In My Blood (Completed)

CHAPTER 1: Stranger or Savior

Beca should've been hungry. They hadn't eaten in two days, after all. But after finding no fucking game in the woods they'd been inhabiting for a week and a half, she had no choice but to take the bike and set off to find food. At the very least, she'd get a few hours' reprieve from Amy's bitching about starving to death or Jesse looking at her with those helplessly worried puppy eyes--the sort that always made her feel equal parts shitty and guilty and frustrated. She knew they both cared about her. She just wished they didn't.

As she rode off on her black triumph motorcycle in search of rations at sunset, clad in her leather jacket and black v-neck t-shirt beneath, ripped jeans with her trusty combat boots laced up to her knees, she contemplated for the eight thousandth time leaving Amy and Jesse. They'd be pretty helpless without her hunting and fighting skills, but she'd been beyond shitty company for the past 6 months especially and besides, what the fuck was the point of staying alive anymore? Surviving wasn't living. Beca couldn't remember the last time she lived, and honestly? She was fucking tired.

But her companions needed food and she made them a promise to get some, so she followed a ways behind a pickup truck which led her to what looked like a warehouse not too far from the road. She parked her bike and ducked behind a dumpster to survey the scene. She crouched and moved behind a broken down Buick, quietly making her way closer to the warehouse until she found a window. Beca peered through and watched the scene unfold--a group of people running what appeared to be a pop-up mini-marketplace, clearly desperate to unload their goods. Beca knew well that these types of places were like ticking fucking time-bombs, but if she could get in and out quickly, that would be good enough. She watched as three men and a younger girl entered and spread out, shopping around in the bins of supplies and pilfered canned food. The rumbling of a truck engine had Beca ducking behind the car once more, peering up as she watched five guys with assault rifles pile out of an armored jeep. "Shit," Beca hissed as the scavengers took out the guards with relative ease and raided the market, yelling commands and firing shots (and being way too fucking loud, the morons). It would only be a matter of minutes before--

The clickers staggered inside while the scavs filled sacks with stolen goods, nondiscriminatory in their quest for human flesh. Chaos ensued, and Beca turned to leave until the piercing shriek of the younger girl echoed through the warehouse and carried through the crack in the window. "Holy shit--" Before she hesitated again, Beca steeled herself, climbed up and used her boot to kick in the window, hopping into the fray. Armed to the teeth with both a hunting rifle and sheathed machete slung across her back, a pistol on one hip and a revolver on the other, and a switchblade tucked safely into her boot, Beca pumped her shotgun and fired at one of the clickers, the headshot dropping the diseased to the ground immediately. She fired another--this time at a scav who raised his gun to the girl, hitting him square in the back. When he dropped to the ground, Beca raced around and took the girl by the arm, pulling her behind a barrel. "Stay down, kid." The fighting ensued, and Beca fought with her shotgun until she needed to reload, swapping for her revolver instead. Gritting her teeth, she dodged a flaming projectile and fired at a clicker from her knees.

She retreated back to the barrel and took the girl by the wrist, tugging her along. "Keep your head down. Jesus, you're taller than I thought," she mumbled, pulling her toward the temporary path she'd cleared en route to the warehouse doors. She turned her head just in time to watch a scav fire at them. Beca took the younger, taller girl around the middle and put her own body between the kid's and the bullet, taking the hit instead. Adrenaline pumping, Beca pulled a knife from her belt and flung it true, the blade piercing the scav's neck. "Let's get the fuck out of here." Still holding tight to the girl's wrist, they raced outside toward Beca's bike. "Get on," Beca commanded, and the girl hurriedly obliged.