Perhaps We'll Meet Another Day

Somebody I Once Knew

"Brittany..." Lexi started quietly, taking a few steps forward as if approaching a dangerous animal, "what happened?"

She looked down at herself with a sigh, eyes tired. "Let me get this stuff off me first, please. I've been walking in it for like an hour."

Without so much as a word of explanation, the woman unceremoniously set the three bags on the ground and left the room with three water bottles from her group's box. Well...now just her box, Lexi thought to herself morosely. It left her with an uneasy, tight feeling in her chest.

She stared down at the packs on the ground, recognizing them as Candice's and Natalya's. One of the straps was frayed and nearly ripped off from where it had been sewed into the back, dangling by several threads. That hadn't been there before they'd left on their mission this morning.

They were also flecked with blood of both black and red, but these clues didn't really tell the brunette anything about the events that had taken place. All they had to go on was what Brittany eventually told them, unfortunately.

Law's group grew eerily quiet while the other woman was away. They didn't like the reminder that going out there could mean their deaths, and they were all trying to process the fact that the two other women they'd been hanging around with were just suddenly gone. They may not have trusted them entirely, but they were still people. To know that two lives were just snuffed out...

"I can't believe they're gone." Shachi muttered unemotionally, still trying to wrap his brain around it.

Penguin let out a breath. "That's the world as it is now, I guess...never know when you'll see someone for the last time."

"She just lost her whole group. I wonder what Brittany is feeling right now." The redhead went on to say.

Law scoffed under his breath, but no one remarked on it. Clearly, they didn't need to ask to know what he thought. Without much else to say, they descended into another silence.

She emerged from down the hallway about ten minutes later, her skin devoid of any remnants of blood. Her clothes were a different issue, and would probably never really be clean again. The unfortunate effect of not being able to do laundry anymore. She sat down next to the bags and looked around at the others.

"Candice and Natalya are dead. I'm sure you've gathered that." She spoke blandly, as if she'd distanced herself from the truth. "They were eaten."

"What happened?" Lexi urged, not liking how unemotional she sounded when it came to the loss of her two friends.

Brittany crossed her arms and leaned back against the way. "We went to a hardware store I saw when you and I got all that water. Thought there might be something useful inside. Maybe some propane or something.

"We searched around a bit but didn't find much. Then we found this locked door, and Candice thought it would have good stuff on the inside that others couldn't get to. We used some of the metal shelving to break it open, but there were a ton of zombies on the inside instead."

She shook her head. "We'd broken the lock and knob, so the door wouldn't shut. We ran out as fast as we could, but there were a lot of them. Candice got caught, and when Natalya went back to try to save her, she got bitten too. The only thing I could do was run. They were being torn apart behind me, there was nothing I could do."

"Jeez, Brittany..." Penguin started, shaking his own head sadly. "That's terrible."

Lexi glanced at Shachi and saw a similar sympathetic expression. They believed her. But part of Lexi was still wondering how she managed to come back with all three bags. That scenario didn't leave room for explanation.