This takes place in a modern day Westeros.
There were a few outside today. They were normal ones, slow moving and slow thinking, staggering around blindly. They were only really a threat if you were stupid enough to let one come up behind you. He popped open the window and leaned out, aiming the rifle before thinking again.
"Girl," Sandor called to her. "Come here."
Sansa shuffled toward him nervously. He noticed and chose to ignore the blood caked under her fingernails.
"Have you ever used a gun before?"
She shook her head. "I've never even held a gun before, mister."
His mouth twisted. "Well today will be the first day… and don't call me that." He went through their weapons and picked out something with the least amount of recoil. She held it awkwardly after he handed it to her.
"Go on. Aim and try to shoot one. Take your time, it's not a race, and they are too stupid to get to us when we're here on the second floor."
She tried until the chamber was empty, he refilled it, and she emptied it again. Not a single landed shot. It would be a lie to say he wasn't disappointed, but at least she did put some effort into it. When he finally took the gun from her and shot them all himself, she looked as if she were about to cry.
"I'm sorry, I tried-"
"Yeah, I know. You'll try again next time, too. Try until you get it." He told her. "You can't rely on me forever. I'll probably get bit and turn one of these days, and you'll have to shoot me too."
"Please don't say that." She did start crying then.
"Fine, fine. Stop crying." He looked out the window across the town. "We've gotta leave soon, otherwise we'll be stuck outside at night. That wouldn't be good." The sharks came out at night, sniffing around for something to eat. Their favorite scent was blood. Sandor would've been safe if he was alone, but instead he had Sansa with him. Sansa, the girl who was prone to nosebleeds when she got too upset, and was gifted with a menstrual cycle like clockwork. Sharks could smell her from a mile away.
"Why can't we stay here today?" She asked. "I'm still so tired, and my feet have blisters, and I'm hungry."
"Well, we don't have any food so you're going to stay hungry until we find some, and there's no food here." He pointed to her feet. "And we have to find you some better shoes, too. Those aren't much better than walking barefoot. And above all else, we need to work on getting out of the city. As far as I can tell, this is still the city."
She sighed long and loud in response, and Sandor felt the same. As they made their way outside, he thought he would've given anything for a day to just sleep and not worry about anything. Sometimes he wondered if Sansa could even remember the time before the world went to shit.
"How old were you when the outbreak first started?" He asked her.
"I was eleven." She replied.
"Mother have mercy, eleven years old." He shook his head.
"How old were you?"
"I don't even remember. It's been hard keeping track of things like that since it all started. I think I'm thirty-something now. I must be."
"You don't know how old you are?" She made it sound sad.
"Not right now, no." He grimaced. "It's not that big of a deal. Look at the world we live in."
"Well, I know how old I am."
"Really?"
"I turned seventeen right before…" She looked away. "Right before that thing with my dad."
He nodded. "Yeah." He knew her grief. He remembered his own well enough.
"Couldn't we use one of these cars?" She peeked in the window of one. "A few still have keys in them. We could drive out. That would be faster. Probably safer too."
"Wouldn't work." He told her. "Most of them have been syphoned clean of gas. The rest have bad tires, or dead batteries, or are broke down in some other way. Even if we found one that worked fine, we wouldn't be able to navigate it around all the broken roads and garbage."
She looked at her feet. "I guess."
Sandor found some canned food in the trunk of a car, and pulled some sneakers from a corpse, but unfortunately they didn't fit Sansa. There weren't many undead out. It had started raining around the early afternoon. They didn't much like rain for some reason.
It was good for them to be out in the rain. It was the closest they'd get to a hot shower anytime soon. The rain washed the grime off of them and their clothes. It wet Sansa's knees until they were red and raw.
She sniffled and trembled, and he found a cellar underneath an old pub in town. It was cold but dry. There were a good number of wine bottles left too. Sandor remembered a time where he could've drank himself silly. He guessed the beginning of the end could change someone a lot.
Sansa pulled off her wet clothes and wrapped herself up in a musty old blanket. Her hair was wet and stuck to her skin. He watched her as she shivered and shivered, and then finally fell asleep. He followed her example, pulling off his clothes and taking the other blanket. It wasn't big enough to cover his entire body, but it worked just fine.
The next day, they shook the stiffness out of their clothes and put them back on. Sansa was a pretty enough young woman, but it was hard to conjure any sort of feeling about seeing her naked under those sort of circumstances. He'd seen her naked half a dozen times by that point, and she him.
He used a knife to pry open some cans for them to eat their breakfast out of. He hated the taste of it, and he knew she did too, but they never complained. It was all they had, and all they were like to have for some time.
He decided to indulge her, and himself, and stay for another night in that cellar. They hadn't been on the road together for very long, but she needed some rest after all she'd been through.
Eventually he gathered the strength to open one of the bottles of wine, and offered to share it with her. He drank straight from the bottle, but she poured her own in a little tin cup they had. The more they drank, the quieter and the drowsier she got. Her eyelids drooped, and her head lolled, and he felt tired just watching her.
When they finally fell asleep, they slept into the afternoon the next day.
"Shit," He said, rubbing his eyes.
She jolted next to him, and then relaxed. "What's wrong?"
"It's late. We'll have less time for moving today." He stood and stretched his arms. "Come on."
"My head hurts." Her voice was a muffled whimper behind her blanket. She was still wearing that stupid orange hat, even to sleep. It was thick wool with flaps over her ears and a big fluffy white ball on the end. It was something like a little kid would wear, and too big for her head, too. It made her look like a weirdo, but then he realized that he probably didn't look much better, with his scarred face.
"You have to get up." He said. "We have to get moving. You'll be fine."
She let out another whimper, and tossed back the blankets to reveal her face. She cupped her hands over her eyes for a second before forcing herself to stand up.
"Let's try to make it a long way today." She wiped her nose with the back of her hand. "I'm tired of this."
"You and me both."
He unlocked and opened the cellar door, helping her out while looking around to make sure everything was still safe. She tugged her hat down, running her fingers over the ends of it.
"What's with that ugly hat anyway?" He asked.
"A piece of home… The last piece."
He remembered how she said she was only eleven when it all started.
He stopped her, and they stood still for a moment. He listened. The city was so quiet he could only hear the ringing in his own ears. He grit his teeth and made sure his gun was loaded.