[right][sub][i](Addressing: [@RedXIII])[/i][/sub][/right]

When the beautiful lady called her ‘young one’, Christina raised an eyebrow. The woman didn’t really seem much older than her - more beautiful, rich, extravagant, yes, but older? Not really. Before she could respond, something changed. She couldn’t quite tell what it was exactly, maybe the wind brought a strange scent, maybe it was an odd sound, maybe it was just a strange feeling. Normally, she would brush it off as her mind playing tricks on her, but the others seemed to have noticed it as well. The masked man even removed his scarf to sniff the air like some sort of a bloodhound.

Her thoughts were interrupted by loud gunshots fired from her close vicinity. Her first thought was that the handsome man is trying to show off in front of the girls. She turned to yell at him only to see that he was also covering his ears, staring at the woman. The woman who had just shot some poor guy in broad daylight. Christina instinctively moved closer to offer help and froze in surprise. The man was dead. In fact, he was dead for several days. His name was Ernie, he was a local drunk, but a nice guy in general. Christina remembered his funeral. And now he was here, in the middle of the town, right in front of the saloon where he spent most of his waking hours. What was happening?

The man talked to her, telling her to go inside, and then disappeared inside the saloon, but Christina had just now noticed the incoming horde and her eyes were sweeping it for one person in particular. There it was, a flash of bright yellow among the sea of gray and black. Christina gulped, blinking a couple of times, hoping to wake up from this horrible nightmare. Her mother was buried in her best Sunday dress - dark blue and white, very common style and colors in the town. But she had something else on her - a scarf Christina made her, yellow with red flowers embroidered on it. 

It was years ago when she saw her mother looking at a beautiful silk shawl in a local tailor’s shop window. There was no way they would spend that much money on something unnecessary. Christina and her mother both knew it, but it didn’t stop them to go take a look every time they were in town, admiring the beautiful work. Wanting to give her mother a surprise, Christina decided to make her a shawl just like that. The fabric was as far from silk as you can imagine, simple and quite scratchy, and the flowers? Well, most of them didn’t even look like flowers. But her mother still loved it and wore it to church every Sunday. And, eventually, was buried with it. 

Christina stumbled back. Somebody used some sort of dark sorcery on her mother’s body, defiling it, disturbing her peaceful rest. And not just her mother, there were dozens of corpses walking the main street, every town resident was sure to find a friend or a relative in the coming horde. She could see there was some dark figure of a living man moving in front of the dead, and originally wanted to march straight to him and punch him in the face (or groin, that was yet to be decided), but seeing that the Sheriff and the masked man were already handling it, she retreated into the saloon.

The handsome stranger was already holding a gun and drinking some whiskey. Not a safe combination under normal circumstances, if you asked Christina, but then again, these were not normal circumstances. She only carried a Derringer, which would hardly be useful in the upcoming fight, but knew where to find some bigger gun.

“Ey, Carl!” she yelled at the bartender, who was hiding behind the counter. “Toss me that rifle of yours!”

“Fuck you!” he shouted back at her and crawled into a nice spot under the bar, where he usually hid during bar fights.

“Well, thanks for nothing,” she mumbled and reached for it herself. She had been here a couple of times before when treating his ‘private issue’, so she knew where he was hiding it. It was heavier than she expected, way older than her father’s rifles from when he taught her how to shoot. Hopefully, she remembered something from his lessons.

She winced when the stranger broke a window but had to agree that it was probably a good idea on how to get a clear shot. “Hello again!” she waved at him, checking the rifle cartridge. “I’m Christina.” It was a weird place for introductions, but she felt that if they were going to fight this menace from hell together, and quite possibly die together, he should at least know her name. With some effort, she managed to break one window too, aiming her rifle. But then she hesitated. She knew all these people, she treated their wounds and illnesses, she was friends with many of them, she helped deliver their babies. How could she just start shooting them?

One of the dead made a decision for her - he found a woman hiding behind a parked cart and dragged her out by her hair, jumping on her with his teeth out, growling. “Sorry, Marcus,” Christina whispered and pulled the trigger. The corpse of a butcher’s son flinched as she hit his shoulder. She was aiming for his head, but she never was an excellent shot. Still, it bought the woman some time to run away, behind the line of armed men that was forming around the Sheriff.