Totally new to Walking Dead, but over the last week I've been catching up on the whole series, and had an idea that I hope will turn into a pretty good story. I didn't have a huge amount of time to write a great big chapter, but I'm hoping that this little prologue will spark people's interest.

Prologue

X

After the last agent turned, the choice seemed reasonably clear – stay in the secure compound alone and go mad, or risk going outside the walls to look for other people who had survived.

She had supplies. She was safe. She could defend herself here.

But what if there were people outside who couldn't defend themselves? Before the radios had stopped transmitting, she had heard stories of safe-houses and CDCs being overrun. There was nowhere for anyone to go now.

Except here.

The compound had the best security around. The walls that surrounded it were fifteen feet high and made of thick concrete. It spanned about two and a half acres altogether. She had walked the grid at least ten times looking for weaknesses and had found none. Nothing had gotten in since they had gone into lockdown.

Of course, the lockdown hadn't helped. They had just locked themselves in with the disease. The fifteen agents that had been injured in the initial phase had turned first, and before anyone knew what was happening they had reduced their number by half. On day one, there had been nearly two hundred of them.

Now, a month later, it was just her and a pile of bodies.

And if that wasn't enough to send you over the edge, then nothing would.

And if she left to find others, then what? Little chance of the turned ones getting in, but the same couldn't be said for any survivors that tried to find sanctuary in her absence. What if they broke in by charging the gate? Then the place would be permanently vulnerable and they'd be back to square one. At least if she was here she could get them in safely.

She decided early on into her enforced period of solitary that there was little sense in keeping the bodies in case someone wanted to put them in a coffin with a flag on it, and so she had hoisted a bunch of them over the high walls at intervals all around the perimeter, making sure never to throw too many over in one area in case they created a handy ladder for anything that wanted to get in.

The difficulty lay in figuring out the place. She hadn't been there very long before the lockdown – maybe a week or so. Not enough to time to become familiar with anything. All too often she would think her feet were taking her in one direction when in fact they weren't. It felt like the whole placed was suspended in time. Books and files lay open on desks, cups of coffee sat half-drunk. There wasn't even that much gore spattered about; once it became obvious that a lack of a heartbeat wasn't a valid indication of someone shuffling off their mortal coil, the infected were usually confined to the cells and dispatched once they turned.

Days began to merge. She had cleaned up the medical bay as best she could, scrubbing away at the blood marks on the walls, date-checking and rotating the seemingly endless supplies of dressings and medicines. She had even ensured the medical refrigerator was a safe temperature.

It was around the time that she was remaking all the beds on the ward that she realised what she was doing. She was making the place inhabitable for others.

Others who certainly weren't going to come to her.

It took her a day and half to prepare everything she thought she would need. One of the first broadcasts they had gotten before everything descended into chaos came from another one of the compounds that hadn't been so lucky. The agent who radioed them was alone and barricaded in an interview room. His broadcasts were always accompanied by the sounds of banging and scratching, but the one thing he had said was that when people turned, the only way to truly kill them was by destroying the brain. With this in mind, she raided the secure weapons unit and armed herself with two handguns with silencers and a sniper rifle. Basic training seemed a lifetime ago, but the second her fingers touched cool metal it felt as though a part of her brain long since disengaged flickered into life once more.

She eventually found the garage where all the armoured vehicles were kept. She smiled sardonically to herself as she realised that remembering to drive on the correct side of the road was the least of her worries now. She selected a truck and made sure the gas tank was full, placing three extra tanks in the back, along with enough bottled water and supplies for a fortnight. She would drive as far out as she could for a week in one direction, picking up any survivors she found on the way. Then she would guide them back, stock up, head in the other direction and do the same.

It was a vague plan, with plenty of room for error.

But it was the only one she had.

X

Would love some feedback!