Rain. Just what Lian needed. This hideout of hers had just dried out of supplies and it was time to move. Ever since the city fell into anarchy and chaos, Lian had been bouncing from survivor group to group. The first few days it had been with some neighbors from her apartment building, but eventually they had died, all one after one, taken by the infected and later becoming one themselves. Lian had seen it. How they turn from nausea to confusion to unconciousness... And then eventually becoming one of them. The monsters. The horrors.
This particular hideout was a very small and old convinience store, or it had been. It was long since dry of supplies but Lian used to be in the same group with the owner, who had hid supplies in the back, away from most looters' eyes. Eventually, he too had been taken by the infected, dragged out into the streets and torn limb from limb to protect her. The memory of it all made her nauseous... The blood... Shaking off the thought, Lian got up to scramble her things together. A dark green knapsack she carried had all her belongings. Some canned food, two bottles of drinkable water and a magazine to a gun she didn't even have. She had taken it off a dead police officer, but his gun had been nowhere in sight. Instead, she carried around a crowbar, not only for the potential of melee but also so she could pry open doors or loose boards. It really did come in handy. In the sidepacks of the knapsack she had hoarded a bunch of different types of batteries. She didn't know if they worked or not, and she only had a small flashlight of which only a few of the batteries fitted, but you could never be too sure. Something she had learned from all this time in the city alone is you take what you can get.
Sighing, she went to the back of the store again where the last owner had hid the supplies. The secret storage was all but empty now. There was a can of ravioli though. Maybe it was still edible? Shrugging, Lian packed it into her knapsack and turned around to leave when she heard the noise. A loud static, growing in both pitch and volume. If there's anything she knew about the infected is that they have good hearing and smell. Quickly she dived back into the storage room. The front of the store was half-covered with the metal curtains that stores used to keep their place safe when closed. Lian couldn't remember what they were called, but point is they weren't enough to protect her from the infected on the outside. The windows were loosely boarded with planks but it had holes that the infected could easily rip through. She lay hidden, waiting, watching. Infected slowly started to crawl about, seemingly appearing out of nowhere from the shadows. They clawed at the posts which made the sound. Cursing low to herself in Chinese, Lian could do nothing but watch. It's my lucky day... she thought, but then the static was exchanged for a voice. Listening intently and awestruck, she heard the voice talk about a chance of getting out of the city. A chance of salvation. Memorial park? Is he insane?! There's ten thousand infected from here to Memorial Park!
She bit her nail, a bad habit she had when under stress. She had to think, and think fast. The best way to get there was probably through the subway or maybe the sewers. The streets weren't safe, but then again the subway and sewers are garuanteed to not be safe either. When she was sure the infected had left, she swinged her knapsack off her back and rummaged through it. There, a map!
It was a map of the city, marked out with a big "you are here" dot maybe twenty blocks from Memorial Park. She had taken it from the tourist bureau just across the street from the convinience store she had holed up in, so finding herself on the map wasn't that hard. The hard part was knowing what streets had collapsed and were inpassable and which streets could still be used for traverse. Maybe if I stick to the alleys until I get to Asgard Substation... It's just a block away... she thought, but was interrupted by a sound from the store. She quickly grabbed her crowbar and hid herself, looking out toward the small store. Was it a wandering infected? A survivor?
(( Feel free to jump in as a survivor right there, people! ))