn’t want to let him go, but in the end she released his arm, watching as Elliot slipped between the crowd to get off the bus.
At this point, with most of the people already loaded on the buses, it was easier to see what was going on near the building. Elliot spotted Mary-Ellen at the same exit they’d used, and he let out a breath of relief. Which instantly caught in his throat as he watched the zombies swarm down upon her. It was one of those moments in the movies where time was slowed down, the moment of horror and sadness suspended on the onlooker’s face when they realized what was about to happen. This wasn’t a movie, though, and there was no slow motion. Just a shouted warning, preceding a sailing flaming bottle, headed straight for the zombies surrounding Rae’s mother and a couple other unfortunate people trapped in the fray.
Before the Molotov had even hit its mark, Elliot was running, shouldering his way past people headed in the opposite direction. His arms went around Rae before she could take off, preventing her from joining her mother in the flames. Had it been his own mother in there, Elliot would have done the same thing Rae had been about to, no matter that he knew it was a futile effort. It pained him to know there was nothing they could do now. Mary-Ellen, and many others, were lost. “She’s gone, Rae! She’s gone. We have to go!” He was dimly aware of the snipers that had protected them from above, scrambling past them to get to the buses themselves.