Alyce hit the side of the truck, letting the driver know he could drive off. She watched the truck until it was out of sight. The young woman stretched and moved her neck from side to side, feeling the cracks in the vertebrae. It had been a long day. Her hands and arms hurt from lifting heavy boxes and her head pounded from all of the yelling she'd had to endure.
But now it was time to make the trek home.

The last sector they delivered to was actually quite a ways from her apartment. Thankfully she knew a back way to go in order to avoid seeing too many people. She had learned her lesson from her co-worker's mistake.
The young man had been jumped while walking home. He had been stripped, beaten to a pulp and hung upside down overnight. There were rumors that it was the work of the Fireflies, but Alyce had her doubts. Everything the group did had a point to it. What had happened to that poor bastard hadn't had any point except violent revenge.

Alyce slipped through an alleyway and heard the sounds of street fighting. The illegal fights were a haven of gambling and drugs. Damn it! They had cut off her normal route home!
Taking off her ID pass and stuffing it into her pocket, Alyce prayed that her jumpsuit rolled down to her waist the way it was would not be recognized as a Resource Distributors uniform. Putting on a confident face, she strode out into the open street.
It wasn't that busy, with people taking their supplies and heading into their homes. Alyce had to take quite a detour but ended up nearly back where she needed to be. The last bit was the scariest. She had to pass through an area that was known to be frequented by smugglers. But usually if she kept her head down and stayed against the wall no one bothered to noti-

A rough hand suddenly reached out from the open doorway of a run down building and snagged her, dragging her into the building. Alyce's scream was cut off but a smelly hand over her mouth.
"Government lackey!" a voice snarled into her ear.
"Think you could sneak past us you worthless hoarding scum!" another snapped.
Alyce felt herself being lifted up and slammed down onto a table. A light over it illuminated several dirty looking men surrounding her.
"We gotta do worse this time around," one of them said, cracking his knuckles. "Show 'em we mean business." He slammed his fist into her stomach while another man stuffed a greasy cloth in her mouth and held her down. A knife appeared, glinting in the light.
"I say we cut off this pretty hair, make her look like a shaved dog."
"I say we do some surgery on that face, make it not so pretty."
"And maybe without a few fingers she won't be able to steal from us anymore."

Alyce thrashed and kicked, trying to spit out the nasty cloth. 

"And then, when we're finished with her," the biggest one said, running the point of the knife down her cheek to her throat. "We string her up outside the quarantine zone. Let the infected find her."
Alyce screamed as a blow to her face left her with what would be a black eye, while a strong hand grasped her fingers and jerked one out of it's socket.
Her screams of agony sounded like some kind of animal. For the first time in her life, she prayed for death as the knife pressed into the skin of her chest.

Pain. That was all she knew. The only reality in her mind.
She heard gun shots, but her mind couldn't process what they meant. She heard men shouting and yelling in pain, but couldn't make sense of it all. Then the shots stopped and someone grabbed her by her hurt hand. She screamed in agony, the cloth finally falling from her mouth. A rough hand grabbed her by her braid and dragged her across the floor. She was lifted up and her world turned upside down as she was tossed over someone's shoulder.
"Kill the crazy bitch!" her captor ordered as he ran out the door. "I'm dumping this one outside."

It took Alyce more then a few minutes to realize what he meant.
He was dumping her outside the QZ...

 - Outside the QZ
She didn't know how they got out of the city and she couldn't get her bearings on her surroundings. The pain was still intense and all the blood had rushed to her head from being held upside down, making her dizzy and disoriented.

Suddenly she was slammed onto the ground. She coughed and tasted blood in her mouth. Hands roamed her body as her jumpsuit was removed, leaving her in just her tank top and underwear. She heard tearing sounds and managed to get her eyes open and focused enough to see him ripping her jumpsuit to shreds. He also took her ID pass. No doubt he was going to leave them for the soldiers to find in the city somewhere, a testimant to their cruelty and her murder.

A hand grabbed her face hard. "Hope the clickers enjoy chewing on you bitch," he snarled and shoved her face away. She heard his steps fade away.
Whimpers escaped her throat. She put her good hand over her mouth, trying to muffle them. The clickers hunted by sound. She had to keep quiet.
But her hand hurt so badly...
She dared to look at it and wished she hadn't. Two of her fingers were pulled out of joint and they were pointing the wrong way. Blood ran down from the cuts he had made in her chest and shoulders. Her lip was cut and there was a dark bruise forming under her right eye and more bruises on her arms and legs.
And they had been interrupted. She didn't even want to think about how badly she would had looked if they had done all they had planned.

Alyce struggled to get to her feet but fell back down, nearly screaming when she landed on her injured hand.
Then the sound that made her blood turn to ice:
Click... Click Click... Click...

Panicking, she scrambled underneath a piece of a building that had fallen over and had overgrown with vines. The clicks came closer until a single clicker appeared. Alyce told herself to be still, told herself to calm down, but inside she was terrified. She wanted to scream and run. She shook with the effort to remain hidden. The clicker came closer to her hiding place.
No... God, please... someone...