When The World Ends

Sickness

After finishing most of the gummy bears, my jaw hurt. I put the rest of them in the side pocket of my bookbag that's in front of me. Daryl and Michonne's conversations ended a while ago about the governor's disappearance, so he starts messing with the radio, spinning the dial back n forth, hoping to find a station still running. As he is scanning, a voice comes through.

"Find sanctuary."

"Was that a voice?"

"Shut up." I'm quick to shout; as Daryl continues messing around.

"...determined to survive... Keep alive." We lock eye contact till Daryl's head shoots forward. An earsplitting squeal sounds as the side of my face eats nothing but the dashboard. Pulling back, I see maybe hundreds of walkers in front of us, now swarming the car. Throwing it in reverse for him, he floors it, plowing over bodies. That's short-lived when they piled up under the car.

"The left?" Nothing, I check the mirror; the only thing is walker brains flying out from under the tire.

"We need to make a run for the gaps to the right of the car. Grab your shit." Daryl yells. Flipping my bag around to my back, I unhook a knife. "You guys make a run for the woods, don't stop for nothing, you hear me! Now!" They all push out the doors while I look towards Daryl. He makes eye contact and nods. Seeing the fear in his eyes too calms me somehow. He pushes the sunroof open and shoots, following out, standing on the car. I slide down the windshield and jump, his hand catching mine for a short second.

"Ty!" Bob yells, assuming he's either bitten or gone; I keep running, stabbing every walker's head I can.

"Go!" Tyreese yells to us, trying to distract the walkers. We all turn and run, starting our way through the dim light forest floor. Crunching of leaves, twigs, and small pebbles underneath over feet wouldn't help our escape. Running for what felt like seconds, which was most likely minutes, stabbing walker after walker, until we finally came to a clearing.

"Hold up," Daryl shouts, turning where we just came.

"This is stupid; we have to keep going. I'm not dying because we chose to stop for a breather." The wall of trees rustles until two figures push through. More walkers, smoothly they both fall and revel Tyreese. Bloody, tired, and covered in brain matter. My stomach finally boils over, releasing the contents from our ride. Spitting the rest up, we continue running, the herd catching up to us.

It would be long until we found the college Hershel had talked about if we were stuck on foot. About an hour of running later, we managed to escape the herd and were stopped at a stream washing up.

"Are you okay?" Bob asks quietly, sitting by my shoulder. Daryl and Michonne were trying to find out where we went once we got out of the car and how long it'd be until we were there. Ty was washing the walker parts off his shirt.

"Yeah, fine." I lie, standing up, stumbling for footing. A strong pair of arms steady me.

"You're burnin' up," The southern draw comes out of his voice in a low growl.

"I'm fine." I snip at him. Glaring at each other, Michonne shouts.

"Ty, we gotta move, a town up ahead." Pulling himself from the stream, we start our scavenger again. For the next few hours, the only sound was our pairs of feet kicking stones across the road and laughing about old friends. We were making our way around the corner onto another deserted street when we came to a gas station/repair shop. The sign had its numbers flipped upside down to spell out hell, getting a chuckle from everyone. The shop's wall was comprised of vines, but that didn't stop Daryl from looking.