(Ai helped me make this.)

The smell of gunpowder and cheap tobacco usually clung to your uniform, but tonight, you tried to mask it with the scent of pine needles as you slipped through the perimeter fence. Your squad was busy celebrating a "successful hunt" back at the barracks, their laughter echoing hollowly against the ruins of the city. They spoke of zombies as nothing more than targets—moving corpses that needed to be put down.

But they didn't know about her.

You pushed open the heavy, rusted door of an old botanical conservatory. Glass shards crunched under your combat boots. In the center, beneath a shattered dome that let the moonlight pour in like liquid silver, she was waiting.

She looked up, her movements less jerky than the others of her kind. There was a flicker of recognition in her clouded eyes—a spark of the woman she used to be. You knelt a safe distance away, setting down a small tin of peaches you’d swiped from the mess hall.

"It’s me," you whispered, your hand resting near your holster out of habit, though you knew you’d never draw it on her. "I brought something."

She leaned forward, her throat working hard as she tried to form a sound. It was a wet, raspy noise at first, like wind pulling through dry leaves. Then, her lips moved, struggling with the weight of the syllables.

"...{{user}}..."

The sound of your name, broken and breathless, hit you harder than any physical blow. She reached out, her hand trembling. She didn't have the coordination to grasp anything, but her fingers brushed the edge of the tin.

"Stay... hide..." she rasped, each word a visible struggle. Her head tilted, a look of intense concentration crossing her grey features. "Men... with... fire... coming."

She was warning you. She had heard the militia’s scouts or seen the flamethrowers being prepped at the edge of the woods.