Story Taking a Leap: The Sniper

twinkie

𝒴𝑜𝓊𝓇 𝓁𝑜𝒸𝒶𝓁 𝒷𝓁𝓊𝑒𝒷𝑒𝓇𝓇𝓎 𝒷𝒶𝒷𝓎~
Roleplay Availability
Roleplay Type(s)
My Interest Check
Tempe

Part One

“This can’t be possible.”
Kendall Shane looked down at her phone. It just simply wasn’t possible. The time was 15:24 on a Wednesday. Or at least, she thought it was a Wednesday. The time was flying nowadays, and it felt like an hour was only a minute. She couldn’t tell what time it was anymore, what month it was, or even the year.
She was hiding in the torn-up remains of her home. A wild storm of infections and diseases swept their way, killing billions of people around the planet. Everyone in her hometown of Tempe, Arizona was dead, lain scattered amongst the streets as rotting corpses. Each time she stepped foot outside, the flies swarmed her body and the gore and carnage were smeared on the asphalt. The cracks in the pavement were spilling with fresh and dried blood. The constant beating sun made matters many times worse. The stench was nauseating; a scent of rotting flesh and cooked meat that had been left out for days. There were crows and other scavengers constantly picking at the remains of the human carcasses. The sight may have made Kendall pass out if she wasn’t used to it, but everywhere she walked, a new body was discovered and another person she once knew was dead. As far as she knew, she was completely alone in the world. Any time she tried to call someone, the call would go straight to their voicemail.
She got up from where she was laying on her tattered couch and stretched, the joints in her arms and back popping. Kendall thought it might be best to scavenge for food yet again, as her stores were running dangerously low. She grabbed her baseball bat and headed out, weary to lock everything up when she left. Her handgun was still inside, but she never brought it along unless she was moving locations. The weapon had limited ammo and there were never any supplies in the towns other than grocery stores. Kendall walked down the street, holding her head up high and alert. While zombies tended to come out at night, there was still a possibility that one or two might become brave and step foot into the sun. Heat radiated off the black asphalt, sweat pouring down her neck and back, staining her shirt
There was debris and garbage fluttering across the landscape in the soft wind. Rotting bodies were littered everywhere she looked. Lights flickered like strobes inside shops and stores. The air was filled with the heavy aroma of death. As she walked, Kendall passed the grave site she created not too long ago. She nodded solemnly for each of the three mounds; one for each of her friends she knew were dead.
“Sally Rekrut” she nodded at the first one
“Xavier Abernathy” she nodded at the second one
The last one she hesitated on, but eventually found the strength to say his name.
“Elix Rose” she nodded at the third one
She turned away and headed to the grocery store at the end of the street. It was a big building, filled to the brim with food, supplies, and basically everything she needed to survive and at least feel a little happy. The best part was that the whole building was perfectly air-conditioned. She had to pry the double doors open once she got there. The automatic part stopped working a few weeks ago, so it had been a struggle to keep going in and out without letting too much of the precious cool air out. Once Kendall was inside, she shut the door quickly and looked around.
The place as a whole was a mess. Cans, plastic bags, shopping carts, and other miscellaneous items were strewn about the destroyed aisles. Random shelves were lopsided and hinges on freezer aisle doors were broken. A few random blood smears were dried on the tile, but all bodies had been removed by Kendall and a pair of disposable latex gloves.
She started rifling through the leftovers. There wasn’t much left anywhere that was still good except for the canned goods. Any grains, produce, and dairies were all rotten and weren’t any good anymore. She picked up a can of chicken soup and almost gagged. It was the only thing she’d been eating for the past few weeks and she was absolutely sick of it. She set the can down slowly and started going through some of the other decent items left.
A squeak of a rubber shoe sole on the tile floor sounded out behind her and she jumped up, baseball bat at the ready. A boy stood there, a few inches taller than her. Dark curly hair and a twisted smirk tracing his lips. He watched her every movement carefully, waiting for her to do something out of the ordinary. He was leaning casually against one of the broken shelves, but his stance showed that he was ready to leap away at the slightest motion. He had a dirty tank top on, which may have been white at some point but was now smudged in grime, a black jean jacket around his waist, and dirty cargo pants with messy boots. A strap crossed his chest and, looking behind him, she could see a rifle. A rifle! God, how she had looked for one! There was only a handgun in her home, so a rifle would be a golden treasure. She read the dog tags around his neck and saw the name “Cypher”. Interesting name.
“Raiding the old grocery store huh? Eesh, that’s embarrassing,” he smirked.
“Sneaking up on people is worse,” she held her bat up, feeling provoked by his sudden appearance at the wicked glint in his eye.
“So dreary around here, what happened? Most of the bodies have been moved at some point or another,” he walked towards her carefully and stared at her, light on his feet as if he were ready to run away at any moment. His hands were up, away from any weapons that he might have been carrying.
“Yours truly cleaned the place. It’s my home, I’m not about to let it go to waste while I’m still here.”
He looked impressed, and she lowered the bat and held out her hand cautiously.
“Name’s Kendall, but you can call me Sparrow.” She held up her own dog tags and showed him the word sparrow stamped into her tag.
“Cool, pilot?” and she nodded “Sweet, whatcha fly?”
“Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor, of course. She was my best girl.”
“Sick ride. Some of the best in commission, no? What happened to her?”
“Went down in a warzone. Chuted before I went down with her,” she remembered the moment sadly. The explosion was hot, but Kendall was just glad that she didn’t go down with it.
“Damn, that sure is a bummer. Name’s Ashton Micheals by the way, and you can call me Cypher. Best hacker and decoder the US Army has to offer.”
“What’re you doing in Tempe? It’s kinda desolate for you to be here.”
He shrugged, shoving his hands deep in his pockets.
“The air conditioning is better here than in NY.”
“Damn, you’re from New York?!”
“Yeah, well what’s left of it anyways. Whole place is a mess.”
“How did you even get here? You were basically on the other side of the country.”
“I got a real weak transmission when I was heading to California. Sounded like a distress call. Came right from Tempe. Couldn’t resist so I came here and I found you.”
“That still doesn’t answer my question! Walking in this heat would have killed you. So how did you get here from the other side of the country?”
Ashton sighed. “I might have stolen one of the RGs and driven over this way.”
Kendall was jealous. There was no equipment here that she could use at all for her benefit. She didn’t even have a transmitter, so where the hell would a distress call come from? And especially an army-grade one that would be picked up on this stranger’s scanners. She finished collecting canned goods from the ground and set them carefully in her duffel bag. Getting up, she walked by Cypher, who started following her. As they walked out into the hot Arizona town, the heat immediately hit them hard. She walked home, conserving as much energy as she could. The heat was intense and the water was scarce. The ground shimmered with the radiating heat waves. The beating sun was at its worst.
Even as Kendall made her way back home, the stranger behind her kept close. His footsteps were quickly catching up to her every time he fell behind. It eventually started to get on her nerves.
“Why are you following me?” Kendall asked, stopping in her tracks and turning on her heel to face her shadow.
“Because you called me here?” he suggested.
“I did no such thing, so if you have any common sense left in there,” she pointed to his forehead, “you might want to get out of Tempe before I shoot you there.” She made a finger gun and made a shooting motion. Her hand fell back at her side and she shrugged the duffel bag over her shoulder. Glancing at her phone again, seeing that she’d been out for longer than she was supposed to.
“Shit, we need to go. It’s dusk,” Kendall pointed to the sky, which was turning a dusty pink mixed with soft shades of orange and purple. A screech sounded out in the distance. Not the kind that was full of pain or sorrow, but rather a sound that made your blood curdle in terror. A sound that only zombies could make. Ashton let out a chuckle at her reaction, but was quickly met with a fist wrapped tightly into the collar of his tank top, pulling him down to where a pissed-off Kendall breathed in his ear,
“If you want to die tonight, be my guest. If you do, I’m taking that RG and your rifle. If you don’t want to die, come with me.”
He looked shocked at Kendall’s harsh words, but she took off at a sprint towards her home. There was no stopping the zombies who heard the loud conversation between the two earlier, though. One of the undead creatures stepped out slowly from between two commercial buildings. It was certainly a gruesome sight.
Its most noticeable trait was how dry its skin was. The colour was shimmering porcelain, the purple tint slightly more noticeable than it normally would be. Veins popped out, the blue greens and purples mixing together. Its skin flaked off in large chunks. Its legs were long and straight. There was no knee, only an unbending bone that ended in a fleshy point where the foot would be. It was almost as if the creature was stumbling along on long stilts. Its arms were spindly and easily its longest appendages. They reached the floor with prolonged fingers. There were no nails, only bloody nail beds. Every muscle in its limbs was pulsating and throbbing, ichor dripping out of some pores. Its torso was caved in, a starved husk of the person it once was. The neck was considerable in length as well, but the head was really the most disturbing part. Only a few greasy strands of straight, dark hair remained embedded in the scalp and there were bloody, pus-filled scabs littering the flesh. The eyes were gone, almost as if they had been gouged out by a wild animal. There was no nose and the mouth was wide, stretching from ear to ear, but completely devoid of any teeth whatsoever.
Kendall held back her vomit at the sight but held back her tears at the odour. If the smells of rancid milk, week-old fish, and unkempt teenager could be mixed together into a meal, that would be how she would describe the disgusting stink.
Before anyone could say anything, the creature hunkered over and started spazzing, its shape became deformed and a few seconds later, it looked like one of the real estate agents from down the block.
“Diana Schrute…” Kendall whispered and glanced at the smiling woman, who waved kindly. If the two hadn’t just witnessed that transformation, Kendall knew that she wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference between Diana and that zombie. The woman was the only person in her neighbourhood with that Kendall didn’t have any direct connection, but she still couldn’t find the willpower in herself to attack.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake…” Ashton grumbled and pulled the rifle from his back, aiming carefully at the woman.
“No, wait!” Kendall shouted and placed her hand on top of the barrel.
“It’s a zombie, Sparrow! We need to get rid of it before it gets rid of us!”
She shook her head. Kendall knew that it was a zombie and that they should kill it, but there was a sense of familiarity and normalcy that came with seeing Diana again. Ashton took her vague look as a sign that he could remove her hand from the weapon. He raised his rifle, took aim, and fired right into the neck.
The creature screamed in agony and fell to the ground, writhing as blood spurted from the wound in its oesophagus. Eventually, it lay still in a puddle of its own murky blood.
“Thank you, but I could have done it myself,” Kendall said slowly.
“In that right state of yours? I really don’t think so,” Ashton scoffed right back and slung his gun onto his back again. “Let’s just head back to your house so you can recuperate and I can figure out how to leave here with my head.”
Kendall nodded at this plan and started back off to her home, which was not too far away. As they walked inside, she took her boots off and set them to the side. After bolting the door shut and making sure the window bars were still secure, she was finally able to settle back onto the tattered couch.
Little did either of them know, though, Kendall had stepped in the zombie’s blood. While most of the blood had dried on her boots, a droplet of the gore had splattered onto her leg. The liquid seeped into her skin, making its way through her body, contaminating every living cell it could find.
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Back
Top