Riza awoke to the sounds of rumbling cars just outside her bedroom window; the sun had just risen, the beams peeking over the rooves of the suburban area. A little dazed from the light and noise, Riza lifted herself from her warm cocoon in her bed and stumbled over to the window in a half-awake, half-asleep fashion to peer out of the glass to locate the source of all the noise. Multiple vans and cars with painted on text were gathered out the front of her house and more stretched down the street, struggling to get close to her house. Almost dismissing the vehicles as a local party one of the new residents held, Riza went to close her curtains and crawl back into bed before she noticed the formal looking men and women unloading themselves from said vehicles littered along the street. The fog had lifted from her mind enough and her muscles had received enough blood to function for her to realise and remember the events of the previous day. Riza promptly closed the curtains to block all visual information and just as quickly stomped out of her room to her guest bedroom with a heavy grimace on her face.

Lan Fan sat in a corner of the room, her knees resting to her chest as she idly traced patterns in the thick grey carpet with her tattooed arm, clearly having been awake for only an hour or two. At the movements of Riza in the doorway, she lifted her head and smiled sweetly at the woman occupying the wooden frame. Ignoring Lan Fan for the moment, Riza promptly wandered to her window and drew the curtains shut, covering the room in a dark shadow. This action left Lan Fan incredibly confused at the woman who had just as quickly left the room as she had entered it. After a small internal battle, curiosity got the best of her and she decided to follow Riza around the house as she kept grimacing at the outside view before closing the curtains of every room in the house and turned on few of the lights. It was if she was trying to hide. After all was said and done, Riza wandered into the kitchen and flounced down onto one of the hardwood chairs, sighing audibly and trying to relax a bit. Lan Fan stood off to the side in the shadows, scratching her tattooed arm almost like the tattoo burned her with stinging nettles and looking to the side awkwardly, unable to look Riza in the eyes.

Sighing gently to herself, Riza Hawkeye stood up from her undignified sprawl across the chair and pulled out her cell phone from her pyjama pockets and dialling Sheska's number once more, opting to find out where Sheska was rather than put any effort into Lan Fan for now. A blaring ringing sound met her ears after the phone had successfully connected to the radio tower and Riza leaned back against one of the kitchen counters as she waited for Sheska to pick up; she didn't wait long.

"Hello… Riza?"

"Hey Sheska, how long until you get here because press and news crews are starting to arrive and I'm worried you might not be able to get inside my own home. They sure found out about it fast."

"I'm walking down your street now. The whole street is filled with cars and people Riza, everyone knows about this girl. I had to park two streets over. The media were all over her last night and the story appeared on every major news network! Roy tried to downplay it but he failed pretty miserably ah-, hold on I'm almost at your house now."

"Ah… I guess that was to be expected, he is pretty useless. Sheska, enter the side gate and head around the back. You'll have to jump over the fence so be sure to do so carefully. I'll wait for you by the back door. It's locked and the curtains are closed but I'll be there."

"Roger that Riza, chao."

"Bye, bye Sheska."

The call went dead and Riza smiled gently at her phone before she placed it on the table behind her next to where she had placed her keys the night before, looking up at the ceiling. Lan Fan cocked her head to the side and blinked once in confusion at Riza, whom seemed to be lost within her own thoughts. A sharp cough ripped up Lan Fan's throat and a little more of the excavation site's dust came out her mouth with it; she had been coughing up the leftover dust from her lungs for the past night and didn't get much sleep because of it. Riza snapped her head around to look at Lan Fan, who merely smiled gently with an expression almost in pain as her throat burned with metaphorical fire, and went back just leaning against the wall within the shadows.

An undignified scream came from outside followed by a heavy thump as most presumably a human fell from, presumably, the fence. Riza sighed amusedly, dropped a coat on Lan Fan's head to cover her face and hair, and went briskly to the back door before she opened the curtains and unlocking the glass sliding doors. Sheska lay on the ground, her glasses crooked and her hair ruffled, her bag miraculously still together with nothing spilled out. Riza let a small sigh out her lips and lowered her shoulders and head. She still gestured for the klutz to come inside her house anyway; Sheska quickly responded, bounding quickly into Riza's little abode. Riza glared out at her yard, noticing the glint of a camera lens hidden in one of her bushes before she shut the door and drew the curtains to block anyone from the outside seeing inside.

-.-

Sheska held her bag closer to her body as she looked at Lan Fan and Riza standing in the kitchen. Both of the ladies when in pyjamas due to the earlier hours of the morning that Sheska had arrived in. "Come here Sheska" Riza said, pulling out a chair for the brunette to relax into and set up. The other woman took it hesitatingly as Riza put a glass of water in front of her.

"I'll be right back Sheska, come with me, Lan Fan." Riza said before she tugged Lan Fan's tattooed arm tentatively and dragged her into the corridor. Sheska unloaded things from within her bag onto the table whilst humming softly to herself. Among the contents was a sketchpad with pencils for any visual information, a notebook, several pens and a recorder with a 10 gigabyte micro SD memory card inserted into it. She relaxed a little more into the chair and waited for the two to come back.

-.-

Lan Fan had never been good at communicating, so being around this foreign and alien language wasn't as jarring as it should have been to someone of a clearly older time. Currently, she had been placed into fresh clothes and underwear rather forcibly by Riza and was now sitting on a plush chair as Riza brushed and braided her hair back from her face. She had been put into black shorts that had the ends touching just above her knees, another oversized shirt on, this time it was blue and had a silver heart on it near the collar. On top of her shirt was a dark blue unzipped cardigan that covered her hands and half of her shorts. Riza smiled at Lan Fan and let go of her hair, which was now tied back in a braid with her fringe and some strands of hair left out near her temples that fell to her collarbone.

With her tattooed arm, she reached back gently and pulled the hair forward, looking at the twisted locks within the mirror. A sudden flash, a vivid memory, clouded her vision for a bit as she stared at the mirror. Golden hair, eyes like the sun, a grey tattoo streaking down his right arm before the memory was filled with molten red so much red, eyes filled with joy, then pain, so much pain, so much red, but you and that red are one in the same, the same, the same, you lived, where are they now, where-. Lan Fan lowered her eyes and let go of her hair, opting to place her hands in her lap so she could control their movements. They were trembling as she squeezed them in-between her thighs to hide them from further view.

Riza held the door open for Lan Fan, the brush she had used now sitting on a small table in her room and her own hair tied back. Lan Fan blinked once at Riza before quickly scuttled over to the door and heading straight into the kitchen. There were pieces of paper, writing tools and a small strange metal box on the table in front of the brunette. Sheska smiled at Riza and gestured for Lan Fan to sit down on the chair opposite her as she and Riza exchanged words between each other. Lan Fan sat down and blinked a few times as Sheska grabbed one of her clear pens and pressed a button on the silver box. Lan Fan stared awkwardly as the screen started counting up.

"Hello, your name is Lan Fan, right?" Sheska stated, a small lightness to her tone.

Lan Fan's eyes widened. She had heard the woman correctly, right?

"I spent a large part of my schooling learning all types documents and also did a management course for foreign documents and a part of that was the need to learn multiple languages. I don't know why I chose a dead language, but I guess it worked out alright."

"You can understand me?" Lan Fan questioned loudly, her hands spreading out on the table as her eyes widened in shock.

"Yeah, most of it anyway as we don't have every word ever used. We need your help though. Riza said that you formed out of the ground you were dug from and that was a… odd occurrence. Can-"

Riza quickly mumbled something to Sheska in her ear, who in turn quickly turned to Lan Fan.

"-and apparently you know something about 'Mannequin Zombies' from all the horror movies. We need the information for historical and scientific progression."

"Scientific progression! That's the reason those devils were there!" Lan Fan yelled back angered. She was not going to be a part of this science again. She swore that to herself and to them.

Sheska was unsure how to react; this girl was clearly terrified of the past she had lived in, but she needed to find out why someone as calm looking as Lan Fan was so scared. "So what happened? Please tell us. We need this to be able to understand the mysteries of the Mannequin Zombies. If not to improve science than to stop some scientists repeating mistakes."

Lan Fan was silent for a while as her mind roared with multiple thoughts and arguments. One of these little voices won. She finally answered quietly; "Alright…"

Sheska leaned forward and put her pen to the paper as Lan Fan sat for a moment, unsure of where to start. Her eyes had clouded over and multiple emotions crossed her face as she tried to grasp for a suitable place to start. At the same time Riza sat down in one of the remaining chairs and observed the girl in front of her to make sure she wouldn't try to bolt or break down. Finally, Lan Fan's expression hardened and she looked up.

"I suppose I should start with what was presumed to be the basics of staying alive. Sleep during the day, have plenty of food and water, and travel in groups.

A gentle wind rustled through the grass as the sun dipped below the far away mountain range's peaks, covering anything below them in a heavy shadow. Animals scampered into their burrows and the birds began to settle within the trees. A river filled with salmon flowed nearby, glittering in the last light of the day. Several tufts of dandelion fluff dislodged from their stalks and went off, sailing in the wind currents to find root away from it's original home. The leaves of the trees rustled and blocked out some of the sun, casting long shadows onto the ground.

Deep brown eyes fluttered open, the darkness rousing them from their light sleep. Lan Fan quickly sat up and stretched, before she reached over to the knot she had tied with the rope to keep her within the tree and quickly untied it. She unravelled the rope from around the tree and around her and quickly coiled it to store in her small bag. She was losing light and her oil supply for her lamp was running low. She scowled at the next stream of wind, the cold air pinching her arms as she through the branches to where she had hung her dark drown trench coat, the leather providing an old comfort to the lone traveller much like a hug. Lan Fan blinked and yawned, stretching her arms wide. She reached up and hooked the lantern off of the tree branch it rested on, lighting the oil inside and glanced at the sun to determine her location. She follows the sun, no real goal in mind.

Looking down at the ground, Lan Fan crouched on the branch like an oversized vulture before she threw herself off the branch to the ground below. Upon landing, her ankles ached and her boots sunk into the ground partially. Lan Fan brought her fingerless-gloved covered hands to her face and breathed into them to try and heat her hands up a little more in the late-night chills, the heat from the lantern heating her left cheek as she held her right hand close. She gripped the lantern between her teeth and shifted her tight singlet on her body up, pulling the zipper on the right higher up so it stayed up before she pulled her looser pants up, tightening the white belt around her so it held up better on her body. She needed to adjust her clothes from her sleep where they had risen and adjusted from her slight movements in the trees.

Lan Fan steeled her resolve, slung the bag which contained her rope, spare oil and other necessities over her body, and began walking in the direction that the sun had set in. The stars shone brightly above her and she began to stare at the beauty of the lights, a soft smile coming to her face as she kept wandering through the overgrown grass and looming trees. She often wondered what it was like to be a star, no need to worry about surviving. She had no goal and no future to look forward to as she followed the sun. She had been doing this for nearly as long as she remembered, since that night. She had been part of a group once, but they were all dead. The Mannequins had killed them. No, those monsters hadn't killed them, the one who killed them was-

A raspy groan echoed through the air from behind her, to close to be safe. Lan Fan whirled around and scanned the trees to find the source and eliminate it. The stars above provided little light as she looked through the shadows to find the pale creature. A lone Mannequin was shambling towards her, its raspy groan and it's dry, cracked, purplish tongue licking its flaking lips sent chills down Lan Fan's spine. She silently opened the lantern's glass panel used to light it and refill oil as it came closer. It was getting closer so much that she could see the dried blood on its chin. Something changed in the mood and the zombie lunged towards her, a devilish scream erupting from its lips as its mouth unhinged to take a bite out of her body. With one fluid motion, Lan Fan flung the lamp at the monster, the oil spraying onto the zombie as it burned and scorched the flesh of the undead from its bones.

Lan Fan sighed and picked up her lamp, scolding herself internally for wasting oil on this beast when she was in suck limited supply. She closed the tiny door on the lamp and began to follow the sun once more, or at least, the opposite of the moon. The terrain was changing from a flat landscape to a steeper one, leaving the dying creature behind. Their corpses were incredibly flammable. There was a shout from a male, then a flash of light shone in her direction from near the top of one of the hills. A man with blonde hair and a goatee was pointing a large flashlight at her, which was so powerful she had to shield her eyes with her arm. She scowled at the thought of this light attracting more zombies, as they were attracted to any changes of stimuli in their environment, whether it be light, heat or sound.

"What is it?" she called, preparing herself to run from this man. There were a lot of looters at the beginning of this apocalypse and Lan Fan had assumed them all dead, maybe a few survived? Looters went around and stole all of your equipment to pawn off to other travellers; not that it really mattered to Lan Fan.

"What are you doing out here? Are you alone?" He replied back, not answering her question but lowering the light so she could at least look at his face properly when he talked to her. She really didn't want to reply but she knew she had to.

"Yes, I'm alone. What difference does it make to you?"

"A kid shouldn't be out on their own, regardless of skill or history. They're not old enough."

"Well I am alone, so what are you going to do about it?"

"Join in with our group."

"No."

Jean blinked and his mouth fell open comically and the flashlight fell from his hand.

"I haven't been with a group for four years and even then I didn't really belong with them. They died from their bickering splitting them, before Mannequins decided to chew on their bones." Lan Fan clarified.

"I see, well you're joining us anyway. Like it or not, it's safer for everyone"

This time, Lan Fan's mouth opened comically but before she could disagree and tell the lie that she was heading somewhere important like she had for other groups, he grabbed her by her trench coat's collar and dragged her back to his camp where the other members of his party were. She went limp, giving up all pretences of fighting this man. She sighed, hoping she could maybe escape the group soon and return to what she was doing, even though what she was doing herself had no purpose. Maybe she would find comfort in the group that decided to take her on without her consent. She sighed again and looked at her feet as she was being dragged through the thick grasses.

I hope it doesn't turn out like them.