"Yeah, baby~! Uhn~!"
The bed creaked under them, sheets tangled, the slap of skin against skin filling the room. The man drove into the black-haired woman beneath him like there was nothing else in the world.
"You like that, huh?" he said, pinning her hands above her head, his voice thick with excitement.
"Yes — more, give me more!"
Her voice changed mid-sentence, dropping into something wet and guttural. Her head snapped toward him, and the face that met his was no longer hers, flesh torn away in patches, eyes gone bloodshot and empty.
"Ahh—!"
He bolted upright, gasping, drenched in cold sweat, heart slamming against his ribs.
"Shit. That dream again. It never even lets me finish."
He swore under his breath and dragged himself out of bed, crossing to the window — a sheet of plastic nailed over the frame, just enough to keep the weather out. Moonlight fell across his face: mid-to-late twenties, tired around the eyes.
He was deep in an unfamiliar forest, holed up in a treehouse built between two massive, centuries-old trunks that had grown into each other over time. Crickets and night-things droned steadily somewhere below.
It had been two months since the outbreak.
It started on an ordinary night. People out clubbing, on dates, doing late grocery runs, sleeping soundly in their beds, when the dead climbed out of their graves without warning. Wakes, cemeteries, morgues, it didn't matter. The corpses rose and went straight for anything living: dogs, cats, rats, and above all, people. Nothing was spared.
Those who got bitten or clawed and managed to run rarely realized what had already happened to them. By the time the signs showed, it was too late — and like everyone before them, they turned, and tore into whoever was standing closest without hesitation.
Ironically, it was the preppers, the ones who'd spent years getting ready for exactly this, the ones who'd watched too many post apocalypse movies to count, who reacted fastest, arming themselves almost eagerly. Police and firefighters followed. Then everyone else, grabbing whatever was on hand: knives, bats, pipes, broken bottles, rocks.
It all happened so fast, so precisely, that it felt scripted, like the opening chapter of something written in advance.
Even with the military mobilized, even with every technological advantage, cities fell one after another. The poorest nations went first, the ones without standing armies. The last to fall were the superpowers, the U.S.A, Russia, Japan and the odd mountain nation like Bhutan that had geography on its side.
Fortified holdouts eventually crumbled too, as ammunition and food ran out faster than anyone could resupply. Soldiers and survivors scattered in every direction. Some didn't make it out. Some did.
I'm one of the ones who did, or more precisely, whoever used to live in this body was.
"I wonder if anyone else is still out here," Michael muttered, something almost hopeful in his voice, before turning back toward the bed.
"Christ. Why'd I wake up in this world, of all places." He shut his eyes and let sleep take him again.
The next morning, Michael made his way down the spiral staircase wound around the trunk, boots echoing against wood with every step.
He had the beginnings of a beard, a scruffy shadow of a mustache, and wore hunting pants with a tight camo shirt. A machete hung at his hip; a pistol sat in a chest holster.
"Day seventy-one," he mumbled as his feet hit the forest floor.
He crossed to a table he'd cobbled together from branches, grabbed a wooden cup off the shelf, filled it from the water dispenser, splashed his face, then drained the rest in one go.
He gathered kindling from the stacked woodpile, tossed it into the fire pit, and struck a flint until the flames caught. Breakfast was simple, foraged tomatoes and potatoes, cooked over the fire.
His camp sat behind a wall of arm-thick branches, planks, and salvaged logs, standing a good two meters tall and enclosing space roughly the size of a small house, enough for three people, maybe more if nobody minded being cramped.
It was his little pocket of safety in a world that had already been bad enough with its share of terrible leadership before all this, and had only gotten worse since.
Before eating, same as every morning, Michael stripped off his shirt and started stretching, joints popping, muscles loosening. Then he dropped down and ran through push-ups, sit-ups, and squats, thirty reps each.
He'd kept the routine up since the day he arrived in this world. A strong body was the one piece of equipment nobody could take from you, and in his experience, the soft-bodied were always the first to go when things went bad.
With the workout done, he finally ate.
Later, Michael geared up to head out, hiking pack loaded, machete at his hip, a Glock 17 in its holster with a full seventeen-round mag and a spare.
He stood at the gate for a moment, breathing slow and deliberate to steady his nerves. The locks took a while to work through; he'd built them deliberately hard to open from outside.
Once through the gate, the safety of the walls was behind him again.
He knew the surrounding terrain well by now, after enough supply runs, and moved through the forest with practiced confidence, eyes still tracking every shift in the trees around him.
He'd always loved traveling before all this — hiking trail after trail in country after country and picked up a working knowledge of foraging from the locals who guided him. Wood sorrel, ground ivy, wild berries; he knew what was safe by now.
He was crouched over a patch of berries when a branch snapped behind him.
Snap.
He spun, gun drawn, finger already moving toward the trigger, then stopped himself just short of firing.
A man stood a few meters off, shaggy dark brown hair, piercing blue eyes, a permanent five-o'clock shadow. Sleeveless gray shirt, cargo pants, sturdy boots, a crossbow leveled steady at Michael's chest.
What caught Michael's eye first, though, wasn't the crossbow. It was the pair of dead squirrels slung over the man's shoulder.
"No way. No freaking way. Daryl?"
The name slipped out before he could stop it. The man, Daryl, narrowed his eyes, just as thrown as Michael was.
"Who the hell are you? How do you know my name?"
"What in the actual hell is going on," Michael muttered, lowering his gun without thinking, already spiraling into his own head. "Not only am I stuck in the States, I'm inside the world of a damn TV show. Is any of this even real? Am I in a coma? Is this just happening in my head?" He kept mumbling, chin in hand, looking every bit like a man losing it.
Thwack.
An arrow buried itself in the dirt an inch from his boot.
"Hey! Quit talking to yourself and answer me! Who are you?"
The shot snapped him back to the moment, though it didn't rattle him much. He realized, too late, that blurting out Daryl's name had been a mistake and scrambled for something that would pass as an explanation.
"I'm Michael. I ran into your brother a while back, during his biker days."
Daryl let the empty crossbow drop to his side, drawing a pistol from his waistband instead, though he didn't raise it, just kept it loose in his grip, ready to pull it out in a moments notice.
Something in his posture eased, just slightly.
"You know Merle? Then how do you know me? I don't remember you."
Didn't expect that to actually land. Guy's more trusting than I figured.
Michael let out a short laugh, reaching for another half-truth. "He talked about you sometimes. Even showed me a photo once, that's how I recognized you so fast."
Daryl studied him, clearly still working through whether to believe it, but the hostility in his stance dropped another notch. "Didn't know Merle carried a photo of me around. Doesn't sound like something he'd do."
"Yeah, doesn't exactly fit the tough-guy act he puts on for everyone," Michael said, and this part, at least, wasn't a lie. Whatever else Merle was, rough, difficult, complicated. He loved his little brother. Messy as that love was, shaped by whatever the two of them had grown up carrying.
Prick redeemed himself eventually, though.
Daryl's gaze drifted to the plants in Michael's bag. "You out here alone?"
Michael nodded, going back to picking berries. "Yeah. Better that way, for now."
"How you figure?"
"Bigger groups mean more noise, more risk. Draws walkers, draws other survivors — and a lot of those aren't friendly. That's mainly an issue once you're past fifty or so people, though. Below that, it's manageable, so long as everyone actually listens when the group's leader says something."
Daryl tilted his head, curiosity creeping past his wariness. "How do you know all that? You come out of one of the cities?"
Michael just smiled. No, I watched the show. Though hell if I remember all the details anymore.
Silence settled between them, broken only by the rustle of leaves. Michael kept foraging. Daryl kept watching, clearly working up to something and not quite getting there.
"You standing there like a statue's creeping me out," Michael said eventually. "Whatever you're gonna say, just say it."
Daryl shifted his weight. "We got a group, around fifteen of us, camped a couple miles from here. You want to come?"
The offer caught Michael off guard enough that it took him a second to process it. Then his face broke into a real grin.
"Yeah? You sure about that?"
"Yeah. Merle will be glad to see a familiar face."
Michael's smile turned a little strange.
If this is the episode where Daryl's heading back to camp... Merle and I aren't crossing paths anytime soon. Guess our camps ended up closer than I thought. Should've actually ventured out further.
He kept all of that off his face. "Familiar face, huh? Sounds good. Mind if we swing by my camp first? To grab my gear."
Daryl shrugged. "Sure. Lead the way."