Angel

Chapter One: Jessie

The moans. I was so tired of hearing them all the time. Even in the upstairs room I was hiding in I could still hear them. I had made it into this house unscathed by sheer luck. It started as just another day in another deserted neighborhood scavenging house to house for anything I could use. Food and weapons were top on my list, but I took batteries, matches, and clothes when I could find them too.

I had left a house this morning after searching it not realizing that a herd of the dead had practically taken over the neighborhood. I'm tired of living this life, and it's making me careless. I have only myself to count on, and today I almost didn't make it. If the front door of this house hadn't been unlocked, I'd be bits of blood and bone on the front step. With the size of this herd, there wouldn't even have been enough left for me to turn. Being eaten alive was not how I wanted to die. At least not today.

The room I was currently hiding out in was the furthest room away from the front door. The less they could sense me, the faster they would move on. Or at least I hoped so because I couldn't stay in this house forever. I always had the need to keep moving. If I stayed in one place too long, I felt vulnerable. If the dead didn't find me, it was the living. I was done with both. The few good people left in this world always ended up dead, and the evil ones did everything they could to make you want to be dead. I didn't trust anyone anymore. I barely trusted myself as it was.

I lay down on the bed to only close my tired eyes. That's all I wanted to do. As long as the furniture I had pushed in front of the door held, the roamers, geeks, biters, monsters or whatever you wanted to call them would be blocked from getting inside. And as long as they were outside, the living would stay away too. That meant I could rest for a little bit. I needed to. Too many sleepless nights with cat naps interspersed to keep me from keeling over in exhaustion was finally taking its toll.

Except my exhaustion did catch up with me. My dozing turned into a solid almost twenty-four hours of sleep. I needed it, but I had left myself exposed to the dangers I had constant nightmares about. What if the dead had managed to get inside this house? I would have been trapped in this small bedroom.

Fresh meat for the roamers.

I popped up off the bed and looked out one of the small windows. I was able to breathe a sigh of relief as the street was empty. They had finally moved on. Most likely there would be a couple of stragglers around, but that was nothing I couldn't handle.

My backpack was next to the bed, so I picked it up and placed it on my lap as I sat down I was about to look for something to eat when a sound in the distance got my attention. It was a car engine, and as it got closer, I realized it was more than one.

Carefully, I pushed the tattered curtains aside and saw two vehicles drive down the street and stop in the middle of the road just a house or so down from where I was. "Damn it," I muttered. I had escaped the dead to now to have to deal with the living.

I had to know what I was dealing with before I could plan my escape. There were multiple houses on this street, so the chance of them coming here first was slim. I watched as five men exited the cars. They looked like I wouldn't want to meet any of them in an alley, be it dark or not. The exact type of people I stayed away from...dangerous and deadly. I immediately knew that if they found me, I was going to wish I was dead. They split up and went into the two houses across the street, but I knew there was nothing worth scavenging in them as I had been through them already. It wouldn't take them long to figure that out and move along to the next house. Which could be this one.

Quickly, I redid my long ponytail twisting it into a bun. That way no one could grab it. My pack went on my back, and I slipped the gun into the holster on my leg. There were only six bullets left, and I needed to use it only when I had no other choice. I pulled the knife out of the sheath at my waist and started to head downstairs, but I stopped at a small mirror that was hanging in the hallway. I saw tired eyes looking back at me. There was a smudge of dirt on my face that I wiped away with my hand. How long it had been there, I had no idea. I had been pretty once, or so people had told me. The days of dressing up like a girly girl were long over. This world had taken away everything from me, including feeling like a woman.