"Please." David begged as he stumbled behind the fast pacing woman. The tip of his numb booted foot caught a root that sent him stumbling, quickly catching himself with a curse before falling back into step. The woman slowed only a little, her hooded head turning slightly to see if he was keeping up before facing forward and trudged on.

"Please, where are you taking me?" He asked and pulled the fleece poncho tighter around his quivering shoulders. He was much warmer than when he was tied to the tree and he was thankful but his mind kept yelling at him to turn around and make it on his own. Why was he blindly following this woman? Who was she and why did she ask him those questions.

He contemplated returning to the Saviors, returning to his home of only a few months and tell them that he freed and saved himself, maybe then he would have the respect he so desperately yearned for. Would they believe him? Would they believe that a frail child like himself fended a night in a walker infested forest with no clothes or weapons? The more he thought about it the less he was inclined to do it.

He just wanted safety. He just wanted to sleep every night without worry just like he did before and after the outbreak happened. Before his mother died they had fended themselves well in an old country club outside of Richmond. They had food, plenty of water and enough space to create a small community which they never did. It was just him and his mother against this world and they thrived for the first few years.

It was when his mother was bitten on a supply run that the world showed David how ugly it had become. They never were outside longer than a day; they never encountered others surviving like themselves, the lived happily blind to the terror of the new world that when they finally experienced a sliver of it, it was too late.

He took his mother back home. He held her as she cried about the burning in her skin and cradled her as she slowly succumbed to the fever. It was less then hours later when David had to put down his own mother and he was all alone in the cruel new world. After her death, he needed to find someone to take her place, he was not fit to be in this world alone and when the first group of survivors found him on the road; he joined them even though it took an innocent life in the process.

"There's a safe place up ahead, a community that is good." He never noticed that she had a slight accent to her words until now. Her speech was slow and her words crisp with a roll to her tongue that was so faint you could miss it if you weren't focused on it.

"Why are you taking me there? Was it because of those questions you asked?" Jogging to catch up to the woman he stopped at her side and could only see the tip of her sharp nose through her beyond her hood.

"In a way yes, the answers you gave were genuine and I can see that you are not used being out here." Suddenly she stopped and even though he could not see her face clearly, he could feel the hard look she was giving him.

"Those men that you were with, the Saviors are no more beastly than the creatures in MY forest and for you to associate with them I should have left you tied to that tree." David felt his heart stop at her words that were spit in his direction and it made him take a step back from her.

She sighed and straightened herself before speaking once more. "But I didn't. You begged them, you pleaded with them to not tie you to that tree and they left you like a piece of trash to throw away. You are a boy, a young man who I can see does not know how this new world works and you chose to fend with the worst company you could have found." Lifting her head so he could see her whole yet shadowed face, he could see the true age of this young woman. To him she was young but her eyes screamed such wisdom that she was ancient.

"There are people out here who have not lost their sense of morality, you just happened upon the people who lost it too soon." With that she closed her pink lips into a tight line and turned to walk in the direction they were originally in but David had one more question that burned him with curiosity.

"How do you know the saviors? What did they do to you?"

"Boy you are crossing a line that is way too thin." She seethed and picked up her pace to where her cloak billowed wildly behind her.

"No please tell me." He pressed and jogged to her side. "Please tell me how bad the saviors are. I wasn't with them long so please; how bad are they?"

The woman sighed and slowed her pace as all the possible answers she could give them reeled through her mind but chose to keep it as short as she could. "I don't like evil in my forest."

David sighed and rubbed his tired face. This woman wasn't making any sense to him and to avoid his head from hurting worse he dropped the subject on the saviors. For someone who was so keen on helping him, she really showed the hatred she had for people and it boggled him to his core but before he could mentally explode, he asked one more question.

"They referred to you as a witch, why would they say something like that unless you really are one?"

"Why do they refer to themselves the Saviors when they are not saviors?" She fired back and her hazel eyes burned him through the shadow of her hood and it was then he finally sealed his lips. She had a connection to them in a shape or form and by her expressions of them, they were not good. Whatever they did to this woman must have left her so scarred that she only wanted the saviors to feel nothing but fear when they mention her.

And they did.

He was only with the Saviors for about two months before they tried to kill him, a member of their group that had pledged and initiated to show their loyalty. Although those two months he received the sleep at night he was used to, he could always hear their hushed tones and whispered secrets.

Some men would say about how there was a dead in the forest that could run faster than they, a dead they could never catch to kill but had killed them on multiple occasions. He remembered how five men would leave to go and collect and their 'offerings' and if they were lucky three would return with not even a quarter of their offerings. They would weave tales about a cloaked witch in the forest that would attack them with wild screams and shoot them with such sharp arrows that they would pierce through to the other side.

They would say how wild she was, how feral she was and how they could never catch her as she would instantly disappear behind trees and vanish like she was never there. One rumor through the group was that she could walk amongst the dead and not be attacked, like they were her own army at her command.

She was myth that the men would tell scary stories about but when groups would return with missing members, that myth was the only thing that truly frightened them and in truth it was just an ordinary woman who he followed behind. She never screamed wildly, she shot the dead with her sharp arrows to save his life and she never vanished. She protected him when neither he nor his group would.

She was an enigma in this new world that he couldn't figure out and truthfully he was to apprehensive to figure it out. He was just grateful she didn't leave or kill him.

"This is as far as I'm willing to take you." Suddenly she stopped, rooted to the ground like she were statue.

David panicked and looked up in her direction to see large, steel walls surrounding a great piece of land. The moon shined over the road before what seemed the entrance to the community, lined with dead cars and even dead on sharp medieval looking traps that were before the gates; snarling and snapping at the walls like they knew someone was beyond them.

Turning his head to the side to look beyond a wayward tree branch, David could see three people standing upon the gate with assault rifles aimed and drifting through the air like they were aimed at something in the distance and it was then he gulped.

"You expect me to waltz over there alone and be face to face wi-" David turned and saw that the woman was nowhere to be seen. The cloaked figure no longer standing like a still statue upon the forest floor, vanished so silently that he never knew she had gone; leaving him alone.

"With guns pointed at me." He whispered silently before turning and forcing himself to trudge toward the gate with a violent shiver to his body.

Hazel eyes watched from behind a large tree to see that David had finally turned and walked toward the gate, shivering from fear and anticipation. He needed this, he needed to be with a group that would help him grow and show him how to live in this world, lessons he would never have received with the Saviors.

Shrinking back further behind the tree a light had flashed brightly that startled her as well as David. She could hear them call out to him and asking who he was and David would answer, soon the gate had opened and she saw the same bearded man waltz out and pat the young boy before guiding him into the safe zone.

Yes, she knew that he would be fine . . . for now.