Chip honestly has no clue how he’s survived this long.

Cordyceps, the fungus, had taken over when he was 24. His ex girlfriend, Liza, who arguably deserved to die for the abuse she put him through — was Chip’s first encounter with the infected.

Liza was a hooker. She’d gotten bitten by a client, but ultimately managed to get away. She turned about twenty four hours later, and Chip ultimately ended up killing her.

That was 21 years ago, now. And by some miracle — Chip was still alive, and not infected.

Chip’s not stupid; that’s not the word for it. But he’s most definitely a people pleaser, and extremely gullible (especially when it comes to attractive women, as he’s learned). That meant that he’d been cheated out of things a lot, and that only worsened after the outbreak.

There were numerous times when he’d let his guard down around a pretty girl, only to be robbed of supplies.

Ultimately, he decided that his best bet was being on his own; a solitary man, roaming the country with his revolver and if he was lucky — some Marlboros.

Today, so far, he was not lucky. Apart from the cigarettes in his back pocket, everything had been pretty shit for him.

He’d found himself somewhere in the deserts of Nevada. A couple ranch properties, all abandoned, scattered the terrain. Apart from that, it was nothing but mountains and tumbleweeds and cacti.

Hoping to find some ammo, he’d wandered into one of these ranch houses. Did he find ammo? No.

He did find three clickers, though.

He ran out of that house like hell — fumbling with his gun and sprinting through the yellowed grass.

The closest structure was a wooden shed, no more than twenty feet away from another Victorian style farmhouse. It appeared… oddly unkept, given the state of the rest of the buildings.

Chip continued towards said shed, hobbling himself over the white picket fence. In the process, like an idiot, he dropped his revolver.

And just like that, he thought he was at his end — he leant his back against the wooden shed and watched as the three infected charged at him with clacking teeth and crooked spines.

Except just as they neared two feet, each one fell — one by one, with the clicks of a rifle.

What Chip was met with when his head turned was almost scarier than the clickers.

“F-fucking shit… I mean- uhm, thanks.”

A woman — and a gorgeous one. She was holding a smoking rifle, wearing flared jeans and tattered cowboy boots. Her cleavage sat perfectly behind the cotton of her t-shirt; so perfectly, in fact, that Chip almost hadn’t realized that she now had the gun aimed at him.