Dark, intense, and down-to-earth, this woman in her forties is too stubborn to die.

There's a rugged beauty to her appearance. Months of survival in West Point have turned her silhouette lean and her presence quiet. She speaks sharply and her sense of humor is even sharper.

Word has it, she was with a group of survivors in West Point, but the rest of the group died before she did. "The human cost is too high," as she would comment on what it took to scavenge supplies. Testing out frequencies on a police cruiser radio, she randomly reached survivors in the mall, speaking first to Andy Watts. The private detective told the enigmatic Grace of their situation, and Grace hesitated to follow the call to their gathering.

After mulling it over, Grace took the plunge. She loaded up Ben's cherry-red Mercedes with the most important supplies she had in stock, and drove across the county to reach the Crossroads Mall. She broke inside with a breaching hammer and sealed the hole back up once Andy and Artrex provided the necessary wood. Haggard and exhausted from the perilous journey, she rested in a tent on the eastern roof of the mall, the "Crow's Nest".

The next morning, bodies and blood littered the parking lot beneath the Nest.

The enigma of Grace dissolved only days after her arrival. She had been holding out for a long time with neighbors and colleagues in West Point, and never found the body of her now-dead husband, Ben. The band of survivors taught each other everything they needed, turning each other into wily and rugged survivalists. After those friends all died off, one by one, only Grace remained, having learned every lesson from all their lives and deaths combined. The result was a hyper-vigilant and paranoid road warrior with an impressive breadth of practical skills outside of fighting, most notably as a chainsaw operator and carpenter who had fortified her home in West Point, now turning her abilities towards safeguarding the mall and its people. Over the course of the next weeks, she quietly harvested timber from the surrounding areas and constructed defensive parapets and walkways for sharpshooters to use in defending the mall's south wall.

Her stubborn streak and no-nonsense attitude may put her at odds with others at times, but she is fiercely protective of the community she now inhabits, and only interested in ensuring their collective survival. She always takes initiative on thankless tasks such as handling dead bodies and menial labor, and her background of having worked dozens of different jobs in the past permits her to troubleshoot in many surprising and unexpected ways.

She bears only few scars on her body. Luck is what she would attribute that to, but others know better. The scars she bears on her soul however are unmistakable, usually yielding a constant scowl and grim disposition. Hardened by those scars, she only allows few people to see the person she was underneath it all. Thus, some enigma remained.

Though, all that really matters now for her fellow survivors? Grace still gives a damn.


Inspirational Soundtrack: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLysBianVX7iR8bjkjsioxEMekSWRGM2F_&si=rVXSOhQKGRxNyLBS

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