04-12-2011, 06:30 PM
Rigger was sure to monitor the soup as Tristessa spoke. Her story was truly horrible. Being attacked by your pet and then watching your brother become...one of them. In some respects, she was lucky though. Very few of the infected or the transformed get to keep their minds. None of the ones that he had encountered anyway. He heard some stories of some from travellers he met along the way, but that was it.
The soup was warm enough to eat, so he reached in his pack for his water bottle, tipping some over a cone that was lying in the rubble. He tipped his soup into the cone, and handed the hot tin over to Tristessa, placing it on the ground in front of her. He then handed her the spoon.
"The tin's hot, so you may want to have the spoon," he said before looking at her for a second. "I really hope that you can find your brother one day, find the brother that you had before the infection too. Maybe his mind will remain as well."
Rigger said it to be kind, though he knew, and very likely Tristessa knew as well, that if it was a murder of infected crows he was likely to fully transform.
"Well, I come from a scavenger's family," he said slowly and took a small bit of soup before he continued. "When the infection started, a whole lot of people left the city to the safety zone just beyond the city limits. I lived with my mum and my baby girl, Kalecia. She was two when this all started. I was young and stupid when I had her, and I was with a young and stupid girl who really couldn't handle a kid. So my mum and me became a weird but effective parenting duo. Anyway, I couldn't deny the fact that looting and thieving was in my blood, and I knew I'd never get an opportunity like this again, so when the epidemic began, I packed up my car and sent my mum and Kale to get to the safety zone and I'd meet them there. I was going to do some stealing and get anything of value or that we may need, anything that was left behind by the people. Well, the day I sent my mum and Kale off, was the day that the highway out of the city got decommissioned because of the ambush that occurred. The weak and the slow were the first to go, and everyone else scattered. I don't know if my mum and Kale were the unlucky ones who were attacked, or the ones who were forced to flee. I've been trying to find out what happened since, but it's a perilous journey by foot to the city limits, and until I'm fully prepared or get a vehicle, I won't be able to make it."
Rigger took a long drain of soup and then smiled weakly at Tristessa.
"That's why I'm here. Too lowly to make it to the safety zone, and too busy combing every bit of the city for signs of my girls."
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