“Robin… Are you okay?”
He stood with his back to her, his shoulders shaking, and he was clutching something in his hand. And then he slowly got up and turned towards Olivia. The only thing Olivia could see in his hands was blood, and it was splattered across the rest of his body, even splattered across his face.
Olivia jerked back in shock, and Robin still rose, almost as if in shock, and Olivia panicked, pulling her gun out of her holster and pointing it at Robin. Her voice quavered as she asked again, “Robin?”
He looked up at her, his eyes were empty and vacant, and he lifted his hands, in the exact same manner that the monster’s that had invaded Olivia’s home had done to her. And she pulled the trigger.
Robin fell backwards, the breath he had been holding escaping in a sigh, and his eyes closed. A small tennis ball fell out of his hands, and bounced along the floor, rolling and hitting Olivia’s feet. Behind Robin she could see Fido, and she fell to her knees, a sob in her mouth.
And then behind Robin, Zack came. “Mom… Is Robin okay?”
Olivia sighed, and then stood up. “He’s just sleeping honey. He said he’d catch up with us later. Let’s go.”
Olivia turned her back on Robin. It was almost a day later, when his eyes flashed open, and his hand tightened into a fist. “Olivia…” He murmured.
----------------------------------------
About an hour later I was standing at the building, staring at the horde as they still clawed and scratched at the burning building, almost entirely heedless of the fire that mottle and danced over their skin.
A few of them here and there would collapse from the heat that quite likely fried their brains, but it wasn’t killing enough of them, and it wasn’t killing them fast enough. At this rate whoever is on top of that building is going to die from the fire long before the Bleeders did.
What I really need is a distraction, I need time to be able to climb up the building and get to whoever’s on top of it, then get them down before the Bleeders realize I and whoever is up there is gone.
Still keeping my eye on the horde, lest they notice me and decide I’m easier prey, I looked around for a rock or something, and found a big brick. Picking it up, I tested the weight, then went closer to the horde, and threw the brick.
It arced through the air, and landed directly on top of a car, triggering the alarm system. I hadn’t been expecting that part, but some of the cars here haven’t run out of battery. Even in the ten years that I’ve been here.
Immediately the horde turned towards the sound and started shambling towards it, and I crept along behind them, being very careful to not make any noise. And definitely not cut myself. They have a crazy powerful sense of smell, especially for things like human blood.
It was incredibly nerve wracking being this close to them, but I made it across the road without any incident, and tried to walk into the building so I could climb the stairs to the top. The second I opened the doors though, the fire leapt out at me, singing my hands and my clothes.
I jumped back cursing, and glanced upwards, and immediately leapt to the side. The staccato sounds of bullets hit the ground, and a few of the bleeders looked my way, and started lumbering towards me slowly.
I launched four arrows in their direction and launched them directly at the four lumbering Bleeders. They fell to the floor with a dull thump, and fortunately none of the bleeders heard them, though I didn’t feel like pushing my luck and going to collect the four arrows.
Instead I looked back up at the person who had shot at me and noticed two things instantly. One, whoever shot me had a silencer, and two it was a weapon designed to fight humans. It was an automatic weapon, the kind of gun you hold in one hand, like a pistol. And two, it was a woman.
Slowly, I knelt down and put my bow on the floor, then raised my hands in a gesture of ‘I have no weapons, don’t shoot me.’
Apparently she had no qualms about shooting an unarmed person, and she fired again. The only thing I had going for me was the fact that aiming down is really annoying, and the fact that she had a really bad aim.
Regardless, I still reacted as one would when being fired on by bullets, and rolled out of the way, pulling an arrow out in one hand, and grabbing my bow in the arrow, then looking up to send my arrow glancing across the woman’s forehead, leaving a scarlett line there.
The woman jerked back in surprise and I grinned at her. I saw her eyes tighten with rage, and then I moved out of her line of sight, and went around the building, looking for a fire escape I could climb, and eventually I found it. Although the people at the top seemed a bit smarter than I had expected.
They’d pulled the fire escape up, and it was more than six feet out of my reach. Not a distance I can feasibly jump. But, on the other side, I found a set of windows, each of them was about three feet high up from the others, so I could climb up that. I slung my bow onto my shoulder, planted my right foot onto the window sill, and started climbing.
And then a bullet whistled in between the wall, and my head. I looked up and saw a different person, a young boy this time. Maybe sixteen, seventeen. In his hand was a small pistol and as I watched him, he went to pull the trigger again, and I leaned out to the side, completely letting go of the wall and window frames with one hand, dangling with the other one. This movement sent me swinging over, with my back now against the wall.
As I had expected, a bullet whistled through the air, right where my head would have been, instead hitting one of the bleeders. Looking up at the man, I made a cut it out gesture with my free hand, and then an okay sign.
He frowned in very obvious confusion, and I clarified, mouthing, “I’m a good guy. A friend. I’m trying to help you.”
His eyes lit up with understanding, and he turned away from the walls, and I heard muted whispering, though I was unable to hear what was going on. And then an older man appeared where the young boy had been. He mouthed at me, “I hear you are friendly?”
I nodded. “Yes.”
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“How can I be sure?”
In response I reached over my back and grabbed an arrow, then in the same motion threw it, slicing a line in the man’s hair. “I could have done that any time I wanted. I didn’t.”
He smiled. “Very true.”
I nodded my gratitude, then gestured around me at my current predicament. I’d already deduced that there was no way for me to go back to the position I’d been in before, and I was stuck here, for a while at least. My hands were already getting sweaty, and thus slippery, so it wasn’t going to be a very long while.
And then a rope fell right next to me, and I breathed out a sigh of relief. Reaching out with my right hand, I grasped it and swung around, my stomach towards the wall once again. And then I started to climb. I wasn’t very good at climbing ropes, but I managed to make relatively short work of it, reaching the top in maybe four minutes. When I reached the top, I immediately grabbed the lip of the wall and hauled myself over, then landed on my back with a sigh.
And then the older man walked up to me, and extended out his hand. Now that I was closer I saw that he appeared to be Asian, not Chinese or Japanese, but maybe from the islands. Philippines maybe.
I grabbed his hand and hauled myself up, then said to him, “Thank you.”
He simply nodded, and then said, “Now who are you, archer? And why did you come here?”
I shrugged. “I saw some people in danger. Decided to come help. I’ve been waiting for someone you see. I’m not even sure if she’s still alive or not. But she said she’d be here, so I’ve been here for ten years. I owe her a bit of a debt.” I smiled. “Since then I’ve been saving everyone I could find. I needed to see if they were her.”
The man nodded. “I understand. I too had someone precious to me before all this. My brother. Sadly, he passed away long ago. Near the beginning of the screecher outbreak.”
“I’m sorry for your loss.” I looked at him, then to the boy who’d been shooting at me, and asked, “Is this your entire group?”
The old man shook his head. “No, we have three more, although one of them was injured. We have a doctor in our group, and her son has been taking care of him for a while now.”
My eyes zeroed in on his and I said, “What’s the name of this doctor of yours? Or her son’s name?”
The old man gestured to me and began walking. I took a brief moment to look around and noticed the abundance of tents, almost seven of them. The asian was walking towards one of them, the largest. I quickly surmised it must have been the medical tent, and hurried to catch up to him.
He seemed to know I was beside him without even looking and said, “The doctor’s name is Olivia, and her son’s name is Zack.”
I sucked in a breath, then said, “Lucky you.”
He looked at me in confusion, and I clarified. “To have found a doctor. I had to teach myself.”
The man laughed and said, “How about you? Do you have a group?”
“No. I had one for a while, but I didn’t agree with the things they were doing and we separated.”
He nodded. “Peacefully I hope.”
“Nope. I had to fight my way out of there. The leader of the group thought I was going to betray him, so he locked me up. I escaped and fought my way out of there. I pissed off a good number of them, and I might have killed more.”
The man stopped and looked at me, and asked, “I see. I trust you bear no ill will towards my group?”
“None at all.” I smiled. “It was in self defense. I don’t go around attacking people unless they try to kill me first.”
“Which we did.”
“Correct. But to be fair, I wasn’t ever in any danger.”
The boy looked at me insulted, and I grinned. “If I was in danger, I would have started trying to shoot you. Either with my gun or the bow. But I didn’t.”
The asian man frowned then extended his hand. “I’m Muramasa.”
I grasped his hand, and replied, “Robin.”
As we approached the medical tent, another young man walked out. He was tall, wearing a tank top,which showed off his impressively large arms. He had a strong jaw, and pale green eyes. His long blonde hair was pulled back into a ponytail.
He walked over to me and said, “You’re the archer my mom mentioned? The one who tried to shoot her?”
“Correction. I did shoot her.”
He smiled sarcastically, then punched me in the jaw. I stumbled backwards then fell down on the ground, immediately, the brown haired man walked over to the blonde youth, and put a hand on his shoulder. “Zack. Calm down.”
I swear Zack bristled, like the muscles in his arms and shoulder just moved and shrugged off the brown haired one’s hand. “He tried to kill her. He tried to kill my mom.”
For myself I stood up, and started backing away. “Dude, calm down, I didn’t actually try to hurt her. If I’d been trying she would have gotten an arrow in the middle of her forehead. As it was, she just got a scratch.”
Zack walked over to me angrily, and I could see his hands clenching and unclenching. He kept walking, until he was close enough that I could hear him breathing. “You might want to rethink your opinion on that.”
And then a woman’s voice came from behind him. “Damnit Zack! Listen to him. I saw him shooting. If he wanted to hurt me he would have.”
I looked behind her to see a woman. She was about five foot seven, eight maybe. Short cropped brown hair hung around her head, and her brown eyes had little lines around them. I estimated she would be in her late twenties early thirties.
When I saw her I grinned and muttered, “So you did survive.” The doctor frowned, and I hurried to cover up my mistake. “I take it you’re Olivia?” She nodded, and I smiled. “My name is Robin. Pleasure to meet you. Sorry about the scratch.”
“I tried to kill you. You gave me a…”
And then my reflexes kicked in. I had seen Olivia’s eyes widen with surprise, and on the reflection of a piece of metal, I saw the hazy outline of a human-like figure. So I dropped to one knee, turned around, and with the leg that wasn’t currently supporting me, I swept Olivia off of her feet.
I saw Zack turn towards me with rage in his eyes, and then a storm of bullets ripped through the area where both she and I had been. He instantly realized what I had just done, even as I jumped to my feet, grabbed an arrow, and got my first good look at the person who had just tried to kill me.
They were dressed in all black. Black military vest, black biker helmet, black pants, and a black shirt. In the person’s hand was a machine gun of some kind, fully decked out with a laser sight, some modified stock, and handle, and a shortened barrel. A custom weapon then.
The weapon did him very little good, because about a second after he tried to shoot me, he fell on the ground with an arrow in his eye. Immediately, I was already turning around scanning the area for anyone else. Of course I found one, another man dressed like the first climbing up over the wall via the fire escape.
He didn’t even manage to make it onto the lip of the building before he fell off an arrow in his chest this time. I heard exclamations from down below, and then the word, “Regroup!”
I smiled softly, and then grimaced as a bullet hit me in the shoulder. Immediately I turned around and instead of using an arrow this time, I shot him in the shoulder with my gun. He fell down from the force behind the little tiny gun, and I walked over to him, picked him up, and threw him off the building.
He screamed as he fell, and then I heard the sound of a body hitting another body, and then I heard the victorious howls of the Bleeders. I turned back to Muramasa’s group and said, “We need to move. If you all don’t die to the bleeders you’re going to die to The Hunters.”
Everybody stared at me and I sighed. “Get up and move or you’re all going to die.”
Immediately the group was moving. Muramasa came up to me and asked, “Who are these hunters you spoke of?”
“They’re an elite group of people, some of the most dangerous people in this city. They work for someone who calls himself The Sheriff. He holds a metropolis over this city.”
“How much do you know about them?”
“Quite a lot. I was their leader.”