Peeking the barrel of a gun out over the sill of a window on the second floor of an office building sat a figure dressed in a range of sports gear and loose fitting clothing. The first to provide padding to the abuse he had taken recently, and the second to make it harder to spot him in the shadows that he liked to abuse.

It worked for the initial shots, and if not for the sun's glare obstructing anyone looking in his general direction he would have probably taken a healthy dose of lead by this point. The pocked marked exterior of the building gave weight to this testament. Some of those craters were nearing the clenched butt range as well, whether they were a couple of inches off from hitting his face or less than an inch from penetrating the wall that he was using.

Either way he was thanking Lady Luck for all of the near misses as of late, and hoped he could eke out a couple more from here before the end of the day. It was going to be a long one he knew.

It was barely Dawn as his ambush was sprung by those insidious Midgets, or as the people were starting to call them, Hornettes.

He was seriously starting to hate the tiny Bitches that were spawned by Queen AnnaBee, and the fact that people were giving all of these freaks pun filled names did NOT help the matter.

He was glad that he was assigned the Western "front" of the Hives zone as they were starting to call it. For there wasn't Just Queen AnnaBee and the Hornettes occupying the zone. There was also the Widower and his "Hazmat Aldhiyb". The last of the Hivers was the Terror-cotta Zomboids. All equally bad names that somehow fit perfectly, and all equally a hazard to deal with. Though if he had to choose between suicidal exploding wolf spiders the size of cats, plant zombies with ceramic plating strong enough to compete with level 4 body armor, or 1-foot tall bee people with rifles acting as cannons; he'd still choose the bees. At last with the bees he could still salvage the cannons for functioning guns, and if he could live through this ambush he would be able to get four, no three that last shot mangled that .22, functioning guns that could help the people out. Not to mention all of the unused ammunition left over.

It had been two weeks. Two fucking weeks! since the start of this shit show, and in that time he's had to use his rifle "skills" more often than his 4 years of being in the National guard.

-Two weeks? No, It felt more like two months.-

Every day was a constant uphill battle, as new solo-freaks appeared seemingly out of nowhere. Sometimes they'd appear right in the middle of a camp killing half a dozen people before finally being put down, only for the survivors to realize they knew the bastard. But he couldn't complain, much. He got to be on sentry duty for the western front of Queen AnnaBee's territory. Having seen firsthand the survivors of her blasted BuzzShot, again terrible puns for a terrible thing, made him shiver whenever he thought about it. Best case scenario the victim would be lucky if they got hit in the head, at least then they wouldn't have to suffer being eaten from the inside out. Worst case? Well if they didn't get the "projectile" removed swiftly, within 15 minutes a fucking roided out midget would burst from the wound to go berserk on those around it.

-That's how Mickey ended up 3 days ago, poor bastard.-

What made shit worse was that even being put on the sentry duty on the western front, all he could do was stem the tide. The damned bees where a fucking text book example of a layered defense. Whenever they thought they could break through they encountered harder resistance. And the tide just keeps coming! At this point he could swear they were being funded by the Russians in exchange for honey, or some shit.

But the thing that truly pissed him off about this whole thing. What truly ground his gears, pissed in his cheerios, or shoved a stick up his proverbial ass, was that if he hadn't been late going to the base on day one, he would be standing guard on the outskirts of the fucking city preventing any and all access in and out of this god awful quarantine zone.

"Fuck!" He seethe through gritted teeth as he flinched due to a round whizzing way too close to his head. His shot that was meant to take out the last gun emplacement missed and only decapitated one of the crew instead of disabling it. The fuzzy cunt flopped lifelessly onto the asphalt and twitched a couple times in its death throes. The two remaining bees scream in both fury, and frustration as they attempt to correct their aim. The steady beat of their fire barely disrupted.

The Marksman quickly pulled the bolt back and forward to chamber another round. He sighted the frontal shielding of the gun just about where the firing controls were. He took a deep breath to center himself then let it all out. At the finale of the long sigh he aimed. It was a pause of breathing, lasting only a few beats of his heart as he made sure his aim was dead on, then he tapped the trigger.

The .308 round glacially flew out of the barrel. The rifling of it causing the copper-jacketed round to catch it and perform a slow waltz in the air. The FMJ was chased by the bloom of the ignited gasses escaping their cylindrical prison. The recoil of said ignition sent a wave through the gun and into the gunman's shoulder causing his skin and muscles to ripple under then force. The dancing copper bee flew in a shallow arc. Across a dawn lit street, with shadows stretching out their abyssal hands, the metal cone of death pirouetted. Its path led straight to where the man intended, impacting the shield of metal protecting the crew, it sheared through it deforming a bit and altering its course. Its path tore up the aiming cranks and finally ripped through the torso of the loader, whose face was a mixture of feral glee and smugness.

For while the Marksman was trying to recover his aim the Hornettes weren't idle as the gunner, who was formally the assistant loader, had already sighted in her mark. If it weren't for the .308 round adding to the turn of the gun; the resulting explosion of the Hornettes' cannon would still be off by a few degrees due to the assistant gunner's inexperience. Unfortunately for the marksman, however, Lady Luck was a penny pinching wench, as his luck for the day had gone up and dried out. The returning 5.56 burst out of the barrel in a similarly beautiful pirouette as it flew unerringly towards the marksman's closed eye. It ruptured the organ as it passed it in its death march, and flew out the back of his skull and into the dropped ceiling tiles behind it.

The two thunderclaps finally range out in sequence as if they were a sardonic play viewer.

Both Marksman and gunner slumped for two separate reasons. One as their soul was severed from his mortal coil. The other breathing heavily as she stared wide-eyed at the hole near an inch from ending her as it did her sister. With the adrenaline finally leaving her, she wept. She wept for the loss of all of her sisters in her patrol. She wept for nearly dying. She wept for surviving while those around her didn't. She finally wept then chuckled at the fact that now she had to drag everything back to base. A mile distance would be brisk for a tall one, but for her it was going to be hours.

She stood unsteadily and brushed off her dress in a vain attempt to clean the gore from her sister's passing, and set about to pack up as much as she could.