Torn Apart • TWD

Chapter 1 - spider attack

Tessa had woken up to the sound of chirping birds, along with the rays of sunlight that had peeked through the many rips in the curtains and straight into her eyes, forcing her to move around the lumpy mattress and eventually rolling off the bed entirely.

Instead of letting that discourage her from her sleep, she blindly reaches for a pillow sprawled on the bed and secures it under her face so she can continue resting.

Or that was the plan before she heard tiny legs running across the floor that made her eyes shoot open with such panic you would think it was a biter that was coming towards her instead of a little spider.

Nonetheless, she still reaches for her knife that has been secured to her wrist with multiple hair ties, and keeps a safe distance from the creature with such stealth she starts to think of herself as a ninja, before throwing a heavy book and flattening the little monster, the knife was just a precaution in case she missed. There are too many dents in the wooded floor to resort to stabbing every time one of the creepy crawlies appears.

A hard lesson had been learnt while living in the woods, the girl does not like spiders and will scream if one gets even remotely close. Usually attracting the dead, who sadly prefer to eat 4'9 tall girls over one-millimetre-tall spiders.

Knowing that she can never sleep after a spider attack since she's always afraid it will have friends, she gets up with an annoying groan and flings the pillow back onto the mattress. With a quick scan around the room for any more arthropods, and a nod of approval, she grabs her scuffed-up boots that sit at the foot of the bed and rocks her heel back and forth in order to sink her foot in, and though the black boots with little flowers sewed on make her feet throb, crush her toes together and leave blisters on her ankles, they're still her favourite item that she had from the before.

Tessa quickly exits the room as soon as her feet are forcefully shoved into the shoes, the girl never wants to spend too much time in the house, the air is musty and dry, no matter how many bottles of air freshener have been used or airing out she has done in the past the stench is adamant on clinging to the walls. There's blood shining through the cracks of the floorboards from the previous owner of the house, who decided that putting a bullet in her brain in the middle of the hallway was the best way to go, but based on the many family pictures that hung on the walls, Tessa guessed the elderly woman didn't have anyone to live for.

She stashed the pictures in the same hole she dug for the woman whose house she overtook, which gave her a lovely view of the circles of water that had stained the wallpaper and ceiling.

So now, the young girl is scoffing down a can of baked beans with haste in hopes that it won't touch her tongue. Like everyone who is still alive, she has learnt to force herself into eating food that used to revolt her into wanting to throw up.

Lots of food disgusted her, mushy food, ones with a weird texture, any sort of vegetable, and those are sadly some of the only ones to find when searching houses, she suspects that others have scavenged the homes before her and smartly left the disgusting food behind. Occasionally she would find a chocolate bar or bag of gummy bears that helped the mush go down without a fight, but other times all she had was the hunger pains that served as a reminder of why she must force it down her throat.

So she taught herself to catch animals, it's easier to kill them by thinking that they're going to die anyway, whether it's at the hands of a biter, a hungry human, or another animal, it will happen eventually and she makes it quick and painless. Though there was an incident when she was aiming at a flock of birds and accidentally hit one that was so small the only explanation was that it was a baby. Tessa didn't eat that day out of sadness for taking the chick from its parent.

The young girl has a hatred for killing young animals, that are smaller than the rest. Perhaps it stems from a precedent of adults trying to take her life for no reason other than they could, but clearly, they couldn't since she is unharmed and they were left to a horde of corpses.

Knives are her preferred method of hunting, more lethal than an arrow released from a bow and as stated, she doesn't want the animal to feel pain and with an arrow more than once she has had to finish it with her knife. She did not have these skills in the before, but with infinite free time, she learnt. There was once a group, the only good one she had seen since the outbreak, and they taught her survival skills, though it didn't do them very well when they were slaughtered by a larger group for their supplies.

She stole the blade she now keeps tucked in her sleeve from a body, she doesn't know if the person was from her group or the larger one, but it didn't really matter in the end. She made the bow herself, after watching some of the adults make various weapons for weeks, it wasn't hard to replicate after some trial and error.

Tessa escaped the battle with a handful of kids after their mothers instructed them to run, there was one boy close to her age that didn't make it very long, after a day of running he fell down a hill and broke his leg, there were a small herd of biters that heard his screams and once they came into view both she and him knew he wouldn't survive, so despite the protests and screams of the other kids, she ended it humanely and they all ran.

But the other children didn't trust her anymore, they were scared and not very subtle about it, they clutched their weapons tightly with narrow eyes when she was close, and she knew that little gang of kids wouldn't last with so much mistrust, so she left to find a home for herself. But after a few miles of walking, she heard a cluster of high-pitched screams from where they had set up camp, so with a sigh she put her hands over her ears and kept walking.

Groups never work because people will never fully trust each other enough to put the collective's lives above their own, they're selfish when the future is uncertain so they steal food in the night, leaving kids to go hungry. Humans will always put themselves first, so Tessa learnt to do the same.

She's seen families torn apart, she's seen babies abandoned, children being struck when they get too loud with the dead nearby and adults being killed when they panic. People have been brutally murdered over a few cans of peaches. Everyone thinks they can do what they want, men had taken girls' clothes off while they fought — Tessa didn't understand that one, but what she did understand was the screams she heard while a friend had covered her eyes.

Humanity has more monstrous instincts than the biters ever will, they thrive off greed, and the dead thrive off hunger. She had decided which she would rather deal with. So she is alone with only corpse stragglers to deal with, only a few people have unknowingly wandered her way, the closest town takes days to walk to and other than the odd house close by, there's nothing here that will sustain their greed.

She's safe.

Or that's what she thought until the sound of cans clinking together reached her ears, the signal she had set up to inform her that her trap had caught something heavy enough to be human. More often than not it's a biter, and if it's not it usually ends up as one once the Tessa has a conversation to determine if they're dangerous. They always are.

So she makes sure to grab her bow and green bag with her homemade arrows sticking out, quivers aren't easy to come by so she had to get creative. There is a gun stashed at the very bottom of the bag, strictly used for scaring tactics only since there are no bullets in it.

Once armed, the girl followed the noise, normally it's hard to pinpoint which trap had been set off since there are many littered around the area, but the growling from the stumbling dead and laboured breaths from a non-dead that's bleeding all over the girls net makes it easy to find.

Not in the mood to walk to biters to kill them, Tessa plants herself next to the tree that the woman is hanging from and sets an arrow into her bow before releasing it. She continues the process while occasionally glancing at the woman who looks like she's having a hard time wrapping her head around what's happening, and after the last body hits the ground, she notices the woman is finally sitting up and looking at her, well trying to, she looks as though she can't focus her eyes.

With a better look at the woman, the girl realises just how fat she is and thinks she has to be on her own with all that food in her stomach, but then again she doesn't seem like the type that can survive alone, especially when she can barely see. So Tessa asks the one question on her mind; "What the fucks wrong with you?"