It was the afternoon of that day, barely an hour before dusk.

The sky was dyed completely in a brilliant orange, while a fuzzy dome of purple had a peep from the east. At this time, most survivors would have already finished hunkering down in their shelters to wait for the new day. Even though the undead couldn’t see in the dark, the same went for humans. This gave the former a natural disadvantage, as all a zombie needed to do was to scratch or bite at exposed skin, while a human needed accurate attacks to disable their limbs.

And in a city, where the undead roamed practically every place one’s eyes laid upon, it was even more so.

But she didn’t care about those difficult things.

Her steps were light, her breath was calm, her mind was clear – Violet ran freely, as quick as a swallow, across the rooftops. When she came across the edge of a block, instead of taking the stairs she would instead just jump straight down, using her halligan tool’s pike to catch herself on the windows or ledges to break her fall. Of course, she still had to use the stairs to go up the buildings.

Without slowing down along the way, she ran through the roaming undead. She didn’t give them any attention, and neither did they. In this way, she managed to cover a distance it normally took them a day or so together in just a few hours. But despite that, she found herself located deeper in the city.

“How rude, making a girl run around...”

The path she took was a winding one meant to prioritize coverage instead of distance travelled. Even though she had been running for over three hours, she could still see the building where Frank and Evan were resting at in the distance.

“Bastard, where are you...?”

She jumped off a building and landed on a concrete balcony. A couple of undead saw her do so. She made eye contact with both of them for a moment before she left them alone and jumped down again.

Her stomach complained.

“Stop that, I already ate earlier, y’know?”

The room she had landed in on the third floor was completely empty. She chose the room because it was between two two-story buildings, which gave her easy access to the rooftops. Just in case, she glanced around the streets looking for any signs of her target. Disappointment beset her as she realized that there were none.

She glanced at the sky. After making a rough estimate of the time, she decided against crossing the street ahead. She needed an entire road ahead of her in order to have time to get in position once it came.

“Eh, it’s far enough. I’ll just wait here, I guess.”

So she did.

As time went by, the sky grew darker and darker. Being who she was, Violet became bored a long time before then. But she was in a room that had every piece of furniture destroyed, and no remaining items of interest had remained. What she did manage to accomplish was the feat of burning through an entire box of smokes.

It was truly a productive day for her.

As the sunlight completely disappeared from the sky, she spent her time waiting by the window with nothing to do. Numerous undead passed her by, but perhaps due to the extremely limited visibility, none of them noticed her. She breathed a silent sigh.

“Maybe I should’a went with them back to camp,” she thought. But she quickly shook it off, knowing that it was a bad idea.

Every one of them had a role to fulfil.

And that was why Violet could confidently leave the group to do something else. That was because Io was with them.

Slowly, gently, she touched the crudely-wrapped injury on her neck. Remembering the time Io attacked her several nights ago; Violet couldn’t stop the corners of her mouth from rising.

She didn’t even see the attack coming!

From a relaxed position on a chair, with a decently long table between them, Io managed to close the distance with a speed that even she, who had been fighting for close to a decade, couldn’t react to. Not only that, she somehow managed to swing her weapon and cut just deep enough to not hit her carotid arteries.

Did Io somehow consider Violet’s situation?

She recalled a time further back. When they had retrieved the weapon left behind by the late Julyette, Evan was almost bitten by an undead. Io saved him in a nick of time, which made her look like a hero, and Violet, the idiot who shouted out loud in the middle of a zombie-infested city.

Of course, there was no way she would have let Evan get bitten. It would not take her even a blink of an eye to throw her baton towards the zombie’s head. But it was a fact that Violet did scream in terror at that time.

The reason wasn’t because of what everybody thought.

“We must take her in at all costs.”

Later on, the prowess Io displayed during their underground gauntlet only made Violet more confident about her decision.

Despite her peculiar nature, the strange young girl could bolster the group’s firepower to an illogical extreme. All they needed to do was figure out how to act around her mannerisms and speech. And that was where Evan shined.

There was nobody better than him at picking on someone that wasn’t his size.

Fortunately, it seemed that Evan had attracted Io’s attention. Though it made Violet feel somewhat frustrated, the occurrence was still favorable.

The wound on her neck hadn’t completely healed yet. But despite that, there was no pain. The blood had stopped oozing out though, which was great. Ideally, Violet would find a neck brace to keep the wound hidden, but without it, she could only rely on the regular items such as scarves. Of course, she knew she had some collars back at base, which looked both fashionable and cool at the same time. She committed herself to wearing one once she got back.

Her head plunged.

“Holy shit, it isn’t here yet?”

She was bored out of her mind.

“I wonder what the boys are doing...”

Just as the thought crossed her mind, a dull ache in her head manifested. It intensified slowly until she saw the ground rumble slightly.

It was coming.

Quickly, she removed two small cans from her backpack. They were containers of fluorescent paint that she had found along the way. Because of their size, Violet had to empty her bag of several boxes of cigarettes that she unceremoniously smuggled out of Io’s stash and outside of Evan’s scrutiny.

The pain in her heart as she left them behind was real.

In order to ensure that her plan worked, she had to wait for it to cross the street. There was no way she could guarantee success otherwise.

While enduring the increasing severity of her headache and feeling the floor beneath her shake, she vigilantly monitored the block across her with wide-open eyes.

When it finally came into view, her head felt like it had split into two. The pain forced her to bite her lips in an effort to endure it. Admirably, she was able to do so.

Some Tears weren’t destructive monsters. Those weren’t the type to lash out at everything around them. However, depending on which one they faced, some of them were quite thorough in combing areas for humans, while some simply idled in one place and waited. What they had at hand was somewhere in the middle. While it dutifully combed every city block, it didn’t bother itself with checking the floors above unless something attracted its attention.

How did she know? Violet simply observed it from afar earlier that day

“It’s crossing!”

The monster was clad in a darkness deeper than the night. Despite the difficulty she faced by simply being near it, she pushed her body through the pain and jumped to the building where it was going to.

Thankfully, when it wasn’t actively chasing something down, it moved in a sluggish pace. By the time Violet arrived at where they would intersect, the monster had just arrived to the building. Using nothing but its body weight, it crushed the walls like sand and continued on.

Violet concentrated on the feeling from her feet. Though her sensations were dull, she was still able to roughly estimate where the monster was heading to based on the vibrations and sounds alone. But because of the limited time she had, her best guess had to do. She shuffled herself towards the edge of the rooftop and opened the two cans of paint.

The moment she felt a violent tremor beneath her feet, she dumped the contents of one can to the alley below, making sure that she spread its content evenly. And right before the paint made contact with the asphalt, the monster broke through the adjacent walls. The paint splashed onto its body instead.

Sensing the liquid, the Tear stopped in its tracks. Because it was impossible to see it, Violet couldn’t determine what it was doing. But as the black mass shifted slightly, a bone-chilling sensation shot up her spine.

It found her.

She swallowed the scream that clawed its way out of her throat and pushed her trembling knees together. She fought through the cold sweat and her shaking hands to dump the contents of the last can of paint. At first, she feared missing because of how uncoordinated her movements were. Fortunately, she didn’t.

When she vaguely saw the liquid splash directly on top of it, the air she held in her lungs escaped in the form of a huge breath of relief. She prayed that she wouldn’t have to do it again. But that time, she had to. They wouldn’t be able to escape it otherwise. That was the first step in her role to play in that game.

As the Tear started crawling up the walls, Violet decided to leave. But in order to buy as much time for the others, she decided to lead it around in a winding path as it had originally travelled first. After a while, it would naturally take that route by itself, and Violet would be long gone by then. Sure enough, after she had led it around a few blocks, it started scouring the nearby buildings by itself even when Violet had already broken off the path to observe it from afar. It took her a couple of hours to do so. But perhaps because it became invigorated with the recent sighting of fresh pray, it started to travel much faster. It was an undesirable development, but it couldn’t be helped. They just had to run faster.

Satisfied with a job done, she nodded to herself and ran straight towards the woods.

“Good luck, boys. It’s now in your hands.”