Kivana Dennicia Brown

Age: 21
She is a college student, majoring in business. She is pretty tough, has been in her fair share of fights, and is also pretty spunky and loud too. Kianna is also very stubborn, but is always ready to listen to someone else's opinions. She never really has been someone to get sick often. Actually, in her whole life she's only been ill about 7 times since she was born.

Daren Snow

Age: Unknown, appears around mid to late twenties

Daren isn't a native of the U.S. He lives, instead, on an island off the coast of southern California working with the police force and was in the States on a job when things started becoming rather odd. He can speak six languages, is very well trained in various types of combat, and rarely gets sick. He's not very nice, really, sarcastic and a bit unemotional, and seemed to have lost his faith in the human race long ago.

Daren hated the unpredictable weather of the United States. Sunny, cloudy, cold, hot, rainy, the entire spectrum of weather contained in this one little town, the name of which he didn’t care to remember. He’d found refuge in a BP gas station, the shelves half-bare from looters and survivors long dead or gone completely. They had taken everything from the cooler shelves, but didn’t seem to think to look in the freezers behind the shelves, where bottles, cans, and packages of frozen and preserved food were kept safe from prying eyes. But it had stopped working a long time ago; the milk was turning green around the tops, the frozen food was thawed and stinking in bloated or ripped-open packages. In the storage rooms behind the cashier counters, though, was a storage area kept at room temperature, locked until he’d found a crowbar to force it open. Within were shelves of canned food, some cat and dog food.

The front windows were half broken and some were boarded up. The pumps outside were shut off, a couple cars abandoned nearby. Daren had to push some of the shelves in the storefront to the windows, lifting the light ones up and wedging them against the windows. While he did, he felt he was a lucky person to have been friends with the president of the U.S. He’d been called from his island home when the virus was let out in Pennsylvania, it being seen as a paranormal or nonhuman-based situation that he was usually relied on to help contain. But when they found it was something even greater than what they could ever imagine, the situation spiraled out of control. Luckily, he’d been trusted to be given what weapons he asked for. Until the military escort was broken up.

Taking his rifle, he used the ladder in the storage room to go to the roof. Again, he wondered why he even decided to agree to quell the situation. He’d denied requests in the past, many times, and he had a bad feeling about this one, and that feeling proved to be right. With his rifle at his side, Daren pulled his cell phone out of his pocket. The last time he heard it ring, it was two weeks ago. His main worry wasn’t his own health or life, he didn’t care about either one, he worried more about the ones he’d left behind. Daren Snow wasn’t one to dwell on the past or what was happening to others, but those he considered friends, he put in a special place. If they’d decided to come looking for him, they’d find a lot more than they bargained for. And he didn’t want them hurt.

He pocketed the phone again and adjusted his tie. He’d washed his clothes in a clean pool of water he found not long before, but the bloodstains still showed up on his white shirt. The zombie blood was especially hard to get out of cloth. Sighing, he looked down, into the dirty street and parking lot. None of the cars would work, they were crushed, on fire, flipped, or abandoned because they ran out of gas. Some he could see had bodies lying through windshields, under tires, crushed or decapitated. One was a jockey he’d bludgeoned with a tire iron, its permanent smile turned to where Daren could just see it. When he arrived at the station, he hadn’t heard much movement, save a low, growling sound he could identify as a hunter. It’d followed him for a while. As he surveyed the scene, he heard it again. A growling, angry noise, not quite human but not quite animal. The hunter.

Turning, Daren found it. Crouched, its red and yellow eyes glaring, it sized Daren up. Slowly, he raised the crowbar from his belt loop, unblinkingly staring down the hunter.

Kivana breathed heavily and held her gun close to her chest, peering slowly past the shack she had hidden behind. Her suspicions had been right; there were 3 of the infected walking toward her. She had enough bullets in her gun to kill them all, but her hand was shaking so rapidly that she'd probably miss and cause them to run to her. She bit her lip, squeezed her eyes shut, and peered back to see how close they were to her now.

The infected were headed in the other direction. Apparently, another survivor, or some kind of animal, was being killed. Well, she didn't know if it was being killed, but only something in extreme pain could make the kind of sounds coming from that direction. Kivana let out a silent sigh of air and sat on the cold marshy ground that was the forest floor. She'd never really been able to deal with the infection epidemic. When she'd first seen the report on the news, she'd been freaked out, and in denial thought it to be a horrible prank. But when she'd seen them for herself, she'd gone bizerk. She still shuddered when she saw one and since she was bad at direction, she could almost never find a safe house.

But recently, she'd heard of a place in Chicago that the infected hadn't come to yet. It had running cars and planes, and was ready to make flights out of America every Friday. Today was Saturday, and she knew that from New Mexico it'd take her at least 2 weeks by foot including the stops for rest and the time it took to fight the infected. She heard another blood-curdling scream and peared back around the shack again. Her suspicions had been correct yet again. A weapon-less survivor was being chased down the road by a small group of infected citizens. She felt her hands begin shaking again as she stood, knowing now was the perfect time to split before they came into the forest. She began to walk once again, hoisting her heavy artillery-filled book bag onto her shoulders and speed walking until she felt safe and away from the road again.

She stopped when she reached what looked like the end of the forest. It was very scary looking, with murdered corpses everywhere. She took a big breath and trudged across the road, not used to being as scared as she was those moments it took her to step across the road. She could see some sort of house or building in the distance, and decided to go on and check to see if it would make a good resting place.

The hunter didn’t seem to want to move until Daren did. Both stood, staring into one another’s eyes, glaring in the sunlight that was completely perfect in such an open space. Then a scream, that of a defenseless survivor or an infected, pierced the quiet, and when Daren startled, the hunter made his move; leaping over the slight dip in the ceiling, the hunter lunged for Daren. He brought his hands up, but not in time, and was knocked back. Kicking the hunter away, Daren struggled to stand and grabbed his fallen crowbar. The special infected rolled a couple times, grappling with the air as it stood and came at Daren again.

Daren braced himself, raising one hand, and as the hunter reached him, he grabbed its shirt and shoved it back, onto the floor. He raised the crowbar and brought it down, connecting with the hunter’s leg as it struggled away. It screeched at him, slashing with its claws, and as Daren went back, he hit the edge of the roof and nearly fell over the low dividing wall. Before he could regain his balance, though, the hunter was on him, pushing on his shoulders as though it wanted him to fall. He kicked up his left leg, connecting with the hunter’s stomach and throwing it over his head, off the roof of the gas station.

Sighing out a breath of relief, Daren bent over, calming himself. Of all the infected with special mutations, he hated the ones called hunters most of all. They were sneaky, even with their growling, screaming voices. He went to retrieve his rifle, fallen when he was caught off guard. When he bent down, something bashed into him, taking him down to the ground. The breath was knocked from him, the hunter grabbing his hair and wrenching his head back. Daren brought his elbow back and into its ribs, throwing the hunter off balance enough for him to toss it away and bring the crowbar up, spinning around and jabbing it into the hunter’s face. His strength back, Daren wrenched it back, swinging it like a bat and connecting hard with the side of its head, throwing it onto the ground. He stood, stabbing the crowbar into the hunter’s back a few more times before snatching up his rifle and, with an annoyed growl, went back into the building.

Kivana finally made it to the other side of the highway, feeling relieved that none of the infected had seen her. She was a sitting duck, just walking in the middle of the road. She began going further through a small patch of withered plants until she reached another street, this one with even more bodies and wreckage surrounding it than the last. At first glance she saw cars laying on their backs, and bodies on fire. It looked pretty deserted, with an old broken-down gas station on the other side of it. She jogged across the street and tried to look into one of the boarded-up windows. She saw nothing but what looked to be a wall of some sort.

Kivana walked over to the door. It had something in front of it too. She thought for a second. 'If there were zombie in there, they wouldn't want themselves trapped. And those things were put there from the inside. Survivors would have to move those to get out.' Then she had it. There had to be a safe group of survivors in there! Although, she did know that there was still a possibility of no one being there at all. She knocked on the door, deciding to take a chance and hope for people, then looked around to make sure she was alone. She was. She began lightly beating the door. "Please! I'm a survivor! Let me in! Please! I can help you!" Kivana pleaded as she hit the door. The sad sensation of doubt began to consume her, causing her think that maybe no one was in there. Maybe they'd been safe but one of the special infected had gotten to them. She sighed and decided to leave.

She looked around again before taking a step, this time more frantically than before to see if it was safe to go. The smell of rotten bodies and smoke hit her nose at the same time, creating an unexplainable odor she hadn't noticed before that made her want to throw up. She turned back around and hit the door again, this time, more motivated than before. The wasteland of road went on for miles and without sleep, she was sure to faint if she continued on with the stench, especially in the heat that New Mexico was famous for.

Daren made sure the door to the roof was secured. The infected didn’t seem to be able to work a doorknob on normal doors, but the specially mutated ones could easily claw and bust through them, much faster than a common infected. He set the rifle on the cashier counter and stood behind it, fiddling with the register. When he managed to get the drawer open, he inspected the contents. A few twenties, a stack of ones and fives, a couple tens, and coins separated into their own compartment. Money was useless in the wastelands that was New Mexico and the rest of the States.

As he pulled out a lighter and started burning the money a bill at a time, Daren heard something. Footsteps, it sounded like, quick, rapid, outside the front doors. He pulled his gun toward him and kept silent, moving around the counter and into the storefront. He startled back at the noise that came forth, a pounding at the door on the other side, accompanied by calls and yells of what sounded like a young woman. He stood frozen for a moment, mind racing.

He should let her in, he hadn’t seen someone alive in a long time. Maybe a week, at the most. He’d spent his time, as he wandered the desolate roads, talking to himself, using blunt weapons to beat any infected that got in his way, allowing himself to be put in danger he didn’t care about facing, carelessly throwing himself into hoards of the infected. If he let her in, he would be sure whether or not she was infected, bitten or scratched, or just a desperate immune trying to call out someone else. It wouldn’t matter to him, but if she stayed out there, she’d probably attract infected with her calls.

When he went to the door, putting a hand on the shelf that blocked the doors when the voice fell away into silence. He narrowed his eyes, staring at the blank place through the veil of yellow hair. She seemed to be gone, silence reigning throughout the air. He gasped when she started hitting the door outside again, and wrenched the shelves away, throwing the door open and pulling her in by the arm. “Shush!” He hissed, pushing the shelf back into place and securing it. “You’ll let them hear.” Using a few broken tiles from the floor, he wedged them under the shelves, making sure they couldn’t easily be pushed away from the door.

Kivana heard a light shrill shreik escape from her lips as a man pulled her into the gas station. She glanced at him before surveying the room, which had a similar stink to the stench outside, but a little less in-your-face. She could identify it better, though, since it wasn't so blunt. The smell was the smell of rotten fruit and burning garbage. Kivana felt her eyes begin to water. She shook her head and let her eyes go back to the man. He seemed kind of beaten up in comparison to herself, since she only had a little dirt on her clothes from running through deserts and forests. She hadn't really done much killing. She freaked out to much and usually was stealthy enough to be unseen by the undead.

"Nice setup you got here..." Kivana said, stepping further into the room, feeling a little awkward at her form of entrance. She looked around, seeing all the big shelves in awkward places around the walls, explaining why she couldn't get through the window. The middle of the room looked pretty bare except for the desk in the corner that held the cash register, and a few shelves in the middle of the room. She looked around for some sign that would tell her that there were more people there, but found none. That meant it was just her and this strange, blood-covered man. She was never one to be shy, and never one to stand away from a fight, but ever since the infected had come she'd been a lot more vulnerable, a little less tough, and a tad more shy.

"Do you have any food?" Kivana asked, feeling her stomach lurch at the thought of a sandwich. The blood-covered Snickers chocolate bar poster in the corner didn't help it. She hadn't eaten in over a day, and she had only had a half of a stolen sandwich then. Kivana breathed sharply through her nose, trying to steady her strong feelings of throwing up from lack of food, but the smell, even though it was light, caused her to spit up a bit in her mouth. Even though it was mostly spit and flem, was absolutely repulsed. Kivana swallowed it down and shuddered. She didn't want to be there anymore, especially not as sleep-deprived and hungry as she was, but she needed to rest up before she made her way to Chicago. She sat on the ground and peered up at the man, feeling a little woozy.

Daren turned back to the girl. Indeed, she appeared young, maybe in her early twenties, late teens. When she spoke, he didn’t find use in replying. It seemed more of a passing comment rather than something to hold a conversation around, and he moved to one of the counters to find the line of air fresheners he’d seen before, as he burned up the useless money of the halfway-sane world left behind. He uncovered a can of ‘Spring Breeze’ Febreeze and let loose, wandering through the entire room with the trigger held down until the can sputtered and hissed. It helped get rid of the stench of death, rotting fruit, and rancid milk, at least, but it still lingered in his nose.

He looked around when the girl spoke again, moving forward toward her. It wasn’t like Daren to be so... willing to allow others around him, and it especially wasn’t like him to speak easily and gently with others. But he surprised himself when he nodded and said: “Sure I do. Come on, over this way.” He led the girl behind the front counters, a hand carefully on her back to make sure she was steady. He even let her into the storage room first, grabbing his gun and crowbar before joining her and closing the door.

“There isn’t much smell here.” He said. “Just dust and wood. Canned food and packages that don’t need to be refrigerated, and crates of water. Take your pick.” He left the girl, going to one of the unopened crates of water he referred to, sitting in the corner, using a pocket knife to cut the plastic open and take one for himself. “What’s your name?” He asked, leaning himself against the wall. He turned his sulfur colored eyes to her.

"Kivana studied the dimly lit storage room before letting her hands roam the shelves and pick up a package of Doritos. She used one of her long nails to pierce the package and grabbed one of the blue bags. She looked over at the man, who seemed to be doing the same thing but with water. He seemed a little scary, with them being in the dark room and him with his weapons, but she knew that he only needed those to protect them from the infected. She sat down across from him on the floor and stuffed a handful of chips in her mouth before answering his question. "Kivana." she said meekly after swallowing.

Kivana tried her hardest not to eat like an animal, but with every swallow her stomach demanded more food, and that caused her to shovel more into her mouth. She really couldn't help it. She hadn't eaten in so long that the chips tasted like a full-course meal in her mouth. With every bite, she could taste a hint of lemon seasoning and breaded chicken. She could just taste the steamed vegetables on the side. Kivana finished the bag of chips quickly and without drink, then walked and grabbed another of the same flavor. She looked up at the man, hoping he wouldn't think that she was mannerless, but before she could stop herself, she had finished the second bag as well. She sat the empty bag on the floor next to her beside the other, then looked up, realizing she knew nothing about this man and he knew nothing about her. "Who are you?" she asked bluntly, her old personality coming back. She ran a hand through her naturally bleach-blond coloured hair and let her pale blue eyes stare at the man's face and stay there, waiting for her answer.

People usually were intimidated by Kivana, the way she was always demanding answers and when she stared at people, she usually squinted in a way that made her look like she was seeing right through them, like she could see their soul. She didn't do it on purpose, but it was just the way she was. No matter how timid she got, she always had a fiery way to her.

Daren didn’t seem to be paying attention. He was usually like that, a glare to his gaze, staring off somewhere else when someone was talking, but he was always listening to what people were saying. Kivana was her name, she said so herself. It probably wasn’t her real name, in the event of near-apocalyptic situation, a person could be whatever or whoever they wanted to be. But they couldn’t change who they really were. Especially Daren. “Name’s Daren.” He said at last, sliding down the wall to crouch. “Not a native of the States.”

He studied her carefully, through narrowed eyes. Always watchful, he could pinpoint a person’s ideas, thoughts. It had taken a lot of years to learn. Too many, in fact, as he lost most of his humanity. He could tell Kivana, as she called herself, wasn’t as she seemed. The events that had unfolded so suddenly probably interrupted her general personality, and knowing her safety, that personality was revealing itself again. Her stare was hard, her voice bluntly demanding. He’d handled a lot of people like that.

It didn’t matter to him. The stare didn’t affect him, he hardly considered its importance. The voice reminded him of his long-time friend, Ron, one of the two friends he’d left behind on his island home. “Where you from?” He asked. He didn’t particularly care, it didn’t matter, but it would give them something to talk about while being forced to hide in a stench-filled gas station.

Kivana 's eyes widened, seeing the man, Daren, sizing her up, just like she'd done to him. Most people tended to look away when she gave them her death stare, but Daren hadn't seemed to care. She felt the muscles in her jaw relax and her mouth smile, something that only happened when she felt respect for someone. "I'm from Santa Fe." Kivana said, cracking her stiff knuckles and holding the strap of her book bag by her thumb. She heard a sound coming from outside. It sounded like... like... grunting. The grunting of an animal. She glanced up at the boarded up storage room window, one Daren probably hadn't remembered to block. The wood was nailed in neat rows so it was very hard to see through. She stood and walked to it. Through a sliver which light shown through, she put her eye and looked out.

There were the pack of the infected that she'd seen chasing the scared survivor. Her eyes widened and her hands instantly began sweating. There had to be at least 13 of them, walking down the desolate road in such a manner that caused them to look like they were the rulers of the town. With every limping stomp they took, Kivana was more frightened and she felt her bravery and bluntness shrink away. They seemed to just be passing through, but they were very intimidating, none the less. Kivana felt her breathing become noticeably heavier and her heart began to beat faster. "There's some of the infected outside, Daren." she said in a slow, husk whisper. Her fingers where shaking. Kivana pulled away from the window and began glancing swiftly at her surroundings and cracking open a water bottle and chugging it down

There was a loud bang, similar to the sound an aluminum trash can makes when it is knocked over. Kivana rushed up once again, and looked through the sliver. The infected were after a half-dead women whose body was stuck under a car. One by one they hit the car until it tipped over like most of the others had, then they attacked her. Kivana, now woozy with a headache, staggered back down, breathing in short, stifled breaths and fidgeted with the straps of her book bag.

Daren caught the words “Sante Fe.” It was a town, that much he knew, whether it was near of far from their current location, he was completely unaware. He knew where the big towns were, he knew his way around them, but of the smaller towns, or those not as universally known as D.C., San Fransisco, Miami or Orlando, Chicago, New Orleans, St. Louis, or Phoenix, he was a complete stranger to. “I’m from Snow Island.” He said. “It’s not particularly known among a lot of people outside southern California.” About the time Kivana reacted, he heard the sound of death. A grunting, groaning sound that only came with the desperate wanderings of aimless undead on the prowl. He watched her move to the boarded window, something he hadn’t considered because it looked more like a part of the wall than anything, and safe enough if they kept quiet.

He joined her at the window, finding a gap near the top and gazing through, spying a number of virus stricken dead, marching in a group along the street beyond the side parking lot. They didn’t show their true power or speed, they weren’t on the chase of something that could get away, but they did seem to have a destination in mind. “Yep.” He said. “There’s a number out there. Not too many, doesn’t look bad.”

He stayed there when Kivana left the window, watching the movement. One stumbled over a bump in the road, sending it falling into a burning trash can. The flaming contents spilled all over as they approached a movement nearby. He raised a brow when the car tipped, impressed with their strength as a group when they managed to work together rather than fighting to the ultimate death. He turned away when Kivana went back and down to her bag. Leaving the window, he joined her in a crouch.

“Hey, calm down.” He said. “They won’t get in unless we make a good amount of noise. I’ve seen them pass up buildings that look too difficult to get into without bothering to find an entrance, they’re not that smart. But I saw an axe on the wall in the office on the other side of the place, I can get out there and take care of them if you want.” He stood and went to the door. “Oh, and I got some Tylenol too, some vertigo medicine and something for an upset stomach of you need that on my way back.”

Kivana nodded and watched Daren out of the corner of her eye as she stood and looked out of the window again. The zombies were slowly walking to the side of the street that the gas station was on. The one in the front, the leader, was staring straight at the window with its coal-like eyes, as if he knew that she was there. Kivana watched them intently, unable to look away. He lead his group to the aluminum trash can that sat a few feet away from the window and made a low muted grunt, then threw it at two of the infected that were fighting each other. They stopped and stood there, looking at the window while the leader grunted.

This action puzzled Kivana. She had never seen anything like it. Why were they listening and not trying to kill each other? Usually, if there were no survivors around, the infected would kill each other. These ones seemed to have formed a... killing team. She watched as the leader finally ended it's rapid grunting, realizing toward the end that it was actually saying words, but it's vocal cords were so ruined from the Green Flu that it sounded low and raspy like a growl. She distinctly heard the words search and kill. Kivana wondered how many of the infected were actually talking instead of grunting.

She watched as the two that had been fighting walked closer to the window. She felt like sitting down, but was too scared to pull her eyes away. She felt her heart skip a beat as they came even closer. Kivana's breathing shallowed and tears swelled in her eyes. She bit her lip until it bled, but stopped as they walked around to the door. Kivana stopped breathing and sat down under the window, feeling relieved, until she heard a loud crash in the main room.

Daren left his gun behind for Kivana. If something were to come in, she would have something large to divert the threat, especially if that threat was a special infected. They were much stronger. Before moving, Daren made sure the storage room door was secure, but still able to be opened from inside, and went behind the counter for a few bottles of pain killers and calming medicines. Walking past the door to the outside world, he took his crowbar off his beltloop and used it to pry open the door to the back office, on the wall in the dark of the corner farthest away from the exit that led into the windowless office. With a bit of work, he levered it open as he had before and stepped inside. Indeed, behind the metal desk, was an axe on the wall protected by a glass case.

It was locked, the case, but the front window was thin. It was quiet, so Daren was loathe to cause any noise. Gritting his teeth, he bashed the crowbar against the window and shattering it, and using the hooked end to grab the wooden handle and pull it out. Dropping the dull, rusted bar from his other hand, Daren took his weapon and stepped outside, striding quickly to the blocked door, pulling the shelf open just enough for his thin frame to slip out and into the hot, still air outside. He went right, toward where he and Kivana had seen the zombies wandering, his pockets rattling a bit with the pill bottles stowed away.

Stepping onto the side parking lot, he glanced around. The half-dead woman they’d worked to get out from under the car was no more than a bloody mass, the only things that defined her as human being scraps of clothes, bone, and a ragged hand with two fingers missing. Blood smeared the sizzling concrete as the scavengers wandered off. He paused behind an overturned car and listened. They seemed to be communicating, and as he watched, they moved about, the lead of the group breaking up the fight between two others and growling at them. They were behaving, and, it seemed, communicating with one another as though they were... almost human. But their minds were filled with rage and a hunger forever unsatisfied. Their bodies were no more than corpses animated by the Green Flu.

He stepped out from behind the car as they began moving off. His footsteps were quiet, but he worried about the noise his pockets were making. It wasn’t normal, and they’d hear that. But their muddled, gurgling words were loud among the group, and it drowned out the rattling. He raised the blade of the axe and targeted the last one, stumbling from a broken leg. With a quick slam of the axe head, he went down, beheaded, but it alerted those just feet away. They turned.

The leader of the group pointed to Daren and screamed at him, a shrieking call that sounded a bit like ‘die’. The rest of them listened, immediately rushing him. “Damn it!” Daren raised the axe again and swung it like a bat, hitting two of the nearest ones in the head, at the mouth and cutting halfway through their fragile skulls, dislocating their jaws and breaking them off before digging deeper and affecting their brains. He turned it around to the spiked end and buried it in one of the zombie’s heads, swinging it again and taking down two more. One of the seven remaining threw herself at him, and Daren kicked her back, into the leader. Another from the right grabbed his arm, twisting him back to the right, and Daren swung the axe around and buried the spiked end into the thing’s back, sending it down, and mowing down the woman and two behind her. He went forward angrily, pulling a pistol from his pocket and planting a single bullet in the last three.

Out of breath, Daren shook his head and started back to the store, kicking one of the twitching bodies away from him with a sigh. Two weeks of fighting the things, and he still couldn’t hate them enough.

Kivana watched as Daren took on the monsters while she looked at the gun which he'd left in the room and wondered what had made that sound. It was like glass had been broken. An image of the old windows that were covered by the shelves popped into her head. They were definitely attempting a break in. It looked like Daren had gotten them all, except the two that had went around to the door. Kivana took a breath, grabbed her pistol from her bag and loaded it up. She held her gun close to her chest, her bag full of bullets on her back. She slowly stood beside the door, pressing her ear against it and listening intently. She heard nothing. Kivana walked swiftly back over to the window, looking out slowly. They were all dead. She wondered where Daren was, hoping he'd come back in time to save her from any monsters that were in the near area.

Kivana decided to stay in the room, scared of her surroundings. She sat in the far right corner so she'd be able to eye both the window and the door and anything else that was in the room. Her mind was telling her to be brave, and reminding her of the time she'd fought a mugger while she was in New York just a few months back. She remembered how he held his fingers inside his jacket like he was holding a gun, because that had caused her to laugh. He'd demanded that she drop her purse and walk away. She'd laughed harder at that and began to walk away. He'd grabbed her arm and pulled her back, causing her to fall on her bum. She got up, pushed him, then tried walking away again, making him grab both her arms, pull her, and tug on her purse. That's when Kivana had punched him in the stomach and kneed him in his 'special area'. She could remember the sight of him crouching over his crotch with his hands in-between his legs. She'd walked away, proud of her actions, hoisting her purse over her shoulder and a smile on her face. Why couldn't she do the same with zombies?

She pursed her lips and decided to reminisce about other things, like the infected boyfriend she'd had to run from, and the family that she'd watched be murdered, and then she thought about the way she'd had to escape through the empty tunnels of the subway. And how she had to stay quiet when she'd come across the miniature hoards of the infected and diseased rats in the tunnels. She didn't understand why she couldn't fight one. Maybe it was just another one of her weird glitches, like how she was scared of spiders, or how she was scared of being killed by a rabid animal while in the city. She sat up, trying to focus on her surroundings once again, waiting for Daren to come back so she could discuss escape.

He’d started to go back, but before Daren turned, he caught sight of something rather shiny hiding among the dried bushes where the air pumps were. Passing the tiny massacre, he ran to investigate. A discarded silver revolver, speckled with blood and empty when he checked the chamber. Useless to him. With a soft growl, he tossed it into the shade of the pumps and started to stand. Something grabbed his hair on the way up, and he gasped, spinning around and pulling his own gun to face a wriggling bush. Its stray limb had tangled in his hair, pulling when he stood. Gritting his teeth, Daren pocketed the gun and stamped the ground. It was almost his trademark to be a jumpy wreck while under stress, since he didn’t outwardly show the feeling.

Pocketing the gun again, he looked around and went for his axe. No one was around, and he didn’t particularly care what they thought if someone was, the reaction was absent. He tended to glance around after many odd or embarrassing situations, even when it was in his own home. Puffing out a breath, he went to go back inside.

Turning the corner, he found blood on the ground. It wasn’t there when he left. Freezing, he held his breath, glaring around. Something was close. It laughed, a noise made namely by those called jockeys, and as he spun around, it attached to his head and dug its claws into his forehead. He yelled in shock, flying forward, away from the building, jerked to the left by the tiny thing on his back and head. It screeched at him, as though taunting him to stop it. Daren stumbled back to the building, throwing himself into the solid stone structure and sandwiching the jockey, hearing a satisfying crunch as one of its limbs broke. It was enough to make the thing release him, and he kicked it into the wall again, aiming for the head until it shut up and stopped moving.

“I hate everything!” Daren yelled to the sky. Blood was leaking from the puncture wounds on his forehead, getting into his eyes. Wiping it away, he got back into the store, finding two more common infected, which he beat to death with the flat side of the axe to release a bit of pent-up energy and anger. When he was successful, Daren dragged himself back to the door that led into the general storage room. Kivana was still there, sitting as far away from the door as she could. “Got you these.” He dug in his pocket, tossing her the pill bottles before closing and locking the door. “Best not take them all together.”

Kivana caught the pill bottles Daren had thrown at her with both hands, trying to prevent them from hitting her in the face. She opened the Tylonol and quickly swallowed them without water. She looked up at Daren while using her right hand to rub her throbbing temples. Her eyes slightly widened at the sight of the blood pouring from the gashes in from his forehead. "You're... you... you're infected..." she said, standing up while pushing her body against the wall. She gripped her gun and raised it slowly and with shaky hands, scared that Daren was about to attack her. "You... you're infected. I'm so sorry..." she said, letting a tear fall from her eye. She knew that she'd have to kill Daren. She didn't want to, but she knew that in the next few minutes, he'd be foaming at the mouth with rage and clawing and biting at her skin. She struggled to pull the trigger of the gun, unable to, but decided to let him enjoy his last few moments of sanity.

"I just wanna say, thanks for riskin' your life for me. You ain't have to do that, and I'm sorry that you... y'know." Kivana said, her true personality shining through with her ebonics-filled speech. She began braiding a strand of her blonde hair and cracking her knuckles. "I ain't known you for too long, but you is a alright kinda guy, riskin' ya-self for some kinda stranger like myself." she said, her words becoming more dragged and improper. She took in a breath of air that puffed her cheeks up, then she exhaled slowly. "I know you 'bout to freak out when I say this, but, I kinda am gonna have to shoot you now, y'know." she said, sighing slowly and lifting her gun back up. "I don't know where you are about to go, but if you go to heaven, put in a good word for me."

Kivana could feel herself holding the trigger, and her hands were shaking too much for her to be able to get a good shot. She took a breath and pulled the trigger, waiting to hear the loud bang of death. But, none was there. She looked down at her gun, confused. She pulled the trigger again, shaking slightly less. Her gun still didn't shoot. She opened the slot that held the bullets. Every space was filled. She tried to shoot one more time before finally realizing what was wrong. She'd forgot to cock the gun! Kivana cocked the gun and aimed it again, beginning to shake more. She aimed at his heart, but the gun kept waving and as she pulled the trigger, the bullet only grazed Daren's shoulder. Kivana sighed, not wanting to have to do it again.

Daren squinted his eyes as she spoke. Her true self seemed to be coming through, showing. He widened his eyes, touching his forehead. The jockey really had clawed his skin well, and he put up a hand to wipe it away. “Don’t worry about it.” He said. “I’d rather... die... fighting rather than be killed by the army.” There were reasons his island had an immediate militia rather than army or official military. Ordinary people were less likely to rebel against one another or a particular group of people in event of island-wide catastrophe such as a virus outbreak.

Daren gritted his teeth when the bullet grabbed his shirt and skin. “Watch it!” He growled. “Steady your hand, don’t get nervous and miss. A clean shot to the head and it’ll be done.” He stood with his hands behind his back. “Oh, and don’t leave immediately, right? You’ll wanna stay a couple minutes after you kill me. Just saying.”

He was having a hard time containing a smile. Even as the virus was making his body cold, it wouldn’t turn him into one of them. He’d experimented after the virus broke out, a few times he’d been scratched and bitten, and every time, he got cold, his eyes turned from yellow to red, and his heart beat very slowly, making him rather lethargic. So he’d taken care of himself, returning to normal, but leaving his clothes filthy and bloody in the meantime.

Kivana blinked at Daren, confused at his reaction to her shooting him. "You... you want me to shoot you?" she asked, very confused but knowing she'd have to do so anyways. She realized why he wanted her to. It was because he didn't want to be infected. That made sense. Kivana, feeling like her old self again, raised her gun back up and aligned it with Daren's forehead. She pulled the trigger before he could respond to her question. Her first instinct, if she were permanently her old self, would be to laugh to get the nervous feeling in the pit of her stomach to go away, but her knew, weird personality caused her to run to him and let her hands hover over his head, which was spilling blood.

"Oh... oh my g-gosh. Ohhh my..." she said, breathing heavily and fanning herself. She couldn't believe it. She'd killed someone who'd let themselves die for her. It was amazing and she, well, she didn't know how to react. Wether to sob and wave her fist at the heavens or to throw his body outside to distrace any of the monsters outside that heard the gunshot while she made a clear get-away. She decided to sit down back in the corner and eat a bag of Hot Crunchy Kurls that was laying on the floor next to her foot. They reminded her of her cousin, Janae, who was waiting for her to arrive in Wichita, Kansas. They were to travel to Chicago together. The last time she'd spoken to her was yesterday on a dead man's cell phone. She was undercover in a safe house.

Kivana sighed and looked at Daren again, his body acting as a barrier between the door and her. She didn't want to step over him, she was too scared that he was still alive with Green Flu. She'd seen some of the infected get shot in the head and still not die, so she could never be sure. She decided to wait a few minutes, and if he wasn't standing up by then, she'd go and stay in the main room where there were no dead men laying around. Kivana hugged her knees, her eyes still on him.

Daren didn’t immediately die. When the bullet went through his head, he instinctively clenched his jaw as the pain exploded through his skull. But his vision blacked out immediately, and he didn’t even feel the ground come up to meet his back. The cold sensation fell away, the floor fell away, and the world exploded into a dark mist, deafening him and taking him to a lonely, isolated place, where he felt suspended in water, floating in that darkness. His breath gone, his heartbeat gone, the blood still in his veins, Daren was gone, in no more than mind.

Then wind started blowing, a tornado sweeping down upon him and forcing into his lungs. A strike of lightening hit him in the chest, shocking his heart into rhythm again and sending the blood through his limbs, each beat feeling like a hit to the chest with a sledgehammer. The floating sensation was gone, sending him crashing onto the floor once more with pinpricks of light stabbing his eyes. He breathed in slowly, still a bit hard of hearing, but he could catch a crumpling, crunching sound coming from the corner.

Gritting his teeth, he opened his eyes. The sunlight that beamed through the cracks seemed more like blinding fire, but his eyes were adjusting. His head was pounding, and his heartbeat wasn’t helping much. He rolled over, onto his side. “Gah, maybe that wasn’t a good idea.” He muttered. “Next time, aim for the heart. Doesn’t hurt as much.” He glanced down to the floor, where a pool of dark blood had gathered. Meaning his hair was completely drenched. Keeping his head down, he went for the abandoned Tylenol bottle Kivana had left and glanced at her. “I’ll be fine now, don’t have to worry about me biting you or anything.” He smiled a bit. Not to reassure her, but because he felt she would react as many did when they saw his regenerations. Inhuman, they said. Indeed.

Kivana looked at Daren and then at his blood covered shirt, and then at the gun in her hand and last at the blood on the floor where he'd been laying. She felt her body shake as though she were heaviy sobbing, then she felt her skin tighten and close around her body like a gicantic elastic body suit. It was as if she were a snake about to shed its skin. She looked back at Daren, who seemed to be fine. Not like a Green Flu monster, but more like a sane person. She looked back down at the blood on the floor, utterly bewildered. She felt her body lighten one more time before she felt the vomit begin to travel up her throat. She tried hard to stop it, but it wouldn't work. She dropped everything that she'd been holding in her hands and placed them firmly on the floor as she spewed spicy red throw up. It burned her throat like acid reflux and caused her to cough.

Kivana looked up at Daren, her eyes dark with wooziness, her arms and mouth quivering, and her nose twitching. She'd never been one to be able to take in a lot all at once. She'd always either thrown up or passed out when things shocked her too much. When her pet mouse died when she was 6, she'd been out so long that her mother took her to the hospital. Kivana hoped she wouldn't pass out now, but her eyes were slowly rolling around like they usually did before it happened. She looked at her puke on the ground and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, trying to regain herself. She saw a bag of mint flavored candy canes and ripped them open, ready to get rid of the bad smell and disgusting taste in her mouth and bit into one, creating a cracking sound that made her jump.

"Y-you're okay?" she asked Daren, hoping he wouldn't make a huge deal of the vomit on the floor beside her. "I thought I shot you. I thought I killed you good. I got you in the head. Why didn't it work?" she asked, mainly talking to herself. She trusted what Daren had said, that he wasn't an infected man, and that he wouldn't attack her. She had no idea why, but maybe it was the way his voice had sounded when he'd said it, like he'd really genuinely meant. The way the monsters were, they would've immediately lunged at her after regaining full body strength. Kivana sized Daren up, scanning him from head to toe. He looked well, except for the blood that drenched his body and caused him to look like an evil red-head. Kivana chewed her candy-cane more rapidly, wanting closure on the current events.

Daren raised a brow, but went to the corner where the water bottles were setting and took up two. “I’ve seen that reaction before.” He said calmly, using the water to wash out the blood from his hair, bent over the floor carefully. “I’ve seen a lot of reactions when I do that. You got me damn good, right through the head, don’t worry about that.” He wrung out his hair and took up a roll of paper towels near the water, using them to squeeze out what was left. His injuries were gone, though, what was left were a few streams of dried blood on his forehead and face. He used the rest of the paper towels to take care of that.

“Just relax, Kivvie,” he muttered, approaching and sitting near her. He’d given the girl a nickname, just like he did with everyone he met. Ron was Ronnie, Matt was Matty, and so on. “I know it’s a lot to take in. I... Erh... The reason I didn’t, y’know, die, is because... I don’t have a soul. Now, hear me out, okay?” Daren put up his hands, as though to steady her. “I was born in 1605. I got deathly ill. My parents enlisted the help of a longtime friend and alchemist, who use his power to extract my living soul while I was near dead. But because of that, I can’t die, nor can I be killed or age a day. And viruses, including the Green Flu, don’t affect me as drastically as would normal beings.”

He paused, and sighed. “You thought you, as a human, were alone in the world? Many do. They take vampires, werebeings, angels and demons, shapeshifters, and the like, and they say they’re not real, a myth or story to keep things interesting. But they’re real. I mean, I don’t mean to make this horror movie a fantasy, but you should know the truth. My island, Snow Island, is basically a safe haven for these beings, who would be killed or put on display anywhere else. They can live normal there, among their own kind and humans alike. My family colonized the island in 1630, and never looked back. Unfortunately, nonhumans are just as susceptible to the flu as humans. But because I’m a living being with no soul, I’m not. So any time I die, I just... come back.” He glared at the ground. He didn’t care if Kivana believed him or not. The truth hurt, and it hurt him to recount it.

Kivana looked at Daren in a new light. He seemed to have a similar story to her. Not about the whole nonhuman thing, but when he talked about his native land, he seemed to be a little pouty and sad. It reminded her of her childhood, and gave her a flashback.

Kivana was instantly transported to her front porch. She was sitting on it, eating a popsicle and watching the other kids play kickball, a game that she wasn't invited to join in because she couldn't run very fast, but she didn't care for it much anyways.. She didn't mind, though. Although it would feel nice to be asked every once in a while. She looked over at the kids in the playground playing tag around the swings and slides. She continued to eat her cherry popsicle and swat bugs away. She stood up, deciding to go ask to join in since she wasn't very shy, and when she'd asked, they said they were done playing, then when she went back to her porch she could see them running around again. That was the one thing in her life that she would never forget. She could see herself, braces on her teeth and pretty blonde braids down her back and glasses that caused her to look like a story-book nerd. That was the one instance in her life that made her lose the glasses and get contacts, then beg her mom for eye surgery when she turned 17.

She had ditched the braids for rollers and let her hair hang in a wavy style every night. And her braces were taken off when she was 15. She was labeled as a hottie since then, and she'd regained her lost confidence and replaced her wimpy attitude with a toughness people usually found in wrestlers. Although, she never could get rid of her weakling-like ways when she was nervous. She blinked and looked back at Daren, silently wondering if he'd seen the episode but knowing that he hadn't. Although, he probably did see the vacant look on her face.

Kivana bit her lip and finger-combed her hair, hoping that she didn't look like an idiot. She decided to talk about something before he asked about it. "We need to get to Wichita, Kansas by Wednesday. My cousin is there waiting so we can head to Chicago." she said, standing up and looking out of the window threw a wide crack in the wood. It was dead outside, with no show of any living creatures. The smell of her upchuck was beginning to make her light-headed and she sat back down on the side of the room opposite of it.

Daren stared at Kivana for a moment. That look that crossed her face was very familiar, the look someone got when they were thinking back, remembering some past experience or bringing back a memory they’d locked away or thought they’d forgotten. It forced his own memory to return, bashing him in the head with the past. The day he almost died, the day it was almost the end of his reality for good. His parents, standing over him with the white-haired man, genuinely concerned for him for the last time. They were begging the man to save their son, no matter the cost. And he did. Daren was still conscious enough that day to hear their words, but not strong enough to speak his objections.

Often he still felt the sensation of the man reaching his thin, pale hand into his chest, a freezing shudder spasming through him, squeezing the air from his body. And though he’d struggled to get away, writhing under the pain of an enormous pressure crushing his ribs. Then the cold left him, the pressure gone as breath rushed back into his lungs, forcing him to gasp. The pale man had drawn away, hand clutching a semi-solid substance that seemed to drip and radiate a light mist.

He had never seen his soul again after that day.

Looking back to Kivana with the same blank, steady look on his face, he knitted his brow when she mentioned Kansas, then Chicago. “Er, no.” He said stiffly. “No way in hell. I’m headed back to California, I’ll be able to get word to my crew, and they’ll be sending a ferry out for me. There’s no way I can go with you to whatever useless safe haven or overrun city you had in mind. Because whatever it is, it’s probably already been destroyed or taken over.” He stood and crossed his arms, leaning against the closed door.