Not Made to Rot.

Elena Monroe was supposed to be starting nursing school. Eighteen, driven, grieving-but healing. Her father had passed from leukemia a year earlier, and all she wanted was to make him proud. Then the world ended.

She and her mother packed up the car with her little sister Ivy, hoping to escape Georgia and reach the safety of Atlanta. But what started as a desperate plan shattered on the roadside-when her mother suffered a heart attack behind the wheel. With no emergency services, no help, and only a few months of first aid training, Elena was forced to make an impossible choice.

She buried the woman who raised her and drove away with a shell-shocked eleven-year-old in the passenger seat.

Gridlock stopped them just outside the city. Walkers flooded the highway. And Elena-bleeding, exhausted, and breaking-stumbled across a group of strangers: Shane Walsh. Lori and Carl Grimes. Carol, Sophia, and Ed Peletier. They took her in. Protected her. Called her strong.

But Elena never felt strong. Just awake when everyone else was still dreaming.

The quarry became a fragile safe haven. Ivy found laughter again. Elena found purpose. But in a world where everyone turns after death, she'll soon learn... she's not like the rest.

In a world built on death, what happens to the girl who won't rot?