The Walking Dead - When Hope Is Lost

Alice ran as fast as her short legs would carry her. Her steel toed boots were beginning to rub blisters on the backs of her legs, but she couldn't care about that. Right now, there were perhaps a hundred of the hungry bastards on her ass. Some of them moved faster than others. While she didn't understand the differences in their speed and apparent agility, she understood one thing: If she didn't outrun them, they would kill her.

Her shotgun slammed against her shoulder blades, attached to a leather strap that did less than hold the stupid thing down as she ran.

Hitting a curb, she jumped, hoping that the sudden incline would at least take out a few of the dead. It did…but only a few…

One false move and she was down, having caught her toe in a crack. Normally, she knew better than to fire a gun in the city. It attracted them. They could hear, and they could smell; at least enough to weed food out of their little mob. Rolling onto her back, she positioned her shotgun as one of them grabbed her foot bringing it's mouth down.

"AH!", she squealed a bit, before blasting it's head to pieces. The elderly man with half a jaw, behind Mr. Sticky bits fell back a bit as the blast took out part of his chest. She had to move quickly, or the rest would close in on her.

"Dammit…", she groaned, backing up in a sort of crab walk. Standing, she started to run again.

--

A girl's panicked voice perked Mayson's ear up, as he stuffed a hand full of beef jerky in his mouth. He chewed quickly and pulled his gun, taking the safety off as he walked toward the voice. He didn't honestly care about this girl, but no human deserved to be torn limb from limb. No human deserved the treatment that most of the race had received the past few weeks.

BAM!

He fell, his back slamming into the ground as he took on the extra hundred pounds against his chest. Opening his eyes, he stared up at the face, sure it was another walking dead thing.

The girl scurried away from him, shaking, and drew her shotgun. Instantly, Mayson threw his hands up, "Whoa whoa whoa! I'm human. Living breathing human! I swear…"

"Are you bit?"

"What?", Mayson asked her, as if oblivious to the question. She pumped her shotgun, placing a shell into the chamber and Mayson flinched, nodding his head slightly with his eyes closed, "No. No, I'm not bitten. Are you?"

"Hell no. I wouldn't be talking' to ya if I was…", she spat at him, and he raised his eyebrows.

"Alright, then. I'm going to stand up…slowly. You're going to…", he reached a hand up, and brushed the shotgun barrel to the side, away from his nose, "…relax a bit, and we'll get out of here. If you don't kill me…I can help you."

The girl stared at him for a good few seconds, before ejecting all five shells from her shotgun, and reloading them. She placed it back on safety with precision, and slung it over her back, "Fine…Where's your group?"

"Dead."

"Mine too.", she whispered, taking a deep breath.

"Then we have something in common. It's a start…", Mayson replied with a smirk. He motioned for her to follow him as the corpses began trudging toward them. They snuck down an alleyway and up a ladder, staring down at the death below.

This was the world, now…

Atlanta, Georgia. This was the last place Theo wanted to be. He's been awake and relatively alone for fifty hours straight. The world around him has drastically changed in the past two weeks. Most of the world's humans have degenerated into some invulnerable cannibal. Through dumb luck Theo figured out the way to stop these creatures is by causing blunt force trauma to the skull. Before the radios and televisions stopped working people were calling this an infection. Bullshit. Infections can be cured. Go ahead and try curing someone that will unknowingly rip their hands off to escape handcuffs while they don't even react to being maimed! That was another sickening discovery that made Theo trust his knowledge; blunt force trauma to the brain.

Gunshots disturbed the man's daydream. Lately that sound was as common as seeing a bird. However, these shots were quite close. Theo rushed to the window while leaving a three quarters filled shopping cart in the aisle. This halfway looted corner pharmacy/market has not been targetted by the dead. Window posters and metal shutters made seeing into the place sort of difficult but seeing out was only a matter of looking around the obstructions. His squatted position gave him a view of most of the street. Outside, a young woman was to be the next victim of the apocolypse. Theo grimaced when she tripped and an infected closed in on her. One less vagina in the world... he regrettably thought.

Surprisingly, the girl blasted the monster away with a shotgun. Furthermore, she was aided by some young buck before they ran down an alley. Theo receded from the window. He hoped they will survive this horror of a twisted reality. Another glance was spared for the outside world. The two were on the roof across the street! He could see the top of their heads bobbing around the top of the building.

Theo decided to bide his time. If they ever look over to his position he decided he would stand up and wave his arms as if he were doing a jumping jack minus the jumping. For now, those two were just new additions to his only TV channel.

Just a month ago Tom was in his home, drinking champagne by his pool as soft classical music lulled him to sleep. How quickly he came to be here, in an apartment stripped of everything that had value or served a practical use. Tom had been able to avoid using his hunting rifle up until now. It seemed as though it would take his own life before any of those of the dead, as he had it propped up, barrel in his mouth. He wanted to end the hunger, the running, the long nights spent sleeping on the floor. This was life now, and he wanted out. The moaning of the dead served as a backdrop to his feeling of hopelessness. He began to squeeze the trigger.

A gunshot rang out. Tom passed into the world of the dead, a world of nothingness. Except he hadn't. In fact, he opened his eyes and realized that things were exactly as they were before. His gun hadn't fired at all. He stood up, dazed.

What just happened?

He looked around the room, and then ran to the window. It was then that he saw the shot's source. He saw two figures having what appeared to be a tense exchange before disappearing into an alley together. He went to grab his rifle to see if he could get a better look through his scope but they had disappeared with a trail of the dead in their wake. He ducked back behind the window and thought about what he had seen. Tom's gut reaction was a glimmer of relief that he wasn't the last man alive. That being said, he didn't really want to have to deal with other people, as he learned that events like this give people an excuse to take their frustrations out on successful, self-made men like him. Parasites is what they were. The looters that took everything he had, the group that had sailed away on his yacht to find safety somewhere else, they were no better than the dead that roamed the streets below.

All those wastes of life that were always out to get me would just love a chance to blow my head off

Tom realized that he was getting ahead of himself. Surely there are some strains of dignified, useful people like himself left out there. After all, the only one who had tried to blow his head off so far was him. He actually started to weigh his options. He can sit and wait to die, or go out on the slim chance that he can actually make something of the short, brutish life that he had left.

He stood up and stumbled into the wall. At first he opened his scotch to make the shaking stop, and now he had to admit to himself that perhaps he was a bit drunk. Nonetheless, he packed his things, slung his rifle over his back, and ran down the stairs onto the streets below, cigar in one hand, hunting knife in the other. The commotion from the gunshot had drawn the dead away, unfortunately they had been drawn in the direction that he planned to go. He tried to plan a different route, but he wasn't familiar with the urban sprawl that lay in front of him.

I'll deal with that when I get there

He had a lot of walking to do anyway, and he moved into what he felt was a stealthy crouch-walk, but was actually more of a stooping, drunken shamble.

Daniel's breaths were heavy and he even gasped between them, he was exhuasted, but how could he not be, he ran no less then five miles in less then forty-five minutes. He clasped his Splitting Maul and was bent over leaned aganist the wall of a Janitor's Closet. He was not actually sure what kind of building it was, he had come in the back, but he decided he needed to secure it. He left the back and went towards the front, but noticed a set of signs, they listed different sections and the directions to go. He had found himself inside the Atlanta Police Department. He continued in, finding himself in the, Shooting Range & Armory, as it was listed. He was scoruing through boxs of stuff looking for something useful, but was only meeting empty ammo containers. He stopped, dead silent, a noise peaked his interest. It came from the the adjacent room, he queitly stood tall, gripped his maul tightly and slipped to the doorway, inside stood two of the walking dead. "Fuck." He thought to himself, he was assesing what to do, then he laid his maul down and pulled two knives from his field set. Quietly taking a few steps into the room, he quickly lunged forward and thrusted the blades into the back of the reanimated bodies' heads. He pulled hsi blades form them and cleaned, then slid them back in the sheathe. He scanned the two he killed, an officer, and a civilian. The cop had no gun, but a pair of cuffs. He took those and returned to the back door and latched the cuffs around the handles to close it. He went past the range this time towards the offices, he scanned for my undead, but none were in sight or earshot, so he started rummaging through desks. "Nothing, nothing..... Fuck you." He said aloud while sitting in one of the chairs. He happened to notice something across the room, next to a drunk tank.

Ever since he was positioned in the states sh** got real the infection spread and so did the chaos,before the TV's and radios went down Captain realised he was better of finding a group, strength in numbers he thought. He was remembering being back in jolly good old England with his team he thought back to what the corporal had said before having his intestines pulled out when suddenly BANG gunshots.

Someone outside had fired a a shotgun he zoomed in on his optics and saw a man and a woman running away from a hoard, they were screwed unless someone did something and as usual that someone had to be him. He picked himself up and opened the apartment door there was only one "infected" and it was limping so he sneaked up behind him and hit the zombie on its head with the hammer and bashed him with the riot shield knocking it down stair's into at least twenty zombies as they all slowly turned he bolted for the fire escape.

The zombies were hot on his tail when he reached the ladder he dropped onto the ladder and slid down when he noticed how close he was to the zombies then suddenly a zombie fell on top of him. Making him lose his grip he reached out with his British multi weapon and the axe end caught on to the ladder, the zombie clung onto his leg ready to bite, Captain turned his right arm towards the zombie and fired the crossbow saying "Goodnight sweat dreams."

The zombie fell onto the street making an all mighty splat blood and guts flew everywhere after that Captain climbed down and headed towards the people trying to avoid the hoard. He stopped for cover and saw a police car and a brick he thought he might just have a way of getting round and escaping the zombie hoard.

"Where are you, girl?" Kim spoke to himself as he went through the shelves in the abandoned grocery store. Of course there was nothing there, everything was either rotten or long retrieved by some luckier survivor. He turned to the window as he checked the last shelf. He left all of them open, so that any other survivor that might possibly stumble upon this shop knew there was no point in wasting his or hers time here. It was as much as Kim could do for the rest of the survivors in this ruined world. A month ago he came here to record his songs. He remembered this neighborhood well. Well, as much as he could remember it from the one time he stayed here. How in the hell did things change so fast? People on the news spoke of an unknown illness, whilst some babbled on and on about God's punishment for our sins. This was no illness, this was a pure holocaust of mankind itself. How did it came to be? He didn't know, nor he wanted to know. Not right now at least.

Looking out of the window, he had a clean view of the street. "Lily, where in the world are you?" He called her name out again. Of course, no one was there to answer him. Blood dripped from the tip of his bat that was attached to his back. Glancing one more time around the shop, he turned to the door, ready to leave through the same window he came in. What then? He would hopefully be able to climb back to the building next to this shop, the one he formerly came from, and then proceed from there. With one leg he stepped out in the hallway, carefully stepping over a dead walker. He managed to deal with him as soon as he came in here, luckily no other walkers seemed to inhabit this store. For some reason, today, a lot of walker activity was going on out in the street. Good for him, yes, but also bad should he find himself down there. He had to keep to the heights. Checking at the minimum two story buildings, like this store. Looking right, a window came into his eyesight, the one he came in from. It was still open. He sighed in relief, noticing how there was seemingly no activity on the floor. Before he left, however, he crouched down besides the body, checking the pockets. In the inner pocket of the jacket was a bloodied map of this part of the town. A smile made its way to Kim's face as he put it in his own inner pocket. He was sure it would come in handy at one point. Not wanting to waste anymore time, he made his way to the window, carefully going back out. He stood on an emergency ladder and was happy to see that the ladder was high enough for him to make his way back to the building he originally descended from.

He grabbed a hold of the edge of the building, using all the strength he could muster to pull himself up. It was then that he heard a gunshot. He still didn't know to differ the types of gunshots, but it was something with much more firepower than a simple handgun. Situated up on the small roof, he could see most of the street. Some girl was running away from the walkers, taking one down in the moment of sheer panic. She knew how to handle a gun so he was sure she was aware it wasn't smart to shoot in the street. Especially with, what he know recognized was, a shotgun. It was a desperate move. He almost had an urge to rush down and help her, but she stumbled across another person. She seemed to be safe, for now. Both of them. But they weren't the only people out in this ruckus. He spotted two other people, but only barely, he couldn't make out much, except that they weren't dead. They moved far too... alive. There was no going down there for now, not while many walkers are attracted to the gunshot. He was safe here for a while, it was a flat roof, no entrance to the building from it and no way for the walkers to sneak up here unless they fell from the sky. He hoped they wouldn't.

What to do? He pondered about the matter. Approach the two? Or one of the two people he spotted nearby as well? He put down his backpack, taking out the map from his pocket. He unfolded in onto the flat roof and started looking for a way out of here without being near the street.

sitting atop a fire escape on the second floor of a drug store directly across from the Atlanta Police department was a figure dressed in black. Below him was a small group of walkers staring hungrily up at him, waving their hands about and showing their bloody wretched jowels as they hissed and moaned at the juicy man-steak jokingly throwing moldy breadcrumbs at their feet as if they were a flock of pigeons... or maybe chickens, since chickens can't fly.

"Here lil chiki chiki chiki, come get your suppa." Jack said mockingly at his undead pigeons. "Not hungry? Oh well..." Jack stood up on the fire escape and spat at the closest one to his feet. He felt no remorse for the infected. All they were had left them and only now all is left are mindless husks, relying on some fucked up instincts.

Just then a loud bang echoed across the street. Some kind of gunshot that he couldn't quite make out what type. He wasn't the only one who heard it, his flock of "pigeons" turned and made a B-line straight for whoever made the shot. "What idiots! First rule of Zombie 101: Never use noisy weapons!" Jacks knowledge of whatever these things were came mostly from video games and bad Thursday night TV shows, but most of it turned out to be true by learning first hand. As long as he followed those simple rules, he will survive.... or at least he hoped.

Since the walkers got so easily distracted, and his fun was spoiled, he decided to investigate the sound. Slowly climbing down the fire escape and double checking his surroundings with every step. When his foot reached solid ground, he pulled his bow off his pack and placed it in front of him, complimenting it with an arrow. Watching the group of pigeons stumble its way towards the noise patiently waiting for his moment to pick off any stragglers that fall behind with his bow. "Just a modern day William Tell..." Jack muttered to himself jokingly. Using his knife to pry out the arrows from its skull afterwards was a must. his arrows were already dwindling, but if it meant that whoever fired that shot had one less walker to deal with... than it was worth it. "Who knows! It might even be some cute redhead or something..." he joked again.

On the first platform, Alice stopped. Climbing the first twenty rungs of the ladder was exhausting for someone with no upper body strength. Her arms ached and her chest burned, but the scariest part of it all was the fact that the undead seemed to know how to grab the ladder. That meant…

"We have to keep going…", she murmured to Mayson, who was also panting, his feet clanking against the metal platform as he paced. She couldn't tell who was more terrified, but it was better for her to keep an even head, even if that meant shooting the stranger in the foot to slow him down. Shaking the thought from her head, she motioned toward the walkers who were dangerously close to their vulnerable feet.

"Yeah. You're right. Think we can make it all the way to the roof?", Mayson asked, staring down with nervous eyes.

"Sure. We made it this far. I'll go up first…"

With that, she took off up the long section of ladder to the roof. Once there, maybe they could find a sign of salvation. Maybe there WAS salvation for this city. If not, maybe they could at least find more humans. After a few minutes of climbing, Alice hoisted herself onto the roof, rolling off the edge, onto the tar covered gravel. They were safe. Mayson fell not far from her, panting.

"What now? Unless you're a shockingly awesome Parkour master…we're stuck here."

"Now. We wait.", Alice said, standing. She glanced around, and narrowed her eyes at one of the windows across the street. She could have sworn she saw a human. Human…Walker…they all looked the same. But he looked alive…,"I don't think we're alone…Look…"

Daniel approached the drunk tank to find a man whom's fate was decided by iron. Daniel peered at the body of the man, his body lifeless, his soul saddened, but then all of a sudden he jerked to life, or that is what it intially appeared to be, but it turned out he came back a viscious walker. Daniel reacted quicky by plunging one of his knives into the head of the sitting walker, and then peering around him inside the drunk tank looking for more, but finding only a boombox. Daniel found only a .32 Schofield Revolver on the man with no ammo. He tucked the firearm into his belt and then proceeded to the front door, peeking out he saw nothing to his left and nothng straight ahead, but to his right was a large group of walkers moving towards the police department. His first reaction was to run, but he was too tired, he would have been caught in no time. He closed the door quietly and calmly, he began creating a plan inside his head, working out a way to get out of the station alive. Once he had came up with something he quickly went back to the desks and gathered as much tape as he could, he began taping down all the dispatch radios and the massive PA system the department had. Once ready he flipped all the switches and now he had to grab his catalyst. Returning to the drunk tank he grabbed the boombox and checked it's Cassette and CD holders, it held a single Cassette the title worn out, but the Artist was still visible, Daniel smirked as it read, "Led Zeppelin." He checked the batteries, all of them were there, but he only had about an hour of play time. He rushed back to the PA center and placed the boombox on the counter, he turned it on, hit the repeat button, flipped it to track six and then hit play. The song Kashmir blasted from the boombox as it's volume was maxed, same for all the devices Daniel prepared in the station, he closed his eyes and jammed for only a second before now bolting through the front door and down the street, it was quite a long street, and as he got close to the end he was met by another group that came around a corner from an alley way, he turned to see another group that had split from the hoard now tailing him while the hoard piled into the station. While searching for a new route he took an educated guess at the number of walkers, he came up the answer a moment later saying to himself under his breath,"Too many." He noticed an open apartment building and darted in just as the walkers came within feet of him. He ran up the stairs, adrenaline the only thing keeping his weary body going. He made it to the third floor before finding the way to the roof blocked, it had been sealed by people on the fourth floor, probably isolating themselves from walkers. He rushed to a window in the front of a room, it was a window overlooking the street, but he had to do what was necessary. He pulled off his shoes and took the strings from them and used them to tie his maul onto his back, then he slipped from the window onto the building's face, slowly and carefully he scaled it, moving inch by inch until he finely made it to the roof. He rolled onto his back after making it over the ledge. "Fuck!" He screamed in his exhausted, hoarse, nearly gone voice. His breathing even heavier now then it was before. He stared into the sky, thinking back to a better time.

Tom set out on his trek with a brazen confidence, but now found himself panting, drenched in sweat, and unsure of what the hell he was thinking when he decided to head towards the sound of a gunshot. Tom had never been one for physical activity, in fact he'd probably done more running around in the past couple of weeks than he had in the whole year beforehand. If he couldn't talk, buy, or cheat his way through something, it wasn't worth his time. Lucky for him the alcohol dulled not only his sense of judgement but his soreness as well, which is why he was still walking... although he most certainly wasn't graceful. What the alcohol didn't do was enhance his respiratory capabilities, and so he had to stop and take a break.

Probably a good place to assess things anyway.

He leaned up against a car and sat for a moment before peering over to look things over. He saw the alley that the two figures had disappeared into. It was about 5 blocks away, and the area between him and it was crawling with the dead. There was no way he would be able to sprint and make it. He looked around him. The corner store seemed like a better bet. There weren't as many of those things around it. Maybe there would be some other survivors around. Tom shifted into a crouch. He took a deep breath.

I'll go on three

One...

Two...

Three!

Right as he shifted his weight to break into a run, the sound of blaring rock music made him stop and cover his ears.

What the hell?

He realized that it was coming from the police station. The ones that were on the street took notice, and began heading in its direction.

Does someone in there have a death-wish?

Almost as if on cue, he saw someone sprint out of the building and take off down the street.

"HEY" Tom tried to shout but he knew it was no use with the music playing. He took off running after him, but it was obvious that this person was much younger and faster than him. He tried to wheeze out "Wait up", but it came out as an unintelligible whine. He tried to follow behind him, but he disappeared into an apartment building with several of the dead close behind him. Tom would have screamed a trail of obscenities, but he couldn't spare any breath, as he had drawn the attention of several of the dead. He noticed that there was now an opening in the direction of his original destination, and he ran toward the alleyway. Despite the trail of zombies behind him, Tom realized that he was actually going to make it, as even in his state, he was more agile than these particular corpses. Tom got his hopes up as he got closer

Maybe there's some kind of fortified base with food and water and the military to protect people

Tom finally made it, turned into the alley, and saw... nothing. Even in his stressful situation he momentarily stopped in his tracks.

How could I be so stupid, this alley was probably just part of an elaborate escape route, they could be miles away by now.

Tom's defeatist thought was interrupted by the sight of a ladder. He was about to climb it when he realized that he simply didn't have the energy. His eyes darted around. There had to be something he could to. A dumpster came into his vision, and with it, a thought.

No way, I'd rather get eaten alive.

The moan of the hoard closing in made him realize that no, he really wouldn't.

It's probably not that different from any other part of the city anyway.

Tom opened the lid and held his breath to avoid gagging and hesitating. He used his last bit of energy to fall in. The lid shut behind him, and he was enveloped in darkness. The sound of the dead was muffled, and further covered still by the sound of his heavy breathing.

Can those things smell me in here? Can they... open lids?

Tom sure hoped not. Either way, it was time to wait now.