Two

She sits near the faded radio, watching out the old and dirty window. The cracked glass has been yellowing for quite some time and it seems pointless to try to clean it. A shiver runs down her spine and she briefly glances around the warehouse, noting Jacob moving around in one corner. The rest of the place was devoid of movement or people.

She rakes her snarled hair back with her fingers, drawing it into a messy ponytail with a faded out yellow hair tie she got from someone a while back. Or maybe it was something she found herself. She stands up, stretching her arms and back with a yawn, then sits back down at the desk.

It had been her space for almost the full one and a half years they had been living here, she had claimed it. Someone, presumably Ruby, had brought her a blanket and a mussed up pillow once. She always seemed to know what was of her best interest before she knew.

Monitoring the radio was pointless, there was only ever static or the same repeated government broadcast to fill the long and empty hours of the day. The static occasionally played tricks on her mind, having her hearing things and imagining voices that weren't actually there.

I remember sitting next to my grandfather in his old beat up red pickup. We sat there heading somewhere, I can't quite remember now whether it was from home or to home, listening to old music that I didn't really know. The sun was beating down harshly against the worn metal of the truck, heating up the inside, but was off put by a cool breeze letting itself in through the fully open windows. Loud country music was loudly playing from the truck's radio, and my hair was whipping around in my face. We were heading back to his house, from the park after having a day out together like we used to before grandmother got sick. It was the first time I had hung out with him in what seemed like forever after Grandma had gotten horribly ill.

But this was different. Something wasn't right. The roads were perfectly clear, not a car in sight. Until there was a car. It was behind us, cool blue metal gleaming in the sun, going too fast, trying to pass us on the road. The road that harboured a sharp curve, one that you'd need to slow down to fifteen miles an hour to go around. Another large pickup huge semi was coming from the other way. In the next minute, the two vehicles had collided and sent my grandfather's truck rolling down into a deep ditch on the side of the road. It's quite blurry from there on. Mostly just memories of glass and metal and blood. It was all perfect..until it wasn't.

The next time I opened my eyes was in the hospital. Several machines hooked up to me and an IV drip in my arm. Over the course of the next few days I learned my grandfather hadn't survived the rolling of the vehicle. The next few weeks were a mess were a blur of doctors appointments and nightmares.

The loud crackling of the radio brings her back to the present, and she grips onto the hem of her sweatshirt, adjusting it, before standing up. "I'm going, I'm going out," she tells Jacob and leaves the warehouse without waiting for a response. The air is crisp, but the sun is still warm as it gets lower in the sky. She reaches up to tighten her ponytail. She knows the trail well, well enough to find escape routes if needed. She is a firm believer that they won't be needed. She Luka has this part of the city memorised so well, to the point that she knows it like the back of her hand. It's not too hard to navigate if you've lived there long enough. To tourists, though, it would seem rather daunting.

Water drips off the leaves of mostly bare trees while she walks, toning down her tension some with the added ambiance.occasionally, making quiet noises. This brings back memories of walkingher dancing in the rain with her best friends, and later with Ruby. Before things got really bad. In the beginning, when they lived on the same street completely unaware of each other, until everyone else was dead. Including her two best friends. Lynn and Myloe. She shakes out her shoulders, remembering that the past was only a setback. The future was what mattered now.

 She Luka sighs, running her fingers through her hair once again to get the flyaway off of ehr face, and begins to jog. Dark clouds are filling filled the sky up ahead and promising it promised more rain. Rain was mostly refreshing. Killed off the infected occasionally, and filled their water supply, which got dangerously low all the time. The constant influx of strays didn't help that problem much either. She never voiced her complaints though, Ruby seemed to love the extra company.

She stops her jog at a large and semi mangled tree with quite a few small knots. She puts her hand into one of the holes and begins grabbing a hold of one that's shoulder level and starts to climb the tree, heading towards the large platform at the top she knew was there. She and Ruby had found this place a year or so earlier by accident, a desperate escape attempt that, thankfully, had succeeded.

She reaches the top, and the platform,taking a seat in one of the old foldable camping chairs they had lugged up there a while back. It had a small hole in the back and was a faded forest green, akin to her jacket. There's only a singular painful memory linked to this spot, but no matter how painful it was, the space is unavoidable.

A young girl, Luka had found her months ago, being chased by a mutilated horde of the creatures. The girl had seemed entirely unaware of the danger looming behind, crouched over to pick up a long dead and wilted flower. She had jumped from halfway up the tree, despite Ruby's protests, trying to reach her. She knew it was dangerous, but fueled by adrenaline, she had run towards the child in an attempt to save her. She had reached the child, who hadn't talked- or rather wasn't talking to her. Luka had barely managed to get them both back up the tree before the hoard was upon them, howling and snapping at her heels, crying out for their blood.

The girl had wrapped her arms around Luka's neck, hanging on tightly, deathly tight. She had turned out to be deaf and communication was hard for them. They had brought her back to the warehouse and found some paper and a pen for her to write her name on as soon as it was safe. Rosalynn, she remembers vividly. The name never fails to knock the wind out of her with overwhelming sadness.

Luka had fallen into a depressive state weeks later as she watched Rosalynn get snatched away and murdered by a small Pack they had encountered. She had brought the girl out to the outlines of the city upon request to get more paper, despite knowing the dangers. She had refused to leave the warehouse for a while after coming back with only a pad of paper and some Crayola markers gripped loosely to her chest. Ruby never once pressed her for answers about Rosalynn's disappearance.

The markers and paper were still tucked away in the little area by the radio, buried somewhere in Luka's chaos.

She shakes away the memory, standing silently while watching the horizon break. A pack of mutts wanders around a ways away but other than that the area is quiet, for which she is glad.

The soft creaking of the wooden platform makes her turn around with a muted sense of alarm. Those things can't climb up the ladder. There stands Succubus, her favourite sweatshirt, well, only hanging around his arm. Her last name and team number were printed in nice white lettering on the back of the faded light green jacket. She didn't realise she had dropped it on her way over. She walks over to him and takes the jacket when he offers it to her. She ties it around her waist. "Thank you."

"Anything new to be worried about?" He says with a head tilt. She shakes her head.

"All quiet here. Has Ruby come back yet?" She watches him shake his head. "Oh. Well it's still early."

"Yeah."

Luka and Succubus had had a pretty rough start when Ruby had brought him to the warehouse, occasionally coming to blows over stupid things. This led to lots of shoving and screaming, Luka taking off, and Succubus messing up her chaos in her little corner just to get under her skin. That had more or less had only been in the initial few weeks together. Their fights were much less frequent.

One particular fight stands out very well in her mind. Ruby was out on a supply run for a few hours, and she was left alone with Succubus. He tried to make a point to annoy her, messing up her desk when she stepped out, hiding the marker set again. When she had finally re-made up her desk and found the markers missing she had been livid, yelling out his name and grabbing for a small knife her uncle had made for her.

As soon as she had found him, she had thrown the knife right into his thigh without a shred of hesitation. The noise he had made was shrill and dripping with shock. Luka had gone to retrieve the knife and he had dug the point into her throat, sweeping her feet out from under her when she was too focused on the retrieval. Her head had cracked against the cement and she was reportedly 'out for a few hours'.

She barely remembers the exchange, probably because of the blackout, but she woke up in her corner, the markers sitting on top of a hazardous pile of papers. Her things hadn't been moved since and they both still had the scars for a constant reminder.

They sit there for about a half hour before Succubus decides he's going to leave, making sure she's going to head back soon as well. She will as soon as it starts to get dark or the memories threaten to drown her. She always does. As soon as he hits the bottom, yelling up at her to let him know if it's safe, she unties her jacket from her waist and slips it on. She looks back towards the warehouse and gives him the all clear. She watches his figure recede then turns back away from the warehouse- no, her current home.

She licks her lips, trying not to let her mind wander too much. Instead she thinks about all the good that could come from monitoring the radio. Someone would pop up on that damned thing, calling for help and then they'd be there. Eventually. At least she hoped so. People were out there of course, Jacob and Succubus were a clear representation of that claim.

She had tried adjusting the frequencies here and there although that never did much. She swore she had heard someone's voice on it once and an S.O.S on it another time. The S.O.S had been there but no one was there to answer her when she called it. Safe to say it disturbed her to the extent she wasn't keen on ever re-visiting the channel again. It didn't seem to bother anyone else that she didn't, thankfully. Luka suspected that they just stopped caring about her radio efforts at that point.

She watches the bare landscape for a while, spotting another small incoming pack. They didn't seem to be heading to the area by her tree specifically, just in her general direction. She didn't really feel like risking it, not wanting to be stuck up here at night, zipping up her jacket and neatly organising the few things in the tree.

She heads down the tree with a last glance at the pack. She would return to the radio

and wait for Ruby to return from her supply run. Easy. Mundane. Manageable. A constant cycle that she had grown attached to.

She reaches the warehouse in a span of fifteen minutes at a light jog. She had timed it once, but she is sure her time has gotten better with her stamina over the past year or so since the outbreak. She had never been out of shape really, choosing to play sports like football and soccer interchangeably every other year with softball occasionally in the early spring.

She missed doing those things, but at least she was staying in shape somehow. Maybe she could find a football or something to have the boys play with her when the weather was nicer..if it ever got nicer. The sun seemed to always carry a dull glow. She didn't think too much of it, the sun starting to slip low beyond the horizon. She makes her way over to Succubus and Jacob, making them aware of the pack's movement before retreating to the safety of her corner.

She turns it on, adjusting the frequency, and making herself comfortable. She crosses her legs and slides the blanket over them, shifting slightly. Luka takes to sifting through the papers on her desk, relooking through them and reading over them. Some were news reports, outdated sport rankings, random numbers on spreadsheets. There were three books that she had read over and over, and probably had them memorised. She never really liked reading but they were an exception. Most things on her desk were an exception. Paperwork wasn't really her style.

She sets the papers back down, finding herself looking outside the broken, filthy window and at the door more than the papers. She wasn't even really reading the pages anyways, her mind wandering to faraway places.

She moves the stack, tucking it into a cubby underneath the desktop right on top of another loose leaf pile. After a few more minutes she gets up, heading towards the entrance of the warehouse and leaning against the outer frame of the heavy door.

A calm breeze floats through and moves her hair. She takes it out of its ponytail, wrapping the band around her wrist. As she predicted the earlier pack was visible, but the direction it was taking was going to lead it right past the warehouse. The sun has officially dipped behind the horizon and the panic has started to set in. Ruby wasn't back yet which was a problem in itself. There hadn't been a ton of recorded times that she didn't come back in a timely manner, because Ruby always came back. Numerous things could have happened, none of them being anything close to good.. Luka knew Ruby was smart and could handle herself most of the time. Keyword; most.

She watches the pack until it turns out of sight around the building and the noise of shuffling and soft grunting dissipates. She takes a strand of her shoulder length chocolate brown hair and twirls it around a finger trying to imagine what she would be doing in this moment if she was back home.

Probably laying in her bed talking to her friends and pretending to do homework until she absolutely had to do it. She had hated school like everyone else, but managed to pull decent grades. Good grades that allowed her to compete in sports didn;t keep themselves up. Not that grades matter during the apocalypse.

The future she had wanted didn't matter anymore. She steps out into the blossoming darkness, a few steps from the door to a rusted little table, picking up a lighter that sits on a table right outside and lighting the lamp next to it. At least anyone nearby will be able to see it and get the 'right of passage' to sleep in the warehouse and maybe, maybe, be able to join the ranks. Probably not, however, since Ruby was missing, therefore nominating Luka to be in charge.

She was almost eighty percent sure that the packs couldn't see light unless it was right in front of them, thankfully. It was too risky to test the theory, however, so she couldn't be totally sure.

She leans on the ribbed wall closer to the lamp. How nice it would be to have a decent blanket, or a decent bed, or a clothing change, really a functioning house in general. It wasn't safe to live in a house anymore, since the mutations had overtaken the city, and even if it was, they probably wouldn't be able to choose what house they were going to live in, and that ran the risk of running into either hostiles or dead bodies.

She worries her lower lip with her teeth, expression changing. She can see Succubus watching out as well from her peripherals on the other side of the door. Mainly he did this, but sometimes Luka joined him. Very rarely, but it happened. She stops messing with her hair when she feels his gaze on her. They don't speak to each other and besides Jacob shuffling in the middle of the warehouse occasionally, the almost silent crackle of the flame is the only noise that can be heard.