Charlotte and Christa. Christa and Charlotte. That's the way it had always been.
Since they were born, the fraternal twins had been practically attached at the hip. Rarely were they seen apart, and they often found themselves answering people in unison. When they were younger, they joked about having a telepathic link, something that connected their minds and made them truly one. As they got older, the idea became a silly fantasy, but they still both thought about it from time to time.
The outbreak pushed them impossibly closer.
It had started with a few news stories, tales of the dead reanimating. Charlotte had gawked, perturbed by the idea of dead people not quite being dead. Christa had scoffed, returning to the kitchen she'd been cleaning. The media had a way of twisting things, taking things way out of proportion and adding little white lies here and there to make a simple story seem so much more complicated.
And then it got bad.
There was a panic. Things got so out of hand so quickly that Christa found herself wondering if they would even be able to make it, through the riots and traffic and everything else. The decision to go to Georgia was mutual. Finding their father and Christa's boyfriend became one of their two top priorities, the other being just plain surviving.It would be a long journey, and neither were quite prepared for just how bad things would get.
They set off by car with several spare sets of clothes, some canned food, toiletries, a pocket knife, and a pistol owned by Charlotte. Beginning in Norfolk, Virginia, they made their way slowly South before realizing the roads weren't going to get much better. They got to the North Carolina border before they realized that travelling by car at that point wouldn't be a particularly good idea.
The two began on foot, scavenging what they could as the last of civilization seemed to disappear and was replaced with the dead. Nowhere was safe anymore. While their father was an avid weapon collector and was rather proficient at using most of them, the sisters could only dream of wielding half of the things he owned. Both'd had basic gun training, as no father wanted his daughter-or in his case, daughters-to be defenseless in the case of a robber, rapist, kidnapper or murderer. Of course, it had come to the point where those were the least of the girls' problems.
They'd been holed up in an apartment complex, in a room on the third floor, for three days. Going out only to collect food and ammunition, as well as any other basic survival equipment they could find before returning to their little haven. They knew they couldn't stay there for long-it was only a matter of time before they were found by another group, or other living people scavenging through the building and hurting or possibly killing them. Christa found it to be a blessing that they hadn't encountered anyone in the time since the outbreak, but it wouldn't last forever and they needed to be prepared.
They stayed at the apartment a total of five days before setting out again.
They made it to South Carolina thirteen days later, avoiding a single group of men wandering down the road. They took several hours to wait it out, making sure they were well rested before continuing again but still being on watch. Christa became antsy, nervous; realistically, she knew they'd never reach Georgia in only a couple of weeks, especially on foot, but every hour spent waiting was another hour that meant her loved ones could be devoured. Charlotte had been handling the stress somewhat better than her, or at least hiding it better.
In South Carolina, things went somewhat smoothly, until Columbia.
The group they'd been dreading finding, the one they'd assumed would be so very dangerous, turned out to be the best thing they'd found during the entire trip.
Their leader, a man named John, was kind, and strong and such a good leader to the eight people he was travelling with.
They were headed for Fort Benning.
Christa knew they were their best bet at reaching their family. If only hitching a ride for a while, the group members were trustworthy, well protected, and had enough provisions to go around. John had been rather nice about allowing them to join, more so than the twins had expected. Hardened, rough people were their expectations, people who had adapted to the rough world before them. But some people, Christa figured, had to retain their humanity, and it seemed that that group had done just that.
John, the leader. Miranda, his wife. Macy, John's sister. A man, Geromy and his eleven year old daughter, Clarissa. Eric, Alexandra, Quincy and Felice, four stragglers they'd picked up along the way.
Eleven people, the twins included.
John insisted that he'd heard of a refuge camp in Fort Benning, a safe haven for survivors. The one in Charlotte, NC had been overrun, prompting the group to head to the nearest one they'd heard of that was still up and running.
The group had begun with John and his family, as well as Eric and Felice. Along the way, the others had been picked up, all headed for the same location. The man suggested that their family was staying at Fort Benning as well, and the twins couldn't help but agree that it was possible. Christa hoped that they were right. She couldn't imagine another possibility.
They all traveled together, hitting a road bump in Augusta when they had to stop for fuel. It took them a whole two days to siphon enough as well as collect other needed items from the area before heading off again. They took a wide circle around Atlanta, wanting to avoid the city as much as possible. Any densely populated area, the group knew, would have more of the dead than they could keep up with, with their limited ammunition and meager supply of melee weapons. Fort Benning was only a day away. They were so close, so close.
And then they found a herd.
They were overrun, with no way of getting around them by car and being forced to abandon their vehicles, taking as many supplies as they could carry and running off.
Panting, in the woods, John did a headcount and sighed in relief when all ten of his followers were safe and intact.
They decided to travel the rest of the way on foot.
Their estimated arrival time stretched to almost a week later, having to stop and rest often and circle around larger groups of the dead. It took a while, but Fort Benning got closer and closer with each hour of travel, and they weren't going to give up now that they'd gotten that far.
Fort Benning was a bad idea.
It seemed that many other people'd had the same idea as them. The dead occupied almost every space they turned to look, and as they got closer, they could see that Fort Benning was not an option. So, they doubled back; maybe they could find a permanent residence. A secluded house, an apartment complex. But Christa and Charlotte insisted on leaving. John asked them to stay-"It'll be safer in a group," he insisted. "We can help you find them."
While he was right, they could go around more quickly if it was just the two of them. They could attract less attention.
They parted from the group with a few sad goodbyes, hotwiring a car and stuffing their gear into the backseat before heading towards LaGrange. Their father's house was there, and it was the closest place to them where their father might have been. When they arrived, the house was empty-they'd expected it, but it still hurt. Almost everything was gone, scavenged by locals or passerbyes.
Christa's eyes hardened as she held her sobbing sister. The only one left to find was her boyfriend, and she couldn't handle losing him. If their father was gone, their mother long dead, the only ones she had were him and her sister.
She promised herself, right then and there.
She'd find him.