The first thing she processes is the PAIN - the searing pain of teeth biting hungrily into her flesh.
But the second thing is that she has to get her children out of here. She needs to buy them some time. It's too late for herself, but her children… She'll be damned if they get her children.
"Ok, I love you. I love you so much," she's trying to keep calm, but her hands still tremble as they grasp her daughter's hair for what will most definitely be the final time. The moans are getting louder and she knows that time is running out.
"I want you to run." She places the gun in her daughter's hands and can't help but think bitterly that something so innocent shouldn't have to grip something so potentially corrupt. But it could be the only thing to between survival and a gruesome death. "You take care of your brother and you run as fast as you know how." It's her last request, and she prays for their sakes that it will be carried out.
She presses a final kiss to each child's cheek, murmuring her last words of love in their ears. Then she pushes them forward and they're off, speeding away just like their Momma told them to.
She thanks God that they won't have to see this.
A final prayer resounds in her head before she resigns to her fate, falling against the snarling mouths and gnarled, bloody hands.
And over her screams and the sounds of flesh being torn to shreds she has a fleeting thought.
She'll never see dead people again.
She'll never see another body being ripped apart.
She'll never see the world go up in smoke even more than it already has.
She'll never see her children meet a similar fate.
Whether it's this revelation or the fact that she's just been torn in half that silences her cries she's not sure. But as darkness creeps on the edges of her vision she graciously accepts it, embracing the gift to unsee the horrors of this new and terrifying world.
He knows that he'll be seeing this image in his dreams for the rest of his life. Both pity and horror circle his brain as he merely watches the decomposing torso struggle to reach his live body.
Because that's what he is. Living. And apparently, things like her are not. At least, not really.
He reaches for the rusty old bike lying in the grass and prepares to find out what's next for him to see in this nightmare of a reality. Hopefully his wife and son will soon be in the picture.
In fact, he's just about to leave before the weak gurgles of the half-corpse jolt him back to the scene playing right before his eyes. He pulls out his gun.
He searches her eyes for a spark of something, anything. But he sees only a raw, animalistic hunger that appears to be idiosyncratic to the living dead.
A gunshot resounds through the silent streets of the abandoned town.
Rick figures that if she had seen what she had become, what the world had become, she'd have wanted to end things anyway and never look back.
And with that he rides away.
He doesn't look back either.