July 30th, 2037

The day started off like the others had the past few weeks. Nicholas knew it was a lousy idea of his father's to stay behind while others of their neighborhood trekked off in search of the refuge settlement that had not long since been established. There was no way of knowing exactly where it was, and for all Nicholas knew, it could have been less than ten miles down the road. But he wasn't going to take any risks. His father already had - and it got him infected. Now, Nicholas had his ill mother and traumatized little sister to look after. It wasn't easy. It was the hardest thing he'd ever been through in his life. This whole thing was. It was never supposed to happen. He cursed himself for having talked so animatedly to his friends about having a zombie apocalypse. How awesome it would be.

Awesome now, ain't it? the voice in his head spat.

His eyes focused on his work - his sister had been bitten and he was trying to patch up the wound the best that he could, while praying that she didn't get infected as well. Their mother was not looking good. Nicholas expected to have to put a bullet in her head before the week ended.

"It's okay, Alissa," he said softly to his sister. "It will heal. You'll be fine."

She was crying, and for the right reasons. There was little chance that she wouldn't become a walking corpse. From what Nicholas had seen, it took significantly less time for the infection to spread through bites than any other contraction of the illness. It pained him to think about it. His father was gone. His mother was...pretty much gone. Now, his sister faced the same inevitable fate. How long before he, too, would become a victim?

"I'm scared," Alissa said. "I want to go home."

Nicholas did too. They were currently using their local Wal-Mart as a shelter. Not bad, considering. Except all of the supplies, food, etc. had been ransacked. They were left with almost nothing. Which reminded him of what he needed to do soon: go looking for supplies.

It had only taken two days for Mattie's entire family to die. Interestingly enough, none of them had become infected with the virus that turned human beings into reanimated, flesh-hungry corpses. No, while they were all busy worrying about that, they had forgotten that there were other diseases that lurked in the carcass of a collapsed civilization. Even worse, her brother had fallen victim to something much less visible: despair. He'd been the first death. After spending several hours making hardtack and making weapons out of broken glass shards, she'd come up to check on him. He'd hanged himself with a sheet from the balcony of the house they were barricaded in. There wasn't even a note.

As if that hadn't rattled her enough, death decided to tear through the rest of her siblings and her adoptive mother. All of them. The background was this: She'd had several jugs of water sitting on the kitchen counter. Half had just been collected, and Mattie had put the iodine tablets in them not five minutes before. The other half were safe to drink. And she, in her utter stupidity, had neglected to label which were which. Her youngest sister, Isabella, who was nine, had woken up from a long nap and went straight for the water. No one saw her drink from the contaminated jug, but in less than an hour she had a steadily-rising fever, vomiting and diarrhea.

With no running water to dispose of all that biological waste, Mattie and her mother were unable to contain what they both were fairly sure was cholera, no matter how much bleach they depleted from what they had. They were the second ones to fall ill, and from there it spread like wildfire. Within twelve hours, everyone in that damn house was ill, and within six, Isabella had died from dehydration, followed by the rest of her siblings. Mattie didn't quite know how she survived, as she spent at least a day unable to move with a dangerously-high fever, passing in and out of vibrant fever-dreams and wild hallucinations that she was too disoriented to distinguish from reality, and of course, vomiting out more than she thought she had in her.

And then, suddenly, she felt fine, despite the entire house smelling like feces and rotting bodies. Mattie wasted no time grieving––she could do that later–– and rooted around until she found cans of gasoline. She'd doused everything, walked out and thrown a lit match over her shoulder, unsure what to do and laden with heavy jugs of clean water and a hastily-gathered pack.

Now, to the present. She had planned on strictly rationing her hardtack but it turned out she didn't really need to. She hadn't felt like eating for the three days since she'd walked out of that burning hellhole of a house. Now, disoriented with hunger and rattled with the ever-present paranoia of a living corpse coming out of nowhere and gnawing her flesh, Mattie stumbled clumsily in the direction of a Wal-Mart. She hoped there were enough supplies left in there to restock, but she certainly wasn't going to count on it.

"Just close your eyes," Nicholas told her, gently running his thumbs over her eyelids. He was shaking. His voice was shaking. He had to go out there. And he was terrified.

The next difficult decision he had to make was this: did he take the rifle, low on ammo, while he scavenged and leave his sister defenseless, or did he leave the rifle, low on ammo but still loaded, with an eleven year old girl who had never fired a weapon before? Despite what might have been best, he settled on the latter. He wrapped Alissa's arms around the rifle as if it were a teddy bear, and her eyes cracked open to look at the weapon.

"I'm leaving that with you and you need to be a big girl about it, okay? If anyone, even mom, tries to attack you, aim at them and pull the trigger. You understand?"

Alissa looked up at him and nodded.

"It's gonna be loud if you have to pull the trigger. Hopefully you won't need to. I'm going to find food for us, okay? I'll be right back."

They were in a Wal-Mart. A Wal-Mart, and yet it was utterly without food of any kind. And any kind would be paradise right now. They had a single box of Saltine crackers which was getting emptier by the day, and they couldn't long survive on just crackers and water. Nicholas feared they might have to resort to cannibalism...but how sanitary would that be?

The thought causing his skin to crawl, Nicholas headed for the front entrance of the store. As soon as he stepped out, wielding his machete, he caught sight of a stumbling humanoid figure and immediately took cover, back inside of the building, behind a crane game machine. He peeked out from its edge, completely oblivious to the fact that he was visible through the transparent glass, and eyed the figure warily. It was a woman, but whether living dead or just plain living, he couldn't rightly tell immediately.

There was a flicker of movement in the corner of Mattie's eye that made her stop and stand alert. Suddenly she thought of what might be inside the Wal-Mart. What if people had gotten infected in there? What if it was crawling with the living dead? Why hadn't she considered this before? Heart pounding, she reached into her backpack, got out her slingshot, and picked a rock up off the ground. It wasn't by any means a very effective weapon, but a properly-aimed jagged rock could break open the skull and make it much easier for her to toss another stone and obliterate the brain.

But she didn't shoot the sharp-edged rock which she held at the ready. She wanted to know if this person was...a person, before she leaped to conclusions. But the figure had disappeared. It was somewhere in the Wal-Mart, near the entrance, but she couldn't see it anymore. Mattie weighed her risks. She'd been sleeping partly on rooftops, partly in wrecked bedrooms of houses she wasn't sure were infected. She was desperate for shelter, real shelter that protected from the elements and from disease.

She took a single deep breath. In and out. Stay near the entrance. Be quiet. She picked up several more rocks, her chest aching with dread. She didn't want to go in there, she wanted to run far away. But if she could find food in there, food and fresh clothes and supplies, then maybe it'd put off her death for a good while.

She approached on newly-energized feet, with a quickened pace.

In and out, she told herself. In and out. In and out. Mattie stepped foot into the Wal-Mart with the feeling that most people have when entering a Wal-Mart (impending doom), and pulled back her slingshot, scanning the entrance of the store through narrow eyes.

As the woman neared the Wal-Mart further, she seemed to be wielding something - a slingshot? Nicholas could have scoffed. What damage would a slingshot do to a zombie? His grip on the machete tightened, and he held it with both hands like a baseball bat. His entire body was shaking violently out of fear, his heart pounding hard against his chest. A whimper threatened to break out of his throat.

Finally, he mustered the courage to squeak, "Stop!"

Mattie jumped violently at the sound of a voice, said "Asscheek sandwich!" and whipped her head around to look at the man. He was shaking. She was shaking. Yes, a well-aimed rock or two might concuss a living human, but it was rotting flesh that it worked best against and even then there was much less than a guarantee it'd do its job right. She looked down at the weapon. It looked like a machete. She was practically at his mercy, even if she managed to get out her hunting knife.

"I just need some supplies," she said, trying to keep her voice firm. "I'll be out before you know it." She knew very well that even most living humans had lost the ability to reason when society collapsed.

Nicholas had revealed himself, stepping out from behind the crane game machine. It felt like his heart was in his throat and ready to be vomited out at any moment. His cursed limbs were shaking like leaves so that he could only imagine what his voice was going to sound like when he finally mustered the audacity to speak again. Still, he tightly held the machete like a bat. In reality, the slingshot wouldn't do him much harm whereas he could get a few good slices in with his weapon, no matter how dull it was.

"I just need some supplies," said the woman.

Solemnly, Nicholas shook his head. "D-Don't we all?" he said, rather upset at the fact that his supposed to be witty comment came out as a stuttered mumbling. "There's- There's nothing here," he continued. "That's why I w-was leaving. I have to, uh, I have to, uh," he shook his head again, frustrated. He spoke slower, "I have to find my own supplies."

Mattie swallowed. Shit. She was exhausted. Depressed. Just wanted to lay down and–– a vision of the last time she saw her brother flashed through her head. No. She wanted to live, god damn it. This guy seemed worn out too. From how much he was shaking in both his voice and his physicality, he was either too scared to be any good at defending himself, or too malnourished. Or both. Perhaps they'd be more effective at finding useful things if they joined forces.

Trusting the wrong person could be her last mistake, however.

Her voice came out as measured and taut as she felt. "Then perhaps I can join you."

"Join me?"

These words confused Nicholas simply because of the fact that the only other human he'd come in contact with had tried to kill him over half a loaf of bread. His whole demeanor transitioned from anxiously alert to depressingly exhausted. There was nothing other than his own life that he had to lose in letting this woman join him in his - their - fight for survival. His mother would not see the end of the week, and his sister didn't have much longer either. Of that, he was sure.

"Sure," he finally said, "but again, there's nothing here. We have to go somewhere else."

She nodded curtly and let out a breath of tentative relief. For now, it seemed like they were set to cooperate, and though she would certainly have to keep an eye on him until more trust developed between them. If it did. Mattie had her doubts that anyone outside of her family would earn such trust, and, well, that meant the whole world.

"Deal. We split what we find evenly, got it?" She hoped that would be advantageous enough for him to settle on it, but she had little hope and zero faith. Why should she? "Fuck me over and that little sword of yours is going straight up your ass," she warned. And then she got moving, exiting the Wal-Mart swiftly in a way that left no room for argument. She made a note to get the knife out of her backpack and have it somewhere she could quickly arm herself with it, just in case he became a threat.

But somehow she had a seed of doubt that he would. He looked weirdly familiar, which was nonsense. He was a complete stranger.

"That's no way to talk to someone who just agreed to become an ally," Nicholas growled, though his adrenaline was pumping harder upon voicing the mild threat. Who was she to talk to him like that? Still, he felt the need to shake it off and let it go. It would be no use making living enemies - there were enough undead ones to handle.

"There's a hardware store and a convenience store side-by-side about five miles from here," he said. "Which, as you can tell, is almost the middle of nowhere. I- are you from around here? Oh, God, how rude of me. I'm Nicholas, but everyone calls me Nick."

It was a spontaneous question, but Nicholas couldn't shake the feeling that he'd met this person before. His eyes squinted in confusion as he stared at her just a little too long before he shook his head and looked away. There was no way he'd ever met her before in his life, yet he felt almost emotionally connected with her. As if they'd been through a lot together.

How stupid.

Mattie felt the hairs on the back of her neck rise at the tone of the man's voice, but she responded with only a quiet nod. There'd be no use arguing; even if it didn't escalate to something dangerous, it might mean the loss of an ally. She didn't know how useful he'd be yet, but she'd just have to weather it. Hardware store, convenience store. Hmm. She doubted that they'd be unlooted, but perhaps the hardware store would have been overlooked for more immediate needs like food and water.

The man's introduction came out of nowhere, and the name Nicholas took Mattie by surprise. Her eyes widened for just a moment but her expression was quickly back to normal. There was just something about the name Nick. Through her whole childhood, every time she'd heard the name or met someone called that, it had given her the strangest, deja-vu feeling. She'd always hated it. But this time, it felt different–– there was still a deja-vu feeling but it wasn't the same. Somehow. Maybe it was that Nicholas looked like he was feeling something similar.

"My name's Mattie," she finally said, reaching out and shaking his hand. "Um...nice to meet you."

Nicholas took Mattie's hand to shake, and it sent a jolt of electrifying shock through his body. There was something strange about the way she looked at him. Those eyes were not a stranger's eyes. He stared into them, trying to figure them out. After all, the eyes are the window into the soul. But as quickly as he felt like he knew this woman, the feeling vanished, and she was indeed but a stranger. Something about that depressed him. It made him less hopeful.

"Nice to meet you, too," he said, and it was as if his voice suddenly grew five hundred octaves deeper. It was strange. As if he had the sudden urge to be gruff, protective, manly, and Nicholas just was never manly. He shook his shoulders, and the feeling dissipated.

"Five miles is a long way to walk," he said, becoming anxious. He looked around, stiff. Scared stiff. Oh God, he was scared, but he wasn't about to let her know that. "Think we can make it?"

This was getting weird. Really weird. It shouldn't have felt this weird to meet someone, even if this someone was a stranger and they were both in the middle of an apocalyptic society fighting for their lives. Looking at him felt like reliving a dream that had been made blurry and inscrutable just by wakefulness. Nonsense of course, but it was regardless a very creepy feeling. A shiver went up Mattie's spine.

Was his voice that deep before? she wondered when he said it was nice to meet her. Maybe he was younger than he looked and was having voice-related issues. But he looked...fairly manly. She shrugged it off.

Five miles never felt like much to Mattie until now. With so many threats practically surrounding them and civilization done for, there was an endless number of possibilities as to how one or both of them could be killed on the journey. Five miles...could she make it? When had her last meal been?

"It's doable," she grunted. It was a no-no to show any sign of weakness in front of a stranger in a situation like this. Even if he did seem strangely familiar.

As Nicholas anxiously awaited Mattie's reply, he was constantly looking around their surroundings as they walked. It was pretty dead - no pun intended - and there didn't seem to be any unliving roaming around. Which was strange. Perhaps they'd been fooled into thinking there were no victims remaining.

The strangest part about the zombies, for lack of a better word, was that they did not consume their victims. They simply infected the healthy and moved on to search for more targets. They simply wanted more of them. It was as if they didn't even need to feed on anything. After all, why would they? Their organs were not technically functioning, their brain seeming to be only in control of motor functions. Ah yes, that was the key. Aim for the head.

Except Nicholas had nothing to actually aim with, he'd left his freakin' rifle in the Wal-Mart with his little sister.

At Mattie's reply, he nodded, was silent for a moment, then said, "Alright then," which was a bit awkward considering the time that had already passed in silence. He looked in the direction opposite of Mattie in an attempt to hide his obviously embarrassed expression, then cleared his throat.

"Have you, uh, been in any houses down this way? I came from the south end, and-" he sputtered because he'd just said he came from the south end which Mattie probably wouldn't have taken in a goofy way, but made him all the more embarrassed. "And- and, uh, well, I was in the houses before that. Like, I mean, I looked in the houses while we made our way to the Wal-Mart."

Mattie couldn't help but smile just a little. He was so awkward and flustered, it was almost cute. It, in fact, almost made her forget what he was saying because she'd gotten a bit too caught up in how he was saying it. Which was incredibly stupid and not very much in her primary interest, which was of course, surviving. (Repopulating the planet was so far out of the question that she almost scooted away from the man.)

Back on target. The suggestion of the houses made her a little cold. They were all so filthy, and they creaked in the night when she was alone but for her thoughts, her memories of her brother swinging from his bedsheets, of Isabella panting her last breaths exhausted from all the vomiting she'd done, of her own fever dreams.

All she said was, "I have been in a couple of the houses. They're not safe."

Nicholas caught Mattie's smirk, which made him feel even more humiliated. He was starting to become frustrated, wishing that he'd never met another living person at all. Then another part of him told him that this was one of the best things that could have happened in a situation like this. Like a miracle. If he even still believed in miracles. Civilization was gone - and only recently so. The heaviness of his heart became even heavier.

"Not safe?" he asked, more of a statement than a question. His voice had dropped to a grumbling mumble.

Going in the following houses was kind of exciting to Nicholas, but now that Mattie told him that they weren't safe, his excitement was ruined. It wasn't very likely that there would have been anything worthwhile in them, anyway. Either the previous residents took all the food with them, or scavengers came along afterward and looted them. Their only hope was to see if those small stores down the road had anything to salvage, which was also very unlikely, but Nicholas kept his hopes up anyway.

As they continued down the deserted road, the hand not holding the machete fidgeted with the rugged cloth of Nicholas' pants. The anxiety he was beginning to feel was too much. He was paranoid. What if this person killed him? Alissa would never know. And she couldn't fend for herself and their mother. What if Alissa was dying, and Nicholas wasn't there to comfort her through her last breaths? The thoughts made him feel sick. If he'd eaten anything but crackers the past few days, he might vomit. His hand loosely clutched his chest.

As Mattie trudged along beside Nick, she found her mind wandering. This was always a bad thing, but the more she tried to pull her thoughts back to the present, the farther they went. For some reason she was frustrated: it was as if this had all happened before. As if she'd just sat through a mediocre movie, and then to her distaste it rewinded and started to play again. Except she couldn't get up and leave. She couldn't even ask for some popcorn.

Things were a blur right now. She tried to sort out her thoughts, but the idea that she was in a rerun wasn't quite graspable and it always escaped just as she almost had a hold on it. That combined with the memories of her weird fever dreams, and her desperate efforts to prevent the cholera outbreak, and just plain loneliness, made it all even more confusing. One foot after another. She walked on auto-pilot.

Mattie glanced at her newfound companion. He was clutching his chest. A chill of alarm seeped through her bones. He wasn't sick, was he? She stepped away at the thought. Perhaps he was just unfit. Unfit in a zombie apocalypse. That would not do for either of them.

"Are you okay? Do you need––water?"

It was not apparent to Nicholas that he was clutching his chest as if he were having a heart attack. He looked at Mattie with a confused expression, then down at his own hand with the same expression, and removed it from his chest, letting it hang by his side as he spoke.

"Oh, no, no, I'm fine. I'm sorry, I was just thinking about...stuff."

He shook his head, filthy hair bouncing to the sides. Suddenly, his legs were feeling like a lead, and a dreaded thought entered his brain - what if he'd contracted something from Alissa? No, that couldn't be. Was it spread through the air? It seemed to be at first, until everyone started rising from their graves. Now it only seemed to be spread through body fluids. Wait. That didn't make any sense.

"I'm fine," he repeated with a bark, as if she'd asked again. "Let's just - hey, look," he pointed in front of him at a small, abandoned restaraunt. He doubted there was anything of use in there, but it would be good to have the distraction. They could salvage whatever was left. "Let's check it out."

"Ah, good, good." Mattie could understand that. She'd been thinking about "stuff" too. Stuff being everything from the fever dreams, to how she'd keep clean water well-stocked, to what she'd do in the case that this guy snapped and tried to murder her. Despite her high guard around Nick, she thought it reasonable that his thought process was similar.

His repeated "I'm fine" made her jump. It sounded as if he was trying to convince himself as well as her, and that made her even more nervous, to the point of mild chest pain. His suggestion to check out the restaurant seemed rushed and irrational and it made her neck tingle, but she didn't exactly have much to lose, she thought. Mattie was without a family now, without anyone but herself to protect and it seemed like anywhere she tried to go in terms of survival would be pointless, a dead end.

She shook the thought from her head. There could be cans of non-perishables in there, and they'd come in a lot of handy. It'd also be dark, and harder to see any of the zombies in the case that they should be attacked. But it wasn't going to get any lighter outside, and the risk could prove to be worth the reward.

Mattie took the knife out of her backpack and headed toward the entrance without answering. She didn't know why, but she felt a need to protect Nick.