Author's notes: Unfortunately, I still don't own the Walking Dead. I hope you enjoy this chapter; it's a bit slow, I'll admit, but things sometimes do tend to start off that way. It ended up a lot longer than I expected, and I honestly don't know how to feel about it other than somewhat annoyed because writing this is turning out to be far easier than writing the things I'm supposed to be writing. Anyway, enjoy!
Chapter two: In death's dream kingdom
When she and the three others had been traveling together, they'd planned on going to Atlanta. It seemed like a good idea at the time; they'd heard rumors of a safe haven not far from the city, and they had the means to get there—namely, Mina's car. After their fallout, though, Mina hadn't known if she wanted to go it alone. At first, at least; it didn't take long to decide to keep going after a couple of days moping around in her tent. She was on her own, but that didn't mean she could turn around and go home. As far as she was concerned, there wasn't really a home to go to. She and the others—Jon and Amanda and Kelly—had tried calling their families more times than they could even remember. Most of the time, their calls didn't even go through; everyone else had the same idea, it seemed. Even without the lines being jammed with thousands of frantic callers trying to reach their loved ones, it had been impossible to get anything more than voicemail. It didn't take long for their phones to die. It was frustrating, but it was just the way it was and there was nothing to do to change it.
It was about a five or six hour drive under normal circumstances, but she'd been able to speed most of the way down to Georgia. After all, who was going to pull her over? At the same time, however, the roads were blocked off in some areas, while multiple car pileups blocked the way, and the median separating the two sections of highway and interstate made it impossible to just switch sides of the road. Far too much time had been spent trying to drive their way around the mess, and eventually Mina and her companions had gotten out and tried to walk it. They were stuck not far from Cartersville; it meant that they were in Georgia, at the very least, but they had underestimated how brutal of a walk forty-plus miles could really be.
Maybe the stress of that walk—one that, when they stopped near nightfall after four hours of walking, hadn't even gotten them halfway to Atlanta—had been the straw that broke the camel's back. Mina couldn't say for certain, but they had separated that following morning.
When Mina woke shortly after dawn, she worked slowly as she bundled up her few precious belongings. Her tent was disassembled and rolled up, tied with cord with the poles inside the bundle to keep them in place. The bundle was then secured on top of her backpack, her sleeping bag rolled into a smaller bundle surrounding the throw pillow she used to support her head. There was plenty room in her backpack for that; what supplies she'd gotten back in Kentucky, and what had been supplemented since getting to Georgia had slowly started to dwindle. She missed the nutritious albeit slightly stale granola bars, and the leathery jerky, two things she'd never particularly cared for before but missed as much as she missed ice cream.
Aside from her tent, her sleeping bag, and water, Mina carried a few spare items of clothing, travel-sized toiletries, a small first-aid kit, and her weapon. Food was scarce, but every so often in abandoned cars, she'd find something edible not guarded by a swarm of flies or immobile walkers. That couldn't last, though, and she knew that and just had to hope she'd get to safety before nightfall and before the grumbling of her belly couldn't be quite satisfied with a few meager mouthfuls of water. That was going to become a problem, too; she'd managed to get a handful of bottles of water, a definite downgrade from her jugs of purified water, but it would have to do. Lately, being picky was stupid; even more than it had been before the apocalypse.
She moved with caution, careful to keep a respectable distance from most of the abandoned cars she passed. It was a mix of vigilance that she'd acquired since the end, as well as that lingering notion of someone—or in this instance, something—hiding underneath, waiting to grab at her ankles. Too many nights spent reading urban legends? Perhaps. At the very least, she was presumably getting close to the city; she saw road signs here and there that gave her hints, which was a good thing; she'd been too preoccupied getting her tent and weapon and too damn stupid to grab a map of Georgia. She'd been maybe once or twice in her life, and both of those times had been in passing, when she'd gone to Florida for spring break. Those experiences didn't exactly lend themselves to traveling to the place. When she checked one of the signs pointing to exits into rest stops and smaller towns, she was glad to note that it was about another mile to Atlanta. She'd be on the outskirts, but she'd be there at the very least and from there would be able to figure out her next step, be it find somewhere safe to rest, or find a hint regarding that supposed haven. It didn't much matter as long as she lived to see the next day more or less intact.
Over the years, she'd gotten used to walking. It was a simple fact that owning a car and trying to use it around campus was rather pointless, given the parking situation. So while she'd had her car, it spent most of the time parked out in front of her apartment building, used only when she had errands to run and didn't feel like waiting for the bus. Still, despite walking from class to class every day for the better part of six years (two of those years spent in grad school), she hadn't been prepared to make a trek that would take her more than half of a day. One mile, though (more or less), was nothing. Or, it would have been nothing if she'd had a full belly of something besides lukewarm water. A walk that normally would have taken her fifteen minutes or so—on a good day—was going to take almost twice that. If she'd had the calories to waste, she could have run it and made good time, but the very idea of it made her want to give up entirely.
Luckily, it was still somewhat cool out; cool compared to how it would get, anyway. She'd thought that Kentucky got hot; while it did get unbearable there, she had to wonder what the appeal in living in Georgia was when it got to a hundred degrees before noon. She understood the appeal just then, of course, given that the place was meant to be apparently a great place to get help, but so far all she'd gotten was that the walkers smelled even worse down there.
She paused every so often in her walk to sip at her water and glance around, making certain that the coast was clear. By the time she reached the outskirts of Atlanta, the sun had risen just a little higher; hardly enough to make the heat unbearable, but enough to tell her that she'd spent more time standing around than she realized she had. It was a bit of a longer walk into the heart of the city, and as she stood surrounded by skyscrapers, she more than once had to stop herself from gawking like a kid in a candy store. It wasn't much of a secret that she was a small-town girl; Bowling Green wasn't exactly a bustling metropolis. Technically, neither was Atlanta just then, but Mina still couldn't help but be a bit awe-struck by the buildings that surrounded her; a monument to the world before. It was so strange to realize that it hadn't even been quite a month since it had all come crashing down. Every day felt like it dragged on and on. Maybe it was to do with her lack of things to distract herself with. Her mp3 player had died within the first two days and she hadn't been able to charge it. Still, she hadn't had the heart to toss it and had it tucked away in her back pocket.
The silence in the city was overwhelming; frankly, it made her uncomfortable. What had once been a heavily-populated city was now a ghost town and it felt as though she was the only person there. She couldn't have been though, could she? From the looks of things, she absolutely was the only person there. Perhaps stupidly, she stood in the center of the street for a moment, peering around and trying to catch sight of anyone; trying to see if there was anyone else in the city with her. Mina hadn't been the type of person to mind having alone-time every now and then, but being alone in the most literal sense was…honestly, it was depressing. Releasing a soft sigh, Mina hiked her backpack a little higher on her shoulder and continued on, forcing herself not to hum lightly under her breath. While before it was fine, then it became a little quirk that could potentially get her eaten.
Mina paused again as she caught the echo of…something. Her eyebrows furrowed as she turned in the direction of the noise she'd heard, though for all she knew, she was turning the wrong way…or hallucinating. It was a very real possibility, given how little she slept lately, and how little she got to eat. Just as she was thinking that maybe she really had lost it, she heard the sound again. It was clearer, sounding similar to the crackle of a handheld radio. It was close, too, and she turned on her heel again to head towards the sound. She was aware of how stupid it was to follow sounds, but followed it nevertheless and unsheathed her machete as quietly as she could manage. She stopped at the mouth of an alley, shielding herself with the brick façade as she peered around the corner and spotted a thin young man. He wore a baseball cap, and as she listened, she could make out bits and pieces of what he was saying.
"Hey you. Dumbass. Yeah, you in the tank. Cozy in there?" Despite her efforts to keep quiet, Mina snorted lightly at the young man's words. That was certainly an inventive way to get someone's attention. Not unlike the previous night, she heard a light shuffling behind her and went tense, all traces of humor gone as she turned around to face the source of the noise.
A walker had started its way towards her, groaning low and revealing a hideous maw. Its gums had receded, though whether from gingivitis or after death, Mina neither knew nor cared to know. All she knew was that it had either spotted her or heard her and was now coming after her. It wasn't particularly fast, especially not if she chose to run, but it was moving with the fierce determination of something with strong enough motivation. She backed into the alley, luring the walker out of sight. It was a risky move, especially since she didn't know the alley well…but the walker followed and she managed not to trip over anything and as it inched closer, she swung her machete at the creature.
The blade caught it in the jaw at first, and with a grimace and the sound of meat ripping as she tugged out the blade, she swung again. This time, the blade found its mark, buried in the walker's skull and piercing the very edge of its remaining eyeball. The sound caught the attention of the young man with the walkie talkie and as she tugged her machete from the walker's skull, she heard him stammering into the radio before giving the apparent dumbass directions. Mina turned slightly to face him, brows perking and then furrowing when he mentioned the swarm of geeks surrounding the tank. And they were distracted by a horse? Oh, that was…she felt a little queasy at the thought; she liked meat and all, but nevertheless it was troubling to hear about anything where an animal would suffer. And she imagined that the geeks hadn't really taken the time to put the horse down humanely before chomping away.
Ignoring the joys of personal space for a heartbeat, Mina moved closer to the baseball cap-wearing young man and peered around him, dark eyes widening at the sight before her. He hadn't been kidding about all of those walkers, and there they were…just a street over from where she'd been standing like an utter moron. She retreated with a sharp intake of breath, staring at the Asian with still-wide eyes. Even though he barely glanced at her, she managed to still speak for the first time in a weak. "Holy shit," she muttered, and though the man beside her barely even cracked a smile, she knew that he at least somewhat shared her sentiment. The sound of gunfire made her snap out of her near-shock—made her literally jump, in fact—and she shifted to peer out of the mouth of the alley once more to see two walkers fall, the backs of their heads vanishing in a plume of brain matter and blood. She grimaced again as she retreated.
Soon, the gun-wielding man (in a sheriff's outfit, no less; who the hell was this guy?) joined the young man at the mouth of the alley, a gaggle of geeks not far behind. With a sound that could only be described as pure panic, Mina took off, following the two men without even thinking and hurrying up the ladder on the side of the building. Despite her panic, she could at least say she wasn't screaming the entire way up—just once, when she felt a dead hand clamp around her ankle and nearly pull her back down into the throng. She let out a shriek then, kicking that leg wildly and hardly feeling any satisfaction when she heard a dull metal clanging from her managing to smash the walker's hand against the tube that surrounded the higher portions of the ladder.
She reached the platform on the side of the building, all but shoving the two men away so she had room to stand. Their break didn't last long; not when one of the geeks had clued onto the fact that he could climb, too. A fresh wave of panic propelling them, Mina, the young man, and the sheriff clambered up the ladder. She refused to look anywhere but at her hands the entire climb; looking down would make her stop, and looking up would only give her vertigo. Soon enough, they reached the top of the building and Mina stood hunched, her hands on her knees as she caught her breath and tried to quell the rising panic. She didn't know what had scared her more; the heights or the horde of hungry walkers and the one that had very nearly gotten her off of that ladder. She straightened and saw the younger of the two men peering over at the elder, brows raised. "Nice moves there, Clint Eastwood," he said, and Mina honestly couldn't tell if he was being genuine or a smartass. From the look on his face, likely both.
Quick introductions were made; Clint Eastwood turned out to be a former sheriff's deputy by the name of Rick, while the smaller of the two men was called Glenn. "Mina," was all that was offered when she was asked her name. She felt odd standing there making almost-idle chit-chat with these two strangers, especially when neither of them had really intended for her to tag along. As it was, though, when she braved a look over the edge and saw the alley still swarming with geeks, she knew she wasn't about to go on her merry way back the way she came. The introductions were over, though, and Glenn soon led them to stairs on the opposite side of the building.
It didn't take long for them to reach their destination, their only impediment being a pair of walkers, both of which were quickly dispatched by two figures in full riot gear. She trailed after Rick and Glenn, only to come up short when a tall blonde woman rushed Rick and held a gun to his head.