Chapter One

The sand storm was coming in fast and if she didn't find shelter soon, Katiyana would be stuck in it. Not that she cared so much at the moment, running across the shifting sands of the wasteland she called home, dragging the still struggling corpse of a zombie. She wasn't running particularly fast, and the congealed blood of the dead creature spread out in a trail behind her, just like she wanted. She grinned to herself. Zombie killing was fun. It was what she knew. It was all she knew. Six months ago, she woke up in some science facility, not knowing who she was or why she was like she is. She only found her name and her age in that place, it was too destroyed to give her anything else. Six months of travelling hadn't given her much else, apart from her realisation that she seemed born to kill zombies. It was almost easy for her. Simply killing them had begun to bore her so she tried to think of better ways of killing off more of them at one time, which was exactly what she was doing now. She had travelled widely across the wasteland, and the mountains surrounding it, finding only abandoned buildings and a skeleton of a city, which she had only viewed from a high distance. One day, she vowed, one day she will explore it. She had found other survivors, but they had tended to be mad or loners and she soon left their doom and gloom attitude for a life on the road. The zombie behind her let out a groan as she dragged it across a bump, the noise bringing her thoughts back to the present. A black line appeared ahead of her, widening into a large jagged crack in the ground. She knew it to be a small, deep gorge in the land, enough of a fall to kill any thing, including the undead. She skidded to a halt and stopped for a moment, peering behind her. In the distance, a shuffling mass had appeared, following the gore trail she had left. Satisfied, she took off again, still dragging her hostage. She picked up her speed as they approached the gorge, needing it to feel safe. No normal human could jump the space, but, she had realised all those months ago, she was no longer a normal human. Just before tumbling into the abyss, she pushed off with the pulsing, glowing cybernetic left leg of hers, flying over the darkness beneath her, her dusty trench coat flapping behind like a cape. Half way across, she dropped her dead weight, sending the zombie groaning into the hole. Landing catlike on the other edge of the gorge, she rose and looked back as the other zombies began to shuffle into sight. They were fast for shufflers, but she had experienced a few weird moments before where the zombies appeared not to just be mindless shuffling monsters. Some had been fast, some had obscene 'powers'. She shook her head. She supposed everything mutated, evolved. These ones weren't clever though, and with a grim smile, she watched as they followed the gore trail over the edge of the gorge, trying to reach her. She watched till the last one had disappeared into the dark, adjusted the tatty backpack, from which hung her spiked bat, and sped off, away from the oncoming storm. She had memorised this area of the wasteland easily, knowing her best bet from the storm, was the abandoned prison. She had come across it a while ago, a sinister place, but empty of even the dead. The massive gates and iron walls had seen to that. It wasn't her favourite place to stay, but no where these days was particularly welcoming. Using the power of her cybernetic leg, she sped up, going faster than any human athlete. Though she was fast, nature was faster, and by the time she had reached the prison, she was almost lost in the sand raging around her. She had put her goggles on as soon as the sand around her had picked up, pulling the scarf around her neck up to her face to protect her nose and mouth. Without stopping, she leapt up to the top of the solid metal wall that surrounded the grey building, and dropped quickly to the other side. Running to the nearest door, she slammed it open, then forced it shut, fighting against the raging winds that send blasts of sand over the walls and into the building. Finally getting the door shut, she breathed a sigh of relief and pulled off her goggles. Her baggy hat came with them, and she tucked them both into one of the many inside pockets of her oversized trench. It had been the first bit of clothing she had found when she awoke, and since then she had sewn many different sized pockets to the inside. Her Uzi was tucked into an outside pocket, and she had been lucky to find more ammo, which jangled around in the inside pockets. She was careful not to use her gun too much, preferring the use of her spiked bat, or her foot. Her hair had gotten longer, and she had taken to plaiting it and tying it up with a rag she had found.