If he hadn’t run into Carl that day in the woods Steve was positive he would have died.
When the outbreak initially hit home, Steve had been ten years old. At first he hadn’t understood exactly what was going on, sticking close to his mother’s side and clinging to the hope that the government would solve everything and set things straight. The town had gone into lockdown, setting up barriers and creating strict rules. For a while everything worked out fine; the police did their job as best they could, enforcing the laws and keeping order. Able-bodied civilians provided aid, and while it wasn’t perfect the town was able to sustain itself for years. But then one day things began to slip.
The restrictions grew tighter, more survival-based than concerned with quality of life. Fights broke out between those who had been left in charge and those who thought they could run things better. Steve’s own father had found himself in a position of leadership, one of several in an attempt to keep things fair. Of course, nothing really was fair, and Steve quickly learned that his family was skimming necessary supplies, leaving less fortunate households with little to their names. The small town, easily halved by initial attacks, grew ever smaller. Life inside the walls became unbearable, and when Steve was eighteen conflicts came to a head.
After a particularly nasty fight a small rebel group stole supplies from their collective cache and attempted to escape, leaving the gates wide open as they ran. Not only were they killed by the constant waves of Walkers just outside the walls, but those same Walkers made their way into the town in the middle of the night. The watch wasn’t enough to rouse the citizens in time, and Steve woke to the sound of screaming outside his house. Grabbing the baseball bat by the side of his bed, Steve prepared himself to fight, only to make it downstairs in time to witness his mother being brutally torn apart by a group of the undead, still alive--screaming. A hand shot out from somewhere behind him, wrapping around his arm, pulling him from the house and into the woods behind his house. Somewhere in the corner of his mind he recognized his father’s voice, guilt eating away through the numbness, the image of his terrified mother burned into his mind. Could he have helped her? Eased her suffering at least?
This had to be a nightmare.
It wasn’t until they had stopped, reconnected with a group of survivors that Steve saw the bite. His father’s arm was bleeding profusely, and while he insisted that he was fine they all knew what was coming. He panicked, drawing a gun Steve had never seen before, threatening anyone who came close. When he started to drag Steve away into the woods it was the chief of police who drew his own piece, threatening to fire, angry words firing back and forth until there was a series of gunshots. Steve remembered hearing a scream, remembered warmth splashing over him, remembered his father falling at his feet, dead before he even hit the ground. And after that he stopped functioning, allowing himself to be lead away, taken in by a group of people he barely knew. A group that would shortly become his new family, that would teach him to survive. It was little wonder that Steve found himself more or less adrift when another attack separated them, leaving him lost in a world he had almost no experience with.
@steadyfire @bitterbadge
