Olivia had been only been sixteen years old when the world came to the beginning of the end. It began as a sickness, a disease that seemed to pop up over night. Within the first few days in Mississippi there were dozens of accounts of people taking to bed with violent fever. Mississippi was not the only place affected by the illness. As Olivia had learned from the news it had quickly spread across the globe in a world-wide pandemic. What was most frightening was that there was no one--not one single scientist or doctor--who could find a cure to this mysterious disease that was racking up victims by the thousands.

People began to die. Then, they started coming back. But those who came back were not as they had been. They were no longer human. Instead they were unthinking, unfeeling monsters. They were rotting shells driven purely by instinct, hungry for flesh. At first the government tried to cover everything up. They worked to single out the cases, make sure the public didn't panic. It didn't work. Things grew quickly out of control and the world soon found out about the Walkers. Eventually they learned that it wasn't just those who died with fever coming back, either. People who died of cancer, of a heart attack, from drowning, from choking on food. [i]They[/i] came back as Walkers too. Eventually the people learned that there was a cure to Walkers: You had to kill their brain. Only by then it was too late.

The Walkers numbered by the thousands, if maybe not even the millions or possibly even the billions. In the first few months the military had set up evacuation points and shelters all over the country in hopes of protecting those who had not yet fallen ill and turned. Those soon fell, however, as either they were overrun by Walkers or the military was instructed to pull out due to the hopeless situation they were left in. People were left to fend for themselves. This, coupled with the fact that they soon lost all forms of electricity and communication, began the quick and inevitable breakdown of civilization.

Three years had passed since the Walkers came to be. There was little of humanity left. Of what few people did remain they gathered in groups in order to survive and either built settlements in the ruins of the old world, or else wandered the land in hopes that their constant momentum would be enough to keep them alive. How they fared all depended on how smart they were. There were some people, however, in rare cases of either insanity or extreme confidence, that chose to go it on their own, forsaking groups for one reason or another. Some people simply liked being completely alone, but for others what remained of humanity had simply left a sour taste in their mouth.

The world had become brutal, unforgiving. There was joy to be found still, yes, kindness too and beauty as well, but people were far more wary of outsiders. Their priority was to look after themselves and their group. If you [i]were[/i] part of a group and you weren't pulling your own weight you were given a trial to prove your worth. If you had no useful skills to provide you were kicked out of the group and left to roam the wilderness. No one needed a pair of useless hands that did nothing but consume resources without giving any back. There were other ways that the world had become more brutal as well. Loose morals, quick tempers. These often led to rash decisions and scenarios best left unspoken. What was scary was that in some groups, so long as those particular people could still provide for everyone in some way, they were allowed to stay. The one sure thing that could get you kicked out of a group, however, was stealing. Thievery of any kind begot immediate exile, or in some instances, a death sentence. Depending on the group's leader or council--whatever it was run by--if they kicked you out into the wilderness they might either be kind enough to give you some supplies, or else they would leave you with nothing. One way or the other you were on your own and had to defend yourself from the Walkers.

Olivia herself was a bit of an odd case even for the world she now lived in. Since the early months when the the sickness was still taking its toll and Walkers had just started arising she had been on her own. Helen Moretti, Olivia's mother, had been one of the first cases to take sick with the fever. When it killed her Olivia was left orphaned with no other family to care for her. Olivia's father had been an unknown figure, her mother an only child, and her grandparents deceased years before. With no one else to care for her Olivia was taken in by her neighbor Mr. Samuel Byrd. Mr. Byrd had been an old fellow in his late nineties. He had been a war veteran, serving in both the Korean and Vietnam wars. A lot of people in the neighborhood thought he was crazy because of the huge supply of weapons and food stuff he kept stocked, the fact that he would always rattle off survival tips or war stories, and because he always smelled like gun powder and cigarette smoke. Olivia, however, had really liked Mr. Byrd.

When she was growing up Olivia and her mother were teetering right on the edge of "poor" and "working class" even with her mother working two jobs to make ends meet. Whenever something in the house broke and Helen didn't know how to fix it or didn't have the money to call a repairman, Mr. Byrd took care of it. All he usually asked for in return was a pack of cigarettes, a canned good, maybe a box of matches, or even to just sit down and have dinner with them. He was a lonely old man, Olivia knew, whose wife had taken their daughter and left him for another man who lived overseas. Not to mention the rest of the neighborhood pretty much shunned him and wrote him off as crazy. Not Olivia, though. Mr. Byrd was her baby sitter whenever her mother was working late after Olivia got home from school. She would go over to his house and he'd have a snack waiting for her. Vegetables and cheese or fruit, sometimes something sweet like cookies and milk or donuts. She'd do her homework while laying on the huge bearskin rug he had in front of the fireplace. After Olivia finished with her homework she'd listen to Mr. Byrd's stories again and again, or he would teach her some survival tactic. He also taught her to shoot a bow, how to use a knife, and he taught her about guns. What Olivia's mother would let him teach her, anyway. Occasionally Olivia was even allowed to go on hunting and fishing trips with him, and she learned how to hunt and fish and clean what she caught. Of course, her mother didn't know that she had used a gun on the hunting trips, but what Helen didn't know wouldn't kill her. Plus, the knowledge and experience was invaluable. For Olivia, Mr. Byrd was the grandfather she never got to meet.

Samuel Byrd was the reason that Olivia had been able to survive on her own for the three years following the start of the infection. Not long after her mother passed away, Mr. Byrd passed too. Before that he told her to take everything he had--weapons, food, survival gear, gas, truck--and leave. He told her to go it on her own, to trust her gut and her instincts. Others might lead her wrong either on accident or on purpose, but if she trusted herself she would be alright. He could see it coming, he said. The inevitable breakdown of society, how humans would change once their world ended. He had seen it in war before. Terrible disasters always brought out both the best and worst in people, just like Hurricane Katrina had a few years before. Of course Olivia was downright terrified to go it on her own. She was only sixteen years old. She remembered questioning Mr. Byrd, asking what if this was just something that would all blow over. He gave her an earful for that, and Olivia had wound up crying because she was sensitive to being scolded. Afterwards he had given her a hug and a Hershey bar, apologized for yelling, but made damn well sure that she understood that this was something that was [i]not[/i] going to blow over. Not any time soon, at least. No, he assured her. She was better off hitting the road and getting a head start before the shit hit the fan. So when the time came, Olivia did what he told her to. She took everything he had left her and hit the road.

Three years later Olivia was still going strong. She no longer had the old pickup truck with the camper shell, a lot of the weapons had needed to be let go either for lack of ammunition or they were simply too much to tote around (sometimes she approached groups and traded for things she needed), and the food had been spent long ago. Olivia had been very careful about how often she ate and the food had lasted a long time, but it simply had not been enough for three years. However, she knew how to hunt and forage and so she got by just fine with that. She still had a lot of the survival gear, as well as several useful weapons she kept on her at all times. Her bow, with its retrievable ammo, which she could easily make more of, was in and of itself a treasure. The ax and bowie knife she kept too were useful in all sorts of ways and she made sure to keep them sharp. She had a fishing pole to fish, a compass and map so she never lost her way, a tent (even though she often slept in trees as they kept her high above potential predators), rope for various tasks (such as tying herself to the tree to keep from falling), and other numerous things that helped her survive in her day-to-day lifestyle filled with endless potential danger.

Olivia now stood at the end of a bridge, her map in her hands. Rusted cars littered the roadway here and there, some empty, some filled with skeletal remains, the flesh and sinew long since rotted away. The city that lay ahead of her on the other side of the bridge was a skeleton in its own right. Few if any people lived there now, and undoubtedly hoards of Walkers filled the streets. Buildings were beginning to crumble and Mother Nature was working to reclaim what had once been hers all along. It was mid-winter and so many of the plants had died, but you could still see the stalks of great vines that had begin climbing up the sky scrapers, could see snow settling over everything. As Olivia had learned, cold temperatures slowed down the Walkers. If the temperature dropped low enough the Walkers simply froze up, became Walker-cicles. They couldn't move to hurt you. Not unless you were stupid enough to scratch yourself on them or until they thawed in the spring. Thankfully, here in the North winters were extremely cold, and so Olivia had little to fear from the things-that-shouldn't-be. She was still cautious, of course. She was always cautious. If you weren't you could get killed, and Olivia rather liked living.

At that moment, in the early morning of that cold winter day, everything was hushed. A chill wind played with Olivia's long, dark hair, blowing it about her shoulders and face until she put it up in a pony tail and pulled the hood of her jacket over her head. Her dusty gray eyes darted down to the map once more to assure that this city that she was about to approach was indeed New York City, New York. It was, and Olivia felt a triumphant joy building up in her heart. For the last three years she had taken to traveling the States, seeing all she could see of the land. She had taken her time, meandering here and there, sometimes taking the time to go around a whole state before moving on. It was the little things in life that Olivia looked forward to and kept her going every day. Seeing national monuments she had never seen before, witnessing an entire forest change colors in the fall, visiting places she had never gotten to visit or ever would have dreamed she would have visited before the infection. These things thrilled her and was what she lived for. And now, finally, she had made it to New York City.

"Alright!" Olivia declared happily to herself. "First thing is first! Let's go find some shelter for the night and see if I can find some food." Her store was running low and all that remained was a can of peas and a can of pineapple. Olivia decided to start by finding food first and so she set about searching the cars on the bridge. Of nearly fifty cars there was little to be found, but she was lucky enough to come across some granola bars, a few more canned goods, a bag of beef jerky, and even some useful tools like matches and lighters. There were a lot of matches and lighters, actually.

"Thank God for smokers," Olivia chuckled to herself as she put her new stash into her backpack. Satisfied that she had found all she could, Olivia crossed over the bridge and continued onto into the big city. "Imagine if Mama could see me now. A little country girl in the big city," Olivia continued to muse aloud to herself. She did that often as it kept her sane to hear [i]some[/i] sort of human voice, even it was her own. Shaking her head as in disbelief, Olivia kept one hand on the bowie knife at her belt while keeping both eyes open in search of shelter.