Three Years, Six Months, and 18 Days since Day One...
As the blistering cold wind struck my face, I shivered in my thin blanket. I've been traveling for nine days now and I still couldn't find a signal on my radio. I was tired, hungry, and frustrated with all of this dumb apocalypse bullcrap. Life was so much easier before scientists decided that making an inhuman virus that brings humans back to life after being infected was a damn good idea. I was different...I got bitten by a walker on day one, and I should have died or even turned because of how young I was, but I never did...My body mutated, and I became more substantial than a normal human being.
My parents were happy I didn't turn but worried because my body didn't just change, my whole physical appearance changed. My hair went from tree bark brown to a raven shade, my eyes went from emerald green to a pale blue shade, and my skin turned pale white, so pale my father said his own daughter looked like a ghost, in a joking way of course. The 'zombies' as you would call them, avoided me like the plague. It was like they were trying to give me room to myself yet protect me. I felt their humanity still inside them, though they couldn't feel it themselves. I felt their emotions and their presence.
It was like, I could see the real them under the virus controlling them. Having these abilities was okay in good times but scary in bad ones. The Z's didn't bother my family when they were with me, but if I was away from them. Well, that's how my dad lost his leg that day. Having abilities to fend off z's became news to survivors around the world, and eventually I had a target on my head. People wanted to take me hostage so they could do experiments on me like some sort of test subject. It endangered my family. I had no other choice but to leave them behind until the hunters died down and people thought I was dead. I ended up losing contact with my parents and now here I am.
Traveling in late winter to find some way to contact my family and tell them I'm still alive. I almost didn't make it but let's just say a nice old man with some good advice told me to keep going.
Growling reached my ears, I peeked my head outside the blanket surrounding me to see what the commotion was about. I was laid up against a large tree with my gear beside me but secure enough in case hunters found me again.
Seven, "biters" as my father would call them, were stumbling their way to me with plastic wrapped around their legs. I sighed in exhaustion, I just couldn't catch a break with the damn things. I wrapped the blanket over my shoulders as I unsheathed my knife to help the dull-brain biters that trapped themselves in plastic.
But when I moved toward them, they growled at me, I froze in my step and looked at them again. The one biter in the middle growled again at me in a way I felt was a warning. I was confused and looked back down at their feet and saw something shiny in the dim light from my camp light.
As I focused more on it to figure out what it was, I was tackled, just as I was falling to the ground, a loud gunshot rang out. The biters surrounding my camp started to wake from their dead sleep and I realized what happened.
Thomas, the biter who followed me through my journey was lying beside me with a gunshot to the head. He had tackled me and took the gunshot that was meant for me. I felt tears brim my eyes as I looked over my now entirely dead companion.
I felt my chest throb in pain, tears streaking down my face as I held my dearest companion in my arms. Everything around me seemed to slow...
My emotions were another thing that made my ability to 'control' biters more intense. One time a guy put a gun to my father's head when I was still young, he was trying to steal our supplies in our camp but my father wasn't going to do that.
The man threatened my mother that if she didn't do it, he would kill my father and then me next. I didn't like that, I was scared and hid in my tent, but the next thing I heard were gunshots and screams from my mother. I panicked and ran out of the tent to see ten biters had invaded the camp and were chomping on the guy who threatened my father's life, one biter was trying to attack my father. My mother's screams alerted more biters and two of them came charging toward her, I screamed.
The biters seemed to stop in time, they looked at me and didn't move. I felt tears falling down my face and I was scared. One biter dropped the limb it was chowing down on and looked down as if upset that he upset me.
I still didn't understand what was happening and promptly said "P-Please, don't hurt my mother and father, please just take the bandit and leave us alone please." I begged the statues of biters in front of me. I didn't expect them to do anything nor even move, but after I said that, the biter that was on top of my father, moved to stand on his feet and proceeded to walk over to the still pretty alive bandit and grabbed his arm. The other biters seemed to do the same and dragged the bandit out of our camp.
That was the day me and my parents found out I could control biters and my emotions made them appear out of nowhere and attack any threat trying to harm me. This day also happened to coincide with me meeting Thomas. He became a guardian to me, protecting me when I and my parents ran into more bandits. He became my friend, a being I could rely on to never let me down.
....
I felt anger build in me, the hole in my companion's head stared back at me, and I was consumed with utter sadness and rage. The biters around me started growling louder as I looked up in the direction of where the gunshot had rung out.
There they were, three men sat behind a log on the edge of my camp, one holding a rifle. I felt my temper rising as I picked up my knife and got to my feet, the biters gathering around me.
I didn't hear myself give the order until after I said it "Save the rifleman for me...". The biters charged for the men, making them fall back but they didn't get far as they were surrounded by biters. I charged myself at the rifleman, taking him to the ground. We tossed and turned until I finally was able to kick his rifle away and pin him to the ground with my knife. It was a special military knife that my father gave me, and I kept it sharp to the tip. The rifleman began to beg and plead with me to let him go.
I barely heard his pleas as the cries and screams of his companions nearby of them being ripped apart by biters, filling my ears. Just when I started to add pressure to the knife so I could slit his throat, My mother's words went through my head.
"Never become what the world sees you as...your gift will save multiple people one day mio fiore. Never let them think of you as a dark monster, but a light flower that will grow to make this dreaded world beautiful again."
I felt my anger dissipate as fear and sadness gripped me by the throat as I realized what I was doing. The man beneath me was begging for his life as his companions were being eaten by the biters that I ordered to eat them.
I closed my eyes in shame as I stood up, and backed away from the man, hitting my back against a tree as I slouched to the ground. I looked at the knife in my hands, a little bit of blood dripped from the tip and I felt like I had failed my mother.
This damn apocalypse was tearing me apart...