Walker? or Zombies? (Walking Dead Game x Strong OC)

Chapter 21: The Road Has No Memory

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The world had been dying for sixteen months.

The initial chaos, the screams, the fires—that was the loud, messy death of the old world. This was the quiet decay that followed. The silence was a sickness of its own, broken only by the wind whistling through the skeletal remains of towns and the lonely, shuffling groans of the things that now owned the ashes.

On a cracked stretch of I-85 in North Carolina, a rusted-out sedan sat slewed across two lanes, its doors long since ripped away. For hours, the scene was a still life of ruin. Then, two figures emerged from the dense woods lining the highway. They moved not as a man and a child, but as two parts of a single, fluid organism.

The boy, taller now, moved with a lethal grace that was unnatural in the stillness. At fourteen, Zack had shed the last vestiges of boyhood. His face was all sharp angles and weary focus, his ocean-blue eyes holding the cold, flat calm of a frozen lake. His dark blade was a permanent extension of his hand, held in a low, ready grip.

Behind him, a step to his left, was Clementine. The little girl who had hidden in a treehouse was a ghost. At ten, she was lean, quiet, and her eyes, once wide with fear, were now narrowed in constant, calculating assessment. She carried the knife he'd given her with an expert's familiarity, and a pistol was holstered securely on her hip. Her purple baseball cap was faded, the stitched 'C' frayed, but it remained her only concession to the child she used to be.

They were a deadly, efficient survival unit, honed by 500 days of fighting for every sunrise.

Zack stopped at the edge of the tree line. He didn't speak. He didn't need to. He simply raised two fingers, pointing first at the sedan, then at a collapsed billboard fifty yards down the road. It was their silent language, perfected over a thousand miles of desolate roads. You take the high ground. I'll clear the immediate area.

Clem gave a single, sharp nod. She broke from his side, her footsteps utterly silent on the cracked pavement as she sprinted towards the billboard's rusted ladder. There was no hesitation. She was a weapon responding to his command.

Zack watched her for a second, ensuring she was safely ascending, before he turned his attention to the car. Three walkers were milling around it, drawn by some forgotten scent. They were slow, clumsy, and their movements pathetic. He approached them, his posture deceptively relaxed. The first one turned, its jaw unhinging in a wet groan. Zack's blade flashed out, a whisper of dark steel, entering the walker's eye socket and exiting through the back of its skull. He pulled it free before the body even began to fall.

The other two lurched towards him. He flowed between them like water. A precise stab to the temple for one, a brutal, upward slash through the chin and into the brain of the other. It was over in three seconds. It wasn't a fight. It was housekeeping.

From her perch on the billboard, Clem watched his six, her pistol tracking the empty spaces around him. She saw nothing. He saw nothing. He gave her a quick, upward glance—Clear—and began to strip the car for anything useful methodically. He found nothing but dust and dried blood.

He was about to signal to move on when he felt it. A subtle shift in the air. A vibration in the ground that didn't belong. His head snapped up, his eyes locking onto a small, abandoned gas station across the highway. The front door was slightly ajar.

He didn't call out to Clem. He held up a closed fist. Danger. Hold position.

Her response was immediate. She flattened herself against the billboard, becoming just another shadow in the ruin.

Zack moved. He crossed the four lanes of highway in a silent, low crouch, his blade held in a reverse grip. He was a predator stalking his prey, the very picture of ruthless competence. He reached the gas station, pressing his back against the brick wall beside the door. He listened.