Madison Lowery never anticipated the end of the world. In a world made up of pain and the hopes of survival she didn't expect Daryl Dixon to change everything for her. Who would have thought the girl who didn't believe in love would find it at the w...
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"Get in the car, Maddie! I'm not fucking around!" My sister screamed at me as she threw more of our belongings into the trunk. I wanted to help, but she never let me. I rolled my eyes at the older woman and jumped in the front seat of her jeep.
I had no clue where we were going, what the plan was, or why she was freaking out. All I knew was that she told me to pack my stuff for a trip. I only stared at the frantic woman when she threw all the food from the pantry into a duffle bag.
Maureen slammed the trunk shut and jumped into the driver's seat.
"What about, Zade?" I couldn't help but ask, referring to her husband who had still been at work when her panic started.
"We're picking him up." She told me as she pulled out of the driveway. I had just moved to Georgia two months ago. Maureen and Zade let me live with them until I could find a job and apartment, but as we pulled away from the small two-bedroom house that I had grown accustomed to I realized we weren't coming back. Had the police finally caught on to what the three of us had done three months earlier? Had I ruined their lives with my choices?
"Mo, can you just tell me what's going on?" I screamed as I gripped onto the dash. Maureen was swerving around her neighbors and other cars. The people around us were running frantic, perhaps it was different than I had feared. It appeared that everyone knew of what was coming except me.
Maureen had always been a shitty driver, hitting curves, merging when she shouldn't, speeding. She was worse than Florida drivers, but this was another story. I had never seen her drive so fast; so reckless. My heart was beating so loud and so hard that I feared it would jump out of my chest at any second.
"Hold on!" She screamed as she ran straight through a red light.
"Maureen!" I yelled, squeezing my eyes shut and gripping tighter onto the dash. If we were gonna die I didn't want to watch the collision. I didn't want to see it happen.
I heard a loud noise, a crash, and yet felt nothing. I opened my eyes and turned to look back at the road behind us. My eyes widened when I saw that my sister had caused two cars to crash into one another, smoke was rising into the air and I watched as people fought to avoid the accident, not a single person stopping to help.
"Mo, what the fuck!?" I yelled at the woman. The blonde never took her eyes off the road. She looked like she was born to race cars. The look of determination on her face was one I had never seen before. "Stop the car!" I yelled, but Maureen didn't stop, she kept her eyes glued to the pavement. "Maureen!" I watched as my big sister rolled her eyes, clearly tired of my panic.
"Look, right now I just need you to trust me. We aren't safe." I started at the woman who refused to look back at me.
"What do you mean we're not safe? You're the one making us not safe!" I exclaimed.
"Madison." She muttered, releasing a long puff of air.
"Just tell me what's going on."
Maureen glanced over at me for a moment, her face still stone cold.
"Okay... just— just don't freak out." I didn't say a word, I didn't dare. I already was freaked out. I had never in my 24 years seen my sister act so insane, seen so many people around me act insane. "Something's happened you really haven't heard?" She asked.
"No." I shook my head.
"Do you live under a rock?" I rolled my eyes at my sister.
"Can you just tell me?"
"People keep getting sick... then they die." She whispered. I furrowed my eyebrows at her words.
"Okay...?"
"But then they come back." She finished.
"What do you mean they come back?"
Before my sister could answer she whipped into the parking lot of Zade's work. I jumped out of the car the second I saw him running towards us and I got in the back seat.
"What's the plan?" Maureen asked the man once he had shut the passenger side door.
"We gotta get to Atlanta, Morales told me they got a safe zone." It was at that moment that I realized how serious this was. The look on Zade's face, when he spoke, told me everything I needed to know, this was serious and we really are fucked.
It felt like it took hours to get even remotely close to Atlanta. We were stuck on the highway and I was beyond annoyed. We had no plan for where to go. I had brought my Walkman thankfully. My sister had always made fun of me for carrying around the cassette player that our aunt had given me as a kid, but I always believed there was something magical about the thing. I had never been more thankful for the device, Maureen and Zade had complained that their phones had no signal. I hadn't given in to the whole smartphone thing yet and I suppose now I never would.
"Maddie... Maddie!" I pulled my earbud out, Friend of the Devil now becoming more quiet.
"What?" I asked my sister.
"We're gonna step out, talk to some people. You coming?" I shook my head no and put my earbuds back in.
'A friend of the devil is a friend of mine
If I get home before daylight
I just might get some sleep'
The song continued. I put my head on the window and closed my eyes. This wasn't where I wanted to be. This wasn't where I was supposed to be. I had finally gotten out, I was finally free, and once I got back to living my life the world came to a screeching halt.
