Abandoned Apartment Building, Southwest Missouri

Silence. Ever since much of the fighting between the living and the dead died down, bringing with it the hideous cacophony of gunshots, desperate screams and moans, silence ruled Missouri. From the streets of the big cities to one particular room... At least until something broke. Out of the entrance into a ventilation shaft, a curious form crawled out and stood not very high, putting on its childish backpack again. It was Valentina. Looking quickly around the room, she realised she was alone - which had, weeks ago, became the best blessing she could ever wish for, and even better, that the door was blocked amply by several furniture: A huge king-sized bed with a cabinet and table stacked on top of it. The only light that allowed her to see was coming from her flashlight, which she tried not to think came from her elder brother, Vertov.

The air was cold. Being indoors did little to keep Valentina warm. The room was dark, and she could never get used to it, to being afraid whenever she did such a thing. Footsteps stomped in the ceiling, and there was a crash below the floor. The apartment building was haunted by the dead. "Ugh..." She could barely shrug the thought of sharing an apartment building with a horde of biters (as she calls them) just a few doors away, even if she was well barricaded from them.

Sweeping her flashlight around the room, she found stacks of some stuff in a corner. Quite faintly, she thought someone might have tried living in the room, and there was a door leading to another. Pulling her revolver out of its holster, she tried not to think that it came from her elder sister, and pointed it at the door. There was banging inside. Valentina could not help but to breathe heavily. Crossing her arms at the wrists to support her gun arm like how Lieutenant Hugh taught her to do, the act relieved the ache in her arms quickly, having been exhausted from crawling and climbing the vents. There was banging inside, methodical banging. Something was howling and wailing inside ceaselessly. The girl tried not to wish that Daddy was with her.

Gripping the knob and twisting it with her left hand left her defenseless - months before she had learnt to switch to shooting with her left hand because of her blind right eye - but she had no choice. It was either be defenseless or completely blind, and the fear that she would lose her only working eye would leave her paralysed with fright. After pushing it open, letting the door swing open noiselessly, she brought her revolver up quickly, only to discover an empty toilet. The window was open, and the wind was strong. The medicine cabinet was slamming shut and opening again as a result. It angered Valentina. She hates being frightened like that. Marching up to the window, she shut it tight, making sure to lock it tight. The last time she didn't do it had costed her a safe place to sleep, forcing her to wander in the night without sleep and with a mind horribly flayed by sleep deprivation, fear and stress by morning.

It was the first time she had ever dared to enter an apartment building, and she did so out of desperation, not that she had ever stopped being desperate ever since her last friend, Lieutenant Hugh, was killed by a Biker gang. She tried not to remember. For weeks she had been running and hiding, stealing and even killing. She thought it would all go away when she dared to enter the dark places where even the Biker gang that killed her strong soldier friend would not dare to go. In the months that follow she would be proven wrong. There would never be enough food, as every room where vast stores of it could be found were occupied by too many of 'them' to be raided. Again, she wished for her family to be with her again, but sensing tears starting to form in both her good and bad eyes, she stopped - she never knew she could stop thinking about something until she had to, ever since Valerie sacrificed herself for the family.

With the room seemingly safe, Valentina thought about moving her 'secret places' into the vents and the room, which she wanted to become her new 'sleeping place' or sleep spot. Hiding things, Valentina thought, was like setting up a game of treasure hunt, and even better, without ever giving the hunters any clues. It became something she was good at, as it turns out, from all those games she would help to make possible whenever the relatives came to visit from Russia. She knew that it would be an exhausting task, having already tired herself after exploring the vents for half a day with nothing to pull or push around. Her closest secret place had big guns - guns bigger than pistols that she could not yet use, even one that was alot heavier than her Hello Kity backpack - not to mention many replacements for her equipment whenever she needed them. There were cans of food that she could not yet open - somehow, for the life of her, she could never find a can opener, and her knives won't cut them open. She couldn't help but to feel too weak or dumb to get those things open.

After clearing the toilet, she wanted to look through the piles of things at the corner of the room, where the bed used to be. Coming out, she saw that they were by the mattress, which looked a little filthy, and when she crosses the room, she thought she saw someone, or something, walk by her. It felt as though someone was gripping her heart and lungs when she realised and pointed her flashlight and revolver at it... Only to discover a dressing table with an oval mirror.

Mirrors are bad. It was what Valentina believed in. But it had been months, many months, since she looked into one. She had nearly forgotten how she looked like, willfully trying to forget. She was mesmerised by the dressing table, but afraid of it. She kept the flashlight away, afraid to see. Yet she was curious. She wanted to see. It had been too long. The feeling was welling up in her. She inched closer, and finally gave in. After sighing in submission, she inched closer to the dressing table, and sat down on a stool beside it. After another moment of hesitation, she noticed a grip where a lightbulb used to be, just large enough, and set Vertov's Tactical Torchlight there.

Before Valentina looked, she closed her eyes. She remembered stories that Mother used to tell, stories that she would repeat in her head to herself every day so that she would remember with crystal clarity. Cinderella and The Ugly Duckling. Chicken Soup stories. Removing the pirate eye patch thing she managed to scrounge up from somewhere, she took a deep breath and looked.

Nothing changed. There was no princess or swan in the mirror, no miracles that used to happen in the church she went to what seemed like forever ago. A milky white right eye. The frowning scar down her left cheek. Tears fell, and the utter sadness that was stuck in Valentina, forbidden from coming out by the constant need to run, hide and fight came back overwhelming. No longer caring about the reanimated stomping above the ceiling and below the floor, she cried and screamed, and with her revolver, smashed the mirror, producing a rippling crack. She cried into her own arm, and could only be more sad when she realised it was her own arm, and not Daddy's, nor Mommy's, not even that of Lieutenant Hugh. There, she cried herself to sleep.