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[i]It has been 18 months since the outbreak. 

Permanent settlements have begun to crop up across many parts of the US, but they are few and far between, and discord is rife. It seems like every week there is a new rumour about somewhere safe, a place where there aren't any walkers, a place where society can start again... but rumours are all they are. 

In the beginning, chaos and confusion reigned and information, or a lack of it, would get you killed. For anyone to have survived this long, they must have discovered a few simple truths: Everyone is infected, you turn when you die and the only way to stop it is to destroy the brain. The walkers hunger for the flesh of the living and their bites are highly infectious and can kill in hours unless treated quickly, usually with amputation. 

This long after the fall of civilization, everyone has lost someone. A friend, a partner, a child... pain and suffering follow the survivors like a bad smell, but it is through this shared experience that many unlikely friendships have formed, alliances made and even romances blossomed. Even the end of the world, it seems, is not enough to completely crush the human spirit...[/i][/centre]
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The last year had been difficult on Marcus. Emotionally and physically he had been drained by his task, a simple task but one which had led him to drive, walk, swim and climb his way across 12 states, fighting famine, disease and the walking dead, to find out what happened to his wife and daughter. The first six months had been easier, making his way from Tennessee back to Boston, believing that his wife would have kept their daughter safe inside their easily fortified home. It was only upon arriving back at his house to discover that his family had set off to New Orleans to search for him three months prior that he began to feel the strain of worry, every night wondering how they were faring on the road, fearing they could have been taken by walkers, or bandits, or worse...

Over that time, he had met several people he would consider to have been friends. First there was Carl, a trucker he met in Knoxville whose own family was in Boston. They helped each other survive the chaos of the first few weeks after the outbreak and went their separate ways on the outskirts of the city. It was Carl who had given Marcus the revolver he still carried and had insisted that he kept it when they parted ways. After Carl he met up with a large group led by a man named Raimes who insisted they travel to West Virginia because he firmly believed that they could carve out an existence in the thick forests there free from the menace of the walkers. Unfortunately, over the following months with little food and frequent attacks both from the dead and from bandits and scavengers, the numbers in the group dwindled and eventually the remnants split and went their separate ways. 

Currently, Marcus was travelling with a man called David, who he had met on the road just outside the town of Meridian in Mississippi. Though David hadn't been incredibly forthcoming with details about his past thus far, they had at least managed polite conversation along the road and thus far neither one had managed to do anything to get the other killed, so as far as Marcus was concerned they were off to a good start. They were just coming into a town by the name of Slidell when Marcus decided to break a silence which felt like it had been going on for days.

[b]"So.. uh.. phew, that weather's getting a bit warm, huh? Much hotter down here than up in Boston, I'll tell you that, and ano.."[/b] He began, but was abruptly silenced by David waving him down and pointing to something nearby.