.・゜-: ✧☾　☽✧ :-゜・.

𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐋𝐋𝐀 𝐆𝐑𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒 𝐖𝐀𝐒 𝐈𝐍 𝐒𝐂𝐇𝐎𝐎𝐋 when the outbreak happened, sitting in math class, staring out the window not listening to what her teacher was talking about.
The sound of the principal's alarmed voice through the speakers snapped her out of her absence.

"The school will close for the day,"
A loud cheering spread in the classroom as the principal continued. Stella tried to focus on what he was saying but her classmates were too loud. She only managed to perceive a few words.

"The health care authority has.... Warn..... Go home..... Lock..."

The teens pushed their way out of the classroom and out through the corridors, eager to miss school. But Stella felt as though something was wrong.

As soon as she stepped out she saw cars crowded outside and in front of the school a long car queue stretched on the road. Stella heard cheering but also loud yelling and screaming in the distance. The girl climbed up on a trash can to get a better view. Her gaze was carried around the cluster of panicked faces, hoping to find her mother's black Volvo. The crowd was filled with cars in different colors and brands but her mother's car was nowhere to be found.

Then, like a stab of fear, a realization hit the girl - Carl. Her younger brother. She hoped that her parents had picked him up already and that whatever was causing the panic and chaos hadn't hurt them. Then another alarm filled her, -her father.
He was in a coma after being shot.

Stella grabbed the shoulder straps of her backpack and jumped down from her scouting spot. She looked around her and scanned the passing faces.

"Stella!" A familiar voice yelled in the distance.
The girl turned around so hastily that she almost fell. In the crowd, Stella could perceive the figure of her best friend Lilly Smith pushing her way towards her.

"Stella!" Lilly panted and wrapped her arms around the girl. Stella felt a warm, calming feeling having Lilly with her. That meant that she wasn't alone.

"What the hell is going on?"
"No idea," Stella said closing her eyes relieved to have someone by her side in the confusion. The girls unraveled from the hug and grabbed each other's hands as they looked out on the chaos on the street.

A loud scream made both girls jump. They turned to the direction of the sound. People were running in pure fright away from an unknown threat in the distance. At first, Stella couldn't see what was causing the panic but then she spotted four limping people heading towards the panicked cluster. Their clothes had been ripped leaving big holes in the fabric and their bodies were covered in blood.
One of the limping people grabbed a woman in her 30s and... bit her neck. A frightened scream escaped her mouth and she felt her stomach turn as she saw the blood squirt and run down the woman's clothes as she screamed for help.

Stella squeezed Lilly's hand as hard as she could. She wanted to move, and hide, but her body was frozen. She watched in numb horror as the woman fell to the ground, her shirt and neck filled with the red substance.

Stella finally got a good look at the person who bit the woman, she was extremely lean, the hair on her head was tangled and messy and her eyes looked like two white globes in her face.
The cluster of frightened and screaming people ran towards the two girls, who both just stared in shock, frozen in fear. Luckily Lilly, last minute, jumped to the side still holding onto Stella. The sudden move made her snap out of her trance. The two girls ran behind a small brick wall and pressed against it as hard as they could.

Stella's mind felt like an empty space. The image of the woman's death haunted her, spinning around in her head. The blood, the screaming, the frightened faces.
She squeezed Lily's hand as she pressed herself against the brick wall. The screaming became more distant indicating that the big cluster had left, but that didn't calm Stella. Her heart was beating at a rapid pace and she felt her breakfast wanting to come back up. The girl knew that the image of what she had just witnessed would haunt her forever.

"What the fuck just happened?" Lily whispered as soon as the screaming was so distant they barely heard it. Lily's voice was shaking and sounded like she was on the verge of tears.
Stella opened her mouth to answer, but the lump in her throat made it impossible to say a word. Instead, she just shook her head.

Then, everything happened too fast. A groaning sound was the first thing that Stella heard. Then a figure appeared in the corner, a limping person like the one that bit the woman. Lily, without hesitation, pulled both her and Stella back up on their feet and began to run. Both girls ran down the street, like life depended on it-which it did. Stella refused to look back, didn't want to meet the threat behind her.

Lily made a quick turn into an ally. The sudden movement made Stella fall. She hit the hard concrete and felt a sharp pain in her left foot. The pain radiated through her leg and she groaned. She tried to push it away and get back up, but as she looked around to find Lily, all she saw was the girl's back as she jumped over a fence in the ally.

The groaning from the unknown creatures behind her that now had tripled, got louder and louder as they closed up on the girl.

Stella began to run up the street again. She knew that the hurt in her foot would make it impossible to get over the fence. Instead, she ran towards her house. She lived far away from the school and Stella knew that she wouldn't be able to run all the way home in her condition. But without any other opinions, she began to run. Panicked people ran past her and bumped into her from all directions as she limped through the city.
"Thank god, for football practice." She thought to herself. Her stamina was a clear facilitation.

But she didn't even make it two blocks before she saw the black Volvo in the distance. She jumped up and down and waved her arms in the air to get her mother's attention. She almost cried as the car increased the speed before stopping, making a sound, that Stella only have heard in movies- the sound of rubber against concrete.
Stella threw the door open and felt a wave of relief as she met her mother's gaze.

"Get in!" She yelled.
Before jumping in, Stella tossed a quick glance into the backseat and saw, to her relief, Carl. His worried and scared eyes met Stella's. The girl felt her heart break at the sight of his fear. She wanted to protect her from whatever hell was happening outside.
Stella sat down in the passenger seat and before she even closed the car door, her mother pressed the accelerator and began driving up the crowded street.
The whole drive home, Stella was plagued by the memories of what had just happened- first the panic, then the zombie-looking woman, the woman she bit, the blood, the screaming, and then Lily.

Now, a month later, the 15-year-old girl, was sitting on a lodge watching as the orange colored sun set behind the mountains. Her hand was in her younger brother Carl's brown hair massaging his scalp. On the four lodges that were forming a square around the burning fire in the middle, people from the camp were speaking intensely about the situation in which was on everyone's minds. Some people from their group had gone to Atlanta to gather some supplies, but they still hadn't returned.

On the lodge next to Stella's, her mother Lori Grimes was sitting next to a young girl named Amy, making a hopeless attempt to calm her down. Amy's sister Andrea were with the group in Atlanta. Along with Andrea, there was also a younger Asian man named Glenn, a man named T-dog and his wife Joaquin, a man named Morales, and a man named Merle.

On the lodge in front of Stella, Shane was sitting next to Dale, an older man in his mid-sixties. He owned the RV that the group used as a lookout tower. Dale would spend hours on the roof of his RV with his rifle and binoculars, scouting for any threat approaching their camp.

Shane looked away from Dale and met Stella's gaze. He gave her a clearly forced smile trying to tell her that everything was fine. Stella was smarted then that, Glenn was the only person who knew Atlanta the best out of everyone in the group. He knew all the ways in and out and was always the person who was forced to join the supply runs. The chances of him getting lost were zero. The only explanation the girl could think of was death. There was not a chance that they were alive, everyone knew it but no one had the heart to admit it.

Shane, who used to work with her father, was the person who gave her the news about his death. Shane used to be her father's best friend. He would attend family dinners, barbecue nights, and birthday parties. Stella always liked Shane, he was like an uncle to her. Now like a father. He gave her, her first drink and offered her to smoke cigars but her father always stopped him.

Stella was grateful for the memories, but the memories of what life used to be like hurt the most. She missed her old life so much.

The rest of the Atlanta group were in their tents, that were spread around the campsite, sleeping or at least trying to.

Stella got used to getting 3 hours of sleep every night. The fear of walkers- as they called the dead- stumbling into her and her family's tent plagued her nights making it impossible to close her eyes. She adapted to a world where you had to sleep with one eye open. But it wasn't just the fear that made her nights sleepless, but also the nightmares. The nightmares where the young girl would witness her family getting torn in pieces by the monsters that now roamed the earth. But when she would wake up from these horrible torments that terrorized her nights, she would just wake up to another nightmare. Waking up, knowing that you will never see your father or any relatives again, knowing that your little brother will grow up in such a terrible world, or not knowing if this day will be your last.

Stella looked back at the descending sun and shut her eyes. At the start, the girl tried to tell herself that all of this just was a long, protracted nightmare and that she would wake up in her own bed and go eat breakfast with her whole family, and that everything would be okay. But that never came, she never woke up in her own bed again, never had breakfast with her whole family and things never turned out okay.

A rustling sound behind her made her eyes fly open again. She, along with the others around the fire, stood up swiftly, a move that almost caused Carl to fly out of her lap and onto the ground but the young boy sat up last second. Stella turned around and her gaze roamed around the forest, where the sound had come from. At first, the girl didn't see anything, but then a figure approached them.

Stella grabbed Carl's arm and pulled in the boy behind her, as to use her body as a shield from the unknown threat. Shane and Dale lifted their weapons and aimed them at the figure. Stella heard the clicking sound of the two rifles load behind her and Amy and her mother gasp. Shane copied the move that Stella had done just seconds ago and grabbed her arm to pull her behind himself.

At first, Stella thought that the figure belonged to a walker. But then she noticed something, whatever was approaching them had their hands in the air as a sign of peace and surrender.
Stella furrowed her eyebrows.
"What are you doing? Shoot it!" Stella's mother yelled to Shane.
"Wait!" Stella shouted. "I think it's a person."

The figure stepped out of the forest and into the open area in front of it. The descending sun illuminated their face revealing them.

It was a boy

_____ ˚₊‧꒰ა ☆ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚ _____
𝟐𝟐𝟎𝟕 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝𝐬
𝐉𝐮𝐥𝐲 𝟐𝟗𝐭𝐡 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟑
𝟏𝟎:𝟓𝟗 𝐀𝐌
_____ ˚₊‧꒰ა ☆ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚ _____

A/N
OMG FINALLY POSTING THIS STORY!
I've waited so long and I'm so excited and I hope that u are as excited as me
And also my TikTok is flopping like helllll.

But I hope you like this story

Please vote it would help me a lot ♡︎