5 V

The thundering of my heartbeat merged with the pounding of my feet. The ground was becoming loose and difficult to run on. Stones were sliding under my feet and the sound of the loud thuds from behind was alerting anything in the area that we were here.

Panicking, I find myself looking around, squinting through the darkness, trying to find somewhere to hide out. Just as I was loosing hope, a small and extremely run down cottage appearing off into the distance.

THUD THUD THUD

I kept running, trying to put more distance between myself and the creature following behind me. When the buildings walls finally came close enough, I turned off the road and pushed the door open, slamming it shut behind me and sitting against it.

Whatever was following me started slamming against the door, pushing, punching, clawing. It was like it was desperate to get to me, but I wasn't chancing it, I didn't know whether it was friend or foe and I didn't want to risk my life over something as stupid as that.

Every time it slammed against the door, I felt my back bounce off the door with the force of the hits.

After a while, the thing gave up and left me alone. Relief washed over me, not only because my chaser was gone, but also because I had found a place to stay for the rest of the evening. But first, I need to check all the windows and doors. Navigating in the dark was hard for me, I have never been the greatest with maps or coordination outside of fighting. There were times, back in Japan, when I had managed to get myself lost on my way home from school... I lived only five minutes away as well... Anyway, other than that I'm just a fighter, not a leader. In a chess game, I'm the pawn that's secretly the knight - I guess that also could mean that I am a blind follower, but I have a strong sense of right and wrong (even if this world is a place that has non of it right now).

Curling up in a corner, I hide under the thickness of my dads coat and fall to sleep with the long dagger within arms reach.

The morning arrived with a bone scorching heat. After stuffing the coat back into my back, I replaced the dagger into the sheath and then started walking the country roads again, bag swinging at my side and my senses more alert because of last night.

Nothing was out here, not even a wild animal.

It was silent, only my footsteps against the crumbling soil and stones could be heard.

After walking for half of the day, a group of buildings started to appear in the distance, one by one, more buildings became visible. When I finally hit the first row I noticed the town was almost as bad as the city.

The ground was covered in mess and blood, random limbs and bodies. The smell of blood was very dominant in the air and I couldn't help but to gag at it.

From what I could see, the zombie count was definitely not as high and moving around the streets wasn't that difficult compared to in the city.

I was exploring the streets when I discovered why there wasn't a high count of zombies in the streets: there was a shopping centre. Anyone in there when the virus broke would've been at an incredible disadvantage, there were zombies wandering in and out of the door, but not really moving far away from the others.

Deciding that staying close to there was dangerous, I turned and started looking around. There weren't many living people around, and if there was, they were extremely hostile and looked like they would kill me if I stuck around.

Finding myself walking aimlessly around the streets, the night had almost arrived and I ended up trying to find a place to stay. But nothing, the buildings were either, locked, taken or overrun. The memories of the evening before replayed in my mind, i shivered as goose bumps travelled up my arms. Just thinking about it made me want to get off the streets even more.

As I passed an alleyway I noticed two people crowded by a massive crowd of zombies.

"Sucks to be them," I sighed to myself, passing by before stopping in my tracks when I heard:

"We have to get back to the others! The school could be overrun!"

School? Others? Some kind of safety?

Taking a deep breath, I pull my katana out of the sheath and started to run down the alley. The attention of the zombies turned to me. They locked their gaze on me and started chasing at an abnormal speed. Quickly swiping through their heads, I managed to break down the wall of zombies. When the zombie count shrunk down, the two people started swinging their weapons and helped me finish off the last of the dead.

Flicking the worst of the blood off my blade, I looked at the two extremely exhausted people. Both female, one with blonde cropped hair and the other with long purple hair.

"Thank you so much for helping us!" the girl with blonde hair thanked me.

"No problem," I nodded, pushing my hair out of my face, the two girls watched me curiously.

"Do you have anywhere to stay?" the blonde asked, I raised a brow and shook my head. The purple haired girl looked annoyed at the blonde but stayed silent.

"Why don't you come back to the place we are staying for the night then? Of course, as a returning thanks to saving us," she added on, the purple girl getting more annoyed by the second, she grabbed the blonde and pulled her out of ears reach. They started whispering furiously at each other for a while but I think the blonde won.

"It's ok, I can just sprint," I speak up, slightly disappointed at my own words.

"No! Come back with us! I'm quite interested in you, a blade, and an accent. Equally odd hair as Sua. I think the others will also be interested as well," the blonde said, pointing her thumb towards the purple haired girl.

"Well thank you," I smiled at them before we started to exit the alley. The two girls lead me through the streets and towards a school.

The evening had crawled over us and we were completely blind.

"Who attracted the zombies?" Sua asked with an annoyed tone as she whacked one of them in the back of its skull with a hammer, which caught the attention of the others.

"You- you didn't really need to do that," I sighed before swinging my blade and trying to miss the girls but keep hitting the zombies. When there was a break, we ran towards the gates and quickly slid into the school grounds, locking the gate firmly behind us again.

"Time?" Sua asked.

"I'd say around 10pm or 10:30pm," the blonde told her before looking at me, "oh by the way, I'm Eva, she's Sua. And you are?"

"Willow, it's a pleasure," I replied as we walking into the dark and dust drowned building.