"Chris, we need to get the fuck out of here. Now."

I looked into the panicked eyes of my best friend. I wasn't planning on being one of those dumb fools that left it up to the government and the scientists to fix whatever the hell was happening to the human race. We were currently in the most populated city in the country, and when people started to eat each other, it was time to check out. Before everyone else had the same idea.

"What do you mean get the fuck out of here? Where do you propose we go? And how do you suggest we get there?" She spit out her questions rapid fire, eyes moving from mine back to the emergency broadcast on the TV.

Ah, the upside of living in Manhattan. No car, no car payments, get to all your destinations in minutes by train. If someone had given me the memo years ago that the dead would come back to life and start feasting on the living, I would have stayed in the backwoods of Georgia.

"Just start packing shit up. Enough to last a while. I have a plan."

"Emma! Stop! Jesus!"

I pulled the car over and rested my head on the steering wheel. I couldn't catch my breath. It was like someone was sitting on my chest. I had not realized I'd been going 90.

We hadn't gotten very far from the city when we heard the blasts. We had watched from the rearview mirror as the New York skyline went up in flames, bombs hitting the bridges, which crumbled into the water below. I had almost driven right off the road, not even bothering to wipe the tears away from my eyes.

I just kept driving. It must have been hours ago by this point. It was like time didn't exist. I sucked in a handful of deep breaths, trying to find my voice.

"Em…are you okay? Do you even know where you're going?" The worry in Christa's eyes was blaringly obvious. I snuck a peek at my face in the mirror. I was pale as a ghost, red rings lining my green eyes, barely any color in my lips.

I swallowed. Even amongst the chaos that was ringing in my ears, I knew I had an answer for that. "South. Less people. More guns."

A week. A week we'd been dodging the main roads, sneaking into small towns and taking any supplies we could find. A trip that normally took less than a day had taken us seven with the amount of detours we were forced to take.

I leaned my head against the passenger seat, content with letting Christa drive across the state line between South Carolina and Georgia. I had closed my eyes for only a few seconds before I was jerked forward as Christa slammed on the brakes.

I glared at her, annoyed to have a rare chance at sleep ripped away from me. She narrowed her eyes at me. Uh oh.

"Emma. You haven't said more than three sentences since we drove out of New York. I've known you for eight years and I had no idea you knew how to hotwire a car, shoot a gun, siphon gas from a car, or start a damn fire. You've saved my ass from those…those…things more times than I can count on one hand at this point. Explain yourself."

I sighed. Of course she had no idea. When I left Georgia for the big city, I had no intention of looking back. My stupid, naive nineteen-year-old self was ecstatic to have a reason to leave behind my bumblefuck, hillbilly past and start anew.

"I grew up here. You learn a thing or two." I stated, trying to keep this conversation to a minimum. I wanted nothing to do with recounting my history before New York.

She nodded, seeming to realize I wasn't going to share any more information. After a few moments of tense silence, she stepped on the gas and we kept moving.

"Fuck. Fuck. Fuck." I whispered to myself, struggling to reload my gun. I whipped my head around, trying to catch a glimpse of Christa's red hair among the cars on the highway. Panic began to set in when I couldn't find her.

My brilliant idea to get on a highway had started out just fine. We were running on fumes right outside of Atlanta, and as much as I hated to admit it, I had a feeling the main roads would be backed up with countless abandoned vehicles. We had only just started to fill up our gas cans when a small group of the living dead began to work their way towards us.

"Em! Here!" Christa was suddenly to my right, holding a baseball bat. Under any other circumstances, my spoiled city-girl best friend would have looked hilarious. This, however, was life or death.

"What do we do?!" She whispered frantically, almost tripping over herself as she struggled to keep up with me.

"Keep up. We have to leave the car. I'm not going to try and cut through those fuckers. There's too many of them." I grabbed her wrist and slipped off the highway into the woods, not looking back once. I had made not looking back a lifetime habit.

I kept my hand close to the knife in my belt, the one I had stolen from a sporting goods store back in North Carolina. I trudged through the forest, eyes and ears open. My tracking skills were fucking shot to hell. It was like my feet sought out every damn twig in this godforsaken forest.

Christa was on a completely other level though. It was as if she was trying to bring to life the phrase "bull in a china shop".

"Em, where the hell are we going? I'm fucking tired. I'm dirty. There's bugs everywhere. Tell me you have some kind of a plan."

Bugs. Naturally. She's annoyed with the bugs. She stood with her weight on her left leg, hands on her hips. Typical Christa.

"If we are where I think we are, which I think we are, there's a rock quarry about two and a half miles northwest of the highway we ran off of." I whispered to her. I was patient with her complaints; I knew she was out of her element here. I was convinced that every time her eyes moved left or right she was expecting a Starbucks to appear out of thin air.

"Ok so, are we there yet?"

"Christa, I love you, and I know your city-girl ass is struggling with nature at the moment, but shut the hell up." I smirked at her, trying to keep the mood light. I kept moving, making sure she was behind me, and let out a sigh of relief as the trees began to thin out.

My moment of relief was short-lived, however, and I smelled them before I saw or heard them. Decaying flesh was moving its way up on my list of familiar scents.

Five of the undead had staggered out from the trees behind us, and I turned myself around on my left heel right as a particularly ugly one reached out for Christa's shoulder. She let out a bloodcurdling scream – likely attracting any others within a five-mile radius – before my knife hit it right between the eyes.

I ran and tore my knife from the dead man's skull, pushing Christa out of the way and burying my weapon into the face of a short, fat woman. Christa was swinging her baseball bat wildly, smacking the other three to the ground but not delivering the requisite fatal blow to the head.

I tripped over one she had knocked to the floor, felt it twist its hands into my hair. I struggled to free myself to no avail, squirming across the dirt as Christa attempted to bash its skull in with the bat. I couldn't hold my cry of pain as she missed its head and slammed the bat into my knee.

"Oh my god, Emma, I'm so sorry. Fuck!" She was in hysterics, tears blocking her vision as she slammed the bat back down to the floor, hitting me on the back of the head this time.

I could hear the teeth snapping at my shoulder as my vision began to blur. End of the world and I get stuck with the least coordinated human being on the planet. My life was going to end because my best friend couldn't aim a fucking baseball -

What I believed to be my final thoughts were suddenly cut off as a gunshot rang through the forest. The last thing I felt before the world went black was the slackening grip of the dead fingers in my hair.

Authors Note:

Thoughts?! It has been a long - I mean looong - time since I wrote fanfiction. But I love TWD and Daryl, and this idea came into my head. It's going to be a Daryl story done right, which means I'll be taking it slow. But no worries. He shall be here soon enough!

Reviews are welcome :)