To Do List:

Wake-up

Unbuckle from tree

Breakfast: canned pineapple (what's your name? Gwen Harper)

Re-apply bite (mom's name? Caroline Murrin)

Check supplies (dad's name? Jacob Harper)

Check weapons (sister's name? Lily Harper)

Check the perimeter (favorite animal? No, never mind, fuck that question!)

Take out Nippers (favorite food, beverage? Ruben at Rouge's Brewery and a Dead Guy's Ale)

Climb down

Apply fresh camouflage (favorite performers? Pat Benatar, Heart, Yo-Yo Ma)

Scavenge for supplies (focus on supplies)

Keep moving till last light (sing something? Anxiety by Pat Benatar)

Set up snares (don't fuck up this time)

Pick a new tree (what kind of trees are they? Looks like an oak or some shit?)

Climb up

Dinner: Beef Jerky and canned fruit (what would you rather be having? Crab legs with butter)

Check supplies (pants are torn to shit, need a new pair)

Check weapons (need something better than a meat cleaver)

Check perimeter (look for nippers, take them out quietly, no guns)

Tuck in (listen for nippers, watch for hands)

Remember the little things (tonight's topic includes the glories of sex! Christ, I miss that.)

Start again tomorrow (Joy!)

Day in and day out, the same thing for weeks on end, felt like years. The same thing each morning, noon, and night; staying alive, remembering her name, recalling the past, in the hopes of prolonging the inevitable. The inevitable things composed of being eaten, dying by natural causes, others finding her and using her like a toy, or the simple act of suicide due to madness.

Some nights, she would sleep only to dream that this shit storm was nothing more than a nightmare. Some fucked up flight of not so fancy caused by the chili she ate before bed, the sleeping pills she popped, that stupid zombie marathon she watched on the Chiller channel. In the dream she would get up, enveloped in warm down blankets. Gwen would shower and leave for work. It was so glorious, so wonderfully normal

Such a lovely thought, but it never lasted. Then the sun would seep through her eyelids, and the groaning of nippers would bring her back to reality. The mental to-do list nagging to be completed, every necessary item in need of being checked off, only to be repeated again and again same time the next morning. Different questions to dull the loneliness, to apply some entertainment to the fear that continued to pump through her veins, feeding this insanely stupid desire to remaining among the living, even when occupying that level of being put her on the nippers' menu.

With a smirk, Gwen pressed her back against the trunk of her current bed, prepping her arm for the fake nipper bite, basic defense against any fellow survivors who felt the right to get touchy. It worked once; it had been the fly of the moment decision to try. She had been trapped in Grocery Outlet, not a weapon in sight, by a group of horny bastards who were ready fuck anything female that didn't bite. Gwen took a chance and bit herself, sinking her teeth in enough to break the skin, then she stumbled out, they captured her, she let them, then they saw her arm, rather than rape her, they gave a beating, and left her to turn. Of course now, after so many weeks on her own, Gwen was prepared to face anything, she proved able with a meat cleaver. Though, lack of food left her willowy, almost skeletal, if anyone bigger than her got close enough, they could exhaust her, take her down. Gwen was better off hiding, keeping to the shadows. Out of sight, out of mind when it came to facing fellow survivors. So, if someone overpowered her, who's to say that the fake bite wouldn't be her ace in the hole, worth a shot, worth any possible risk. No dip-shit would want to risk getting his dick bitten off by some nipper.

Your college roommate's name? Becky Hines. That in mind, she started squirting glue all over her arm, apply ripped cotton balls and gunky blood red paint. Those things were in abundance. Who needed paint during the apocalypse? Admiring her work, Gwen deemed it realistic enough and began looking through her supplies, making a note of anything that required restock. What famous writer said "to love another person is to see the face of God?" Victor Hugo. She did need new pants, hers were scraps held to her legs by duct tape, but they would hold for a couple more weeks, give or take. They weren't a priority, right now; snares! She needed to check and see if those things caught something while she slept. Gwen was sick of beef jerky, and some of the pieces were growing hair.

Shoving all her supplies into her bag, she zipped it up and threw it over her shoulders. What is one of your favorite films? "In the Name of the Father." Weapons within reach, and after checking for straggling nippers, Gwen climbed down, the rough bark of her one night bed scraping her palms as she let go. The nippers from last night lay strewed about the tree, good sweet merciful fucking God, they reeked something worse than awful. Holding her breath, she knelt down and rubbed her hands over the one whose innards were spilling onto the grass. What was the color of your high school boyfriend's eyes? Green, like the pines. Taking up some of the gunk and black blood, she rubbed it over her arms. These fuckers didn't weren't movers, but they could smell a living from miles away. Gwen felt her breakfast bubbling and climbing up her throat, but she swallowed it down, ignoring the foul taste in her mouth, and putrid stench that was pretty much raping her nose.