Think before you act, Marnie. It was something had been said to her enough times that the sentence had become meaningless. But it wasn’t that her mind fell deaf to its definition, it was that the instruction had been so ineffectual it became instinct to disobey. Think before you act, they said, as if action and thought were mutually exclusive. Marnie disagreed. In fact, she found that her mind moved fastest when her body moved with it, ideas surging with the steps of her feet.
Her head had been humming a song from the old days, some remnant of a pre-bullshit world. They said all teenagers scare the living shit out of me. Marnie glanced at the woman at her side. They could care less as long as someone’ll bleed. Six, her fingers said. So darken your clothes. Six people. Four raiders. One rando. One ardent teenager with two hands gripped tightly around a heavy wooden nail bat, feet poised for the lunge. Or strike a violent pose.
Maybe they’ll leave you alone—
A low grunt escaping through grit teeth, Marnie charged at the nearest raider — Steve? — swinging her bat HARD into his kneecaps, grabbing the pistol from his belt as he crumpled in pain. Had she ever held a gun before? No, but Marnie supposed she played enough Call of Duty to know how to use one. With two swift pulls of the trigger, the pistol fired twice onto Steve’s thigh, until Marnie leveled the barrel of of the gun to the red-haired woman attempting to pull a rifle from her back.
— but not me.
For a split second, eyes glanced at the fallen raider groaning in pain. Blood leaked out of the bullet holes, an ugly, vibrant shade of red. Marnie’s face contorted in disgust. “Yikes. Sorry, dude,” she said, though she only half meant it. Kinda served him right for cheating on his boyfriend ( no, Marnie WASN’T eavesdropping ! ). Eyes fell back on the woman with the rifle, and without tearing her gaze away, she called at the survivor behind her. ❝ Yo, lady? ❞ she cried. ❝ You gonna do something or what? ❞
the world was full of unpredictable people and it was a doomed art to attempt to master their behavior. the little boxes they’d built their lives around lay in ruins and their own kin hunted them with hungry teeth and empty hearts. now those little boxes on hillsides were their tombs, quilts of mundane lives their shrouds. if hunter had not understood the unpredictable actions of people BEFORE the outbreak, she certainly had surpassed her old knowledge now. a survivor since birth and now a woman alone--a hermit of her own making--she survived by predicting the unpredictable when she could, and having patience when she didn’t.
the other survivor was a brash girl, anger flowing through her veins and rippling off her in waves. anger could be productive--it had kept hunter and her mother going for a time when they’d first been expelled from the compound. but anger burned hot and bright before it burned up and left nothing but ashes in its wake. it was the sin of her father, her brother and this girl before her. bow drawn, hunter watched quietly as the blonde led the charge--arrow trained on the angry girl’s victim in the event of a turn of tides. even just a girl, she was VIOLENCE and hunter saw the raw potential of someone who might teeter on the edge between enjoying the fray and indulging in death. a quiet smile
the smile faded underneath the groaning man who lay broken at a blonde girl’s feet. footsteps rang behind the woman under the aim of the gun and hunter made quick work of loosing arrows into the skulls of the men who had both chosen to follow her into the woods and to follow her again to the source of the scuffle. she felt a tinge of sorrow in having snuffed such primal loyalty from the world, but it faded easily against the memory of their wrongdoings. the smirk returned though at the heckling. no one could rival jesse andersen when it came to talking shit, but she appreciated the effort nonetheless.
doing the man a kindness, hunter answered the girl with a silent arrow between his eyes. a man of many sins, the archer did not believe in letting strangers suffer for long. never one to refrain from her own modest showmanship, hunter let loose the arrow for the rifle woman’s hand as she made for the gun yet again. blood arched across the side of the woman’s head, but hunter had not made to pierce the hand. instead, a hefty gash cut its way through the back of her hand. hunter threw the bow over her shoulder, unsheathing her kukri and made her way closer, eliminating the jilted lover with an artful slive of the throat.
“sit.” she told the rifle woman. alive, the woman would give up more information than dead. if the group belonged to a larger camp or if they had caches throughout the cheyenne outskirts. “give the girl your rifle.” hunter didn’t care much for guns, though she owned several. there was an elegance to archery and combat, and a silence, that firearms lacked. ANYONE could pick up a gun and take a life. hunter refused to become just anyone. as much as she hated him, she was still tyr andersen’s daughter--something much more than a weak will behind a big gun.
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