Apocalypse # 1
Title: Outcasted Engineer
Summary: Cynthia's well known in the apocalyptic country as one of the last remaining chemical engineers. However, she's also known to be particularly anti-social with her strained relationship with the leader of one of the largest survival groups. Besides that, she's rumored to have a hidden relationship with the lead field scavenger Leon and is known to disappear for hours on end with no one catching even a glimpse of her. However, the tables have turned. It's now up to Cynthia to push past her strained relationship with Holly and do something for the greater good of all the survivors.
Main Characters: Cynthia, Brittany, Leon
Outcasted Engineer
Cynthia ~ 26
Leon ~ 25
Rapid knocking on the door of the safe house and Cynthia's personal base awoke the chemical engineer who everyone knew rarely enjoyed having other people around since after her father was killed and her friend essentially left her to die. She was only friends with a few people, Breanna Grayas and Jay Bramble mainly, while it was rumored that she and Leonardo Bramble, a man belonging to a different survivor group, were in a relationship despite Cynthia's strained relationship with the group he belonged to. Cynthia had known all three of them since she was a teen during the earlier stages of the outbreak. Those who grew up around her and the Brambles knew that Cynthia's parents, in exchange for a favor and a promise, had promised her to Leon on top of everything else. However, nowadays Cynthia was rarely seen with him and his sister, more commonly seen with his cousin Jay and Jay's fiance Bree who was working with her to create a mass produced cure for the outbreak that would also return living infected back to normal humans.
Cynthia blinked open her sapphire blue eyes and sat up, pushing the blankets off and registering that Leon had left at some point during the night. She picked up the beat up pistol her father had carried before he was killed along with the slim dagger like knife she carried around with her usually tucked into her front jeans pocket. Cynthia tapped on the device on her wrist, which flickered to life and showed what exactly was banging on her door at six in the morning. Brittany again, she rolled her eyes, that younger woman got in more trouble than she had ever seen someone else get into and most people came to her for help. Despite how she was tempted to leave the door shut and let the infected following her get to her, she pressed a small button on her wrist device and activated the electric fence she had turned off to conserve power and went toward the door. "Brittany," she spoke through the door as she reached it, "what did I tell you last time you woke me up banging at my door at six thirty?"
"Not to do it," The Survivor Runner responded breathlessly, "but I need your help!"
"With what?" Cynthia leaned casually against the door, waiting patiently for her to explain herself. The isolated survivor was wearing shorts and a t-shirt, both of which were clean thanks to her chemical solutions mixed with some of Bree's technology. Cynthia's base was a two-story suburban house that had a large basement and bunker, with a white picket fence looking fence encasing a massive yard and a front and back porch,. The outside was a work in progress, currently being painted by Cynthia to be a light shade of blue that wouldn't chip off or get dirty from the infected outside of the fence and sometimes in her yard. The inside looked like it would if there wasn't an outbreak, everything was pristine and clean, without a trace of blood or dirt anywhere. Cynthia had spent years creating specialized chemicals and synthesizing cleaning supplies from her chemical work and with the aid of some of Bree's technology. It was something that set her apart from everyone else if someone was looking for "The Chemist" it was rather easy to find if they were in the right city. Cynthia's base could be seen from a mile away from its clean paint, and massive yard with different kinds of fruit trees and other plants in the backyard. She helped other people with their bases too, just not very often, instead she often times went around in her small reinforced army truck with food and supplies for the smaller groups and loners.
"There's a small family trapped in a basement from Thunder's explosion of one of the Infected nests, they have a small child who's been bitten and has less than an hour before she turns on her parents and older brother. The father's leg is pinned beneath a steel beam and I don't have to equipment to cure her, free him, and perform an emergency amputation so I can take him and his family to Bree and Jay's group." Brittany responded quickly, "please Cynthia, you're the closest one to the nest and the trapped family."
Cynthia pulled open the door and pulled the trigger of her pistol a few inches to Brittany's left of her head, killing an infected that had gotten past her fence. "Stay here, did you run over here or bring a buggy?" A buggy was a device Bree had widely distributed to any survivor she could find over the years, it was a small golf cart-sized car with metal beams that make up the cabin, and are outfitted with an invisible force field, allowing the drivers to drive through infected hordes and not be bitten. While the buggies were perfect for a small mission, they weren't fast and as powerful as an actual car, and Cynthia owned an army truck that she and Bree had reinforced and increased its performance since they were teens.
"Buggy," Brittany confirmed as she stepped into the base and stood in the entryway, watching as Cynthia moved around and gathered the gear she would need.
"Put this on it," Cynthia tossed her a small disc-like device before she disappeared up the stairs to change her clothes, mainly just her pants.
Brittany caught it and did as she asked, going over to her buggy which was in Cynthia's driveway next to the army truck and attaching the device to the small vehicle. Of which shimmered for a brief second and changed to be all white, a sign of it working.
Cynthia emerged from the house a second later, a backpack strapped to her back and wearing blue jeans with her pistol holstered at her right thigh, knife strapped her left arm, and a specialized rifle strapped to her backpack. "It makes it lighter," she explained the device's function as she grasped two lower bars of the buggy's frame and lifted the vehicle into the back of the army truck before she pulled the cloth covering down and hooked it into place. "Get in the truck Brittany," she then said as she removed the backpack from her back and tossed it into the back of the truck and shut the back door before jogging back to her base to shut the door.
Brittany quickly yanked open the front passenger door and got in, buckling her seatbelt by the time Cynthia returned and slid into the truck. She often wished that she had all the cool stuff Cynthia had, it would make everything so much easier. She belonged to a group called The Wandering Leaves, with most of the people she, Cynthia, and the Brambles had grown up with. Breanna was her younger sister, someone everyone who knew about her adored. And it was just her luck that she belonged to the group that Cynthia flat out refused to help with her past with it and who was leading it. Leon belonged to the group too, but everyone knew that he was special and very lucky. It was rumored that the two of them were in love, and a few people speculated that Leon was actually the reason behind Cynthia helping out her community now and not continuing to stay at home all the time.