PetrA

Chapter nineteen: Ellie

Ellie could hardly move without her stomach wanting to spill everywhere again. Her clothes were soaked in guts and weeks old blood and she smelled like rotten meat left on the counter for months, if not worse. She just couldn't handle stuff like that. She could hardly handle raw meat without getting sick. It was like 9th grade all over again with the cooking classes. Their teacher loved giving them raw meat to work with, and often they had to cut away fat and things like that. Ellie had begged her teacher to let her cut the vegetables instead, but she had to do the meat. It wasn't until she actually threw up in the garbage bin, that she was allowed to stay away from it. Apparently throwing up was a good enough excuse.

"Ellie, Ellie!" Gemma shook her shoulders with force bringing her out of her head. She blinked and stared at her. "We're going to get you out of these clothes." She said calmly. "Is okay Kim will help you while I find something in your size?" She asked. Ellie didn't exactly get to answer as she doubled over and threw up again. The vomit burned her throat, and Kim pulled her hair back again. "Be right back." Gemma said hurrying away. Now her own clothes had been covered in stomach acid and the food they'd managed to get in her. Ellie felt utterly and completely horrible, she'd hoped that it would never come out how she can't handle raw meat and intestines. For some reason it just made her own intestines wring themselves inside out.

After a while Gemma came back wearing what looked like a black and silver penguin suit. "Where did you guys find silver penguins?" Ellie asked. Gemma held up two black suits in front of her and a very large roll of duct tape in the other. She was grinning like a mad man, "Time to get changed," she threw one of the suits at Kim and dragged Ellie to her feet, "I'll need help getting her out of these, and someone to hold her hair if she pukes again." That's how Ellie ended up standing in a back room surrounded by a lot of boxes, with Gemma and Kim helping her undress. As they kept a trashcan ready just in case. It did come close a few times, as they had to peel the clothes of her. Luckily, the underwear had been spared for goo and body fluids, Ellie didn't think she would be able to take it if she had to stand naked with Kim right in front of her, and Gemma standing there too. Plus, she knew that there were at least three boys trying to look into the room.

Ellie couldn't even get into the first wetsuit Gemma had brought, it got stuck by her hips. It reminded Ellie about when she had to buy a new competition swimsuit and had to try on four or five different sizes before finding one that could come over her hindquarters and fitted her upper body. It wasn't that she had big boobs, quite the opposite, but Ellie had broad shoulders, with a narrow waist and slightly beefy hindquarters, which made it hard to find something that fitted over her behind and upper body. Once Gemma managed to find one that fitted, Ellie felt like an oversized dolphin walking around. The duct tape only added to the weird part. Though it wasn't done tightly, just enough so it would keep out any hungry mouths from her flesh. Helping Kim getting him into his wetsuit didn't help on Ellie's face situation. Gemma told her that she was still extremely pale and the redness made her look like an albino tomato with green eyes. Which made zero sense to Ellie.

"Wow you all look like overgrown silver penguins." Ellie said once they were back in the main store. All the others looked exactly alike in those suits with layers of duct tape. "Now time to go shopping." Joachim said. He didn't sound very happy. Finding clothes in Ellie's size wasn't a problem, the problem was that there was nothing she'd usually wear or had chosen to wear out of her good will. Camouflage wasn't exactly her gig, but she sucked it up and tried on pieces until she found something that was comfortable and didn't make her legs look like two potatoes with feet. As for a shirt, she just found a flexible black long sleeved shirt with a high neck. The jackets were thin, camouflage, which supposedly would keep them warm in cold weather and comfortable in warm.

They all wore exactly the same, even little Aiden. Maybe not so little, but compared to them he was. "We had to cut half the lengths of the legs so it would fit him." Cody said. Looking out of the window they all agreed that they would leave when it was light. They could hear the screeching getting louder outside. "Barricade the doors, cover the windows and find sources of light, not torches." Ellie said as she noticed Cody and Lesley move towards the torches. "Use those old fashioned lights. You know those that use paraffin, or whatever. They're over by the camping stuff." She felt like she had to get back control, even though all she wanted to do was crawl under a rock and hide there. Showing weakness wasn't an option. Neither did Ellie like feeling weak. In fact, she hated it more than anything else in the world. She had worked hard to build up what other people saw as confidence, holding the mask was everything.