Lena Falstein
Lena remained on her back, staring at the ceiling. The cold metal floor was unusually relaxing against what skin she had exposed. Her breathing slowed to its normal rate. This felt better than I thought it would. She turned her head to the left and smiled at the figure next to her. The smell was terrible, but he wasn’t going anywhere for a while, if at all, and certainly not with a metal blade sticking out of his head.
Satisfied at her handiwork, Lena sat up. She’d only taken a small scratch, which wasn’t bleeding, but she supposed that even a scratch is all it’d take to turn. Unless these weren’t the viral, blood-borne kind of zombies. Maybe their infection was airborne and she was already turning. But then, wouldn’t she already be feeling something? What would she be feeling, though? So many victims didn’t realize what was happening to them until it was already too late...but those were characters in movies and video games, not like the rotting mass that lay next to her with a prosthetic leg sticking out of his brain. Speaking of which… Lena scooted closer to the dead guy and grabbed hold of her running blade, giving it a light tug. It didn’t move very much. This could be a problem. Lena braced her other leg against the zombie’s shoulder and yanked on the running blade. With an almost cartoon-like “splortch” noise, the running blade broke free of the skull, covered in blood and discolored ichor.
Ugh. Yeah, that’s about what I expected zombie blood to look like. Not having a towel or a sink handy, Lena took the water bottle from her hip pack and poured a bit over the rubber foot of the blade, washing the gunk and grime from it. She carefully looked over the attachment point, which connected to the stub just below her knee, and determined it to be safe to reattach. What remained of her water, she quaffed in a single swallow, placing the empty bottle back into her hip pouch, making a note to refill it as soon as she could. And maybe, in the future, don’t kick zombies. Bleah.
She finally stood back up, using a nearby wall to lean on. From a standing point of view, the dead zombie seemed almost peaceful. Possessed, maybe? Kinda like in that one old video game. Maybe I’m doing these bastards a favor by killing them.
Lena now had the chance to get a better look at the room. She’d led the zombie on a merry chase, not paying much attention to where she was going at all. Now she seemed to be inside an armory of some kind. At least, that’s certainly what the shelving arrangements would indicate. It looked more like it had just been picked clean, probably by a UAC Security team, and what remained were a few dozen empty pistols and a small box of dart-like bullets that didn’t look like they’d fit in the pistols at all. Lena carefully picked up one pistol and looked for some indication of what she’d need to put in it. 12x12mm Airsafe. There was only one box left in the room that bore that label, and it contained exactly enough ammo to load the gun with. She did so with some difficulty and a few pinched fingers.
After making sure the weapon was safetied (by pointing at the dead zombie and trying to pull the trigger), Lena tucked her new Berducci into the waistband of her track shorts. She lamented the fact that she hadn’t had the chance to change out of her running gear, but this was a potential zombie apocalypse scenario, and she argued that she hadn’t any time to waste to get in on the action.
