Chapter Text
Madison woke with a jerk; a combination of sunlight and nightmares pulling her from a restless sleep. She scrambled to her feet, angry with herself for falling asleep on guard duty. Again. Her head started to spin from standing too quickly and she braced herself against a tree; sinking back to a sitting position she willed the world around her to stop moving. The spinning slowed down and eventually came to a stop and she chanced standing up again. Leaning against the tree for support, she took a moment to remember how mornings used to be; snooze buttons, warm blankets, and coffee. ‘Oh, coffee! I think I miss you most of all.’
Returning to the task at hand, she scanned the small clearing of their “camp”, trying to look as if she had been on the look out all night and not asleep in a ball by the base of the tree she now leaned on. ‘I couldn’t have been out that long, right? Just a few minutes-I’m sure of it.’ All Madison knew for sure was that she had dodged a bullet. She would never have heard the end of it if her sister, Ally, had caught her nodding off. ‘Where is Ally, anyway?’
Uneasiness radiated from somewhere deep within as Madison looked around for her baby sister. Even with a mere five years between them, Ally had always been Madison’s baby sister and no amount of protesting on Ally’s part would change that. ‘She must be off in search of a semi-discrete plant to pee on,’ Madison tried to reassure herself. She held her breath and listened for any telltale noises suggesting which direction Ally had wandered off in. ‘It’s quiet,’ she thought, ‘Too quiet.’ Madison took a few steps forward, her hand instinctively checking for her knife at her hip. “Ally!” she called as loud as she dared, “Where are you?”
Silence.
She focused on the ground, looking for tracks to give her a hint as to which direction to begin her search deciding that made more sense that running blindly into the forest. They’d never find each other that way.
She heaved a sigh of relief when she found a set of tracks and she set off to follow them into the forest knowing it was only a matter of minutes until she and her baby sister were reunited and they could make their way back to the main road.
“Ally? Ally! Come on, this isn’t funny anymore. Ally!”
The silence was deafening, but she kept pushing on; the uneasiness she felt earlier morphing into full blown panic.
And then her world shattered. The faint trail left by her sister in the dew moistened dirt was interrupted by clear signs of a struggle. And blood. So much blood. Madison shoved her fist to her mouth and clamped down hard to keep from screaming. ‘One of those things got Ally. A walker got my baby sister!’ In the past few weeks she had heard many terms used to describe these flesh eating monsters roaming around; biters, geeks, lame-brains. Folks in this area called them walkers and she favored that above the other descriptions she’d heard, but none of that mattered now. No matter what they were called, one of them had attacked her little sister. Terror got the better of her and Madison shrieked, “Alice Montgomery Wyatt! Where are you?”
She heard leaves rustle behind her and in one fluid motion she whipped around and yanked her knife from its sheath, ready to take down the monster that took her sister. She zeroed in on where the noise came from and lowered her knife with an incredulous laugh, ‘Stupid squirrel.’ She rubbed her eyes with her empty hand and shook her head, forcing herself to take a few seconds and breathe. ‘You don’t know if that’s Ally’s blood, she probably took out the walker that tried to get her and that’s walker blood you see. She’s still out there. She’s okay.’
Unsure of what else to do, Madison decided to continue her search in the same direction she’d been going. She turned back around only to find herself face to face with a walker. Her blood ran cold as she stared into its face; a face she’d know anywhere, “Oh Ally.” She whispered, her heart ripping from her chest. ‘No.’
Madison forced herself to swallow her grief for the time being and to see the thing in front of her, not as her baby sister, but as the monster it was. Her momentary loss of focus cost her and she was caught off guard when the walker reached out for her; instead of putting her knife in its skull, she backed away, tripping over an exposed tree root. She fell backwards, hitting her back on a rock. She heard a pop and howled in pain. Ally was getting closer now, ‘No, not Ally,’ she reminded herself. She forced herself to a kneeling position, wincing with the movement. ‘Thank God I’m not paralyzed,’ she thought, ignoring the high probability of broken ribs. Madison went for her sheath to find it empty and it dawned on her that she must have dropped her knife when she fell. There was no time to look for it; the walker was mere inches away at this point. She scoured the ground for a rock or a stick-anything nearby she could use as a weapon. Something bright caught her eye. ‘My knife!’ She lunged for it, sprawled out on her stomach she could just reach it. Her head was violently jerked backwards as the walker grabbed hold of her ponytail and pulled. Again Madison cried out in pain as she was pulled to her feet by her hair. With the walker behind her she couldn’t maneuver herself into a position that allowed her to use her knife. She tried elbowing the thing in the face, but it wouldn’t let go of her hair, all that did was keep the teeth at bay, for now. She knew noise would attract other walkers, but she couldn’t help yelling from exertion and pain as she tried to fight the walker off. She was getting tired and the pain in her back was getting to be too much for her. ‘So, this is how it ends?’