Shortly into her inspection of the store – the suffocating stench of death driving her to work quickly – Chris found a walker stood facing the corner of the room, apparently oblivious to her presence. Wrapping her fingers around the baton again, she stepped closer to deliver a fatal blow, before she heard a whispered voice. Chris forbade herself from losing sight of the walker, and listened.

[b]“Look . . . It's a lurker. Have you seen those type before?”[/b]

Chris drew the police baton slowly out of her belt loop. As she listened to the kid talk, she was sure of two things; the girl wasn't alone, and there were more undead cramped into the store among them. 

She had seen lurkers a few times before, and they seemed to stick in the places most suitable for shelter, as if they knew where survivors would come looking. Of course, they didn't, they weren't in the least bit smart enough for that. A lurker tried to grab her grandfather as they made to escape the city, and almost succeeded given that he was just an old, tired man. That was the first time Chris killed one of them... the first time she killed anything that didn't have eight legs. Even now, killing wasn't something she did readily, but in a short time it became habit, and instinct.

[b]“Wait . . . I think I hear something behind us . . . Don't go any further inside.”[/b]

Once it was out of her belt, she lowered the baton until it straightened. She took another step closer to the looming walker in the corner, turned her body just so, and as the creature turned its sagging face to greet her, her baton collided with its head. Chris ducked forward and pulled it away from the corner before it could hit the wall; she didn't want to alert any more of the undead, nor the other survivors. Still gripping its upper arm, she hit it twice more. Then she eased it to the floor and shuffled around it. 

The store wasn't terribly big and she was certain the other survivors would have heard something of her scuffle, so she stepped through the aisles towards the girl's voice. The woman turned into her aisle just as Chris was raising her baton to strike what she thought was another walker. 

The woman couldn't have been more than a few years younger than Chris, and carried a hammer in similar fashion to the baton. If not for the woman's abrupt cry, Chris might have attacked on instinct. But while the cry did save the woman from immediate injury, it gave up their position to the multitude of walkers in the store. A chorus of grunts and moans, as though they were waking from a long sleep, erupted from all corners of the room. 

“No time,” Chris muttered. She lowered the baton momentarily, in a sign of good faith to the other woman, and pointed it at the store front instead. “Front door. Go!” Slinging the rifle onto her shoulder, Chris jogged back the way she came, to the front of the store; to Tony.