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"Sh-it sh-it sh-it sh-it sh-it." Rupert hisses under his breath as he brings the hooked blade up just in time to catch the jaw of one of the corpses. The blade easily slices through the gooey jaw matter like a hot knife through butter, easily penetrating the lower skull and wedging into the brain just enough to incapacitate the staggering dead man. The corpse falls, truly dead this time as Rupert catches his breath; he's a culinary student, not a warrior for Chrissakes.

Rupert was devastated to hear his home country of India had become a hotspot for the roaming dead, though he had only been there once when he was ten to visit a very old grandmother and was now twenty-two. Privately he hoped his grandmother had died years before this catastrophic infection spread like wildfire. The young Indian man backed up from the diner doors and headed into the kitchen. He and his group had stopped here for food supplies, and Rupert had enough culinary knowledge to know what to look for with the cooking utensils he had.

As soon as he entered the kitchen, he crouched in wait for any predators. Hearing no shuffling footsteps and no low groans, he stealthily navigated his way to the pantry where the perishable goods would be. The young Indian man located some rice packets and found a good deal of refried beans and such, tsking inwardly at the diner's lack of freshly prepared food but glad enough to count on them to have these items. He shoved them into his bag and immediately set out to grab several water bottles that lay nearby; these would be useful too. He finds a first aid kit and immediately bags that too, knowing the value of medical supplies in times like these, also grabbing some paper plates and plastic utensils for easy use and disposal. This would do.

The young man creeps out of the kitchen and doesn't notice the zombie approaching him until it lets out a loud gurgle. The man backs up into the wall and curses to himself until a hatchet buries itself into the top of the undead woman's skull as a towheaded man appears behind the fallen corpse, grinning wickedly.

"Dammit Keith, always showing up at the most convenient times, aren't you?" Rupe snarls as the towheaded man laughs. His straw-colored hair is cropped in a short flattop and his clothes look mangy and dirt-caked. Sanitation was not Keith's strong point, it was the middle of the "fuc-king zombie apocalypse", as Keith liked to say. The zombies served as his excuse, his refrain for why personal hygiene was to be taken with a grain of salt. Rupe begged to differ, but he kept quiet to both save face and prevent any kind of unnecessary argument. Rupe's mother had always emphasized what good hygiene could do, and Rupe's own excellent hygiene gave everyone a bit of comfort, what with him being the chef of the group.

There was no culinary experience more hands-on than being the chef for survivors of the zombie outbreak. Rupe was pleased that the bulk of the survivors he cooked for truly enjoyed his meals and looked forward to them, so he was full of strong desire to make each meal worth being the last. He sampled new recipes from one of the two cookbooks he had saved, skipping over the recipes that took too much time to prepare.

"Ready to go?" Keith asked Rupert. The young man stood up and brushed some of his thick black shock of hair out of the way of his eyes.

"Ready."