Disclaimer: I don't own The Walking Dead, and have no affiliation to AMC. I have full rights over my original characters.
Isn't it funny how volatile life is ?
One moment, you have it all under control, and the next thing you know, everything has been thrown down and stomped on. Your hopes, your dreams, your life, lying crushed in pieces on the floor.
For as long as I can remember, I had always wanted to be a ballerina. The idea had sprouted in my 6-year-old mind one morning, and from that moment on my existence had revolved around that project and its realization. Training starting at 7 am every morning and lasting until 6 every night, the endless sessions of stretching, the regret in my voice everytime I turned down a friendly invitation to the profit of my work, my mother's everlasting vigilance towards my diet and figure… I had borne it all to become what I wanted, and I had succeeded. My dream had come true when as a teenager, I had been accepted at the Orlando Ballet School as a student in professional division.
As for my brothers, they were both brilliant students with an exemplar discipline and a wonderful future ahead of them.
And in the blink of an eye, we had lost everything.
There are some events you forget, or from which you cannot remember some details, as they didn't much affect you. And there are events which stick to you, haunt your mind on a daily basis, each detail as vivid as the first time you experienced it.
I'll never forget the day when the world fell. Months before that, there had been rumors of a new form of plague, but the medias didn't reveal much. The governments were worried, they didn't know what to do as the unknown disease was spreading across the countries.
The first time I ever saw an undead was a Tuesday, and it was 18:26 sharp. I was driving home from practice, when he emerged from the bushes, limping miserably as fast as his mangled body allowed towards me. I swayed to avoid him, and had to stop the car to process what had just happened to me : it was when I realized that it had all been true, the rumors and stories in the medias, the hushed discussions my parents had when they thought we were all sleeping, the whispers exchanged before classes at the Opera.
But seeing my first undead brought a new light to all of this mess. There was no denying and positive thinking to save us now.
I had slammed on the breaks all the way back home, eager to pack everything up in the eventuality of a quick departure, and had even called my brothers off school. Nobody had made any objections, as if they'd expected me to call for an Apocalypse emergency anytime. We'd remained in our house, just the three of us, for a week : our parents never came home to pick us up, and the walkers began to be too problematic for us to stay in place forever. And so we packed our things, and went on our way.
The first months had been easier than expected, we were able to find food in abandoned stored almost all the time, and even some gas for our car. But as the Apocalypse settled in and the world finally went to the pile of crap it was meant to become, surviving had become more and more of a challenge. Between the heated encounters with other survivors and the packs of Walkers coming out of nowhere when we least expected it, it was a miracle that the three of us were still alive and together.
Nowadays, life had pretty much settled into the weirdest kind of routine: wake up, check that no one had been eaten alive, be careful about not being eaten, eat, walk countless miles, find a good place to settle, try not to be eaten while you sleep, and repeat the next day. Strangely, I found comfort in this routine, which kept me going.
If years before now I had been told that my life would soon consist in worrying about my brothers and myself being eaten by zombies on a daily basis, I would've laughed and gone back to my pointé work, because it was unfathomable that such things could be true. Alas, here I was, self-proclaimed protector of my broken family, and the person who would guide them to a better place. Where that was, I was still figuring out, but we had come a long way from Florida and didn't plan on stopping anytime soon.
As the first rays of sunlight peeked from behind the buildings, I yawned and rubbed my tired eyes. I had been driving almost all night after taking over my twin brother so he could have so rest, but right now all I craved was a little pause even just to stretch my aching limbs. In any other circumstances, the sleeping forms of my siblings sprawled out on the seats would've been deemed adorable, but it just made my heart ache. When we had to sleep in the car while driving to someplace else, it meant we hadn't found a more suitable place to spend the night, a place where we would've been comfortable at least for one night. And if we hadn't found a place, it meant I had let down my promise to care for them.
As a rundown gas station came into view I slowed down the car, checking the environment before I stopped the vehicle and stepped out. The place seemed empty, but anything and anyone could've been hiding inside, so I grabbed the baseball bat from the trunk before setting myself on exploring. A baseball bat was pretty much my weapon of choice, although it depended on the context and the needed defense. I swung it on my shoulder, at the ready should anything threaten me, and entered the store. Like I had expected, it was sheltering a few walkers who had probably lost their way out and roamed up and down the alleys as an occupation. They turned to me as I entered, groaning in hunger and holding their hands out to grab a piece of me.
I gave a good swing at each of them, smashing their skulls in the process, and they toppled to the ground. Wiping the blood on the remains of their clothes, I went back to my exploration. Unsurprisingly, most of the shelves were empty: scavengers had been there before, taking the fresh products and most of the canned goods for their personal use. But there were still some cans scattered here and there, some of them past the due date, others still good for a few months. I grabbed two cans of black beans and two of fruits for breakfast; we would come back later for the few left. Putting them down on the hood of the car, I tapped on the windows to wake my brothers.
"Come on Ben, Julian, it's time for breakfast."
They stirred lazily, to which I scoffed: it was quite unexpected to see people being lazy while in the middle of the Apocalypse, yet it came naturally to them. The perspective of breakfast was apparently enough to motivate them, and they got up, stretching their sleepy limbs which popped obnoxiously.
"Hey sissy," said Julian, the oldest brother, younger than me from a year. "How was the road?"
"Clear all the way to Virginia. A few figures along the road, but mostly clear." I replied, opening one of the cans with a Swiss army knife. "I was a bit sleepy in the last hours, but it's manageable."
I kissed both of them on the cheeks, handing them something to munch on. Ben looked at my bloody bat resting against the car, then back at me with an indifference uncharacteristic of a 7 year-old.
"Did you find anyone in there?" He asked.
"Only walkers." I shrug. It had been some time since we'd last seen a human being who was still fully conscious, and not just a mindless, soulless bloodthirsty creature.
Whether it was because we were short of conversation subjects or because we were keeping an open ear for a potential threat, I did not know, but we ate in silence. With full stomachs, we emptied the store of any remaining useful good, which not only included food but also various token like rope, duct tape which surprisingly still stuck and cardboard scissors engraved with the name 'Mary'. It always felt weird to find objects with names on them, as it provided them with a history; they weren't just mere objects anymore but proof that humanity truly existed once, and that it wasn't just an hallucination created by my mind. Mary, God rest her soul, would certainly not mind me borrowing her scissors, so I pocketed them feeling no shame whatsoever. Just as we were boarding our car to get going, a walker came out of the bushes, limping and groaning as he spotted us. Julian seized the baseball bat and approached him, greeting him with an ironical 'Hey there buddy', before he slammed the bat into its head. The walker crumpled to the floor, his brains spilling on the concrete. My brother cleaned the bat onto the dead's hoodie, and tossed it back into the trunk.
"I'm getting the hand at this, don't you think sissy?" He boasted, installing himself behind the wheel.
"Uh, you wish you did." I replied, leaning on the back seats and tucking myself under the quilt. "We all know that bat likes me better." Both boys scoffed, but didn't say anything in return. "Wake me up when we're in Washington, okay?" They hummed as an answer, and I dozed off to sleep.
My dreams had all pretty much been the same since the world had fallen, a super-realistic nightmarish version of my worst fear: losing my brothers. Before all of this, I feared being injured, being rejected at an audition, gaining weight even. Nowadays, the idea of leaving my brothers to their own device even for one night was enough to keep me awake. They were all I still had from the old world, the only family I had left and the only people I cared about.
So it wasn't surprising that I awoke to a start, inhaling deeply to drown my panic and my heart rushing. The car was empty when I did so. I got up hastily, getting out of the car. Julian was only a few meters away, peeing between the trees; I exhaled in relief, and leaned against the car, rubbing my eyes. Julian turned back to me, and he smiled sheepishly when he saw my tired face.
"Nightmare again?" He asked, pulling me into a bear hug.
"Like always. They never seem to stop." He pat my hair.
"We'll get out of this, I'm sure of it." To which I shook my head. It would never get better, only slightly less horrible at best, but never good.
"Where's Ben?" I suddenly realized that my other sibling was missing, pulling out of the hug to scour the place with my eyes.
"He thought he saw a rabbit or two, he's trying to kill them right this moment." Before I could protest about his carelessness, he held my shoulder tight. "It's okay Violet, he can do it. He's lived it all too, remember? He has lived in the world of walkers and dangers with us, he's learned to be careful and smart with his actions. Trust him."
"He's only seven, Julian, and..." I sighed.
"And he grew up in this shit-pile of a world. If anything, he adapted to it better than we did. Trust him, Vi, just do it."
I dropped my head heavily on his chest again, holding back a cry.
"I just don't want to lose you two..."
"And you won't." He comforted me. "That's a promise."
At this moment, Ben emerged from behind the bushes, holding a long brown rabbit by its hind legs, a wide smile plastered on his juvenile face. He was too young to bear all of this, he should've been growing up peacefully like Julian and I had done, not caring about imminent dangers and bullshit like that. It wasn't fair, but what was anymore in that context?
"See?" Said Julian, oblivious to my sorrow, gesturing to our little brother. "Trust him. Good one, Ben, d'you get it with your bow?"
Yep, it was definitely a fucked up world. We took the risk of lighting a fire, quickly cooking my brother's catch, and ate up. It wasn't often that we got to eat meat, and we greatly enjoyed it when we had some. Walking around, we found an abandoned log cabin inside the woods, and decide to rest there for the night. Having slept most recently, I took the first round, and we exchanged with my oldest brother in the middle of the night. According to my previsions and the road indications, we were still a bit far from Washington, but it wasn't more than a day or two on the roads. I simply hoped that the gas tank would bear the distance. We boarded the car again just as the shy October sun was rising over the hills, cutting through the thick mist of the morning. Canned fruits served as breakfast for the three of us, and we kept rolling across the State. I fell asleep to the devastatingly beautiful post-apocalyptic landscape of Virginia: there was a certain beauty in the destruction and the odd calm that possessed entire cities. I awoke to a much different scene, as we were back into the country again, feeling someone shake my shoulder gently.