1 Episode 1: Loss

The Compound burns slowly and pieces fall off, walkers roam the courtyard as the now reanimated corpses lie there lifeless. In the science building Hailey lies there already a walker, she is just sitting there staring into the sun as she lies impaled. Dex bursts awake and looks around, he is cut up badly from shrapnel, he struggles to see straight, everything is blurry, ears are ringing. Dex grabs his bag, and puts it over his shoulder, he uses some rebar next to him to pull himself up, he sees the walkers around and decides it's too dangerous. Dex sees Hailey and then the outside, "I hope you guys made it" Dex pulls himself to a classroom and shuts what was left of the door, he walked to a desk to push it to the door. He kneels over and struggles to push, he falls at first, but lifts himself up and pushes with the little strength left, when it was blocked he walked slowly to a desk with old medical equipment from the raiders. "Sometimes I'm happy when things happen to be where I need them" He takes the stuff he needed and begun to sew his bad cuts together, "Damn this hurts like hell, I need to quit being in a building when it blows up." Dex stitches him self up and begins to bandage his wounds up, after that he feels weak and before he could reach the door he falls over. Struggling to keep awake Dex falls asleep quickly.

Past:

Young Dex walks alone with the family, they were doing nothing but walking for the longest time. Mel walks up to Dex and is quiet for a bit, "What was it like back at the start in the city? We were near Seattle when it all happened, we've only heard rumors about what happened to cities." Dex looks down in an emotional way, "It was terrible, people were going crazy, fire was everywhere, dead people attacking the living, the cops struggling for control over the situation. It didn't take long for the military to bomb the city to hell... My parents... They didn't make it out..."Mel looks at the watch she had on, she handed it to Dex and said, "This was my fathers... original father's watch before he left for war, he said that no matter what, this will keep him with me forever... He made it out and came home, I just kinda kept the watch, guess I liked it a bit too much, but he said that the more you hear it tick is another second given to you by the sacrifices our loved ones make for us, keep it to remember that your parents are at peace knowing that you are still here." Dex hesitates but takes it and puts it in the pocket of his backpack.

"Hey you two, we should lie low for a bit here at this trailer park, seems safe enough for now." Mike said as he opened the back door to a trailer, they all climbed in and settled in, Mike got a fire going and they all warmed up as snow began to fall. "It's getting colder the longer we stay out here Mike, we need to find a place to stay long term." Mel looked at them and said, "W..well what about Uncle Tom?" Katie looked at her and said, "I'm sure he'll be somewhere safe, we'll get him back, don't worry Mel" Dex hears some branches break and he slowly turns his head a bit, he grabs his knife and then gets confirmation that some people are there when he hears a faint whisper. He grabs some paper and writes down, "Act natural, there are people around us, we need to get inside fast and go" He looks at Mike and Katie and says, "Look at the poem I made." when they looked, and read, Katie looked at him and said, "It looks great, here, it's getting pretty cold, lets get inside." to grab some blankets." They all went back in and got low and quiet.

'

"Whats going on." Dex looks at Mike and says, "The first group I wa with taught me to be aware om my surroundings, there are some people hare, we need to get ready to go, fast, I think they may be responsible for what happened to my group, I don't know." Mike agreed, they bundled up and Mike hopped down, they were packed, when the rest were down, Mike yelled to run, as they began he was shot directly through the chest, Katie was grazed, the trio didn't realize what happened and kept running. They ran into a nearby gas station and hid, then the snow storm picked up badly. "M...mom, he's gone, where is he?"

Present:

A few hours later Dex wakes up, he has a splitting headache, he slowly gets up, he struggles a bit. He grabs his bag and puts it on, he takes a handgun that was by a corpse, he checks it's clip and takes two spares off the raider corpse. He looks out the window and sees that the sun is still up, but starting to go down, Dex takes some food out of his bag and downs it fast. Dex waits for the sun to go down more and more, he eventually moves the desk out of the way, he has a bit more strength now, Dex walks to Hailey, he takes his knife out slowly and looks at her, "I'm sorry Hailey... But we won, I'll look for the others, they have to be together still, I won't stop searching until I find them, I promise you." Dex takes a deep breath and puts her down, he gets up and walks past the broken bottle of vodka, he goes down the stairs and opens the door, he enters the courtyard and gets low. There are countless walkers around, he see a hole in the fence, he goes to it, he uses his already dark clothes to blend in with the night, he takes his bag and slowly pushes it through the hole, he then crawls under. Dex takes it and walks slowly through the empty courtyard, the walkers that were in it all ended up leaving to go to the outside after the surviving group, Dex slowly walks through, limping, he sees the death around him, he walks past a ripped apart militia soldier, he exits the place and goes up the hill slowly, he turns to have a seat on top of it. He has the same view that Sarah did when the place went up in flames.

Dex slowly got up after a while and started to slowly walk away, he got into town, and saw smoke. He jogged to it with the little energy he had and saw a couple buildings that recently burnt down, he noticed the police station burnt as well. "Oh my god... This must have happened during the fight..." Dex looked down to see a bracelet belonging to Sarah, he noticed that it was intact, "She's out there, the others or at least most should have made it, I gotta find them, soon." Dex put the bracelet away and began walking west where Sarah had always told him they would go when they got Will. He had hoped to find his friends again, he had a small glimmer of hope left, but knew that no time was to be wasted.

The Militia:

Sarah leads the remaining people down the street, far from Willmington, she notices that they were all tired, they had just crossed into Kentucky from Virginia, they were going along the border with Tennessee. Jack noticed a small motel nearby and walked up to Sarah and said, "I know it may not be safe but we can rest at that motel down there, then by morning figure out where we will begin." Sarah was too hungry, thirsty, tired to respond, she just nodded, they walked to it. They all slowly walked there, once they got in, they all got their knives out and were ready to kill anything. Sarah saw a walker lunge at her and she was grabbed and fell, as the walker landed on top of her, the knife went through it's head. Jack and Lamar delt with some others while the militia remnants set things up, they were in the main office where it was big enough. Eventually the walkers were piled up outside and they all went to bed, Sarah was laying there with Will beside here in a sleeping bag already asleep. Sarah was thinking about that day, she remembered the sound of Dex giving in and accepting it, she remembered the sound of the explosion. Sarah was laying there full of emotion, she had a tear fall as she remembered that special bond she had with Dex, she got up and decided to leave to get food, water, air.

As she left Jack was sitting outside with Lamar on watch duty, "Hey Sarah, where ya off to?" Sarah looked at them and said, "I'm going to get some food and water, to clear my head." Lamar looks at her and says, "I'm with you on that, let us come with." Sarah signals for them to come along, they lock the doors and leave a note and head out, they three walk down a lonesome road and go to the woods, "flashlights on, stay alert" Jack reminded them as they entered, they all got their gear together and headed down to the creek, Lamar took out some canteens and filled them up one by one until all 6 were full, Sarah and Jack did the same with some water bottles, as they bagged the stuff they saw a big rabbit eating some berries. Sarah grabbed her gun and attached a silencer to it, she aimed and took a deep breath, Lamar held her gun down when he noticed babies come out to eat, Sarah looked at them and quietly said, "Looks like they're just trying to get by, same as us." Jack responds with a nod and they quietly walk low to another spot by some open fields, they spot a deer eating grass, Sarah aims it slowly and takes a deep breath, she rests her finger over the trigger, before she could fire the deer was shot and killed. Sarah lowered the rifle in confusion, "That wasn't you was it?" Sarah shook her head, they began to slowly get up as some people left the woods, they knew the trio was there. "Come on out, we won't hurt you, we see you're hungry, even more than us, you can have it."

Lamar called out, "Why should we trust you." The man put his gun away and said, "Because you're trying to survive just like us, we get it, come out, we come from somewhere safe, big walls, big community." Sarah got up and put her hands up, Jack looked down and did the same, Lamar followed after. "We're listening." The man walked up to her and held his hand out, "I'm Captain James H. Monroe of the United States Armed Forces, or was, until all hell broke loose." Sarah eased up and shook his hand slowly, Where you from Mr... uh Captain Monroe?" James looked and chuckled a bit, "Please call me James, we live in a big settlement just off the highway, about 10 miles north of here, we are about 3,000 strong, we have shops, trade, currency of sorts, get togethers, events, you name it. We are comprised of people from quarantine zones from all over the state, we can take you in, you can take up camp in the settlement and call it home, we are building a new society there." Lamar looks at him and said, "Damn I heard the rumors of a network of communities and an even bigger one to connect it, Hailey wanted to connect Wilmington to it but didn't know how to communicate." James chuckled and said, "We can be hard to reach, I take it, you're from another community and I take it that since you all look the way you are, it isn't around anymore." Sarah looks down and said, "We'd like to go back with you, our small group needs somewhere to stay." James looked at her and smiled and said, "Come with us." His companions grabbed the deer and they walked up to a truck, "How many you got back there?" Jack looked at him and said, "About 6 if you include us." James ordered his men to drive to their friends, they all loaded up and drove to the motel.

When they arrived, Sarah climbed down and unlocked the door for the others, she walked in and saw that they were just waking up. "Guys come on, we just found a new possible home for us, pack your things, I'll explain on the way." The group got the small amount of supplies left and loaded kon to the truck, they all headed out for this new possible home, they weren't thinking, all that they thought of was food, water and sleep. They were on the road for a little bit until they were stopped by a checkpoint, James leaned out and told them to open up, the soldiers there opened the gate, they kept going for a while longer. Eventually Jack looked behind him after seeing a big light, they arrived at an airport, a big one, the front gate was massive, when both opened they entered the place.

A New Home:

As the truck entered, they parked and the trio got out and looked around, people were mingling, trading, playing games, it was like the apocalypse had never happened. They unloaded all of their stuff in the designated room inside the main building, they were on the third floor. They had a nice room, the airport's main building had makeshift walls built to make many big rooms for people. They quickly made it a place to call home and all ended up leaving it to explore, James had decided to show them around. "Now that you all have settled in, how about I start the tour." Sarah smiled and agreed, James took them to the bar first, they entered it and met the bartender who was cleaning up for the night. "Well, you must be the new folk, I'm Louis, I pretty much run thing in here, it's hella fun, we got games over there, food and drinks here and a lot of memories being made." As he introduced himself he shook their hands, Jack looked around and said, "I think I'm going to be a regular here for sure." Lamar looked around in amazement at what they had built up, James walked them out to go to the medical office.

"Alright as we enter Dr. Greens office, it's the usual doctor's office, she isn't in at the moment though, she went home a couple hours ago after all the work she's done, so let's continue shall we?" Sarah looked around by the street and said, "How do you keep this so safe?" James looked at the command center and said, "We have a lot of guns and a lot of people willing to defend this place, we've had raider trouble recently, but they don't attack much because they know it won't work." Lamar looks at him and says, "Wait raiders? If you're talking about the group led by the crazy guy who goes by 'The Boss' then we know 'em, burnt our home down, did the same to Sarah a while before, we lost many good people, brave ones at that..." James looks at him and says, "They are bad people, seems that we have a lot in common,many here were impacted by them, 150 people were here from other camps and communities impacted by them, we're in this together, lets finish this tour." The tour continued and they learned so much more about their new allies.

Dex:

Dex walks down the street and comes across a small, abandoned camp, he keeps going and eventually finds an arm band there. The arm band had a 'W' on it, it was an armband from a militia member from Willmington. Dex slowly walks to the edge of a cliff and holds the armband in his right hand, he looks into the distance, and sees nothing but buildings, he was near a really big town, he didn't know which one but it was small. He sees the sun beginning to go down, he looks at the arm band and quietly says to himself, "I'll find you" He put it into his bag next to Mia's necklace and begins to walk away from the camp to the big city like place in the distance. His journey begins there, he doesn't intend on quitting, he will do anything to find his way back.