Part 1

GOOD INTENTIONS

Excerpt from a later chapter:

Kyle woke convinced he'd left a stove on.

A stove. Not necessarily his, no. And it might not even have been an actual stove per se. Maybe more of a toaster oven, or just a plain old waffle iron. With the waffles still inside, which would be a shame, because there was a pinch in his stomach that told him a waffle might have been the best fucking thing ever right about now. Either way, it'd get the job done, burn down a building somewhere, and he'd end up going Oops and get footed with a bill big enough to force him into prostitution.

He sat, flung the covers off his bed, and groggily reached for his timepiece on the nightstand.

05:20

Seven hours of sleep. Not bad. Not particularly good either, judging by how his thoughts shuffled forward slowly and his eyelids remained stubbornly heavy. Maybe he should flop right back into bed, pull the scratchy, stiff covers over his head and let the figurative stove blow.

No, no he couldn't.

Kyle gave in to the nagging feeling scratching at the back of his head and got to his feet. He found himself a passably fresh set of clothes, dug his belt out from where it had somehow ended up under the bed, and tied it while his thoughts kept turning themselves upside down. Come on man, get it together, he thought while he slipped the timepiece back onto his wrist. The anxiety kept crawling around the insides of his skull, like a pile of antsy... ants. Be worried, it insisted. Be out of your fucking mind.

He chalked it off as a pre-performance anxiety of sorts, his equivalent to a musician's stage jitters before the lights came on. Only his stage was right out there, past that door, and his audience a flock of scared survivors and a militaristic psycho. He'd have to fool them all again today, keep them believing he was no more than some idiot who'd not been able to check travel warnings on TripAdvisor before booking his summer vacation in quarantined Harran. 02/10, wouldn't recommend. Good weather this time of year, scenery nice, but locals very clingy. With their teeth.

Kyle left the unease behind once he stepped from the room, shed it clean as he could when he crossed the threshold. He even closed the door on it, just to make sure it wouldn't come crawling right after him and catch up in the hallway. And then, with his stomach in avid agreement, went to search for something that'd pass for breakfast.

Awakening: Stupid Tourist.

Zofia heard the plane approach and raised her gaze to the afternoon skies. It came in from the West, and that was peculiar, since they usually didn't cross into the Quarantine from that direction. Mildly interested, she took another bite from a stale, dry and altogether too tough piece of hard-baked halva, and craned her neck to track the plane's movements through wispy clouds.

Unlike the others, this one kept altitude as it passed across overhead. Another reason to dismiss it. Another reason not to care.

"It's better that way," she tried to convince herself, stamping out an ugly twist of hope in her gut, and shoved the last chunk of food between her teeth. She wasn't ready. Not yet and maybe not ever, but certainly not now.

Bits of halva, sticky and sweet, lodged itself between her teeth. She made an effort to wash them down with a generous swallow of water from her canteen, and while she sat there gurgling and pushing at her teeth with her tongue, her eyes abandoned the skies to check on her perch. A bit of a sorry excuse for one, with a rickety folding chair placed dead centre on the flat roof of a three story shack. But it put her above things, and she didn't need to worry much about anyone (or anything) approaching without her catching sight of them.

It made for a lovely view too, and these days that was about the only redeeming quality left to Harran.

Ahead of her, the city's slums fell away in a downward slope. Blocky buildings made of naked red brick, with only the occasional pale blue or green paint-job clinging to the facades, made up for most of the immediate scenery. Rows of flat, ramshackle roofs baked in the sun, cobbled together from sheets of metal and planks of wood, with the occasional deep blue tarp thrown over them. To her left, the buildings nestled close to steep rocks ringing in the peninsula, and farther ahead they pushed as far as they could out against the bay.

Over there, across the wide channel of water, sat the mainland, with Harran's architectural jewel standing proud along its shores. Zofia knew it only by the name Old Town, though the name fit. Harran's ancient heart had aged well, grown itself into an attractive metropolis that flirted with new and shiny things, but never quite separated from the old. Modern designs sprouted at its skirts, though the Ottoman roots remained, thick and gnarly and oh so pretty from where she sat. Zofia could see the brilliant, white buildings glaring back at the sun, and how skyscrapers mixed themselves into the traditional skyline of bulbous cones and delicate arches.

And then there were the thick, black pillars of smoke rising in-between it all.

If the slums were bad, Old Town was worse, Zofia knew. She frowned at the bloated stadium close to the shore line, Harren's latest architectual marvel built for this years global sporting event. Her brows knitted, as if that thing was to blame for everything that had happened, even it it really wasn't. Probably wasn't anyway. Maybe. But it hadn't helped matters. And it was ugly. More tendrils of smoke curled upwards around the structure, and she wished it'd go ahead and burn down.

Sometimes the fires over there died. Then they started up again, because there was always more to burn.

Yeah. Old Town was much worse.

Zofia pulled her eyes from the deceptively pretty skyline (if one discarded the smoke), and stared at the massive bridge spanning across the water instead. The Infamy Bridge it was called. She had no idea what it was so infamous for. Being really bloody big, maybe? Though from here, on the other side of the hill cleaving the slums in half, it didn't look that big.

The wall though, that looked big regardless, even if she only caught snatches of it between buildings, way out there where they'd dumped the concrete walls meant to keep Harran in, while the out watched on and fretted about what they'd locked away. She scoffed and turned away from the water.

A heavy, hot silence squatted in the air. It stank. Decay. Piss. Shit. Stale, stale everything . The whole city, its slums and bustling metropolis alike, had run past its expiration date. Though up here, with her head above the alleyways, she could almost smell the ocean. Water. Salt. Seaweed. Stale, too.

Zofia's brow pinched and she absent-mindedly folded the halva wrapper, until she was left with a tiny paper kite sitting in the palm of her hand. It was a pathetic little piece, but she turned her head to the skies again, and with a flick of her wrist sent the kite arching up towards the rumbling plane overhead. Her kite barely made it past the tips of her fingers, before it veered off and tumbled out of sight over the edge of the roof. Zofia sighed. 'Useless.' She picked up her water once more and lifted it to her lips for another sip.

That was when the plane spat out a dark blob. A parachute opened moments later, stabilizing the blob as it plummeted towards the cursed alleyways and shanties of the Harran slums.

Zofia squinted.

"What the…?" She hurriedly squeezed the canteen between her thighs, snatched the binoculars from her belt, and peered up at the chute.

A man was attached to it. A person, not an orange crate filled with necessities meant to keep Harran's citizens from— well, from being worse off than they already were. Something Zofia thought quite unlikely, no matter how far her imagination stretched. Once your neighbours started tearing chunks of meat out of you, and your streets were crowded with zombies shuffling shoulder to shoulder, you could safely assume that things couldn't get any worse.

Weirder, maybe. Like a man paradropping into an unforgiving quarantine zone. That was quite bizarre. Interesting, too.

Zofia resealed her canteen with a quick twist of the cap, and stashed it away in her pack. The binoculars returned to her belt, where they bumped against her hipbone as she stood.

She wasn't the only one watching the skies. Everyone did these days. A chute, no matter what it had attached to it, drew attention. Rais' men would get to it first, of course. They always did. They'd pick the sad Tourist apart right after he landed, and leave what was left to the Biters and their gnashing teeth.

Zofia's heart drummed frantically against her ribcage. While the men did their picking, they'd be distracted. Anticipation pulled through her stomach, a quiver of dread flirting with excitement. Ready or not, this could be it. A little distraction was all she needed.

She tracked the Tourist's descent. He'd go down near the southern apartment towers, not far from her. Uphill, but not far.

"What are you waiting for?"

Zofia frowned. Yes, why wasn't she halfway up the rise yet? She glanced at her bow propped up against the chair, a simple compound bow without the bells and whistles of a professional piece. At one point it had been painted a mossy green, though by now most of the colour had been chipped off, worn away by her rough handling of the poor thing.

Her eyes darted to the skies again. The chute was coming down fast, and her fingers twitched with her own uncertainty. She could choose to do nothing, of course. She could sit down again, enjoy the view for a little while longer. It was a decent enough day for sitting, after all. Her pockets were sufficiently lined with food. Her water supplies were in good shape too. Yes, she could just sit here, let the sun crawl across the skies until dusk called her back into the confines of her den.

Zofia grunted and snatched up the bow. She pulled the sling over her head and shoulder, and pulled it tight, securing it firmly to her side. A routine inspection of everything she carried followed as she stepped up to the edge of the roof. Bow, check. Hatchet on her right thigh, check. Pack, check. Makeshift quiver with a few arrows at the small of her back, check. Ready then, even if just for stretching her legs across the rooftops of the slums.

Below, in an alley barely broad enough to fit a man and a half, two lone Biters loitered with their ruined faces turned toward the sun. They ignored her, and she ignored them.

With her heart having found itself another fast paced beat, Zofia leapt from her perch to the shorter, squat building on the other side. She landed as softly as one could on sheets of corrugated metal, and jogged across the rickety roof. The noise of her feet hitting the metal stirred the Biters clustered around the house. An enthusiastic moan here, a wretched gurgle there, all squeezed up from throats that had long forgotten how to form words. Zofia ignored them still.

She plotted a route across the rooftops, and with the chute still in sight, made her way across.

Her fingers strained as she clung on to the edge of the roof. Her arms shook from the effort of pulling herself up, and Zofia thought, for a moment, that moving slowly and deliberately had been a terrible idea. Momentum helped when one tried to scale walls. With considerable effort, Zofia managed to get her knee over the edge. With more of the same she snapped her elbow up too, and slowly heaved herself to the top.

A shaded balcony greeted her. Concrete and red brick, walled in and covered by yet another sheet of metal. A wilting shrubbery stood in one corner, a dirty wicker basket in the other. The door was gone, but someone had pushed a bookcase across to make up for it and keep the monsters out. Zofia stayed low and crept to the other end, where she could get a good look at the street below. She'd seen the chute flutter out of sight here, but she'd had no idea what to expect.

The Tourist had landed by an abandoned grocery store across the street. Rather, he'd tried to. His chute had caught itself on a light pole on the way down, missed the shade roof that would have cushioned his fall. Now he dangled from the line like bait on a hook. He was clean bait, at least. His jeans were pristine, and his long sleeved black shirt lacked the dirt and tears that had become fashionable here in Harran.

No Biters had come to nip at his ankles, Zofia noted. Not yet. The street lay empty, save for a broken down bus that had made it halfway through the bend, and a burnt out car reduced to a blackened skeleton. When the city had turned, it had also stopped caring for keeping itself respectable. Rubbish lined the streets, gathered in piles where the wind collected it. Scraps of plastic, paper and rotting food didn't bother her though. It was the blood. The dried smears of crimson. The dark pools that marked where a person had bled their life onto the pavement. She wondered, briefly, what the Tourist was thinking about the matter, as he hung suspended from the side of the building. Did he see where a leg poked out from under the bus? The rotting piece of meat with the white of the bone showing? Had he noticed the splash of red on the windshield? If he did, was he regretting things as they were?

"You should help him," she whispered to herself. He looked a little out of sorts up there, his head jerking left and right as he tried to get his bearings. An oxygen mask was strapped to his skull, so she couldn't get a good look at his face, but she imagined he wasn't all smiles and grins after the bodged up landing. Eventually he grew tired of hanging, unclipped his harness, and went to greet the tarmac with a pained grunt.

"Ouch," Zofia murmured. She leaned forward, ready to vault over the wall and lend the idiot a hand, when she heard the beat of boots on the pavement. Heavy boots.

"Ah shit."

Her mouth felt dry, her throat clicked. She pulled her bow forward, wrapped her hand tightly around it. Don't be a coward. This is it. Her shoulders shook, and Zofia ground her teeth together to keep them from chattering.

No. She wasn't ready.

Three men fanned out in front of the tourist. They leaked malice, carried themselves with the same purposeful steps as a pack of attack dogs cornering their mark. Except dogs had redeeming qualities. These man, they did not. Their weapons were just as likely to crush a Biter's head, as they were to knock a healthy man's skull in, and then they'd rob the poor bastard of whatever scraps he'd had left to his miserable life.

"I told you that wasn't a normal drop chute," Thug number 1 proclaimed. He jutted his chin at the man lying in the dirty street.

The men had their backs turned to Zofia's cover. It didn't matter. She didn't need to see the three yellow swathes of paint across their chests, like claw marks of some monstrous beast, to know who these dogs answered to. Who they belonged to. It was how Rais marked what was his. Territory. Property. People.

"Break his legs," the tallest of the three ordered. "Then take him to Rais."

Zofia's stomach lined with ice. It turned, made her want to be sick. Tahir. She knew the voice. Couldn't ever forget. Didn't ever want to forget, since how would she ever be ready otherwise?

The men closed in on their quarry. Zofia choked down a whimper, and slid behind the wall. Her limbs were numb, heavy. She dropped her chin to her chest, stared at her fingers tightly wrapped around the bow. Coward. Her knuckles had turned white.

"Back up, all of you!" Zofia heard the tourist bark. Desperation gave his voice a faint tremble.

"Stop," Thug number 3 warned. "Loud noises draw them." He kept his voice down, as if he was trying to make a point, because clearly the tourist didn't know, and even though Zofia wasn't looking, she thought he was about to cause a racket. Enough to have Rais's men reconsider. Their feet shuffled across the tarmac. Cautious steps. Wary. For a while, Zofia fought against her dread, tried to get herself to look over the edge of the wall. She twitched, craned her neck up. Then came the first muffled TWACK of a bat meeting a meaty target. Then another, and another. Her resolve faltered.

Zofia squeezed her eyes shut. They kept beating him, and she hid in her corner.

Coward….

The tourist fought back. A gunshot cracked through the air. Or two, she couldn't quite tell. It didn't matter though, whether he'd fired one shot, or two. Or even three. The echo of it bounced through the streets, and jolted everything terrible awake.

Zofia held her breath. What was he thinking?

The first blood curdling shriek was quickly answered by a chorus of them, and they all came bearing down on what had, a moment ago, been no more than a quiet spot of murder.

"Fall back," Tahir shouted. "Fall back!" His men didn't argue. No one in their right mind would.

Zofia exhaled sharply and forced herself to peek over the edge of the wall. They were already legging it up the street and quickly out of sight, leaving the tourist dragging himself towards the shop behind him. She watched them run, their backs to her. Easy targets. They'd been such easy targets. The whole bloody time too.

You coward.

Quick footfalls and greedy snarls drew her attention back to the idiotic tourist. Three Biters (or Virals, rather, as the locals called them) came charging up the street. The early birds, the ones about to get their pickings on the worm.

"No-No-No," Zofia stammered. She yanked the bow up. Her right hand dipped to the quiver at the base of her spine, and she nocked an arrow as the first raving things reached the downed man. It bit down on his arm. He screamed.

"Shit." Her arm drew back— and stayed poised when a man came darting from the alley to her right. The newcomer knocked the Viral right off its meal with one practiced swipe of a baseball bat, and then proceeded beating the thing to a pulp. They were convincing swings, so much in fact, that Zofia almost didn't hear her own death hoisting itself up the ledge behind her. She smelled it though. The whole city reeked of rot and decay, but a gust of wind could still betray the dead who'd not quite understood what being dead entailed. Not crawling up a wall, for one. Or lunging at her with wide, bloodshot eyes hungry, its yellow teeth bared, and fingers curled like claws. They were caked in dirt and dried blood. Zofia sidestepped its first grab. She slid back, drew the bow up, and let the arrow fly.

Missed. Fuck.

The arrow sunk into its open mouth and lodged itself in its cheek. It lunged again.

Zofia swung her bow at the thing's head. A slap, really, but enough to send it veering off its path and stagger against the wall. When it recovered and got its beady, blood soaked eyes on her again, Zofia bolted.

Fuck that tourist. Fuck him and his stupid parachute. Fuck him and his stupid gun.

She jumped from the side of the building, tucked herself and her bow into a roll into the ditch behind it, and started up the slope as soon as she got her feet back under her.

Zofia ran. Behind her, a woman screamed. Her cry carried grief. The scream, the loss and the despair, they came bounding after her, much more relentless than any Biter, and Zofia kept running. She hated herself for it. But she ran.

Taffer Notes: Updated 18th Jan 2017, Draft version 1.5