world war z

[assistingconsultant]

This was not what Joan had intended, at all.

The door had been innocent, and she supposed that was the real mistake. In her defence, though, upon going through, nothing had been out of sorts. Her eyes, trained as they were, actively picked out details in the building as she walked through, looking for the exit. She'd wanted to explore, that was all, though she kept the door back to the Nexus firmly locked in her mind, direction-wise. Like Las Vegas, she just wanted to see something new.

The real hints came slowly as she approached the street. It had been an office building, and sometimes a painting was askew, a chair knocked over. Down in the lobby, though, with its glass walls, she was able to see that outside there were cars parked on the sidewalk, the traffic lights were off. She had paused, uncertain, because she knew that this could be a bad idea. What if there was a pathogen, here, like in Fran's world? But then she had heard screaming, and Joan simply could not ignore it - she tore out the building and into the street.

Zombies. Zombies. Really?

She supposed her other mistake had been in assuming that the only real danger in the Nexus was the danger she faced every day in New York during her work, nothing more than that. A dangerous assumption. The woman at the end of the block could not be saved, Joan saw that immediately upon going out on the street - but now she was exposed, and then she was running, unable to get back through the building's front door without being intercepted. The best she could do was try to loop around, get in through the back, and get back to the Nexus. And never go through this door ever again.