PROLOGUE
MAY 29TH 2018
THE OUTSKIRTS OF KNOXVILLE, TENNESSEE
The smell was alarmingly familiar. His nose didn't twitch up at it anymore. The body had been sitting out for five…maybe six days. A sizable half of the skull was entirely smashed in, leaving the face mangled…would be unrecognizable if it weren't for the body size of their friend. He questioned if he had ever met anyone in his life shaped quite like them. He grabbed his lifeless wrists, turning them over.
He thought he should have been crying…or emotional. Anything to feel in touch with his humanity. No one made a sound. Not the girl crouched next to him, the one he loved more than he felt anything these days. No one behind him either, the small group of beaten down survivors that they had left. He didn't like that no one was pulled to an emotion. He felt he should almost force it, out of obligation. But instead, he dutifully checked for what he knew wasn't there: a bite mark. A motive for an otherwise cruel, vindictive murder.
"We're going to have to move on." She said cooly, with finality. He glanced at her as she pushed up from her spot kneeling on the earth, brushing the dirt off her knees. That was a futile move at any rate, they were filthy, sporting a tear on her hip, you could see checkered boxers underneath them. She looked north, towards where the highway would be, also- away from her friends.
"Move on?" He questioned softly. She didn't respond. She shook out her hair. It was long, tangled, and locking up in a way hair her texture shouldn't be. She retied it on the top of her head. She wouldn't look at him.
"I think we should leave now. I don't know how much longer the light will be on our side." She shuffled her sleeve down her wrist.
"Are you…" he spluttered, disbelief splattering his tone, "have you lost your fucking mind?" He stood up, waiting for her, begging her to turn around with his voice. She stayed stagnant. "We just lost a friend," he pleaded, :we all just lost a friend, one we've had for years, and all you can think about is moving on?!" He wanted her to yell. He wanted her to scream at him, scream that she was hurting too, that they all felt the loss.
She didn't.
And that hurt him more than yelling ever would.
She looked over her shoulder at him, and then looked up at the sky, checking where the sun was sitting in it.
He felt defeat like he hadn't felt before.
"Do you even know who you are anymore?" He asked her softly, and the tone gave away what he really said. What he really told her was that 'you are not the girl I fell in love with.'
"I know I'm alive." She said plainly. She knelt down to hike up a sock in her boot. He felt the gazes of his friend's burning into his back. Their pain, their concern…their exhaustion.
It had been two years since it all started.
And he hadn't given up yet.
"That's not who you are." He insisted, stepping forward.
He hadn't given up on her yet.
"That is who I am." she turned around, finally. She stared at him with such fierce intensity- like she thought he was stupid. Or naive. He couldn't tell you exactly what look he wanted to see in her eye- he never wanted to see her hurt, or upset. But to see such an intense look of jaded numbness, just twisted the hand that was clutched on his heart. She was only 24.
"That's all any of us are." Her gaze moved past him, to the people behind them. To their friends, to their family. "I'm not a girl, or a millennial," she spat mockingly, "or a friend." Her words settled between them, settling into the dirt of the earth, into the grime under their fingernails, into their hearts. "I'm alive. And I'm trying to stay that way." She always, nowadays, ended her sentences as if they ended the discussion. As if that were just it, and she always had the final say.
She didn't.
"He wasn't killed by a walker," A new, gruffer, voice pitched in, stepping forward. "We can all see that as clear as day." He gestured down to the corpse of his friend, "And I would think, if you were really concerned about staying alive, you would wanna know which of us-" he raised his voice, circling around the group of people, "did it, and why. Because I don't know about y'all- but I ain't seen anyone else in days." His eyes, a sore, red combination of angry and tired, met hers, "so I ain't goin' nowhere, until someone starts talking."
"I'm sorry…" She spoke softly, looking up, "I thought it was fairly obvious who killed him." Her eyes met with another pair, someone who stood towards the back, quiet throughout the entire debacle. Their eyes narrowed at her, and she took a moment, only a second, to pray to whatever vengeful, hateful God they had left, that she wasn't going to be next.
He turned, and followed his love's gaze to the hatred that it was met with.
He hadn't lost hope yet, through the Famine, the Pestilence, the Death, they- all of them, they weren't done yet.
It settled over him as he watched them stare at each other, feeling the energies of the people he was standing with, the people he loved, already divide, already picking sides, already formulating plans. He couldn't help but see the battle line that was drawn between them in his mind, the war cry that was screaming in his head, despite the stark silence littering the air.
The Fourth Horseman.
It was finally here.