Kim Marie
Kim se tenait près des tombes. Chabby lieux de repos, mais le meilleur qui pourrait être organisé dans les circonstances actuelles. Abel et Drake murmuraient deux moitiés d'un psaume, comme des bookends appariés qui entremêlaient un éloge qui échappait aux paroles et à la construction.
Tournant son regard vers les croix qui marquaient la chute, Kim se demandait ce que cela devait ressentir sous des couches de terre emballée. Elle était présente au raid et à l'attaque. Son corps aurait pu facilement rejoindre les sept qui étaient déjà couchés. Elle considérait la perspective de sa mort - pas trop étrange. Comment elle avait jeté son épaule dans le combat et répliqué avec précision militaire et vigueur quasi-suicide, marchant comme un soldat dans les bras ouverts de la Mort, seulement pour les faire annuler d'elle.
Juxtaposé à côté de Drake et d'Abel, et leurs cœurs déchirants, Kim se sentait extraterrestre, et donc elle se détourna des tombes pour partir. La perte de sept vies a été un lourd coup au moral et à la main-d'œuvre - elle ne nierait pas. Pourtant, elle ne put rassembler le chagrin pour leur faire du deuil. Ils se sont battus et sont morts sur le champ de bataille, défendant tous les oubliés qui étaient partis dans le monde. Un jour, Kim traverserait le même chemin.
Elle est tombée sur Kin, en position fœtale dans un désespoir calme et palpable. Kin a atteint cent quatre-vingts centimètres, mais debout devant le garçon, Kim a dominé sur lui. Elle regardait vers lui, avec une expression particulière essuyée soigneusement vide. Les gens parlaient souvent, et elle savait ce qu'ils pensaient d'elle - ce robot curieusement étrange et sinistre. Elle était, cependant, loin d'être aveugle à certaines nuances de l'émotion humaine, vue assez pour dire la vérité qu'elle pensait qu'il méritait d'entendre, d'une voix aplatie qui n'abordait aucun argument. "Tu as fait du mieux que tout le monde pouvait pour les garder en vie. J'espère que vous le savez."
Le garçon était dur, endurci et bordé, vieillissant au-delà de ses années. Il avait peur de s'opposer, un gardien dévoué qui a donné sa vie pour sa nouvelle communauté, et qui a plu l'enfer sur tous ceux qui ont osé s'en prendre aux oubliés. De bons hommes, Kim n'en connaissait pas beaucoup. Mais Kin - il n'était pas un mauvais homme. Il avait les effets d'un cœur que Kim avait imaginé impossible à trouver dans ce monde nouveau, enfermé dans un corps et un esprit trempés.
Se relevant du mur, Kim a glissé sur la texture de la brique pour étaler ses jambes à côté de Kin. Elle a pensé aux soldats de la Seconde Guerre mondiale - piégés dans les runelles et les tranchées qu'ils avaient creusées pour eux-mêmes; prenant leurs repas et se reposant ensemble; se tenant debout à travers le feu d'épaule à épaule avec un ennemi sans visage; promettant et fantasmes divertissants de quitter la zone de guerre derrière, afin qu'ils puissent supporter avec l'effusion de sang du présent - et a frappé Kin sur l'épaule, dans une démonstration de solidarité.
Name:
Kim Marie
Age:
18
Faction:
The Forgotten
Personality:
Before the infection, Kim was a happy-go-lucky girl. The youngest and only daughter in a family of reasonably affluent means, there was little she had to worry for. She was clever enough, and got good grades, occasionally topping her class in the good years.
But she came to the Forgotten a shell of who she had been. At the start, she was just a scared, shaking fifteen-year-old, who quaked in her Converse sneakers. Now, she is nothing if not quiet. You would have to pry her lips open for conversation, and her replies are often grunts, or monosyllabic. She’s a person of few words, Kim is, and sullen. She would make a good soldier; sometimes, she stands like she’s carved of marble, still enough to convince flies to land on her. Even then, she does not move. She takes orders, if they’re yelled at her, or passed under a breath. Enlist her into a turf war and she’ll throw herself into the battle, frontline or no. People have whispered rumours about her, but just because she is close to mute, she’s not deaf. She knows some of them think she’s cold-blooded. She’s heard gossip that she kills squirrels for fun – ridiculous, there are hardly enough around for that anymore. It’s strange though, she could embark on a mission with almost suicidal determination. But the moment she is attacked, she lunges forward screaming, fighting ruthlessly, tooth and claw, her way back to life. Once, when she was out on a personal scavenge, a Scorp jumped her. They scuffled, but it was Kim who left with nothing but a bloody lip and crooked tooth, and the nameless Scorp lying in a pool of growing blood.
Backstory: Kim was fifteen when the outbreak struck. With one fell blow, she lost mother, father, and twin brothers. For two weeks, she sealed the windows and locked the doors and grieved. She barely ate. In the bubble of her home while the world wreaked havoc outside the walls, time was not sanctioned to pass, as she haunted the halls like the ghosts her family had become.
One day Kim opened the door after someone had been banging on it for five minutes straight, to reveal an old friend on the other side. Josephina forced herself in and locked the door behind her back. She was bleeding from a cut above her temple, but she managed to propel herself into Kim’s arms and almost knock her over. Perhaps it was the way warm blood dripped onto Kim’s back and shoulder, or the sensation of heat and flesh under her hands, but it was enough to pull her back into the present, and do for Josephina what she had had no opportunity to do for her family. Kim cleaned the wound and wrapped Josephina up; Josephina made sure Kim had enough sustenance and brought her back from the brink of a wasted death. She told Kim about her short stint with the Gamers, that she had abandoned when fights for glory and bullshit started taking place. She had tales about a faction they could both go to, and live out the rest of the apocalypse back-to-back, arm-in-arm.
Kim had to admit the prospect of having someone else to live for was attractive.
When they were both well, Josephina led them out the door for the last time, the two of them laden down with all the supplies they could carry. She had heard that the Forgotten were stationed in a shopping district, and that was where they went. But on the way, they encountered Coyotes, who fell on them like a tsunami wave, pouring in from all sides. Armed with bricks, shovels, and pitchforks, they descended upon the two girls.
Kim fought back, scratching and kicking at hands that tried to fall on her. Eventually, she wrenched a hammer out of one Coyote’s hands, and began to beat her way out. She broke elbows and collarbones and the fingers of someone who had been holding a gun. He dropped it. But not before a shot rang out and Kim heard a quiet exhale of breath from behind her.
Death never loses its flavour. At least, it hadn’t in the first three weeks. Even though the population had been decimated, and the streets were still littered with errant corpses no one had bothered to clean up, the children from The Coyotes weren’t acquainted with murder. But as they scurried like kids about to be told on, and she crawled to Josephina - whose blood was flowing in a steady free stream from the gunshot wound over her heart - Kim felt she could kill someone right there and then. Or had she already?
She stayed there for a long time, Josephina’s head cradled in her lap. She watched those eyes empty until they were as blank as the sky they stared up at, and the life drained from her cheeks through a hole in her chest. Kim waited for a deathbed acquittal, for the Coyotes to return with whooping calls and an axe to cleave her neck clean through. But neither ever came. Josephina died quietly, the wind whistled hollowly around them, and the blame for her last friend’s death sat heavily on Kim’s shoulders.
Kim picked up the pistol – ill-gotten gains, that made her feel sick to the stomach – and the bag Josephina had been carrying. With each step feeling like lead, and each breath like a knife in the heart, Kim found her way to the Forgotten.
She never spoke Josephina’s name again.
Other:
A mean grappler. She can defend herself, even on the ground.
Owns a pistol, and scavenges for ammunition
Will use anything within sight to fight. Bottles, knives, and sticks are all fair-game
Light on her feet, and proficient in sneaking quietly in the cover of shadows
Has been with the Forgotten for three years, is aware she could be considered disposable and has no qualms about how trivially her life could be used by authority as a means to an end (i.e. in a turf war)