STOP! Wait a minute…

Ohhhhh, boy. Here we are, quite a bit of years after my last update. A lot has happened since then, and I've changed a lot as well. Most importantly, I believe my writing has changed. Now, I'm not sitting here at my laptop saying that I've become Mark Twain or anything, but I feel fairly confident in saying that my new work is much better than what I first posted in 2012. I've grown up. Things have changed. I'm currently in the process of writing a few different novels with no expectations but high hopes. Browsing through my laptop, I re-discovered my Alice in Walkerland folder.

AIW was my first ever real story, even if the entire plot was based on a TV show nearly word for word. I've always had a fondness for it and hopes that maybe one day I'd revisit it, but that day never came. But, I feel like I have the motivation and capabilities of doing that now. I am aiming to somehow bring Alice in Walkerland to an end, but before I can do that I have to practically rewrite the story. The Younger Me of 2012 wasn't interested in plausibility. I knew what I wanted to write, and I wrote it that way (common sense be damned).

Quite honestly, it's sort of embarrassing looking back at my chapters and seeing what I posted for the world to see. The goal, hopefully, is for me to revamp my previous chapters and then put out a finale chapter. I'm hoping that, those of you who have stuck with me while I was posting regularly once upon a time, will take the time once more and give me some feedback on my efforts. It would be much appreciated. I don't know where this story is truly going to go or where it's going to end. I have a small plan, but it's completely possible I may fall in love with AIW once more and want to continue on further than anticipated. Whatever I decide, I hope that it will meet your expectations and overcome them. I'll do the best I can for this story, and for all of you.

With my undying respect and appreciation,

Star Jinxed Wolf

Chapter 1

I threw what was left of the shattered baseball bat aside breathing heavy and wincing at the pains shooting through my arms from the repetitive strikes. The dead and decaying bodies around me were smeared on the concrete floor, their heads bashed in and body-matter leaking out like a poisonous stream. I felt the panic in my chest start to subside as danger passed, falling backwards against the wall and bracing my hands on my knees. Sure, it had only been two, but armed only with a bat, it might as well have been a dozen. As I caught my breath, I glanced around the grimy motel room more carefully this time to ensure I wouldn't be met with anymore surprises. After the racket I had made taking out the Rotters at my feet, any others nearby would have most definitely been aroused to come in for a looksie.

Everything was still, the unnatural stillness of the new world. No humming of electricity, no low growl of airplanes flying overhead, no roaring of trucks, no whispers of human voices – just the still…and the sound of muffled barking and claws digging into cheap wood. I heaved one final breath before straightening up and walking over to the bathroom that I had been exploring when the Rotters had crawled out from underneath the dirty bedframe. The door was jiggling violently in the frame, a shadow barely seen underneath the thin gap at the bottom. I swiftly twisted the doorknob, taking a step back as a black and brown blur darted out of the bathroom and past me.

"Sorry you missed all the fun." I apologized dully, watching as the beast of a dog sniffed at the unmoving bodies. "But we can't risk you getting bit. We don't know what it does to your kind, remember?"

The German Shepherd, satisfied that the dead wouldn't be going anywhere anytime soon, pulled his dark brown eyes up to glare at me – quite literally glare. It seemed he hadn't been pleased with me slamming the door in his face before he could jump out and help me take down the Rotters. Judging by the deep gouge marks in the bathroom's door, I'd say it was a rather fair assumption. I rolled my eyes at his affronted look, scanning the room for something else to use as a weapon now that I'd destroyed my baseball bat. I gave the splintered wood one last fond look before turning away. That bat and I had been through a lot together; from central Florida to here, somewhere outside of Atlanta.

I heard the jingling of dogtags follow close after me as I failed to find any reliable melee weapon in the room I cleared, exiting through the door with the broken frame from my kick and stepping back outside. The covered walkway of the motel offered me relief from the sun above, but it didn't stop the heat from saturating the air. Sweat dripped off of me in rivulets, trailing across my skin like fingers. It was hot in Georgia, but it was nothing compared to Florida. I wiped my hand across my forehead before enclosing my damp fingers around the hunting knife secured at my waist. While it certainly was a lethal weapon, it required me getting a bit closer to my target than I was keen on being. Pulling it free, I moved to the next room and banged on the door a few times. Leaning against the doorjamb, I waited patiently for someone or something to answer my knocking. I decided to wait a tad bit longer than I had at the previous room, figuring some of the previous tenants might be in stickier situations and would need a bit of extra time to get to the door.

While I was sweating like a pig, Bayou was panting his head off as he tried to cool himself down. Like me, he had become accustomed to AC and was laboring in the unrelenting and inescapable heat. Sitting beside my leg, clingier than he had been before the end of the world (if such a thing was possible), I reached down and gave a loving scratch to the black ears that twitched agitatedly atop his head. One was standing straight up and rotating to catch every minute sound while the other was drooped over and floppy. The mismatched ears had been one of the reasons that I had fallen in love with the mangy thing when he'd been brought into the clinic where I'd worked before everything fell apart. He'd been brought in by a good Samaritan who found him chained up in the backyard of a foreclosed property. Young, emaciated, flea covered, balding, and sporting several infected wounds from both other animals and humans.

The physical recuperation had been an easy one – lots of food and antibiotics – but the emotional recovery had been rough. Bayou was as aggressive as aggressive came, snarling at anyone who lingered by his kennel too long or made eye contact with him whatsoever. He couldn't be walked on a leash, instead we usually just hauled open the small door that connected the inside kennel with the outside run, and that would also be when we would quickly dump food and his medicine in a bowl before he came stalking back in. It was heartbreaking seeing a creature so young already tainted by the world. Despite TLC from everyone in the clinic, months passed without a temperament change and the decision was made that if improvement wasn't seen in the next month then he would have to be put down. An unfriendly dog was unadoptable. I wasn't about to sit around and see that happen.

Thirty days of constant attention and motionless sitting outside his cage gave results, minor but a step in the right direction. Soft words and slow movements seemed to be the key for the damaged soul, and it progressed to gentle touches. Dr. Howie said that it was the most incredible behavioral change that he'd ever seen in his entire life. It seemed only reasonable that I take him home with me, so I did. That's when I learned a few more things that hadn't been obvious at the clinic. Bayou was terrified of thunder. He had a real hankering for pizza and wasn't above stealing slices right off of my plate. He refused to sleep in a dog bed and instead made himself quite comfy with me on my barely big enough mattress. He was a bed hog to the extreme.

The most important thing I learned – he was clingy and territorial to a level that wasn't necessarily okay. It was sweet at first, then it was a nuisance and after a few near bites to friends and family, it was a liability. I had to lock him in his cage if I needed to leave the house for any extended period of time, lest he rip my apartment to shreds. I couldn't have anybody over to the apartment without locking him away, either, and even then my guests would have to listen to his incessant barking from the room over.

Thankfully, the world went to shit before he could sink his teeth into someone's arm and a lawsuit. Now, his territorial nature was almost a blessing. Being as big of a dog as he was, he could take a Rotter to the ground in a matter of seconds when he had the chance. I didn't often let him have that chance. I knew that if you got bit, you turned, but a dog? There was no telling what happened if a dog was bit. What if he turned into a Rotter-Dog, sort of like what happened in I am Legend with Will Smith and all. I couldn't deal with that. This dog was all I had and my only companion as I headed towards Fort Benning where my brother was hopefully still stationed. The last communications I had with him placed him there, but that was weeks ago before the cell service had gone caput. He could be fine, or…

I didn't let myself linger on the alternatives. Instead, I tried the doorknob after a very long time of no activity. Unlocked. I pushed it open slowly. It was in the same state as the previous – messy and destroyed with a few miscellaneous stains and rotting bodies that looked like they'd been stationary for a long time. I froze in the doorway, taking in the scene. A woman's body lay on the bed, skin shriveled against her skeleton and what was left of her hair wispy like cotton candy. She was positioned peacefully, arms crossed over her in the classical coffin pose. A second body sat in a nearby chair, half of his head blown off and a mosaic of blood and brain matter dried on the eggshell colored walls. A simple handgun dangled from his fingers, tempting and exciting to me. I wasn't big on guns, preferring to smash and bash with some sort of blunt weapon, but only a fool would turn one down. Besides, I knew how to shoot. I'd make do.

Stepping further into the room, I hesitated in snagging it right away and instead did a cautionary sweep of the simple layout. When nothing caught my attention, I returned to the suicidal man and pried the gun away from his cold, dead fingers with quite a bit of difficulty. Time had cemented his joints into place, making it awfully hard to maneuver them off of the trigger. A nasty cracking noise resonated from the dead man's knuckles as I finally yanked it free, shuddering at the sound. I slid the clip out of the gun's stock, running my thumb across the spring-load. Only two bullets were missing, leaving me just short of a full clip. I took a moment to compose myself. I'd be lying if I said I'd never thought about taking the easy way out when all of this started.

Hopelessness had arrived swiftly along with whatever disease killed and then rebirthed the known population of the country and maybe beyond. In the blackout that followed the collapse of the government, it had all seemed like too much. I was a veterinary assistant who had been in college, and now all of a sudden, I was thrust into being a survivor in a dead world. I couldn't do that. I panicked. I knew I couldn't survive this on my own and I thought it better to end it quick, by my own hand than to be ripped to shreds and devoured. I had debated for weeks within the barricaded safety of my apartment, eyeing the bottle of sleeping pills that I had had but never really used. In the end, Bayou had been what stopped me from ending it. If I was gone, there'd be no one to take care of him. It was a weak reasoning, but it was all I had to cling onto. I hadn't wanted to die, I just…didn't want to be eaten.

I was lucky – lucky that my parents had passed on long before the apocalypse in a car accident; a drunk driver on the wrong side of the road. On the bright side, even though it sounded awful saying it, that was two less people who I worried about nowadays. Just Vincent, who was on a military base, and Bayou. It was almost a relief not having people you cared about. As long as I was around, I was fairly confident that Bayou would survive as well. And Vincent, well, he was stationed at Fort Benning. Where in the world was safer than an army base? Maybe a private island…anyways. I just prayed the idiot hadn't decided to jump ship and strike out to find me. If the military was intact, he could be labeled as a deserter for such a decision.

I realized I had been staring down at the gun for a very long time when a loud clattering had me jolting violently, aiming the loaded gun towards the noise. I let out a heaving sigh when I saw Bayou skittering out from under a hairdryer that had fallen off of the wall in the bathroom, still plugged in and tangled in his legs. I just remembered to click the safety on the gun before sticking it in the waistband of my jeans, darting forward and trying to steady him as he panicked at the cord tangled on his front leg.

"Alright, alright, calm down, you idiot." I snapped, snagging his leg and holding tight as he tried scrambling backwards. "It's just a hairdryer."

The soft clicking of his nails on the tiled bathroom floor slowed down as he let me maneuver the plastic cord undone from his paw. No sooner than I had, he jumped away from me and trotted back into the bedroom, shaking himself viciously and sending a cloud of brown and black hair to cascade off and hang in the hazy air. I shook my head, eyes darting around the bathroom before realizing that there was nothing worthwhile for me to take. I fell from my crouch to fall flat on my butt, leaning back against the bathroom doorway and staring out towards the open room door. The sun was setting, turning everything a golden orange and bringing out the cicadas to screech like devils.

The bodies on the bed were foul and pungent smelling, but it was a scent I had become unfortunately used to in the months since everything went to hell. It wasn't the worse that I'd smelled, and it surprisingly did little to dampen my appetite. My stomach had been growling nonstop since that morning, the meager breakfast I'd had not being nearly enough to sate me. I was very skinny, and so was Bayou. Finding food had been hard. I was no hunter, meaning that scavenging was all that I could do. Unfortunately, I had waited to leave my apartment and head north very long after the initial outbreak. Most of what could be looted had been looted by those who had fled before me.

"We're down to our last can of food." I called to Bayou as he sniffed in the grass outside of the motel, probably trying to find a suitable place to do his business. "Want to go halfsies with me?"

I pulled the backpack off of my shoulders, placing it between my legs and trying to remember which zipper compartment held what was left of our food stores. I dug past clothes and empty wrappers, a few crumpled photographs and some notebooks. My knuckles finally hit metal, thudding dully. I wrapped my fingers around the can and pulled it free. Despite my hunger, I felt my face fall as I read the label.

"Great." I sighed sarcastically, weighing it in my palm.

With resignation, I yanked off the pull tab and tossed it aside. At the sound of prospective dinner, Bayou came hurrying back into the motel room and sat patiently beside me. He'd retained his manners throughout all that had transpired, surprising since it had been a real chore to instill them in him to begin with. I stared into the can of processed meat, the pale pink stuff looking back at me. I was tempted to just give the whole hunk to Bayou, but commonsense told me not to. I needed something in my stomach, even if it was the undesirable parts of farm animals. I pulled a small plastic spoon out of the netting on my backpack, stabbing it into the can and digging a sloppy line straight across. With difficulty, and a soft sucking noise, I hauled out the measured portion and barely was able to drop it on the cleanest part of the tile floor when Bayou was on it.

I poked at my half unhappily, licking my dry and cracked lips. The smell of it alone seemed to arouse my stomach as well as disturb it. I stuffed the first few spoonfuls into my mouth quickly, swallowing without chewing before chasing it down with a long chug from the water bottle at my hip. Still, my gag reflex couldn't help but rear its ugly head. Knowing I wouldn't be able to finish the small bit that was left, I dumped the rest of the can on the ground for the dog.

"Eat up." I burped, pushing a fist against my mouth. "You filthy animal."

I left the door open as long as possible, but as the darkness started to creep over the concrete outside I realized it was time to secure myself for the night. This room was as good as any other one. The bathroom, while dusty, was clean enough. The hinges were surprisingly silent as I closed the front door to the room, throwing the deadbolt. It was funny that there was a time in my life where even being in the same vicinity as a dead body would make me a wreck. I never participated in euthanasia's at the clinic, and I was always "sick" during the funerals of family members. My parents were cremated, as per their request, when they passed, so there was no need for a viewing.

Today, four months into the disease that had struck the world blind, I was about to be bedding down in the room adjacent to two rotting corpses. I'd come far. I ushered Bayou into the bathroom with me, setting up one of my small camping lanterns on the sink and switching it onto it's lowest setting. Faint light lit up only the immediate area, allowing me to see where I was walking. Closing the bathroom door, I switch the small little lock and dropped my pack on the floor. I heaved a sigh, looking around the tiny space. It was pretty standard. The mirror was cracked and covered in such a thick layer of dust that I couldn't even see my reflection in it. That was fine by me. I was sure I looked like hell. I snagged the lantern and moved towards the toilet, lifting the lid and moving the light closer to peer inside.

The water seemed clean enough, no grime growing inside the ceramic bowl despite the passage of time and otherwise uncleanliness of the motel. I lifted both lids and stepped back, letting Bayou lunge forward and lap thirstily at the still water retained in the tank. I felt somewhat guilty about letting him drink out of a toilet as I sipped at my metal water bottle, but clean water was hard to come by. It made more sense for a dog, a creature that had evolutionarily adapted to consume raw meat and drink from unfiltered water, to lap at the toilet rather than me.

I set the lantern on the back of the toilet, turning towards the tub. Scum had started growing in the corners of the bathing area, probably mold. I carelessly ripped down the shower curtain that was already hanging by only a few rings, shaking it out and draping it over the worst of the nastiness. The cheap plastic sheet crinkled loudly as I climbed into the tub, carefully lying backwards and trying to relax. A bathtub wasn't the worst place I'd laid my head down, by far, and although I was cold from the smooth ceramic at my back it was almost pleasant. The high walls of the tub felt like a cradle, holding my body as I bent my legs and crammed myself into the most comfortable position I could. I finally let out a sigh, stilling and closing my eyes.

Then they were popping back open as I heard the skittering sound of nails on tile a moment before a heavy weight plunged over the wall of the tub and joined me. I grunted as four paws stepped on me numerous times, Bayou trying to find purchase for him to crawl up me and finally collapse on my chest. Eighty pounds landed on my torso, knocking the breath out of me. Bayou rested his head on my collarbone, exhaling deeply and peering up at me with dark brown eyes. I rolled my own, freeing one of my hands out from under him and grudgingly scratching his ears.

"I guess there's always room for you, bud." I relented, squirming as his back paw dug into my kneecap. "Even when there isn't."