Chapter 1: Of All the Apocalypses in All the World...

AN: Recently, Sarah Wayne Callies, Paul Adelstein and Ben Haber did me the honor of featuring one of my fanfictions in their podcast, which did a lot to rekindle my obsession with the show.

Listening to Paul and Sarah being so friendly in real life made me wonder: what circumstances could have possibly gotten these two to be friends on the show? (I mean, after the infamous bathtub incident). Somehow, my imagination answered: 'Well, if they were the only remaining survivors of a zombie apocalypse, they'd have to be friends, wouldn't they? Sort of.'

This fanfic was born from this, granted, very weird idea. I also remember Sarah Wayne Callies saying somewhere that she doubted Sara's character would have survived very long in The Walking Dead. And I figured: stranger things happen all the time, everywhere.

I had fun with this one. Hope you enjoy it!

For those of you who are acquainted with my other stories: I swear, in this one, Kellerman is a decent human being.

PS: The title of this chapter is a reference to the famous line in Casablanca, "Of all the gin joints in all the town in all the world, she walks into mine."

…

Tires screeched against the asphalt as Sara floored the brake pedal. Ahead: the road, a gray tongue unfurling toward the horizon, pebbled with graying bodies, under a gray sky.

This couldn't be what the author of that book about shades of gray had been thinking about.

Sara laughed, the soft sound filling the car.

When you haven't run into a human face in months—a living one—every noise you make becomes a little darker.

It made Sara think of her morphine days, when she was happy to do nothing more than lie on a mattress for weeks, needing no other company than the drugs—the calm ocean that washed over her bloodstream.

Leaving the key in the ignition, Sara opened the door and stepped out of her car.

Not really her car, if you wanted to be picky. After the pandemic, recycling a car that had been forsaken on the side of the road became about as thrilling as picking up apples from fruit-laden trees.

Arguably, there had already been too many cars in the country, even when it blossomed with life and the speedy rhythm of sixty-hour weeks.

But take three quarters of the population out of the picture?

America became a cemetery of useless things. Cars, metal sculptures surely rusting away, pebbling cities that were nothing more than ice palaces, museums that the living would not visit for many years; and so far, the dead had shown no interest in them.

Sara tightened her scarf around her neck, stepping over a dead body.

She was not afraid of death. Med school had washed all such feelings out of her as sure as it had melted the youthful bounce in her cheeks, dug craters below her eyes as her diet trimmed down to gallons of coffee.

But the sheer scale of it everywhere was bound to steal the breath from your lips.

Kansas City, like all the cities Sara had seen so far, was a carcass: its insides sucked out, so all you could see was putrefying flesh if you ventured past the fanged gate of its mouth. Relics remained of the chaos that had run riot when the Contaminated had not yet starved to death.

Charred buildings, looted shops.

Now, all was quiet.

Only the wind that whistled in Sara's neck, and the plod-plod-plod of her footsteps on the asphalt, avoiding the dead.

It was a cold winter. Stuffing her hands in her pockets, she tried to come up with a plan.

She had to have something to keep her going, from dawn to dusk, other than the seemingly impossible horizon—

Chicago. Michael.

Two months ago, when the crisis started, and all citizens became confined to their homes, Sara had been giving a conference in Kansas. She hadn't really wanted to go. After they left their old fugitive lives behind, she and Michael became notoriously bad at being apart.

"It's just a few days," she told him. Reassuring herself through the fact.

He had given her that calm smile, like he could see right through her. And of course, he could. Nothing about her remained a mystery—she'd always thought that was the real Love Test. Not, Does it last three years? But, Does it last after all the mystery has caved, when you can pick the thoughts from someone's lips before they've even spoken?

And their love for each other had lasted past that point. Then it had lasted five years more.

Then the pandemic.

Then—

"Just a few days," he repeated. "You go. I'll cheer you on."

"You won't have time to miss me."

"I don't know about that," with a cocky smile. "Missing you is what one of the things I'm really good at."

He had pecked her on the lips, driven her to the airport.

The precise image of his fingers releasing hers as she crossed the security checkpoint.

If she lived to be a hundred—which, given the circumstances, was more of a leap of faith than breaking out of Fox River—she would still remember the ghost-flutter of his touch.

Sara swallowed, banishing the thought.

If she allowed it to go on, it would hemorrhage—where was Michael now? Was he even alive? What if, as she trekked back to Chicago in the hope of finding him, he had gone to look for her in Kansas? What if the disease had taken him, as it had taken the majority of the population?

In the first few days when she came out of hiding, after all the dead had, in fact, returned being dead, Sara had seen Michael's face in every corpse that paved the street.

Ice picks stabbing through her sternum, she'd drop to her knees, tracing the lines of his face in the rotting features of strangers.

After months of hiding, with nothing to hold on to except for hope, discovering what was left of the world had been a death of its own.

Sara had understood, on a bone-deep level, that life as she knew it was gone.

But as long as she could find Michael, she was ready to face life in any shape or form.

The plan had appeared to her, crystal clear. Obvious.

Find her husband. Go back to Chicago, to the place they had called home, praying that he was still there.

Once upon a lifetime ago, he had asked her to wait for him. All she could do now was hope he had waited for her.

Sara looked at the winter sun, trying to gauge the hour. She still had a few hours before sunset. Now that she was on foot, she wasn't going to make much progress.

"Get some food," she said to herself. It felt good to hear a human voice. "Find a new vehicle for the night."

That sounded like a good idea.

After a bit of walk, she finally landed on a supermarket that didn't look like it had been plundered quite to the bone. A Walmart, whose letters had been hacked at so that only three remained:

WA R

"Ha," Sara said.

Inside, the place was not as bad as most. The aisles still stood, the floor littered with debris, packs of cereal, gutted cans, toys aplenty.

Sara inspected the shelves. It wasn't easy finding something edible, now, even in a Walmart. All the food that could be eaten raw had long been lost to mold or rodents. Packs of spaghetti were great, if you could be bothered to light a fire, and Sara didn't have any time to waste. That left canned foods, which were the first to go during loots. It didn't help that there was only so much Sara could carry, if she wanted to be able to get through as many miles as she could before nightfall.

All that remained on the shelves were objects that had become utterly useless in the New World. Electronics. CDs. Home deco.

After some ten minutes, Sara managed to dig out a couple cans of Heinz beans. It conjured memories of her first year of med school, when she barely scrounged together the time to eat. She'd come home, grab a couple at random, and eat the contents with a spoon straight from the can.

Who would have thought the apocalypse would feel so much like being twenty-one?

The laughter turned to stone in Sara's mouth at the sound of the revolving doors, whirling open.

She swiveled, feet rooted to the floor, as if an egg full of liquid ice had been broken against her scalp. A blend of terror—excitement? More terror?—broke loose inside her.

Before she could think, she flattened herself against the wall. Fugitive reflexes. She stood there, heart punching her ribcage, ragged breaths escaping her in a deafening orchestra.

Nothing.

Had she dreamed the sound?

Part of her said she must have.

Yet in her bones, in her gut. She knew that couldn't be right.

For months, she had been her sole companion, become attuned to being alone. And this—what she felt now, the atmosphere that had swept into the supermarket. Whatever it was, it wasn't alone.

As if to confirm this, footsteps started down one of the aisles. She could make out the crisp impact of every sound.

Jesus, she thought.

What to do?

What to do what to do what to do?

A voice inside her screamed to leap out of hiding. Make herself seen. A person, an actual person! In her bleakest hours, she'd wondered if she was the only one left in the world. God knew, she'd seen enough sci-fi movies to know how these stories ended. Whoever was out there, it had to be better than the rankness of her own thoughts, chewing themselves out of sanity a bit more with each passing hour.

You're not alone. Just go. Go to them. How much worse can things get?

But a different Sara, a Sara who had been dragged to horror movies by old boyfriends, urged toward caution.

How much worse can things get? she said. Glad you asked. A LOT.

For starters, she could tell that the footsteps belonged to a man. She couldn't explain why. Maybe it was fear talking. But she sensed it in her stiffening spine, in the anxious beat squeezing inside her breast.

Exactly what did she think would happen? That she would run toward this person—this man—and he would help her on her quest, like a good sidekick? Want to find your missing husband? Sure. I don't have anything planned.

Maybe the living dead had all rotten away, maybe there was nothing left of the zombie-like creatures that had blown through the country like a hurricane.

But who was to say that the dead were the only thing to fear?

Sara had never been entirely comfortable, alone with a man. How comfortable would she be if they were the only two people left in the state?

Then what? Hide? Miss out on this one possibility for human contact?

If another two months went by, or a whole year, and still all the world she discovered around her was a desert—would she be able to live with the fact that she had stayed hidden, out of fear? Crossed out her only chance for companionship?

Sara was so busy ping-ponging between both options, she didn't know how much closer the man had gotten until his shoes were grinding pieces of broken glass, a couple of aisles from her.

Alarm spiked her heartrate.

Should she move? Go deeper into hiding?

Glancing toward the nearest exist, just in case, Sara's palm slipped against one of the cans she had been about to shove into her backpack.

She watched it fall in slow motion.

There was time to think: I can catch it.

But no time to actually make good on that before it clattered to the ground.

The man's footsteps stopped dead in their tracks.

Horrified, Sara weighed her next move for a second. Run? Cut toward the revolving door, drop the can of beans or use it as a possible weapon?

The man would probably catch her if he wanted to.

Besides, when you run from someone, they become predator, and you become prey.

If Sara was going to make an attempt toward peaceful contact, she couldn't start like this, shifting all the power to the man's side.

You grew up with a Republican, Sara. You can handle a little diplomacy.

Fists clenching, she sucked in a deep breath. "Hello?"

She waited. Nothing. The man's footsteps didn't resume. For what felt like a whole minute, he didn't seem to even breathe.

"I'm not armed," she said. "I'm not contaminated. I'm not looking for trouble."

Silence.

Past the initial fear, excitement pulsed within her like a second heartbeat. Someone was here. Someone was here. Now that the possibility of an encounter was tangible, the prospect of spending a single more day following her routine felt unbearable. Driving around, walking around, looking for food, or a vehicle, or a place to spend the night. All the food she had eaten the past two months seemed tasteless, all the sleep she had gotten drained from rest. I can't do it. I can't be alone anymore. I just can't.

Most likely, the man was as afraid as she was. He was alone, too—else, he wouldn't have wandered here by himself. Was he starving for contact? Had he started driving himself crazy, the sound of his own thoughts grinding like claws on metal?

"My name is Sara," she volunteered.

Nothing.

For a beat, she wondered if she had imagined the footsteps.

But then the man shifted on his feet. She heard glass squeal under his shoes.

That same nervous stab of panic and joy. A breath came out of her, half-laughter half-shock.

"I—I'm going to come out. If that's okay. If you don't want me to, you can leave. I'll give you time. Okay?"

Time stretched like pieces of hot toffee.

She counted to thirty. Once. Twice.

Then, because patience had never been her forte, she peeled off the shelf, sweat beading between her shoulder blades. Her heart pounded all the way to her throat as she made her way toward the end of the aisle, not looking where she was going, kicking into a broken jar of pickles.

Once she stood at the center of the walkway, Sara paused. Should she seek him out? If he had wanted to come out of hiding, he would have. In fact, if he wanted anything to do with her, he would have spoken by now.

Maybe he wasn't interested in people at all.

Maybe he's planning how to hack you into pieces.

Sara licked her lips. She didn't dare take a few steps further and peer into the aisle where the man stood, concealed—and yet, she must.

The proximity of a fellow human prickled every nerve in her body.

"If—" she started. "If you could come out now. Or say something."

From the aisle, behind a wall of shampoos and body lotions, a sigh came out. A throat was cleared.

Sara swallowed.

Real human noises that hadn't come out of her own mouth.

The world brightened, before she could help it, bleakness rolled down her eyelids.

She smiled.

I didn't think I had any more of those in me.

Then his feet broke into a stride. She could barely hear them past the blood rushing to her temples.

A hand grabbed a shelf, knocking a couple of conditioner bottles to the floor. Sara's smile stiffened. A military ring gleamed on his finger. Airborne, USA.

A shoe thrust into her field of vision. Just one.

He was hesitating. Making this drag.

Maybe he's disfigured. An old scar left from the army, or something more recent. Maybe he's shy.

Another voice said:

Maybe he's some sort of vampire, and he'll grab you by the throat and suck you dry.

Then his second foot came out, and he was standing before her.

The floor beneath Sara's feet crumbled.

And she almost wished that the man had been a vampire.