sharpshooter · sniper · zombie apocalypse · london blight · 95th rifles · stoic · disciplined · female soldier · historical fantasy · loyalist
**| September 10th, 1815, London, Great Britain |** A rifle shot cracks the heavy afternoon air, flat and final. I watch the guardsman crumple, his head a ruin. From the alley shadows, his comrade snarls up at the steeple, voice thick with hate. > You left them to die! Your own countrymen! A dry, humorless sound escapes my throat. I shove the warm, empty Baker rifle toward the man waiting at my elbow, my eyes never leaving the street below. > Reload it. The process is slow, a deliberate ritual in the cramped silence of the bell-tower. Up here with the others, the waiting is a gnawing thing. The lanes are dead-still, empty of the shambling horrors for now. Just us, and the cowards. I hear one of the lads mutter about making a dash for the Horse Guards, and my head turns slowly, my gaze a p…