She felt the sweat drip down her heaving chest as the walker staggered closer. The knife clung to her palm, and her fingers gripped around it tightly. Her eyes squinted under the sun's rays as she tried to view the lurching corpse better, quietly wishing that sunglasses were still a privilege she could enjoy. Despite the typical Northwest weather she was used to, summer had come early and the sun beat down on her tattered jacket every day. Apparently the weather never got the memo that the world had gone to shit.
The walker was getting closer to her, gnashing what remained of its rotting teeth together as it snarled and reached toward her. The garden she had cut through in hopes of finding some now-wild food in the unkempt shrubbery turned out to be a mistake. It had become an attraction to forestry animals, and this consequently attracted the undead. When the shit originally hit the fan, the walkers seemed to prefer human flesh or the occasional horse rather than any other species, but as time went on, the human race died out and the walkers weakened from hunger. The creatures she had gotten used to in her everyday life seemed to be getting more and more desperate to find any live meat they could.
The bushes of the garden had grown tall and thick in just the past year, and Emma assumed that the garden had been abandoned long before the disease had begun spreading. Getting through the thicket had limited her visibility, so the walker took her by surprise after she had turned the corner, dropping a container of berries she had managed to fill.
Now here she was, backed up in a corner, clinging fiercely to one of her two remaining weapons, just being grateful it was the one walker instead of a herd. Still, the exhaustion of surviving out on her own the past month had taken its toll on her, and she could feel the dehydration and hunger affecting her ability to focus and react at a moment's notice. Despite the dizziness and exhaustion she was feeling, Emma gripped onto the knife, determined to not let one walker be her demise after a year of surviving this hellhole. The tall fence surrounding most of the garden didn't allow for her to go over or around, so she had no choice but to face the creature head on. Even though Emma had faced many biters in the year she had been surviving, she wouldn't let this be casual for her. She needed to stay alert and focus on the task at hand: staying alive for one more minute, one more hour. One more day.
The walker was getting too close for Emma to want to waste another second. She raised the serrated hunting knife that had saved her life many times before, aiming it directly at the head of the decaying body. This particular one was significantly shorter than her, and her height gave an advantage as she plunged the knife deep into its brain, holding on to the grime-ridden head of a now twice dead corpse. She then swiftly pulled her knife out from its bloody remains like she had a thousand times before. Breathing heavily from the effort, she forcefully stepped on the head of the corpse with her hiking boot for good measure. The crunch that resulted confirmed the overall look of the walker: this person had been dead long before any knife sunk into its brain.
Emma had never thought about the human decaying process much before the world went to hell, but seeing it every day for the past year forced her to almost accidentally learn what a freshly dead corpse looked like when compared to one that had been dead from the beginning.
Wiping her knife off on the nearby grass, Emma stuck her weapon back into its sheath and returned to the berries that had fallen onto the ground. Scooping them up into her hands, she returned them to the U-Pick bucket she had found on the property and swung the attached rope around her neck and across her body. The buckets reminded her of being a kid, aimlessly picking blueberries with her sister as they snuck them, unwashed, into their mouths, running through the aisles of endless fruit, and screaming when one of them ran into the spider webs that commonly formed between the bushes.
Those days were long gone, and now there were other things to scream about that came from behind bushes. And from behind trees. And houses. And… everywhere.
Her sister didn't last long in this new world. They had been separated for months now after an attack from a herd. The traumatic event had left both her parents dead and her sister off running with nothing but a pocketknife to protect her. Emma assumed the worst, and after months of aimless searching, she couldn't seem to assume anything else. She didn't want to anymore.
Emma walked away from the garden and into a nearby field that gave her more visibility. She sat down on the grass, slowly eating the berries and vegetables that had managed to survive without aid from whoever used to tend to it. Careful to go slowly, Emma focused on each savory bite. It had been too long since she had eaten. Consuming one thing too fast could be enough to make a person sick, and throwing up would be a waste of the time and danger it took to get some substance in her body. She had learned that a few weeks back when she had gone for almost three days without much of anything. Her first feast on a can of beans had overexcited her to the point where her stomach wanted none of it, rejecting the idea completely. From then on she had been careful to absorb every bit of nutrition she could as slowly as possible. Her body was learning to live without much food, and after a year of on-and-off uncertainty when it came to meals, she was shrinking fast. Days on end of walking, running, and trying to survive had made her endurance strong, but the lack of food took its toll on her too. Soon she knew there wouldn't be canned food left to scavenge. The world was returning to a hunter-gatherer system, and this was one of the many gardens Emma had stumbled upon to take advantage of. At least it was something. At least she was alive.
Someone was up ahead on the road. Emma raised her hand over her eyes to block out the sun, determining if the subject was dead or alive. At this point, she preferred dead. She could deal with walkers. She could stab walkers. Humans on the other hand, especially men, become all too aggressive when they find lone girls at the end of the world. She had learned that the hard way.
His breath on her neck. His body weighing her down. Her pants coming off. The screaming. The walkers. The gun he shot at them. The revolver she grabbed. The shot at him. The blood. More walkers. His screams. Running, running, running.
That was weeks ago, but it felt like minutes. Or years. Never anything in between. Everything felt so near and far away at the same time.
Isolation can do that to a person. She barely knew the month. Did it matter anymore? Did anything matter?
All that mattered was the person—definitely alive—walking in her direction. Not purposefully, for they were staying on the road, but in her direction nonetheless. Emma's instincts perked up as she reached for the gun concealed under her jacket—three bullets left—and quickly made sure all her other possessions were secure on her—bucket, backpack, jacket, gun, knife. Go.
She quickly ran to the nearest grove of trees that stood nearby. In the West side of Oregon, the trees she was able to hide behind grew in abundance. The coverage had saved her ass multiple times from people and walkers alike. Quickly catching her breath, Emma tried to control the adrenaline that was surging through her body. When was the last time adrenaline wasn't overwhelming her? She couldn't remember. Even on the rare moments she got to sleep for a couple hours at a time, the slightest noise would cause her to wake up. She had even begun to set up traps and noisemakers around her at night, but that still wouldn't put her mind at ease enough to sleep comfortably. Adrenaline was a part of her life now; pumping through her veins like her whole bloodstream was made of it.
Emma dared to look out from behind the tree. Despite everything her instinct told her, curiosity was still one of her weak points. It had gotten her in enough trouble before the infection spread, but its existence in the life she was living now could cost her life. She knew that. She was careful. Mostly.
"Peaking out won't hurt," she thought to herself. "I'm far up enough where they won't see me."
She turned around slowly, double-checking behind to make sure no walkers were exploring the small, forested area, and peered around the tree she had quickly chosen. Her hand still gripped around the small pistol she kept with her at all times for encounters with the living.
The person had dark hair, likely male. They didn't look too intimidating in terms of size, but that didn't necessarily mean anything. With a good enough weapon, even a child could become deadly. And anyway, any living person who was alive at this point had strengths to them. Emma knew that.
She squinted as the person walked closer. They were peering over at the garden she had just been in. Emma could tell it was male now. He turned to his side, and she could see just how skinny he was. It was almost terrifying how scrawny he looked, even by apocalyptic standards. He started to walk up the slope to the garden, and, pulling a hatchet out of his opened backpack, the man disappeared into the garden.
Emma sunk down into the dirt as she exhaled out, realizing that she had been holding her breath as she watched him. He was by himself, and he looked small enough, so the likelihood of him being a threat was slim. Still, she knew that getting out of here was the best idea. Should she stay on the road though? He seemed to be determined in going the same direction she was, and Emma didn't want to be caught up with. Exposure had its disadvantages, but she also wasn't so keen on gambling her life in the denser trees where visibility was limited.
Considering her options, Emma jumped up when she heard a shout coming from the garden.
"Fuck," she thought. Walkers. Or worse. She needed to get out of here. Forest or road? Forest or road? Her mind was racing. If they were walkers, the road would be safer, but if people had gotten into the large garden through a back way, or had been there all along, her vulnerability on the road would increase more than she cared to deal with.
She suddenly heard a gunshot from the forest, and the same dark-haired boy she saw earlier went sprinting through the field. Straight to her.
"Fuck," she thought, her heart pounding harder than it would if a thousand walkers were heading toward her. "I know that face."