She caught a glimpse of them through her scope and grimaced to herself. The wind was still blowing into her face, which meant the Hunters couldn't smell her; not yet, not unless they backtracked. She quickly tried to pick out her next position.

Unlike in previous eras of her life, she couldn't just run down the street all wily-nilly and blast anything that tried to stop her. She was equipped with a grand total of two single-shot rifles and no melee weapon. She was supposed to hunt from the high ground, from birds' nests, and from well-selected shadows... She wasn't much of a pursuit predator, and certainly not against superior numbers, and while she'd gotten the hang of climbing from roof to roof or ledge to ledge in these trying times, she was barely stealing glimpses of her quarry and already putting herself at high risk.

Snickers had led the pack on a wild goose chase, bouncing back and forth across the town like it was a marathon obstacle course at a prestigious dog show. Three of the hunters more-or-less seemed to be keeping pace with him, while two lagged but continually kept trying to intercept him whenever he changed direction. The chase was so ridiculously on-going that she had to hope they'd simply grow bored of him and come to the decision that he wasn't worth the trouble.

Wasn't that what most animals would have done, after successfully chasing off a rival predator from their home territory? Given up?

She heard a high-pitched squeal followed by a chorus of brays and roars. Shit. Shit. What was that? Either someone had gotten the jump on Snickers, or he'd just doubled back and taken a snap at someone in passing them. Or maybe someone had run afoul of poor terrain? She had to get a visual. She ran through the streets as dusk threatened, needing what remained of the sun. Her eyesight was about to be handicapped and theirs was about to become enhanced. Where? Where were they? Still north? She needed something tall.

The rear face of a town clock-tower rose into view on her left, with a fire escape straggling down the back side. That would do! Taller than the motel smashed up against its side anyway.

Grappling hooks were a nifty tool in the post-apocalyptic, and a person could make them out of almost anything. Tear a few sheets to braid a rope with, tie them around a rock and you could at least get a rope where previously ropes didn't exist. She'd made her own from the broken end of farming implement padded with velvet to stave off any loud metallic clangs. She tossed it up onto the raised end of fire escape, tested that it had lodged in place, and then pulled herself up.

Okay, first floor, reclaim the rope, scurry scurry scurry up the damn stairs. Another floor, another. She heard the Hunters and felt they seemed to be homing on a single location; the voices weren't panning to either side as had previously been the pattern. Where? Too damn far!

She set a foot on the rail of the stair, tossed her rifle onto the ledge behind herself and shouldered the sniper. Loaded? Yes, loaded. She jerked the gun up with a deep breath to steady herself, and balanced the barrel on her knee as she peered through the scope.

Where?

She caught sight of a Hunter loping across a rooftop at a fast clip, and followed its vector till she found the spidery bodies swarming around an entrance to a junky, low-lying plaza. This was bad. Snickers wouldn't have ended up on the ground floor if given a choice in the matter, which made her think that some kind of jump or pounce had gone awry and he'd been forced to scamper for the nearest cover. The shop in question only seemed to have one window serving as an entrance point for the door-handle-impaired zombies. Snickers might be able to use it as something of a bottleneck, but it was a mite too broad and could be safely breached just as soon as the hunters realized they ought to try approaching him together.

She needed to act. If she killed or at least wounded one of them, it would either attract attention to herself or else scatter them. Whatever happened, it would at least momentarily take their attention off Snickers. She tried to get one snugly in the sights.

Steady. Steady.

It wasn't easy to hit a Hunter. Not with their gangly, four-legged gallop and the way they slid and scampered about walls and preferred to jump from perch to perch as opposed to walk. she had to pick whether to aim for the head, or to aim for the body; she had to pick whether or not—if none of them would sit still long enough for her to aim—she'd just shoot the rooftop nearby to spook them.

She'd never held a gun before the apocalypse. And when it had broke out, and her fellow survivors had thrust weapons into her hands, she'd been pathetic at hitting her target even at short range and whilst equipped with a shotgun. And she was now the world's last precision sniper.

Oh, the heroes of yesteryear would sigh...

There. Two of the hunters had been lagging behind the other three, and even now they weren't pacing about with anywhere near the agitation of their fellows. One of them she didn't have a clear shout to as he perched and watched his brothers. The other was the pregnant one, obviously slowed by her swollen belly, but with her teeth bared in a fanged snarl as she dared her adversary to come out and face them all.

Careful. Steady. Twitch by twitch. This target was barely moving.

There. Even as she breathed, the scope lay with the cross-hair neatly on 'Eve,' hovering somewhere between her head and shoulder. This might be a full kill shot.

Eve?

She'd named her? Somewhere back in the closet of her mind, she's named her, and the name she'd picked was 'Eve'? Why? Why? Hell, why not Lilith if she was going to pick something so ominous!? Just... just squeeze.

Squeeze the trigger.

Please.

Snickers is in there and needs-

-A building exploded. Not the building Snickers was in, no, but a building directly perpendicular to it. Concrete heaved and buckled, with rebar bending out in all directions as dust and grit rained down over the front of the shop where the two ground-bound hunters were. A roar boomed out from the aftermath that sent chills down her spine and left all the hunters staring like deer caught in headlights.

She didn't even have to turn her barrel to look. She knew what she'd see, and prayed Snickers was smart enough to hide under a shelf and not come out until it was over.

Tank.

Eve was still under her sights, though twisted about to gape in a new direction, and probably would only be there but a fraction of a second longer. Should she pull the trigger? No, she didn't have to, because the situation had changed. A Tank, of all things, was about to indirectly save Snickers' ass.

The Tank saw Eve and her attendant first, because they were on the ground and they were right there. It thundered forward like a charging gorilla, much more suited for running than Hunters were, and the two of them recoiled with squeaks. A crunch of metal signaled the Tank had picked up something—maybe a car? She lost track of Eve as the hunters screamed and scrambled vainly to get out of the way.

The three on top didn't know what to do; the two below lacked for any real cover or things to climb. The Tank waddled forward those last steps, now up on two stumpy rear legs with both fists knuckle-deep into a car, halfway through the motions of a throw. The malformed head of the monster—nearly buried in its grotesquely swollen musculature—came straight into the sights of a sniper rifle.

Not yet! It has to kill them first! And it definitely would! The two on the ground were as good as dead, and any of the three up above were going to die if they tried to help.

But she pulled the trigger without any real hesitation.

And in that moment she was David-killed-Goliath. She was something amazing. Her gun gave a soft little cough, and a tremendous kickback against her shoulder, and then the Tank's sturdy head imploded back into the flesh and bones of its body. One Shot. One Bullet. Dead. The body pitched forward, and the car landed upon it with an organic squish, and the street went hushed and quiet.

She slowly lowered the rifle, and then grimly reached for the next shell to load it, even armed with full knowledge that it might never be spent.