Ellie Dixon

Trees, Running and a Broken Ankle

Me and Sophia had been lost for a few days, with no sign of anyone. "It's been days, Ellie. How much longer can we live like this? The others probably think we're dead and have taken off. We don't have any weapons or food. I'm so hungry, and tired, and cold." Sophia started to cry, I knew that she missed her mother and brother, I knew everything she told me, I just wish that I had an answer for her.

"We'll get some food today. I'll catch us something." I confirmed. "Hey, down there!" I noticed a river. "Water." We ran towards it as fast as we could, which wasn't that fast in our state.

Sophia jumped into the water, smiling and laughing. I jumped in after her, we'd left Teddy and Dolly on the grass bank next to us, so they didn't get wet. I splashed my face and hair with water, submerging myself. I even drank the water, I didn't care if it was dirty, we had to drink something. We hadn't drunk since a muddy puddle we had found the day before. "Oh my god, this feels so good." Sophia said happily.

"We're gonna freeze after this, but right now, I couldn't care less." I agreed. "Hey, you feel that on your legs?"

"Fish." Sophia realised.

I took a deep breath before going under the water and opening my eyes. It was dark but I was able to make out a lot of fish surrounding our legs. I reached out with my hands, grabbing two handfuls and coming back to the surface. I squeezed them and waited a couple minutes, so I knew they were all dead before going back to the grass bank. Sophia sat next to me. I put the fish on the grass and counted them out. "Eleven." I smiled, giving her six and me five. They were pretty small fish, but they'd do, and I could maybe catch more if we hadn't scared them off.

"What part do we eat?" Sophia asked. I gave her the look. "Oh god."

"We gotta do what we have too so we can survive. All we've seen since we left that cabin is trees, trees and more trees. So... Here's to surviving." I said, putting the first dead fish in my mouth. I gagged as I chewed the raw fish, the blood and eyeballs squirting in my mouth. I gagged but kept it all in my mouth before I swallowed the chewed corpse. I looked up to Sophia who had a scared look on her face. "It's so good." I tried.

Sophia looked back down to one of her fish with a disgusted look on her face. "Here's to surviving, I guess." Then she placed a fish in her mouth and took a bite. She screwed her eyes shut tight and fisted her hands, she chewed as quick as she could before leaning over to the water and drinking some of it. She sat up with water running down her chin. She looked to me. "I don't know if I can do that five more times."

Since me and Sophia decided that it was very difficult to eat the fish that way, we decided to make a fire. We put sticks together and surrounded it with rocks. I then got two sticks and started rubbing them together, trying to make a spark. "Come on, come on." I tried.

We'd gotten further away from the water, but not too far, just far enough so the ground wasn't too wet. "Ellie, behind you." Sophia said, standing up.

I turned around and saw a walker. I grabbed a big, heavy rock that was next to me. I tried to throw the rock at the walker's head... But I tragically missed. I hit the knees, so the walker fell over. Split second thinking got me to run around the walker so I was by its head. I jumped into the air before moving over and landing on the walker's face. The skull collapsed, causing brain damage and instant death to the walker. "Ew." I nodded as its brain juice exploded everywhere.

"How did you know to do that?" Sophia asked, sitting down again, holding Teddy and Dolly in her lap as I tried to get a spark going again.

"The walkers are dead bodies, right? They're rotting, just a lot slower than us. You've seen how easy their bodies rip. I figured their bone structure must also be weak, so one forceful jump to the head, brain damage and death. Boom!" I smiled as I got a spark going, causing a small fire to start in a controlled area so we wouldn't cause a forest fire.