First Walking Dead story. Hope you enjoy, and if you do, please leave a review to let me know!

Prologue: This is the Way the World Ends...

This is the way the world ends/Not with a bang but a whimper

T. S. Eliot "The Hollow Men"

Jacklyn was in the hospital when the world ended.

She had been diagnosed with cancer when she was twenty. A tumor, wrapped around her brainstem. It had started with headaches, neck aches, migraines so awful she would nearly pass out. It escalated to full spinal pains, like razors cutting into her vertebrae, and a knot that grew up on the back of her neck. The tumor went from the size of a pea to a golf ball in less than six months. She had lasted two years, undergone chemotherapy, radiation, surgery, even experimental procedures and drugs which had caused her to permanently lose all of her body hair, except, thankfully, the hair on her head. The doctors couldn't explain that, but Jack was relieved. She would hate to be bald and shiny in her coffin.

She was literally on her death bed when chaos broke out in the hallway outside her room.

Shouts. Screams. Cries. And moans. Those were the worst, the moans. Punctuated by gunfire. The smell of burning hair and flesh.

Terror ripped through Jack. She had thought she was beyond terror, that being so close to death made her somehow invulnerable to fear. But she felt fear as she laid in the hospital bed, weak, doped up on morphine. Some instinct, and a fair amount of adrenaline, pushed her to sit up, to pull the IV from her arm, place her feet on the linoleum. The world was spinning, her muscles shook, and her head throbbed despite the cancer ravaging her brain.

She stood up. Her hospital gown crinkled around her legs. She took a step forward, her knees threatening to give out. The world looked wobbly and her heart was beating too rapidly. She wondered if it was happening, if her body was finally giving out. She took another step. Another. The door was closer now, her feet were still moving. Something was scratching on the door.

Jack reached out, one hand grabbing the handle, the other bracing her on the wall. She took a deep breath. A fog was starting to form over her eyes. She pulled the door open and someone fell in on top of her.

It was a nurse, one of the ones that would come by in the afternoons to check on Jack's IV, her saline drip, make sure she was comfortable. But something was different with her. She fell on Jack, hands clawing the linoleum, mouth open, eyes milky and glazed over. The nurse groaned and growled and snapped her jaws in Jack's face.

Jack tried to hold her off, tried to squirm out from beneath her, but she was weak and her arms weren't able to hold the nurse off. Jack's arms gave out and the nurse was on her, teeth sinking into Jack's forearm. And then there was a shot, the nurse slumped, lifeless, over Jack, jaw going slack and releasing her arm.

Jack didn't hesitate. She kicked the nurse off and used the last of her waning strength to push the door closed again. She slumped against it, cradling her injured arm to her chest. Outside the groans, screams and gunshots continued to ring out. Jack listened to it all as darkness settled over her eyes and she fell into unconsciousness.

It was days later when Jack finally awoke. She knew it had been days because of the soreness in her body, the deep muscle bruises that form from lying too long on one side on a hard surface. Unlike when she had passed out, only silence met her ears. There was no screaming, moaning, gunshots in the hall outside.

She hadn't been expecting to wake up, at least not alive. She sat up and stretched. Her muscles were still weak. She had lost too much weight in the past few months, as the cancer had progressed and the treatments had intensified. She had always been tiny, short and naturally thin. Now she was skinny almost to the extreme and the last few days of eating and drinking nothing hadn't helped. Her mouth was sandpaper dry and she was dizzy.

Yet despite her obvious dehydration, Jack felt different. She felt…better. Not a hundred percent, but more lucid than she could remember being in a long time. The sunlight coming through the window felt warm on her bare legs, the linoleum cool, and her head wasn't pounding. That might have been the most significant change. Her mind felt clear, cognizant, and there was no throbbing pressure at the back of her neck.

Jack lifted a hand and brought it to the back of her neck and what she felt there, what she didn't feel there, brought tears to her eyes. The tumor was gone! Her neck was flat, the skin no longer pulled taut over a cancerous lump. She choked back a sob and wondered, for a moment, if she were dead. But no, that wasn't possible. She could feel her pulse beating steady and strong in her veins. She was alive!

Jack felt something like elation warm through her stomach, pour out through her limbs. She struggled to stand up, her body still stiff and uncooperative. It took two tries, but she finally got up. Her knees wobbled for a moment before locking. She stood there, rejoicing, wondering how it could have happened. How could her tumor have just disappeared?

Her arm started to itch and she went to scratch it. Her fingers brushed over rigid scabs and she looked down. There were two crescent shaped wounds on her arm. Not very deep, just superficial punctures in the skin. Teeth marks. A bite. She remembered the nurse with the dead eyes that had bitten her and shuddered. Jack looked over her shoulder at the door and wondered if there were any more people left out there. She didn't know what had happened, but if other people had been infected like the nurse, would that have explained the gunshots? Was everyone dead?

There was only one way to find out. Jack reached for the door knob, then remembered how revealing her hospital gown was. She turned around and searched the room, looking for the clothes she had worn when she had been admitted. She had asked the doctors not to throw them out, just in case. Suddenly she was glad she had thought to do that.

There, in the armoire against the wall. She shuffled toward it, opened the drawers, and fished out her jeans and the A Perfect Circle band shirt she had worn so many weeks ago. Her flip-flops were still there too.

It was slow going, but she managed to change herself and made a mental note to try to find underwear as soon as possible. She didn't like going commando. Just as she was turning to head to the door, she caught sight of something out of the corner of her eye: a bottle of water. It was too good to be true. Jack practically ran for the plastic bottle sitting on the end table near the bed. She cracked it open and slugged it back, feeling instant relief as the water washed over her parched tongue, slid down her constricted throat, and hit her stomach in a wave of blissful, lukewarm nourishment. She drank it down quickly, nearly making herself sick.

When she had drained the bottle she turned to the door. Fear slid down her spine. What if there were people out there that had gone crazy like the nurse? What if the hall was filled with dead bodies? Jack walked to the door, took a deep breath, and let her hand slid back to her neck. She fingered the spot where the tumor had been, taking courage that she had managed to survive, somehow, the deadly cancer that been suffocating her brainstem. She could handle anything that lay on the other side of the door.

What met her eyes was not at all what she had been expecting.

The floor was painted red and black with blood. The walls splattered with gore. The nurse was still there, lying face down. Flesh rotting. The scent of decay and rot was so thick in the air that Jack doubled up, coughing. She gagged and nearly puked up the water.

Something groaned nearby. She heard feet scuffing the floor. Saw a shadow in the peripheral of her vision. She snapped her head to the side and froze. A person in military gear was ambling toward her, mouth agape. She might have thought he was human, if not for the fact that the man was decomposing. His flesh was gray, mottled, peeling away from the bone in places. His chest was ravaged, torn open. How was he able to move?

Jack took a step back, but her body was still weak, still uncoordinated. She tripped over the fallen nurse, went sprawling on the ground. The man, the decomposing, dead man, shuffled toward her. Like the nurse, he had a crazed look on his face, milky, cataract eyes. Jack knew he was coming for her. Her arm throbbed and all she could imagine was his teeth sinking into her skin, ripping her throat open. How ironic to survive a tumor only to be eaten by a walking dead man.

But the corpse, the zombie, only spared her a passing glance and a hiss. He didn't stop. He didn't attack her. He just kept shuffling on.

Jack sat absolutely still until he passed and then let out the shaky breath she had been holding. For the second time, she had somehow managed to elude death.

All it had taken was being robbed and nearly raped for Jack to realize that she couldn't trust the living so easily anymore. She had been on her own for a few weeks, scavenging stores and homes all around Atlanta, just trying to survive. The dead didn't bother her. When she emerged in the streets they didn't take any notice of her, unless she made a lot of noise. Sometimes they would start toward her, recognizing somehow that she wasn't like them, but then they'd get within a few feet and stop, turn around, ignore her. She didn't understand it. She had seen them rip apart living humans, devour flesh. Jack didn't know what made her different, but she was thankful for it.

What really confused her was that she had been bitten. She should have died. Should have turned. But she hadn't. Instead she had woken up, brain cancer miraculously cured, and somehow immune to the zombies that crowded the streets of Atlanta. That wasn't the case with others. She had seen people get bit, run off, die and come back.

No, it wasn't the dead she had to worry about. It was the living people who pulled guns on you, who made you give up your food, water, weapons. The people who tried to rip your clothes off and force themselves on you. In fact, Jack would not have escaped a gruesome rape if it weren't for the zombies. Three or four of the dead had happened up them as the men, a group of six boys barely older than herself, had attempted to defile her in a back alley behind the convenience store she had been holing up in.

She stuck mostly to the areas that were crowded with zombies, the places that other living people were too scared to venture. It was a good plan, for her. Kept her safe from the living that might try to hurt her, take what she had managed to scavenge in the ruins of the city. It was lonely, but she didn't know if there would ever be anyone she could trust again.

That's why, on a sunny day in downtown Atlanta, Jack watched the group of men sneak into the department store across the street and debated whether or not she should help them. Or at least warn them that the zombies ambled in and out of there all the time. Normally she would turn a blind eye, let them fend for themselves. She wasn't looking to get raped today. But there was something about this group, these men, that nagged at her.

One redneck, one muscular black man, one young, obviously scared Asian kid, and a cop. A cop! The uniform was meant to be a sign of integrity, of trustworthiness. And they were obviously on a mission of some sort. Maybe she could help them. Maybe they could help her. Only one way to find out for sure.

She walked calmly to the building, running would just attract zombies. Even though they wouldn't attack her, it was annoying when they followed her around like rotting, stinking puppies. So she made her way into the department store quietly, slowly, and went for the stairs, keeping an eye out for the men she had seen, still wary despite her gut instinct that she needed to find them.

And she did find them. On the roof. She was in the stairwell when she heard their shouting, scuffling, as if they were fighting. She paused, wondering if this were a good idea. Maybe she should just head back down the stairs, give this idea up. But before her brain could talk her out of it, her hand was on the door, pushing it open. It creaked on rusty hinges and all four men turned to her at once, weapons raised and pointed directly at her.

Jack lifted her hands to show she was not a threat and said, "I'm not a zombie, I swear."

The men just stared at her, perplexed, but they slowly lowered their weapons. She took this as a good sign and took a couple steps forward, letting the door close behind her. The cop walked toward her, raising a supplicating hand when she shot him a suspicious look. "My name is Rick Grimes," he said. "Who are you?"

"Jacklyn Rivers," she said, and extended a hand to him. When was the last time she had shook someone's hand? The cop—Rick—took it with a smile. "I saw you guys head into the store. I was going to warn you that it's a pretty regular hangout for the undead, but it looks like you got everything under control."

"You came here, risked getting found by walkers, to deliver us a warning?" The large black man stepped forward, looking incredulous. "You're living in the city, you got to know those things are dangerous."

Jack shook her head, "I can handle myself." She didn't say that the zombies—the walkers—weren't a threat to her. "I thought you guys might need help."

"We look like we need help?" the redneck said, giving her a look that clearly said he doubted she would be any assistance to any of them. "What're you gonna do, anyway? Fight those things off bare-handed? You ain't exactly Annie Oakley."

"Daryl," Rick said, chastising. He turned back to Jack and said, "We're just here looking for something. We weren't planning on staying long enough to draw a crowd. We're not trying to put you in danger."

It was true that she didn't have a weapon, but Jack didn't really need one, not against the zombies. She wasn't really in danger, not like they were. And even if she had been packing a weapon, she probably wouldn't know how to use it anyway. "What are ya'll looking for here? Maybe I can help you find it."

"And what would you want in return?" Rick asked her.

She contemplated this for a moment. "You guys have a safe place? Somewhere to hole up where others don't bother you?"

The men all exchanged a glance. Rick nodded to her hesitantly. "We have a camp. Men, women, children. It's safe enough from the walkers."

"I'm not worried about them. I'm worried about the other living people," Jack answered honestly. "I've already been robbed and attacked. I need to find someplace safe from other people. Give me that, and I'll help you find whatever you're looking for."

"How do we know you'll be any help?" the redneck—Daryl—said angrily. He turned to the others and pointed at her. "She might be all talk, and then what? We got another mouth to feed. Another burden."

"I can help you," she said. "I know this city. I know the places where the dead congregate the most. And…" she paused, looked around at their faces. They seemed trustworthy enough, at least the cop did. And he had said they had a camp with other women, and children. A safe place. But was it worth it to tell them her secret? To let it be known that she could walk, undetected, among the dead? Would they believe her? Would they try to take advantage of her, use her to do their bidding?

"And?" The young Asian kid asked, gently. He gave her an encouraging look and she saw nothing but earnest compassion in his face. That did it, that made up her mind.

"And the zombies don't bother with me," she said.

The four men all stared at her in awe, disbelief, and confusion. Daryl spit on the ground. The Asian kid went slack jawed.

"What do you mean, they don't bother with you?" Rick finally asked.

"I mean, I can walk into a crowd of them and they don't pay me any attention. I don't know why. I can't explain it. They just don't mess with me." She shrugged. "Like I said, whatever you're looking for, I'm your best bet at finding it."

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