Beggarman's Crusade

[Warr]

The washed out, entirely devoured, corpse of a cow sprawled in front of him, half-opened eyes staring in disbelief at the still visible form, before feeling his stomach rumble and his eyes watered. They had been the cause of this, they had prevented him from a decent meal in months, from being able to navigate this way in any easy sense. At least he liked to think it was they who did this, because he doubted any human, vulpine, or or even elephane, survivor would stop from even leaving some meat around the skull. And boy did it make him mad, it made him so bloody mad he had to sing, to shout.

“I’m a beggar and a thief, a scoundrel and a rogue. I’m a rebel and a heretic. Yeah, yeah. I’m all these things, but damn can I dance.”

The words were an artillery shell in the deathly tranquil silence of the Dverian Lowlands. They were words which were meant to provoke a response, and already doing so. Silent groans and heavy, quick footsteps, they all could be heard soon after. The music was picking up, that was for sure.

They would be on him like fleas on a wolf, and his fangs would be ready to deliver them to sweet oblivion. Why in the nine levels of hell should undead be able to eat when the living hand to scramble to find food that wasn’t green and healthy? One beat of the temp, two beats, three. They were visible on the horizon, and his bowie knife came out.

One of the raging beasts flew forward, and the blade caught him in the temple, dug in. His dancing partner grabbed that filthy barely there shirtcollar and spun him back the way he came, hurling him towards the other zombies. Other scramble-shambled for a grapple, and was greeted with a steel-toed boot to the chin, shattering it’s teeth in the process. And by then there were a few too many for pleasure nearby him. He threw himself into flight, running as fast as he could, and slowing only after he passed the nearby building’s corner. A shotgun came unsheathed from his side, and the oh so recognizable sound of a shotgun’s loading could be heard. He turned back to the battlefield, grinning at the horde and pulling the trigger.

The process of loading and unloading was repeated no less than five more times, and then the horde was on the ground, though not necessarily dead. A silent, and slightly creepy grin later, and a shovel to the head began fixing that.

He was living in this new age, everyday combat. Fighting for food and to keep from being someone else’s. And today’s combat proved lucky. A few of the newly deceased undeceased had some goodies on their corpses. One even had a backpack with bullets and thank the gods, a supersmacker peanutbutter crusher bar, in -mostly- mint condition.

So the rebel, fighter, madman, he unwrapped his spoils of new day’s war, and took a bite of the first honest to heaven junk food he had tasted in weeks.

[Kay]

She crouched carefully in the burned out husk of the ship that had dared attempt the trip around the continent to safer waters in search of a less perilous trade route. It hadn’t been Lupan’s brightest moment, sending their Crown Princess on the voyage. A hurricane had caught the Unfolding Dream before she had cleared the Warreic Straight, sending the vessel careening off course - straight into the continent…specifically what had once been Dveria. When the crew had been overwhelmed by the zombies infesting the continent they - ‘they’ being the Captain and his Mate - had loaded their princess down with all of the supplies (Read: Bullets) she could carry and sent her and the Sinopa pup she refused to be without off on their own, lighting the ship on fire as a distraction.

That was ten weeks ago. The board she’d been marking the days on had sported seventy neat, precise lines that morning arranged in careful groups of five. She’d flung the board out to sea upon making the seventieth line, overwhelmed by a rare fit of despair. Nobody was coming for her, it seemed.

So she had returned to the ship to gather what she could. It wasn’t much…she had come back for the last of the food long ago. She picked up a katana lost on the night of her flight and examined the blade carefully. The belt was, of course, ruined…which was why she hadn’t bothered picking up the blade before. Hope, the orphaned Sinopa kit that served as her constant companion - had been in a chewing stage of her growth.

She glanced down at the half-grown, wolf-sized fox laying at her side. As was usual when they ventured out, Hope was staring inland, her ears lifted and alert. As her Lupan companion watched, however, Hope tucked her ears tightly back and shifted a little bit in place before going utterly still. Putting one arm around the kit, she pulled them both into a nook of the burned out hull, sitting as still as was possible for an adolescent sinopa kit and a very young princess, and keeping absolutely silent.

It had been a whole lot of luck, finding out that the zombies (at least in this region) were bumbling pieces of dead flesh who reacted only to obvious sights such as movement or light and to sound. If one sat still and quiet, the zombies would never know you were there. They had no sense of smell. That set of facts alone had saved the unlikely pair of survivors much more often than any weapon had.

She was brought out of her thoughts moments later by Hope’s soft squirm. Looking up and seeing nothing in sight, she lifted her oddly colored ears to listen. Moments later, she heard it too…the distinct and wonderful sound of gunfire. It lasted only a few minutes, but when she looked at Hope, the kit gave a foxy grin.

The fact that there might be other survivors gave the pair heart, but it did little for their current dilemma that was the pack of six zombies that had just emerged from the trees. She growled softly under her breath, emboldened. Pulling the military grade twelve gauge shotgun that had been sawed off to accommodate her smaller size and stature around on its sling, she called out loudly in a universal jingle.

“Shave and a Haircut!” She then cocked the shotgun quickly and grinned, her ears flat back and her pointy canines showing. It was time to send a great resounding declaration of ‘HERE I AM!’ to survivor and zombie alike.

Bracing the butt of the sawed off weapon against her hip, the woman-warrior who had been a princess Once Upon a Time squeezed the trigger and sent brain particles showering.