Made to Endure

Chapter 02: Unwanted Company

Melanie acted with purpose and mechanical grace. She weaved around furniture like a dancer, wasting no movement evading the obstructions in her path to the front door as every step took her closer to her objective. When nearly at the threshold, she suddenly crouched for a fraction of a second before launching herself toward the door like a coiled spring set loose.

A zombie had reached the door, but as its decaying hands took hold of the metal frame, Melanie's wrist blade impaled its skull while at the same instant her knee impacted its chest. Truly dead, the zombie was knocked over backwards, but before it could hit the ground, Melanie leapt from it, ending another undead while she was still in the air.

The corpses still staggering toward the house numbered more than a dozen, and they were packed closely together, making it difficult to avoid one without being in range of another, but she'd fought these kinds of groups many times and had well practiced strategies to deal with them.

Melanie tapped her wrists together to retract her blades, drawing her sword and pistol. Not needing to be quiet, she fired the gun with pinpoint accuracy. Before her mother had left, she'd trained her for years on how to use various weapons. A thought always lingered in the back of Melanie's mind as to whether her mother would be pleased with her current level of skill. She pushed the thought aside as the remaining zombies crowded toward her.

A press of a button on the side of the flintlock triggered the auto-loader. Powder and shot refilled the firing chamber, and mechanical arms concealed within the extra wide housing of the barrel compressed everything into place. A small light on the weapon illuminated green when ready to fire, and Melanie dropped another zombie before hitting the reload button again.

Her sword flashed in a series of rapid cuts. Against humans, she could've ended them all by now, but against opponents who didn't feel injuries and were immune to blood loss and organ failure, she required different tactics. The cuts she employed removed fingers and hands, keeping the hungering corpses from being able to grab her. She couldn't afford to be entangled or slowed.

She stayed on the move, using the undead's numbers against them. Whenever one of them would be close enough to reach for her, she'd slash at them with her sword while circling, getting another zombie in the way to block the path of the first. She kept them bumping into each other, constantly trying to reach past other shambling corpses suddenly between them and their nimble prey.

As their numbers reduced, she changed strategies again, cutting and hacking at legs to reduce movement and trip up the uncoordinated creatures.

She was down to the last three when a pair of blades whistled past on either side of her and ended two of the undead. Melanie's gaze snapped to her left to find the origin of the weapons. Eddie stood on the porch, drawing a second pair of throwing knives from behind his back.

"I didn't need your help," Melanie told him, slashing out behind without looking, to put down the final undead present. Her tone wasn't hostile, merely a cold and emotionless account of fact.

"Perhaps not," Eddie admitted, putting away his blades. "Nevertheless, my folks always taught me to help out when possible."

"My mother taught me how to kill," Melanie countered. She sheathed her sword. Taking a pair of pouches from an inside pocket of her vest, she refilled the shot and powder compartments in her pistol before pressing the reload button one last time. Holstering the weapon, she returned the diminished pouches to their pocket.

"Your ability to end the undead is why you'd be a great help getting me to the town of Geargarde," Eddie suggested as he came over to retrieve his knives.

"I don't even know where that is," she said.

"It's a little ways north of here, near the Slagspire Mountains," he explained.

"I'm not helping you," she stated. "I kill zombies, not escort refugees."

"There are zombies everywhere," Eddie reminded. He gestured in the direction he intended to go. "Why don't you kill them in that direction? It would be entirely coincidental that it cleared a path for me."

Melanie stared at the stubborn idiot who refused to take either a hint or a direct rejection of his request. The lower half of his face was covered by a beard and mustache the color of reddish rust, but she could tell his easy smile was still present. The coveralls under his long coat were stained with machine oil and dirt as if he'd crawled through a scrapyard on his stomach, and Melanie considered for a moment the possibility he had. She suddenly wondered why she was even bothering to look him over. He wouldn't be around long enough for it to matter in the slightest.

"Everyone who's traveled with me either left or ended up dead," she warned him.

"If I'm going to die in the company of a zombie hunter, then it's certain I will die if I'm alone," Eddie replied. "At least with you, I have a chance."

Melanie wondered if she was refusing him because she was certain he would die or because she was afraid he would die like the others. Mentally, she violently stabbed the thought to death. She had a purpose, ending the undead, and anything else and everyone else was beyond her notice. If, she corrected her thought immediately, when he died, he'd become a zombie for her to kill, but if she could get him to Geargarde, it would mean one less she'd have to hunt down later.

"Very well," she agreed.

The sun hadn't reached the northern horizon yet, but the nearby buildings and surrounding trees were already obscuring its diminishing light. Shadows came out of hiding and spread across the ground. As the light continued to fade, the first of the moons began to rise. Melanie knew it would be at least another hour before the other two made an appearance.

Melanie's goggles amplified the ambient light to a sufficient degree she could still view everything around her as if the sun hadn't set. It was one of many pieces of equipment she'd been given to help her accomplish her mission. She didn't need rest at the current time and she could hunt perfectly well in total darkness, but with Eddie now accompanying her, she had to consider his capability and wait for dawn. She headed back to the house.