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"Mmm." he shrugged. Moving was a good idea, but if nightfall came, having a good hidey hole was preferable to wandering around in the open. Owle wasn't particularly vulnerable... but she'd stay wit him, even not able to do a lot in his defense, and he wasn't looking forward to what he could put into a fight just then if one came up. Right then, he was the weak link.

A soldier injured on the battle field was incapacitated, and one good man the same, to drag him to safety.

"If it's only that far, we better start. I'm not sure we're going to be making ideal walking time anyhow." with which he gritted his teeth, hard, and lurched forward, guiding the righted motorcycle along with him, despite his ribs' protests.

Being useless felt shitty. Being a hinderance was worse.

Moving further ahead only confirmed where he was currently. Of all the times for his helmet to be destroyed, now was not that time.

The less than pugent aroma's flooding his nostrils were more than enough to make your average person gag and puke nonstop. But he slugged on through, the shoulder lamps illuminating what they could.

When he came to, he found the most visible of his wounds dressed. Someone had found him, and obviously left him alone. Part of him reasoned that he should have stayed put because most likely the rest of the squad would arrive to help.

The other part of him told him to stay on the mission. Picking up the only pack to have made it unscathed, he proceeded down the tunnelway, constantly hearing things that didn't naturally belong in the ambience of your average sewer. Coming to a slow gait, the headlamps showed the tunnelway was cut off with a locked gate.

Without a second's hesitation, he unholstered his sidearm and fired several rounds into the lock, before kicking the door open.

"Hey....how hard is it to drive one of these things, anyway?" Owle asked, instantly regretting the question. She hated the things, but...she hated the thought of being in this city after dark even more.

"I mean...do you think I could manage without killing us both?" She continued to walk along, pushing the bike with her.

"Once or twice," she answered when he asked if she'd ridden a bike. "And they say you never forget, so..."

She listened to him talk, nodding appropriately.

"Well..." Owle took one shaky breath and let it out again, trying to steel herself for this challenge. "I could go real slow at first. It's still faster than walking, isn't it?"

She bent down, indicating one of the many parts of the machine. "This one's the gas, right?" she asked. Her finger moved to point at another piece of the vehicle. "And this is the break?"

"Alright..."

Owle stopped walking, looking at the bike shakily. "I guess its worth a try. I'm gonna zigzag a bit at first, see how it turns..."

She was opening up the storage on the bike as she spoke, retrieving some bandages from the medical kit she had on her. Cutting them off with her knife, she used the clean white strip to tie back her hair...then she grabbed another, tying it lower down just in case.

"Maybe..."

She was about to suggest that he should stay off at first. But then what if she went speeding off and a zombie came up behind them. She shook her head. "Nevermind. I guess we'll see how this goes."

Still shaky, trying to steady herself, Owle climbed onto the bike. This time, in the drivers seat. She tapped against the gas, not hard enough to start the bike moving, but just getting used to the motion she would have to make. The same went for the brake.

She would wait for Kalis to get on behind her, and then the real adventure would begin.

Owle pressed on the gas and the motorcycle roared to life.

"Whoa..."

Owle didn't sound too startled, but it was enough. They were moving forwards and to her surprise she was actually balancing on the thing. It wasn't that hard...she'd ridden these before...she'd just never actually steered.

Experimentally, she tried turning the handlebars, just a little bit.

"Whoa!"

Her balance was suddenly thrown off, and she found herself needing to lean just the right way to keep from falling. After a moment of panic she recovered her balance. Without thinking she turned the other way, to straighten the bike out.

"Ah!"

Again she had to tilt to keep her balance, not quite having it down yet. But again she recovered, and again the bike was moving straight forward.

Thank god she was not moving too fast.

"Alright..." Owle said, taking deep breaths to calm herself down. "Let's try that again..."

And again she shoved the handlebars, a little harder this time, to the right.

"Ee!"

It wasn't enough to overbalance them, or send them into any buildings unexpectedly, but it was certainly enough to panic Owle. She righted the bike and tried again...

This would continue until she was confident she could make at least mild turns at low speeds without falling over.

((This wouldn't feel so awkward if I had any real experience with motorcycles.))

Kalis was calm enough, waiting with his partial grip and letting Owle handle it as she started moving forward. It wasn't so bad, and he started to relax for a moment as she slowly accelerated. And then the turn, once they started coming to a good pace.

"Sh-!"

Kalis tightened his grip, pressing the injured ribs against her back as he tried to lean desperately, with or against her, since he was the heavier of the two bodies and didn't have the feel for the turns the driver had. Basically somewhere between covering her mistakes as she started to learn the process, and just covering his own part of it.

Which wasn't so big a deal, except that he was less interested in her driving than his ribs just then. They were a little distracting.

"You have to lean more, the harder or faster you want to turn." he offered, after the first couple, starting to loosen up his grip and relax a little again. Once he she started getting a hang of it enough that he stopped with the efforts to compensate and just started leaning with her on the turns, things would grow a lot simpler for Owle pretty quickly.

Which still put the two of them alone on an empty street, making a fair deal of noise, moving at low speeds only, in the middle of zombie country.

Luck for Kalis seemed to jump between extremes, but this was truely begging for trouble, and likely it would fall on them sooner or later, before they made it to those walls.