Author's notes: I do not own anything related to the Walking Dead, aside from the first season DVD that I just recently remembered that I had. Other than that, the only thing I do own happens to be the original characters I'm adding to the story, and some plots here and there. I'm looking to remain faithful to the TV show as much as possible with little deviation-just with some different perspectives. Naturally, there will be spoilers for the entire series thus far, though we won't have to worry about that just yet. Reviews and criticisms (constructive, thank you) are always appreciated, especially for this fanfic newbie. Enjoy!
PS: the main title, as well as the titles of the chapters are lines from T.S. Eliot's The Hollow Men. I found it quite fitting to the show and I also just really like the poem. Naturally, I own that about as much as I own the rights to the Walking Dead.
This is the way the world ends
Chapter one: We are the hollow men
She woke with a start, fingers tight on the hilt of her machete as she peered around in the darkness. A soft shuffle reached her ears and her impossibly tight grip grew only tighter on her weapon. She'd been on her own for a week, and in that time had gotten progressively more and more paranoid. There was a reason for that, of course; not being alert could get you killed just as surely as lying down in the middle of the road and letting the walkers just have their way with your flesh. She wasn't going to just lie down and die, though, regardless of the fact that she was indeed laying down. The tent she'd found at the hunting goods store offered little protection, truth be told, but she kept her lights low and once it was pitch black out, she forewent them entirely. There was no reason to get spotted on account of her own stupidity.
It was just as well she'd never really been afraid of the dark, although that was slowly changing as the days progressed.
As she had every night, Mina spent most of her time in her tent waiting for something terrible to happen. She never meant to, of course; she needed sleep just as much as any living person and knew that she was running on fumes at that point, but nevertheless, the smallest noises woke her right up and she spent hours with her mind and her pulse racing as she struggled to find some sort of comfort in her sleeping bag. It was usually a futile effort, though. The ground was far too hard and she'd gotten far too used to the modern conveniences. Most people had; after all, only a handful of people were paranoid to believe something like this could happen. She'd been the kind of person to watch the shows about apocalypse preppers and laugh and commend their dedication, but she'd never taken such a thing seriously.
That was definitely egg in her face.
When it had first started, she'd thought that maybe it was some sort of elaborate hoax, not unlike the first radio broadcast of the War of the Worlds. Mina had come to her senses, though, knowing that it wouldn't be as easy to do something like that with news reports, and who in the world would want to fake the apocalypse anyway? It didn't make sense, but neither did reality. Neither did her roommate trying to kill her. That had been what pushed her into action, and not knowing what to do, she locked the girl in the bathroom. It was the best option at the time, and it had given Mina just enough time to grab a few bare essentials and high tail it out of her apartment.
She lived ten minutes away from the Western Kentucky University campus by foot, but she felt neither the inclination towards walking anywhere, nor the inclination to go to campus. It screamed bad idea, and as she had in many things, Mina trusted her instincts. That campus could barely handle an inch of snowfall, let alone what seemed to be a rather violent epidemic. Neither she nor the newscasters nor-apparently-the CDC knew quite what it was. Whatever it was, though, was scary as hell and about as infectious as the common cold. All she got from the news as she'd gathered her things was that the people rising from the dead had a pesky habit of biting people. That seemed to spread the infection, and so as Mina loaded into her car with her supplies, she took care not to get bitten. She'd tried to avoid being noticed, but that didn't seem to be in the cards for her any more than having one day to herself where things weren't going to shit.
She'd learned quickly that money didn't mean much of anything. At first it did; it meant a full tank of gas when the gas stations were still in operation, and it meant jugs of water tucked neatly into the trunk of her car when she could actually get into the stores. Her first few days into the event, she had traveled with a handful of classmates; two girls she'd taken biology with and a boy from her archery class. She didn't know any of them very well, but they'd gotten along just fine. Between the four of them, they'd gathered things here and there that could mean the difference between living and ending up a corpse-one way or another-and they'd avoided squabbling. Of course, the first time they did have a confrontation, it ended with all of them parting ways. It had been over something so inconsequential after the fact, but at the time it felt like something of the utmost importance.
Mina couldn't even remember what they'd argued over. It didn't much matter then as she pushed herself into a seated position, staring at the canvas inside of her tent as though she could see through it. As though she could see anything beyond the first few inches in front of her face. She held her breath, waiting for something to come scratching at her tent, or to barrel it over...but it never happened. Minutes passed, though each one felt like an eternity. Every sense was on overdrive and she felt her pulse hammering away, her breath-when she allowed herself to breathe-ragged from worry. As she had for the last week, however, she got lucky. Disaster was avoided for the time being, and when she heard whatever-it-was shuffle off back into the woods, she released a breath and fell back against her sleeping bag.
As she struggled to get to sleep, she didn't let go of her machete for anything.