All That's Left Behind - ronance

chapter 1

Max has been missing for fifteen days. 

It’s the first thought in Robin’s head when she wakes up. Every morning, she tacks another day onto the steadily climbing number. She takes a minute to pray to a God she’s never believed in. Then she gets up and gets moving. She packs up her bedroll and her food and water—precious in this hellhole—into the beat-up truck she’d picked up a while ago, and she drives.

It’s been this way for a while, even before Max disappeared. It was a similar routine; wake up, check perimeter, wake up Max, get her moving, and ignore her terrible morning attitude. Robin had become an expert at siphoning gas within the first few weeks, learned to check every building (whether it be abandoned house, deserted supermarket, or desolate Starbucks) thoroughly before letting Max anywhere near it. She had a whole rulebook running through her head. Don’t talk to strangers, heartbeats or no. Check for hidden biters like you’re in a slasher movie. (They had a scare once involving a closet, and Robin decided she wasn’t interested in taking chances.) Every piece of food is valuable. That kind of thing. Only thing that’s really different now is the obvious emptiness of the passenger seat and the caustic worry twisting her gut.

An old picture of Max is stuck in the visor above Robins eyeline. It’s not the best one of her. She’s maybe fifteen and making a classic Max stink face at the camera (Robin can vividly remember the moment she snapped it, Max's annoyed Quit it, Rob and the punch she’d thrown Robin). But it’s the only photo of her the other girl has. 

Max is alive. The information thrums in Robins head. She’s alive. She has to be. She isn’t among the dead—any of them (Ronin knows, she checks their faces). She’s alive and she’s moving. A former plumber recognized her photo a few towns back. 

“Yeah, I saw her,” the man said. 

“Where?” Robin demanded.

He scratched at his head, where his hair has begun receding. “Few hundred miles back maybe?” He jerks a thumb over his shoulder.

Robin looked in that direction, but all she could see was bleak gray sky. “Was she alone?” Robin asks. The man looked taken aback, probably at the urgency in Robin’s voice. Robin repeated it, low and snappish.

“No,” said the man. “No, she had friends.”

All Robin heard was strangers. She keeps driving. Max is alive. Robin will find her, whatever it takes.

*****

Robin really, really hates it when they’re kids.

Robin doesn’t see a lot of them, but she knows it happens often; when parents can’t make it, their kids don’t either. Most of them don’t have a clue how to survive alone, so they don’t last long. Although she has heard a rumor about a kid living with his undead parents in another room for a few months.

She’s wary of supermarkets. For all the lack of brain function, stiffs tend to know that people flock to them. They like to hang out in parking lots and produce aisles, sniffing at scents in the hopes of a meal. Robin hadn’t liked being forced to visit grocery stores even when Max was around, but she’s down to a pack of Slim Jims and three bottles of water and she doesn’t like being unprepared even more.

She’s shoving a box of granola bars into her pack when she hears a gurgle behind her, the telltale shuffle of feet. She swings around, gun raised—and stops. This one is so small; she probably doesn’t even reach Robin's hip. Her brown hair is matted and bloody, but in two braids that were once neat. Robin’s chest feels tight. That means somebody had been taking care of her.

She’s missing half of her jaw, but Robin still sees Max when she looks at her. She remembers making her sit still for half an hour while she tried to master the French braid, determined to get around her clumsy fingers. She won’t waste bullets on this one. She can’t. She smashes her skull with one swing of the bat and hightails it out of there, resisting the urge to puke as she stomps on the gas.

*****

Two days later, she spots a girl who is definitely not Max on the side of the road, surrounded by the walking dead. Sometimes she’s caught off-guard by wanderers and stiffs with long hair dirty with grime, girls with similar slim builds. Sometimes her heart will stutter, and she’ll have to steel herself, make sure it isn’t Max. (It never is.)

This girl is built like Max, but she’s brunette. She actually looks like she’s doing okay; she’s got a machete and a gun and she is using them like she’s a veteran, like she’s a survivor. Robin wouldn’t have stopped except this girl stands at five-foot-nothing and she’s managed to attract a frenzy. She shouldn’t stop. It’s every woman for herself out here. One girl isn’t worth Robin's life, or Max's.

But she stops. She supposes in Max’s absence she needs someone to protect.

She takes out three zombies with a burst of bullets and then swoops in with her bat. The girl turns her gun on Robin in shock, but thankfully realizes she’s not a stiff. By the time they’re the only ones standing, though, their boots are covered in gore and they’re staring at each other like enemies.

It’s Robin who breaks first. “You’re by yourself,” she says. “In the middle of nowhere.”

“So are you,” says the girl. Her left hand is dripping blood, but she’s not showing any signs of pain. Even covered in sweat and grime, Robin can tell she’s not the kind of girl she would try hitting on pre-apocalypse. She’s pretty, the picture of a fairytale princess with brown flowing hair and crisp blue eyes. 

“Yeah,” Robin allows, “but I’ve got a car. And gas. And water.” she levels her gaze at her. “What do you have?” 

The girl’s upper lip curls. “Dignity,” she says. “So you can get into your P.O.S. and drive on if you think I’m trading that for a sip of water and a can of Pringles.”

That catches Robin off-guard. She wasn’t—that wasn’t where she was going with this. But she knows that shorter girls have it that little bit harder than girls tall like her, girls who’re armed and tall and able without laws or morals. Robin lowers her gun pointedly. “I don’t want your dignity,” she says carefully. “I want to help you.” 

Confusion flickers in the girl’s blue blue eyes. Does she know what help means? 

“I’m guessing you’re heading that way,” Robin says, nodding west. “So am I.” This doesn’t warrant a reaction, apparently, so she adds, “You’re the first living person I’ve seen in a few days. If you want, you can keep that gun on me the whole time.”

The girl considers her, and there’s something in her gaze that’s unnerving, sharp, dissecting. “If you touch me,” she says, “I’ll cut off your hand.” She sticks the gun in her pants and the machete in the pack slung across her back, then trudges past Robin towards the car like she owns it.

“Don’t worry about it, sweetheart” Robin says as she follows her. “I like my hand.”