Tori Serrano hadn’t slept well during the night. She knew the door was barred well, well enough to sleep easily without a gun nearby or one eye open, but a familiar growl was coming from outside the boarded window. The growl of the Hunter. She was near the top of the apartment building, so she didn’t doubt he was crouched or resting on the rooftop, possibly scoping the road. It was a mystery to her how he, and the rest of the specially mutated zombies, could survive being hacked, shot, and generally obliterated, yet later reappear as though nothing had even happened to them. It was annoying.

A faint beam of light was starting to show through the window by the time the growling stopped completely. Sleepily, she raised her head from the musty-smelling pillow of the mattress in the corner and put a hand to her head. As she sat up, pulling her boots toward her and unlacing them, she heard something above. Thunder, somewhere nearby, rumbling in the sky. She rolled her blue eyes, angry at the weather for making her mood ever more sour. It was Hell trying to see the undead rushing you in a torrential downpour. Tori wasn’t about to deal with it again unless it was absolutely necessary. She had food, it was left over, obviously, from whoever called the building a refuge before her. And water, a few crates of plastic bottles, not to mention a couple guns and a backpack of ammo she’d found in a closet. Of course, that was among the smeared blood, the half-crushed bodies, the horrified yet frozen, faded eyes of those who escaped most of the damage, probably from the Tank’s rampage. She hadn’t seen him around, though.

She put her black hair up in two pigtails, a style she preferred because it kept her hair up and away. Standing and stretching, Tori’s joints popped and crackled in place. She took up her rifle and an axe she’d found in a tree around the wooded area outside town, setting them by the door before moving the heavy furniture away. Throughout the night, she’d heard movements from multiple areas below, and had to inspect the place if she were going to stay another day.

Tori polished the blade of the axe and checked the edge. It was still very sharp, she’d taken care of that a couple days before. Having hit so many undead bones and walls, the blade got dull very fast. The lobby was quiet, vaguely, sitting at a round table among those crushed bodies. The smell was terrible, but she didn’t have a sense of smell. Or taste. No taste came with no smell, her nose and taste had been damaged by inhaling the smoke of oil fires from where she’d come from. It was before the downfall of humanity, though, years before, when she was a child. Now, she didn’t smell the Boomer bile, the smoke from fires, the death all around her. She didn’t taste blood, or sweat, or the food she ate when she found it.

In fact, finding a can of condensed soup was a lucky strike for her. In the kitchen of the room she’d taken as refuge, a few still sat on a shelf in the cabinets, and she took one with her to the lobby. The can said to add water, but it didn’t really matter. The chicken and noodles would have tasted better, but all she could sense was the texture. A bit like watered down glue and bits of rough, crumbling cubes. But she couldn’t complain, at least it was something. Washing away the texture with half a bottle of water, Tori stood and grabbed her gun, strapping it over her shoulder, grabbed her backpack and slinging it onto her back, and holding the axe in both hands.

Though her boots were heavy and added a few inches to her height, she stepped quietly. They made useful for stamping the heads of the ones she didn’t manage to kill directly, and every night she found shards of human skull lodged in the thick, tough rubber. Walking through the atrium and through the hallway, she started up the stairs to the first floor. The noises she’d heard were quiet from her room near the top, and she thought they came from lower floors. Indeed, Tori found a few straggling zombies wandering aimlessly, two fighting with one another. Raising her axe before they noticed her presence, she dispatched two quickly with a swipe that hit them in the chest, burrowing through them and dislodging their spines. The ones fighting broke apart and glared at her, and with one rounded burst, hit both. One was completely beheaded, the other short enough to have been hit at eye-level. Its structure was so weak, the blade cut right through its head without much trouble.

No movement came from the next two floors. All was quiet, save for a couple more in the stairwells. As she started back to her room and floor, her backpack full of medical supplies and a few water bottles, including a plastic funnel she found and took with her on a whim, she heard another, familiar growl from behind her.

Spinning around, Tori came face-to-face with her enemy, Hunter. Wearing a bloody, tattered dark blue sweater, his mouth was twisted in a filthy, sharp-toothed growl, his yellow-rimmed eyes sunken in and streaming small drops of deep red blood. He was crouched, hands spread out and legs bent, ready to leap. Tori raised her axe, spinning it in her hands. They stayed that way for several moments that seemed to drag for hours, both waiting for the other to make the first move. Tori gritted her teeth, bringing the axe back, and leaping forward, swinging it from left to right at the hunter. He leapt forward and over Tori’s head, screeching at her and spinning around. Tori dislodged the axe, but not in time to stop the hunter from grabbing her and throwing her off balance. “Damn you!” Tori yelled. “I’ll kill you!” She pulled her hunting knife from her belt, thrusting it at the creature on top of her, swiping it around and catching him along the face, tossing him onto the floor. Jumping up, she grabbed her heavier weapon and swung it down.

It hit the hunter’s hand, severing it a little before the wrist. The hunter screamed in pain, a furious look crossing his face as he stood and jumped at Tori again. She used her axe to block him, but stumbled backward and into the wall. The hunter held her there with his remaining hand, trying to bite at her face. Tori brought her knee up, coming into contact with his stomach and sending him back. With the side of the blade, she slammed the axe into the side of the zombie’s head, flattening him onto the ground. Twisting the axe again, she smashed it into his back again and again.

“I’m so... pissed.... at you!” She yelled, sending the blade over and over into her foe. “So... sick... of you! Stay... dead... this time!” Huffing, she finally stopped, observing the work she did. The hunter could hardly be called a hunter anymore, it looked a bit like a mix of bone, blood, and intrails.

Tori gasped when someone spoke, spinning around and putting a hand on her gun. But unlike the others she’d come across, this dred-headed man didn’t seem to want to attack her. At least, not at the time. She relaxed a bit and let out her breath, lifting her axe and resting it on her bare shoulder. She could feel coagulated blood drip from the blade and run down her arm, defacing her black scorpion tattoo. She smiled, almost laughed, as he spoke. “Relax, buddy, this ain’t my first rodeo.” She said, a little out of breath, but it would quickly pass. Her voice, calmer, was just a bit raspy from the damage her esophagus and lungs had taken from the oil-fire smoke she’d endured when she was younger. She nodded to the nearly-unrecognizable hunter corpse on the floor. “Been after this one for a while now.” She continued. “Wanted to show it who’s boss is all.”

She looked down to her pants. Leather snakeskin patterned, dappled here and there with blood, dusted with dry dirt and flaking mud. “Got here a week ago.” She said. “Walked most of the way, figured I’d hitch a ride with a couple other survivors. They wanted my stuff, thought they’d kill me for it, so I had to kill them first. Been looking around town for anyone else not so crazy, but tough luck with that. Until now, anyway.” She smiled a bit, then shook her head. “I know how to kill these things. They’re fast, though, not like the old movies show. If that were the case, I think we’d be a little better off. If you’re tired, though, and can’t really cope with digging so far as the heart, the spine’s a good hit too. Dislodge and break that, the guy’s done for.”

She switched her axe to the other hand and extended hers in return. As they shook hands, she saw they had similar fashion choices, at least in gloves. He certainly went for the ‘lone ranger’ kind of getup, in her mind. She was more of a rough goth-girl, with her zip-up sleeveless corset-type shirt and black-filled tattoos along her arms and torso. “Name’s Tori.” She said. “Tori Serrano. Nice break seeing a sane person around.” It was true, she’d been alone so long she resorted to talking to herself so she could remember how to talk. And digging in dumpsters for food during days of desperation wasn’t as much fun as with a friend to scavenge with her.

Tori put her axe against the wall and brushed the drying blood from her arm. “Most never believed something like this would happen.” She said. “But I did. I was pretty paranoid, and trained myself in endurance, speed, and practiced with heavy blunt weapons every day. I guess it paid off.” She smirked at that. Everyone always called her crazy for what she thought and believed, that one day something or someone would reanimate the dead in some way, and the general population wouldn’t be ready. Even if she died before it happened, at least the training would keep her strong. “Can’t turn down an extra set of eyes.” She said at last. “Wouldn’t hurt to accept a bit of company that doesn’t try to rip you apart, either...”

Her eyes widened when he stopped speaking. Tori knew the reaction of someone who heard a dangerous noise, and when she listened, she could hear it too. When the charger appeared in her line of sight, she went for her axe, but was pushed away before grabbing it and smacked into the old wall opposite Tyrod. Letting out an annoyed growl, she glared at the boy as he brought out two pistols. They didn’t usually penetrate the thick hide of a tank or charger easily, and obviously, as it came for Tyrod again, the bullets had only angered it. Tori threw herself forward, grabbing Tyrod’s hair and yanking him back, taking up her axe just as the charger flew past them and rammed into the wall to their right.

Tori took a stance in the middle of the hallway, spinning in a half circle with the axe clutched in one hand. The charger was still stunned, turning around in the narrow hall, and as it did, it received the axe in full force between the shoulder and neck. The force of the impact sent it back with a loud roar, and Tori used the moment she had to raise her rifle and position it carefully. The first shot hit the charger in the neck, the second, between the eyes. Its voice was silenced immediately, dying down with the ringing shots of the rifle, and Tori sighed. “Damn.”

Turning to Tyrod, she looked down. He’d pushed her in the chest, she could still feel it on the skull tattoo. “Don’t push me.” She said. “I saw it when you did. And believe me, I’ve taken a lot of hits by chargers.” She shouldered the rifle again, walking away to retrieve her axe. The thunder rolled again, right above the building.

Tori let out a long breath, dislodging the axe and inspecting the edge of the blade. This charger’s blood was especially dark, almost black, and smeared only where it had entered the thing’s thick hide. Taking out a few paper towels from the small pocket on her backpack, she started wiping it clean. “I’ve had closer calls.” She said flatly. “I didn’t say I thought I was tough, I said I saw the charger with enough time to spare. Believe me, I’ve been run down by enough of ‘em to hear their feet, they’re damn heavy. I’ve seen others smashed before, a good number. I know how it’d be if I got careless and wasn’t prepared.”

She tossed the paper towels, in a bloody red and white ball, to the floor and whipped the axe around, embedding it into the wall nearer her. They hadn’t been near each other five minutes and he was already on her nerves. She’d met a lot of men like him, some worried about her because she was a woman, because she’d taken a lot of smoke damage and sometimes couldn’t run as easily as other times, and others worried about her or looking down on her because she was, obviously, a woman. “You’re damn right I’m a bitch, and don’t expect it to change. I got nothing to be gracious about, anyway.” She smirked as he moved past her. “You’ll have to catch this hand before you claim it.” She added. “I’m faster than you think.”

Ass. Her mind said what she didn’t want to. It looked like he was going to the roof, which she didn’t have any use for. Of the old walkie talkies she’d found, the connected HAM radio, the various old computers, the ones that still picked up a signal didn’t connect to anything, or anyone, still alive. Static was all she got in response, and they were probably damaged by water from past storms. Still, if Ty wanted to get soaked in the rain, it was his decision. Grabbing her axe, she stalked away to check the entrance. If he could get in, others would, and she felt the need to bar the door and windows again so she could rest easily outside her reinforced apartment room while she waited for the rain to pass. If Ty wanted to join her, that was his decision. She wouldn’t follow him.

She pulled one of the heaviest tables out from under the series of plastic cups, rancid plastic containers of something she couldn’t identify, and old soda bottles, heaving it across the room and using the blunt end of her axe to break the table legs off. She used the tabletop as another layer of barrier, and used the jagged breaks from the metal legs to brace the tabletop against the windows. She didn’t hear anything outside, other than the breeze picking up a bit, carrying the scent of a long rain that was imminent. It would probably last a few days, which was more time than she wanted to spend still in the same place. She wanted to get out, and to the potential safe haven she overheard on the HAM radio before it shorted.

She clenched her jaw when she heard something approaching, but it was only Tyrod. Picking up her axe, she went to inspect her work on the double doors that were the entrance to the atrium. When he spoke, she turned. “I could’ve told you, if that was what you were doing.” She said. “Haven’t heard anything for a few days. Last I did hear, though, heard of a place a couple towns over, in a huge mansion. Apparently it’s a nice town, people with a lot of money lived there, so big houses aren’t uncommon.”

She slapped the topmost layer of debris piled and wedged into the door. It was her work, and she was proud of it. Kicking, punching, or hitting, the barrier wouldn’t break for a very long time. Especially since the streets didn’t seem to harbor many of the hissing, mindless creatures wandering about in the skin of humans. “Been here a week.” She said. “Found a nice supply of food and water, some ammo, and leftover medical supplies. Just a couple guns, though, a few pistols, two broken. Made up the barriers in two days, didn’t sleep but a few minutes.” She stretched, sitting herself down near Tyrod and leaning against a couple stacked crates, pulling her backpack and gun toward her. Thunder beat out a song, lasting a few moments and shuddering the building. “Ehh, I really didn’t want to stay here much longer.” She growled, looking at the ceiling as though she could see the rolling clouds above.

Tori brought her backpack to her. It was black with red detailing, found hanging in a closet in one of the houses she’d looked through, and thought it interesting it matched her vest. It had an extra buckle around the bottom to secure it more snugly around the stomach, preventing it from hindering her movement much. Pulling a water bottle from the main compartment, she took a long drink. There were plenty of others in the supply closet she’d found, crates full of them and she didn’t want to leave many behind. It seemed such a waste. Some she could use for rinsing her hair, maybe cleaning her vest, which wasn’t as resistant to blood and dirt as her pants or boots. Even after that, there would be a few more crates. “Sure, I know the place.” She said, pulling her axe to her so she could wash its blade. “I’ve been here a week, found the things up on the roof pretty useful until the first rainfall came and killed ‘em. Said it was five miles to the west, which was the same way I was headed. Said if there were any survivors out there, that they were okay there.”

She looked at her axe. The blade was still sharp, and the handle was stained a bit. “It’s a recording.” She continued. “I heard it a couple times while trying to reach someone the day I got here. They put it on a loop to play every fifteen minutes. So... I’m not sure if they’re okay after all.” She glared at her hands. Her eyes were a two-toned blue, dark on the outside of the iris, lighter around the pupil. “Paradise as long as there aren’t raging zombies. Which I doubt.” She chuckled.

She turned her gaze on him then. Her eyes were half-open, a bit shadowed from a mix of natural shadow and black makeup she carried in a back pocket. The thunder was soothing, calming, in a way. Though it would keep them both cooped up for another few days, she couldn’t complain. It wouldn’t make the rain go away any faster. “I can’t see much problem with sticking around a bit longer.” She said. “At least cabin fever won’t set in as fast with someone else around.” Glancing around, she watched him glance at his harmonica. “I’m not much into instruments.” She admitted. “But I’m a pretty good singer. I might not seem like it, what with this voice, but when I put thought into it... I’m not bad.”

She closed her eyes. Beneath the layer of harmonica music, she could hear the pattering rain on the roof and outside on the roads.

((That's okay, I might've got ahead of myself a little with this one!))

Tyrod was an interesting man. It made staying stuck in an old apartment building worth something, even if it were useless to try and stay alive. But that was the way Tori thought. Usually more pessimistic. When she was alone in the apartment, she would watch the rain from the area around the sill that wasn’t boarded up. The sky was usually very dark, looking more like dusk than day most of the time, the rain falling in sheets and wind whipping the trees in the background, the park nearby. She didn’t see many infected wander through, though, they didn’t appreciate the rain much. Only one or two running after a half-dead dog or rat, or fighting with one another.

She also went up to the roof sometimes with her rifle, taking out the ones she thought suspicious, mostly all of them. And the tub she’d placed up there to collect rain was half full by the evening the clouds started rolling out. It would be freezing, but she usually used that tub for a quick bath and clothes-washing. Tyrod mostly used the bottled water, which wasn’t a big deal. There was plenty for just a few days. And though they fought, both stubbornly not backing down, Tyrod seemed to want to keep the peace rather than come to some conclusion. It wasn’t Tori’s style, but she accepted it. Best not to actually fight with someone good with a gun and blade and useful as a reliable partner.

When Tyrod woke the morning the rain was stopping, Tori had been half-awake for an hour. The noise of the rain always calmed her, and she liked listening to it in the silence. She didn’t let on that she was awake though, and let him go out. When the door closed, though, she jumped up, waking herself up with a quick douse of water to the face. Putting her hair up into their standard pigtails, she went to the kitchen of the apartment, grabbing a guitar and bag she’d put a few cans of soup and ravioli into, and went to the atrium.

She’d taken a seat on the floor, leaning against a column in the center of the floor, when Tyrod returned. “Got some breakfast.” She moved the bag forward with her foot, her hands were busy with the guitar. “Y’know, when I told you I didn’t play instruments, I kinda lied. I play pretty well. In fact, wanna hear a song I made up the other day?” She strummed the strings, adjusting their pitch a bit to perfection.

Tori glanced at him as Tyrod took a seat. Quickly taking a bite of the plastic-wrapped apple pastry she’d found in a box, she strummed the strings of her instrument. “Didn’t want to glorify the fact.” She admitted. “Besides, I didn’t have a song to sing. I usually don’t think up songs and just go with the flow of the music, but the events as of late really influenced it.” She paused, glancing back at him for a moment. She never made eye contact with him. It was different for her, not to look someone directly in the eye and let her steely gaze bring them down. But she didn’t want to know what he was thinking, or what he was feeling, if his eyes were to portray such a fact. She could pick up on little things, twitches and eye movements that gave away what others felt or thought, she’d been trained by her father before he was killed. But Tyrod was different. Strange. Oddly interesting.

“Okay, I’ll start now.” She took a breath. “It ain’t meant to be all serious and everything, ‘kay? Feel free to look at me like I’m crazy.” Silently, she let her fingers move along the strings, making a quick beat that sounded a bit like ‘Let it Snow’.


She rested her hands on the strings, halting the music amid a flurry of silent giggling. “Oh, lord, that’s the best I’ve ever done!” She sighed. “Never was a fan of Christmas music.” She went on, setting the guitar aside. “So I adapted it.” Reaching up, she undid her hair and scratched it into a sheet that fell on her back. “Damn rubber bands.” She muttered, twisting back her hair to put it up again.

Tori yawned as she followed her companion in standing. “I’d like to play a bit more, but the guitar’s unnecessary weight. I found it here, so I’ll have to leave it too.” With that, she picked up the leftover unopened cans of food and slipped them into one of the larger compartments of her backpack, grabbing the spare ammunition and setting it on top for quick access. The handguns she kept with her, though rarely using them, she put in the side pockets and zipped them halfway closed, leaving them slightly protruding. “But I can hit out a good beat with a drum, or something drum-like. That suffices sometimes. Always ready to show off for someone who appreciates a good song or something.” She smiled, hoisting her rifle up and onto her back, letting it lie securely over the back of the backpack before she buckled it a bit tighter around her. “Ready and willin’.” She said.

Tyrod seemed to love his harmonica. Though Tori herself wasn’t one for such music, in the hands of a good player, she could tolerate and even grow to like the sound it made. And Tyrod was certainly good, seeming to have played for his whole life, or at least since childhood. When she bent for her axe, she thought about his question. “Heard an estimate on the radio before the static cut in.” She said. “It’s about five miles from here, going along the main road and we’ll get onto a short freeway, cross state border, and get into town.” She didn’t know where they were, but she’d seen a map and knew the way. Names, in her opinion, didn’t really matter anymore. She went to the front doors and started rearranging the barricade. “Hope you got everything.” She said. “We won’t be getting a bath for a few days, maybe.” She shuddered at that thought. For about six days in the past she’d gone trumping through mud in an especially marshy area after a hell of a rain storm. She didn’t like that, and neither did her old clothes.

But discomfort was a norm for her. A few days of filth was little in her mind, though she preferred not to deal with it. Through extensive endurance training, most of which she put herself through, she had learned to tolerate even the most maddening of things from human and nature alike. Mostly being covered in thick mud from head to toe for more than a couple days. When she shifted aside a rectangular table, she found a broken window that once was framed by the left door that led into the atrium. Glancing out, she found no movement, other than the misting rain as it faded away and the water rushing through the gutters.

Tori stepped out and into the fading mist of rain. Raising her axe above her head, she stretched her arms out wide to the sky, cracking her joints and twisting her head around. “Love the rain.” She said, looking around for straggling normal infected. “Can’t say it’s helpful when you’re walking in the streets, though. Wish I could smell the aftermath...” She went ahead of Tyrod, looking through the alleys they would soon pass by. While most survivors tended to run from infected, using their weapons when necessary and trying to avoid groups or the walking dead in general, she tended to rush right into the fray with blade swinging, or stayed in high windows and atop taller buildings with her rifle, picking them off one by one. As long as the infected didn’t see her, they didn’t usually pay attention to the firing of the weapons. Possibly because their hearing was damaged, or they’d been around enough noise to pay no attention to it anymore.

Luckily they were near the end of town. The road beneath their feet was starting to widen out, and a wide expanse of farmland was ahead of them. And as she passed by a particularly narrow alley, something babbled in a strangled, hissing noise. A man dressed as a cop, hat and all, without his gun, rushed at her, and she raised her axe, swiping it at his neck. He ducked, though, lunging forward, and she kicked him back, into the trash can near the mouth of the alley, bringing the blade down between the eyes, slicing the head right open. Tori huffed. “Hah! Bastard. They’re learning.” She turned to Tyrod with a smile on her face, content with her actions. “Guess they’re still a little human after all.”

She didn’t like that. If the infected were learning a bit more, they’d become more efficient. And if the common dead were learning, the special ones were as well. Especially the hunters. She hated them with a passion. Almost as much as jockeys, their cries and odd laughs sometimes keeping her awake at night in tight-jawed annoyance.

Tori’s eyes widened when she saw the little group round the corner in the alley she’d just gotten away from. They seemed to glance at their fallen comrade, then turn with snarling, guttural growls to her. She let the axe slide down, and she gripped it by the head like a heavy knife. She appreciated Ty’s sword and all, it was probably a much-desired weapon of the zombie gamers, before they were all killed by the real things. But it was too cliche for her. It was razor sharp, indeed, and could easily cut through bone when the right technique was applied, but she’d seen them break before. Break, snap, shatter, dull, all were possibilities. The blade of the axe would dull, but she had a sharpening stone, and it was very thick, difficult, if nearly impossible, to destroy, unless one took into account the tough wooden handle. That was why she didn’t grip it by the end.

With her left hand, she grabbed the shoulder of the nearest zombie as it ran at her, bringing up her knee and cracking a few ribs when she made a connection, following it with a powerful kick to the jaw, sending it back. Swinging the axe around, she caught a nearer one in the neck, then flipped the blade around to the other end and sent the spike into her eye, wrenching it around and pulling a good amount of her sagging skin and skull off the front of her face. Knocking her back, Tori was grabbed from behind and shaken, hit a few times on the head. She forced herself, back, purposefully falling onto the road, hearing a nice crunch, possibly from a limb. Rolling off, she brought back her left foot and aimed for his head, the impact embedding the toe of her boot into the side of his head and nearly ripping his fragile spine from the rest of his body.

Even with there being four still approaching her and Tyrod from the street itself, she had to laugh at his antics. He seemed to take on the personality of the one who wielded the sword before him, possibly feeling more than human as the blade did most of the work, slicing and dicing. She sped forward, the spring in her thick-soled boots giving her more of a flighty feeling, tossing her axe forward and into the gaping mouth of the nearest zombie, sending her down. Balling up her free fist, she sent it into the covered stomach of one to the left, forcing it back and into an older-model car with a broken window, sending it into the long shards of glass. The last two were slow. One had a broken leg and the other was weighted down with some heavy metal objects tied to its feet, obviously done before he became infected, perhaps by a friend or fearful survivor. The first one, she stepped right up to, raising the axe and slicing it long-ways, straight down the middle of the skull. The other one she kicked to the ground and beheaded with one quick sweep.

She looked around to Tyrod. Nothing else was in sight save for the broken corpses of the zombies. Her gun burned, dying to be used, but her main worry was that the noise would attract more and more. “Well, that was fun.” She sighed, rearranging her bag on her back. “How about we move on, eh?” She tugged on her vest to unbunch it, trudging forward once again.