Author's Note: Hey guys! Welcome to the beginning of a new story. For those of you who aren't currently caught up with the show, WARNING! There will be spoilers ahead! I will be closely following the story line of the TV show (with a few added additions), so I apologize now for the mass amount of paraphrasing that will be taken directly from the episodes. And for those of you who are enormous W.D. knowledge buffs, you'll notice that we will be starting out this story during Season 2, Episode 5. After this, we'll be following from young Kylee's perspective around Season 1, Episode 4, and since she is the main focus of the story, any interactions that she is not directly involved with, you won't see written here. This is the first story I've done that so closely ties in with a series, so I would appreciate a little leeway during your read. All comments are welcome, and this will definitely be a learning experience for me.
I hope you enjoy!
~Annie
**Cover image credit goes to the DeviantArt user Sempaiko. Please check out their page for more W.D. art!**
The night is balmy. The air lays thick and heavy over the highway, but the gentle sound of cicadas singing in the trees nearby is drowned out by the blaring of car horns and the desperate, argumentative voices of a thousand people stuck in a traffic standstill that stretches on for miles.
Helicopters swoop low and slow overhead, circling the city of Atlanta and the massive pileup awaiting just outside its borders. People are wandering in the streets amidst the cars, confused and frightened and trying to figure out just what is going on. The radios are playing nothing but static, and at this point even the emergency broadcasting has stopped.
Shane Walsh leans out of the open driver's side door of his car, looking up to the sky as the choppers continue to pass them by. Parked next to him is an old tan Cherokee, and on its open bumper Carl Grimes sits with a young girl playing checkers as the adults linger nearby. Behind his shoulder stands his older sister Kylee Grimes, who has been keeping the children distracted with hints and strategic plays on both sides. It's been working for a little while, but they're all growing restless.
"Are we going soon?" the petite, blond-haired girl questions. Kylee is pretty sure her name is Sophia.
"I don't know baby," her mother Carol answers. "I sure hope so."
"I'm hungry," Carl pipes up, shifting to look between his sibling and their mother, who's sitting propped against the bumper of Shane's car.
"I know buddy, we all are," Kylee reassures him as best she can. "Maybe we won't be stuck here too much longer."
Carol speaks up from the side, offering to get Carl something to eat. "Ed's into all this survival stuff. We've got enough M.R.E.s to feed a small army."
"I'd sure appreciate it," Lori Grimes responds while the other woman walks around to the driver's side of their Cherokee, assuring her that it's no trouble.
Kylee watches Carol's husband Ed follow her towards the front of the car, and hears their whispered argument as the two kids focus once more on their game.
The portly man chastises his wife for offering supplies to strangers, and the older Grimes child can't help but feel both sympathetic and aggravated at the way he treats her, speaking to her as if she's worth less than the dirt beneath his shoes. Ducking her head, Kylee pretends to have missed the conversation as Carol circles around the front of the vehicle to dig in her purse.
She turns instead to watch her mom speaking to Shane, leaning on the edge of the open window as their father's best friend continues to cycle through blank radio stations. She can't hear much of what they're saying from where she stands with the kids, but gathers that at this point even the emergency broadcast about the refugee center in Atlanta has stopped playing. She watches Shane step out of the car and slam the door shut, announcing that he's going to walk ahead to see what's going on.
"I'll go with you," Lori responds before turning to her daughter. "Can you please stay and watch your brother for me?"
"Yeah, of course," Kylee answers with a nod, turning to Carol as she offers a few granola bars.
"Ed must have forgot to pack those M.R.E.s, but I found these in my purse."
"Thanks Miss Carol," Kylee replies with a soft smile, glancing over her shoulder where her mom is explaining to Carl what's going on.
"Shane and I are gonna go scout up ahead a little bit and see if we can find someone that knows what's going on," she tells her younger son.
"I want to come with you," Carl pleads, only to be turned down.
"You stay here with your sister, alright?" She fixes a stray lock of his hair and kisses his forehead.
"Hey, we'll be back before you know it," Shane promises him. "Okay little man?"
As they walk off Kylee drapes her arm around her little brother's shoulders, leaning her hip against the tailgate of the Cherokee and rubbing his upper arm in reassurance. She hands him one of the granola bars Carol found, and tries to pull the kid's attention back to the checkerboard.
"Your dad's nice," Sophia finally speaks after a few minutes.
"Shane's not our dad," Carl interjects quickly. "Our dad's dead."
Before Kylee can even speak or let the loss of her father resurface in her mind, an explosion echoes somewhere up ahead. Carol huddles the two youngsters close to her side while Kylee jumps to her feet, and around them all hell breaks loose. People begin yelling, screaming, fighting in the middle of the street, and overhead the helicopters circle around to make a beeline for the heart of the city. Their mom and Shane are still gone, and Kylee feels a knot of panic settle in her chest.
She turns to her brother and kneels in front of him, placing her hands on his shoulders. "Hey bud, stay here with Sophia and Miss Carol, okay? I'm gonna go find Mom and Shane."
Rising to her feet, she looks up to the older woman. When she nods Kylee turns to push her way through the chaotic crowd in search of her family. People press in on her from all sides, jostling her and knocking her against the sides of vehicles as she tries to slip by. She isn't sure if it's been ten seconds or ten minutes, but with each passing moment the heavy feeling of dread weighs down on her, settling like a rock in her stomach.
Occasionally she tries to ask if anyone has seen her mom, but with so much arguing and clamoring for answers of their own, no one spares a minute for the young twenty-something.
After a while she makes it closer to the city, where the traffic jam is even worse. She can barely squeeze through the cars parked bumper to bumper, finally resorting to climbing over bonnets and tailgates when her path becomes blocked, and here the throng is even thicker. The noise of the crowd is deafening, and Kylee manages to slip into the trees where fewer people have dared to venture. Still no one has seen her mother or Shane, and the older Grimes child is beginning to panic. She breaks into a jog, and then a flat-out sprint.
She never sees the drop off until her racing feet hit thin air, and then she's tumbling down the slope beneath a bridge where the bank of the creek hits her with all the force of a semi truck. A rock strikes her temple, and in the dark no one sees her lying unconscious at the bottom of the ravine.
.
..
...
..
.
When Kylee finally comes to, her head is pounding something fierce and the light is absolutely blinding. She groans and rolls onto her side, eyes squeezed shut as her temples throb in time with her heartbeat, and it takes her a minute before the world stops spinning.
Her clothes are splotched with mud and torn in some places, and her shoes are sodden from laying in creek water while she'd been passed out. She pushes herself slowly into a sitting position, still wincing at the pain in her skull, and gingerly touches the swollen area where she knows a dark bruise has probably formed. Thankfully her fingers come away free from blood, and while she has a pretty wicked headache, she's almost positive that she doesn't have a concussion.
After allowing her eyes to adjust to the mid-morning light, Kylee clambers ungracefully to her feet. Now that she's awake and becoming more alert, she realizes that her first priority is finding her family again. It takes her a while to get back up to the top of the ravine, and then she makes a quick bee-line for the road. But she stops dead in her tracks, gasping softly, when she finds the highway silent and devoid of people. The cars are still there, piled one right next to another like some sort of graveyard, and the only signs of life are the birds nesting in the treetops.
"Mom? Carl! Shane?!" Kylee hollers, her voice growing more and more desperate as she continues to call out for her family with no response. She wanders among the vehicles, passing doors left wide open with their contents spilling out onto the asphalt. Clothes, supplies, personal belongings. All left behind as if their owners were in too much of a hurry to gather their things.
Kylee even stumbles upon a few corpses, and the sight of the first mutilated body has her dry-heaving into some nearby bushes. They look like they've been gnawed on by some sort of animal, and then the scraps left behind to rot in the sun. She trembles and screams for help, for her mom and her brother, and then eventually for anybody - but her cries receive no response. She weaves through the wreckage and the death towards the city, hoping that somehow they managed to make it inside, to the refugee center. That's where she knows she needs to go.
The day grows on towards evening as Kylee finally begins passing the first of the military barriers, but there's still no signs of life. No people, no noise, no movement. The city's turned into a ghost town, and she's beginning to panic. Every few minutes she continues to call out for help, but she only hears her own echoes in response.
Until the first Walker hears her yells.
They descend at first in singles or pairs, and Kylee freezes in the middle of the street. Their moans and raspy breathing are nearly silent in the beginning, but as more and more of the reanimated corpses gather around her the cacophony grows. She spots a break in the growing pack and makes a break for freedom, the bottoms of her sneakers slapping against the concrete as she bolts down a side street. Everywhere she looks she sees the dead walking, growling and groaning as they watch her racing by. Soon enough she has quite a crowd forming at her heels, gashing their teeth at the prospect of a fresh meal, and Kylee cries out in fear, begging someone to save her.
Her lungs are starved for air, and her calves burn with exertion. She doesn't have much energy left to keep running, and she fears that she's going to die here without ever seeing her family again. In her mind's eye she sees her mother's understanding smile, and hears her brother's carefree laugh. She imagines that Shane is protecting them, and has taken them somewhere safe.
She misses her daddy so much.
Her steps begin to slow; she can't go any further.
The herd is growing behind her, their gurgling snarls drowning out Kylee's labored panting.
Her foot catches on a chunk of broken concrete and she stumbles, hitting the ground hard.
She waits for the snapping monsters to descend on her, and tears fall across her dirty cheeks. She squeezes her eyes shut and prays for the end to be quick.
And then the first shots go off, felling the walkers closest to her.
"Get up, gringa!" Someone yells. "Get out of there! Vamanos!"
Whipping her head around, Kylee sees two men standing in an alley to her right, waving frantically at her. Unsteadily, she clambers back to her feet, willing her jelly-like legs to support her weight for just a while longer. One of the two men continues firing into the crowd of walkers while the other reaches out for the girl, and together they slip behind a chain-link fence. She stumbles and someone pulls her arm across their shoulders, helping her along until they reach a compact car idling at the end of the alley. They guide her into the backseat, and with the slamming of doors and the revving of the engine, they peel away deeper into the city.
"Hey, what's your name, chica?" One of the men asks her. They're both Hispanic, with dark eyes and copper skin. One of them has a crop of black hair with a bandanna wrapped around his forehead, and the bigger of the two men is bald with scruffy facial hair.
"My - my name's Kylee," she stutters an answer. "Who're you?"
"I'm Felipe," the bald one answers before gesturing to the other boy behind the wheel. "And that's Jorge. What's a crazy gringa like you doing wandering the streets by yourself, huh?"
Kylee runs her fingers through her tangled hair as she explains, "I was trying to find my family. My mom and my little brother. We were all trying to get to the refugee center, and then a lot of things happened at once - I got knocked out, and when I woke up everybody was gone."
The pair converse among themselves for a moment in Spanish, while Kylee watches on in tense silence. The smaller of the two, Jorge, seems unwilling about the topic of their discussion. Felipe appears to reason with him, and occasionally gestures towards Kylee as she sits the back seat. Finally Felipe turns towards her.
"We're gonna take you to Guillermo," he tells her. "I don't know what to tell you about your familia, but maybe he can help you out."
Kylee scrubs her fingers against her eyes, trying to keep the tears at bay. She fears the worst for her family - for her mom and Carl and Shane - but at least for now, she's safe.
That evening the young girl sits inside Guillermo's compound with a full belly and bandages on her hands where they'd been scraped by her earlier tumble. They'd accepted her rather quickly into their fold, and what Kylee had first thought to be a rather welcoming group of gangsters taking Atlanta as their own turns out to be a collection of caring people trying to look after a retirement center that had been abandoned by most of the staff when the city became overrun.
"You're a nurse?" Kylee can't keep the humor from her voice as Felipe takes a seat beside her. He nods with a grin and gestures to Guillermo, who stands to the side speaking with an elderly gentleman.
"And our fearless leader there used to be the janitor. All of us here are either what's left of the staff or have wandered in over the weeks. We aren't much, but we're the only ones left to take care of the folks here. We're a familia now, and we look after our own."
He notices that Kylee's expression has turned forlorn, and he places one meaty hand on her shoulder.
"You're safe here, chica," he tells her. "I don't know what to tell you about your mama or your hermano, but I can tell you that if you want to stay, there's a place for you here. Besides, we could always use an extra pair of helping hands."
The young twenty-something looks up, and manages a slight smile. "I guess I can stick around for a while," she replies.