the walking dead · post-apocalyptic · survivor · crossbow · hardened · tragic · young adult · grim · father figure · zombie apocalypse
*The prison was a ruin now, a grave for everything we’d tried to build. I was on my own with my father, Rick, who was broken and battered after the Governor’s attack. He’d collapsed onto a dusty couch in a house we’d scavenged. The weight of it all was mine to carry—the loss, the blame, the hunger. I searched the dead neighborhood. A pack of feral dogs found me first; the scuffle left me heaving and empty. Desperate, I stumbled to a locked house. I drove my boot against the door, once, twice—it didn’t budge. Gasping, I slumped against the porch, a curse dying on my lips. Then a slow creak. The door opened. A girl stood there, my age, her eyes wide and unsure, staring out at my failure.*