Chapter Four: Devastation

Devastation: great destruction or damage.

Day 10

It had been a few hours and Daisy was beginning to smell the rot. Never had the stench of death completely invaded her senses as it did now. Jess' body lay limply where it had fallen when Daisy had gently pushed it off of her. Her head was twisted back and to the side unnaturally, somehow her open, blank eyes had sought Daisy, the blonde hair falling delicately in front of them Daisy's only reprieve. It gave Daisy a strong feeling of unease, to have the girl that she had known for years be irrecoverably gone. But there was a grim sort of acceptance that had led to Daisy refraining from any emotional outburst, as Jess had been very prone to before her death.

The dead that were outside the storeroom had stopped ramming themselves into the door, apparently uninterested now that there was no sound coming from the room. Daisy gave a sigh and stood, moving towards the door. She gave an uneasy look down at Jess' body and stepped over her, leaning over the cabinet that blocked the door to place her ear against it.

Daisy didn't hear any sound, save for a few grumblings that could be from the dead that remained on the street. She stepped back and looked at the cabinet, judging the apparent weight and lamenting her now solitary confinement, it had been relatively easy to move with Jess there. Her aching stomach did not allow for this hesitation, however, so she braced herself against the side of the cabinet and pushed.

Immediately there was the sharp screeching of metal against metal, the cabinet against the floor, and she cringed, but did not relent in her pushing. After a few minutes the cabinet had been pushed aside from the door and her path was then unblocked. Daisy exhaled in relief and made to turn, remembering Jess and thinking that in this new world, anything that could be taken with little to no resistance was needed for her continued survival. At the same time as she felt clawed fingers grip her shoe, Daisy saw the now awake eyes of Jess; she was one of the dead.

Daisy screeched in surprise, despite her usual cool-headedness. She fell from Jess' hand pulling her down, and she quickly scooted back on her ass.

"Fuck me, Jess." Daisy said exasperatedly, half-expecting some inane comment in return about Jess not being a lesbian, and becoming sad when there was none. She turned over onto her knees and kicked back with her feet, crawling over to the shelves at the back of the storeroom. There was rumbling growls behind her as she scattered the miscellaneous objects on the bottom shelf, blessing her luck as her hand came upon something that felt long, hard and wooden. Daisy suppressed any childish impulse to giggle at her own mental description, and swung the object down towards her feet, at Jess' head.

When she missed, Daisy stood and turned to face Jess, seeing now that she held a heavy shovel in her hands. She cringed and held the shovel high, bringing it down and cracking into Jess' skull with the hard, sharp side of the shovel. There was a sickening crunch and then a squelch as Daisy pulled the shovel from her former best friend's head. Abruptly, she turned away and heavily vomited on the floor beside her, some matting her dark, long hair, and splashing on her shoes and the finally-dead Jess' still face.

Day 12

It had been a long couple of days. Daisy had escaped from the dreaded hardware store backroom, her new trusty shovel in hand, fought through the hundreds, if not two, dead that still roamed the store and sought refuge in a nearby house that was above a bookstore she had found that was a block away. Yesterday, she ran to the corner grocery store that she had sent Glenn, Nina and Kat to just days before, and gathered some small provisions which had sustained her thus far.

Daisy was snacking on a small bag of salt-and-vinegar chips that were causing her to scrunch her face up at the sourness.

"Eugh, why do I even like these? They're always so fucking unpleasant to eat. You, sir, are a masochist, methinks." Daisy was muttering to herself as she licked her fingers, her other hand holding open a heavy book that she had gotten from the downstairs bookstore. Her hand rummaged in the chip packet once more, and she grunted when she found that it was empty. Daisy's eyes skimmed the remainder of the page and she dog-eared it, crumpling the packet and looking up to throw it overhand to the nearby trash can.

She closed the book, Pet Semetary, and set it beside her, rising and going over to the bed in the centre of the room. Daisy bounced onto it, shuffling forward on her knees to look out the window that was behind the head of the bed. Her fingers inched open the light curtains and revealed more sunlight. Outside, Daisy could see a few dead ambling along the road, but significantly fewer than the dozens that were there the day before.

Seeing that there were not too many dangers visible from her window, Daisy had finally come to the decision that she would leave as her and her friends had planned before the ambush of dead had come upon them. She replaced the curtain and sat on the bed, bringing a duffle bag next to her closer, opening it and digging around.

"Aha!" Daisy exclaimed to no one but herself, brandishing a new bag of chips, this time barbeque flavoured, and opened it, relishing in the crisp hush that sounded as the air was released. She took out a chip and put it in her mouth, crunching it. "Mmm. Can never go wrong with barbeque." Daisy looked towards where the previous empty packet sat in the trash can with distrust.

Day 15

Daisy wiped the sweat off her brow and sighed, looking ahead to the rows upon rows of abandoned cars that littered the highway. It was a strange sight, of such desertion, that she had never seen before. But such sights were now commonplace in this new world. She continued on, ignoring the strain in her legs from walking so far from the city. Daisy had decided just days ago to abandon all hope for Atlanta, and to run from the city, just as Daisy and her friends had planned to before being attacked.

"They just had to all come on this highway, together. One whole fucking side completely without cars, with no way to get one of these hulking pieces of shit onto that side." Daisy lamented, bereft at the fact that there was no way that she could take one of these cars that were pointing towards the once-supposed safe haven, and use it in an effort to leave Atlanta's borders.

Daisy bent over, the hot Georgian heat almost too much to bear. When she looked up and began to amble her way forward, she heard some chatter ahead. Her eyes widened and she quickened her pace, excited at the possibility of seeing another alive person after days of solitude.

Suddenly, without apparent reason, there were screams from the people. Daisy stopped and automatically looked up, wanting to see some sign of impending doom, but there was none. So, she began to run towards the voices. Daisy jogged through the cars, weaving between red and white and black, back-tracking when she noticed a small face peeking out over the other side of the hood of a car.

Daisy let loose a smile and a breath of relief when she noticed that it was a little boy, it seemed like ages since she had seen any person, let alone one much younger than herself. His wide eyes were endearingly innocent, contrasting to the horror found in, presumably his mother's, eyes above him. The woman had come up and seized him to her chest, looking back towards the space above Atlanta, and quickly ran with the boy away from the city, and away from Daisy.

"Hey, wait, what—?" Daisy questioned after the woman with confusion, remaining confused until she turned to look. Just as she turned, there was a series of deafening bangs and great trembles in the road. She dropped to the ground and backed away slowly from the huge cloud of debris and dust that was quickly rising from what was once Atlanta, growing larger and larger with each bang, each bomb dropped by the heavy helicopters soaring overhead.

Daisy turned and scrambled to her feet, feet finding purchase after a few false starts. She quickly rammed into a car door for her fastness, wincing in her pain, but not ceasing her running away from the devastation that was Atlanta.

Behind her she heard more whistling drops and more thunderous landings, but Daisy did not stop. She ran and ran, finally catching up to and passing by the people who had remained on the highway and were now evacuating. There was a stampede of people: young and old, man and woman, blonde and brunette, black and white. Daisy was momentarily distracted by a stunningly garish Hawaiian shirt that seemed so out of place on a man mid-apocalypse, not to mention he was donning a worn fishing hat and a spectacular white beard, but soon regained any momentum that she had lost.

But soon Daisy stopped herself. She realised that she really couldn't lose herself in her panic. So, when she came to the final cars of the highway gridlock, Daisy decided that she would take one of these cars to get her far, far away.

And what luck, the third car that Daisy had tried was unlocked, and the door opened with ease. She quickly sat in the driver's seat and looked around for the keys, praying, metaphorically, that they had been left behind in the rush. Daisy thought for a moment and decided to follow every action movie she had ever seen, and checked above her, flipping down the sun visor, almost crying when no keys fell into her lap. Her head fell forward onto the middle of the steering wheel and her fingers grasped either side. Eyes closed in dramatic sorrow, they finally opened to find that the keys were in the ignition. Daisy's hand came up to slap her forehead.

"Of course…" She muttered bitterly, wide eyes now narrowed, to the steering wheel in front of her. "Way to not play into my fantasies, Mazda." Daisy's hand found the keys and turned, and she gave a wry smile when the engine hummed to life. A sharp beeping filled the car. "No!" She yelled, pulling the door shut hard, and snapping her seatbelt on to stop the beeping. "Thank you, Mazda." Daisy seemed judgemental of the car for being this brand. She put the car into reverse and beeped the horn at the surrounding crowd, slowly backing out from her spot at the end of the traffic jam.

"Wait!" Daisy heard somewhere to her left. She slammed the brakes and pressed the button beside her to wind down the window. There was a woman, a man and two young children. Daisy narrowed her eyes at them with distrust and raised her eyebrows expectantly. "Please, can we go with you?" The man elaborated. They looked like a weak bunch to Daisy, the man a thin, nerdy ginger, the woman a willowy brunette and the kids, well they were just too short.

But the littles one did have killer puppy dog eyes. Daisy sighed in exasperation and beckoned them into the car. Each of her new car-mates gave her an unwelcomed, radiant smile and they all piled into the car.

As soon as they were all in, she put the car into 'drive' and started on the highway, away from Atlanta. The crowd that had been previously on the highway had dispersed, some running off into the woods, or continuing to run down the road and some were speeding away in stolen cars like Daisy and the family with her was.

"Uh, so…I'm Pete and this is…uh, Maryanne." The man started, nervous of the deadly look Daisy was giving him from his left in the driver's seat. "And our kids are Maeve and Jonah." He pointed to them, first to the somewhat surly teenage girl 'Maeve', and then the small pre-pubescent puppy-dog-eyes boy 'Jonah'.

"I can already tell, this is gonna be just fu—reakin' fantastic." Daisy said sullenly, looking up to the heavens as if to find some reprieve.