Birds chirped merrily in the early morning sun. The zombie apocalypse had done little to subdue their numbers or their nauseating positivity. A chilling breeze blew between the trees, and morning dew was heavy in the air.

Max Caulfield walked...

She walked onwards, one foot in front of the other, wrestling with every fiber of her being, not to think about anything else. Left foot. Right foot. Keep walking. She hadn't come across any zombies since her adrenaline high ended, which was just as well, Max wasn't sure what she would do if she had to fight her way past any, and frankly, she couldn't find it in herself to care.

The apocalypse had done a number on the diversity of humans. Specifically, it had weeded out almost everyone who wasn't a grizzled, take-no-shit, badass, and the people who were prepared to train to become one, not unlike a reasonable, pre-apocalypse, job application. Max Caulfield had always been an extraordinary exception to that rule.

Max's girlfriend (and best friend) Chloe Price, on the other hand, had been the poster child for not taking shit. The first zombie she killed was far from the first dude to obnoxiously invade her personal space, nor the first to sorely regret it. Rachel Amber, Max's other girlfriend, hadn't quite shared Chloe's enthusiasm for violence, but still, people (dead or otherwise) messed with her at their peril.

The three of them had loved each other desperately, certainly beyond caring about a since gone society's hang ups about the correct number of people for a relationship, but that wasn't the only reason these two formidable women kept a meek and timid hipster around, Max Caulfield was their secret weapon. Max had a super power... had... past tense...

The first time Max saw a zombie, sinking its teeth into Chloe's neck, she had cried out in defiance and, to her astonishment, time had undone itself before her very eyes. Like a rewinding video, the undead marauder had shrunk back into the building the girls had unwittingly wandered into, affording Max the foresight to tell her partners to run for their lives.

With a little experimentation, it dawned on the trio, that Supermax had the power to rewind time, essentially making them untouchable... or so they thought... Surprise zombie attack? No problem. Unstable floorboards? Think again. Some asshole with a sniper rifle? Not on Max's watch. As long as Rachel and Chloe took all the risks, and kept Max safe, they were always one step ahead, and even then, Max herself had been bitten by zombies plenty of times, and every time, she abruptly retconned that crappy timeline.

But even time travel powers can't always save you from the perils of overconfidence...

The three of them had been exploring an abandoned mall. It was an optimistic scavenging trip. When the shit hit the fan, people had looted malls in droves, but the girls had stumbled upon the building on their way to Seattle, in the hopes of finding a secure settlement (and maybe even Max's parents), and it seemed worth a look. The building was worryingly intact. Good for shelter, but bad, as far as means of escape went, not that it was too concerning for team Max.

An uneventful scavenging trip followed. They found some zombies, who Chloe gladly introduced to her crowbar, and found some backpacks, with a couple of days food, and some bullets in them, probably dropped by some poor soul who'd had a worse day than they were having. More interestingly, Rachel found an acoustic guitar, and took the opportunity to serenade her loves, after forming a makeshift campsite in the food court, in the middle of the mall.

Musical indulgences were always a tactical decision, with sound-sensitive undead everywhere you looked, but as mentioned, it was hard to worry, with Supermax on the scene.

Slowly, like an ominous, creeping shadow, a sound rose in volume, rising over Rachel's angelic voice. It was the gurgling, rasping roar of the dead, an entire herd. Rachel dropped the guitar and they ran. The first exit they came to was already overrun. Zombies clambered over each other like ants, desperate for flesh. They turned and ran back to the food court, but to their dismay, they saw that the dead were beginning to file in from the other entrances, too.

Max cursed herself. Obviously, she should have rewound, the second they heard the zombies. The less music to lure them in, the better. Still, better late than never, or so Max thought... Straining herself to go back as far as she could, Max found herself grabbing Rachel and Chloe's wrists, just before the left the food court, the first time, and leading them to a different exit.

The results weren't much better... It turned out, the dead had surrounded the mall, as though thinking with military tactics. Max rewound again and again, her head pounding as the ability took its toll. Eventually, sprinting frantically, she led her girlfriends to the safest exit, which still had its fair share of zombies in-bound. At first, they tried to bottleneck the dead, killing them as the filed through the narrow doorway, but that plan proved impractical, as the shambling army loomed from the center of the mall.

Their backs against the proverbial wall, the girls forced their way out, finding themselves in the loading bay, behind the mall, with more zombies than most people generally liked, closing in. They faught furiously, but before long, the worst happened, a zombie wrapped its arm around Rachel's shoulder and shredded the side of her face with its teeth. Max rewound, but the new timeline wasn't much better. On their next attempt, Chloe was bitten, then Max. Max rewound again and again, but she was in a situation controlled not by choices, but chaos. Having seen her girlfriends die, didn't give her much foresight, when moving out of the way just meant moving into the path of another zombie, yet Max went on...

Max rewound five times, ten times, twenty times, fifty times adamant that there was a timeline where all three of them got out alive. Her head pounded and blood poured from her nostrils, but still it was the same. Finally, a glimmer of hope began to show, as they made it passed the worst of the herd, but just as it seemed they'd make it out, Chloe and Rachel were seized almost simultaneously. Max winced, feeling like her brain had been through a blender, and yet she tried to rewind one last time, but when she did, she felt something inside her snap.

The world slowed almost to a halt, but Max couldn't move. She stood petrified, looking at Rachel and Chloe's horrified expressions, as two sets of zombie teeth bore down on them. Max focused with all of her might, but time wouldn't yield, the only effect seemed to be more trauma on Max's aching brain. She continued to hold time still, but she could feel even that slipping away from her. She looked mournfully at Rachel and Chloe's faces, before letting go, turning around, and running, tears streaming down her face.

Max had been walking ever since. Rachel and Chloe were dead, and it was all her fault. They had grown dependent on a power that had ultimately turned out to be worthless. She had been worthless. What would she do now? Seattle seemed meaningless. In her heart, she knew it was very unlikely that her parents were alive, life is about the journey, not the destination, so they say, but Max's favourite part of the journey had been the company, and now she was alone...

The forest thinned, as Max approached a road, running perpendicular to her path. Looking left and right had kind of had its day, and even if there were still cars on the roads, Max's depression had bumped self-preservation a few notches down on her priorities list. That was how her trip across the road, came to be interrupted by the screeching of tires, as a car ground to a halt, just shy of slamming into her.

Briefly startled out of her melancholy, Max looked with interest, as a girl, a couple of years her junior, wearing a denim jacket and a ratty, blue and white baseball cap with a D on it, leaned out of the window on the driver's side.

"Hey..." The girl said, after the two were finished sizing each other up.

"Hi..." Max replied.

Unexpected social interactions were no less awkward in the apocalypse, albeit for different reasons. Now, they came with a plethora of questions. Who is this person? Are they alone? Are they dangerous? Have I already made a mistake by not murdering them?

"You know, I know no one has much reason to have a spring in their step these days, but I almost put my foot down." The girl said. "I thought you were one of them."

Max wasn't sure if the girl was trying to make her laugh. Either way, she didn't.

"I'm Clementine, by the way. Who are you?"