It had been two weeks since the world had gone down the shit hole. Maybe. Unless this was a very very long, detailed, horrible bad dream. Would someone even call it a bad dream? No, I wouldn't think so. This was a nightmare.

I grew up in Georgia, about forty miles west from Atlanta, in the country. Once I turned eighteen, some shit happened, certain relationships ended, and I realized there was nothing left for me there. So I packed my things up, bought a one way plane ticket to California and moved. I loved it there. It was warm, but not the humid kind of warm where you couldn't keep your hair straight for anything. Everyone was different from each other, and everyone was beautiful in their own way.

But after three years of living on the complete opposite side of the United States, I returned home to Georgia. A place that I had really never wanted to see again. But my mom had died when I was young, and my dad was getting sick. He couldn't live on his own anymore, and I was the only family he had. So like a good southern raised girl, I returned home to help my only parent. It was the right thing to do, no matter how much I didn't want to leave California.

You can never get away from the south.

I had been home for a month before I finally decided to reach out to the reason I had left anyway. I had argued with myself all day about picking up that phone and calling him. I told myself that he probably didn't live there anymore, and even if he did, he had obviously moved on from me. There would be no reason that he would want anything to do with me. I finally had talked to my dad about it. He told me that he still lived in the same rundown old house and that he had run into him a few times in town. Every time he did, he always asked how I was doing. If I was going to come home. If I had anyone in my life.

Each time my dad gave him the same answers. I was doing better than I was when I left. Probably not anytime soon. No one that he knew of.

I finally gathered all of the courage I could find, and picked up the phone. I didn't have to look for his phone number. All of the times I had dialed it as a teenager, it was still burned into my subconscious.

"Hello?" his gruff voice said, answering the phone.

"Hey," was all I could say. My heart leapt to my throat when I heard him. I knew it was him. I knew his voice from anywhere I swallowed and took a deep breath. "It's..it's me."

"Who's me?"

"Who do you think?" I said, smiling.

"...Rae?" he said after a few moments. I had to swallow my heart back down, and smiled at the sound of his voice saying my name again.

"I want to see you again."

"When?"

"Next Tuesday. Around five? At the restaurant we used to always go to."

"Okay. I'll be there."

"I'll see you then, I guess."

But that Tuesday never came. Three days later, the dead started to rise. I was forced to high tail it to Atlanta, hoping that they were able to medivac my dad like they had told all the hospitals they would. But I never made it to Atlanta. The highways had been so congested, that it came it a complete stand still for hours.

I had fallen asleep in my car, and was startled awake but the sounds of screams from outside. I grabbed my knife, gun, and my bag of clothes and personal items that I had managed to gather and darted into the woods, dodging around the walkers and the people being eaten.

And for the last two weeks, that's where I was. The woods. Scavenging what I could. But that was only getting me so far. I had three or four bottles of water in my bag, and those were used up about a day ago. I was thirsty from the Georgia heat, hungry, and exhausted. And I was alone.

I hadn't found any survivors. It made me believe that everyone was really dead. And that I was the only one alive anymore.

He'd be proud of that. After all the times he dragged me out hunting, forced me into camping trips and fishing. He'd be proud to know that I survived this long. But he had to be alive too. He was the one that taught me all of these things that I used to stay alive. How could I be alive, and he couldn't?

Maybe he was still alive, out there somewhere. Maybe he was searching for me. I snorted at that. I was getting ahead of myself. He knew he was the reason I left. Why would he come looking for me? He'd probably just assume I was dead. He probably hated me.

But that didn't keep me from hoping, that maybe, just maybe, he was alive. And he was okay. And that he was looking for me too.