The Messengers of Sanctuary

31 - River

River would never call Chicory an idiot, but sometimes she did things that made him question his own sanity, her sanity, and also the sanity of everyone who had ever done something stupid in their lives.

The latest example of this was seen as the two of them crouched in the darkness, arguing quietly. "We can't go over there and 'check it out.' You saw what happened last time, those things attack everything. Especially me."

Chicory gestured aggressively at the scene not that far away, "they're not attacking each other. Would it really be that hard to lure them somewhere else?"

River growled a reprimand, "that's literally stupid, we can just find another place for the base! I'm not that attached to this random spot in the middle of the woods!"

Chicory gave him a look. "Well I am."

"Then you're going to have to do this yourself because I'm not going to get myself killed tonight."

"Soooo...not tonight? What about tomorrow? I'm down for tomorrow."

"The River is not amused." He met her eyes with a flat stare, unblinking. "No, I'm not dying until I've finished all I need to get done, and find a suitably dramatic way to do it. Neither of those things are accomplished here."

"Hey, I'd say this is pretty sparking dramatic." Chicory laughed at his expression. "Alright then, let's come to a compromise, shall we?"

River glanced back down at the horde of flaming zombies, "yeah alright, what do you propose?"

Chicory grinned, "you know how they really like attacking zombies?"

River growled, "I don't like where this is going." Being attacked by three pyros at once was bad enough, but there were a lot more this time. River wasn't sure he could survive such an arrangement.

Chicory rolled her eyes, "hush, it has nothing to do with you, we'll find some rando regular zombie and use them as bait to get the horde to loosen up a bit. Then I can go over there and scout out the premise."

Chicory wasn't usually the type to come up with a viable plan, but River was kind of impressed with this one, if only because she hadn't immediately suggested he distract the things. River wasn't completely convinced he could live through such an arrangement, especially since these weird fire zombies were just a tad bit faster than a runner. They were somewhere between runner speed and heartfire speed, and they had the endurance to match it.

River grimaced. "Yes, I suppose that could work."

---

River watched from a decent clip away as the regular zombie tumbled down the path. His sunglasses were firmly secured on his face, and his belt knife was at the ready.

Chicory sat near the top of a tree not far from the zombie, she hadn't slept as much as she probably should have last night, River having woken up to find that she'd spent most of that time tracking down a regular zombie and annoying it enough that it was aggressive toward anything that moved.

In the last few minutes it had forgotten most of it's aggression, but hopefully once the fire zombies got to it, it should probably last long enough for Chicory to examine the area. In the meantime, River was there to watch the group maul the regular zombie and let Chicory know if something unexpected began to happen.

It took far too long for the creature to follow Chicory's trail, but after several tense minutes, it wandered unknowingly within range of the predators. The moment that they pounced, Chicory was already out of her tree and running toward the riverbend. The characteristic that had convinced them to look into this area.