She stepped softly into the water. The cold penetrated into her skin like the fingers of impending death and sent shivers up her spine. Suppressing another shiver, Trixie pulled her baby-blue jean jacket tighter around her frame. She felt molested by the darkness. It was creeping around her, pushing at her boundaries, and the light on her Berretta barely kept it at bay. She swallowed thickly as her heart rate soared; as if she’d been pumped full of cocaine and was nearing the edge of an overdose. Instincts were funny things like that. Using fear to keep her hyper-aware. The black of night or the darkness of enclosed buildings had never scared her before… until the apocalypse, that is. Scary things bumped in the night now.<br/><br/>Captain Savage, promoted to a position of Command during the first waves of outbreak, had been sleeping in an abandoned house with the team who left the Haven with her. Only the moon’s glare provided them with light and she took first rest. If it hadn’t been for the Shriek and Titan she would have died to the Stalker’s Ambush that night. Her men on watch downstairs had already fallen to them and a lone Shriek snuck past the ground floor while they feasted. It had climbed the stairs of the cliché family home and entered the room of exhausted humans. She awoke to a sound of Titan’s bark, having gotten careless in security to not have woken at the first strange sound, and saw the grotesque form of the Shriek bearing down on her. Its claws ripped into her breast like a knife in butter and she screamed in pain rolling away; alerting the rest of the sleeping men and women in the room to get up for battle. Her hand pulled her Bayonet from under the pillow and angry hands repeatedly stabbed the monster’s face in retaliation. It released a banshee wail that still makes her feel sick to this day when she recalls the sound and fell. The next few seconds had been filled with the hot wet pain in her chest and the horror swallowing her as she turned to look at the doorway. Her men were pointing and yelling about more monsters crowding the door.<br/><br/>That was the first time she came up close and personal with Stalkers. They were crouched in the doorway with large, black eyes reflecting orange demonic hues from their laser sights, like a great-white sharks eyes. They vanished back into the dark downstairs where they mimicked the sounds of the men who died below to make them thing people were still alive. They managed to kill the Stalkers off, only losing one of the remaining five men to his mind. Insanity gripped him making him rock himself back and forth on the floor like a weeping child… and Trixie shot him.<br/><br/>She lifted her gun while her chest was still exposed with hanging, bleeding bits of serrated flesh and took the shot. She only wanted a bit of silence. That day she lost a bit of her own sanity and also lost the respect from her surviving soldiers. They wrapped her up with medical supplies and then they separated when she showed no signs of infection.<br/><br/>And so here she was… Wading through filth that masked the smell of ammonia in the pitch black despite her instincts yelling ‘Get the hell out of Dodge!’ Just waiting for something to jump out and something kind of did. It was merely in the shape of a person who wasn’t quite undead.<br/>"Hey! Artemis, hold up."<br/><br/>Trixie about jumped out of her skin. The blonde spun round as that call echoed on the concrete around her. She heard the sloshing of a person running and raised her gun to point the light on the individual tracking her. “HALT or I’ll fucking shoot!” Black hair, long legs, and hawkish features stood before the soldier but she took notice that he didn’t have his weapon pointed at her. But she wasn’t going to take any chances “Put your gun away.” Her brows knitted together and her voice got low as she gestured to his weapon to be haltered. “You must be Café boy. Didn’t I send you a card saying leave me the fuck alone? Why are you here, following me into the fucking dumps… Is your pretty Asian lover here too or-” Realization dawned on Trix and anger flared through the sassy woman. “He better not be going after my civilian or I’ll blow out his kneecaps after I finish with you of course.”<span style="font-style: italic">’Shit shit. Be okay Godfrey!’</span><br/><br/>As the two had their little standoff banter, neither seemed aware of the things their yells had alerted in the dark.