I'm breaking my promise. I know I said I would probably finish Joslyn Grimes before I started a new story, but this was one of the first stories that popped in my head when I started watching Walking Dead. And ever since someone reviewed on my other story about finding Daryl a soul mate it's been playing in my head even more. So here goes. Let me know what you think please and thank you. And I don't own anything of or related to the Walking Dead.

Chapter 1

It had been nearly eleven months since I had talked to another person, well another adult. I knew cause I had kept track of the days waiting to be rescued, but nothing has came. Well, nothing alive has came. My name is Katie Thomas. I worked at Helping Hands, Happy Heart daycare. It was a hippie daycare. People brought their kids here when they only wanted them to eat organic food and do yoga. I shit you not. Instead of cots we had yoga mats. Our A.M. snack was a fruit and veggie smoothie. If a kid picked a flower, we had to make them apologize to the flower and then bury it.

I guess I shouldn't complain to much. Because of the owners belief that store bought food had poison in them the daycare had its own garden and even a well. That's what saved us, me and Gracie. That and the fact that my boss went through a stage of canning her own vegetables. If we didn't have those jars of food this past winter, we would have died for sure. I know we are going to have to leave soon though, but I don't know where. We've been here for so long. I don't know what the world even looks like anymore. Maybe we can make it to my apartment, but that sounds dumb even to me. I didn't have much food there either. I look over at the sleeping toddler. I'm all she knows. She just turned one when this all started. She'll be two in three weeks. I remember the day I became her mom, or the only one she will ever know anyway.

11 months ago

I was getting ready for work. I put on a pair of jeans and an old t-shirt that I didn't care about getting messed up. I learned not to where nice things when working with kids. They have no qualms about spitting up, rubbing nasty muddy hands, or sneezing on you. They also yank on any jewelry you have, but that doesn't stop me from wearing the necklace with my mom and dad's wedding rings on it. I never leave home without it.

My dad died before I was born, but mom told me so many stories it's like I knew him. He was a police officer he was gunned down in a routine traffic stop. The guy had a suspended license and no insurance. He didn't want to get in trouble so he killed a cop instead. That's what the newspaper clippings I found say. I never understood how that logically made sense to anyone. Because of that stupidity I never met my dad.

My mom died last year from skin cancer. It was fast and aggressive. She never remarried or even dated. I asked her why once and she told me that once you meet that person you are supposed to spend the rest of you life with there's no point in looking for anyone else. She said its a dull comparison. Like watching black and white movies they were great, but the minute you see a movie in color you don't want to go back to seeing black and white again. I'm happy with the knowledge that they are together again.

I grab a bottled water and wait for my taxi. My damn car decided to break down again so now I have to shell out thirty bucks for a taxi to get to work. I would turn on the TV, but I know they will just be covering that stupid flu that's going around.

I look in the mirror that's by my front door. I'm pretty average looking I have dark brown eyebrows That match my waist length pin straight hair. I have pale blue eyes and rosy rounded cheeks that constantly make me only younger than what I am. I'm twenty-two, but I look about seventeen. I don't wear much makeup, only on those rare occasions when I went out and acted my age. I didn't have anyone to impress so there was no point.

I hear a honk and grab my purse. I head out of my small one-bedroom apartment locking the door on the way out. I jog down the steps and hurry to the waiting taxi. When I get in I tell the driver the address. I quickly get engrossed in scrolling through Facebook. I'm taking a quiz on which celebrity is my soul mate when we pull up to the daycare. I hand the driver my money and head inside.

I clock-in and go to the baby room. That's where I work. I have four kids that are in my group. A set of twin boys that are three months old named Bradley and Stewart, they were going to have a hard time in school I could already tell. Then I had a little six month old girl who was showing signs of being a biter which was just lovely. Her name, I kid you not, was Sweetness. I have no clue what her parents were thinking. Then I have my little Gracie she had just turned one last week. When I started working here she was only four weeks old and we just clicked. She cried when anyone else tried to feed her and she absolutely hated the owner Mary. Whenever she came in Gracie cried and hid, I didn't blame her. I wanted to do the same thing.

I started straightening up my room, why I don't know. It would be destroyed in less then thirty minutes when the kids showed up. I get the twins and Sweetness's bottles from the kitchen and say hi to Cindy who works with the three year olds, and God love her cause those kids were crazy. I had to sub for her one day and I was ready to cry at the end of the day. I grab a bowl and spoon so I would be able to feed Sweetness her baby food when she arrived.

"Have you been watching the news? That flus getting worse. I talked to my mom up in Maine and she said her neighbor has it. Her husband drove her up to the hospital last night and she hasn't heard anything else," Cindy says biting her lip. I shake my head.

"It's just like the swine flu and whatever else before that. They make you think it's so bad, then everyone rushes to get vaccines. Then all of a sudden no one's talking about it. Its like it never happened," I say.

"Well I hope you're right, because from what I've seen and heard…it's really bad."

"Trust me. Think about it, every year we have some highly contagious virus go around and then a month or two later no one has it anymore."

"What are we talking about," Leslie another co-worker, who also works in the baby room, says as she comes in to the kitchen.

"Just talking about that flu going around," I say. I hate Leslie she constantly leaves our room and I end up watching her kids and mine. And I have it on good authority that she is sleeping with Mary's husband. That authority is me. I walked in on them when we were having a Christmas party. It was gross he's a good twenty years older.

By ten in the morning all of my kids were here. I had to give Gracie a bath, as usual, she always came in dirty so I would bathe her in the sink. She was always hungry so I always made sure I had snacks near by when she came in. I fixed her hair in little pony tails, because her mother failed to even brush it. And at the end of the day her mom doesn't say anything. No thank you for doing her job or anything, but I didn't care. Cause as long as Gracie was here I knew she was being taken care of. I worried on the weekends.

I'm sitting on the floor about to feed Sweetness when a choir of cell phones do that loud emergency noise. I assume it's an Amber alert, but Cindy rushes in.

"Oh my god, they're evacuating the state. We need to call parents," she says in a rushed panicked voice an hour later we only have three kids left. I tell Cindy to go ahead and leave. She has a boyfriend with a kid she needs to get too.

"Are you sure," she asks, but she's already grabbing her stuff.

"Yeah I'm positive. I'll wait till they get picked up." She nods.

"If you need me just call. Ok? Me and Brad will come back and get you," she looks at me and I smile and nod.

"Be careful Katie," she says. I hear her car start up a few minutes later.

About twenty minutes afterward I'm left with only Gracie. The two other mothers running in and apologizing profusely saying traffic was horrible. I try and call Gracie's mom again, but no answer. Finally, around five I decide to call Cindy and tell her what's happening and ask what I should do, but my phone isn't working. I go to the landline we have, but that's not working either. I'm stuck. I look at Gracie and decide that if it comes to it we could spend the night here. I didn't want her mom to show up then me get in trouble for kidnapping or something.

It did come to it. Gracie never cried for her mom. Instead she started calling me mom and I never corrected her. The first time I seen one of those things was about a week afterward. Gracie was quietly playing with some toys and I peeked out the window and seen a man walking by. I ran out the front door.

"Hey, sir excuse me. I have a kid with me can you help us," I called out. He slowly turned something about the way he moved was off to me. Then I seen his leg was oddly bent as if it was broken. When he faced me his face was covered in blood. "Oh my gosh. Do you need help," I ask. I only have basic first aid knowledge. Then this guy started coming at me pretty fast, but not quite running. I reach out to help him when this ungodly smell reached my nose. Then this man tried to attack me. He was trying to bite me and I was holding him back with my arms. I noticed he had bullet holes all over his body and his face looked like a rotting corpse. I have no idea when I finally realized he was a rotting corpse. I was becoming tired he was so strong. Then we fell and his head hit the cement step and he stopped fighting. When I looked down I realized we was dead. I turned and puked next to the porch.

I went back inside and locked the door. Gracie was standing there with tears in her eyes I guess she thought I left. I picked her up and she locked her arms and legs around me. I went around and pulled very shade down and we were thrown into darkness.

The next time I seen one of those things was when I had Gracie outside. It was about a month after the first one. I was getting some vegetables out of the garden and Gracie was playing on the playground equipment we had. Then all of a sudden two of them were there. I don't know how they got in there. All I know is they were going after Gracie. So I picked up the gardening hoe and ran. I killed them both. I picked Gracie up and got the few vegetables I had managed to pick and went inside.

After that I was always very careful when I went outside. I taught Gracie that if I said hide she went and got into the kitchen cabinet until I said "ok Gracie no more hiding" it was surprisingly easy to teach her. So every time I had to go pick vegetables I said "hide" and I knew she was safe then when I came back in I would tell her no more hiding and she would come out.

That winter was tough we had all the blankets the center had plus and extra clothes all shoved in one little closet where we slept. I figured insulation plus body heat in a small space would keep us warm, it worked. Of cause I didn't have extra clothes, but luckily we had some for the kids. So Gracie was able to wear clothes that fit. Meanwhile I washed my clothes every three days and wore Cindy's jacket she had left here while they dried. It got me like a dress since Cindy was bigger than me.

Present day

We were going to have to leave. There was no way we could survive this winter here. Almost all of our food was gone and I didn't know how to can food. I have no idea how many of those things are out there or if there is anyone alive besides me and Gracie. I bite my lip. I have to think through my options. My decisions can get Gracie killed.

All of a sudden I hear glass break. Gracie sits up fast, not used to hearing sounds.

"Hide Gracie," I say. And we both run to the kitchen and hide in the cabinet. Gracie looks at me like she's wondering why I'm hiding with her, but she blessedly remains quiet. I hear footsteps. And then I hear the door open. I guess I unconsciously tried to push myself back, but it causes me to bump my head loudly against the wall. Then the door is roughly pulled open and there's this man with a crossbow in my face and a pretty brown haired woman standing in front of me. I throw my hands up in surrender.

"Don't shoot. Please," I beg. The man lowers his weapon. The man looks at the woman and she looks just as shocked as I am.

"No more hiding," Gracie questions. They both turn to look at me sharply.

"Please don't hurt us," I beg. The woman is staring at Gracie, but the man with the crossbow never takes his eyes off me. I glance and see the woman holding a can of formula. I see my chance to save us and I take it.

"You have a baby. I can help. I used to work here I know where there's more. I can help you, if you help us. We need somewhere safe to stay. We can't survive another winter here. Please! I'll give you anything just help me find a safe place for her," I plead. I know the site I must make. My filthy face and greasy hair. My clothes are barely holding on. And Gracie is only slightly better. The man and woman look at each other speaking without words.

"Please don't leave us here to die," I say. Then the man looks at me and I can tell I won. He wasn't going to leave us.

"Fine, but I only have a motorcycle. So, we're going to have to figure out how to so this." I honestly didn't hear anything past fine. I saved Gracie and that's all I cared about.