Note: If you watch The Walking Dead, you'll notice I've borrowed some stuff from the show. If you don't, you'll never know the difference! :) Oh, and I'd love to know what you guys think, good or bad, short or long, so please review!
The rotting thing staggered through the underbrush, more pathetic than threatening. Dean tracked it with his eyes, wishing the last kill of the day was something a bit more challenging. This one had once been a young woman, probably one of the many students that had succumbed to the virus. Her pale hair was matted with blood and tissue, and not much was left of her lips and nose. Still, she was more intact than most of her peers.
Her skin was the color of death, the veins tracing dark lines over the mottled flesh of her arms and face. The noises she made were spine-tingling - gasping groans and moans that were neither human nor animal, but something else entirely.
"This one's yours, Sam," he muttered to his brother. There would be nothing fun about taking this one down.
Sam nodded and raised his arm, leveling his shotgun at the Walker.
"Wait," said Dean. "It's getting dark, there's no point in attracting more of them. Here." He handed Sam the machete strapped to his back. "Quick and clean."
"Quick and clean. That's funny," replied Sam."You know I hate using this thing." But he accepted the weapon anyways, stepping out from the trees and advancing on the poor dead bastard.
At the noise, Emory flew back into a state of sheer panic. It was the third panic-worthy incident of the day, and she was beginning to welcome the feeling as an old friend. She held her long hunting knife cocked at her side in a white-knuckled grip. Not for the first time, she longed for a pistol. You had to get up close to fight with a knife. And close was not how Emory liked to get with these dead sons of bitches. Close meant infected blood flying everywhere. Too easy for some of that spatter to get in her eyes, nose, mouth.
And holy hell, could those bastards get grabby. Better to be at a distance.
She made a slow circle, glaring into the forest that surrounded her. Terror played tricks on her eyes. Was something peeking out from between the pines?
She bit her lip hard, willing herself to think rationally. Walkers didn't peek. They lurched. Staggered. Trudged. And if they caught you, they ate you—no question about it. But they didn't peek.
The sound that had put her on alert came again, this time louder and longer. A soft moan. It didn't sound like a zombie. It sounded human.
"Hello?" Emory called, as loud as she dared. She waited, silent.
Then, "Who's there?" The voice was small, high. A child's voice.
"It's all right, you can come out. Are you all by yourself?"
A small, bedraggled girl crawled out of the underbrush, brambles in her dark hair and dirt on her scabby knees. She was skinny and pale, probably no older than five or six. She nodded in answer to Emory's question, then sniffled and rubbed at her nose with the back of a knobby wrist.
"Where are your parents? Did you get lost?" Emory noticed that the dirt on the girls face had been striped clean in places by tears. She hastily stowed her knife in its sheath, which she had jury-rigged to her belt with a carabiner. No need to spook the kid more than she already was.
The child shook her head. "Mom and Daddy are gone. I was with some folks, but they left me. We were running, and they just...left me."
If she had been thinking like a survivor, Emory would have ditched the kid too. A child would only slow her down, eat her food, and demand protection. Emory wasn't even sure if she could protect herself. But the end of the world hadn't screwed her so hard as to make her okay with leaving a little girl to fend for herself in a forest crawling with the dead.
"Come on. Let's get out of the woods before dark."
The little girl nodded and fell into step behind Emory. She looked tired and weak, and Emory knew she wouldn't make it very far.
"What's your name?" Emory asked, hoping a conversation would pump a little energy into the kid.
"Hazel Ann Harbird. What's yours?" The little voice was perky and sweet, belying the haggard appearance.
"I'm Emory."
The child nodded and scratched behind her ear.
"Hazel. Have you come across Walkers? You're not bitten anywhere, are you?"
"Nope, I haven't even seen a single one. I've stayed under those bushes, mostly. For two nights now. I did just what my mom always tells me, stay put until somebody finds you. I'm real hungry, do you have anything to eat?" Hazel babbled. It seemed that two days of silence had not agreed with her.
Without hesitating, Emory swung her backpack off her shoulders and opened it up, rummaging briefly before extracting a fistful of protein bars.
"This is all I've got. Raided a gas station when I first hit the road and loaded up. Let's see here...I've got peanut butter, chocolate, banana, wild berry—"
"Chocolate," said Hazel, swallowing hungrily. "And peanut butter."
Emory handed over the two bars along with her water bottle. The child seized the water first, gulping down half of it before tearing the wrapper from one of the bars and sinking her teeth into the dense, chewy sustenance.
Emory leaned against a tree while the little girl ate, wondering what the hell she was going to do now. There was nowhere to go. There was no help to be had. A woman and child alone had little chance of surviving for very long, no matter how good Emory got at offing these dead bastards. And she wasn't all that good at the moment. The only thing that had kept her alive so far was pure dumb luck. That and the fact that she had only encountered the dead in ones and twos. They were easy to kill on their own. But surrounded, she knew she would go down. Hard.
But better to die helping a kid than not. If she was going to die, might as well go the noble route.
"How old are you, Hazel?"
"Six and a half. I'll be seven in April."
Poor kid should have been adjusting to first grade, not hovering under bushes in the middle of the woods.
"Do you know where we are, Emory?"
Emory shrugged, looking to her left and right as if there was anything to see besides trees. "Somewhere between Winterville and East Athens. Near Lexington Road. I tried to hit the Wal-Mart for supplies, but somebody torched it."
"Torched the Wal-Mart? The whole Wal-Mart?"
"The whole thing, burned to the ground. Not sure what happened."
Hazel gave a deep sigh, ripping open the wrapper to her second bar. "You live around here?"
Emory nodded. "Used to. I had an apartment down the road, before everything went to hell. How about you, Hazel? Are you from Athens?"
"Over in Winder. We were trying to get to Atlanta," answered Hazel, looking suddenly grim. She went back to her meal and seemed unwilling to say more. Emory didn't push her.
Once Hazel had polished off the second bar, Emory was ready to get a move on. She shifted her backpack to the front, then squatted down by the girl and grinned encouragingly. "Hop up."
As any child would, Hazel knew just what to do. She looped her arms around Emory's neck while Emory's elbows came back to hook behind the child's legs and haul her up.
The little girl was light as air. Emory had a feeling that even before getting left, she hadn't been eating full meals.
Then again, neither had Emory. As light as the child was, Emory's stamina was flagging. She felt as if she had been walking for days. Hazel seemed to grow heavier with every step, and it was only the deepening gold of the sinking light that drove Emory onwards. If a Walker were to step into their path at this moment, it would be a grisly end for both her and Hazel.
It was not a Walker, however, that eventually disturbed the grim, silent determination with which Emory bore her charge.
Though fairly shaking with weariness, Emory was able to mark their proximity to the road which, she hoped, would lead them to some semblance of shelter for the night. She gently let Hazel down, knowing she would need the remainder of her strength to get them to safety. If only she could barricade them in someplace…
Before she could think further, however, an urgent sound pierced the tremulous twilight air.
"Freeze!"
The voice came from nowhere, forceful and gruff and hard as steel. The kind of voice you can feel in your bones. It was punctuated by the sinister sliding crack-crack of a pump-action shotgun chambering a new round, and it didn't even occur to Emory to disobey. She grabbed Hazel by the arm, pulling the child behind her, though she couldn't say for sure where the shooter was.
"Please," she called softly into the trees. "We're not Walkers. We're totally helpless, in fact, but I'm sure you can see that for yourself."
There was a rustle off to her left, and Emory's eyes flew towards the sound. Out of the foliage came two ominous-looking sawed-off shotguns, carried by two ominous-looking men who seemed very comfortable with their weapons, even—or perhaps especially—with said weapons trained on an unarmed woman and child.
"I'm Emory, and this is Hazel. Hazel is six. Would you mind putting those damn things down?"
The taller of the two men had lowered his gun before she could even finish her sentence, the instant he had caught sight of the small person huddled behind Emory. But the other only let his sink an inch or so at her request. It was enough to reveal a pair of intense green eyes, totally devoid of anything close to pity or sympathy. It would take more than the appearance of helplessness to mollify this man.
"Sam," he growled, his voice menacing. This was the one who had called out first, Emory was certain.
The tall guy fished something out of his inner coat pocket. It was heavy and black—another gun, this one a scary-looking semi-automatic. To Emory's horror, he aimed it straight at her and, without hesitating, fired.