Note: Fear the Walking Dead is not considered canon for this story. In large part because I found it to be terribly stupid. There will be an AU history that I feel makes more sense.

Part 3:

I awoke once again not sure if I was truly awake. I stayed pressed against the tree limb for a time, but painful fullness pressed me to move. Rising to answer the call of nature I discovered something amiss. 'Missing' might be more accurate. It was only the zombies growling as they noticed I was awake that reminded me it wasn't the strangest thing I'd encountered in this world.

I couldn't remember what I'd dreamt of, but one word did surface. "Sophia," I murmured, voice soft and high like a girl's. A girl that somehow, I now was. That man yesterday had recognized me, called me Sophia. The shock of him getting ripped apart in front of my eyes had stopped me from figuring it out sooner. It at least partially explained why he'd averted his eyes from me and gotten himself killed.

His extraordinary modesty hadn't endured his death. In the moonlight I could see him and the others still capable of moving all staring up at me. "Well." My plan had been to stay in the tree until morning, perhaps beyond. But plans could change. Balancing between branches just to take care of basic necessities as a crowd of zombies watched didn't sound appealing, and I had a growing thirst that I wasn't at all sure sap could cure.

It was night still, not even a glimmer of predawn light, but my eyes had adjusted. The half moon was enough to pick out shapes even below the canopy, the white-ish teeth of the undead. I couldn't see everything, but hopefully neither could they.

'How long can the virus last outside the body?" I wondered, gathering up my spear. Hopefully any infectious material on the stick had died off, though I still kept my hands away from the brain-stabbing end. Without talking to someone living there was no way to know. Considering I was in an unfamiliar place in an unfamiliar body there was no telling what was behind their grotesque resurrection. Bacteria, alien nanotechnology, magic, the wrath of God, nothing was off the table.

Crossbow Man was still too low to hit with my spear. He worried me more than the rest of the survivors. With only three working limbs he moved around spastically, but he did move. I'd just have to move quicker. Planning was key. I circled the tree three times slowly, making sure I knew where every branch and handhold was. A few minutes wait let the zombies cool down, settling into one big heap. It was time to go. Rushing around to the opposite side of the tree I took three steps out along the lowest branch and swung down one-handed.

"Fuck." A girl's curse reached my ears. Kids were always swearing these days. Not that everyone hadn't been mouthy when I'd grown up in Brooklyn, but at least back when I'd been growing up kids had put some class and cleverness into their cussing. Nowadays it was all 'fuck' this and 'nigga' that. Too much time spent watching B-rated television and not enough rap-battles in the streets in my opinion.

Groans and moans brought me back to my senses. The girl dropping the f-bomb was me, and I was in deep shit if I didn't get the hell out of here. My efforts at gaining an extra second or two had cost me dearly. The invigorating feeling of renewed youth had misled me, as once again I'd underestimated just how little upper body strength I had. Despite weighing no more than seventy or eighty pounds my arm had given out, sending me spinning through the air. I'd done my best to tumble gracefully but the spear hitting the ground had thrown me off, leaving me to land flat on my back from considerable height.

I could see my erstwhile saviour lunging ever closer, the opening discordant aria of damnation. With every awkward but feverish movement of his three working limbs he came closer and closer, teeth snapping with vicious intent. The world seemed to move in slow motion, and I with it to my great dismay. Too robbed of strength to immediately take to my feet I instead raised the spear, thrusting with nary a prayer that I'd hit true.

Fortune was on my side, my makeshift weapon hitting him directly in the throat, knocking him back but not re-killing him. In my haste I'd struck with the blunt end by accident, thankfully sparing me from a spray of infected blood but leaving him free to strike again.

I rolled sideways, pulling my arm clear as his blood-stained teeth came down. The miss seemed to frustrate him, his roar as his bite hit the dirt urging his undead followers to greater speed. Scrabbling on all fours I struggled to get away, fingernails digging through the loose leaves to try and find purchase. It took what felt like an eternity to gather enough speed to get to my feet.

I ran. Barely able to see at the speed I traveled I held my arms up to block stray branches from hitting my eyes. It wasn't until a low hanging limb knocked the wind out of me that I took a rest. It was impossible to say how far I'd gone, or if I'd traveled in anything resembling a straight line. In normal circumstances I would have said that panicking like that was shameful, but those teeth had come far too close for comfort.

I could still hear them in the distance. Not all of them were vocal, but every once in a while one of them groaned. Three, four hundred feet away? They were damaged enough that so long as I kept moving and followed the moon they wouldn't catch me, but they likely weren't the only horde of zombies around. Caution was more important than haste.

My skin was frightfully soft. The exposed torso in particular, but my arms weren't much better. Not the body of a tomboy, sadly. The forest wasn't quite so sharp as northern pine forests, but I'd picked up a number of abrasions from branches and bushes during my flight. No blood so far as I could tell, thank god. Even ignoring the risk of infection, my current luck streak suggested the zombies could sniff out blood like hounds.

I couldn't linger. Thirst was already becoming the problem. The best way to find water was to travel downhill, but I wanted to get more distance between myself and the damaged horde before I started wandering. I started moving again but just a walk, running wasn't worth the energy and in the dark it was asking for a twisted ankle.

It was risky if I needed to run in a hurry, but hopefully prevention was the best cure. Slipping out of my sneakers and socks I held them in my left hand, spear in my right. The ground was cool but not chilling as I stepped feather-soft through the forest, stopping occasionally to open my ears to the world around me. I slipped into a rhythm that helped me ignore my thirst until a gunshot in the distance stopped me in my tracks.

It was a ways off, direction obscured by the woods. If they didn't shoot again there was no guarantee I could find them. No guarantee that they weren't surrounded by hundreds of the undead. Continuing to search for water might be the surer path, even if I had to dig for it.

Two more gunshots decided me. Guns meant people, water, food, answers. It was worth the risk to try. Unfortunately I'd only gotten a hundred yards closer when a stench alerted me to a zombie. Careful not to let my jeans rub together I snuck up behind it, silent as snow. My strike took it through the eye, not the back of the neck like I'd planned, but it did the job. I slowed its fall as best before twisting my weapon free.

Its sudden turn worried me. I could have sworn I hadn't made a sound. Had it truly smelled me over its own stink? A cautious sniff of my armpits came up with nothing terribly offensive. Certainly less than my normal body would produce after a run and a showerless night spent in the woods. Well, without water there was no way to smell like nothing. I'd just have to smell like something that wasn't human.