CHAPTER ONE i. A NEW BEGINNING WITH INEVITABLE CONSEQUENCES
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RUTH
THE GIRL READJUSTED the bag that rested upon her shoulders, the thick leather straps digging painfully into her chafed arms. Every time a twig would snap nearby, her body would jump one hundred feet into the air. The ominous dark of the night only made her walk faster, her small steps becoming noisy strides.
The girl was weak and afraid, and she hated herself for it. Her stomach ached in hunger, the pain almost enough to make her throw up. Ruth glanced over her shoulder every so often, confirming a walker wasn't sneaking up behind her.
Dark blue shadows covered her nearly translucent skin. If somebody wasn't looking close enough, they could mistake the woman for one of those monsters. Sweat rolled down the girl's face and her breaths were faint, an obvious sign of sickness. Pain erupted from her swollen leg, where a bullet resided. It gave her a disgusting limp that left her vulnerable to any attack. Leaves crunched and crackled under feet loudly, and each stumble she made would emit a hiss from her mouth.
Find water, you idiot, she thought to herself. Her silence continued until she heard voices. Ruth snapped out of her daze as two figures approached, not noticing her presence.
She quickly dashed behind the nearest tree, the bark crunching as she leaned against it. The voices halted. They heard her. She cringed back, holding a hand over her lips to quiet herself. The frizz of her dark hair tickled her face and scratched her eyelids, and she could only pray that it would stop. Her fear was almost like a shout into the empty forest. It radiated off of her like a horrible aura of fragility. No matter how hard she tried to calm herself down, it sounded as if her breathing was being played through a speaker. She prayed that it wasn't who she thought it was that lurked close to her, her former group.
Their footsteps reminded her of somebody stepping onto one thousand insects. It was loud, and each step made her wince in her hiding spot.
"You hear that?" One with a higher voice asked the other. Ruth clutched the small knife in her hand as tight as possible, waiting for the figures to pass.
"Probably some dumbass squirrel. Lighten up a bit, man." The other replied, his voice raspier.
"Yea... Yea, alright."
The two passed right next to the tree she resided against, and she pressed herself further into the trunk and slid down to the forest floor. As she adjusted herself, acorns cracked underneath her feet.
The two people whipped their heads to her figure, their weapons raised. A tall man stood in front of her, accompanied by a smaller and less intimidating man. Ruth backed closer to the tree, believing it would protect her from the strangers somehow. She raised her knife with a shaky hand as if it would intimidate them. The taller man scoffed in disbelief, knocking the knife away with his shoe.
