Note: this is not cut off. It ends exactly where it is supposed to. This has been hibernating on my computer for a ridiculously long time, and I decided to just post it now while cleaning everything out. This is unedited, so my grammar, in pretty much everything else sucks.

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Dear Lucy,

Ain't you gotta worry about me no more. I found a nice sort of people, real kind sort with babies and old people—kinda like a hospice, you'd've said. But I suppose if any sort of people out to survive the end of the whole world it might as well be the good ones.

There are some bad ones, but you remember what Ma always said, don't you? Gotta look at things with a little optimism, ain't nobody that ever got happy bitching at life instead of marching forward.

I don't suppose you'd be yammering on about something just about now. It's dark, this new place-I ain't all that fond of the newbies (regardless of who they are). Prancing around, acting like just cos they've gotten this far they can shit all over and nobody'll say nothing.

So I don't think you'd be all that happy.

The stairs creek and it's so cold I think everyone can see my nipples. I ain't had a good bra since that one in Memphis, you remember, the pink one that Charlie got Snapper blood on.

There ain't as many Snappers here-and the newbies don't call them that either, calling them Walkers, or even Biters.

I don't suppose you'd be all that happy about that either, always going off about calling them for what they are. Dead.

Charlie was the one who preferred Zombies, but that I think that made it real in the type of way that Snappers and Walkers don't.

You never did like the cold.

Maybe it's all for the sake of irony, but you died on the coldest day of the year. Snow flakes in your lungs and the tears gluing your eyes shut.

Charlie cried over you until his lips where blue and we heard Snappers coming up. We couldn't save your body.

We didn't see lots of people after that-Charlie kept us away from the cities. Though there was that girl who's skin looked like yours after you died. Same blue, and all. Charlie didn't stop the car even when she screamed.

You'd be glad you were dead, if you'd seen it.

Arms sawed off, legs ganked out at awkward angles and her face rapidly bruising as that man beat her to death with her own hands. Charlie hadn't stopped. And I pretend that you wouldn't have made us either.

The newbies ain't seen the kinda stuff that's out there. Mama's killing their own babies and men hurting their own wives. But they don't see it all the same, and the babies don't gotta grow up alone.

Neither you or Charlie would like it. Aside from the cold, it smells something awful. The newbies've gotten into the habit of going out on runs. I'd never liked the concept and Ma always said that the best way to stay safe is not being a turnip.

"Get your damn head outta the dirt, Jorie," you'd even said it a couple a times, Lucy.

Sometimes I miss you so much I forget what it's like to breathe.

I ain't got Charlie now, neither. He'd've been antsy by now, you remember how he got—wringing his hands like a little old lady, fingers twitching on his gun.

Hey Lucy, you remember that game we p