I hear voices and the crackling of a fire. I try to open my eyes, but they remain shut as if they're glued.

"We can always checkout the town not to far from here." Christian  says.

"We don't have the weapons to clear out a Walmart." Morgan responds back.

"We don't have to clear out a Walmart, just find a house and stay there for a little bit." Christian argues.

I slowly open my eyes and sit up. Bad decision. My head feels like someone was tearing into it with a torch.

"Damn it." I curse and hold my head in my hands.

Christian turns towards me for I am sitting behind the circle around the fire. "Well, looks who finally woke up." He smiles.

I get used to the pain that slowly turns into a throbbing. I give him the evil eye and stand up. I walk towards the fire and sit  cross legged next to him. "Where's Zainab and Oscar?" I ask as I notice that her bow is missing along with her and Oscar.

"Went to go hunt I guess." Morgan looks behind her, her arm is in a made shift sling.

"More like they went to go make out somewhere." Christian snorts.

I slap his arm. "Leave them alone, it's good that they found love in this hopeless place." I miss Carl. I didn't even get to say goodbye. I promised I'd never leave him and this is what happens. 

Morgan pipes up. "So Lauren," She wiggles her eyebrows. "Find someone yet?"

I sigh and smile as I remember Carl's bright blue eyes and dimpled smile. "I guess you could say that."

"Oooo, Lauren has a boyfriend!" Zainab exclaims as she and Oscar jump over the string of cans connected to the trees in case of Walkers.

"Where have you two been?" Christian asks.

"Hunting." Zainab smiles and holds up two rabbits.

"Kissing?" Morgan asks with a smirk. Oscar turns bright red, and Zainab tries to hide her smile. "Uh huh, thought so."

"Topic change!" Oscar fiddles with something on his belt. "You may want this back." He hands me my axe and I smile at him.

"So, we checkin' this place out tomorrow?" I ask, the topic of love makes my heart hurt.

"What place?"Zainab gives us a confused look.

I get up and grab the rabbits from her so I can start skinning them. "A town."

"Dang girl, we need to watch out for your unconscious hearing skills." Christian remarks. I give him the bitch face and hold my hand out for his knife. He cleans the Walker blood off of it with his shirt and what little water they found from a small stream. I heat it up in the fire to disinfect it. Christian finishes explaining the town to the other two. I don't really pay attention as I skin the grey rabbit, putting the meat to the side and the guts to the other side. 

"So we leave when the sun comes up?" Oscar asks.

"Yep." Zainab replies by pulling him down to sit on the ground next to her. I put the meat evenly on five sticks. I hand a stick to everyone and we all sit around the fire, cooking the tender meat.

After we all eat, we agree to have two people keep watch and Christian and I volunteer to do the job. The other three lay around the fire for warmth as it is colder tonight to the point where I can see my own breath. I pull my flannel closer to my body.

"Who was that person you made the promise to?" Christian asks  me after a few minutes of silence. I am surprised at first, but then remember that in my struggle I said that I promised him.

I look up at the stars and fiddle with a button on my flannel. "My boyfriend, Carl. I promised him that I would never leave him." I look back to a shocked Christian.

"You have a boyfriend?"

"Yes, pay attention."

"Is he cute?"

"Are you gay?" I retort.

"Just askin'." He looks up at the sky. "And no I'm not gay, I just thought it'd make you feel better if you described him."

"oh. well, he has bright blue eyes and a sheriff's hat that sits on top of his messy brown hair." I sigh.

"How'd you meet him?" He asks just to make conversation.

"He saved my life. Him and his dad." It's hard to believe that that was  week ago.

Christian chuckled. "How cliché."

I push him lightly and shake my head, smiling. "Come on. We'll wait till you find true love and see how you meet them and react."

He looks at me. "In this crappy world, I highly doubt I'll ever find true love. "

I pull him into a hug. "Don't worry, I've lost everything like you've had. But I still managed to find love." I let go of him. "Look at Zainab and Oscar. They are each others everything."

"Thanks Lauren."

We sit in quiet for another twenty minutes before Christian talks again. "We'll find him, he's still alive."

"I know."

"How?" He looks at me in confusion.

"Because I haven't found him dead yet." I say in a small voice.

"From the way he sounds, not only is he cute but he has to be one hell of a fighter." I can see him smiling at me from the way the dying fire lights up his face.

I look at the moon's position which has moved from the position it was in when we first were on watch. I yawn, I'm exhausted. Having a concussion is by no means fun. "How long have we been on watch?" I ask Christian.

He looks up at the moon. "About two hours, give or take. Why?"

"I think our shift's over." I stand up and put my hand out to help him up too. I walk over to Zainab and shake her awake.

"What?" She asks groggily.

"You and Oscar are up for shift duty." She groans and wakes Oscar up. They sit in front of the fire facing outwards. 

I lay on the ground near me and curl into a ball, something I've done since I was little whenever I was scared or sad. My grandma used to call it the fetal position. I missed her and my grandpa, I still have a little hope that they're still alive since they were in Florida when the outbreak began.

I miss Carl badly. We just started dating a couple days ago and I already lost him. I guess that's how life is for me. Anyone gets too close to me, they eventually get taken away from me without me saying good bye.

I close my eyes and drift off into a restless sleep filled with nightmares dealing with Carl being ripped away from me and me not being able to find him, but hearing the screams of my friends coming from everywhere.

*Time skip a couple hours*

I wake up before Oscar, Zainab, or Christian. Morgan is fighting sleep while on guard. Her sickle is in her hand and she writes in the dirt with the tip of it.

I get up and go over to her. "I got it till everyone else wakes up." I take her place and keep watch. As I sit there, I run my hands through my knotted waist length blond hair. I haven't had the time to cut it. At the camp that my family was at, we were always too busy training and working to worry about cutting it. So it hasn't been cut in about three years.

An hour later everyone is awake and we start to pack up camp. That is until we hear a gun click behind us and I grab my gun out of my leg Hollister and point it at the two people. One is a little taller than me and has curly blond hair and rosy cheeks while the other one is shorter than blonde, but somehow still an inch taller than me. He has really dark brown hair so that it's almost black and looks Asian. No not Glenn, but a smaller version of him. They both had slight quiffs that were like they didn't own a brush but wanted to keep their hair out of their eyes.

"Who are you people? Terminus?" Morgan asks.

The Asian one lowers his gun. "I guess you could say that."