Chapter One
United States Route 411, a parallel highway leading from Alabama to Tennesse, where once cars and trucks zoomed down the aging gray asphalt past fields, farms and forests, was now home to overgrown vegetation, metallic husks of automobiles, and the dead. The only sign of human life was two people, a young man and a young woman, walking together. The man had shoulder-length black hair, tangled and knotted into oblivion at certain spots, a maroon baseball cap nested squarely on his hair, a thick beard slowly but surely growing out of his face, a size-too-big white shirt drenched with sweat, and tattered blue jeans, worn from rough usage. The woman, whose black hair was almost exactly like the man's, had her companion's boonie hat lying on top of her head, blocking out the bright, bright sun from her blue eyes. She wore a white sundress that helped make her feel free. From time to time, the wind would blow, flapping the dress along. It felt amazing. Above that sundress, she wore a black hoodie, which helped keep her hot.
They kept close to one another, the young woman wrapping her hands around the young man's waist. The young woman looked up at her companion and murmured, "You doin' ok, Nate?" Nate, whose actual name was Nathaniel, smiled as he replied, "Yeah, how 'bout you, Macy?" Macy replied with a cute little sneeze. "I take it that's a yes?" Nate smirked. She giggled and said, "Yes, Nate, I'm doing alright."
As they walked, Nathaniel could make out something colossal in the middle of the road. Moving his baseball cap's visor upward to block the harshly bright summer sunlight, the man looked at the scene of now-ancient carnage in front of his eyes.
Hundreds of rusting cars, crashed and smashed into each other, blocked the road for at least five miles along the highway. Glass and metal randomly strewn everywhere. A few corpses, blackened or blackening, all with head injuries. Nathaniel made a mental note of that. Looking at some of the cars, Mace could make out a few arms, or maybe legs, flailing around. She grimaced, noting what they entailed. The undead were everywhere these days.
"I see 'em, hon," Nathaniel said, as if he had read and answered her thoughts. Preparing himself for a fight, he looked down at his belt. Attached to his belt, a sheathed machete and a Colt M1911 pistol. Below Macy's arms, slung on his back, was a barebones AR-15, .223 caliber. In one of the pockets of her hoodie, a Glock 9mm pistol hid, bathing in her warmth, as if it were marsupial young. In the other, there was a butterfly knife, its blade stained a dark brown with blood aged to perfect ripeness. She carried a backpack, where all of their supplies were held.
Mace realizing his intentions, murmured, "No, we should save our energy." The man nodded, keeping his focus dead on the flailing limbs. They did spend most of the morning ceaselessly walking, and Nate knew his blood sugar wasn't too high right now.
He sighed, as a peculiar sign of agreement. "Let's just be careful, then," he advised. Looking at the little concrete median separating the highway, he cautiously walked over to it, his right hand on the machete hilt. One could never be too cautious. When he looked below him, to his left and his right, and at the other side of the median, checking for any threats, potential or actual, which he could find, he sighed in relief. Nothing was around to interrupt their progress.
Mace let go of her love's waist, allowing him to climb over the median. Nate nodded in approval as she followed suit. "Hey, at least you didn't fall on your ass this time," he grinned, as he flinched just in time from the half-hearted punch flung at his shoulder. "Shut up, Nate," Mace laughed.
After a few seconds of moving forward, Nate stopped suddenly, frantically looking left and right. "What is it?" Macy asked, worried. Just as she spoke, an arrow straight into Nate's shoulder. "Agh, fuck!" He growled, running and sliding behind a car as Mace followed. Mace, scared but attentive, looked at Nate's wound. Blood gushed out from his shoulder. Ripping a piece of denim from his jeans, he forced it against his shoulder. After placing a stick length-wise in his mouth, he braced for the awful, awful pain that would come. Mace quickly ripped it out of his arm. His screams and groans were muffled, just by a little bit.
When all was said and done, he took a gander at the arrow. There was a little chunk of meat stuck on it , sliding off the plastic and metal tip. Mace inserted the denim piece into his wound, causing Nate to hiss from the pain. But all that pain turned into primal anger, closer to blind rage than any sort of righteous anger of the wronged. Someone just shot him with that fucking arrow, and he needed to figure out who did it.
It wasn't long before someone shouted, "Yo! Who the hell are y'all?" That someone, based on the muffled, deep baritone voice alone, was probably a middle-aged white guy. Maybe balding. But definitely dangerous to Nate and Mace.
Mace pulled her gun out, and Nate followed suit. "Kill this son of a bitch, the motherfucking asshole," he growled. Mace glanced at Nate for a brief second, before sighing resolutely.
"Nate, you shoot at him, I'll try to flank him, ok?" Mace whispered, quickly checking her clip. Eight bullets. As she formulated her plan, Nate interrupted her, "Five rounds. You ready?"
"Yeah, I am," she mumured.
"Yo! Are y'all livin'?" The man repeated, as Mace crawled through the wreckage, hoping to find a good spot for an ambush.
Nate felt his rage boil inside him. It was making him insane, and he knew it. He had to control it, if only to make sure Mace remained unharmed. Trying to control himself, he began looking around for her. He found her right behind a truck, parallel to a surprisingly pristine 18-wheeler.
He pulled himself to his feet, quietly groaning. Taking a peek over the car's hood, he saw the perpetrator. It was someone different than the middle-aged, balding white man he had imagined. It was a slightly younger man, maybe in his mid-to-late 30's, with a full blonde mane, a white wife-beater shirt, and olive drab pants. In his hands was a longbow, with an arrow strung and ready to shoot.
The man, exasperated, shouted, "Fuck it, I know y'all are out here. I wanna fuckin' know if y'all are livin' or not. Christ, man."
Nate stealthily aimed his Colt .45 at the man. His finger moved to the trigger...
"I wouldn't do that if I were you, man," the longbowman warned, pointing the arrow at Nate. Nate, however, smirked as Mace snuck up behind him, putting her pistol a few inches away from the longbowman's skull. "Don't move, asshole," she growled.
The longbowman grinned. "Well, shit. Guess I got flanked by a buncha kids," he conceded.
"You better tell me why the fuck you shot me," Nate barked, his pure rage almost overflowing.
"'Cause I thought you was a walker, man," the longbowman shrugged nonchalantly. Something about the man's demeanor infuriated Nate, and he wanted just to pull the trigger and do the world a favor.
"You sure you wanna do that, kid?" The longbowman asked Nate, watching his finger slowly shift to the trigger. "I got friends, and they'll fuck you up, man."
"Sure you do," Mace replied, venomous sarcasm in her tone. She herself was filling with rage. This asshole with a longbowman shot the man whom she loved. That was fucking unacceptable, no matter what.
The longbowman shifted tactics. "Look, I'm sorry I shot you, man" he told Nate. "My group, they're good people, they'll fix you up, ok?"
"You're full of fucking bullshit," Nate replied.
"Look, I know you can't fuckin' trust me, man, but I'm honest, ok? We're campin' out in Cave Spring, alright? You can come with me, I'll take you right to them..."
Mace, looking at Nate's wound, sighed deeply, trying to calm down. "We've got to get help for you, baby," she told him. As much as she hated groups, she and Nate hadn't dealt with an arrow wound, and she didn't want to fuck up his shoulder during surgery either.
"Your girl says it's okay, man," the longbowman stated. "What about you, though?"
Nate was conflicted. He didn't want to risk both their lives on trusting a complete stranger, but he didn't want to risk his arm or his life either. After a moment of thought, he acquiesed.
"Take us to Cave Springs, then," he sighed.
THE END OF CHAPTER ONE