Jinx || Daryl Dixon || The Walking Dead Fanfic

-1-

JINX

The girl watched out the window as the first bombs were dropped. It didn't feel real, she'd always had such vivid dreams and expected this was one of those. She nipped the sensitive skin in her inner elbow between her nails and winced, almost laughing at herself for actually following that age old adage of 'pinching yourself' and reminded herself that this wasn't a dream, this was real, and she needed to find shelter that wasn't on the 20th floor of a hotel.

When the news first broke about cannibals across the States she'd laughed, assuming it was the strange side effects of some new party drug that had made it to the open market and she didn't worry too much, that wasn't her scene. Within a couple of days though she could see from her window that people were packing up and getting out of the city. That had scared her.

She remembered an old boyfriend once laughing about how people back home would always rush to stock up on bread or milk, various perishables, in the event of an imminent snowstorm in a country where big snowstorms were fairly uncommon. He'd lived in countries that had real snowstorms and pointed out that what you should really stock up on was tins, the non-perishables and the ingredients you could use to make the perishable items yourself. This advice had been in her mind when amongst all the people rushing out of the city, she'd gone to one of the few stores still open near the hotel she was currently calling home and she bought as many tins as she could carry of food that wouldn't need cooking, which turned out to be mostly fruit. If she'd realised how much she would need to rely on that stockpile, she'd have probably gotten some more savoury items even if she didn't like them.

The windows rattled as she threw most of the clothes out of her suitcase and tried to squash all the tins in, it had almost crippled her carrying them all back from the store and anyway one of the bags had ripped, she needed the wheels of the suitcase to move them again. Putting all her weight on one side and then the other she managed to clip the suitcase closed, automatically changing the little dials that counted as locks to ensure they wouldn't spontaneously unclip. She dumped a pillow into the top of the duvet and proceeded to roll it up like a burrito as the explosions outside grew more frequent. She grabbed the handle of the suitcase and shoved the bedding burrito under the opposite arm and ran out into the corridor.

The hotel itself was eerily quiet, the only sounds were the muted rattling from windows hidden behind the never-ending series of doors in the corridor. It was dark, the automatic lights no longer coming on signalled that the power in the building was off. Realising this, she didn't even bother to try the elevator, she knew that too wouldn't work, it was going to be a long journey from the 20th floor to the ground.

When she finally made it down the last flight of steps she froze, one of those things was pressing itself against the glass windows of the foyer, it had spotted her and was desperately trying to get in. She shuddered and pulled the suitcase in the opposite direction, towards the area of the hotel restricted only for staff.

It was strange to be in this area, she'd stayed in a lot of hotels over the last few months and there was a small rush to breaking the rules and being in the prohibited areas. She saw a door marked with a picture of stairs and a stickman appearing to walk down them, assuming it could only be a basement. The door was locked and with the monster outside the front door she didn't dare try to break it, not that she was strong enough anyway.

Dropping the suitcase to the ground and quickly opening it, tins scattering across the floor she found the small washbag she was looking for and after hurriedly pouring the contents to the floor she grabbed the small gold hair clip she needed. Carefully she used the clip to unlock the basement door and threw the burrito of bedding down the stairs into the darkness, followed quickly by as many of the escaped tins as she could hold in her arms and roughly closing the case and giving it a shove, so it half slid, half bounced down the concrete stairs. Finally, she followed through the door into the darkness, down the first couple of steps and pulled the door shut behind her. She turned, unable to see anything in the gloom, she closed her eyes and held her breath as she used her hands to feel their way back to the lock, repeating the same action with the hairclip as she had on the other side, but this time locking herself in.