Us vs. the Apocalypse
Title: Penny
Word Count: 500
Author's Note: Let's play "spot the crossover" (hint: it's really obvious).
They were a sorry bunch when Jake brought them in - muddy, soaked to the bone, covered in Ollie tar - but I knew there was something different about these ones. We got scavengers all the time, the hopefuls that thought they could grab some supplies without us catching them. They didn't come quite so frequently anymore, not after we started hanging the bodies from the streetlamps, but occasionally we found some unlucky bastards sniffing around the border. They were usually like scared kids, hungry and desperate for a safe place to sleep, somehow getting it in their heads that it was better to deal with us than with the dead. Sometimes we took them in, if we thought they could prove useful, but most times we didn't.
But these ones, no, these weren't the whining little rats that wandered the highways between Balewood and Anson City. They weren't the ones thrown out of one of the coastal towns, and they certainly weren't country folk. Anybody who could get deep into the red zone like that, right into the middle of the fucking hospital of all places, and not lose someone to a bite? Took balls of steel and a whole lot of crazy, so that meant they were either the smart survivor type like us, or they were dispatchers, and when Chelsea tossed the collection of Gryphons on my desk it narrowed down the options pretty quick.
"So," I said, walking around them in a circle. Mikey had them kneeling on the floor with their hands zipped, and it was obvious they hadn't ended up like that without a fight. "Which one of you's the captain?" None of them said anything. Not like I expected much - the dispatchers never talked, not a single one of them. We'd seen a few squads, not counting the ones we'd cleaned out when we took the city, and they were always about their pride and their rules. Four of them wouldn't even look at me, but the fifth, the skinny, sickly one, he was staring me right in the face. "How about you?" I asked him, and held my gun by the barrel so I could tap the grip under his chin. Mikey had made a fucking mess of his face. "You run this outfit?"
"Fuck you," he said. Predictable as hell.
"Sure you'd like that," I said, and hooked my fingers in the leather strap around his neck. "What's this?" I pulled on it until the pendant came out from under his shirt, but rather than anything even close to interesting or valuable it was just a piece of tarnished metal - a penny, it looked like, though it was so worn you couldn't even really tell anymore. "Lucky penny?" I asked, amused. Dispatchers carried some fucking weird shit.
"It's my sister's," he growled at me.
"And where's your sister?" I asked. I'd already guessed the answer, and the way his face got dark confirmed it. "Guess it weren't so lucky for her, was it?"
Word Count: 500
Author's Note: Let's play "spot the crossover" (hint: it's really obvious).
They were a sorry bunch when Jake brought them in - muddy, soaked to the bone, covered in Ollie tar - but I knew there was something different about these ones. We got scavengers all the time, the hopefuls that thought they could grab some supplies without us catching them. They didn't come quite so frequently anymore, not after we started hanging the bodies from the streetlamps, but occasionally we found some unlucky bastards sniffing around the border. They were usually like scared kids, hungry and desperate for a safe place to sleep, somehow getting it in their heads that it was better to deal with us than with the dead. Sometimes we took them in, if we thought they could prove useful, but most times we didn't.
But these ones, no, these weren't the whining little rats that wandered the highways between Balewood and Anson City. They weren't the ones thrown out of one of the coastal towns, and they certainly weren't country folk. Anybody who could get deep into the red zone like that, right into the middle of the fucking hospital of all places, and not lose someone to a bite? Took balls of steel and a whole lot of crazy, so that meant they were either the smart survivor type like us, or they were dispatchers, and when Chelsea tossed the collection of Gryphons on my desk it narrowed down the options pretty quick.
"So," I said, walking around them in a circle. Mikey had them kneeling on the floor with their hands zipped, and it was obvious they hadn't ended up like that without a fight. "Which one of you's the captain?" None of them said anything. Not like I expected much - the dispatchers never talked, not a single one of them. We'd seen a few squads, not counting the ones we'd cleaned out when we took the city, and they were always about their pride and their rules. Four of them wouldn't even look at me, but the fifth, the skinny, sickly one, he was staring me right in the face. "How about you?" I asked him, and held my gun by the barrel so I could tap the grip under his chin. Mikey had made a fucking mess of his face. "You run this outfit?"
"Fuck you," he said. Predictable as hell.
"Sure you'd like that," I said, and hooked my fingers in the leather strap around his neck. "What's this?" I pulled on it until the pendant came out from under his shirt, but rather than anything even close to interesting or valuable it was just a piece of tarnished metal - a penny, it looked like, though it was so worn you couldn't even really tell anymore. "Lucky penny?" I asked, amused. Dispatchers carried some fucking weird shit.
"It's my sister's," he growled at me.
"And where's your sister?" I asked. I'd already guessed the answer, and the way his face got dark confirmed it. "Guess it weren't so lucky for her, was it?"