My name is Wynne Randall, and I am a survivor of the zombie apocalypse. So far, anyway.

I'm sixteen years old, and I've been alone for nearly eight months. So, I'm kind of going crazy.

As my house was being invaded by live-human looters, days after it all started, I climbed out my upstairs bedroom window, my "emergency backpack" on my back, and a calendar in my hand. I have to know what day it is. I have to. I'm sorry, but I'm just weird like that.

I also brought about ten tubes of toothpaste, and three toothbrushes. It might be the end of the world, but my teeth must be clean. I'm sorry, but it's a must.

And of course I brought tons of those necessary little items that help me with a little monthly visit. Luckily, there're still plenty of them on abandoned store shelves.

And my dad's gun, the Glock 26. Instead of shooting those idiotic, piece-of-scum looters in the face with it, he stuffed it in my hand and told me to run. It was just him and me – my mom had died a couple of years before. I know I'll never see him again. His face has started to fade from my memory, but I remember his hugs, and that's nice on a particularly terrifying night.

Right now I'm holed up in the middle of the woods, trying to decide which way to go next. I have no tent, I just have a large amount of dumb luck that allowed me to find an old shack in the middle of the forest.

My dad, Michael Randall, believed in God. We didn't really go to church or anything, but he believed God exists. After all this crap started, I did pray. I asked God why he killed my dad, why he left me here alone, and why in the heck did he have to come up with a much more creative version of the flood? Now I'm not sure if he does exist. But who knows for sure?

I'm thinking I should steer clear of cities. More zombies, more bad people to try to kill me.

I have a compass, though I'm not sure how to use it. Maybe I'll go west, and get to the Mississippi River, it's not too far from here. I don't know why. But if I have a river to follow, maybe I'll be able to get my bearings and possibly find some nice live people. If there are any left.

I don't even know why I don't just shoot myself in the head and be done. Because, who knows if this mess will ever get cleaned up? No one does. There's no order anymore. I'm going to die eventually, anyway, so what's the point?

I guess it's just that basic, animal instinct to "survive".

It's morning now, just barely. I wish I had a watch. Oh well, at least I have a calendar.

But I don't have food. I've always been one of those people that can eat one meal a day and be fine. But I gotta admit it's starting to catch up with me. I'm ravenous, but too caring or stupid or sentimental to shoot animals and cook them.

So I pack up my backpack, swing it onto my shoulder, drink a little bit of my water supply, and head out, the Glock tucked into the waistband of my pants.

I'm glad I was wearing decent clothes when I made my escape: jeans, tough boots, a long-sleeved shirt, and my most comfortable bra, haha. I have a coat hanging around my waist, the sleeves crisscrossed over my bellybutton.

I trudge through the woods, the sun making a slow arch across the sky. Eventually I come to an interstate, and upon checking my compass I see that it heads north. I decide to follow it for a while, until it gives me a road that goes west.

Vehicles of all shapes and sizes stand gleaming in the sunlight. The leaves on the trees are just starting to turn red and yellow, and according to my calendar it's the middle of October. The air is getting cooler and crisper, the nights colder.

I walk along the side of the road, peering into cars, looking for any kind of food. Most of it's rotten, or covered in blood and gore.

I know I'm probably infected with whatever virus the dead things carry. Honestly, I don't know much about this whole apocalypse thing, because whenever Daddy watched or listened to the news, I would go to my room and do something distracting. Like listen to music. God, I miss that.

By late afternoon, my stomach is aching terribly, and I kind of just want to give up. I come to the exit for some small town. There's no town that I can see, but there is a Subway, and a gas station.

I cross over the grassy median, and make my way between cars over to the on-ramp. I walk down it, looking in cars, keeping an eye and ear out for any signs of a herd.

I've only seen a herd once, and that was from a distance. They snuck up on this man, and, well......had their way. It was horrible. I can still hear him screaming, and I would have helped him, but there were too many dead things.

I shake my head, trying to free myself of the vision. I reach the regular road, and walk toward the buildings.

"I'll try the gas station first," I say aloud. Sometimes it just helps to talk to myself, and I do it quite a bit. I also don't want to lose my voice.

I reach the gas station, and the door is already open. It's pretty common for doors to be open like this, but I pull the Glock from my waistband anyway.

I slowly enter the semi-darkness of the building, my ears practically twitching because I'm listening so hard for anything.

I look around. The whole place is trashed, but I manage to find a KitKat on the floor. I don't care about rationing or the possibility of rats, I'm eating this crap right now! Suck it!

And the possibly poisonous candy is delicious. I munch on it, relaxing too much, letting my guard too low, as I search for more salvageable food and water.

There's a small container of plastic water bottles in a corner, and I head over. I hate that water's so heavy. I think of the exhausting walk I'll have as I stick the bottles into my backpack. I really need to get tougher.

I mean, if somebody attacked me, what would I do? Would I shoot them? I can't even shoot animals. But for some reason I actually think it would be easier to shoot a person than an animal. I've never really liked people all that much.

Sometimes I think I was supposed to be something else. Like a cat. Or a dragonfly.

"I wonder what it would be like to be a dragonfly......" I say to myself as I stand, swinging the backpack over my shoulder once again.

I find a treasure trove of crackers and candy bars, hidden behind a stack of empty boxes. I only take half of what's there in case whoever left them comes back.

The sun is sinking lower as I finally start to leave, pulling my flashlight from my pack. Seconds before I turn it on, I see a beam down the road. Gasping, I quickly remove my finger from the on switch.

Oh no, a person. Or a dead thing with a light attached to it. Which would be odd, and quite impossible, but – arggh! Focus!

Being stupid, I back into the building again instead of fleeing across the road and into the woods, to freedom.

I hide behind the first door I can find – the women's bathroom, ironically. I don't close the door all the way, so that I'll have a minuscule gap to peep through to see the monsters.

Soon, voices reach my ears. The sound of them...it's so strange now, after only hearing my own voice for nearly a year. I hate it.

"We'll stay here for the night," A man's rough voice says.

"And will we finish it?" Another man's voice says. His is a little higher pitched than the first.

"Yes," the rough voice answers impatiently.

I hear more than two pairs of feet stomping through the door. I peek through and see at least six men, all nasty and mean-looking, shoving inside. Two of them are dragging an unconscious someone between them, and just drop him on the floor with a loud thud.

"There ain't no beer!" A tattooed one complains.

"Shut it, Brad," the rough voiced one, who has a gross beard, snaps, "You don't need any of that shit anyway."

"Yeah, we need to find food, dumbass," another one says. He has a tattered baseball cap pulled low over his greasy hair.

"Brad" lunges toward greasy-haired dude, "Don't call me that!" He punches Greasy in the nose, and Greasy responds with a kick to the shin.

Instead of stopping them, Gross-Beard, who I assume is the leader, just asks a bald guy with those spacer earrings what he's found.

"Some crackers and candy, man, and that ain't no good," Baldy replies.

"Shit!" Gross-Beard thunders.

"We could just eat that," A dull-voiced guy, who has dreads that reach his waist, jabs his finger at the unconscious body of the guy on the ground.

"We ain't cannibals," Gross-Beard growls.

"Well, he's not worth anything to us," Dreads states, "And anyway, we're starving. There's nothing else to eat. Except for maybe Jim."

"Hey!" The high-pitched-voice guy exclaims, "I don't think so!" He's got an eye patch.

Dreads just shrugs, "Whatever, I was just kidding anyway." He heads off to another part of the room.

Brad and Greasy are still fighting. Brad, who's like, ten times bigger than Greasy, is winning.

Everybody else continues to scour the area for food.

"I found a dead rat," I hear Dreads say from out of sight.

"That's sick, man," Eye-Patch fake gags.

Minutes pass. Greasy and Brad's fight gets louder. And over the noise of it, no one but me sees the guy on the floor slowly scooting my way, still face down.

No one notices. He's coming right at me. What do I do? What do I do? Help?

Go away! Don't come any closer! And this is where the story of my life will end.