𝐖𝐀𝐋𝐋𝐅𝐋𝐎𝐖𝐄𝐑 - carl grimes .

❶ - new beginnings, friendly faces

act one - chapter one
"new beginnings, friendly faces"
- soobriety -

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DEPRAVITY WAS IN THE ATMOSPHERE.

There was no such thing as good and evil anymore. The moral compass was broken; all that was left of the world were the universe's way of ridding the planet of the humans that were polluting it, and in turn, creating spectral corpses to scatter the desolate landscape in a shadowy wrath.

May Clark wasn't one to believe in the supernatural, but she believes in what's in front of her, even if it's just as anomalous — and a rotting reanimated human is far beyond the explanations of science, but here May stands, with her knife driven through the creature's skull, rendering it dead.

It went limp, folding over itself and dropping down to her feet in a puddle of blood. It was a shell of a human — what they once were. Carcasses lay scattered across the hardwood, May covered in their blood, her knife dripping the dark liquid. That's all she heard for a while: Drip. There was silence, an eerie wrath. No more eager growls, no more clamping jaws.

She dropped her head to stare at her hands. Blood splattered the entire way up her arms, and she could only assume that it stained her shirt and face along with it. Nausea creeped its way up her throat in a liquidy bile. She swallowed it down. Adrenaline still pumped through her veins, fright still had her hands shaking.

She blinked, keeping anxious tears at bay, and let out a quick sigh before holstering the knife into her belt.

The house she found herself in used to belong to a family. Framed photos filled the walls in dismal intensity. May wondered if the walkers she just killed were members of said family. But she shakes her head, stepping over the creatures, repeating the same three words that has kept her going this long:

"It doesn't matter."

She keeps low, avoiding the windows. The front door stays cracked open, just in case she needed an easy way out. She palms a golf ball that she picked up from the mantle in the living room, throwing it up the stairs. It bounces off the wall and drops down each step, rolling to a stop in front of her feet. She waits. Her fingers graze the handle of her knife once more, more of a habit than anything.

All of this comes second nature to her. She's had practice; sneaking in and out of neighborhood houses in search of supplies. May scavenges for her own survival. She's uncertain how it correlates to the girl she used to be, frail and frantic, but she tredges on nonetheless.

Part of her believes she's still those things. She's just better at hiding it within the barriers of her instinct.

The second floor is radio silent. Unsheathing her knife, she creeps up the stairs on step at a time, teetering the line between cautious and afraid. The hallway at the top of the steps is empty, and she makes quick work of checking the rooms with open doors before shutting them. Those are her principles: check the building before clearing the building.

The door at the end of the hallway is closed. She knocks thrice, soft yet effective. Her heart hammers into her ears; There's faint snarling. She goes to turn the doorknob — place her fingertips on the sheen metal — when there's a crash downstairs. Voices seep into the silence, and May freezes. Her mind goes blank as she swings open the door, hitting the walker with the edge. It stumbles back, tripping over its own feet and plummeting down onto the floor.

The sound from the bottom floor stops. May thinks she may die from the stress itself, glazing over her eyes and triggering her fight or flight. She tackles the walker, stepping on its arms. It strains under her hold, growling and biting and drooling at the sight of its prey, before stopping completely as blood trickles down its forehead. May doesn't notice the footsteps speeding up the stairs, or the way they prowl down the hallway towards her and finish with the squeak of a door as she removes her knife from the corpse's skull.