Chapter Text
Emilia sighed, twisting the cap back onto the bottle of water she held as she trudged down the road. The scorching sun of a Georgia spring had been beating down on her for days now, and she couldn't wait to find somewhere to lay low for a couple days. Her once pale face was now stained red with awful sunburns, as were her arms and legs. However, she couldn't stop just because she was tired or in pain. She wasn't alone in this world, even if she thought she was.
Those things followed her everywhere.
The flesh eating monsters that had caused this whole mess were never far away. Though they used to be human, they never looked it. They always had something missing that made them look more like a monster than a person, whether it be an eye, a leg, or a patch of flesh. The most common thing they lacked, however, was lifelike eyes. They all had milky, unfocused eyes that looked like they barely saw a thing. If anything, the creatures relied on their hearing.
Emilia had learned quickly that the colt pistol her father had given her upon her departure was to be used solely for emergencies. She had attracted far too many walkers with it before, and that was a mistake that could have gotten people killed. Those mistakes made it a blessing that she wasn't traveling with anyone. At least, she wasn't anymore. She'd had her father and brother at first, but they were both ignorant. It cost them their lives, and did nothing for her but cause her grief in remembering the look of their eyes as they had woken in death.
She had tried her best to forget them, and those in her family who she hadn't learned the fate of. However, their faces weren't easy to forget. Emilia's childhood memories were haunted by them. Her smiling grandparents, whom she was certain were dead by now. Her mother, who might have had a slim chance of surviving if she had her new spouse with her. Her friends, and others who she barely knew but had somehow crept into her memories. She wished the best for them all, but she would rather forget them. All that remembering did was cause her pain, and that was something she didn't need. Not when she needed to be fighting for her life. Whether it be walkers or people, she needed to be ready to fight, and survive.
Emilia didn't trust people, for she'd witnessed plenty of awful things on the road. Betrayal, murder, rape... She'd seen it all, though more by accident than anything else. She'd hoped to join multiple groups until she'd witnessed them do one of these things or another, but all her hopes for companionship had flown out the window at the sight of the foolishness of her kind. They were all idiots, for they let greed and desire get in the way of their common sense, which was the most essential tool for survival. She was better off without a companion, anyways. She wasn't responsible for anyone, and she couldn't blame herself for any more deaths.
A low growl interrupted her grave thoughts, pulling her attention to the thick brush on the right side of the road. Three walkers stumbled out from the bushes, the smell and sound of a potential meal irresistible to them. Emilia sighed, for she had no problem taking them out. They were a nuisance, but it was no different than swatting at Mosquitoes for her now.
She pulled her grandfather's old army knife from her belt, a fresh pain bursting through her hands as her sunburned fingers gripped the wooden handle. Emilia had become accustomed to minor pains throughout her travels, but she had convinced herself that she couldn't let them hinder her. She didn't want to look weak, despite the fact that there was no one to look weak around.
The woman met the walkers head on, shoving the long blade between the eyes of one that had once been a middle aged man. The growl that had been reverberating from his torn throat stopped abruptly as she twisted the blade, finally ending the life that it never should have been forced into. She pulled the knife out of its skull without hesitation, knowing that even a split second wasted would be one that could easily be used against her. The walkers were slow, but that wasn't what she was worried about.
Emilia had taken to comparing the moaning creatures to the hydras of Greek myths. It was said that if you cut off the head of one, two grew back. It seemed that for every walker she killed, there were two already coming to take its place.
She looked up at the other walkers quickly, wasting no time in burying the knife in the skull of the second walker. She kicked the third back when she realized how close it was, hoping to buy a few precious seconds to retrieve her knife. She knew nothing stopped these creatures other than killing them, and it was either it or her. Emilia would rather it be the walker lying in a pool of blood.
Emilia pulled the knife out of the head of the walker she'd just killed, frowning when she realized that the thing she now had to kill had once been a child. She hated killing those simply for the fact that they always looked so innocent, even when they were trying to kill you. Nonetheless, she approached it with a calm demeanor, stabbing it before it could latch onto her baggy t-shirt. She sighed as she pushed the deceased creature off of her weapon, for she hated how numb to all of this she had become. It was almost as if killing the walkers was a habit to her now. She had turned from an innocent author that barely left her apartment for anything but more ink for her printer to a killing machine. To some, it could be considered an improvement. To her, it was a setback.
She'd loved the peace that writing had given her, for it had let her ignore the real world and all of the tragedies that came with it. She'd had tragedies, yes, but they were of her own mind's creation. Her imagination was controlled, but this real world was unpredictable. It had taken lives that she would have considered far too new to be cast out of the land of the living, and it had left her a shell of her former self. Emilia's imagination still existed as it had, but she had locked it away for the time being. She didn't need it in a world like this, but she hoped it would come in handy again at some point. It didn't seem like it would at the moment, but there was no telling when this apocalypse would end. They had to run out of walkers at some point, right?
Emilia's head shot up as the sound of a gunshot echoed from the woods in front of her, bringing her to glance around her frantically. She wasn't sure whether or not the shooter was close or not, but she was hoping that he or she wasn't trying to shoot her.
Unfortunately for her, that wasn't the case.
She was falling before she'd even realized that a second shot had been fired, but she could tell by the searing pain in her shoulder that the bullet had found its mark. Emilia definitely hadn't expected to be condemned by her fellow humans, but life was full of surprises. This just happened to be one of the less fortunate surprises.
She cried out in pain as she hit the concrete on her back, her eyes clenching shut as she tried to block out the pain that was coursing through her upper body. There was no one around to help her this time, and she knew now the one reason that a companion was necessary: safety. If something like this happened, you had someone to either save you or die with you. The outcome depended on the person, of course, but it still meant that you weren't alone. At the moment, however, Emilia was alone. She was also pretty sure that she was about to die. Her body was like a lead weight, and her bones ached from the impact of falling on the pavement. She had definitely hit her head, for she could already feel a massive headache coming on. These pains, however, were nothing compared to the storm brewing in her shoulder.
She turned her head to the right slowly, her blurry vision revealing that she wasn't quite as lucky as she'd thought she was. She hadn't been shot in the head, yes, but she was pretty sure that the bullet was still lodged in her shoulder. Despite that, blood was still pouring from the open wound like lava from an active volcano. It was awful, but it wasn't going to kill her. Not quickly, at least.
Her eyelids fluttered as she laid there, trying her best to stay awake. She knew the walkers would be heading this way soon, and she wasn't going to let them take her. Then again, maybe it would be better that she went now. It had been years since this whole mess had started, and Emilia would know if the government had come anywhere near reestablishing itself. They would inform people if things were starting to get back to normal. However, from the looks of everything, there was no chance that things would ever be the same. There would never be a chance for her to sit at a desk and type up another chapter of a book, or to talk her excessively critical mother about her work. For some reason, she had thought it would be a good idea to take all of her works in progress with her in the beginning. They took up necessary space in her bags, but she thought that they would be a good thing to have if she ever got the chance to sit down and write for a while. However, that had been when she'd thought that there could really be a safe haven in Atlanta. When she'd thought there was still hope for the world to return to the way it was.
She knew now that there was no hope. Everything had been lost in the first year of the whole ordeal, including the government and military. Everyone was making do with what they could now, and it was keeping them alive. It was giving them a chance to survive, but surviving wasn't the same as living.
Maybe it was time for her to let death come and carry her away after all. She had no real purpose here, walking on alone every day. No one would miss her, for everyone she'd ever loved had already met the fate she was facing this very moment. She wouldn't mind being reunited with her family, even if they weren't her favorite people in the world.
Emilia took one last deep breath as she let her fatigue claim her, shutting her eyes for what she expected to be her last time. If the blood loss didn't take her, the walkers surely would. She just hoped she was able to sleep through it if she was condemned to being eaten alive.