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<span>Spoiler: <span class="bbCodeSpoiler-button-title">LuAnn Daniels</span></span>
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<div class="bbCodeBlock-content">Her name was LuAnn Daniels, Lu to just about everybody back when names were less important than one of a series of numbers. Now it was still Lu, and the only number that mattered was how many arrows she had left, or how many bullets.<br/>
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Before 'it' happened, she had been working as a hunting guide for Kentucky Whitetail Outfitters, an outfit that sold hunting supplies and arranged hunts for people who did it for sport.  LuAnn had been hunting since she was twelve, and she and her father and brother had hunted not for sport, but to put meat on the table, and in the little Amana freezer in the pantry of their run-down house.  She knew how to track a deer, how to kill it so that it didn't suffer -- and, just as important, so that it didn't run off and require the hunter to skinny down a stand doubletime and take off into the brush and briars after it.  She knew how to dress one, too, without wasting a bit of the meat, and even how to tan the skin.  Her brother had done most of the tanning, since she didn't have the patience for it generally, and she'd done the dressing.  Her mother had thought the division of labor odd, but her father had just shrugged.  What came naturally to people sometimes went along with gender in the accepted sense, and sometimes it didn't.<br/>
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She could cook one too, though her cooking ran to basics like steaks or stews.  That was just fine, because the budget didn't run to fancy ingredients, and everyone was too busy for dishes that took half a day in nursing it along into being ready to eat.<br/>
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She was out with a hunt group when she ran into her first 'walker'.  It was another hunter, a neat little hole about the size of a quarter in the front of his orange vest and another one the size of a small frying pan in the back where it had blown out.  Larry, the lawyer who'd flown up from Miami to 'bag a buck' as he called it, had moved immediately in to help.  In other circumstances, he might have been a hero.  Instead he was just dead.  The bastard had reached up and torn out his unprotected throat just like a wolf, and that's when the next one stepped out of the trees.<br/>
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Things had gone to shit pretty fast.  They got the news late, relatively, and by the time she'd gotten home, her family was gone.  She had one message on her cell saying that they were headed for an evacuation shelter, and that was it.  She hoped they were somewhere safe.  For her part, she and the others had headed out.  She'd been in a shelter for a few days before some dumbass didn't tell anyone when his mother died of a heart attack, and after that she'd ended up teaming up with a group of survivors who had the skills, and the balls, to stick together and, most of all, to hole up in a place they could fortify.<br/>
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LuAnn is twenty-eight years old.  She's a crack shot with a rifle and a shotgun, and damn good with the compound bow as well.  Her hunting and hiking experience stood her in good stead, making her a natural to lead out the foraging and scouting parties.  At least within their group, sexism was dead, and along with it racism, homophobia, and religious discrimination.  The only thing that mattered was whether you were useful -- useful enough to protect, or useful enough to be protected.<br/>
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What made her most useful to the group was her lack of squeamishness.    She'd gotten good at compartmentalizing things, and there were only two separate compartments -- 'us' and 'them' -- and 'them' included anyone who was working to hurt them ... or making survival harder by getting in the way of what they needed to survive.  Most of the time, she was cold, but beyond that was a fire that could occasionally burst into savagery.<br/>
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Everybody had their own way of dealing.  Those moments were her way -- not something to be proud of, but not something to feel shame over either.</div>
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</div><br/>There was a musty smell in the apartment, which was somewhat reassuring.  It was to be expected given that the whole thing had been locked up tighter than a drum, and that no windows or doors were broken meant it had stayed that way.  The people who'd lived here must have expected to be coming back when the crisis was over.  A part of her, the part that was divorced from the task at hand, wondered if they lived long enough to realize that the old world was never coming back.<br/><br/>They'd had a nice place, full of things that had been well taken care of, balancing expense and quality. She hadn't looked at the pictures hanging on the wall, sitting in frames amongst the brick-a-brac.  Things like that, too much sentimentality, got you killed in the new world -- or at least it was one of the many things that got you killed, and pray to whatever god you believed in that when you went down there was somebody around to make sure that you never got back up.<br/><br/>She'd found a bit of a treasure trove -- somebody in the house had taken up hunting, or had at least toyed with the idea.  There was a compound bow, a nice one, though the pull on it was not as strong as she preferred, and a good supply of aluminum shaft arrows with broadhead blade and field point tips and even a couple of spare strings for the bow and a cleaning kit.<br/><br/>She had no intention of trading in her bow, but you could never have too many spares, and certainly you couldn't have too much ammunition.  It wasn't always possible to get an arrow back when you were shooting into a pack of walkers, though she never left an arrow behind that could be retrieved.  The field point arrows were good enough to take down walkers; the broadheads were better saved for game, or for the human predators that thought the walkers weren't killing survivors fast enough.<br/><br/>The entrance had been left open, her choice.  If there were walkers still in the structure, that was risky, but it also meant she could hear Kalab shout if he needed to, and he could hear her.  For a bit, she had heard Kalab moving nearby, until he went quiet.  That could be bad, or good.  Maybe he found something useful, or maybe there was trouble brewing outside.  Either way, she wasted no time in shoving the bundle of arrows in her dufflebag, a little souvenir that she'd snagged along the way from someone who wasn't going to be using it anymore.  It was durable, water resistant, and surprisingly versatile to carry, and when she had to, it made a pretty good club or barrier against attack when it was full.   A shiver ran down her spine when she heard the howl ... not walkers then, but other looters.  They were by far the more dangerous of the two.  While some of the groups of survivors were trying to do just that, there were others who figured that less survivors meant the lion's share of supplies, of territory, and everything else, meant more for them.<br/><br/>She was already standing and hoisting the bag onto her shoulder when she heard the soft pad of Zach's footsteps.  He was economical of action and movement, so if he was moving fast, there was good reason, and his face confirmed it.  The second bag, which held some dried soup mixes and a couple of flat cans of sardines -- guess the owners hadn't liked them any better than she did, he picked up and thrust it at her.<br/><br/>She took it, the question on her face turning to grim purpose.  If Zach said they had to go now, then there was no time to explain why.  LuAnn knew that, and trusted it -- he was one of the few whose instincts she trusted as much as her own.  Well, it was probably more accurate to say that he was the only one she trusted as much as she trusted herself.<br/><br/>She nodded, and almost as one they headed out into the hallway.  Despite her normal practicality, LuAnn found herself wasting a couple of seconds to shut the front door, though there was nothing she could do about the now-busted lock.  Their footsteps echoed softly in the new silence -- funny how she'd never been as aware of the many myriad sounds of the old world until they were gone.   The short run was an easy one, requiring only a leap or two to get across debris strewn into the hallway, remnants of that other life that no custodian was ever going to have to clean up.<br/><br/>The stairwell wasn't going to be as silent.  The doors were metal, and the stairs were as well.  It was speed or silence, and even with practical footgear, there was going to be sound.  With walkers, it didn't matter that much ... but with other looters, it very well might.  There was no help for it, even as she winced at the soft, reverberating clatter, and it was something of a relief to emerge into the pale sunlight of an overcast sky and push the door securely shut.  Leaving Zach to figure out if it could be, or needed to be, blocked, she headed for the building's edge and peered down.  Her eyes caught movement at the edge of the parking lot.  They widened.<br/><br/>From the discolored flesh on the two that were moving between the cars, easy to see as it hung in flaps from one's shoulder, a putrid greenish red of gangrenous decay, they were walkers, but they moved with speed and intent, one seeming even to stop and take stock of the territory, assessing threat.<b>"What the fuck?" </b>she mouthed, but any answer Zach might have would have wait.<br/><br/>LuAnn's spit dried in her mouth, and for the first time in a very long time, she felt a sickening surge of terror.<br/><br/><b>"Hurry,"</b>she hissed, her fingers almost aching for the comfort of her bow.    Whatever they were, there was more than one, and a shot might just give away their position to the rest.<br/><br/>A scream, a very human scream made her blood run cold.  Screams mostly sounded the same, but unless these howlers could scream, too, chances were that it was one of the others in their party.  The two moving walkers stopped, heads lifting as if they were ... listening.