After moving out of the small homey town she grew up in most of her life to go and live with her estranged father in the big city, she wasn't expecting to become the heir to his company. Her life in Manehattan had its ups and downs; a brand new school, new and old friends alike coming together, as well as losing contact with a lot of people - her ex-girlfriend being one of them, and getting away from crazy magical shenanigans.
Life had improved a bit as she settled into her new life.
She has a job working for her father at his company, where she had spent the last few months climbing the career ladder way up to the top into the position she held now. She was making enough money to live in a comfortable apartment building in the better part of Manehattan, and had accumulated enough to retire early if she wanted to. The company made an incredible amount of money from its products, among other things.
Lyra Heartstrings had it going for herself right now.
It was nice, even if the things she did felt less than humane in the long run, at least considering what it was she was doing. The work she did would have left a bad taste in her mouth at an earlier age, but after a while the things she did came easier, her own morality began to slip out of the window and in the end, she knew it was necessary... more then necessary, actually, helped that it paid handsomely as well.
Which is why she continued to work like this, continued to do the things she did at her father's discretion to help improve life as she knew it. That's what she and the company focused on, improving the standards of the consumer through their products, which she wanted to do in her own special way.
After spending so many years toiling away in a shitty fast food restaurant, she had grown sick and tired of the tedious work she was doing. She grew sick of the way her boss, co-workers, and the customers treated her, as if everything was her fault. The sandwiches were cooked wrong, so she got screamed at. The drive through was too full and someone crashed, scream at her for not moving faster. Someone tripped in the men's bathroom, her fault for not cleaning it up.
She wanted to do something with her life, she wanted to do something grand. Not waste her life in a piss-poor place like that for the rest of her life.
So Lyra made her way to the big city...
Now Manehattan became overrun by ravenous monsters and she found herself fighting off most of her neighbors in her penthouse suite at the top floor, surrounded by endless hordes.
Lyra was sitting inside with a drink in hand and on the balcony when everything had first gone down, when the first reports flooded in over the TV about the outbreak in the lower east side in the slums, where she remembered most of the homeless population, on top of vagrants and bums lived. The virus had only spread from there and quickly among the already sick and defenseless population of criminals and junkies she knew that dwelled in the shadows.
At first, it seemed like a nightmare. Her alarm had gone off, and she had stepped outside to see the city slowly devolving into chaos.
News choppers filled the skies, capturing the chaos unfolding in the city streets as droves of undead monsters began pouring out of every nook and cranny, giving chase to the millions of people who stood little chance. They were almost herding them north through the city, forcing millions of refugees up the streets in dense crowds past police and the National Guard to safety. It was almost mesmerizing, watching all of the bodies slam into one another to flood the roadways, crushing anything and everything in their way to get at uninfected people.
Over the past week she spent hiding in her penthouse, she watched the city completely fall apart around her like a house of cards. The TV signal had gone out around the fourth day, replaced with an emergency evacuation broadcast that took over the radios and phones. The military had been called in shortly and flooded into the city with battalion after battalion. Military helicopters and other aircraft airdropped in soldiers and supplies, as well as some offshore navy ships. It seemed they were pulling out all they had to curb this rampaging onslaught of infected horrors.
But on the seventh day, it wasn't enough somehow. She could see buildings burning and filling the sky with acrid and toxic smoke, entire skyscrapers began to crumble into piles of rubble and ashes. The roads down below were painted in blood, brass casings and torn apart vehicles. The military itself was being pushed further north towards the location she was at, as forced retreats caused the infected to overwhelm any and all in their way.
Her area had remained relatively spared from the fighting further south, but it was closing in, and before long her portion of the city would crumble around her. Fires burned out of control, people were being devoured and turned into monsters to make the horde even bigger, and any armed forces were in full retreat, taking who and what they could with them in a desperate attempt to solidify their positions.
Lyra wasn't exactly lucky enough to be one of the ones evacuated, she hadn't left the penthouse for anything, not even when her neighbors had been forced from their rooms and were devoured by the few undead inside. She just barricaded the door, grabbed the gun she had bought a few months back, the ammunition, and fortified herself inside the room. Lyra had filled up the bathtubs and sinks with as much water as she could, and kept a lot of the valuables in the master bedroom; food and ammunition and the likes.
She may have grown up in a small hick town, but she wasn't stupid.
The city was in chaos and some people couldn't be trusted, especially in a situation like this.
After a while, Lyra had grown bored out of her mind trying to figure out how to get out of this. Her building had a helipad on it and she had gone outside to paint a help message on it, to try and get someone's attention.
She was still here though, so it wasn't very effective, unfortunately for her. But it was worth a shot to try it, even if no one saw it. Hopefully someone would see the message, if not today, maybe tomorrow... if she even stayed that long.
Lyra kept her eye on the skies, watching the choppers flying around dropping napalm in the nearby streets, burning dozens of flailing stampeding bodies, both living and dead. The bombings appeared indiscriminate, and she was sure that if this kept up the numbers of the surviving people would end up dropping the more the military tried to 'help them.'
Fear was giving way to paranoia, she could see it even from her tower. The ships were pulling away from the shore; nearby civilian boats that began to move out were being stopped by the navy, where boarding parties forced their way on board to make sure no infection had not made it on board while a vast majority had been completely shot and sunk.
She eventually needed to get moving, find a way out of the penthouse and to safety. From what she heard on her phone's radio before the power had gone out, there was a mass evacuation being held further north at the Manehattan Stadium, where she had seen dozens of choppers head for days ago. She figured it was already being used, so chances are, everyone's best bet of getting out alive was at the stadium.
Assuming the dead hadn't already overrun it, entire hordes were moving through the city, following still moving vehicles, helicopters, and survivors before clashing like tidal waves, with bodies flying and buildings standing no chance from it.
Lyra looked down at her handgun cautiously, and at the bed where most of her gear was. The vest, pack, and her carbine, as well as the ammunition laying out.
She sat down in the chair and sighed heavily. "Goddamn it, I should have left like dad said." A rack of the handgun slide and she looked outside at the city, and down at the handgun again. "Fuck."