The undead are incapable
of fatigue and will persist
at any cost.

With or without a group of people, days tend to blend together. Walking, scavenging, hiding, sleeping, and eating. Life is ridiculously simple, in that it's not at all.

The only thing you can for-sure predict is that everything can be and most likely will be unpredictable.

It was especially difficult to predict our surroundings today when a fog rolled in around us. It wasn't so thick that we couldn't see anything, but it wasn't thin either; our sight stretched for only ten feet ahead of us.

"I spy with my little eye," I began, skipping down the road with my weapons holstered. I squinted in concentration, attempting to search through the mist. "Something. . . blue!"

Nana jumped at the game and came running to catch up to me. "Is it that car?" She gestures to the traffic opposite us but I shake my head.

Her lips purse and she searches around us for something else blue.

I look around while she does, examining our surroundings deep in the trees. There was another city along the road according to all of the directional signs, and I stayed out of the previous conversation as we figured out which direction to go in. They all decided on a small urban city that had been cleared by the government a few years prior.

We would still run into walkers there — it's basically inevitable no matter where you go, save for the Clean Cities — but there would be many, many less than there had been all those years back.

"Is it the sky!" Nana shouted, pointing upward with a big smile. I smiled wide and laughed when she cheered in triumph.

Zane mumbles something to her about being quiet so we wouldn't attract a horde, subtly touching her wrist in comfort.

I barely registered the rest of their conversation, but I also barely registered stopping in my tracks as I heard something to our right side.

Turning slowly, I peeked over the barrier and stepped quietly on the gravelly debris of the median to hear better.

The cars were all ransacked and ruined from years of runaway survivors like our group, and the pavement was cracked with large weeds growing through. The noise, however, wasn't a plant or a car or even a critter.

I knew it well.

A walker was pressed to the ground under a car, his body nearly ripped in half with the weight of the rusted metal.

He reached for me as everyone came to look as well, and soon he reached for the rest of us, making the injury worse and further endangering us the longer we watched.

"Come on guys, we need to keep moving," Aaron spoke up, practically reading my mind as he began walking again.

"How much further is the city?" I whispered to him, walking faster so we were a few feet in front of the others.

"Six miles, maybe less. Why?"

"Call it curiosity. I don't have a good feeling about this," I responded as I glanced back to the walker who was still reaching for us, though not as obsessively as our scent faded.

Another groan sounded, this time ahead of us. I looked back sharply to find a dark shadow in the fog ahead of us.

"Shit," I mumbled, the others stopping behind me as I quickly hopped over the median and everyone followed when a groan sounded again, louder. Shuffling feet approached as we ducked off the road.

We scaled down the side of the highway's hilled slope and into the thin forest. Staying there silently, our backs pressed against the moist dirt and debris beside an old sewage pipe until the smell of rotting flesh became nearly unbearable. It completely overtook the smell of the sewage spilling out of the large metal pipe.

"Oh god," Garroth moaned, clutching his hand over his face in a desperate attempt to dissipate the smell. Someone nudged him and he smacked their arm in response but continued his disgust in silence.

Kawaii~Chan stuffed her face in Zane's arm, looking ill at the stench. I watched happily as he gave her his bandana, old spice and all, helping her adjust it over her face as he was left on his own to the awful aroma.

A twig snapped and everyone jumped to see a walker trudging toward us, threatening the safety of our silence. I looked at the forest floor, littered with car parts and branches. We couldn't do anything without drawing attention, so I would have to make this fast.

With my favorite serrated blade in my palm, I quickly jumped over a large branch and cringed at the noise when I came face to face with what used to be a teenage boy no older than me. I grabbed his skull in my hand and impaled his neck with the blade so that it pierced his spinal cord.

Then with as much silent speed as I could gather, I clutched him to me and scurried behind a tree. The boy glared up at me with an empty look on his face, eyes hollow and glassy. I shut his eyelids and silently hoped that when he died he had some peace. That someone was there with him for it. Too many people die alone without any touch or support.

We waited silently in place even after all of the walkers were well gone, making sure no stragglers could hear us. I had spaced out clutching the boy to my chest when someone grabbed my shoulder and slapped a hand over my lips. I nearly jumped out of my skin but relaxed when I saw Aaron. He removed his hands and nodded to the walker in my arms.

I nodded back and ignored all the eyes on me as I slowly lowered him to the ground. They died a long time ago, but they were still once a person and deserve to be respected as one.

At least when their walking corpse isn't trying to kill you, that is.

Nobody questioned me and we cautiously moved back onto the four-lane freeway. This time we stayed off the beaten path and instead sticking close to the cars, though far enough away so that no unexpected walkers could grab us from the undercarriage.

Everyone was quiet. We kept to ourselves, raiding as we went for anything useful in the abandoned vehicles.

There wasn't anything very useful in any of the cars I checked personally, but I heard some excitement over a toolbox and a hammer.

I wasn't paying much attention though, and as much as I wish it was because I was watching my surroundings, it was actually because I was off in my own head. I should have been watching my surroundings, I know that. My thoughts were just consumed by the young boy, by all the walkers who were once normal people, just scraping by as they could in their own lives with the previous state of capitalism.

Supposedly there were shows and movies imagining what a zombie-riddled world could have been like. I was born a month after all of this began, nearly eighteen years ago, so I never experienced them firsthand. Most of them depicted that the world's civilizations would be gone overnight, but when the virus creating the walkers actually surfaced, it was... different. Major cities were wiped out, of course, but that was expected because of population count alone. Smaller cities had at least a week's head start, and the military had enough advantage to fortify some of them and get city survivors to safety. The survivors were mostly pregnant women like my mom and children because they were the promise for a future generation if anything went south. There were, of course, plenty of men and women alike of all ages, but they weren't the top priority.

Walkers are only primal instinct. They can't think in any way, though they can run and occasionally climb. They may as well not have opposable thumbs or anything of the like. They don't have the conscious thought to use them anyways. That's why it was easy to fortify small areas and begin building only up, not out. The main problem came when too many of them crowded in one place and had enough strength to break a barricade or climb on each other to breach it. That's how I ended up outside the walled civilizations.

It was brutal. I've seen and dealt with a lot of blood in my life and was even responsible for some of it. However, the amount I saw that day was more than I thought possible. Thankfully I wasn't left without basic survival and medical knowledge to survive on my own, but I was left with pretty sucky aim. I didn't get any practice with functional guns.

"You alright?"

I nearly jumped out my skin to find Aaron walking in stride beside me. His face told me he had been there for a short while, which made my face blossom red with embarrassment. "Sorry?"

He smiled, and I felt sudden overwhelming happiness at being around other people. After the incident, I was overjoyed to be able to have freedom of my own – even if this freedom would most likely point to my own death. After so long in an isolated room, it was nice to have space. I always hoped I could encounter people again, people I could talk to, people I could touch for once.

"You were really quiet, wanted to see if you were alright or just zoning out," he spoke quietly, aware of our surroundings.

"Oh..." I was speechless for a moment. "Thank you," I whispered. "I'm alright. I just got lost in my thoughts."

"Care to share? Boredom is terminal, you know," I glanced up and he finished with a wink, making me chuckle.

"Mainly about what the world was like before all this."

"Hm," he went quiet, but just as I was about to speak, he broke the silence. "I wouldn't know. I was only a toddler, so I have, like, maybe one or two memories from before. Even then, they're just snippets and I can't remember them on a whim."

"That sounds interesting. To be able to see the contrast, I mean. I was born a month after the virus broke out."

Aaron turned sharply to me, shock evident in his voice and on his face. "Really? You mentioned something like that on the train, but I didn't know you meant literally. I heard most of the babies from the time of the fall didn't live very long."

"We didn't. I was always told I was lucky but I don't know. Would you call this necessarily lucky?" My voice became quiet at my question, horrified at some of the memories in my life.

He smiled again. "Hey, you said it yourself. We're all alive one more day. That's enough for celebration isn't it?"

I tried to smile in return, but it was half-assed. He's right, I do say that, and I whole-heartedly believe it. But life versus death is different than their life versus my life.

Then again, now I can explore the world with them like a normal person. With that, I smiled.

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Word count: 1,929

So, uh, apparently if you write in comic sans it actually helps a lot??? Maybe it's less formal so you can relax about it? I don't know. But hey, I wrote! A lot, actually, wow. I'm really happy.