Author's Notice: My writing has been stolen twice by someone who tried to pass it off as their own. If you recognize my writing anywhere please contact me immediately.

A WARNING TO ALL REEDUS WRITERS: In light of posting a very angry author's note to the story that the content was stolen from. I have been informed by a fellow writer that many other writers in the Reedus/TWD fandom have had their work stolen recently.

This person will most likely make a new blog, steal more writing, and submit it as their own to another innocent fic blog. Look out for writing you recognize and if possible inform the rightful owner.

Hunt. Eat. Kill.

That's all the woman knew. All she lived.

Long before the dead started rising she'd been alone in the wilds of Georgia, thriving. She no longer thought or functioned as a human being, but a feral animal. Primal instinct had taken over, ruled supreme within her. With the aid of behaviors learned from the animals around her she became skilled in surviving.

All faces she encountered aside from the dirt caked one reflected in the waters surface were dead. Rotten intruders in her territory, unworthy practice for hunting. She killed as many as she could find within her domain for sport. But after encountering the first of those faces she began having dreams and returning memories of a life she could not understand. One she did not want to remember.

As she stalked through her daily route in search of prey the eastward wind brought the scent of the dead to her flaring nostrils. Something else carried in the same breeze made her stop to inhale a larger breath. A scent similar to the rotters in species but more tangible, fresher, distinctly alive. Filled with panic and blood.

She took off on all fours, flying towards the source of this strangely familiar yet confusing scent. Nearing the origin she shimmied up a tree to survey the scene below from high above, in her comfort zone.

Dead things everywhere, closing in on a fellow corpse down in the ravine. No, not a rotter, he was pink, fast in his movements but wounded with a stick in his side and a gash on his head. Living and fighting for life.

She scraped a nail along the mixture of dirt and black blood slathered her skin to hide her own scent. Underneath pink skin shown through, similar to the creature's hide down below that was killing off the dead methodically. She leaned further off her branch to observe him. She was impressed with his tool that shot sticks at speeds too fast to see. But even more so with his grace and coordination at collecting the sticks to reload while using a gleaming blade that put her own made of bone to shame on the dead that advanced.

As they started to overwhelm him he backed himself against the cliff face underneath her tree. He let his last stick fly and stabbed another to his left with the knife. She heard him make noises, ones that made her own lips move in lost memory. The baser, more dominant part of her brain told her to let the dead kill him so she could steal his tools with ease. But a small part of her wanted to see this fierce creature go on and thrive.

When she watched a rotter to the pink thing's left lunge to bite a chunk from his clothed limb the dominant half warring inside herself changed its directive. As she leaped from her perch, bone dagger drawn one primal feeling tore through her. 'Mine.'

"Sonova bitch, where these fuckers keep comin' from?" Daryl muttered to himself as he dispatched another walker with an arrow and two more with his knife.

Daryl started to lose it, there were just too many closing in too fast. He was contemplating just driving his hunting knife into his own scull when a small dark shape dropped down onto a walker he hadn't noticed practically on top of him. He ducked out of the way just in time to watch as it plunged something into the walkers brain and leaped swiftly to the next closest dead bastard. Daryl didn't have much time to comprehend just what the fuck had saved his ass before another walker was coming at him.

After dropping it and several others closing in on him with thrusts of his knife he paused to watch as the thing killed several more. It was fast, and deadly. He noted long, dirty hair so matted together it resembled many thin dreadlocks and a distinctly feminine body structure covered with animal pelts. If anyone ever found out he'd just been saved by a woman he'd never live it down.

His momentary embarrassment was wiped out when she pounced on another walker, stabbing its head repeatedly as she let out a long, vicious, inhuman growl of triumph. Daryl watched, amazed as all the walkers started to slowly retreat. They were scared of her.

He felt a shiver run up his spine as he watched her chase after them on all four legs like a natural predator, quickly taking down several. Daryl scrambled to climb back up the ravine wall before the feral woman got tired of playing with the dead and decided she wanted something a little more challenging to take on.

Blood loss and lack of footing sent Daryl tumbling back down the steep incline, adding another knock to his head on his list of injuries once he reached the bottom. The last thought that ran through his mind before his vision went black was one of hope that she would at least kill him before she hogtied his ass to a spit and roasted him over an open fire.