AMBER'S POV

My Mom had warned me about going to school in New Orleans. I think she was just scared about her little girl being a thousand or so miles away from her- plus the fact that my chosen career path was art. She always used to say, "Amber, you know you could be a politician!" but I would ignore her and dream of an art career. I understand, she was afraid that if anything happened to me, she wouldn't be able to get to me fast enough, and she always said that art was a career path set for failure. And I mean, I never really was a 'southern girl'. I guess people say Virginia is a southern state, but when you live as close to D.C. as I did, and went to a fancy private school with a bunch of politicians kids, there was no 'south' to be seen. I guess that's why I chose New Orleans as my choice of school, to be that 'southern girl' that everyone talked about.

Turns out, Mom's fear came true. About the being too far thing, not the art. When the world fell apart, I was watching it on the News, telling my frantic mother to calm down over the phone, that I would get the next plane to D.C. and get home. When I got to the airport, the military had already taken over and all flights were cancelled. I went back to my apartment and waited inside, watching the news and constantly calling my mother trying to figure out what to do. Soon my mother stopped calling and the news announced that cities all over the country were losing power.

The news advised citizens to keep their doors locked, so I did, and my only way to see what was outside was my balcony. I watched things get progressively worse and worse, listening as the news told of people coming back to life after dying and eating people. Eating people. The last few broadcasts told citizens to stock up on food and water, get weapons, and find shelter. Then emergency broadcasts were the only thing showing on the TV until finally the cable went out. And the electricity, and the phones, everything. The city was burning all around me and I knew that I needed to get back to Arlington.

So I packed all the food I could find in the house- which wasn't much after about a month of being holed up in my place - and grabbed a knife and my car keys, hurrying to the parking garage of the building. I opened the door to the garage from the stairs and hurried towards my car, which wasn't hard to find since it was the last car in the garage. There was a woman wandering around in the area near my car, and once she saw me she started shuffling towards me. I could tell by the way she looked that she was one of the people who had come back to life, since she looked like the people in the news reports. She lunged at me and I cried out, slicing at her arm, which had no effect on her at all. I pushed her back and ran to the driver's side of the car, unlocking it and getting in. I closed the door just before she got to me and I started the car. As I was backing out of my spot, she fell back and got run over, and I sped out of garage, not wanting to see what had happened.

The drive out of New Orleans was easy after that, minus a few roadblocks that I had to get around. I made my way out of Louisiana, out of Alabama, turning the radio on and off, hoping to hear something other than static, but nothing. I had been on the road for five or six hours, no other cars on the road, no people in sight, except for the occasional living dead wandering aimlessly around on the road. By the time I got to Georgia, I knew I was almost out of gas. There was an exit to Atlanta and I immediately took it, needing to find a place to go. The road out of the city was backed up with cars for quite a while. Upon further inspection, I saw that all of them were empty of people. I had almost made it to the city when the car sputtered to a stop. I sighed and got out, grabbing my knife and backpack, and entering the city.

Have you ever walked into a city and seen absolutely no people whatsoever? Yeah, I hadn't either. I had never felt so scared in my life, but I walked into the city with my knife at the ready. I saw a huge group of the dead, and I quickly snuck towards the gas station I had been looking for. And that's when I saw him. I could have jumped for joy. I hurried towards the wonderfully alive man, who was hurriedly putting food from the station into his backpack. "Hey!" I called, not too loudly but enough for him to hear. His head shot up to me, then snapped towards the dead. I hurried towards him. "I haven't seen any living person for so long!"

"Back up!" he warned quietly, pulling out a gun and aiming it at me. My eyes widened and I put my hands up. "I will shoot if you try anything."

"I-I won't hurt you, I promise… I'm Amber McCarthy," I said, slowly holding out my hand. He stared at my hand, then back at me like I was crazy.

"Give me your weapon," he said.

"My weap-?"

"The knife," he said. I nodded and quickly handed him the kitchen knife and smiled to show that I was friendly. "Look, I don't know where you've been for the past month, but-" We both looked to the side as we heard the huge group of dead moaning and groaning and shuffling in our direction. "Shit, come on!" He grabbed my arm and ran, dragging me into a building and up three flights of stairs.

"Wait where are we-?!" I started.

"Don't ask questions," he said, pulling me into an apartment and closing the door. I stood awkwardly as he dumped the contents of his bag onto the table and looked through it. He glanced up at me. "What's in your bag?"

"F-Food," I told him.

"Let me see." I gave him my bag and he dumped it out, looking through the granola bars.

"I-I just needed to go get gas for my car…" I told him. He ignored me. "You didn't tell me what your name is."

"Zane Tamot," he said simply, starting to put the food away into piles. "Where exactly have you been for the last month?"

"Um… New Orleans…" I said. "In my apartment…"

"Have you killed one yet?" he asked.

"Killed…? One of the dead people? They're already dead-" I said.

"Yeah yeah, but they're walking and eating so you have to protect yourself," he said.

"I cut one," I tried.

"But you haven't killed one…." he said. "You didn't stab it in the head…" He sighed tiredly. "You need to be caught up…"

TWDTWDTWDTWDTWDTWD

ZANE'S POV

Why was I in Atlanta? Well, I lived there, in an apartment on the outskirts of the city. I was given some decent housing due to my internship at the CDC, which was a great opportunity, given that I was working towards a Master's in Health Science at the University of Atlanta. Also, no, I was working in the office portion of the CDC, I don't know anything about whatever the hell caused any of this is. Anyway, I got lucky with my housing being on the outer city, because the military only bombed the middle section of the city after the evacuations failed.

Before I ran into Amber, I would go out on small supply runs, mostly just looting the nearby apartments. While scavenging around on the floor below mine, I found a Glock in an apartment that I would rather not talk about the other contents of… but needless to say, the gun was missing a couple of rounds.

After holding up in my apartment for a week or so, Amber and I decided to go on a supply run, which didn't end so well. While Amber and I were searching a small shop for supplies, I may have accidently knocked over a shelf, causing a loud, crashing noise to echo around the store. We ended up getting followed back to the apartment by a horde that kept getting larger as time went on.

We left two days later, but due to the horde we had to find an alternate path out of the city. Even with our safer route planned out, getting out was still risky, as we had to jump from the roof of the complex onto the roof of the building to the left. We climbed down the fire escape located at the other end of the roof and ran towards the interstate.

"You got here by car, right?" I had asked her.

"Yeah, but it's out of gas, that's why I was at that gas station when we met," she told me.

"Well, you wouldn't have gotten much from there, only fumes. Those pumps ran out within a week of this all going down." I sighed, thinking. "What we're going to have to do is find another car, preferably one with keys in it, because I sure as hell don't know how to hotwire a vehicle."

We made our way out of the city, sneaking through alleyways and ducking behind cars for cover. Come to think of it, besides the horde in front of my former home, we didn't run into too many Roamers along the way, and any time that we did, it was just one or two. Those were taken care of quickly with Amber's knife.

We came to a set of train tracks and started to followed them. That's when we noticed a man. I thought he was a Roamer at first, but then noticed that he was trying to open the door to a truck, babbling to himself about an "Officer Friendly", and throwing around some racial slurs that I'd rather not repeat.

"Hello!?" I called over to him, "Do you need any help?"

"Fuck off!" he yelled in our direction. That's when I noticed his hand, or rather, lack of hand.

"Are you okay, man? That looks horrible," I commented. The flesh around the stump looked seared and was still dripping with blood.

"I said, fuck off!" he repeated.

"We have medical supplies, we could help clean that up and bandage it," Amber tried.

The man snorted and climbed into the cab of the truck, "I don't need no help from nobody, I'm fine on my own!" With that he started the truck and peeled out onto the road.

"Asshole..." I sighed, and we continued walking.