Her cramping limbs tug her from her sleep and she opens her eyes, sinking her teeth into her lower lip to bite back a moan. She works her legs out of their curled position, furrowing her brow as her calf muscles tighten into rocks beneath her skin. Cursing under her breath, she grabs for the bar above her bed and pulls herself up from her filthy mattress, its fabric cover soiled and stinking of body odour.

Her left arm has also gone numb in her sleep, and she rolls her neck, giving the limb a shake to restore its blood-flow. The cool temperature of the concrete on her bare feet is a relief in her stifling cell, and she pads around the tiny room, stretching out her legs.

"You awake, girl?" the man's voice startles her and she takes a step back to the back wall, feeling the hair on the back of her neck rise. The shadow moves, almost shapelessly in the dim light, to rest against the door. Bulky forearms slip through the horizontal bars to rest heavily on the vertical ones, and she catches the smell of tobacco and smoke before her eyes adjust to see the glowing tip of the cigarette in his hand. "Well?" he asks, the luminous red dot rising up where she hears him take a drag from it. When he breathes in the tip of the cigarette brightens, illuminating the shape of his beard and the tip of his nose, lighting afire the swastika tattooed on his cheek.

She shakes her head, finding the wall with her fingertips before settling back against it, her left shoulder blade resting against the exposed toilet plumbing. She shivers, but not in fear. She isn't sure when it had happened, but she has grown numb to the emotions that had once battled through her, and had found herself in a place of complacency. It hurts less to feign indifference than it does to fight.

The forearms disappear into the darkness and she breathes out, relaxing her tensed muscles. Her relief is short-lived, however, and her ears prickle at the sound of keys jingling against each other.

Closing her eyes, she sucks in as deep a breath as she can, inflating her lungs until they feel like they'll burst. When she opens her eyes again he is standing in front of her, almost toe to toe, his large chest heaving with excitement. The darkness continues to conceal his facial features, but does nothing to hide the smell of urine and sweat that clings to his soiled clothing. Turning her face away, she lowers her chin and settles her eyes on the bed to her left.

"I know what you want," he breathes, leaning in until his nose almost touches the smooth skin of her neck where it dips into her collar bone. Shuddering, she squeezes her eyes closed and holds her breath, keeping as still as possible. Bracing her hands against the wall behind her, she wishes that she could melt into the concrete.

Short bristles of hair, coarse like a Brillo Pad, scrape against her sensitive skin as he presses a kiss to the hollow of her throat, scratching her; wearing her away. Tears blur her eyes, but she swallows them back with a throat that had become dry from dehydration – she is sure she would scream if she could remember how to. It seems as though her body has forgotten how to speak, her voicebox weak from disuse, a jewel at her throat that has tarnished with time.

His hand drifts over her body, tracing the concave valley of her stomach, then over the rise of her ribcage, then her breasts. He sucks in a breath when his fingers join his mouth at her throat. He traces his calloused thumb over the ridge of her jaw line, and then follows it with his tongue. Sinking her teeth into her lower lip, her chest begins to shudder and burn from lack of oxygen, her lungs constricting desperately, painfully. He pushes her back into the wall, his hard groin pressing into her thigh, and she turns her face away to suck in a trembling breath.

"God, you're like a statue," he chuckles softly, guiding her along the wall towards the bed, skirting the room, dragging her over the exposed metal pipes and cinderblocks. "Let's loosen you up a bit, huh, love?"

XXXX

She gasps, bolting from sleep with a rush of fear. Sitting upright she searches the room, a single drop of cold sweat sliding down her shoulder blades, south until it reaches the top of her pants and soaks into their denim waistband. Reaching into the dark around her, she flicks on the battery-powered lantern, illuminating the cramped living-room of the small home that she has been staying in.

Slowly, she twists her body and drops her feet to the floor, embracing the feeling of the soft carpet against her soles, pushing up into her arches. She looks at the picture on the mantle, an older couple surrounded by three young girls – likely their grandchildren. Using the sofa arm, she gets easily to her feet and crosses the room to lift the picture frame and inspect it closer. The youngest girl catches her eye and she traces the floral pattern of a Shirley Temple style dress and the brown Mary Jane's clasped on tiny feet. The little girl sits comfortably on the hip of her older sister, her face turned away from the sun, her shoulder length brown hair cut neatly and partly held back by a ribbon. She squints at the pixie-like grin and the pearly baby teeth, and she feels the corners of her own mouth begin to twitch into the beginning of a smile. Stiffening, she put the photo back down, then hesitates before turning it onto its face.

She steps back toward the sofa and looked around the room again, crossing her arms over her middle.

Outside, she can hear birds chirping, and she knows that the sun will be up soon. Moving quickly, she picks up her bag and begins collecting her things, taking a moment to shove a handful of almonds in her mouth. She leaves a granola bar on the table to eat on the go, and rolls her sleeping bag before slipping it into its waterproof bag.

The street is clear when she steps outside onto the overgrown path, the area has been vacant for some time. She knows it is foolish to move on from a place that seems to be relatively safe, but she has grown restless. She doesn't like staying in one place too long – she doesn't want to feel confined.

Her car reeks heavily of gasoline, so she rolls down the window first to get some fresh air moving through the vehicle. Checking the gauge she finds that she has over a half-tank left and she thanks the hybrid-gods for awesome gas mileage. She hasn't had to touch the two jerry cans in the trunk – a relief considering how difficult the commodity has become to find.

Pressing on the accelerator, she steers the car away from the curb, avoiding and overturned mini-van in the middle of the road. Once she finds herself in less precarious driving conditions, she drops her other hand to rest on the leather sheath that covers the blade of the machete resting on her lap. Luckily for her the Walkers in the area migrate solo for the most part and she is grateful that she hasn't come across any hordes. She has become fairly confident in her ability to put down the Walkers that she's come across, sometimes even two or three at a time, but she knows the destruction that they can do when they collect together into large masses.

She drives as long as she can stand to, leaving behind the small town where she'd stayed for weeks while she'd healed physically. The quaint rows of single houses give way quickly to larger lots and then farms that seem familiar yet completely anonymous with their large stretches of barren land, overgrown with ragweed and grass that looks like it will exceed the height of her hip if she finds herself standing amongst it.

Farm after farm whisk past her window until she finds one that catches her interest. It is less intact than most of the others, but the large barn calls her name with its sloped, sagging roof and wearied planked walls with gaps large enough to slide her fingers through them. Guiding her vehicle onto the property she follows the rutted path to the barn then stopped just before it. Leaving the engine running she steps outside and inspects the barn's large doors for a moment before approaching them. Iron handles the size of her forearms are screwed in place at her eye-level and she uses them to pull the groaning doors open, their stiff hinges protesting her efforts. The car fits neatly between the stalls, snugly enough that she has to squeeze out from behind the wheel. It is tight, but it provides her coverage so she won't draw the attention of any unwanted passersby, living or otherwise.

The gaps between the boarded walls let in enough light that she is able to set up her sleeping bag in the hayloft. She decides not to light the lantern - in case its dim fiery glow is visible from the road – so when the last of the sun's fat rays fade into the moons softer glow, she turns in for what will hopefully be a nightmare free sleep.

She dreams of a toddler who wears the face of the little girl in the photo back in the small house. She knows the image is wrong, but she explores it anyway, tracing her hands over pudgy baby arms and small hands that tangle up in her own hair. She has taken to wearing it short enough that its uneven ends, sawed off with the blade of her pocketknife, barely touch her shoulders. In her dream it is long though, a brown curtain that drapes over her shoulders and across her eyes each time the wind picks it up. The toddler in her arms morphs into a little boy who settled his cheek against her collarbone, his button nose sprinkled with fine freckles.

When she wakes her arms are asleep from being crossed over her chest for god only knows how long. She stretches them out, wincing at the aching, tingly sensation as blood returns to her limbs. Sitting up she rolls her neck and looked around the barn for anything that will be useful to take with her. She spots a couple of rusty shears and a pitchfork, abandoned against the back wall of one of the stalls. In the same carrel are the skeletal remains of a horse with a long thick rope of bones that made up its neck and spinal cord.

She climbs down the ladder and heads into the stall, collecting the tools from the wall. She pauses as something crunches underfoot and she bends down to retrieve the rib bone that has caught up under her boot, mostly concealed in brittle straws of hay. She turns the off-white bone over in her palm, inspecting one toothy end before depositing it into her back pocket.

XXXX

She circles back on the highway again, following the familiar roads that she has travelled over and over again, a record stuck in a groove, replaying the same lines. She knows that there is nothing to come of it except for her own death as she put her life in danger each time she makes the journey.

Somehow the thought that this time might be her last comes as a comfort to her; that it will be over soon: the numbness, the longing, the silence. She won't have to see the ravaged remains of those not fast enough littering the streets anymore, or the hordes of heaving, stumbling faces rotting away, mindlessly searching for something to satisfy their never abating need to consume.

The road ducks into the woods, trees lining its shoulders, thick and bursting with summer fresh evergreen. She stops about a mile from the path that she knows leads over the tracks, down the small slope to the wooden footbridge. She follows the route, her weapon unsheathed and gripped in her right hand while the other holds the straps of her bag to her shoulder. Stopping at the edge of the chain-link fence, her toes pressed against the property and she trails her eyes over the familiar scene: a crouched set of buildings, stooped low in the distance, crumbling. Part of the fence to her right has been torn away, opening the space up to the figures who shamble around the yard, stumbling through wreckage of twisted wire and broken concrete.

It is a short walk around the edge of the yard to the steel doors that are partially covered by broken tree branches and waist high grass. As far away from the main building as she can get without leaving the property, she bends down and grasps the rusted handles of a thick metal door. Heaving them back, she pulls them open and a grunt, revealing a set of stairs and descend into darkness beneath the surface of the earth. The long corridor smells damp as she walk through her, her face lowered to rest her chin against the surface of her chest.

She arrives at the only inset of the wall after several yards of tunnel and searches in the dark until her fingers brushed the thin rope that is draped over a ledge. She picks up the plastic flashlight and turns it on, lighting the space around her. She takes a quick breath and pushes her way into the emergency shelter, her feet confident as she crosses the solid floor. She followed the room as it narrows into a small hallway with cells punctuating its right-side wall, and stops in front of the last one, listening to the sound of grunting and growling as she watched the shadowy figure stumble around in the dark.

Lighting a cigarette, she breathes in the toasty smoke and let it fill her lungs. Technically, she hasn't smoked since high school, but she has picked up the habit again, unsure of why she ever denied herself the comfort for so long. She leans back against the wall, her arms crossed over as she waits to be noticed, her thumb flicking the filtering end of the cigarette. It doesn't take too long for thick arms to lash out at her from between the bars, appearing suddenly with mottled black skin, tearing away from the bone where it rubs against the metal. She takes another drag from her cigarette and holds it between her lips while she turns her machete over in her hand. Approaching the cell she stares into the darkness, locating the swastika that has begun to fade into the same rotting colour of the rest of the flesh surrounding it.

She digs into her pocket and pulls out her souvenir from the barn, the one end of the bone now sharpened into a spike. The pot of his belly gives way to the makeshift weapon and she releases it, leaving it protruding from him with a satisfied grunt. She slices off his hand next that is just a palm and a thumb; she took the rest of his fingers earlier on. His chest is a ravaged mess of sliced and stabbed flesh that is rancid as she inspects it.

Her attack does nothing to deter him as he continues to reach for her with one hand and his stump. Scoffing, she turns her back on him to leave.

XXXX

She barely understands the concept of night and day now – it has been so long since she has been allowed outside to see the sun, the moon, or anything except the grey concrete walls of her cell. When something rocks the ground she can barely respond, her body aching too much for her to move. Her neck is sore from his hands gripping it, squeezing until she was sure he would break it like a pheasants, killing her.

He curses from the other room and she hears furniture scraping. Sinking her teeth into her lower lip, she gets to her feet, one hand closing over her stomach, the other bunching into the fabric of her nightgown.

She hears the outer door slam and flinches at the sound and then the silence that follows. If he doesn't come back she will starve to death… she wonders if he would ever be so compassionate as to allow her that fate.

When he returns later he is in a frenzy, she can hear him knocking things over, searching frantically. He comes to her door, his chest heaving, his wife-beater askew, showing off half his chest. She steps back when he opens the cell door, clenching her fists in fear – unsure of what to expect from him.

"We're goin'," he tells her, reaching to grasp her forearm. She doesn't resist him as he pulls her out into the hall and towards the other room that she has only seen a few times before. It is large compared to her cell, almost overwhelmingly so, and she isn't sure she wants to know what it will feel like to be outside in the open. Shaking her head she pulls back, easily yanking her arm from his grip.

"Y'dumb bitch," he reaches for her again and she falls back, shaking her head, her back colliding with the wall behind her. She slides down its smooth surface, pulling her knees to her chest protectively. Reaching frantically around her she feels something slim and snatches it up. Taking a swing at him she doesn't even realize she has picked up a pen until it is lodged into the thick fold of his neck. His eyes widen with shock and he falls backwards onto his ass, his hands flying to his throat that doesn't start bleeding until he wrenches the pen free.

Long streams of blood jet from the wound and he covers it with both hands, sputtering at her in shock. Closing her eyes, she rests her forehead on her knees and doesn't look up again until he has gone silent.

Fear grips her first, if he is dead then she is alone.

Putting feelers out for this one. If you're interested in seeing it continue please let me know.