It had been some time since I had truly exercised. Other than our brief runs for supplies, I hadn't really even walked a long distance in a good while. Between that and lugging about fifty pounds more than I was used to, I was rapidly tiring. I needed to find shelter fast. Thankfully, once I had gotten out of the city, I only ran into an undead every half hour or so. Right when I was about to give up and hoist myself into a tree, I heard careful, measured steps that crushed leaves and twigs underfoot. It was a living person. Soft, as if trying to avoid detection.

I drew my Storm and flicked the safety off. After ensuring that the suppressor was tight, something my dad told me I had to do since the Storm wasn't designed with a suppressor in mind, I turned to face where the person was. "Hello?" I called out cautiously. The footsteps stopped. I tried to listen if they were sneaking away, but they just flat out weren't moving. "Say something or I'm gonna shoot." I ordered.

"Alright! Don't shoot!" A male voice called out. He sounded young, likely in his early twenties. Footsteps crunched towards me slowly, eventually stopping some ten feet away.

"Who are you?" I demanded, not dropping my aim from the man.

His feet shifted, but not in a way that told me he was going to run. It seemed more out of nervousness than anything. "I'm Glenn. I have a camp not far from here. I was just heading back after a supply run." He didn't seem that malicious. From the inflection of his voice he seemed more awkward than anything. "Are you gonna shoot me?"

I suppressed a chuckle. "No, I'm not gonna shoot you. I just didn't know if you were someone who had ill intentions. I've run into more than a couple people wanting to loot my father's apartment." Mainly for the guns that they knew were stashed there, him being a veteran and all. Though they often didn't fancy being on the business end of said guns. I put the safety of my Storm back on and re-holstered it. Glenn breathed out a sigh of relief, and I heard what sounded like his arms slumping to his sides. "Why were you hiding anyway?"

"Oh, um." He let out an awkward half laugh. "It's just with the hood and the rifle you looked kinda scary. At first I thought you were a geek, but you weren't walking like one of them." A geek? Is that what he called them? It honestly sounded a lot better than undead. Rolled off the tongue more smoothly.

I patted the HK once. "This is only for the geeks, not people." As optimistic as that sounded, I knew it was only a matter of time before humanity inevitably went 'Mad Max' and started killing each other. "I'm Angel, by the way." I offered as a way to break the ice and hopefully defuse the tension that he felt towards me.

Crunching footsteps from the direction that I had been heading before meeting Glenn drew my attention. They were evenly spaced, yet moving at a fair speed, meaning it was another person. "Glenn!" Another male voice called out, this one with a slight southern twang.

"Over here, Shane!" I heard my new companion yell out, making me wince at the volume of it. Surely any undead nearby would be inevitably making their way here. The loud footsteps drew close, before stopping a short ways away.

"Who's this?" 'Shane' asked, his voice adopting a curious tone.

Glenn walked a few steps closer to Shane. "This is Angel, I was about to bring her to the camp." There was a brief pause of about four seconds before Shane spoke again. I could practically feel his eyes on me.

"That's a fancy piece you got there." He commented. I heard more crunching footsteps, this time away from me. They were lighter than Shane's had been so I presumed that it was Glenn walking away towards camp.

"Piece?" I asked quizzically? Piece of what?

"Your rifle." Shane elaborated.

"Um, yeah." I grasped the vertical grip on the front of the rifle protectively. "It was my father's gun."

I heard him take a step closer. "You know that kinda gun ain't exactly civilian legal, right?" Before I could reply, I heard loud, shuffling footsteps coming from behind me followed by the soft gurgle that told me that it was an undead. In one smooth motion, I flicked the HK's safety off, turned, and put one bullet right at the source of the gurgling. The body thumped to the ground, dead again. Judging by the noise, it had been about twenty feet away.

"Holy shit," Shane whispered, awestruck. After taking a moment to listen for any of its friends, and confirming the lack thereof, I put the safety back on and shot Shane a confident smirk. "Um, alright then. It's getting' dark and we was just about to serve dinner." I heard Shane start walking. It was in a direction that was slightly off from where I had been going. Luck must be on my side considering that if I hadn't found Glenn, I might have missed their camp altogether.

About a minute later, mainly consisting of me struggling to keep up with Shane's long gait, I began to hear the din of conversation. There were about a dozen different voices, though I couldn't distinguish anything that was being said. As we drew closer, I heard Glenn's voice too, along with a crackling fire. Clanking of silverware and glass dishes. The smell of some kind of stew or soup. My stomach was rumbling eagerly at the thought of food. My hunger spurred me on, letting me catch up with Shane and then some. Our journey led us uphill past what seemed to be a large, boxy vehicle, likely an RV.

Crickets had started their song while on the way over here, enforcing that it was well and truly nighttime. The conversation quieted as Shane and I rounded the corner into the camp proper. "Attention everyone." Shane announced, bringing the conversation to an end. "On the way back from his run, Glenn picked up a stray. Her name is Angel. This brings the total number of survivors in our camp to thirty-three." There was a brief, almost half-hearted round of applause. Hushed conversation began to float around the camp. I managed to pick out my name being said no less than half a dozen times. "Now um, we don't have a spot cleared for another tent, so you're gonna have to room with someone until tomorrow."

Someone cleared their throat. "The table in the R.V. folds down into a bed. She can stay there." A man with a pleasant sounding voice commented. That didn't sound too bad. I'm fairly certain that my father had packed my old tent that we used on our camping trips in this backpack. I would have to take a moment tomorrow to peruse the contents.

Speaking of, "Would it be alright if I set my stuff in there?" I asked, adjusting the aforementioned backpack.

A creaking lawn chair told me that someone had stood up. "Sure, lemme get the door for ya. It can be kinda tricky to open the first time." The same man from before spoke, heavy footsteps signaling his approach. "I'm Dale, by the way."

"Nice to meet you, Dale." I replied cordially as I followed after him, catching several mentions of my father's HK in the group's conversation.

"So what's the story behind that?" I heard him ask as the door to the RV clicked open. As it seemed to be the talk of the camp, I presumed that he was referring to my rifle.

"It was my father's. He figured it would be better in my hands than his." I replied as we ascended the steps into the RV proper. The interior smelled of lemon scented disinfectant and fabric softener. The door banged shut behind me and I heard Dale move further into the RV, so I quickly followed. Dale exerted a grunt of effort, and I heard a click that was likely from the table-bed.

"You can tuck your stuff under the table while I fetch some sheets and a pillow from the closet." Dale headed further into the RV. First thing off was the HK, which got tucked into a cubby underneath the bench. I had originally planned to just lay it underneath, barrel facing the wall, but thankfully the benches had open bottoms. Next came the backpack, which got placed into the one opposite the rifle. With both of those off, I felt much freer and more maneuverable. I left the Storm holstered to my side and did some stretches to loosen up after carrying that much weight for so long.

Dale promptly returned, handing me a sheet, a comforter, and a pillow. It seemed that I had found the source of the fabric softener smell. I tossed the pillow to the far end of the table-bed, which is right when Dale spoke again. "Do you need any help setting it up?" He asked, a small mote of worry in his voice for some reason.

I shook my head in the negative. "Thank you, but I'm fine." Dale paused for a moment more before exiting the RV, leaving me alone. After spreading the blanket out and flattening it, I sat down and took a moment to unwind and decompress. My hand automatically went to my father's dog tags. The day he officially retired was the day he gave them to me. It was odd. I knew that they were likely dead, but it didn't feel like they were. Maybe it just hadn't sunk in yet.

I could almost imagine that it was just the three of us on another camping trip in the woods, and any second now my dad would come walking up to give me a big, bone-crushing hug. Then he would share a funny story about his time in the army, or he would tell me some dumb joke that inevitably made my mom and I laugh. The door swung open before I could think any further.

"Angel?" A woman's soft voice called out. "Dinner is ready if you want to come and get some." Her voice had an almost motherly tone to it. Beyond her, the sound of faint conversation made me hesitant. So many new people to meet. I had never been good at socializing with others.

Taking a deep breath, I replied. "Yeah, sure. I'll be right out."

It seemed that she had noticed my reluctance to head out into the camp. "If you'd like I could bring you a bowl. It's pork and beans with added Vienna sausages." The woman offered. That honestly didn't sound too bad.

I shot her a small smile. "Alright. Thank you."

"It's no problem, sweetie. I'm Lori, by the way." She added and I could hear the smile in her voice. The door clicked closed and soft footsteps padded away. My dad's dog tags got tucked back into my shirt. I took my jacket off, crumpled it into a ball, and placed it between my pillow and the wall of the RV. The only place I felt that my sunglasses were safe was on my head, but keeping them on would likely end with them being broken as I shifted in my sleep. It was with great reluctance that I took them off and placed them on the counter past the head of my new bed.

The door opened again and heavier footsteps entered the RV. "Hey," Glenn's familiar voice greeted. "Lori told me to bring you this." The smell made my stomach rumble in approval. I held out my hands and felt him place a rather hefty bowl into them.

"Thank you, Glenn." I replied, giving the man a friendly smile.

The meal was the most filling that I'd had in quite some time. It left a pleasant warmth in my belly. After some feeling my way around, I managed to locate a sink to put my empty bowl and spoon in. Lethargy was setting in. I felt the familiar, full body slowness that told me I had been up for too long, or expended too much energy.

Outside the RV, I heard multiple sets of footsteps going in all directions, along with many faint, indiscernible conversations. It seemed that dinner was winding down, as most of them were heading away from the RV. I quickly focused in on two pairs that were steadily getting closer. Light, like Lori's had been. I couldn't make out any words, but the soft voices told me that it was a conversation between two women, one of whom seemed to be grumbling. Moments later, the door clacked open and twin sets of feet clomped into the RV.

One pair hurried past me and I heard a door slam further in the RV. "You're Angel, right?" The other one asked from her position still near the door.

"Yep." I replied, turning my head to appear as if I was looking in her direction. Experience told me that doing this always made the other person feel more comfortable when speaking to me.

"I'm Andrea, and the one who all but sprinted past you is my sister Amy. She's still getting over a stomach bug and has trouble keeping solid food down." Andrea elaborated. To prove her point, I heard Amy's muffled heaving through the wall. Gross.

"Good to meet you, Andrea. So you and Amy sleep in here?" I asked politely while doing my best to tune out the events taking place in the bathroom. It wasn't as easy as I'd hoped it would be.

"No, we have our own tent, it's just Dale in here. And you too now I guess, at least until tomorrow." Andrea's explanation made sense, given that she hadn't many a move towards what I presumed was the RV's main bedroom. "Um, are you okay?" She asked after a moment.

"Pardon me?" I asked confusedly.

She paused for a couple seconds, as if uncertain of what to say. "It's just, it seems like you're kinda zoning out." Oh, that's what she meant? I always had a hard time focusing on people, which is the main reason I wore the sunglasses for. It was easy to fake the actions of paying attention if people couldn't see your eyes. I figured playing it off was for the best.

Pretending to stifle a yawn, I replied. "Yeah, I'm pretty beat. Walked all the way from Atlanta to get here." Given what my father had told me about distances, I figured that I had walked a good ten or fifteen miles to get here from Atlanta in my five hour walk.

Andrea let out an impressed whistle. "Wow, that's easily a forty minute drive." There was a few moments of awkward silence, during which I caught a snippet of Amy puking again, before Andrea spoke. "Your rifle is pretty cool, I haven't seen a silenced weapon before."

"Suppressed." I answered automatically. "Not silenced."

Andrea hummed in confusion. "What's the difference?" She asked.

I paused a moment to think. "Well, basically most guns emit around 140 to 160 decibels of sound. My pistol, with the suppressor and because it uses subsonic ammo, softens it down to about 100. That's about how loud your average hair dryer is. Now, if I had a silencer on this instead, that would drop it to about 85, which is about how loud a blender is."

"That's a very interesting way of putting it." Andrea replied, sounding genuinely interested in my explanation. Thankfully, the door to the bathroom slammed open and Amy stumbled out, cutting off any further awkward conversation.

"Ugh, kill me." Amy moaned bitterly, and promptly headed back outside.

"It was nice talking to you, Angel." Andrea called out as she followed her sister. The door clicked shut softly, leaving me alone once more. I let out a sigh of relief and undid the belt holster that my Storm sat in. The holster got tossed on top of my jacket, and I cradled the Storm in my hands. A cursory inspection of the weapon revealed that it was perfectly fine, safety still on. I tucked the weapon under my pillow, laid down, and closed my eyes.

…which was as far as I got before I heard more footsteps just outside the RV, this time from behind near where I was sleeping. At first I thought that it was someone that had snuck off to use the bathroom, but as it got closer they seemed to be dragging their feet. Then, the stench of decay hit me. Without hesitation, I grabbed my Storm and hurried outside, flicking the safety off as I went. Some people were still talking idly, and noticed my sudden appearance if the cutoff in their conversations was any indication. The geek had spotted someone, and was emitting a low growl. Perfect.

"Angel, what are you-" A man, Shane, spoke from ahead and to the left of me, likely being the target that the geek had focused on. Right as it appeared in the camp proper, I steadied my aim and fired. The sound of the suppressed gunshot gave several people a start. The geek let out one last gurgle and fell to the ground. The breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding came out in a sigh of relief.

"Holy shit." I heard Andrea exclaim. "They haven't come up this far before." Murmurs of agreement, hesitant footstep patterns, and hushed conversations could be heard all around camp. Shane's clomping boots drew my attention as he moved close to the softly crackling fire.

"Alright. Dale, take your spot on the roof of the RV. T-Dog," I heard him pause for a moment, as if looking around. "Jim, stay here and keep watch for if any slip past us. Everyone else who's willing, grab a flashlight and a partner. We need to make sure that there aren't more on the way. Thankfully it's a clear night so visibility shouldn't be too much of an issue." With that said, the camp burst into action, a cacophony of zippers, low, worried voices, and what sounded like more than half a dozen firearms being loaded. I distinctly heard a shotgun cocking followed by Shane's heavy bootsteps approaching the RV and by extension, me. "Think you could stay up for another couple hours? Or at least until this whole situation gets sorted out?"

I still felt tired, but the undead always had a knack for ruining my chances at sleeping. "Sure." I answered after a moment.

"Thanks." He paused a moment, before releasing a heavy sigh. "And thank you, for killing that geek. I dunno if it'd've gotten me, but I hope I never find out."

This was something that I had been thinking about since coming here. First that one that I had killed in the forest after meeting Glenn, and now one all the way up here. "I think that it was probably following me. I made sure to kill the ones that I came across, but I guess I must have missed one that had been hiding or one that caught a glimpse of me from a distance." Shane placed a hand on my shoulder, giving me a start.

"It ain't no one's fault. Things happen that are out of our control, and the best we can do is to keep moving forward." He spoke in a low voice. He was right. Thinking about it would only invite madness. It was like what my dad had told me years ago. 'Don't focus on the 'shoulda woulda coulda', just on the 'can, will, and have to'.

"No problem." I told him. With that over with, he walked away. Not realizing my mistake, I attempted to put my Storm back in its holster. The gun dropped to the ground with a dull thud. Well it seemed that I really wasn't going to be sleeping for a while now. After doing my best to brush the dirt from the exterior, I headed inside. It seemed that nobody had snuck inside the RV while I was distracted, leaving me free to figure out how to turn the table-bed back into a table.

Once I had shoved the blanket and sheet to the top of the bed near the pillow, I knelt down and attempted to find a switch or a latch. Upon not feeling anything of the sort, I gave the bottom of the table an experimental push, which bore fruit as it raised up half an inch. It seemed to use a telescoping system instead of any actual folding mechanism. After a short time, the table locked in place with a loud click, and no longer tried to fall back down. Grabbing both my backpack and the HK, I placed the former in the seat, the latter on the table, and slid into the open booth.

The first priority was to clean the smaller of my guns, thanks to my brief moment of clumsiness. After rummaging around, I managed to find my cleaning kit about halfway down. Given that I had done this literally hundreds of times, the whole process of field stripping, cleaning, and reassembling took less than three minutes. I tested the slide several times, listening for any catches that would have told me I missed something. Even though I knew that I wouldn't find anything, I always erred on the side of caution.

Since my dad always ensured that the ammo boxes were full, I learned to be able to tell them apart by weight. The .556 ammo that the HK uses weighs almost four times as much as the .45 that the Storm does. I placed my sidearm aside for now and fished out one of the hefty boxes of .556.

Before I got any further, the door to the RV opened and a single person walked in. Boots, like Shane, but with a practiced light step that spoke of someone accustomed to being quiet. It wasn't another woman that happened to be wearing boots because the RV creaked slightly under their weight. Given we were in rural Georgia, it was more than likely someone who goes hunting frequently.

A solid minute of silence later, I realized that this person wasn't going away. Having finished reloading, I replaced the mag and double checked that the safety was on. Without looking at whoever it was, I asked "What's up?"

"Just admirin' the view." He spoke with a heavy southern drawl and a slight rasp. "Always did like a woman that was good with guns. 'Specially a redhead." At first I was confused, but then I remembered that 'redhead' meant my hair. Like my mother, I was told that I had a bright, almost red-orange head of hair. Given that color was a concept that was forever out of my reach, I never paid much attention to it.

He moved, slowly, to sit in the booth across from me. "Name's Merle, darlin'."

"Angel," I replied politely as I packed my cleaning kit and the remaining ammo away. Once that was finished, I stood, grabbed the holster for my Storm, and put it back on. The full body tiredness I felt hadn't gone away, and I wanted nothing more than to flop down onto a bed and pass out. But there were more important things than sleep.

Right when I moved past Merle to retrieve my sunglasses, he blocked my path with an arm. "Now, I know you ain't goin' somewhere until we talk about the elephant in the room."

"Elephant in the room," I repeated, wondering exactly what he could be referring to. He remained silent, but he did drop his arm, so I reached forward to grab my sunglasses… only to discover them missing. I felt around, figuring that maybe I had misremembered where I put them. My search was interrupted when Merle let out a low chuckle.

"Lookin' for these?" Merle asked coyly and I heard a plastic scraping noise as something was placed on the table. When had he taken my sunglasses? A bolt of panic shot through me as I realized that he must have figured out my disability. Did he plan to tell the other people in this camp? How would they take the news that their newest survivor couldn't see? Would they try to take away my guns because of it? It seemed that Merle must have noticed my internal debate, because he spoke up again. "Sit down, girlie. Relax."

As uncomfortable as I was, I did as he asked. "You aren't gonna tell them, are you?" I swallowed nervously.

"'Tell them'?" He repeated incredulously. "That you're blind? That seems like a pretty important thing to keep secret."

I opened my mouth to reply, before I realized the sheer ridiculousness of my reasoning. "It may seem petty, considering what's going on in the world right now. But, I just want to be normal. Accepted. My whole life people have either looked down on me for my disability, or treated me like I couldn't do anything on my own. Everyone except my parents." A wistful sigh left my lips. "My mom never tried to help me needlessly, even though she was the one person in the world who had every right to. She used to read books to me. Transcribed movies too."

Merle sighed exasperatedly. "Get to the point, girl." I frowned at his impatience.

"The point is," I said louder than necessary. "I know that, whether they intend to or not, the second they find out about my disability they're going to treat me differently. I don't need help. I can get around perfectly fine on my own. Walked all the way here from Atlanta, killing seventeen geeks along the way after all." Merle made a disgusting noise that told me of his disbelief.

"Yeah, and I'm a fairy princess." He retorted sarcastically. I failed to resist the urge to bury my head in my hands. After another few seconds of silence, Merle sighed heavily. "Tell ya what." He started, scooting my sunglasses towards me. "I'm going on a huntin' trip tomorrow. If I take you along, and you impress me, I won't tell those people nothin'."

"That's all? Just go on a hunt and you won't say a word?" It almost seemed too easy. Then again, he probably didn't know that I practically grew up in the woods. My father took me hunting three or four times a month after he retired. He would set up obstacle courses that I had to navigate or he would tell me to go through a section of trees without his help. Navigating in the countryside was a lot easier for me than going through a city. "You're on." I said with a smirk.