CHAPTER ONE RAINA

If she happened upon him at an opportune moment, it was completely and utterly incidental. And to her, it had been opportune; for him, it had been awkward.

In his youth, he had not been celebrated. Long hours would go by writing preposterous lines in the way of, "I will not cry in front of company," or the even sillier, "I will not help Mom in the garden."

Both mantras were futile, as he very much felt the need to cry many times as he was coming up and was of the firm Shrekular belief that it was better to relieve than repress; and furthermore, if not for his time and interest invested in the garden, upon the Turn he might not have survived.

And also, she would not have approached him and they would not have forged the single most peculiar and meaningful of friendships. She was a peculiar girl by his reckoning, and that- if not their experiences together- made it such.

Almost as if animals had begun to sense who the real threats were, squirrels and rabbits no longer seemed to scurry in fear of him as they once might have. Instead, they looked and looked, sniffed, and then ran if he made another move. One such rabbit didn't leave until he'd offered it a rose hip, after which it twitched its nose in thanks and hopped away, hopefully to live a long and fruitful life void of the terrors of the dead things.

She had seen him do it; the thing that his father berated him for. His weakness. His softness. Certainly, he was a foolish man to relinquish food to smarter food and not attempt to fill his own stomach with the creature. One could not afford to pass up the opportunity for a meal in the times they lived in, and if his father had been alive and with him as a younger boy, he would have surely caught a beating and been given more lines.

"I will not feed the fat, juicy bunnies," he would mournfully scrawl.

But for every regretful moment, a positive arises. And in the case of the missed rabbit, a girl tumbled out of the brush surrounding his camp and tentatively shuffled forward, not unlike the animal before her.

He stared, having not seen a child since possibly the beginning of the end.

"M-m-may I," she fumbled over her words like a foal might knock its knobby knees together and fall in its efforts to stand. Her dark eyes flicked toward his single can of beans, all he had left after giving the rabbit his single rose hip. "M-may I?"

He gaped unintelligibly for possibly hours- but in actuality, only an uncomfortable amount of seconds- before fumbling to retrieve an additional plastic spoon from his pack and offering it to her. She shrank away before realizing what he held in his hand, and then relaxed and snatched the utensil with a dart of her own coffee hand in the same second.

They sat far apart, him next to the small fire and her on the fallen log he'd carved into when he first arrived at the small clearing.

When the beans were sufficiently heated, he ripped off a bit of tinfoil from a roll he'd found and poured a little more than half of the contents can onto it- for she looked quite a bit hungrier than he- and gave it to her while keeping the can for himself. The beans were black and seasoned and good, he supposed. He had used the same brand in the old world to make nachos for movie date night.

"What's this?"

He looked up from the can to see her running her thumb across his carving, a confused pucker between her black brows. He felt a small amount of pride; she had not taken her eyes off of him since their acquaintance, and that his art should attract her attention away from himself pleased him. She seemed a fairly stubborn sort, not so easily distracted.

"Tacca chantrieri," he remarked airily. "The Black Bat flower."

"Looks like a lion," she mused. "What's that underneath? Who's 'Diane'?"

His satisfaction slipped away like a dream upon awakening. He had hoped she would not mention the name imbedded a little ways away from the drawing; he had almost managed to forget about it himself.

"My sister."

"Where's she?"

He gazed solemnly down at his nearly finished morsels and waited for the moment of realization; it did come shortly, with a sharp inhalation and a rueful, mumbled apology.

"That's quite alright." He relinquished his unintentionally tight grip on his spoon and put the can on the ground, clasping his hands together around his loosely bent legs. "What are you called?"

She gave him an odd look. "What do you mean?"

"Your name," he revised.

"That's a weird way of asking. What's yours?"

Her eyes had narrowed cattily, and he supposed that for a girl on her own, she must have developed a protective layer of barbs to ward away the unfriendlies. And even the man who had fed her without so much as a word would have to clear some hurdles.

"Sawyer." He adjusted his glasses. "But my friends call me Rory."

"What friends?" she demanded sharply. "Where are they?"

He blinked owlishly. "Dead."

Her shoulder slumped. She apologized again and told him her name.

"Raina," he tried.

She smiled ever so slightly. "We're alliterative."

"Alliterative?"

"Our names start with the same letter," she needlessly explained. "I think it's fate, Sawyer Rory."

The two names together, entirely different sects of his being, clashed unfortunately in an awkward tangle of sounds. There must have been a reason they had never been spoken aloud at the same time in such a manner, and he was fairly sure that it had to have been the cringe-worthy feat of nomenclature she had just accomplished.

"Just Rory, please."

His distaste must have been evident, for she wrinkled her nose and laughed. The sound was soft and rhythmic, and he would have savored and bathed himself in it had it not been pierced through by the less melodic grunts and groans and rustling of nearby danger.

She heard it, too, and fell silent immediately, hand flying to a knife attached to her belt. He donned his bag, stomped out the fire, and extended a hand to her.

Perhaps it was fear that propelled her forward to take it, or an odd sense of homecoming on her part. He was not familiar to himself. These days, if not for the glasses, he would hardly recognize his reflection in the quivering babbles of creeks and brooks; he did, however, see a bit of Diane in her. Maybe in him, she saw someone important, as well.

Their fingers slipped together as they ran, wet with dirt dampened by the clammy sweat he no doubt produced the majority of.

They eventually navigated their way out of the forest and spilled out onto an unfamiliar road. He might have known it, but without GPS or a map or any ingrained knowledge of the area, the lattermost of which having completely slipped away upon his flight from the state at a young age, there was no way of pinpointing where they were. The best he could come up with when asked was as follows:

"Georgia," he stated plainly.

Raina grimaced at him, but he only shrugged.

They crossed the road after ironically looking both ways and retreated just within the tree line on the other side to offer some cover as they trekked West, lured by the pink and orange setting sun. Nervousness began to nip away at his cool collection, and several times he peered down at his companion, who had long since released his hand.

"We need a safe place," he told her. "It's almost night."

She exhaled softly. "Nowhere is safe."

"Just a place, then."

To this, she offered a nod of agreement.

A shuffle and moan drew his attention sharply to the right. A limping creature with mottled hands and face dodged around a gnarly tree, gnashing its stained teeth and raising its arms in anticipation of grabbing and holding its potential meal.

Raina didn't gasp or run away. She unsheathed her knife, but he had already surged forward and ducked its grasping hands to kick its legs out from underneath. It toppled and he knelt to sink his own blade up into the base of its skull. Stillness followed.

"That was cool," she said when he returned to her side. "You look clean. I thought I'd be protecting you."

"Not cool, necessary. And," he continued less gravely, "I'm clean because I bathe. Can't say the same about you, little girl."

The corners of her mouth tightened and her brows drew together again, creating that single wrinkle between them. He supposed that this was the face of an affronted Raina, and determined that it was not nearly as intimidating as she probably believed it to be. Further, she resembled the rose hip rabbit even more closely than before.

"I've been too busy running to bathe," she snapped waspishly. "And I'm not little."

His eyebrows had a mind of their own, truly. They conveyed disbelief and amusement all at once and all by themselves.

"I'm not," she insisted. "I'm nearly thirteen."

It did take him by surprise. "Thirteen, really?"

He wouldn't have pegged her for more than ten. A very small, waifish ten.

"Yes." Ire drained away from her voice as the dying light dimmed even further. "It's almost night, Rory."

His own words, heavier than before. The road they traveled alongside wasn't leading them to any place nearby, and so he looked to the trees.

Fortunately, she didn't balk at spending the night tied to a trunk, but he hadn't expected her to. Her mannerisms spoke of someone that had done far stranger to survive.

They settled on thick, perpendicular branches of a convenient oak tree. He fastened her first, and sensed that she was at first mildly uncomfortable with being tied up by a relative stranger. When he'd been secured as well, he felt her relax beside his arm. They would be able to sleep in their bindings, but they would not fall in the night; of that, he was almost certain.

He maneuvered the straps of his pack around his legs in such a way that the body of it stayed firmly between his knees. He had no blankets, but offered her his extra jacket for warmth and she accepted it gratefully.

The creaking buzz of Southern evening settled in his ears like the humming of a computer. He didn't quite like it, but some sound was better than none. Not for the first time, he yearned for the honking and rushing of the city below the fogged window of his apartment.

"How old are you?"

He startled out of his wistful daze and took a moment to calculate how old he must have been at that point in his head. "Twenty-six. No… twenty-seven."

"Oh." She didn't question his uncertainty. No one knew definitively their age anymore, he supposed. "You don't sound like you're from around here."

He smiled. "I was born here."

The turning cogs in her head were audible from where he sat. "But you don't live here."

"No one lives here anymore," he said. "We just survive. There's a line, I think."

She quieted for a few minutes, digesting his words.

"Where did you live, then? Before, when people still lived."

"New York."

She inhaled sharply. "I've always wanted to go there."

"Understandable." He let his head fall back against the rough trunk, somewhat cushioned by the pillow of his hair. "It's an amazing place. Dirty and crowded, but magical."

She laughed softly, and just like the first time, he reveled in the buttery sound.

If he claimed to not have brushed closely with death before the Turn, it would have been the most deceitful of lies.

An infection borne of slicing his leg open on a rusty pipe whilst running away from a flock of the dead plagued him long enough to scratch a Will into a wide tree he'd stumbled across, lost in the daze of an impeding fever and shaking with the effort to stand. In the Will, he offered his life essence to anyone who might happen upon the tree after he was long gone and settled under its shade with a gun, loaded with the very last bullet in his possession.

He'd cried, then.

Oh, the things his father would say.

He'd done all he could for the wound; nettles for the infection and yarrow for clotting, wrapped up with mullein for bandaging. For the first time, he felt that nature had failed him and hoped desperately for death.

But the next morning when he woke- for he must have dozed off sometime the evening before- he had not perished. His body was still his own; the fog of fever had broken in the night; the wound seemed less inflamed and sticky, and didn't burn or sting quite as much.

He fervently apologized to nature for his doubt of her and lived to see another day.

Some time later, a few months perhaps, Raina found him and they began their travels together. The day after their meeting, they walked a ways West and arrived at a brief strip of stores; a small plaza, he surmised, and on the other side of the road was a gas station.

There was a secondhand clothing store and a dollar store, settled on either side of a ravaged mart. Rusted carts littered the vacant lot, and if there had been any abandoned cars before them, they had all been hijacked by others. The notion of people that weren't himself or Raina still unnerved him, and so he practically ran across the open space with her closely following.

The mart was appropriately intimidating for all that it might have held inside, so they began with the clothing store. He knocked on the glass storefront with the handle of his knife and made out the shambling forms of two dead ones drawn to the noise.

"Open the door," he instructed firmly. "Stay behind it while I get them."

She frowned. "I want to help. I can handle myself."

"You will be helping," he assured. "It's efficient this way."

She didn't look too pleased with that assessment, but complied. He swiftly took care of the bodies and dragged one off to the side, but let the other one prop the door open.

"For a quick exit," he explained to relieve her silent confusion.

Winter was approaching. The bronze leaves were starting to fall off of the trees, and every day he noticed a certain crispness taking further hold of the breeze. He didn't anticipate snow, because as long as he'd been away from Georgia, he knew innately that there would be none of that. In his childhood, there had not been a single white Christmas.

Still, he reasoned that they would need hats and heavier jackets and possibly gloves. He critically surveyed her high top sneakers and made a mental note to keep an eye out for smaller boots, as well.

They found all of those things and even gum and travel sized laundry detergent at the counter. She did not complain when he handed her a rather ugly pair of worn, sturdy brown boots, but did insist on having a pack of her own to carry her beloved sneakers in.

They searched, and did find one.

Attached to the back of another dead girl. Younger than the young girl by his side.

"You don't need it," he whispered hoarsely. "I'll store them in mine."

Raina shook her head and bent down to collect the bag. The girl had already been put out of her misery, evident by the bloody hole in the back of her head. With shaking hands, his companion managed to wrestle the prize off of the stiff, putrid corpse and stumbled backward into him.

It was a good find; a sizable hiker's backpack, with multitudinous pockets and waterproof lining. He found a plastic bag to contain her old shoes and put them, the winter clothes and some of his supplies into the backpack; he figured, even though his heart contracted at the prospect from only a day of knowing her, that if they got separated she shouldn't have to bear the brunt of the loss.

For a long moment, they stood staring at her newly equipped pack. And then, as he swallowed thickly, he saw her shoulders tremble out of his peripheral. He encircled them with his arm and she let her curly head rest in the soft curve of his side, weak with grief.

"Ari," she sniffed. "My sister."

He knew, intimately, her pain.

And just like she had upon discovering the fate of Diane, he said quietly, "I'm s- "

Rumbling.

Feeling wretched, he knelt and implored her with his eyes to calm down and silence her soft cries and whimpers. She covered her mouth with her hands and, at his urging, grabbed her pack and scurried behind the counter. He took out his knife and cautiously approached the storefront.

There were no vehicles in the lot, but they couldn't have been far down the road. He kicked away the walker propping the door and rolled a clothing rack up to provide some semblance of security before retreating back further into the store once more. He looked behind the counter, only to find more dirty linoleum floors and open drawers.

"Raina?"

A reply came not in the form of her voice, but a resounding crash from somewhere in the back that made his stomach drop. He ran.

There was a storage room with a rather unremarkable blue door. The handle gave under his trembling hand, but didn't allow him entry.

"Raina," he called a little louder, glancing over his shoulder at the storefront and feeling panic trickle into his veins when a line of cars pulled into the plaza. "Raina."

Another crash startled him, and he slammed his fist against the door, consumed with harried frustration.

"Raina!" he hissed.

The door opened just as he gave it a particularly rough and forceful tug. He flew back and a sharp pain lanced across the back of his head. Throbbing patches of shadow obscured his vision, and he flailed on the cold linoleum like a turtle on its back, confused and frightened for himself and his absent ward.

Her pained cry cut through the suddenly dank air and he forced himself to ignore the pain. Her name slipped from behind his gritted teeth once more and she released a strangled whimper. Blinking away the spots and not entirely succeeding, he made out her squirming form from behind a rather large dead man.

He leapt forward without thinking and pulled at its shoulders. The dead man fell atop him and he grunted, oxygen leaving his lungs almost immediately. Raina screamed and even as he fought to breathe, he silently willed her to stop. The cars outside would hear them.

He struggled to get his blade free, drowning in the overwhelming danger of their predicament.

And then it all stopped.

The dead man stopped moving and Raina paused to take a breath and all was silent.

And then she screamed again.

"Rory, there's a man!"

A gruff voice rumbled, "Rick, over here!"

Shit, he inwardly swore, still void of air.

...

A/N: Should I continue? It's a bit short, but the next would be longer. Review, tell me what ya think.