Necessary Knowledge to Survive a Zombie Apocalypse

Introduction for a World Long Gone

It began as a fever, which burned and burned until the sick ones cooked to death. But that wasn't the end of it, because they came back. Rose up from their deathbeds and began a rampage all over the world. Flesh-eating creatures from movies and books, come to life for real. Death was no longer the end, no longer the final stage. It was merely the conclusion to step one of someone's life.

For a long time, I walked alone. There were no friends or family or anyone left to run to. Only the walker-filled streets and back roads of the devastated city of Atlanta where I had once lived. So I fled and hunted and hid until I unintentionally found a small pocket of survivors. A lot has happened since our first meeting—a lot of losses and sadness—but we're still here. We're still alive and kicking. We're still human.

I can't say that the road ahead will be easy. I'd be lying if I told you that things are going to get better. The truth is, I just don't know. None of us do. All we know is that we have to keep moving, have to keep surviving.

Rick is our unofficial leader—strong-minded, kind, wants nothing more than to protect all of us. But he's struggling against the hard decisions; I can see it. His family, Lori and Carl, follow him like sheep to shepherd. They are his whole world bundled into two frail bodies.

Carol is getting stronger, more willing to speak out to the group, say what's on her mind. The shiest one, even more so than me, actually saved our lives two days ago at the CDC. Without her and that grenade she found in Rick's clothes, we'd all be ash in the wind. Her daughter, Sophia, is very lucky to have such a loving mother.

I notice that the stressful gap between tough-guy Shane and gentle Lori grows more everyday. I sometimes wonder where they'd be had Rick not come back. And Andrea? She hardly says a word, not after Dale dragged her out of the CDC, as opposed to letting her burn like she wanted. But that's the kind of person Dale is—wise, stubborn, never letting someone fall.

Glenn's grown into someone I barely recognize. He holds his gun now as though he was born into the apocalypse and knows nothing other than killing the walking dead. It's sad, really.

Big-man T-Dog is still one of the friendliest guys in the group. He never shouts or threatens anyone with rough words, like Daryl does on occasion.

That brings me to the hard-ass—Daryl Dixon. Always wearing that smug, irritated look, like everything is in inconvenience for him. But in the short time that I've known the son of a bitch, he's evolved into something else entirely. He's grown up and opened his heart…and to me, no less, the stranger, newcomer, soft-spoken, careless, deer-hunting mushroom-picker of the bunch. I never believed in fairytales until I found my own with him. A wasteland, apocalyptic fairytale, but one nonetheless.

Now we're all just trying to make it out alive. Make it through the next day, hour, minute, second. Fort Benning is our destination—a place of imagined safety from walkers. But it's a long trek, and there are monsters around every corner. So we stick together, humanity's last-ditch effort to survive.

This is Marlie Bryant, and I'm telling anyone out there who's still alive, who's still human, that there is still hope. There will always be hope.

And so it begins, ladies and gentlemen. Season Two.