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𝘔𝘦𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘴 𝘍𝘦𝘦𝘭 𝘓𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘞𝘦𝘢𝘱𝘰𝘯𝘴
2006 ~ ATLANTA
Hiding amongst the shadows, the young woman holds her breath as she waits for the boots stomping past on the worn tarmac road to disappear. Her heart thunders within her ribcage strongly, and anxiety floods over her like a tidal wave to the point where she almost can't breathe. Fucking Marlene and her fucking Fireflies. It had been an order to send the seventeen year old girl out into the Atlanta quarantine zone to rescue one of their more recent recruits. She carries only her rifle, a pistol, and a stiletto knife to protect her precious life from the trained and heavily armed government officials patrolling nearby.
The only thing that had stopped Maddie Williams from digging her feet into the ground and firmly state that she wasn't going was because she rather likes Tommy.
The protests from her older sister were ignored, cast aside like Marlene almost didn't give a shit. But of course, Anna Williams trusted Marlene with her life. Both of their lives. Which meant she was reluctantly sending her sibling out alone into the cruel world; something that tried to bite at the girl's ankles with its sharp teeth whenever it had the chance to.
Maddie was in a conundrum. If her sister trusted Marlene blindly, surely that meant she should as well. Marlene was part of the reason that the pair of Williams are still alive, three years after the global pandemic was officially declared. This meant that Maddie felt some sort of debt toward Marlene. She never questioned the woman's extensive knowledge of how to survive in the wilderness, nor how she knew which plants to eat and which were toxic. She never questioned how she was surprisingly good in martial arts, or how she could handle multiple weapons like she had been doing it her whole life. Maddie never questioned it because she was never given a reason to.
The Fireflies. Well, that's a different story. To put it simply, Marlene is the glue keeping the hostile militia group together. She is, as Maddie likes to call her, The Queen Bee. Marlene had formed the group a few years into the pandemic out of hate towards FEDRA. She, like many others, was sick and exhausted of their brutal and non-humane ways of dealing with the non-infected who resided in the secure, and mostly safe, quarantine zones.
Anna and Maddie had held multiple conversations many, many times. All of them ended with one of them finishing the argument by standing up and storming away. Majority of the time it was Maddie. After three long years, Anna still refused to leave Marlene. She refused to take whatever knowledge herself and her sister had gained on the infected and exactly how to survive them. More like she refused to leave the security and comfort that Marlene gave them with the Fireflies. Of course, that also meant Maddie wasn't leaving. Wherever her sister went, so did she, even if that meant she would have to be thrown into uncomfortable situations and be bossed around as if she was a puppet that Marlene was quietly pulling the strings on, using their sister-like bond to her advantage.
