WHO || carmen and charles WHEN || early evening, coming back from scouting WHERE || east of the safe zone WHAT || girl meets zombie. girl kills zombie. boy saves girl from zombie #3 RATING || pg13 STATUS || complete
Lady Luck was a weird sort of lass. Sometimes, she smiled fortune and good days on you, and other times, it was all black cats and spilled salt shakers. Some people she really liked and blessed them with incredible luck. People like Carmen, it seemed. She had to wonder how else she had been able to make it this far. Pure skill? No. Sure, she had gotten better with her scouting, mapping and shooting but being able to go out every day and still come back to the Compound in one piece even after a run in with the infected? There was no question about it. Carmen was in some serious debt to the fabulous Lady Luck. Some of her good fortune could be attributed to the people around her too. A lot of the people had trained her, taught her what they knew and showered her with advice and tricks that could end up saving her life. All in all, yeah, Carmen considered herself a real lucky girl. She was alive, wasn't she? Not just alive but in a pretty cozy set-up.
If you ignored the huge wall.
All that luck had to run out some time though. Every time she encountered the slobbering things, she thought that surely that was that. This was her time to go and at least she would go out fighting and not blubbering like a little baby. Except, she always got out in some way or another. Was it luck? Or just the pure base instinct to survive?
Carmen often had these thoughts run through her mind on her way back to the Compound. It was becoming less and less an issue of running into an infected this close to the Safe Zone but still, it was better to be safe than sorry. She kept her gun cocked and ready. Never knew when one of those buggers would end up jumping out of some hole or shadow. Street after street and things were quiet. Not too quiet, just regular quiet. But snowstorms usually had that effect on a city. There was the distant hum of life far in the distance, from the Compound that was still a good two miles from where she was. She would get there with just enough time to spare too. The sun would start setting in an hour or so. Carmen definitely wanted to be inside those walls before it got dark.
Painfully ironic that the same thing she felt confined her, she also looked for protection. The price of safety was freedom.
There was the sudden sound of feet rushing and Carmen was instantly on her guard. It was coming from behind her, from the street she had just passed. Was it an infected? Or someone running for their life? Carmen bet on the latter. She at least hoped, anyway. Already on the sidewalk, Carmen ducked into a nearby empty food mart and waited to see what came running down the street. It was pure luck that her turning her head just at the right moment. A torn up and dry looking cashier was clamoring over the front counter towards her. She didn't have time to scream, just enough of a spare second to take a shot (a blind one so she missed) and dash back out of the mart and back onto the street. Not just one but two infected followed her out, growling something terrible.
She took another shot, sending one of the infected to the ground. Couldn't run after her without that leg, could he? But then before she could bask in the triumph, she turned and quickly shot at the second. Down it went, gnarly teeth and all. Head shots were easy when you only had ten feet. Carmen, thinking her troubles were over, started to shakily check herself for any wounds but then saw the first infected start crawling her way. Even without the use of his leg. He was a persistent dead bastard. Lifting her gun, she took aim and pulled the trigger.
Bang bang, you're dead.
Too bad she didn't notice dead bastard number three, unnoticed and sneaking from behind.