If there was a time when his world wasn't some desolate wasteland, Nicholas didn't remember it. Actually, he did remember it, but it seemed so long ago even if it was only about six months prior. He didn't know when he started considering the world a wasteland. It seemed to be around the time his father died and his neighbors fled, leaving only his little sister, his mother, and himself out of the people he knew and trusted. For the most part, it had been his mother taking care of him and Alissa. She was much more experienced in all types of salvaging and physical labor than he or his sister were, considering his life was spent playing video games and Alissa was only ten. The three of them had stayed holed in their house as long as they could, but the more people died, the more monsters rose.

A zombie apocalypse was never supposed to happen in any version of reality, of that Nicholas was sure; not for real. It was meant to be something impossible -- a fantasy of nerds like him who thought they could fight for themselves even though they barely knew how to shoot a gun. Nicholas had personally never shot a gun in his life, and if there was one way to stop a member of the undead, it was by killing their motor functions. If it didn't kill them altogether, at least they couldn't chase you.

The infection had started sometime last year. In fact, the first known case was written off as a version of the common cold in a two year old. It was so overlooked because the symptoms were so mundane until they weren't. And when they weren't, it was too late. Whatever poison was in the infected's veins had already spread to their brain by the time it was noticed, and because the illness was so difficult to pinpoint, it spread like wildfire. There was hardly a declaration of a state of emergency before people were dropping like flies -- then rising. When they started rising, that was the problem.

Members of the undead, affectionately referred to then on out as zombies, were walking right out of morgues. Out of the hospitals they died in. The houses. Nobody understood it. No scientist or doctor could reason it. They didn't even have the time. People were urged to stay indoors and do not interact with them. It wasn't easy for the people who saw their deceased loved ones coming to the front door. Of course they'd invite them in.

That's how it got so bad.

Six months have gone by, and as far as Nicholas is concerned, the world is done for. In reality, it could only be his city for all he knew. After all, neighbors were fleeing, convinced there was refuge elsewhere. Somewhere north, they'd said. His father had a plan to pack up and head north, too. Before he died. Well, Nicholas assumed he'd died. After all, he hadn't seen him in over three months, and he doubted his father would really just leave them like that.

He didn't want to believe that.

The falling of autumn wouldn't have been so bad if there had been electricity, or heat in general. But it got lethally cold in the winter, and Nicholas wasn't sure how much preparation he could do. Not since his mother fell ill two weeks ago, her health sharply deteriorating each day. He knew it wouldn't be long before he would have to burn her body. He didn't know if he'd be able to handle that.

It was cool on the morning he handed his unused rifle to Alissa, but not unusually so. If anything, he was glad that it didn't seem like it was going to get colder in those months than is usually did. As he handed the weapon to his sister, she looked at him both like he'd lost his mind and with confusion.

"I'm going to go out," he started slowly, "and see if there's anyone left. Yesterday I saw a group heading towards town, but I...well, I wasn't sure if they were alive." He paused, taking his hands off of the gun. "Anyway, we need help. I don't know how much longer I can take care of us. I'm going to find someone who knows something about survival. Okay?"

The little girl's eyes were lost but frightened, and she nodded, "Okay." Her small hands curled around the weapon, and she looked back at their mother lying on the floor of the Walmart they'd taken shelter in, dirtying blankets and pillows bunched around her. When she looked back at Nicholas, she only said, "Be safe. I love you."

"I love you too," he said, keeping a stoic expression in the utmost attempt to hide his sheer terror of going outside. The good news was that the sun was up. They didn't seem to come out in sunlight.

He set off scouring the neighborhood, armed only with a shovel that would do little to no damage if danger arose, but he wasn't about to leave his little sister defenseless. For the most part, the neighborhood was empty. There were cats and dogs roaming between buildings that didn't seem to be infected. The vegetation had grown over and infested most of the houses. Any house that didn't seem to be abandoned seemed currently empty, whether because its occupants were out or some other reason Nicholas didn't want to ponder.

Then he came to a crumbling building, ruins of a house. He swore on his life he saw movement in the window. Quick, frightened movement. Feeling a ball of fear and anxiety in his stomach, he ascended the short stairs and slowly pushed open the door. It creaked loudly, practically hanging from its hinges. There was a short wall immediately to his right, blocking the view of the room he'd seen movement in. Brandishing the shovel, he inched closer to the opened archway. "Anyone here?" he called, brief and barked even though his voice wavered with fear.

To be quite honest, the "Zombie Apocalypse" was just another crock of bullshit that Mattie had to dedicate the majority of her life to. First it had been keeping her little shit of a drug-addict little brother out of trouble, then it had been work, then it had been trying to tell herself everything was okay as her mother started to show signs of early-onset Alzheimer's, and now, it was the fucking zombie apocalypse. Same shit, different day.

Mattie didn't even know how she'd survived this long. Out of everyone she knew, she considered herself least likely to survive a week. Yet it was the first week of social collapse that had killed her humble group of eight people. It hadn't even taken whatever infectious biological agent that turned people into zombified shells of themselves to rapidly destroy, one by one, the members of––what even was it? A team? That was a joke. These assholes could hardly agree on whose turn it was to put an iodine tablet in that day's water.

That probably explained the epidemic of Montezuma's Revenge that had killed off half of them. As for the other half, two were batshit enough to get so hung up on arguing as to what had caused the sudden rising of the dead that they couldn't even be assed to help burn the pile of dead bodies which had resulted from the previous implied wave of waterborne illness. Nope, that had been up to Mattie. The last person had been a tolerable woman. She'd tried her best to stick each day through, even though Mattie could see in her face that with every passing week she became less stable. More tired. More desperate.

Ever since that woman had hanged herself and left a note begging Mattie to forgive her, she'd been alone. She'd been wandering through quiet suburbs and avoiding people as much as possible, whether they were living or not.

At this point, the major reason she had for living was when she raided the pantries of abandoned houses and found twinkies.

Today was one of those blessed days. Mattie was just leaning back in a bloodstained bed of a very structurally-unsound house and just looking at it, admiring the twinkie through the wrapper. It was a little squished. It was okay. It was beautiful. She was just about to rip the wrapping open and scarf the thing down when a loud, male voice interrupted her and utterly ruined the moment.

Swiftly, she jumped to her feet and hid the processed treat behind her back.

"What."

"The."

"Fuck?!"

There was a thud. Like someone jumping down from somewhere, but not high up. Nicholas' muscles tensed and his grip on the shovel tightened until his knuckled were bone white. He stepped back from the archway, cowering behind the hidden part of the wall. The thud hadn't come from the room he was about to enter. It came from the opposite end of the hallway. He reasoned in his mind that there was more than one person in this house, considering he saw the movement to his right, but heard the thud to his left.

Then, a feminine voice exclaimed, "What. The. Fuck?!"

Whoever it was definitely was alive. Nicholas had not heard a zombie speak yet, much less express such emotion or fear. He slid back slowly, until his back was against the wall next to the doorway. There was a tight, icy feeling in his chest and his stomach clenched with anxiety. "Uhh," he started, but it came out akin to a noise as if the breath had been knocked out of him. He inhaled and said, "I'm- I'm, uh, not a zombie, obviously. I was just, uh, coming to find people. Like, maybe people who could help. Because me and my little sister are holed up in the Walmart down the street with-" he paused. Don't tell her your mother is ill. "-with only a little, uh, a little supplies left. And...I was just, yeah, trying to find someone who might could help. I can leave. I can leave if you want."

He winced, Way to sound courageous and independent.

"Oh."

Now was the time, of course, to tell this man to buzz off. Mattie should already have been on that, but the way he spoke made her falter. Of course. It had been ages since she'd had any human contact. The last time she had spoken to someone other than herself was the day before her last remaining companion had committed suicide, which meant that this time, however undeserving of trust this stranger might me, she couldn't just send him off.

She hated herself for it.

He could be lying. He could easily be lying.

"Fine. Eh, I don't really have any supplies. Just a crowbar, water, some tallow and a little hardtack." She looked him in the eyes as she brought out the crowbar. "I'm keeping this though."

The owner of the voice stepped out from the room to the left, speaking as she looked in his direction. She looked just as any other live human did lately -- worn out, exhausted. There were bags under her eyes that Nicholas was sure matched his own. Her hair was frazzled, and she was gripping the crowbar in her hands as tightly as he was gripping his shovel.

"Fine," she said. "Eh, I don't really have any supplies. Just a crowbar, water, some tallow, and a little hardtack. I'm keeping this though," she held determined eye contact with him as she brandished the crowbar. He looked away.

"Sure. I'm not gonna strip you of your weapons or food. I just figured it'd be smarter to travel with more people. It's just me and my sister, like I said. She's ten. Eleven? Er...sorry, I don't even know how old my own sister is, but it's not important right now, I guess. Nothing is except food and water. Anyway, uh...yeah. I'm Nick."

Nicholas looked at her again, removing one hand from the shovel to offer it to her.

Hesitantly taking Nick's hand and giving it a firm shake, Mattie muttered, "You sure talk a lot, Nick." It was a rushed handshake, and she couldn't let go fast enough even though it gave her a weird feeling that was almost bordering on being positive. At least she didn't receive some kind of electrical shock, the kind that would be expected from one of those cheap little gags. She didn't know why that had even crossed her mind. Her mind needed to shut up.

"Okay, is your sister alone? Because we should probably hurry back to her if she is."

What was she thinking?

She was a softy. This was probably going to get her killed.

Mattie seemed to be just as anxious and fearful as he was, but she wasn't showing it as much. Nicholas hated that he so easily exhibited his emotions. It wasn't something that he could help, but it was something that could get him killed in the current situation if portrayed to the wrong people.

The handshake was brief and a bit awkward. Then, Mattie asked if his sister was alone. His first instinct was no answer no, because his mother was technically with her, but his mother was extremely ill. Alissa may as well have been alone. He nodded his head, appearing to be in a bit of a daze before he snapped out of it. "Yeah. Yeah, we need to get back to her." He gripped the shovel with both hands again and turned, heading out the door. "It's right down the road," he said. "Just follow me."

"Roger the fuck out of that," said Mattie, her eyes following the shovel that Nick wielded. She shouldn't be nervous, of course. After all, he wasn't the only one holding an item that could easily be used for bludgeoning. But people were treacherous, and at times like this, people probably went loony and beat their survival partners to death in their sleep or something. The thought made her grip her crowbar tighter as she followed Nick out of the house and quietly put her twinkie in her pack. If there was anything not to trust a stranger with, it was her twinkie supply. Her precious, terribly-low twinkie supply.

As Nick said, the Wal-Mart was right down the road. It was weird looking at the building and seeing it so lifeless, a shell of what it used to be, no longer bustling with poor folks looking to buy cheaply-made shit. It could be a good shelter, she mused as they approached the entrance. But with the size of these stores, it could probably also provide crude shelter to the undead.

Best avoid the clothes racks.

The thought crossed Nicholas' mind that perhaps picking up a random stranger as a survival partner wasn't the best course of action. Mattie seemed fearful enough, but fear didn't necessarily equal sanity or loyalty. His senses were hypersensitive as they trekked the brief journey to the Walmart he was keeping refuge in, ears tuning in to every sound, eyes catching every movement.

"Alright," he let out a breath he didn't know he was holding and paused to look at Mattie. He gestured toward the entrance, "We're just past the foyer, near the pharmacy."

Nodding, he passed through the automatic doors that had long since stopped working and been pried open. Nature was already taking itself back; vines and ivy grew along the floor, passing just beyond the entrance. Metals were rusting and dirt and grime were piling up in cracks in the tile. None of it was unexpected. What was unexpected, however, was the loud, ferocious snarling erupting from behind a shelf.

It happened much quicker than Nicholas could keep up with. He was walking toward the spot where their camp was hidden when a blurry, humanoid figure leaped from behind the aisle, growling in his face. His reflexes were just sharp enough that he managed to raise the shovel in time to knock the attacker back, one hand gripping the end of the handle and the other gripping by the spade.

"Crap!" he cried out, raising the shovel then with both hands as he prepared to bring it down on the corpse's head. But he paused when he recognized the face. "Mom," he gasped, staring. The shovel unconsciously lowered, but only for a brief second before his mother's corpse was lunging at him again. He thrust the spade forward, and the pointed end ripped through the corpse's weakened flesh easily.

The creature let out a forced grunt when he pulled the makeshift weapon from four inches within her abdomen. He felt a pang of guilt and remorse in his heart, but he reminded himself: it wasn't his mother anymore.

I'm so sorry, he thought bitterly, gritting his teeth as he once again raised the shovel, this time successfully bringing it down on the monster's head, splitting the tissue to the skull until the skull cracked. He repeated the hits until she went down, and continued until she was barely recognizable.

"We're just past the foyer, near the pharmacy," said Nicholas, and Mattie gave him a short nod as she stepped tensely inside the Wal-Mart and cast a long look around the store and took in the sight of its progressing ruin. Even after all this time, it seemed so surreal. Trying to push the feeling to the back of her head, she gripped her crowbar tighter and shuffled after her new companion in time to see one of the fucking undead leap from behind a shelf at him.

"Shit on a shingle," she breathed, watching him beat the snarling figure who apparently was his mother and then joining him instinctively until there was brain matter on her crowbar and her shirt and...everywhere. For a long minute, all she could do was stare at the bloody fragments of tissue and breathe heavily.

When the adrenaline had died off enough that she could think somewhat clearly, Mattie threw the crowbar on the ground and turned on Nicholas, spitting with rage.

"You told me your sister was alone! Why the fuck you lying, bitch?"

The clang of the crowbar hitting hard against the tile floor was what made Nicholas flinch, not the fact that Mattie was now screaming in his face. Surprisingly, he kept the calmest expression, which was most in part due to the fact that he'd just had to beat his mother's undead corpse to mush. The shovel fell lightly to his side, one hand holding on to the handle. The corners of his lips tugged downward slightly in a frown. "She was alone," he lied, careful to put emphasis on the second word. Then, he turned his head and looked around. "Now where is she? She has a rifle. If there's a zombie in here wielding a rifle..."

"For––for fuck's sake," muttered Mattie, her hands shaking as she bent and picked the crowbar back off. It'd been a stupid decision to throw it down. The noise had probably alerted this douchebag's zombified sister as to their location. She could toss it later. Preferably at him (yeet). For now, it seemed, there was possibly an undead kid to deal with, and after that, Mattie figured it best to leave.

Logically. The pity eating at her meant it would be harder in practice.

"Okay," she said, putting her free hand briefly to her forehead. "I'll look for her and you can burn this corpse."

That's when Nicholas felt himself pull back into reality. He turned to Mattie, incredulity spread all over his face. "What?" he asked, voice far from intimidating. It was more scared and childlike. "No. I can't...I can't burn my mom's body. Are you- Are you crazy?!" he looked back at the disfigured corpse and winced, squeezing his eyes shut. A shaky breath rattled his body.

"Let me look for my sister."

"You just killed the person who was once your mother. That's probably going to leave you with lasting psychological damage. Now... in all likelihood, your sister's pretty fucking far gone by now. It won't hurt me as much to beat up some kid I never even met."

Then she shrugged. "Your choice though, I fuckin' guess."

"God. Okay, whatever," he groaned, pulling the collar of his shirt over his face as a kind of nervous habit. It fell, and he blew out a breath. It did nothing to help his nerves. The absolute emotional torture he was going through at the moment. "I'll just- just f-find something to burn my mom, then."

"Atta boy," said Mattie drily. It occurred to her that her sarcasm wasn't at all helpful, and that she was actually just being kind of a dick. Then again, this motherfucker here had effectively led her into a zombie-infested hole and nearly gotten her killed. Nearly gotten them both killed. She couldn't even believe that she was still helping him.

She also couldn't believe that she was kind of about to hunt down a little girl and beat her senseless.

Only if she's infected. And then she won't be a little girl anymore.

Still, the crowbar felt heavy in her grasp as she started with slow caution toward the back of the store.