Chapter 5 - The Caravan "And After the Storm"
The hipster of the group winced as blood splatter sprinkled his ankles upon Izzy's execution of the crawler. He had no choice but to move when a strong hand took a fist full of the back of his shirt, hauling him right up off his butt and onto his feet, his brown eyes bugging out in panic initially. If it had been a walker he might have been zombie chow. Instead it was Lorenzo, whom he was fairly intimidated by even when they weren't in a rumble with armored zeds. Ask a question about the van latch in that sharpish way, Luke seemed at a loss, shrugging but trying to answer anyway to avoid any rebuke from the other man, who even minus a wing was formidable to him. "I-I don't know, maybe they need to lock it to keep it the latch down??" Seemed plausible to Luke, watching as he was, not terribly eager to join the push against the doors, there wasn't enough space for many more of them, anyway. The height of the van put a downward disadvantage of of momentum from the weightily clad inhabitants.
When Lorenzo drafted him into something possible heroic and therefore risky, Luke just went along with it, like with Dominic in Slaughter, basically a automaton, an extra hand without a brain. "Ah, okay!?" Being in Fort Dixie for so long, he hadn't been exposed and desensitized to the undead. Despite his terror, he was eager to prove himself, especially to Lorenzo and the Doc.
Somehow hearing Lorenzo's command to keep an eye out over his internal rambling and the noise the others were making, he nodded in confirmation, "Got it!" He piped up, licking parched lips, becoming a bit flushed and uneasy when given responsibility to be the driver and brake-ologist. However he did follow through, perhaps because he feared Lorenzo's wrath should he embarrass himself again.
Keeping an eye out for Lorenzo while he slid under the vehicle, Luke wrung open the rusty driver door of the car, eliciting a metallic groan. "Gotcha, Lorenzo!"He slid inside, keeping one foot temporarily on the pavement to ease the vehicle should it roll before Lorenzo extricated himself, and/or if Luke missed the beat on warning the guy.
Luke had not even a cursory understanding of vehicles, having ruined at least two cars in his time from never having gotten even one oil change, for example, but whatever Lorenzo did, it worked.
Using his foot on the pavement, Luke gave a starter push, though was glad when Lorenzo gave the car that extra oomph, with Luke fulfilling his end of the deal by keeping the steering wheel straight, his right foot hovering precariously above the brake while the other joined it inside., the driver door still open.
"Doc, Hank, everybody MOVE!" The mustachioed millennial yelled out, quite loudly in fact, to the others holding the doors shut. What Lorenzo had planned with Luke's physical assistance should have been obvious, that they were going to try to block the back doors shut with the now neutral car's front end.