Alex Clark - The Outpost
Tightening the grip on his pitchfork, of which he had straightened the iron pins to make it easier to use, he followed Jerry towards the Outpost's safe boundaries. It was his thrid actual scouting mission, and after every single time he felt as if he'd never do it again. Arthur was walking closely behind himself, and chatting with phon, which, as usual, was a very one-sided conversation. Amanda was walking next to Alex, softly shaking her head as Arthur kept up the monologue. "So I stabbed that crawler in the eye-socket with my broken baseball bat, and it went all like 'Blueeergghhhh!' and dropped over me. Anyhow, I got up, when..." Alex shook his head and put his mind on the surroundings again. Even though it was 'mostly safe' walking out here at daytime, he had experienced enough to never dare let down his guard for a moment too long. As his mind trailed off he shook his head again, and let his fingers play over the shaft of the pitchfork. Looking at his own weapon and then at the handgun Amanda was holding he felt a spark of jealousy, which immediately subsided. He'd have more chance to break his nose firing that thing than to actually hit a crawler. Despite the tendency of the locals, he couldn't help thinking of all people here as locals, being British himself, to call the walking dead 'biters' he stuck to the name 'crawlers' he and his girlfriend had found for them.
Finally, the wooden walls of the camp were in sight, and despite all the pretenses of toughness amongst the group scouts, he could sense more than hear a collective sigh as the walls came into sight. It was at that point that disaster struck. Jerry tripped over what he had seen as a treebranch, but was actually the arm of a corpse, which immediately sprung to action, and grabbed Alex' feet, making him trip on top of the walker. His pitchfork impaled a newspaper rag as he fell, and have him a nast bruise on his forehead when his head slammed against the metal base. Dazed and surprised he found the walker bringing his foot to its mouth, but a timely reaction of Lucas, who put his foot down on the crawler, saved his shoe.
Breathing heavily he backed away from the corpse against a tree as the situation subsided. A moment of shocked silence later Phon offered him a silent hand while Arthur inspected the dead crawler. "Sneaky sonovabitches." He muttered as he gave the head a kick as Jerry gave Alex his pitchfork back, and pointed at the wound on Alex' forehead. "Luckily we're almost home, get that thing cleaned up. Can't be healty to stick that thing into dead people and then stab yourself with it." Alex silently nodded as he accepted the tool and felt his forehead, gritting his teeth as he felt the minor injury sting like hell.
As they approached the gates in silence, Alex felt the usual shaking coming up in his hands, so he made sure to wrap them thightly around the heavy pitchfork to conceal that. How had he even ended up with the scouts anyways? Perhaps he should try getting a change of jobs, this clearly wasn't his cup of tea.
