Dear Miss A:
	What do you do when the world is coming to an end? 

Panic was thick in the air, the outbreak came out of nowhere, no true reason, no logical explanation that could ease survivors into an ignorant stupor. Hope was as rare as diamonds hanging off the neck of a sugar-baby with nothing to lose. Terror swept itself through the land, no one would be laughing at those survival junkies who had been preparing for this. 

No one was probably laughing at all, especially not when you had ravenous corpses of your loved ones coming at you with the intention to rip you apart like a dog with a bone. How horrible was it when little Miss Picket had half her face chewed off and came at you, fingernails split and screeching and snarling as though more creature then human– she'd always been a kinder, older lady. She baked you those cookies the last time that dead-beat boyfriend broke up with you for that foxy red-head at the bar, she also made sure to remind you that you had mail.

Lola Bean would weep for the older lady who took on such a grandmotherly role in her short time in that city, she'd weep for all the people's letters she'd responded too before the career she tried so hard for went up in flames. 

She'd weep for her best friend who laughed at the aluminium baseball bat clutched in her hands, the peeling Sailor Jerry sticker smeared with blood, she'd weep for her car which she had to abandon because she'd been too under-budget to buy a full tank of gas. She'd weep for many things, most of all how things would never be the same. 

People always joked or teased on how they would survive the end of the world, some claimed God would seep from the heavens and pluck up the kind and true, leaving behind more then not of the world around. Lola Bean wasn't entirely sure what she counted as; her heart pounded like a dryer full of wet sneakers, her chest heaved, coming out in uneven and sharp gasps of breath, her cheeks were red and splotchy, her hair pulled back, dirt and blood caking her skin, those fancy nails she paid for were gone, ripped, leaving nothing but the softened shell of nail-bed behind. 

She had nothing more then what she could afford to carry, everything made her jump, everything smelled like death, she could hear the faint screams of those dying in the distance– she wouldn't go back, she couldn't. Where could she go? Who could she see? How desperate she was to have someone to tell her things would be all right? Lola tried to laugh, it clogged itself in the back of her throat, choking her and making the tears burn her eyes, hard enough to make her sniff back the gob of snot that seemed destined to leak from her flared nostrils. 

Trying to recount the last two weeks, she was trying to make any sort of sense of what was happening; the fear was crippling, the will to live made her irrational and no amount of mental pep-talk could have ever prepared her for this, she was a Diva without the comforts of home, tossed out into the vast-unknown. She could be snuffed out any moment and who would know? Her mother was probably dead, her sister? Hiccupping she plucked at the hem of her shirt, pulling it up to dab at her eyes, daintily, almost comically as a series of snorts and sniffs pathetically left the back of her throat, desperate little mewls of frustration. She had no idea where she was, she hadn't run into any other survivors, and if she did would they kill her and rob her corpse blind? She saw this movie before... people became just as terrifying as the beasts wandering the road-side, it left the woman weary and jumping at the sight of her own shadow. 

She'd carry on, she had no other choice, if she stayed in one place it attracted those... things, she didn't want to draw any unwanted attention to herself, in fact if she had it her way she'd slip under the radar at all times necessary, but if wishes were horses she'd have a way out of this personal hell. 

Swallowing the lump in her throat she carried on, bat in hand, looking over her shoulder every so often, chewing the skin around the jut of her lower lip– unable to help herself and ignored the raw feeling she got in the pit of her belly, ankles knocking together in the hard anticipation of something sliding from behind a building or tree, she needed to get to the main road that lead out, she needed to have a shred of control over what was happening to her.