Hey, Jocelyn here. This is my first fanfiction I'm posting. I mean, I wrote a lot of other ones but I was never confident enough with them, but I like how this one is going so far. I hope you enjoy!

I ripped through the forest, darting around trees and bushes, a small horde of them—the living dead, the roamers, the eaters, the sick humans, whatever you called those things—not far behind. I struggled through, shrugging the backpacks on my back every time they slid off from the rough running. I gripped my bow in my right hand, unable to shoot lest I wanted to lose speed. My breaths came out in pants, my energy slowly wearing out. I felt the need to stop more than a few times, but the scent of rotting flesh and the groans of the monsters behind me reminded me of my current situation. I swallowed uneasily as my sprints became harder. I needed a place to stop and soon.

I had about zero navigational skills, so I couldn't be sure that there were any nearby towns or buildings or roads. My only reasonable option was to climb a tree or something else of an high ground.

I turned my head around for a bare second, seeing that the corpses were a good of distance away. I turned back around, searching the trees till I set my eyes upon a decently tall oak covered in vines, which would make climbing easier. I exhaled more slowly, zeroing in on, hopefully, what would be my destination.

I bounded towards the tree, stopping quickly and taking off my packs and quiver. I threw them up, along with my bow, into a knot of branches big enough to hold them. I follow a moment later and climbed up the trunk using the vines. I pulled myself up and, after a few attempts slowed by my weariness, swung my legs over a branch. I jerked up my feet above themorts just in the nick of time as they grabbed for me. Morts. I liked calling them that. Let me explain myself. It's the shortened form of a Latin word, mortuus, that means 'corpse' or 'dead person.' I had learned some Latin at school as a high-school credit class, and the word just came to mind when I first saw those creatures. Even so, I still didn't feel like the name gave those beasts enough justice. The sagging skin and blackened carcass and relentless chasing told you that they were more than dead. They were bloodthirsty creations from the pits of hell.

I wiped the sweat from my forehead and tried to slow my hard breathing. I looked down at the dead things crowding around the tree, clawing pitifully at the bark. I scowled at the blood and dust covering their placid skin, the wounds that may have been the cause of their turning and their gaping mouths wanting for the taste of living flesh. Their blank, lifeless eyes seemed to look at nothing, but at the same time, seemed to stare deep into my soul. Their taunting and relentless moans beat down my ears no matter how hard I tried to shut them out.

I tucked myself into the branches, covering my ears and pulling my knees to my body. My mind told me to stop being weak, but my nature made me want to hide. I grit my teeth. No more hiding. I couldn't do it. Not anymore.

I grabbed my bow and arrows, notching an arrow onto the bowstring. I shot at the nearest body, lodging the arrow into its head with a sounding thunk. I shot again, and again, and again. It was like a trance. Reload, aim, and shoot.

Reload, aim, and shoot.

I went on for even longer. By then there were many splatters of blood against the branches. There were many fallen morts and more climbing over them.

Reload, aim, and shoot.

They couldn't just keep coming. They had to stop at some point. I refused to let them get close to me. I needed to live long enough to have some sort of purpose in this pointless life.

Reload, aim, and shoot.

Reload, aim, and—and then I realized they were all gone. I had only two arrows left. I blinked a few times, staring at the space in front of me, the metallic smell of blood evident. I scoffed, even though I wasn't necessarily sad I didn't die. I had just survived again. Again.

I scanned my surroundings for a brief second and jumped down from my perch. I squished a bloody arm in the process, but I paid it no attention. I yanked my backpacks—a bulkier, brown one and a small, black, nylon one—from the tree and threw them back onto my shoulders. I held my quiver in the same hand as my bow and began yanked arrows from the corpses' heads, slowly filling my quiver back up, since there was no need to waste arrows. It was another repetitive process. Or it would have been, if I wasn't attacked.

A hand grabbed onto my foot, simultaneously tripping me and causing me to face-plant on the ground and drop the arrows I had retrieved. I whipped my head around to see a still animate mort, one that had been trapped under the falling flesh-eaters. In my fright, I had missed this one. I tugged my foot and flailed around, but its grip just got tighter and tighter. I reached for an arrow, and to my luck, they had fallen too far. I almost wanted to laugh. I killed all those things only for me to be killed myself by the one I stupidly missed. I felt the jaws clamping on the hard leather of my boot and I reached even harder. Useless.

Then there was a gunshot. I hadn't heard any of those in a while and I hoped that I wouldn't. They were as painfully loud and ringing as I remember. As the shot echoed through my head, dazing me temporarily, I turned to see the mort in front of me dead and unmoving. I heard footsteps, running footsteps. They weren't slow and awkward like the morts. It sounded like a living person's.

"Hey, are you okay?" the stranger asked, stopping in front me.

I lifted my head slowly towards the man. I took note of the revolver in his hand. He looked like someone with authority, the way he held himself. He had dark, wavy hair, scruff on his face and tentative blue eyes. I didn't know whether I could trust him or not. Then I turned to look behind him.

More people. A bit less than a dozen.

That's when I started to panic. I jumped away from the man in front of me, drawing my bow and pointing an arrow that I picked up from the ground in their direction. Walking, decomposing bodies I could handle. Human beings? Not so much. Not that I could have handled them before the world went to crap either.

I thought to myself not to overreact. I needed to assess the situation and take control. I met the shocked eyes of everyone standing in front of me. The guy who saved me. An elderly, white-haired man. A girl with chin-length brown hair. An Asian guy, like me. A blonde-haired teenager. A woman with short gray hair. A dark-skinned man. A red-neck with a crossbow. A boy around my age wearing a cowboy hat. And to my surprise, a pregnant woman. I already knew the weakest of the group were latter two. I could never bring myself to cause the death of an unborn child, so I pointed my arrow at the next most effective target. The kid's head.

The brown-haired man and the pregnant woman immediately tensed. I guessed they might have been the boy's parents or something of the sort. I watched as everyone raised their weapons, whether a gun or a blade or whatever. The boy's hands tightened on his own pistol. I regarded everyone coldly.

"Hey . . . " the man in front of me whispered cautiously, as well as dangerously, holding out his hand to tell the others to back down.

I raised an eyebrow, as if for an elaboration.

"Don't shoot," he said and then as an afterthought, added, "Please."

"I probably won't shoot, but you might." Telling him I won't attack may have seemed counterintuitive, but he understood my meaning well enough. "So if you do shoot me, that means I'll lose my grip and release the arrow, and the kid is injured or, worse, dead. You don't want that, do you?"

He hesitated. "What do you want? We saved you. Why would you aiming at us?" he said.

"I don't know you, and I don't know what you can do. Give me a reason to trust you, then I'll lower my weapon."

He looked back at his friends. "We can help you, protect you. My wife is pregnant for god's sake. We don't harm children—"

"I'm not a child," I lashed out, which I then realized was childish. I huffed a breath.

"Look, we—we can get you to a safe place," he finally concluded.

I let my bow droop for a fraction of an inch. "Safe?"

"We found a prison nearby. It has fences and there may be food and weapons and ammunition," the man explained quickly.

"There may be? Tell me why aren't you there right now."

"It's . . . filled with walkers. We were planning on taking a break and then attacking."

I thought for a moment. A prison sounds promising. It can keep things in, but it can also keep things out. The . . . walkers, as he called the morts, couldn't be too bad of a problem if this group was willing to take them on all by themselves. And since this was a prison, there should be several buildings, which means we could stay in separate places and not have to interact often. Butthese were only guesses, and there are certainly cons to this choice as well—the risks of whether or not this place is actually safe and of chance that this is just a lie. I grimaced.

"Are you sure about this prison? Can it keep them out?" I asked at last, not having explain who themis.

He nodded.

I sighed. He might be just nodding to satisfy me. I stood there a few more minutes, acting as if I was thinking, to pretend I wasn't as desperate as I was. Or maybe it was just the fact that there was a pregnant woman and a boy in this group that makes me trust them. I removed the arrow from the bowstring. I leaned down, picked up my quiver, and tucked the arrow in. I looked to the guy in front of me while throwing my quiver on my back.

I give him a dark grin. "I'm not in a killing mood, never have been anyway. Let's go check out this prison, shall we?"