I don't know how I ended up here. Everybody talks now about how the world went to shit in a day, but for me, it went from shit to worse. Believe it or not, the restless hoards of the undead returning to feast on the flesh of the living weren't the biggest of my problems.

Cold. That was the thing that hit me hardest upon regaining consciousness, not the stabbing pangs of hunger from countless days of starving, or the gaping hole where the bullet had gone in, it was the freezing concrete floor I was sprawled on. I twitched my hand, and gingerly prodded my wound. Fuck. That was a mistake. I don't know what was so funny about it, but I withdrew my hand just laughed, and I kept laughing for about 4 minutes until I could hardly breathe and was sure I was about to pass out again. I waited to calm myself, pooling my thoughts. I couldn't even remember what had happened...fully, anyway. Sudden memories shot through my mind like lightening, causing painful stabbing sensations in my skull, memories I knew I didn't want to have but needed them nonetheless. Work, loud noises, panic. Crowds, pushing, shoving, violence, blood. Soldiers, guns, screaming, dying...black. I didn't want to push it any further. That was all I needed.
I wanted to get up and look around, but when I tried to sit up all the blood rushed to my head and the room started spinning like crazy, then the pain and the spinning became suddenly overwhelming and I threw up. The most dangerous thing I could have possibly done right then was throwing up, I didn't have enough sustenance inside me to afford throwing up...but I couldn't control it. I felt a little better afterwards though, so I sat up slowly and looked around. I gazed around the room and could only think about how dull the room I was in was, high, grey, concrete walls and floor, large metal beams supporting the ceiling with cobwebs dangling from the high roof, glinting in the dull light coming through the big, dirty windows. It was the store warehouse, where all the old stock was kept, but now it was desolate and quiet with only a smattering of used tape and discarded boxes. Apparently the noise of my retching didn't go totally unnoticed. A shuffling sound came from just outside the door, and my blood ran cold, I'd seen pictures and videos on the news and the internet before it happened but I wasn't entirely sure about whether the stories were true or not. The noises became more and more clear, and a heavy feeling like a large weight had begun to form in my gut. This was probably the end. Then, the shuffling noise stopped, and for a glorious split second I thought whatever was making it had wandered off, but then my hope was shattered in a moment by loud crashing and clanging noises as the thing outside tried to make its way inside. Slowly resting my head on the floor again, I rolled away from the door onto my wound, causing a massive surge of pain to rush through my body and making me to gasp, but I ignored it. Laying with my head on the floor, listening to my death get closer and closer made me wonder whether the 29 years I'd spent on earth were really only going amount to this moment and lead me to a grim and undignified death. The final crash brought a further two bangs as the doors slammed against the concrete walls, echoing dauntingly through the massive building. I heard a low moaning and shuffling noise, as the thing got closer and closer I prayed for it to end quickly, holding happy thoughts of birds chirping and shit in my head. I opened my eyes briefly to take in the light once more, but in that second I was blinded, and I was struck by an epiphany;

I don't want to die yet.

I looked over at the floor next to me, and there was nothing I could defend myself with within immediate reaching distance, so I desperately clasped hold of a cardboard box and rolled swiftly onto my other side, only to come face to face with a dead, decomposing, but very much living corpse. It's matted brown hair hung limply around it's sunken and wrinkled face, providing a grotesque shadow across its face. It gnashed it's rancid, rotten mouth at me and without hesitation I rammed the box over its face in an attempt to give myself temporary cover. I flipped over onto my stomach, gasping and crawling around, feeling the floor in a mad bid to find a weapon before the beast could get its cardboard blindfold off. At last I spotted a small section of metal pipe that would be ideal for this type of hand-to-face combat, so I reached out and grabbed it. At the same time, it had freed itself and lunged at me, but I had squeezed my eyes shut and thrust the pipe into the air, only to hear a squelch and a crunch as the pipe had connected with the corpse's skull and embedded itself deep within its brain. Without opening my eyes, I felt the spray of cold, dead blood spurting onto my face and over my clothes, instinct told me to cover my wound further, so I flung my other hand across my body and pressed it against the wound to prevent any of this foreign blood coming into contact with it. With every ounce of my strength, I heaved the truly lifeless body from me, dragged myself behind some boxes in the corner for a certain degree of concealment, and wept for several hours until passing out again.

Hey guys, thanks for reading the first chapter of my story, I'd read a couple of Daryl Dixon Fanfics (yes this is eventually going to turn into that) and I just wanted to give it a go myself, hope you enjoyed it, any constructive critisism would be appreciated - Hannah