The sun shown through the boarded windows of the house, Grendel stood up from his post in the chair and peered out of the windows looking for signs of these 'walkers' that Sophia warned him about. In all honesty these creature seemed to be scourgages of Nurgle, they sure looked like them, but they don't seem to speak or have any form of intellect.
How the military of this world hasn't been able to wipe out these walking bags of filth is beyond him, they are so slow and just plain out unintimidating creatures. Humanity as a whole seemed week before the Emperor, he could see why keeping the Imperium strong was a high priority.
Sofia stirred in the cabinet, she painstakingly crawled out of the small cupboard and saw Grendel staring out of the window, "Good moring." She called with a smile stretching, Grendel turned his hea and nodded to her before turning back to the window, "Whatever..." The girl walked over to the Krieger trying to see out the window but it was too high, "What c'ha looking at?" Grendel glances down to Sophia, "Watching for those 'walkers' that you are afraid of."
"Aren't you afraid of the walkers too Mr. Grendel?" He turned away from the window over to where his lasrifle laid on top of a coffee table, "The Death Korps know no fear." He went into the kitchen and came out with two open cans of pudding, "I found these and some crackers, we'll eat and then search for your family."
Sophia smiles recieving the food and sits down with Grendel at the dinner table, she was about to dig into hers as she saw Grendel removing his helmet and mask. She clasped her hands over her mouth seeing an augmented eye and an emotionless face.
"What?" He asked noticing her reaction, "Your- what is that thing?" Grendel felt where his left eye was and nodded, "You don't have augumentations here." She noddeds her head staring at his robotic eye, "I had sustained an injury that required me to get this augumentation. With this eye I can see in the dark, see heat signatures or even into structures."
Sophia's hands came downfrom her mouth, "That's pretty cool, you're like a cyborg! Carl will like that." Grendel shrugged his shoulders wanting to end this conversation and eat before setting out on a long journey to hopefully find this girl's family.
After eating their meager breakfast Grendel and Sophia departed from the house deciding to not return to the house because of its questionable lack of defenses, much to Sophia's dismay but she didn't voice her complaints as Grendel didn't look like he was the type of person to really care for complaints.
"So, this Mr. Grimes said to keep the Sun on your left shoulder?" She nods enthusiastically and points past some trees, "And to keep going straight that way." Grendel nods following her directions to what was called a 'free way', he stops and kneels pulling Sophia down, "Hey wha-!?" He covers her mouth and looks around and spots several walkers drifting around.
Sophia pulls his gloved hand off her mouth and whispers near his ear, "Now what do we do?" Grendel didn't respond, instead he picked her up and sent her up a tree, he croutched down and unsheathed his Mono Knife and started to sneak behind the walkers.
Sneaking around wasn't exactly a skill for a Krieger but desperate times call for desperate measures, Grendel clasped his hand around a walker's throat an stabbed upwards into it's skull. The knife went through the creature as if the skull was wet sand, surprising Grendel pleasantly when he dropped the corpse and repaeted the same to the other walkers.
He wipes his knife off on one of the corpse's clothing and limps back to Sophia who was watching with fascination and a tinge of disguest, "Ew." She commented seeing some blood splatter on the Krieger's great coat, "Such is a minor cost in war." 'Honestly,' He thought, "It's just a little bit of blood, it's not like I haven't been drentched in it before.'
For hours they followed Sophia's directions and several times they had to stop to deal with a number of walkers, they frankly hadn't made any real progress even though they were far from the house they were staying at. With night descending Grendel decided that they needed to camp out in the trees.
He had managed to get Sophia in a tree safely and sat against a trunk with her lying on his shoulder him, needless to say he felt uncomfortable with Sophia lying against him, it felt strange not being with thousands of other men and women like him. So why was this so uncomfortable?
He waved the thoughts away and stared at the area around them in the tree, 'It's quiet for now, but that doesn't mean there won't be any trouble minutes from now.' Working under that thought Grendel spent another night staring, waiting for any sort of trouble to make its presence known.
The sunshine of morning broke from the tree line waking Sophia, she looked up and saw Grendel looking around and glancing down at her, "Morning." She said drowsily rubbing her eyes, no answer as expected, 'Not a morning person apparentlly.'
Grednel jumped with Sophia in his arms to the ground, he rehooked his flak jaket's breastplate and armed himself with his lasrifle, "Let's get a move on." He said monotonesly.
Sophia walked beside him and began to wonder, 'What will the others think of this guy when we show up? He is kind of scary looking, very intimidating, and just didn't seem very sociable whenever he spoke.'
'What will her mother think seeing this very scary looking man walking towards them? What if they accidently shoot him? Sure he wasn't all too nice but he didn't have to save her let alone keep her relativily happy.' Her thoughts left all of her concetration when she laid her eyes upon the highway.
Grendel hurried after Sophia as soon as she started sprinting towards the highway yelling for her mother, needless to say she looked disappointed, if not broken when she didn't see any signs of her group, "Where are they? T-they couldn't have left without m-m-me." She fell to her knees and began to sob out of control.
The Krieger looked at the girl with confusion, he didn't know what he could do, no one ever did this in the Imperium to his knowledge, this definantly never happened in the Death Korps. Sophia sat there for a full minute sobbing, while Grendel just stood there and watched her, "Where... do you think... they went?" She asked wiping her face.
Grendel looked at the ground where she said the caravan had stopped and he started to follow the skids, he looked around some cars where he found a note, "They left you this letter."
Sophia took the letter and started reading, not more than a second later she smiled and jumped with joy, "They didn't forget me!" She ran into Grendel with a hug, recieving a cocked glance from the man, "Sorry, I forgot you don't understand hugs."
The sound of a rifle discharge in the distance caught their attention, "I believe we may find your people that way." grendel said motioning Sophia to follow him.
