Harri used to be a young adult making decisions like whether to go to university or get a job, whether to stuff herself with pizza or go with the more healthy (boring) option of salad, whether to get her own car or hope that her best friend would be willing to drive her everywhere but instead here she was, witnessing an old man having his intestines eaten by a rotting corpse. She'd had better days.
She remembered when she used to watch zombie films and laugh at her boyfriend when he got grossed out by all the gore but now she could completely understand where he was coming from, this was just unnecessary.
"Okay Harri, man up, it's just blood, everybody has it" she berated herself before shoving a dagger through the offending corpses brain. She silently thanked her boyfriends obsession with video games; his love of Dragon Age had prompted him to order himself an awesome pair of daggers, the very daggers she was now using to impale brains. He'd be so proud.
Before she could allow herself to quietly grieve the loss of the love of her life, she was startled by a rustling of bushes. She steeled herself, waiting for the inevitable groaning and shuffling that came along with a corpse, only to be met with more silence. Until... a rabbit emerged, all little and fluffy and whatnot. Aww cute she thought to herself and then jumped backwards as an arrow pierced the poor creatures head.
"Holy shit!" Harri exclaimed loudly, stupidly forgetting that the arrow must have come from a person, a person who now knew of her presence.
The man in question came into her sights, his crossbow aimed at her, his eyes narrowed in suspicion,
"Woah! Easy there, cowboy. I'm not a rabbit" she said, hands on her daggers just in case Robin Hood got a bit too trigger happy, although she was fairly certain he had the advantage; he had range on his side after all.
"Who the fuck're you?" the man questioned, scowling.
"Who the fuck am I?! You come flying out of nowhere firing arrows everywhere and you want to know who I am? Who the fuck are YOU?" Harri said, mirroring his scowl.
"I shot one arrow" he stated.
"Yeah well... you...you killed a rabbit" she finished, lamely.
"Gotta eat, don't I?"
"Oh my GOD, you're going to eat that poor thing?" Harri was visibly horrified and noticed the man roll his eyes at her. She was just about to call him out on it when another man appeared behind him, looking far too happy than anyone should be with the world in its current state.
"Well, well Darylina, looky what we have here. You caught us some lunch" the new man said, swaying slightly.
"Darlyina? What kind of name is that? Wait... Lunch?!" Harri practically screamed "Are you fucking kidding me? I thought this was Dawn of the Dead, not Hannibal! There is no way I am getting eaten, ESPECIALLY not by rednecks"
The new man stared at her blankly for a while and then raised his eyebrow "calm down sugartits, I was talkin' 'bout the rabbit"
"You were... oh. Oh. Of course you were. I'll just... be quiet then." Harri shuffled awkwardly, noticing "Darylina" smirking at her. He probably thought she was some escaped mental patient. Wonderful.
"Let's take this back then, lil brother, so all them fuckers back at camp can stop complainin' that the Dixons don't contribute"
"Wait, you guys have a camp?" Harri blurted before she could stop herself. She had no idea why she asked that, she was usually a hell of a lot more suspicious of strangers, rightfully so, but there was something about these guys that seemed... different. She couldn't figure out what exactly but it was something.
"Yeah, why?" the man she knew as Darylina asked.
"Well... I've been alone a while now and... company might be nice, for a few days at least".
"I'll keep you company, sugartits" the other man winked at her.
"Merle, pipe the fuck down" Darylina warned "Lemme get this straight, you meet two random guys in the woods, mistake them for dudes who wanna eat you and then offer to willingly follow them back to camp. You got a brain in yer head?"
"Yes!" Harri emphasised, offended "but you were clearly about to leave so you obviously weren't intending to do anything bad"
"What if we just wanted you to think that, so we can take you back and cook your stupid ass in a stew?"
"Uh...well...please don't do that?" She said.
"Hey lil brother, think about this fer a secon'. If we take lil chickadee here back to camp with us, Officer Moody's head might actually explode" Merle chuckled
Darylina looked like he was contemplating this for a second and then smirked and nodded his head in agreement.
"Great!" Harri enthused "Thanks Merle and... Darylina..?" she said questioningly while Merle guffawed loudly and Darylina scowled even harder.
"It's Daryl. For fucks sake, Merle" he said shooting his older brother a hateful glance as he walked toward Harri and grabbed the dead rabbit next to her. She grimaced at the squelching sound as he ripped the arrow from its bloody head.
"Let's get a move on then" Merle said,walking back through the bushes, followed closely by Daryl and Harri. Harri briefly looked around her surroundings, happy to be finally leaving the woods; they always creeped her out.
Time to meet the rest of this camp then.
About a half hour later the trees seemed to come apart and Harri could hear the sounds of people. She suddenly felt anxious about meeting new people. She'd gotten used to being by herself.
Merle and Daryl sat next to what was obviously their tent and Harri stopped, confused. She thought that they would at least introduce her to everyone else so she wouldn't have to be on her own, but no, obviously they had other ideas. Awkwardly she carried on walking until a tall, dark-haired man intercepted her.
"Dixon!" he yelled, obviously not caring which brother answered. As it happened, it was Daryl who responded.
"Wut?"
"Who the hell is this? You can't just bring random girls back to camp on a whim, she could be dangerous" the man hissed, angrily, making Harri raise an eyebrow. This dude needed to chill out. Daryl scoffed, clearly the thought of Harri being dangerous was hilarious to him.
"I think we'll be okay, somehow" he retorted.
"Oh, you think that do you? Is that what you think? Well, I tell you what, until I am satisfied that we're not all gonna be robbed in our sleep, YOU can chaperone her" Harri was certain this was the "Officer Moody" Merle had mentioned.
"Fuck off" was Daryl's reply.
"I don't need a chaperone, dude. I'm not gonna kill anybody, unless they've just come back from the dead to feast on my limbs" Harri intercepted.
"When I need the opinion of a Barbie doll, I'll let you know, until then, butt out" Officer Moody spat at her.
"Excuse me?!" she widened her eyes in disbelief.
"You heard me, you got ears don't you? You wanna stay here, you'll be useful"
"I can be useful, I can hunt-"
"Not hunting" he cut her off "Leave the hunting to the men. You can help the women with the laundry and the cooking"
"Are you fucking kidding me?" Harri had a feeling that this was going to start being her new catchphrase around here.
"No I'm not fucking kidding you. Maybe you could do other womanly duties too. You look like the kinda girl who fucks around" he sneered.
Before Harri could say anything, Daryl had stepped in front of her "Hey that's enough, man"
Harri started to notice other members of the camp coming to see what all the commotion was about. She really hated being the centre of attention.
"Hey, I'm just pointing out ways she could be useful, she's clearly not gonna be good for anything else" The angry officer stated, turning to walk around.
Harri grabbed one of her daggers and flung it as hard as she could, watching as it went sailing past the exiting man and into a tree. He slowly turned back to her with a smirk on his face, clearly not phased by this apparent assassination attempt "You missed, Barbie".
She smirked back at him "Oh, I didn't miss"
He quickly turned back to look at the tree, now noticing the dead squirrel pinned to it by the dagger. Then he stomped away, furiously.
"Woah" said a new voice. Harri turned to see a young Asian man who had clearly just exited his tent to see what all the yelling was about. He was staring at the dagger in the tree. He turned to see who had thrown it and uttered "woah" a little louder this time, promptly turned bright red and rushed off to speak to an older man sat atop an RV.
"I really had hoped for a more subtle introduction" she sighed.
"How the fuck are you gonna get pissy at me fer killin' a rabbit, when you just speared a squirrel?" Daryl asked.
"Rabbits are cute. I don't like squirrels, they're vicious little fuckers" She replied, as if it was obvious.
Daryl wandered off but Harri was fairly certain she heard him muttering "women" under his breath.
"I cannot believe you just owned Shane like that!" a womans voice came from her side. Harri looked and saw a young blonde girl looking at her in awe.
"Er... Shane? Oh! Officer Moody?" Harri questioned as the young girl giggled at the name.
"Yeah. I'm Amy by the way" she smiled.
"Harri. Uh... don't suppose you could tell me everyone elses names could you? Daryl and Merle aren't exactly helpful..."
"So not surprising"Amy said "Let's see, you've met Shane, Glenn is the one over there" she said pointing to the young Asian guy who blushed again when Harri looked at him "he's talking to Dale"
"The old guy?" Harri enquired.
"Yeah, he's really nice but sort of weird. The family over there is Morales and his wife Miranda and their kids Eliza and Louis" Amy motioned towards a Hispanic looking family "Then there's Jim, he's sort of weird too. Erm... Lori" she rolled her eyes at her name.
"I'm sensing a story there..." Harri encouraged.
"She's sort of annoying and I'm pretty sure she's having sex with Shane" she said quietly
"Why would anybody do that?"
"No idea, anyway she has a son, Carl. Then there's Jacqui, T-dog, Carol, her husband Ed, who you should probably stay away from, he's a violent creep" she explained "their daughter Sophia is around somewhere, probably with Carl and lastly there's Andrea" she waved toward an older looking blonde "that's my sister" she beamed proudly.
"Awesome, thank you! Now I just have to try to remember names" Harri said not quite listening to Amy chatting animatedly by her side about how glad she was that she now had another young person to talk about things with. She sighed with relief that she was finally in what seemed to be safe, secure place, with other people and hopefully food. With that thought she remembered the squirrel still stuck to the tree and walked toward it with Amy still chattering behind her.
Maybe this place was just what she needed.