She wanted to go back.
Of course, who wouldn't want to go back in her position?
And with back she didn't only mean back to the pick-up. She wanted to go back to a time when no one wanted to eat off her face. And a time when she didn't have to shoot someone in the face. Her last companion always told her that they weren't 'someones' anymore. They were as good as brain dead. She just had to believe it herself…which was harder than expected.
But she also wanted to go back to a time when Percy was still with her. Since that horrific night six months ago when Percy had to leave to save her.
The world was a savage place now. Many people call them zombies, Annabeth calls them Goner. Because their out of their mind. Or trapped in it. She still wants to believe in the humanity in them.
She stabbed the last one in the head and then cleaned her knife with grass that grew on the side of the road. She had to stop with her pick-up because of the zombies that were blocking the road. They seemed to not have had anything to eat for a while. Normally when they hadn't eaten for a long time they get into a trance that made them more useless than they've already been.
Oh gosh, Annabeth has read so many stories about zombies. The ones where they could run faster than any human. Or the ones where they walked so slowly you could outrun them with just walking by. The real ones were way more complicated.
Annabeth wasn't prepared for them to be like that. She has always been a tough girl and her mom has allowed her to go kickboxing to train and to defend herself when needed. But was she prepared for this kind of apocalypse? Where some zombies were faster than others and they gave up completely when not fed? Where she sometimes saw life in the eyes of these… these creatures.
But she didn't fear to kill them, even if there still would be life in them. Survive or die, that was the new world. What she really feared was the probability of Percy being one of them.
She didn't like to think about Percy. Percy was her boyfriend and he fled through the front door of her house to distract the zombies. So she could get away safely.
Him being a zombie – horror.
Then she wouldn't see a reason to go on with fighting. She was looking only for him, because she loved him. Loved him oh so much.
Being friends since they have been twelve and getting together with sixteen made them close. Really close.
So close that Annabeth has been driving across half the country just to find that one boy… even though there was not much of a chance to find him alive.