Major Characters: Rose Hathaway, Lissa Dragomir, Andre Dragomir, Mia Rinaldi, Eddie Castille, Mason Ashford, Dimitri Belikov, Christian Ozera, Tasha Ozera, Alberta Pitrov, Sydney Sage, Adrian Ivashkov.

Summary: When Rose Hathaway and her best friend Lissa Dragomir set out to explore their world, which is now filled with the undead, they face many challenges. They must overcome danger, betrayal, hardship and heartbreak, and much, much more. Rose is the perfect guardian for Lissa, because there's no way Lissa can survive without someone to protect her. But will Rose be able to keep her alive, or will she end up leading Lissa to her death? Maybe Lissa would be safer if Rose was gone. Maybe everyone would be safer if she was gone. Sometimes, when it comes to the people you love, you have to sacrifice yourself. The trials Rose Hathaway are about to begin. Will she be a survivor, or will she get tangled up in the trials of others?

Author's Note: My idea of how the undead act are mainly based on The Walking Dead, and all the [living] characters belong to Richelle Mead. The plot, however, is mine. Some chapters may be told in other's point of view. This story is rated M for RxD and LxC moments, as well as gore.

Preface

I saw it first on the news.

I was sitting on a soft velvet couch with my best friend, Lissa Dragomir, and her brother, Andre Dragomir. Their parents were out on a date somewhere, at a fancy restaurant that cost a fortune to eat at.

We thought it was a joke at first. Because surely this wasn't possible. If you were dead, then you stayed dead. You didn't come back, and you certainly didn't come back a cannibal. I mean seriously, zombies? They weren't real. It defied nature to come back. It defied God, for those who were believers.

So yeah, we didn't take it seriously. We just laughed it off. Made jokes about it.

But then...

Lissa's parents came home. Her father, Eric, was carrying her mother, Rhea. It would've been cute if Eric's expression would've been different. He was in a panic, and he was shaking. He kept trying to talk to us, trying to tell us something, but he was in hysterics.

We finally got him calmed down, and he set Rhea down on another couch. She looked like she was sleeping, and that's what I would have believed if it weren't for the huge gash in her leg. A chunk of flesh had been ripped away, and as soon I saw the wound I wanted to puke. I looked away quickly, and instead focused on Lissa, who was now sobbing, asking what happened to her mother.

"Listen to me," Eric said, "I want you to stay here. Lock all the doors, all the windows, everything. All three of you, stay in Lissa's room. Do not come out until I come home. I'm taking your mother to the doctor." He said it all in a rush, and then he was gone in a flash. He never told us what happened, but I could take a guess.

We did as he said, because we were too shocked to do otherwise. We locked ourselves in Lissa's room, and waited. And waited. And waited.

Hours passed, but Eric didn't come back. Neither did Rhea.

As we were sitting in Lissa's room, on the second floor of their large house, I heard a noise. It sounded strange, like a groaning sound mixed in with a choking sound. I stood up, and drew back the purple curtains that covered Lissa's large window.

I will never forget what I saw. It was the first time I saw the undead in person, and they were much worse in person than they were on TV. There were about seven outside Lissa's house, and they were all much worse than I expected. They were covered in flesh and blood, and some had chunks of their bodies missing. One had organs hanging out of it's body, and I felt bile rise in my throat. They were terrible.

I was the first one to take action. "Come on. They're not coming back." It killed me to tell my best friend that her parents were gone, but I knew what we had to do.

"Rose, no. We have to stay. Daddy said so. He's coming back. He said so!" Lissa was in hysterics now.

"Lissa, there are dead people outside! Dead people who are stumbling around and eating other dead people! We are leaving, right now, before they get in this house."

"Rose is right." Andre said. "We can't stay here, or else we might be trapped."

Lissa began sobbing, and I walked over to her, embracing her in my arms. She cried on my shoulder, and I stood there, comforting her with my presence. After about five minutes, I decided that we needed to get packing.

"I don't know what we can do, or where we can go, but we have to leave," I said. "We need to find out what's going on."

"I'll go grab the first aid stuff," Lissa said quietly.

"I'll get some food." Andre said, giving a nod.

I had practically lived with Lissa my entire life. My mom, the famous Janine Hathaway, was a businesswoman who worked for the government, and she was rarely ever home. My dad, Abe Mazur, was a multimillionaire who basically lived in his office. He worked in a huge fancy building, and apparently money meant more to him than family. So I owed it to the Dragomir's for giving me a family. And I would do everything I could to protect them. I was going to become the guardian of this family. I was going to finally take a stand, and protect what was mine.

"I'll go get the weapons." I replied, with a face blank of all emotions.

So we set off, after we had our supplies gathered. The only weapons in the house were two pistols, and I couldn't find any bullets, save for the ones that were already in the guns. I held on to one pistol while Andre took the other, and Lissa carried a small backpack filled with supplies.

Getting out of the house was easy enough, but once we were in the streets... Well, it was sheer luck that we survived. After we started walking, a walker came towards us, moving pretty fast. I had shot a gun before, but I wasn't good with my aim. I fired two rounds before I hit him, and even then he still didn't die.

"What the hell are we supposed to do?" I said quickly. "They're already dead!"

We were silent for a few moments before Lissa spoke up. "The brain. Nothing can function without the brain. The heart is needed for pumping blood and breathing and stuff, but obviously they don't need air or blood. But without the brain, they can't function. They can't move or think or anything."

I was no genius, so I didn't know if what Lissa said would work or not. Worth a try, though. After firing another round, I hit the walker in his head. He fell to the ground with a thunk, right in front of us.

I had just killed my first walker. My victory was short-lived, however, because just then three more walkers came shuffling towards us. And others were following.

"Oh God," I said. "We're going to die."

I started firing again, and so did Andre. There were too many, though. When more kept coming, we kept firing. And the noise attracted more and more of the undead. The groups were drawing closer, and we ran out of bullets.

"Andre, what are we supposed to do?" Lissa said. "We're trapped!"

"I don't know," he told her. "We need to run."

"Look, through there," I said, indicating to a gap between a group of walkers.

We took off at a run, and barged through the group. My heart was pounding in my ears, and my feet were rapidly slapping the pavement. We were almost through the group, and the walkers were turning towards us. We picked up our pace, running for our lives to escape the undead.

But Andre didn't quite make it.

Everything was fine, until he tripped. The walkers were on him in seconds, and I had to hold Lissa back to keep her from meeting the same fate. "Come on!" I screamed. "He's gone, Lissa, gone. And if you don't keep running right now, you'll be gone too!"

A lone tear ran down her face, and she turned and ran with me.

A few of the walkers who weren't too busy feasting on Andre followed us, but they couldn't catch up. Just as we were about to round a corner, we heard shots being fired. There wasn't time to look back. We just had to keep running.

And we did. We kept running. We moved from place to place. If we were lucky, we stayed at a place until supplies ran out. If we weren't lucky, we stayed until the walkers became too plentiful.

At first, we didn't see many walkers, save for the group outside Lissa's old house. I guess that people fled when the walkers came, but it didn't save all of them. After a year or so, the walkers started traveling in herds, because people were running out.

Whatever the reason for the now plentiful walkers, I knew that I would have to keep the danger at bay for Lissa. She had lost her whole family in less than 24 hours. I was used to being abandoned, so it didn't effect me as bad as it did Lissa. I was always there for Lissa, always helping her.

But she was becoming depressed. She didn't cut herself or anything, but the light in her eyes was gone. As hard as I tried, I knew that I wasn't enough to keep Lissa alive. We needed to find people. We needed to settle down. We couldn't run forever.

Well, how did you like the preface? Ready for Chapter One? Now, I'm not sure when I'll be able to work on this, because I won't be around much for a few weeks, and I'm currently working on another story. BUT, since I can't really find inspiration for my other story, I'll mainly be working on this one. You can expect more chapters in a few weeks, but I may not be able to add a chapter each week. Anyways, thank you for reading!
~ VE