[center][img]http://i.imgur.com/wUWTS6n.jpg[/img][/center] She was jinxed, clearly. Perhaps she had, in a drunken stupor some time ago, walked underneath a ladder after breaking a mirror and then crossed paths with a brigade of black cats. At this point it was the only explanation Valorie had left for her extreme run of misfortune. Well, either that convoluted string of unlucky superstitions after unlucky superstitions or she had actually been cursed by some practitioner of witchcraft. It wasn’t such an impossible idea considering the kind of people she ran into in parties thrown by the Rats, or the kind of things she had done in those parties. Even back then she knew that she had been a mighty asshole. Still, petty squabbles usually didn’t result in an entire city being turned upside down. Valorie could live with the thought that perhaps, just this once, the universe did not revolve around her. Not like coming to peace with that idea really mattered all too much anyway, considering that she was going to be dead within the next five minutes. Of course, that was assuming the door would hold until then, the hinges creaking as a body heaved itself against the opposite side with reckless abandon. She watched as she leaned up against the wall, a dead end, with her final cigarette smoldering away between her lips. The door bulged again and begun to splinter. Valorie leveled the gun Cain had given her with quiet resolve while trying to steady herself against her own heavy breaths. There was a sharp pain in her side from running, and with every breath it felt as if she was being stabbed through the ribs: the cost of smoking like a chimney. She drew in another jagged drag of smoke, wincing as her lungs struggled to find some kind of oxygen. Yeah, maybe she should quit smoking, or she could just be one of the vaping douchebags. She huffed out what seemed to be a laugh at the thought. [i]Never in a million years.[/i] Still, the pain in her side distracted her from the hundred other wounds stinging her body. The door exploded open in a hail of dust and splinters. She smiled; there was something about a necromancer being torn to pieces by a mindless horde of marauding undead that just felt fitting. She only regretted that it wasn’t [i]her[/i] mindless horde of marauding undead. The first of the bodies emerged from the cloud emitting around the broken door frame. Valorie wrapped her one hand around the other to steady her shaking aim as the body steadied itself against the frame before stepping forward with a groan. Beyond it, she could make out the shape of several others. [i]Sorry, Cain. Guess you’re gonna have another lonely night.[/i] The gun went off with a loud crack. [center][i][b]* * * [/b][/i][/center] [center][i][b]Moments Ago...[/b][/i][/center] “Can I also get some of those, uh, creamcheese things? Like a dozen?” “Crab Rangoon?” offered the cashier. “That’s all?” “Yeah, sure,” said Valorie, handing the cashier some money. “Ten minutes.” The young woman slumped down in a delipidated booth inside of the brightly lit, white walled Chinese restaurant that reminded her more of a laundromat than a place you’d come to eat if not for the delicious aroma coming from beyond the swinging kitchen door. Red and blue lights blurred by on the streets outside, although sirens in Santa Somabra were just another part of its ambience. A TV set to some late evening game show had its sound drowned out by a radio on the counter that was set to the eighties station. Valorie tried to ignore the synth keys as she watched some overweight, middle American contestant jump up and down because some old dude with a sprayed on tan was giving them a couple hundred bucks. She rolled her eyes. She could easily make ten times that much money just by doing her new gig and walk away with her dignity at the end of the day. More sirens wailed by, briefly painting the walls of the restaurant in pulsating colors. Valorie craned her neck and looked outside as even more emergency vehicles quickly drove by the tiny street. She guessed it had probably something to do with that gang bullshit Cain had gotten himself caught up in, shrugged her shoulders, and turned back to the TV. However, there was no smiling, shit-eating host or stupid, overly enthusiastic contestant on the screen. A man in a decent suit was sitting behind a desk with a grim look on his face, a video of a fire playing in the background. A red ticker was running across the bottom of the screen, but the words were too tiny for Valorie to make out. The radio cut out, replaced instead by the loud beeps not unlike the ones used to broadcast tornado warnings out in the Midwest. A feeling of dread crept over her. The girl turned her head back to look out the window. Valorie could not say what it was that came smashing through the window, but she knew that she wasn’t going to stick around to find out. Bolting out of her seat, the girl hopped over the countertop and charged through the swinging door with her shoulder. One of the cooks started yelling to her loudly, but was quickly cutoff as a loud bang and a fireball erupted through door. Valorie could feel the heat on her back and the end of her ponytail crisping as she dove behind a prep station, banging her knees and elbows against the hard tile floor. She could hear shouting mixed with pained whimpers as she slowly pulled herself up to her feet, looking over at the burnt up swinging door. From the smoke she could see a mass of figures moving forward. From their jerky, mechanical motions Valorie could quickly tell what they were; the staff soon found out as one of the ghouls lunged forward and began tearing into a man. [i]Fuck me, just let it be shamblers.[/i] The thought was barely out of her head as the dead, catching sight and scent of the living, began scrambling to fall upon their easy meal. Valorie watched as the creatures became red of tooth and claw as they tore into the soft bellies of the staff, washing the already dirty kitchen in a flood of grime and gore. For a moment she was unable to peel her eyes away from the scene, her eyes drinking in the carnage, because there was something to learn even in observing mindless zombies. Soon her better senses pulled her out of her stupor, yet it was too late for already the walkers had caught sight of what would look to them as yet another tasty snack. Valorie ran, and the horde ran after her. She chucked herself through the back alley door and skirted around a dumpster towards the main road. A bright orange was filling the sky despite the sun having set, and before she made it to the sidewalk even more of the undead began pouring into the alleyway. Cut off from the main street, she bolted down another side alley, and then another, and then another. Without even looking over her shoulder she could tell that the mass was still coming. Cursing loudly, she unzipped her bag to grab one of her emergency vials of Demon’s Blood. Truth be told, she was rather scared of using the drug, but all things considered it seemed like the only option. However, the horde was too close for her to mess with the vial outside in the alley. Spying a broken factory window, Valorie squeezed through the missing panes of glass—only for a zombie to snag hold of her bag as she slipped through. Knowing that she was going to lose in a tug-of-war, Valorie reached in and snatched out what she could and bolted deeper into the factory, passing by rows of broken crates and damaged conveyor belts. She could hear glass breaking behind her as the groans echoed throughout the warehouse. She was out of breath by this point and knew that she could not run for much longer. She also knew that running was her only way to survive. Coming upon a door, the young necromancer quietly opened it, slipped inside, and bolted it shut. Valorie placed her hand over her thumping heart and tried to silence her rasping breath, fearful that the ghouls might overhear her. The gun in her other hand felt foreign and heavy. It may not have been Demon’s Blood, but she was just as uncomfortable with a gun as she was with the drug. Placing the weapon down on a side table next to her, the girl leaned up against the door and fished a cigarette out of the pack in her hoodie. Taking a long, slow drag, Valorie scanned the dark room for a way out. Already she could tell that there were no windows and no other exits. Stacks of boxes lined the walls and a desk with a busted out tube TV and an old IBM computer were the only features she could make out in the dim light cast by her lighter. She sighed out a cloud of smoke and told herself that she’d be fine as long as none of the bastards saw her enter the—the door jolted violently and Valorie jumped in shock, making her way beyond the beat-up desk and pushing her back against the far wall. She patted her pockets for her phone only to realize that it, like the vials of Demon’s Blood, was lost with her purse. She was alone. [i]Meaning I’m fucked.[/i] [center][i][b]* * * [/b][/i][/center] Of course she thought she’d miss, but did it have to be every shot? She should have saved herself a fucking bullet. Seething with anger, Valorie let her hand holding the gun drop as the creatures pushed their way around the shitty barricade she had made with the desk and the boxes. She bared her teeth like a vicious dog at the mindless monsters, yet she couldn’t help but feel a bit of sorrow. Not because she was going to die, although that was a hard fucking pill to swallow, but because these creatures clearly lacked control. Unlike the zombie friends of Hurk that she had met, these ones lacked what had once made them human. They were unwhole, incomplete, failures even. Valorie’s lips curled up into an almost cruel grin. They were controllable. A decomposing hand was reaching out for her face when Valorie barked an order outloud in an ancient tongue. She could smell the rot under her nose and feel the crooked fingertips brushing her chin, but the zombie had stopped—and he wasn’t the only one to do so. All eight of the monsters in the room had frozen still as if they had been playing a game of red light-green light. Valorie could feel her connection to each and every one of the undead as it pushed back against the necromancer that had shoddily risen them. The thing about raising the dead is that if you do it inefficiently or on mass, say to start some kind of zombie apocalypse, control gets rather easy to strip away when you weren’t around to monitor them. It’s the exact reason why Valorie could easily control Sammy whenever she had wanted to, and the same reason whenever she raised a human they quickly escaped back into the afterlife. The other thing about raising the dead is that they, in a way, become a part of you. Somewhere in Santa Somabra there was another necromancer right now who felt like something was missing, who felt ill at ease. And now, Valorie was going to put these shamblers out of their miserable state and destroy that something. She barked out another order and leaned up against the wall, smoking another cigarette as the zombies turned on one another and began shredding into each others’ rotting flesh. She could smell a fire in the factory somewhere but made no motion to move quite yet. There was a lesson here she told herself as her eyes drank in the decaying viscera and sprays of dark blood, and Valorie was not going to rob herself of a learning experience. Besides, who doesn’t like a little bit of gore? She leaned in with her lighter in hand to cast an orange glow around the last two remaining zombies as they clawed, tore, and bit at one another. She’d watch them like an emperor watches two gladiators fight, and then she’d reward the winner with her own knife. Valorie stepped forward as one of them stopped moving and rolled the survivor onto his back. She stared down into the cloudy, empty eyes and she pulled out her ceremonial dagger, flipped it around in her hand, and sat down on top of the creature. There was something painfully innocent in the way the zombie looked up at her and for a moment Valorie hesitated, but only for a moment. She jabbed the knife in and didn’t stop until she was satisfied, her hands black with filth. Valorie didn’t move for some time afterwards, letting the mire and the stench of the corpses radiating around her bathe her. Finally, with an almost meditative exhale, the necromancer stood up, but only because she could see the fire spreading closer. She cleaned the blade and her hands the best she could using the inside of her hoodie and then pocketed it. As well, she picked up Cain’s gun and tucked that away into her waistband like some third-rate thug. Taking one last look at the carnage, Valorie doubled back through the now empty factory, grabbed her purse where it had fallen, and began the treacherous trip back to Cain’s. Hopefully the old man would be okay with grilled cheese for dinner.