They'd made it to the safe room. All seven of them. Somehow.

For whatever reason, things had been picking up pretty heavily with the infected. In a nutshell, it was a 'shit just got real' type of scenario. Four Tanks at a time? That was just insane... It had left his group and another group really no choice but to team up and join forces. More men meant a higher survival rate, simple as that. And as the snide survivalistic asshole that he was, survival was something Nick was more than happy to strive for.

But after so much time fighting side-by-side with his group- with Coach, Ellis, and Rochelle- a part of him really did want to strive for their survival too. In all honesty, the skeptical conman didn't completely trust this new group now with them. The three newcomers. This was their first safe room night together and he had to say, it was a little tiny bit cramped. Sure they'd helped them out back there, but what's to say they weren't a group of freakin' psychopaths, huh?

In any case, it was the reason Nick remained up while the rest of his group laid sound asleep. Protecting his fellow Louisiana survivors? Oh, don't be so goddamn sentimental. He just wanted to make sure nobody stabbed him in the face while he was busy snoring away.

He sat in a chair at the top of the safe room, looking out the barred, red door window for any signs of movement, sniper rifle sitting lazily in his lap. He let out a yawn, sleep trying to creep up on him. But he continued to force himself awake. He swore... next time it was Ellis' turn to stay up all hours of the night keeping watch. This sucked some pretty heavy ass.

(( Top of the safe room meaning one of those two-story safe-rooms, yea? Y'know, with the ladders and all. ))

He was so out of it he'd completely missed the sound of someone coming up the ladder, instead letting out another tired yawn. How late was it now? 4am? Almost 5? Only when he heard a "Hey, dude" did he almost do a back-flip out of his chair. The startled ex-conman sputtered a bit before looking behind him to see a girl's head pop up from the ladder. Damn kid almost gave him a heart attack! He was getting too old for this shit...

"Well hey there, buttercup." He greeted back as she made her way off the ladder and onto on the second floor to extend a hand to him. He looked at it for a moment before giving a humored grin and taking it. "Nick." He formally introduced in return before retracting his hand, now propping his arm up lazily over the backrest of the chair, rifle in his lap, and humored grin still in-tact from the unexpected nightly visit. "Let me guess. Couldn't sleep through Coach's excessively loud snoring."