#2

A hail of bullets came crashing through the window and the group instinctively ducked and flattened themselves against the floor. Lily shielded Callie's body with her own while Evelyn and Levi both covered their heads with their arms. In the distance and in the midst of the deafening ringing, Levi thought he heard the sound of two doors shutting. Unless he was mistaken, and he truly hoped he was, this signaled that they were surrounded.

A few short seconds later, he looked up to confirm his worst fears; there were at least ten raiders surrounding them, firearms drawn and pointing at the six of them. He felt his heart sink as Callie let out a terrified squeal, clearly signalling that she saw what he had.

"Come on, get the fuck up!" commanded the ostensible ringleader, malevolent green eyes peering out through the dirt mask encapsulating his face.

There was a black eye-patch covering his right eye and he was sporting some kind of erratic mohawk. Levi recognised the hair style; this man was a member of the 27s, a murderous gang of ruffians that had been terrorising the Naperville area and were formed soon after the outbreak begun. 

He had assumed that the rest of the men present would be under this man's command but that did not seem to be the case, judging by their vastly different appearances. The 27s all had similar haircuts, but some of this man's company were bald and sporting swathes of tattoos on their faces. Others looked completely normal, able to be construed as typical survivors unless you didn't miss the evil glint in their eyes.

"I said get the fuck up!" he commanded once again, kicking Lily hard in the ribs.

"OK, OK, stop!" pleaded Evelyn, slowly getting up to her feet as Lily cried out in pain, barely able to stand up.

"Well, well, what do we have here?" he said, with malicious relish as he approached Lily and Callie. "This one's all mine! Kid'll fetch a real nice price on the market."

Levi, now upright, bit his lip hard in an effort to not throw up at the ringleader's implication. How had this happened? Things had been just fine mere minutes ago. It seemed now that America, in its infinite cruelty, showed no lenience for complacency.

"She's not going anywhere!" retorted Lily, attempting firm defiance but ruining the facade by wincing at the pain in her ribs. If it wasn't for Callie's arms around Lily's waists, she would have fallen back down by now.

"Who wants the loud one?" asked the ringleader over his shoulder.

"We'll take her." said a large, bald and tattooed raider. "Boss needs a new whore after he killed the last one."

The lumbering giant made his way over to Lily and grabbed her roughly by the hair, pulling her over to the other two members of their smaller group as she screamed and flailed desperately.

Calliope stood rooted to the spot, sobbing quietly and watching, wide-eyed, as the men dragged away the only person she had left in the world.

"Good choice." cackled the ringleader. "I'll take-"

"Fuck you, Thorne. We're next, that was the agreement!" said a heated voice belonging to one of the 'normal' looking raiders.

"Alright, alright, just hurry the fuck up." 

The man who had just voiced his disapproval to Thorne approached the twins, looking them up and down like a butcher inspecting a cut of meat. He cocked his revolver's hammer back and pointed it at Scarlett's forehead.

"This one's ours." he stated, side-stepping her and wrapping an arm around her throat as he led her over to the back of his group at gun-point.