The Horde

Chapter 1

        She never realized how often she took something as primitive as food for granted. Hannah laughed inwardly at her own stupidity, should've stocked up while you could, idiot. It had been days since her last meal and her eyes were constantly dry from crying over the hunger pains that spontaniously erupted from her stomach. The pain was a monotonous deep pulse vibrating throughout her entire body and was as constant and persistant as her own heart beat.

        Hannah had been scavenging through campsites whenever she came across one, but failed to realize how the food from these sites were dwindling until her own stock had started to run low. As she walked further into the country, the camp sites and broken cars weren't as abundant as they had been. But whenever she thought about turning around and heading back towards the city, she recalled how she had hardly made it past the weathered welcome sign. Her chances of surviving were slim, but it would be downright impossible if she turned back. Her thinking was disrupted by a painful sound ripping through her stomach. The arrows that she had stuffed into a small pouch slung across her back spilled out around her and the bow in her hand fell to the cracked asphalt. With knees that were too weak to hold up her small frame any longer, she crumpled to the ground as small stones dug their way into her olive skin, but it was absolutely nothing compared to the unbearable pain in her lower stomach. Taking a quick glance at the long road ahead she realized that she wouldn't be getting any help, she was completely alone. Without a way to ease the pain or banish the monstrous noises, she reluctantly waited for it to end.

        Only after the pain had subsided to a low throbbing she was able to entertain the idea of standing. Her legs and arms had started shaking slightly when she stood and when her fingers touched her swelling bottom lip, she concluded that she had been biting down on it to keep from screaming.

        When the sun had started to rise she finally stumbled across a desolate town. A dense forest surrounded her but the shufflers were scattered and sluggish, which was always a good sign. The sight infront of her was heart breaking, regardless of the fact that she had seen it several times. To say the least, the majority of the houses had been annihilated. Ashes from large and persistant fires were floating amongst the dust particles in the air and the area seemed to be completely abandoned, forgotten in the chaos that the infection had created. Hannah glanced over her shoulder quickly and notched an arrow into her bow. The place gave off an extremely negative atmosphere, although Hannah knew that her imagination played a large part in it. She could visualize ghosts swiftly floating past windows and staring at the back of her head with black, souless eyes as she walked by shattered windows and broken doors that had fallen away from their hinges.

        The road was mainly composed of gravel and crunched loudly under her combat boots regardless of how timidly she stepped. After becoming so accustomed to the maddening silence that she had suffered through over the last couple of days, she immediately noticed the small shuffle of feet inside of the house closest to her left. She walked up the driveway and was taken aback as she realized how beautiful the house must have been once, with its wrap around porch and blue shutters. Now, it was completely emersed in graffiti and a substantial portion of the porch has been burned. Hannah peered at the interior through the kitchen window and saw the shuffler lazily looking around the house. Its jaw was slack with hunched shoulders, a small pool of its own thick, crimson blood was forming at its feet. She knocked on the doorframe twice. Her bow was trained into the living room as she prepared for it to stumble onto the porch. Something smashed as the shuffler sluggishly wandered outside. The loud noise echoed throughout the street and Hannah cringed.

        After slamming its shoulder against the wall, it turned towards her, tilting its head slightly in confusion as its jaw locked with a loud popping sound. A guttural growl escaped from its throat and quickly evolved into a howl. With a speed that Hannah thought the monster was incapable of, it charged at her. She hadn't anticipated the attack, causing her to lack the time that she needed to readjust the arrows course. With dirty and bruised arms, the shuffler reached for her long, dark brown hair but she ducked away from its grasp swiftly and pulled out a pocket knife from the inside of her boot. Whipping it at the shuffler just as it turned to face her, she took a couple of steps back clumsily. For a second, she was sure that she had misjudged the distance between them and had overthrown the knife. Her suspicions were silenced as she heard the impact of the knife slamming into the monsters skull and watched as the shuffler stumbled backwards, hitting its head off the white guard rail of the porch. Stepping around the crumpled body to get to the front door, she looked away from the shuffler, not wanting to see who she had just killed.