A/N: word of warning for infrequent updates and stuff, the usual. This is more a test piece and if I like it I'll continue. At least, there'll be around three chapters. At most, probably more. I hope I can deliver.

"Our dead are never dead to us, until we have forgotten them."

-George Elliot

Three weeks.

Three weeks, and Rin thinks she is extraordinarily lucky to be alive. Thank god she's good at running, good at squeezing through places more fierce and violent adults can't get through.

Three weeks since her life became, in every sense of the word, a living hell.

Her heart pounds so fast in her chest she's sure something is going to give way any moment. Her rib cage, maybe, or her spine. A long, drawn out, rattling moan fills the air. Her fists clench. There's a scraping sound on the pavement.

Just around the corner, Rin knows there are at least a dozen of them.

Zombies.

Pulling her jacket over her neck, she dodges back into the shadows of an alleyway overlooking the desolate street. She needs to get into that store - there might not be another one for ages, and she's hungry. Now.

But how...?

Rin falls back against the wall, ignoring the slime against her back. It sticks to her palms. Her stomach growls. She hasn't eaten anything decent for days, not since she was split up from... Hanayo, and her family.

Slowly, she sinks to the floor, biting her tongue. Her hands still feel sticky, and she rubs them off on her shoe but she can't get rid of that horrid feeling in her stomach. She shouldn't have come back into town. She'd made many mistakes in her life but this was the worst one. And why? Because she'd thought that, somehow, despite all odds, she'd find someone she knew? Someone she knew that was alive? There was no way that would be possible!

Even though she tells herself that, Rin can't help but hope, as minute as it is.

There's something on her shoe.

It doesn't register at first, until it clicks. Blood. That's blood on her shoe. And her hands. And she's not alone in that alleyway.

Rin jumps to her feet with more noise than she'd hoped for and winces. The wall behind her is caked with blood, only semi-dry. A shape rises from the seemingly empty bags of trash pushed to the end of the alley. Zombies?

There's no time to figure out. She runs.

Across the empty road, Rin is but a flash. She was always good at short distance sprints. Maybe it was the adrenaline. She's on the other side, and there's only walls and walls of houses.

Where to go.

Where to go?!

She decides to go left, away from the convenience store, to uncertainty and possibly safety. Up here there is a staircase. Zombies can't climb staircases so well. She runs. It's just like back when she was in Muse, except it's nothing like it at all because there were never zombies back then. But there were stairs.

Rin stops running when she remembers that there are more than just a dozen zombies in the city, not to mention other survivors. Making a wild, last sprint across the car park, she slides in between a (badly) parked moving van and the corner fence. There's not as much space behind it as she would have liked. In fact, there's not much space at all - the van completely blocks off all access points except the way she came in. She's sweating so hard she gets the chills. Her hand unconsciously grabs at her knee.

Is she safe?

Her breathing evens out eventually, and stops drowning out the low-key shuffle from the other side of this van. It comes to her attention that the only fast way out is over the fence behind her, but that leads to a main road, and probably danger. Over the van, Rin can barely see the overhead bridge, where zombies slowly patrol, shambling. Shuffling.

The sounds grow louder, the crunching underfoot changes texture and back again.

She's screwed. She messed it up again, and this time it'll be her last. Screwing her eyes shut tight, Rin keels over, clutching at her stomach as it protests. She needs to eat, but she feels like she's going to be sick. The smell of blood is thick. Too thick. Everyone's dead. They're dead. Rin's dead, too.

Except she's not, and when she opens her eyes, nothing has changed. The shuffling, too, has stopped.

"Thanks," she murmurs under her breath, which she didn't know she'd been holding. Who was she thanking? Whoever would listen. God, maybe.

Waiting one more minute, and unable to wait any more, Rin steps out from behind the van, testing the surroundings. It's completely empty all the way up the fence, back whence she came, unreasonably so. Another step. And now, a quick scan to the right before -

Snap.

The face whips up to meet hers and Rin nearly screams but it dies in her throat as a whimper. Her feet are glued to the ground. Blood. Her footprints! Noise.

Zombie. It's a zombie. It's got dead eyes and a gaunt pale face and blood over it's mouth and nose.

But that's not it.

Rin tries to run but all that occurs is a small squeak. She's going to pass out.

It's not moving any closer, it's mouth is still hung open in a wordless, soundless moan, and it's looking right at her.

No. No, this can't be happening. Rin feels her hope die in a wave of terror and dread.

It's Maki.