Chapter 1

'How the hell did you survive?'

'I have no idea.'

…

The world went to shit and Alice Reiss watched it burn with mixed feelings. At the age of sixteen her biggest concerns should have been boys and acne, but God had something different planned. She'd listened with trepidation as her parents dragged her to church every Sunday and wished she'd been young enough like her brother to get away with fidgeting, squirming and occasionally being allowed to play his Gameboy which was actually hers in the first place.

Her younger brother, Joshua, was seven when the world went insane, her sister Jane was fourteen. Jane was different in church, she hung on to every word, terrified of hell and the power of an entity that Alice had come to accept probably didn't exist, but Jane was sure that He did. She was pious and devout and that only passion she ever expressed was in her dancing, she was a prodigy of a ballerina. Alice wasn't much good at that kind of thing, she liked to read.

Her parents, Audrey and Nathaniel Reiss were decent parents. She never had much to complain about, except the multitude of barbecues they made her attend in the summer and the dinner parties she was excluded from in the winter; but then again she wasn't so keen on sitting down to eat with the deputy Sherriff of their town, she didn't even like when she had to babysit for his young son, Carl. Carl was alright, she liked him enough, he reminded her of Joshua a lot and out of her two siblings her brother was probably her favourite. But babysitting was just a way to earn money and Rick and Lori Grimes seemed to think that date nights was the way to save their declining marriage. Eventually Alice grew to like Carl more and she even regarded him on similar footing as Joshua, he became another little brother to her. She didn't exclude him if he wanted to hang out with her and her siblings, she was nice to him and bought him little presents, more than she even really bought Jane, overall she liked him.

Her parents were in Atlanta when it happened with Jane. She was performing in a dance show and Alice had been instructed to stay behind with Joshua whilst they went for the weekend, Lori was just across the road if they needed anything. Alice hadn't even been aware anything was happening until Lori was banging on her door and instructing her to throw things into a bag, that they had to go. Alice was eventually grateful that Lori had even thought of her amidst the chaos.

She met Shane, Carl was there too. She was there on the highway the night they dropped napalm onto the streets of Atlanta. Lori told her to stay put with Carol and her husband but she snuck off behind them, she watched her parents and sister burn from afar.

One minute Lori and Shane were there, the next they were gone and she and Joshua got left behind. She knew it hadn't been intentional, Shane was a good guy and Lori had taken pains to find her, they'd just been separated. Alice had no idea where to go, what to do, how to take care of her seven year old brother who had no idea that the world was ending, he just thought it was a game. She tried to treat it as a game, to pretend it was, until she saw the dead walking for the first time. She didn't know what to do, how to combat them, she ran, Joshua couldn't keep up, he tripped.

Then she was alone.

She kept moving, that was all she could think to do. Gradually she learned the tricks, she learned to stay off of the road and she learned she had to kill to survive. She learned what hunger was and how to carry enough to survive. She never handled a gun but she found a knife, it was long and sharp and terrified her but it served the purpose she needed it for.

She kept track of the days at first, she even managed all the way up to her seventeenth birthday but then she lost count, the world got too confusing. The depression crept in slowly and she fought it every step of the way. It got to her but she ignored it, pretended everything was alright. Except for once.

She was hiding in the basement of some building, it had a tiny, barred window and she set up a small fire to stay warm but barricaded the door. She'd not felt so safe in a long time but that meant she could think, she could let the feelings in. She stared into the fire and held her knife, gripped tightly in her hand, and then, for no apparent reason, she found the cool steel pressed against the skin of her wrist. It would be so easy to just end her life right there and then, in the safe, dark space. She wondered if she would see her family again, if they would blame her or forgive her for letting her brother die, for watching him be torn apart and doing nothing. She sat contemplating it for the longest time and slowly the knife inched down her arm, to a less precarious place.

No.

She thought to herself. She wasn't going to die today, but she was going to allow herself to feel the pain. She did it quickly and stopped up the blood by tying a rag around the wound. It wasn't deep, it wouldn't bleed long, she would survive.

The next day she kept moving and began to form a new plan. She was a little relieved but not cured, she had a long way to go. Her world in Georgia was gone, there was no point to staying there anymore, she needed to get away to somewhere where there was a possibility of some semblance of civilisation. Washington. It had to be the place, if anything was protected it would have been the government and it the capital had fallen then she knew the rest of the country had too. It was the only place. It made the most sense.

Over time the blood letting happened more frequently, and then less frequently as she grew too fatigued for it, she just focused on travelling. If she could find a car that worked then she drove, badly, otherwise she went on foot. She was lucky enough to find a map in an abandoned store, and she learned to fight well. She was alone for nearly three years, she longed for company, the only people she ever met were bad people, she had a few stories to tell.

The first was when she was inexperienced, the man had taken everything from her. This was before she'd found her knife and she'd blindly trusted him, she was still young and believed he would protect her and he did, up until the dark that night and then he pinned her down and muffled her cries as he took everything. She was so frightened that she lay shivering long after he'd gone. She never trusted men after that, she never trusted anyone. A few weeks later she grew fearful, she'd never learned the effects malnutrition could have on the body and mistook it for a remnant of the man, she was lucky. She kept going.

She had to kill two people who tried to kill her, she had no idea how she managed to survive. She barely remembered the fights themselves, just the panting and staring down at the lifeless body, running away before it came back. It took her a while to learn about the head trick, once she did she did it to everything she came across. Once she did it to a live cat, just to spare it the pain of life.

Then there was Bea.

Bea was young, like her, a year older or so, but she seemed so much younger than Alice. She was wide eyed and innocent, she had lost her family only a couple of days previously to when Alice found her and Alice knew she couldn't just leave her behind. After a few weeks of travelling together, Bea began to show that she was tougher than she'd originally shown; but Alice had seen so much more of the world, she was already broken where Bea was pure. Alice took her under her wing, they were together for six months and they didn't care about rules, they decided they were sisters. It was the first and only time that Alice allowed herself to get close to somebody again. Bea reminded her of Jane, blonde, beautiful and innocent. She would not let her go easily. But then they ran into some more survivors.

There were too many to fight and they didn't have anything to give so the survivors took the girls in as part of their group but Alice didn't want to be there, she wanted to keep going to Washington. Bea didn't see the harm in being part of a larger group, she thought that they could convince them to go to Washington. Their leader was a woman, she was firm and strict but kind, Alice couldn't help liking her and Bea practically doted on her. Alice grew to trust the group a little more and tried to go with things for Bea's sake, time went on and they were with them for a few months. But all good things must end.

They were attacked by another group and they fought hard, but the leader was killed and so was Bea. Alice had no reason to stay. She mourned the loss of another sister but not for long, she bottled up the real feelings and saved them for another day, for then she had to move. So she set off for Washington again and this time stayed away from everyone. She got good at hiding, she attacked people occasionally who got too close but only to scare them off. She got good at patching herself up too. It was after Bea that she hurt herself again, she didn't want to but she needed some outlet for the feelings that were threatening to spill out of her.

She managed to keep a rough track of the time as winter came and went, and she kept on surviving. She knew that it was some time past her nineteenth birthday but until winter came she couldn't venture to say she was twenty. She was still sixteen in her mind, she would be sixteen forever. Attending church and believing in God, doing well in school and babysitting Carl for five dollars an hour, the world had disappeared but she was still Alice Reiss. The only difference was now she was alone.