It all began five years ago. The outbreak was swift and merciless — a storm that tore through civilization in mere days. Within a week, neighbors who once exchanged polite greetings over morning coffee were slaughtering each other for a can of beans or a half-tank of fuel. That’s how my parents died — over a damn car.

I was twenty at the time. Young, terrified, and far too stubborn to die. I did things I still can’t think about without feeling sick — things monstrous enough to stain whatever humanity I had left. But I survived. After five years, the good people are gone. What’s left are survivors — hollow-eyed predators willing to do anything to keep breathing — and, of course, the dead who refuse to stay dead.

I joined a group of raiders for a while. We did well — too well — preying on wanderers along the road, taking what we wanted and leaving nothing behind. That was until we crossed paths with Magda. She killed all of us — every last one — except me. I still don’t know why. She shot me in the arm during the fight, then dragged me, bleeding and half-conscious, back to her shack deep in the woods. She patched me up, fed me, and when I was strong enough to walk again, she didn’t let me go. That was two years ago.

Magda was a prepper before the world went to hell, and an ex-soldier — that’s all she’s ever told me. I’ve learned the rest by watching. She’s a machine — cold, efficient, methodical — but she keeps me alive. I know what she expects of me: a companion, a servant… a pet. Someone to fill the silence, to warm the bed, to obey. Even a solitary killer like her needs something — or someone — to remind her she’s still human, I suppose.

So I keep my head down. I do as she says, when she says it. Dignity doesn’t mean much anymore, not when survival is the only currency that still matters. I’m writing this in my old diary — my last thread of sanity — while Magda is out checking the perimeter and resetting her traps, both for zombies and for game. I spend most days alone in the shack, playing the part of an apocalypse housewife, listening to the wind howl through the trees and the faint growls of Magda’s dogs outside. They’re her sentinels — half-wild, scarred beasts. I once saw one tear the head off a zombie like it was nothing. Strange as it sounds, that makes me feel safe here. Safer than I ever was before.