Play Dead || Josie
If there is one thing Josie Jones does well, it’s fighting. Perhaps it’s always something she’s exceeded in, life resembling something closer to a war zone than any fond memory. Even before the world ended, or whatever it is that’s happening. She doesn’t ever tend to think of it as the end of the world. Just a shift - the Earth decided the human race had enough of being the royalty of the food chain. Knock their egos down a few pegs.
Some of the members of this small group can hold their own in a fight. And others can’t. She doesn’t bother with any of them, no teaming up to help one another or even rescue a few individuals struggling to take out an easy target. It’s survival of the fittest. It’s always been survival of the fittest and any unfortunate soul weak enough to believe differently should die off. For the sake of the species.
Josie plunged the blade of her knife into the eye of a groaning, decaying skull - brown gunk that might’ve once been brain matter spewing from the wound and decorating her arm in Pollock-like designs. It gurgles before slumping to its knees with a harsh thunk that may have cracked bones. It lacks the life to stand and therefore the blonde doesn’t think on it further. She just presses forward, a gun strapped to her hip but it isn’t her weapon of choice. She prefers to get her hands dirty, knives clenched tightly in either fist and only adrenaline keeping her warm from the harsh winter sun barely able to warm the planet. It’s only benefit is providing light on her targets.
And that is a great benefit. Enough to make her smile at the walker shambling towards her.
Cian had been fed, and on top of that, he’d had some good conversation as well. Turned out the snarling, blonde watchdog was one of the worst. He hadn’t met everyone but he had met enough to realize the group was survivors but not fighters. It probably took people like Josie Jones to keep them alive this long, and he wondered if she embraced or resented that. He wasn’t entirely sure why he cared to even think of her, other than he felt oddly invested in her story. Maybe it was a kind of imprinting, like when a baby kitten believes a gorilla to be it’s mother because it’s who it saw first. Cian snorted, imaging Josie as a gorilla toting around a tiny kitten.
There was a flurry of motion and the sound of shouting near the front doors. Cian shoved his way forward to see that they had been found by the undead. He had gotten maybe five days of peacefulness, but that was fine. He was rested and rejuvenated and felt a little more alive than he had in a while. Turning around, he sprinted towards the stairs, away from the front doors. A few of the people who had bothered to learn his name shouted for him to come back. They probably thought he was abandoning them, but that wasn’t it at all. Heading to the 2nd floor, he found a window overlooking the furthest stretch of roof covering the outside vestibule. Using the butt of the rifle he had almost exchanged just to be here, he broke the glass and climbed out, careful not to slip in the ice and snow. He hay have been harder to break now, but falling off a roof would still fuck him up for enough time that the things below could get to him.
From this vantage point he had no problem aiming and firing, taking out the walkers getting too close to those fighting on the ground. It didn’t matter that there was icy snow bleeding through the denim of his jeans as he kneeled on the rooftop. In fact he felt nothing but the welcome ache of familiarity. He’d had a sharp eye for killing before the world had agreed that he’d be in need of one. The blood splattering on the snow wasn’t the warm, red he’d once shed and there would be no lies to tell about where he’d been.
His shots were coming quicker if only because a certain blonde was pushing out further and further, like a child anxious to tread into deeper water, trusting themselves that they would be pushed back to shore safely. Cian worried about the tide pulling her further out. She was capable, damn near graceful in how she dispatched the monsters in front of her. They were coming faster, more than it had originally seemed. As one kept up behind her, Cian took aim and blew it’s brains out.
Literally, he watched as rotten brains sprayed across the back of the blonde’s head. He raised a hand and shouted down to her. “Mind the spray, luv!”















