Malevolent. The Walking Dead

[ 006 ] snow full of ghosts

006: snow full of ghosts

The winter came with brutal force. Joey often weighed her poisoned luck. It seemed as though the world had created the worst circumstances and thrown them upon her with close to no remorse. It seemed to be the only salvageable option, and the most digestible ━ she just had the world's worst luck, and karma was biting her in the ass. What goes around comes around ━ who knew if those people she killed had families to go back to as well. Who knows if she took the life of a father, a brother, a mother, a sister . . . it all blended together. The cycle had to end somehow, and it seemed to have ended with her.

She took refuge in multiple places before settling out to ride out the Colorado winter in an abandoned cabin far from town. It was easier to get away with building a fire and not having rotters wander in or hunters see the smoke from a distance and try to attack. The harsh winds and general inability to see through the thick smog also provided an extra layer of protection.

Her food was running out, having relied on MRE's for the past few months until she was left to hunt in the wilderness and hope that there was still untainted meat out there. Joey's ability to shoot the bow and arrow she had found on a corpse in a garage back in Utah had improved slightly. It was a more practical weapon, but she preferred to use her gun - although ammo was naturally running short. Not to mention she was beginning to have to make arrows herself with branches from trees and reuse them despite the rotters blood and flesh stuck to it. She had grown more accustomed to stealth ways to take down rotters and other formidable enemies ━ Joey had also been able to bulk up her body strength from how often she was on the move. Quiet, creeping . . . it was the best way to survive in this world as a teenage girl.

Joey pulled her hat over her ears, and writhing her gloved hands together as she prodded through the snow. It wasn't quite up to her ankles yet, but it would be soon if the snow resumed later on. Joey now knew that it, almost, always resumed. The sky was so consumed with clouds and fog that it was hard to see anything otherwise ━ she ran her gloved hand under her nose as it began to run from the cold. Her hair had grown to below her chest at this point, and was growing more and more knotted as the days went by where she didn't even bother to brush it. Joey sometimes swore she saw her hair going grey from stress. It wasn't an impossible possibility.

She was currently tracking down the elk she had pierced with her arrow not far before. A rabbit was tied to her belt, its blood seeping onto her jeans, but she didn't care. The blood from the elk after it scurried away in pain was leaving a trail in its wake. Her hands lodged another arrow in her bow and ran with it ready by her side ━ when the trail of blood stopped, she lifted the arrow up to her face and scanned the area. The elk wasn't too far away, limping around in the snow. She crouched behind a bush, careful to not make any noise, and drew back before shooting it right below the heart. "Gotcha," a cloud of white air came out when she spoke, but she carried on through the cold to chase after it again. The rabbit on her side thumped mightedly against her thigh.

The crunch of the snow under her boots startled other creatures, but her heart beat in her ears as the trail of blood became larger and more prominent. When she rounded the corner to spot the elk, on the ground and being eaten by rotters, she nearly wanted to throw up from both disgust and disappointment. Her ability to catch something actually salvageable and that would last her more than a few days was chalking up to be something impossible.

She was able to sneak past the rotters that were too busy feasting on the elk, its eyes were still open and seemed to follow her as she walked away. Her luck was poisoned.

When she jumped down from the broken land and into more deep set snow, she only took a few more steps before something grabbed her ankle. A rotter emerged from the snow, gargling and all, jaw clamping and teeth clinking together as it pined after her. Joey fell to the ground, trying to free her foot, before hitting it in the head with a harsh kick and tearing its hand from her ankle. Catching her breath, she pushed forward, looking at the bodies that littered the ground and were nearly consumed by the snow. There were so many of them, it drew her attention. Usually a mass amount of bodies wasn't something entirely new, but something about the fact that they were hidden away, far from civilization, made Joey question how they got there. They seemed to be rotted away, some having only their limbs peeking out from beneath the snow. Joey wondered if they were all rotters or if they had taken their own lives. When she saw one of the shoes was about a fourth of her own, decorated with a faded unicorn and weakly lit up gems, she had to stop walking. Children didn't deserve to live in this world. Although, no one did.