Author's Note: These first two chapters were initially published in the one-shot collection. But I figured that since I was writing a third chapter (and possibly more), I should probably make it its own story. So…these first two chapters are a re-post for continuity. Third chapter is new. Lemme know what you think.

-Parkerbear 16 January 2024

Content and Trigger warnings: Zombies. Guns.

Chapter 1: White Knight Complex

"No," Kyoko Mogami said under her breath. She was surrounded. She could hear their growls, could smell the fetid stench that accompanied them. There were a dozen she could dispatch quickly, she was sure, perhaps another two-dozen more behind them.

Damn that Ghoul bastard. If it hadn't been for him, she would be well on her way home now, safe and sound. If it weren't for him, she wouldn't be injured and limping along on an ankle that was either broken or sprained.

Ugh.

And damn that stupid Sho. His mother had begged her to take care of him, even as the light faded from her eyes. Kyoko had promised and then had decapitated her to ensure she didn't re-animate. Her son was a self-centered, bratty, impulsive little idiot, but they'd grown up together. Maybe she was an idiot too. But if putting up with a useless man-child was what she needed to do to stay in a compound with two-story walls, a well, and a hydroponic farm, then she would do it. Their compound had been built by Sho's pre-Zero prepper father and she knew she'd never be able to replicate its systems or its security if she left.

She should have stayed firm and refused when he asked her for more wiring—he was just going to use it for another one of his stupid vanity projects anyway.

She sighed.

Now? Now the best she could hope for was to use her rifle to get rid of the Walkers in between her body and the nearest securable building before they got close enough to infect her.

She knew that using the rifle was a risk—the sound of the gunshot would only call attention to more of them. But she didn't have a choice. Her injury would keep her from being truly effective in close combat. She was sure she could take care of one or two Walkers in a close fight, but with her ankle the way it was, she'd be doomed if the Walkers swarmed. At least I should be able to keep a bullet for myself, she thought grimly. The sidearm wouldn't be as powerful as the AR, anyway. Best to keep the 9mm on reserve. Just in case.

She looked down and gave herself a quick assessment. She had fifty rounds of the .223 strapped on, some in spare clips, some in her bandolier. The two katanas she traveled with were still strapped to her back. No molotovs, though. Those had been in the pack that had been strapped to the motorcycle that Reino bastard had stolen.

That asshole had left her stranded in the middle of the City without a viable means of escape before whooping out loud. It was a noise he knew would bring the Walkers upon her. She supposed he could have simply taken her bike and left her none the worse for wear, but no. He'd decided to bring the Walkers down on her in a move made out of pure spite.

She breathed in and then out. Crouching, she looked through her crosshairs and the nearest Walker, fired, targeted, and then shot again. When the four Walkers who'd been in the immediate area keeled over, she drew herself up, wincing at the pain in her ankle, and then began limping over to what looked like the most securable building.

After that, who knew?

It was entirely possible she was choosing her own gravesite.

=.=.=

The shock and report of a gunshot drew all of their eyes to the horizon. Ren Tsuruga motioned stop to Yashiro, who'd drawn driving duty that day. Their electric vehicle came to a stop as the four men surveyed the otherwise silent city lying before them like a corpse slowly being picked clean.

Recon Team 6 was two days out from LME Central for an unplanned mission. They'd come built for speed, not combat—stealth was the order of the day. They were going to come into the city, scavenge the requested amount of copper requested by Infrastructure, and then head back out immediately. The rover was armored but light, capable of surmounting the buckled highways and most of the blasted-out streets. It would be good enough to withstand an attack by bands of Walkers, sure, but not a swarm of them.

The City had been a thriving metropolis once. Back then, it gleamed—a citadel shining over a flat plain, full of gleaming skyscrapers that glowed like lanterns in the night. Ren was just old enough to remember it—he'd only been ten years old on Day Zero. Now, the skyscrapers were empty skeletons. Those that hadn't fallen in the chaos that followed now stood devoid of their glass. And the City which had once teemed with life teemed with the dead, instead.

What remained of humanity had scattered. Some banded together in small communes. Others fled for the countryside, keeping their families close and the rest of the world at bay. A very few went to live as far away from others as possible. Those that remained in the cities without plan or organization were quickly inundated, their bodies re-animating two or three days after exposure and then quickly joining the horde of Walkers after infecting the rest of their immediate family. Walkers generally stayed where they converted—generally, they did not make their way across the highways. It had been something that had been a boon to those who'd managed to escape the contagion.

LME had been one of the groups that had formed a commune, and thanks to Lory Takarada's benevolent dictatorship, it was the largest and most visible of the communes, thriving while others fell into themselves with infighting. And now they'd begun rebuilding their own village, a settlement that was self-sufficient and yet offered some of the long-lost comforts they still remembered.

The crew in the car heard a second gunshot, and then a fourth.

Unusual, that.

LME had a great deal of ammunition locked in their armory. But most people did not. Four gunshots was a great deal to waste on a situation that might not be dire.

"Yashiro," Ren said.

"Ren." The older man looked at him with reproach in his eyes. "You know we can't deviate from the plan. This was a grab-and-go, and you know it."

"Those gunshots were just around the corner," Ren said. "And you know we haven't gotten a full quota on that copper."

"And by now whoever that is is being swarmed," Yashiro said. "You know that as well as I do."

Ren looked at him with a clear-eyed gaze and Yashiro swallowed. This was that look that people talked about from this young man. Leave it to your conscience, it said. Could you live with yourself if you left another human to die like that?

Sighing, he relented. "Fine," he said. "I'll send out the recon drone to see what the situation is. You set up the audio drone for the diversion."

=.=.=

Kyoko had managed to make it into what looked like some kind of tollbooth. She'd been too young to remember life pre-Zero, but she'd been told what it was anyway. The concrete structure measured a scarce six-foot square, but it had a metal door and metal bars on the window. She was lucky it had been so near. If she kept being lucky, the Walkers wouldn't climb on top of it to pry apart the roof. At least the metal bars were embedded into the concrete. She understood that structures like this were made to collect 'money' from people 'parking' their vehicles on that lot. Confusing, but then a lot of the world pre-Zero was confusing.

It was a good structure to die in. Oh, she could hold out here fine…for a few hours, maybe, provided that the Walkers didn't swarm. But she had no food or water, and her ankle was sprained or broken and useless. She supposed she could try for snow melt whenever she was more confident she wouldn't be swarmed, but what would happen after that?

She supposed she could try to make her ankle a splint from the remains of a table that had been here in years past. She was about to start when she heard them.

It was what she'd been dreading her entire life. Ever since the death of her mother, she'd dreamed of being trapped in a swarm of Walkers. Who would decapitate her? No one. It was a grim situation, no matter how she looked at it. She braced herself, deciding that the space underneath the ruined table would conceal her best.

She was past the point of fighting, now. Gunshots would just increase the swarm; the space was far to small for her to wield her blades.

=.=.=

"Oh no," Ren said. He was viewing the drone's feed behind Yashiro's shoulder. The shooter was a girl. A beautiful girl, maybe five foot three, a cute heart-shaped face and…a ton of ammo. She had a rifle. And swords.

She had swords.

Something in him found that inexplicably awesome.

He watched as she shot the Walkers coming for her across the square in quick succession—tac-tac-tac. She was an excellent shot—he watched as the Walker heads exploded like so many rotten pumpkins with every squeeze of her trigger. And then, with a start, he watched as she limped into the tiny concrete structure in the middle of the square. He supposed it was a good choice. Well, not good, he supposed. It was simply the best choice available. She wasn't close enough to any other building's entrance; and none of those buildings were defensible anyway.

They watched as she crawled into it and secured the door as best she could.

They also watched the screen as the swarm began to form, drawn by the sound of gunshots in the parking lot.

"Yashiro, she's hurt," he said.

"Has anyone ever told you you have a white knight complex, Ren?" the man asked.

"You can't possibly be implying we ought to leave her here."

"The swarm is already starting."

"And if you move quickly enough, we can set off the audio diversion and get there before they pry her out of that hut," he said.

Yashiro shook his head but Ren knew he'd never let another human being die like that if he could help it.

Their little armored craft started moving on its silent motor as Ren piloted the drone to the other side of town.

=.=.=

Kyoko was curled up into a small ball with her head in her hands. She could hear them outside—the guttural moaning, the squelching sounds of their flesh. She could even hear the gnashing of their teeth, somehow still intact in skulls that somehow never quite finished rotting. She had her handgun in her hand—it would buy her time, at least. Or buy her peace. She didn't quite know what.

She heard the rebar on the window creak and braced herself. It would be time, soon.

She took a deep breath and braced herself. She could handle this. She could. She would. She must.

She bit back a scream as a hand burst through what remained of the glass pane on the window. She would die courageously—she was determined.

She was going to go down fighting. Every single bullet was going to go into a Walker skull. She wasn't going to die without leaving a mountain of Walker corpses behind her.

She brought up the rifle again, her hand on the trigger, when a burst of music made her jump.

Somewhere to the southeast of her, there was something playing the reveille on a bugle at very high volume. She saw the Walkers around her freeze and then look towards it—it didn't take much to distract them, and something this loud was certain to.

Who!? she thought.

But mere minutes later, she knew.

The Walkers had departed to go towards the sound. She'd hidden again as soon as she heard it. There was no real strategic thought to them. All they wanted was to infect, infect, infect, and they reacted towards whatever stimuli had distracted them last.

The square had emptied and she ventured a cautious glance out the window.

There was a vehicle there. Something she'd never seen before, running on a nearly silent engine. She nearly hid again when a hatch popped from the top, revealing the most beautiful human she'd ever seen. He had dark brown eyes framed by unruly brown hair, a slightly worried smile gracing a perfectly proportioned face. But she stayed crouched, unwilling to budge from her defensive position. There were dangers other than Walkers in the City. She wasn't going to give up her place of relative safety just because some freehold crew had found her—there were fates worse than death, and she was planning on avoiding those.

"That diversion will keep them away for now," the man said. He smiled, and she was afraid she'd go blind. "We're Recon Team 6 from LME Central. A freehold west of here, Miss—"

"Mogami," she said. "Kyoko Mogami."

"I'm Ren Tsuruga," he responded. "Look, I know you can't trust us, but we saw that you were hurt. We can help. I'd offer to take you back to wherever your bunker is, but then we wouldn't have enough energy to get back home. Come with us—we do have a hospital."

She looked at him carefully. He seemed trustworthy. His crew didn't have the look of slavers. They were clean, wearing garments that looked pre-Zero but were obviously new. She knew she could say 'no,' and she had the feeling he'd leave her alone. But did she really have a choice? Injured as she was, how would she get out of the city alive?

No, she'd have to go with them if she wanted to live.

"You keep all your weapons," he added.

That decided her. She rose up off of her haunches and opened the door.

"Stay there," he said. "Your ankle."

He jumped off of the vehicle with a practiced grace and before she knew it, she was in his arms in a princess carry. She was about to fight and then realized—he was holding her. Not restraining her. It was oddly comforting.

"Sorry," he said. "I should've warned you—"

She tensed again, her hand on her handgun's trigger. "You should have," she said.

He lifted her up to the front seat and then climbed in through the hatch.

"You're safe," he said. "Whether or not you believe it yet. We'll prove it to you."

She stayed on alert, but deep down inside she knew. He wasn't lying.

=.=.=