INTERIM · BEN PARISH | ✓

Three

A/N:
This is a chapter on Red's background. If you came here to this chapter to continue reading some Zombie/Red interaction, you're reading the wrong one. Just a little heads up. :)

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Three hours after the 1st Wave

SHE WAS IN the backyard, watering the lawn and the flowers that never seemed to stop blooming with buckets of old collected rainwater. Her dark hair was pulled back into a tangled ponytail, and her forehead continued to burn even as the sun started to disappear from the sky. There was something about the earth that calmed her, made her at peace. She probably got that from her mother.

Speaking of her mother, where was she? She and her dad should have been back from their flight not long ago. Just maybe half an hour. And something seemed off. Her phone obviously didn't work, and neither did any of the electronics.

She was going to find her parents tonight.

First things to pack were the essential toiletries and clothes. The second were some books, a wind up flashlight, matches, some food and water. The gun kept in her father's safe. The third were her seeds. Her precious, food bearing seeds.

She took countless types of seeds from her supplies. Wheat, broccoli, cabbage, carrots, a few dozen others. Stored in a large ziploc bag with a wet paper towel sat a baby aloe vera in a pot. Some of the more precious seeds like the c. quadrangularis were kept inside a locket with tape wrapped around it and hung over her neck.

They all fit into one duffel bag and one backpack. She quickly pressed two kissed fingers to the front door and left their house for good.

As she walked, she calmed her growing anxiety with memories. Happy ones. As an only child, she got all the attention. Sometimes it was for the worse, sometimes the better. Her mother used to be a landscape artist and her father was planning on running for senate. She ended up moving twice, but kept in touch with one of her closest friends: Lauren. Things finally settled and they didn't move since two years ago. And since then, she had an extreme infatuation with her neighbor. He was still alive then.

It was an hour's worth of walking before she saw the plane crash. It was split in two, clean down the middle. Dust continued to move slowly west, with no intention of settling.

It was an unrecognizable airline, but when she circled the plane, the stripes on its tail and the number broadly painted on the wing she found told all.

That was her parents' flight.

No. No no no. It couldn't have been. It just couldn't be the plane they took to get home.

Some people had landed on the grass but remained motionless. Most of them were still on the plane, their seatbelts securely fastened.

She screamed and ran over to the row of seats closest to the ground. Her mother was there, but she looked limp, her eyes still open. She must have broken her neck from the impact.

Her father would have been close. She turned and saw him, slumped against the wall of the plane outside. He clutched his stomach like it might fall out.

"Dad?" she said, bending down to his eye level.

"Is that you?" he mumbled. He reached for her hand and took it. His grip wasn't strong like it usually was.

"Daddy," she said, and broke down. The river of tears wouldn't stop pouring, even as they stained her father's shirt. His blood seeped through to her other hand as she pressed gently against it.

"Oh, my beautiful baby girl. It's only gonna get worse, darling." He cleared his throat and closed his eyes.

"Daddy, don't you dare die on me! It's already bad enough.."