Kim Marie

Tandis que le soleil roulait lourd et lent à travers le ciel, et traîné avec lui un manteau qui ripostait sur les nuages et pulsait chaudement, les sanglots à côté de Kim s'assoupirent. Kin leva la tête, et Kim ne dit rien, silence le médium et la monnaie souvent échangés entre eux. Elle n'a pas considéré le garçon sans pilote pour ses larmes. Seulement humain.
Mais les gens - amis, parfois - sont morts, et la Terre a continué à tourner sur son axe, le commerce a continué à couler. Et le devoir ne pouvait être négligé. Kim s'est levée jusqu'à ses pieds. La fatigue a roulé la peau de Kin dans les vagues, et elle a dit, "Je peux couvrir quelques quarts supplémentaires." De peur qu'il n'ait besoin de temps libre. Seigneur - ou quelle que soit la divinité qui restait - savait que Kim se sentait vide pour les morts. Mais le vide n'était pas une nouvelle sensation, et peut-être y avait-il une partie d'elle qui pensait qu'elle devait être pénalisée pour un manque de douleur aussi impitoyable. Si elle sortait son pistolet de son étui sur sa hanche, elle s'est hissée à Kin en quelques mots et s'est retournée pour retourner à la base.
Le paysage était à moitié barré, avec des parcelles d'herbe sèche tissant sur le sable. Kim a foulé à travers eux, prenant soin de ne pas faire autant qu'une ride, pistolet à la main. En arrondissant à la base, elle a repéré Shiba, stationnée sur le toit pour surveiller le périmètre. Elle lui envoya un salut à deux doigts de curt, et aperçut un gingembre qui s'approchait de l'atelier. Sa démarche était bordée d'un branleur, et un coup d'œil dominait la moitié de son visage. Elle était armée, et Kim se méfiait alors qu'elle scrutait la fille et se tenait au seuil de la boutique - à l'intérieur de laquelle Marion Dwight gérait deux invités. Un - une blonde, cicatrice sur le visage - avait des sacs drapés au-dessus du comptoir. La seconde, aux cheveux foncés, ne semblait rien apporter pour le commerce, ses tatouages comme une seconde peau. Il parlait à Dwight.
Une paire d'étrangers dans le magasin - bientôt trois. Ils ont peut-être un garde sur le toit, mais...
Kim se tenait près de l'entrée, en gardant un œil sur leurs visiteurs avec une expression stoïque. Mais elle considérait la fille avec plus de soin. Elle semblait avoir perdu un œil, et c'est l'infirme qui marchait encore qui était enclin à justifier la prudence et l'inquiétude de Kim. Quand ils ont abandonné une partie d'eux-mêmes, qu'est-ce qu'ils seraient prêts à risquer dans une bagarre? Comment leurs canons étaient-ils libres? D'une voix basse qui portait, elle parla à la jeune fille rousse : « Es-tu venue pour le commerce? »
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)