With the survey complete, Evan felt like they were at least starting to make progress. Slow, incremental gains, but progress nonetheless. Once they were contacted by whoever was going to come by the following day, they could be reasonably certain they would be able to know when the building was empty. The method wasn't as thorough as Evan would have preferred, but it was much better than nothing.
Maybe in the morning they could check their count again, but for now, the group was moving onto other issues. Leon, Erin and the girl who had identified herself as Chloe returned to the common room, talking about establishing some kind of organized watch over the building's exits. Evan intended to go there as well, but as he lingered in the main lobby waiting for Jorge and Simon's quiet chat to end, he heard footfalls rapidly approaching from the floor above.
Looking up the stairway, Evan witnessed Esteban appear at the top of the steps, his face worried as he descended partway, wringing the blue sleeves of his sweater nervously. "I think something's wrong. Rob's starting to get a lot worse."
"Oh, shit." Evan slipped up before he could catch his own language. He had intended to return a lot sooner to check up on how their victim had been doing, but with the fight, then Victor and the survey, he hadn't realized just how much time had passed. "What's wrong?"
"He's infected, moron." Simon said bluntly, holding the length of heavy pipe in his hands as he approached the stairs. "He's going to turn into one of them and there's nothing we can do about it."
Ignoring the comment, Esteban spoke to Evan as he leapt up steps two at a time, both soon at the top. "He has a real bad fever."
Pausing at the top of the steps, Evan turned to face downstairs. "Jorge? You still down there?"
"Yeah." Came the reply from Jorge, who peeked around from the bottom of the stairs. He was just as freaked out as anyone else was in the moment, a nervous habit of tracing his fingers over his mustache as he looked on.
"Leon's a medic, right? Get him and have him bring that first aid stuff to..." Trailing off, Evan glanced to Esteban. Evan did have some experience with basic first aid, but it was probably better to have more people around to help.
"Room 317." Esteban said as Simon began to follow them up the stairs.
"I have some bottled water and aspirin I brought with me in my backpack. It's in my friend's room, and if he's still in there, we should go pick that up." Evan led the way as he spoke, moving down the hallway. "I might have something in there that will help. I'll be right up."
"Good." Esteban confirmed, turning away to follow Simon up the steps to his room.
Breaking into a dash down the hall, Evan rapped heavily on the door. The reply was not rapid, so he thumped against it once more. "Lucas! You in there?"
"Geeze, what's wrong?" Lucas fiddled with the lock noisily, then opened the door with a scowl on his face. Stepping back as Evan forced his way inside, Lucas exclaimed. "What the hell?"
"No time to talk. Rob is sick!"
"Who is Rob?"
"The guy we let in." Evan replied as he snapped up his backpack by the strap and slung it over his shoulder. He slipped out the door as quickly as he entered, leaving Lucas behind as he ran down the hall and bounded up the steps to arrive at the proper room. Evan didn't bother to look back as he had left.
By the time Evan made it to Esteban's room, Simon stood with Esteban nearby, arguing. "We need to get him the hell out of here before he bites anyone and we get sick too."
"No, we need to tie him down and make sure if he does turn he can't hurt anyone else."
"How are we going to tie him down, genius?" Simon crossed his arms as he barred the opening with his size, holding the blunt instrument in his hands with a scowl.
"Get out of the way. Now." Evan commanded the larger man, taking a deep breath in case he tried to get his way through violence. "We don't have time for this."
"We can lock him in the office, or a janitor closet. Somewhere safe. But not outside." Esteban offered, taking a tentative step closer to the door.
There was a brief period of silence as Evan was ready for a possible fight. He understood Simon was simply trying to keep people alive, so he didn't really want to have to fight him. But that wasn't a good enough goal for Evan. Evan was trying to keep everyone alive.
Finally, a couple other thudding runs approached from the hallway, and Simon sighed heavily. "God damn idiots." Simon stepped aside. "If you keep doing things like this you're going to get all of us killed. We can't have any of these things inside the building with us."
