ੈ✩‧₊˚ 𝐄𝐗-𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐑𝐒 ༊*·˚ ┊͙ 𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘦 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘢𝘮𝘴

✫ chapter nine

『 ↝ scarecrow ↜ 』

~ ✫ ~

EXACTLY 1 MONTH, 24 DAYS, 6 HOURS AND 47 MINUTES. That's how long Lance has been on the search for Andie to stop her and bring her back home. Considering how she took a shortcut, and went the more dangerous way, she was surprised that she, herself was still alive. But also, it was unsettling that almost two months into the journey, and she was already entering Seattle and there was still no sign of her best friend.

The city was big and very majestic. Or at-least that's how Lance would have imagined it pre-apocalypse. Right now it was overgrown with plants, loud with screeches and clicks in the far distance and all damaged. She couldn't lie, in a way, this view was just as eye-pleasing.

She slowly crossed the bridge, feeling immense starvation and thirst, at once. Dear little Lance, thinking that since she took the shortcut, she'll find Andie in no time, decided to pack up barely anything. Not even proper weapons. The ones she had right now were mostly looted from abandoned buildings.

She was hoping she could do the same, somewhere here. Go through some of these suburban houses, find some weapons, ammo, ideally some food and maybe even a place to stay the night.

Lance couldn't lie to herself. She was slowly regretting venturing out. Yes, she had a strong motivation that kept her going, but she couldn't help but wonder about her mom, and life back in Jackson.

If only nothing had ever happened, and hopefully that would be what would continue after she brings her best friend back home, she would start patrols next year. Andie would get to learn from the crush herself, Ellie Williams.

Maybe she would become friends with Maria and Tommy. Maybe even Joel, for Andie's sake, even though he was a very scary and dominant man. Although he was getting old and vulnerable, she would still rather go swim in the Salt Lake naked mid-January than participate in a one v one battle with him. That would most certainly end with his victory and her possible death, even if she had months of training and the whole town rooting for her.

She just wanted to get over with this. The travel had been excruciatingly long and unpleasant. She had done barely any training and preparation and she was lucky to even be alive. The dangerous path really wasn't the easiest to go through. It lead through many big and open cities, which meant many infected only waiting for her to enter, to rip her to shreds and bite the living hell out of her.

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As she was approaching an empty house, Lance looked around with nearly ammunition-less rifle. She had to be careful with that thing. First, she was almost defenceless with the ammo running out and no other weapon, and second with the amount of noise that she could really generate in such a big city. It was so fucking scary.

If she shot the rifle and didn't get out of there immediately, who knows how many infected would come after her? She didn't even wanna think about it.

Lance creeped over to the back door of a nice yellow suburban house, and tried to open the back door, but it wouldn't budge. 'Shit', she thought to herself. Why couldn't people during the outbreak just open all their doors, just in case some lonely girl twenty five years later wanted to enter? Truly a mystery.

Lance slowly walked over to the closest window and pushed it back to create and opening, but the spores came rushing out immediately. The girl quickly closed it and decided it was probably best for her to move in to another house. There was either a bloater or a rotting corpse in there, and she didn't wanna encounter neither of these. She didn't even have a mask.

She walked over to a tall wooden fence, deciding to jump over it. She crawled to the other side, only to be met with a silhouette staring right at her, at a way too close of a distance. The girl panicked but relaxed just as quickly.

Out of rage she threw what turned out to be a scarecrow aside and stomped on its face, ducking it in the mud pile that was created recently due to the rain.

She scoffed and walked to another back door, this time of a nice blue coloured house. As Lance was going to push it open, she saw a lock laying down on the patio, but it seemed as though it had been cut or broken. It must've been due to the outbreak though.

She entered calmly and carefully, preparing for a potential fight. Yet what she saw was much better than that. The back door led directly to a kitchen, that was now kind of rotten, but right there on display on the counter layed fresh boxes of plain crackers, jam, beef jerky and cans full of tomatoes, soup, corn and other deliciousnesses that Lance hasn't had since she left Jackson around two months ago. And this girl was starving.

She grabbed a few items sloppily and shoved them into her backpack. Lance also opened a box of crackers and put a couple into her mouth immediately. She was in heaven, if one even existed. She was on cloud four, which was like cloud nine but during a world-wide zombie fungus apocalypse.

Lance moved on to another room which was a pretty cozy living room. She saw three or four backpacks, that didn't seem like they've been dusting there for years, no. They have been recently out there. She walked over to one of them, in hopes of finding some weaponry. Before she did that, she looked around nervously, for any signs of people. She figured she could be quick. Just take some of their stuff and leave before they come back.

She started opening the bag, and searching through the insides. She felt her fingertips touch what seemed like a revolver maybe, but as she was pulling it out, something suddenly grabbed her shoulder.

Lance was thrown on her back, with her eyes shut due to the impact. Her attacker started throwing punches to her face. Lance knowing it was definitely not an infected, but probably one of the backpack owners, figured she did not have to worry about getting bit.

She turned around and felt the persons neck. She reached for a necklace and quickly pulled on it, in an attempt to choke the owner, however to her dismay it broke. The mysterious attacker chuckled and pulled out the same revolver that was now laying on the floor, and indifferently fired, right into one of Lance's organs that soon failed.

And so she laid there, with some sort of pendant in her hand, while in the last moments of her consciousness mentally apologised Andie for not reaching her fast enough, and wondering if she's even alive.

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rosary thinks...

Shortest chapter yet, I truly apologise!! But hey, I know it's still a filler but it's important okay? The next chapter will be the kina short too but the one after will be reaaally long to make up for it! (Spoiler, it's over 2000 words haha)