My gaze fixed on the shattered land that was once one of the most cosmopolitan and vibrant cities in the Western world…The lightning flared deeply across the rolling sky, the flash lighting up the room behind, the glowing reflection caught in the cracked shards of glass that jutted from the broken frame… in an instant my eyes narrowed, drawn by the sight of that woman… my heart struck by some force that seemed so out of my control… something so deep… something so needful. I caught Trey’s barely concealed lustful gaze, something I expected from him… and something else… a soft sweet smile that played on her lips momentarily as she gazed at him. I felt my heart pitch forward and had to steady myself against the outcrop as my eyes met hers in the reflection in the glass. My mind reeled from the effects of such a simple gesture on her part, but it had such a profound impact on me. This day had seen many emotion rise within me, this perhaps was the most unexpected one of them… jealousy… a deeper darker part of me regarded Trey as something more than just a hired thug, I saw him as a threat… very real and pronounced.

…It was at that moment that something clicked over in my mind and a darker primal resolve set in motion in my mind…

My eyes were drawn to her as she slowly reached for her weapon, her gaze regarding us both for any signs of aggression towards her… Trey, perhaps through instinct slide her gun to hold her in its sights, I watched her graceful movements as she motioned towards the wretched hell that surrounded us… I knew that whether any of us liked it or not, our survival… slim though the chance was… depended upon us allowing some form of cooperation. Trey glanced to the shattered bodies of his men, already cooling.

The suddenness of Trey’s outburst shook me for a moment…

“Fucking speak you dumb mute bitch!”…

I watched as her eyes flared, wondering how many times she had faced such a situation before, and how many times her victim had underestimated her… only to be left cooling themselves in a puddle of blood. Her gaze then shifted to mine and I found the look in her eyes ignite a little of the fire that had burned in me earlier, I watched… captivated almost… as she pulled herself onto the desk and sat regarding us. My gaze seemed reluctant to shift from her sight… I felt that darkness swell within and leach from my senses, and despite the danger I could think of only one thing… her…

A sudden grinding crack broke the silent triangle between us… Trey was the first to speak as the noise echoed through the empty stairwell, quickly followed by a chorus of guttural cries…

“FUCK!!!…

Trey ducked from the room and cast his gaze down the stairwell, the cries increasing with the footfalls as they wound their way towards us, their crazed shadows falling across the steps a couple of floors below… he returned, a look that mirrored the haze that had fallen across him earlier in the wastes. He watched as pulled the knife from the wood of the table, gently running my fingers across the sharpened edge, feeling the cold touch of death that held such promise within its folded metal…

“Oh for fuck sake Celine… I mean seriously, what do you expect to do with that fuckin pig sticker!” Trey sighed and bought his gun to bear as we heard them reach the floor below…

I glanced across at this woman, her beauty seemed to radiate with the danger that rushed towards us, I wonder how many times she had felt the rush of adrenalin as she had faced the innumerable threats that were testament to her survival, how many had lain battered and bleeding at her hand…her eyes glanced to mine, I saw an echo of her past as her mind seemed to measure the threat that closed in on us…

I watched her deftly un-shoulder the cross bow and quickly thread a bolt into the groove before locking it down. I winced as I remembered the path of fire that skipped across my abdomen as she had used the self same weapon against me. I flipped the knife around so that the blade pointed behind me, my fingers tightly wound around the shaft as my other hand pulled a syringe free from its housing… I felt my mind close around itself as I braced for the fight, the intoxicating rush of facing a possible death almost shocked me… but the barriers of my staid existence below ground fell away and I almost envied her this life… I knew the last vestiges of the darkness that had fallen across me still clawed at the farthest reaches of my mind, the battle deep inside seemed to be at the point of tearing me apart… I felt her gaze fall across me and quickly twisted to lock my eyes on hers. I wondered at her thoughts at the shadows that etched themselves across my face…

I was jolted from her as the door was hefted open… the fingers of the electrical storm lit the room, reflecting in the eyes of this wretch… eyes that burned red with the disease and the madness that tore at him, a pitiful and tormented sight but no less dangerous for it… as the lightening glow faded the room was suddenly lit by the violent flash of the gun muzzle at Trey’s hand… the room filled with the whining rumble as the clip emptied heavily into his chest throwing him backwards, his body dancing in a macabre ballet. Trey screamed out as the rage flooded through him and more moved to fill the doorway, the weight of their numbers in this confined space allowing them to quickly force their way into the room. A click from Trey’s weapon was followed by a quick curse as the spent clip was ejected and a new one driven home… but by now they had closed in on him and he was forced to use the weapons butt as a makeshift cosh.

A glance to my side and I saw as this woman deftly poised against the backdrop of the storm raised her crossbow and slipped her finger against the trigger….

I spun about as a shadow loomed towards me, feeling the dankness of his breath as he clawed for me, his fingers reaching out… I whipped the blade about; the sharp edge cleaved the tip from an outstretched finger as the point cut cleanly across his throat… I winced as the thin spray of blood splattered across me, suddenly I was feverishly aware of the cut in my forearm… a wound torn as the darkness bit deep into my soul… but my rational mind screamed at the risk of infection… I felt the rage fill me as I drove the blade deep into his chest and forcing him backwards into another of the scavengers that bore down upon me, wrenching the blade free as he pitched backwards… Trey stepped back with a guttural cry, making some space and his gun once more sparked through the room… the wall exploding in a cloud of rubble and blood spittle as the bullets drove mercilessly through flesh and bone…

I twisted as a flash of gunfire highlighted a fast moving shape that kicked off from the table and launched into the air, I spun as his pitched scream filled my ears and thrust forward with the syringe… releasing a lethal dose of Pancuronium bromide into his system… the dose was large enough that his muscles had siezed and paralysis had set in before he hit the floor and I plunged the blade through the vertebrae of his back, ensuring that he would never return to his feet…

My eye caught the woman who had been the object of my earlier dark needs as she spun about… her crossbow pointed directly at me… a thin clunk sent the blot screaming towards me… I felt it flick at my hair as it passed by the side of my head and came to the gurggling halt buried in the throat of an attacker that had come up behind… the thin spray of red filled the air as he dropped. We exchanged a glance, her eyes burned with a depth that threatened to swallow me… and my thoughts were only broken by Trey as he called out….

“We have another group coming up… move now while they are thinned out!”