Endure and survive.

This far out, separated by distance, by the curve of the land and the things that grew on it, you couldn't really see the city, or hear it. If you strained your eyes, maybe there was a glow; if you strained your ears, maybe the sounds of civilization. But mostly, it was light of the moon, and the sounds of nature.

They'd heard the siren, though. It had carried. The reminder that if she strained her ears and tried to hear the city, she wouldn't be listening for the sounds of civilization. It would be the sounds of the other thing. More like home. She hoped everyone she knew still there was safe. She hoped anyone -- hunters, she thought of them, the old language of before -- taking advantage of the Purge would find this place too far out of the way. Wouldn't find it at all.

But hope was a small protection and she knew better than to rely on it, which was why she'd wired nail bombs to the windows of every room they weren't in. Why she was carrying a rifle as she prowled from back of the house to front, why she had her bow and quiver slung across her back, pistol in her belt. Switchblade at her side. All her old tricks, bar the molotovs, because she didn't want to burn Harley's house down, or the forest by accident.

(But she had bottles of alchohol and she had rags, ready to go. Good for wounds, and if it came to it, if it got really bad, that old trick would come out, too.)

She'd thought of doing something in the surrounding woods. More traps, maybe, or just motion sensitive lights. But she didn't want animals wandering through and hurting themselves, or constantly lighting up the place, drawing attention. Better to leave it quiet, and keep the lights to a minimum. Preserve night vision. And project the image: this is just nature. Nothing to see here.

Usually she liked the peace of nature. That had been the same back in her time, her world. Being out in it, away from the trappings of humanity, from the ruins, empty or otherwise.

But part of it, then and tonight, was that it was easier to hear and see anyone coming. So she stalked, and she listened, and she watched.

Maybe it was weird, to be heading out to explore an abandoned, overgrown amusement park, when that had been the state of much of her world. But that had never been the bad part. It had been the result of the bad parts, sure, but in itself there'd always been a kind of beauty to it, and a kind of fascination. Imagining what things had been like. It wasn't the same as finding out, as knowing. Discovering that sort of thing in the bustling city was nice, but still, she liked the idea of poking around the amusement park.

There was far less chance of hunters or infected turning it into a desperate struggle for survival, too. That was a point of difference to how it would have been.

Plus, there was the company. The company would be nice. You needed good company to really make exploration worth doing. She figured Blue for a good partner-in-crime.

The last benefit was that she didn't have to walk across the whole damned country. She had the pickup, now, which was well underway to having sufficient random little knick-knacks on the dash and hanging from the roof to satisfy her. She perched herself on the bonnet, sent Blue a text to let her know she was there, and waited to go adventuring.