Chapter Text
If you travel 750 miles from Ohio to Georgia, it should take you roughly eleven hours without traffic. But your GPS doesn't take into account whether or not you're stuck in the middle of an apocalypse.
In my case, the journey took almost a month. Nights were spent on the side of the road, resting, never fully asleep... just in case. The days that weren't spent driving were spent avoiding the undead, searching for food, and trying to find a place to stay.
I was travelling with my brother Lukas, and my best friend Natalie. We were a good team and we considered ourselves lucky. We never came across large groups of the dead people, and we found a few cans of food and some supplies here and there. But we never did find a place to stay.
xXx
"Katelynn? Katelynn wake up!"
I was asleep when Natalie woke me up, shaking my shoulder.
"What? What is it?"
"A group, five or ten, heading this way." She informed me.
I sat up then, fully alert.
"Okay, we gotta go then." I said.
Lukas sighed and shook his head.
"No gas in the car."
"What do you mean there's no gas? We found some 'bout ten miles back!"
"Not enough apparently."
"What are we gonna do?" Natalie asked.
"We can't stay in the car." I told her.
"We can't go out there! Are you stupid?"
"Katie's right." Lukas said.
"So we're just gonna go into the woods? What if there's more?"
"Nat, breathe. We'll stick together. It's our only hope."
"What if there's more?" She repeated.
"Then we kill them, or we run."
She sighed, slowly giving in.
"They're about ten feet away now." Lukas told us.
"Okay. Straight into the woods, but we stick together."
They both nodded.
"Take what you can carry, let's go."
I picked up my back pack and carried it on my shoulder. Natalie grabbed a flash light and Lukas grabbed some extra ammo, then we left.
I ran ahead with Natalie and Lukas following me. We ran for maybe ten minutes before we stopped in a small clearing.
"Where from here?" Lukas asked.
"We'll walk. Head South like we planned yesterday."
"Did anyone pick up the map?"
"I did." Lukas said, tapping his back pack.
I nodded.
"Can we go? I feel like something's gonna jump out and eat us."
xXx
We walked non-stop until the sun came up. We were all tired, but Natalie was really showing it.
"We'll stop soon, Nat." Lukas promised. "Just wanna see if we can find shelter - little house or somethin'"
Natalie nodded her head in response and continued to walk at her own pace.
"Over there!" Lukas said, pointing to a few trees.
It wasn't the trees he was pointing at though, it was past the trees at a house.
It wasn't much at all. One storey, pretty small - probably one or two bedrooms at most.
"Let's take a look..."