Undead - The Walking Dead Fanfiction

Chapter 1 - Blast To The Past

Chapter 1

He wasn’t there when the world changed. He wasn’t around when the dead became the Undead. It was so sudden, so terrifying, and he wasn’t there for me. I guess Dad never really had been, he was always so busy with Sheila.

Sheila was Dad’s girlfriend, the girlfriend he cheated on my Mom with while she was on her death bed with cancer. Mom knew, which made it worse. She would see them together, flirting and laughing like there wasn’t a problem on the entire planet. And Mom was slipping away so slowly, it was torture to watch just how terrible Dad treated her before she died.

The funeral was sickening, Sheila had her head leaned on Dad’s shoulder like she was the one who had just lost her entire world. And Dad held her the way he used to hold Mom, kissing the top of her head and cooing about how everything was going to be okay.

Is it wrong that I was jealous? I wanted him to be worried about me, to comfort me. I guess that’s what I thought would happen when everything we knew changed.

When the announcement of the Undead came over the news channels, I waited up for Dad to come home and take me away. We would finally have a life together, and I’d finally be the most important thing in somebody’s life. Dad never came home that first night, he called. 

“Eden, honey, stay indoors. Lock the windows and anything those things would be able to get into. I’m staying the night at Sheila’s, she’s too afraid to be alone. You’ll be alright, we’ll come home in the morning. I love you.”

He left me there, in the middle of the city, alone. I was only sixteen, and I had no understanding of what was to come. The Undead were everywhere, they had my house swarmed. The neighbours were killed that night, I still remember hearing them screaming as the Undead ate them alive. I remember how I knew enough to know I couldn’t remain there, it was no longer safe. If the could break into the neighbours house, they could break into mine. And I wasn’t about to sit there and die.

I left at some point that night, leaving a single note on the table for my Dad to read when he and Shiela came by in the morning. All I wrote was: BYE.

*****

I had a group, people who had done the same as me and decided not to wait to die. We worked together, killing the Undead and just surviving. 

For awhile, I stayed with them. It was nice to have them watching my back. They had plenty of food, and we had all done our share to earn it. I didn’t stay for long, though, because when a herd went through, it killed about seventy-five percent of our people.

There wasn’t many left, and the longer I was with them, the more I realized that every time you grow attached to somebody, they get ripped away. I left when they were sleeping one night; I couldn’t bare the thought of losing another. I blamed myself for every death, knowing I could’ve prevented it if I had just been there sooner.

As for my Dad and Sheila, I never saw either one of them again. I’m assuming that they are dead, and honestly I wouldn’t be disappointed. They never cared about what happened to me; if they had, they would’ve been there that first night. 

*****

Eden Hollister was my name, and I was sixteen when the world we knew came spiralling down on us. I was just an average girl, one that liked to spend time with her friends, one that like to dress up and go out. I was athletic, always doing sporting events to keep myself in shape. I cared about people, I loved people, and there was even that special boy that I had my eye on.

That was the old Eden. That was the girl I was in a different life, the one that would rather die than kill somebody. She wasn’t a murderer, she wasn’t even a brat. The world as it is now, that would’ve gave her nightmares. It would’ve been the reason she couldn’t fall asleep at night, the reason she prayed to God before she slept. 

But that Eden was gone, left somewhere shrivelled up inside the girl I am now. For most part, I don’t even consider myself a girl. I’m more of an animal, fighting to survive, but not exactly sure why. I don’t know why I’m fighting so hard, I know there will probably never be a cure for this, and there most likely never will be a meaning to my life.  Somewhere deep inside, it’s telling me not to give up, to use every bit of myself I have left. And I know that eventually, I’ll know why I’m still alive.

There has to be a reason I didn’t stay home that first night, a reason I didn’t want to still be that innocent little girl I used to be. I like to think that I was born for this world, to live and perish amongst the Undead. Maybe that alone was enough to explain my reason to be alive. It was my calling, and I secretly loved all the harshness. This world had no beauty to it,  but that didn’t mean it was ugly, just misunderstood. And it was my job to understand it, I knew.