At the beginning...

Joanna's parents were one of the many that died the first day the dead came.

Joanna locked herself in her room with the home phone and quickly dialed her Uncle Gary, who owns a gun shop near the city.

That's just the start.

Two years afterwards...

Joanna sat on the chair with a rifle laid against the wooden leg of it. She was facing the window of the motel she was staying at with her cool uncle (he owned a gun shop—great for the apocalypse). It was her shift to take watch.

Joanna's eyes drooped and her eyelids were heavy and demanding more sleep, but her mind endured the night. Joanna glanced down at her wattle bottle. She shrugged, bent down, and poured some into her cupped palms and quickly catapulted the lukewarm water into her face. She sputtered a little, but it was worth it.

When thirteen year old Joanna opened her eyes with droplets clung to her eyelashes, headlights shone outside.

She gasped. The car must've been farther down the forest highway. But it was coming, alright.

It pulled into the parking lot.

"Gary!" Joanna yelled. "Gary get up! Car coming!" She grabbed her hunting rifle and went to shake her uncle awake.

Uncle Gary basically slept with one eye open and was immediately awake. He climbed out of the motel bed and grabbed his backpack. He grabs the small camping flashlight he had and turned it off, handing it to Joanna.

Bullets fire and glass rains down on them. Joanna and Gary got down on their stomachs. Gary screamed for Joanna to run. And she sprinted to the bathroom and climbed through the tiny back window.

And she ran away a long ways.

----------

One day later...

"Hey—hey!" A soft, kind voice turned firm and commanding in an instant. Joanna sat straight up, causing the stranger to backpedal into a tree in alarm. The girl had dark brown hair and amber eyes. Sun-freckles dot her cheeks. She looked a year older than Joanna. In her hand was a pistol.

"Whoa, dude...as you can see my only weapon is a rifle." Joanna fought for her memory of the seconds before she went to sleep. Joanna's rifle should have been right next to her, but instead its strap is slung over the stranger's shoulder. Joanna took in her exceptionally crappy makeshift shelter; she remembered when she found the tarp in the forest.

Even in the end, people still littered.

Good job humanity. Whatever is left of it.

The stranger bites her bottom lip and switched her gun to safety before tucking it away. "You're alone."

Joanna nervously picked at the loose thread of her old underarmour sweatshirt. "Yeah," she confirmed. Though it was pretty obvious she was alone—there isn't any good reason to leave a kid behind. But Joanna was the one who had left someone behind, she noticed solemnly. "Totally alone."

"Get on up, you're coming with me—or wait, should I ask you're name first or do you want to dismiss tradition."

Younger Joanna smiled a little. "My name is Joanna. But you can call me Jo or Jojo or—"

The girl returned the smile, but cut her off. "I'll call you one of those variations." She laughed a little. Joanna couldn't figure out what was funny about her pointless rambling that made her fourth-grade self seem like a toddler, she hoped that someday she'd grow out of it. "My name's Aviva." The girl introduced. "And I suppose you can have you're gun."

Aviva took off the rifle and tossed it to Joanna. Joanna caught the hulking object.

It was always hard to carry those hulking things, Joanna thought. Even on Aviva, the rifle was almost as tall as her.

"Aviva!" Shouting sounded from the shadows of the dense woods. The dawn casted dark ghosts to shield and cover those who hide in its being.

"Coming Dad!" Aviva yelled back as she peered behind her at the direction of the man's voice. "That's our cue. Follow me."

Zaremareth