*Repost from OOC thread*

Since no one else seems to be kicking things off, I'll just relocate this in the hopes that someone will take up and roll with it. This is the thread where this belongs anyhow.

The pounding was one thing. That would have just faded into the background under any other circumstances- but the stench! The putrid stench of death and rotting human flesh just wasn't something a person could get used to. It took real, conscious effort now for her to keep herself from just blowing all the traps at once and making a run for it- but she knew she wouldn't get far; the ones outside the door were just a taste of the mass that roamed the streets below.

For the first week, she'd kept herself busy cutting them to ribbons with her laser rifle- the re-built and heavily modified CTR-3820 that she had nearly three dozen confirmed kills with. Zombies didn't count, of course- well, they did at first, but after the first hundred or so she'd stopped counting. It was easy then, when she had been able to just hack in and seal off the building then pop the head off anything that came near the front gate. That was before the fusion plant shut down and city power died- now the only things keeping the unfeeling, uncaring horde at bay were a double-thick plasteel door and a couple of prox-mines. The CTR-3820 couldn't just be used lightly now; without a reliable power source the only way of charging it was the solar backup- and that could take hours to reach a full charge.

She flicked her glasses down from their perch on her forehead to peer out the window, using their zoom function to scan for any sign of intelligent life- and saw nothing, as usual. Popping in the earpiece and tapping the comm... static, as usual. Crap for reception indoors anyway, and the only person who had her frequency was dead. It never hurt to check, though; maybe another survivor might have picked up Lee's unit- a slim chance, but still a chance.

She went to check on the rations next- no rush; rats wouldn't touch that synth-paste crap and if the zombies got in she would be screwed beyond caring anyway. The usual grimace seized her face as she squeezed the dregs of the next-to-last tube into her mouth, then hurriedly took a swig from her canteen to wash the chalky taste down.

That was it then; maybe a day or two more then she could do nothing but move or die. She'd have to use the roof- no way out downstairs with all the nasties chewing on each other and anything else that looked edible. She'd been planning the move for days; a length of lightweight climbing rope and a pair of magnetic grapples now bridged the gap between the roof and the next building over. The roof was safe; the only ways to get up there were the non-functional elevators and the penthouse, and the penthouse was locked up tight. When the time came, a quick zipline ride would see her across the gap- but after that, nothing was certain. She was pretty sure the adjacent tower was abandoned, but that was no guarantee that it was zombie-free or defensible, to say nothing of potential sources of food.

One last try on the old set.

She pulled up a chair in front of the massive, boxy contraption. Old it might be, but at least it didn't require power- a few turns of the crank on the side and the ancient emergency radio burbled to life. She grabbed the mic and keyed the set to transmit on every frequency it could. Not that it had worked before, but maybe there was someone out there listening- even if that someone might have been an enemy before, any human contact would be a good enough start.

"This is Resistance operative 11-King-Echo," she said wearily into the set, "to anyone who can hear this message..."