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Darkness is all I remember when I try and think of my name. When I say darkness I don’t mean the type of darkness children are scared, hiding monsters under their beds or in their closets. Nor do I mean the type of darkness that plunges someone into a nightmare.

The type of darkness I am talking about is the type that chills you to your very core. The type of darkness the takes away your oxygen without warning. The type of darkness that surrounds you before death. Don’t ask me how I know this because in all honesty I have no idea.

There are only five things in which I am certain.

#1: I have no name, no past, and no family in which I can recall.

#2: Never, under any circumstance, can I ever take off my sun glasses.

#3: My eyes glow a vibrant violent color for no known reason

#4: Walking corpses roam the earth killing and eating any living thing they come across

#5: Somehow, someway, for some un-godly reason I have a connection to the corpses

Due to these only five things on which I can count I rarely interact with other humans. In fact, after never taking off my shades, staying away from other humans is my second most followed rule. So what  the hell do I think I am doing right now?

My feet won’t listen to common sense. You’d think I’d be running away from danger, but here I am in the middle of a dead sprint toward the sound of many enraged corpses, snarls and the petrified scream of a little girl. My ratty shoes, with already too many holes throughout them, slap dangerously against the cracked concreate of an abandoned alleyway. My hands clench my arrow bag straps tightly to keep it from slamming into my back with every uneven step. The bow strapped across my chest stays firmly in place, maybe too firmly seeing how it’s about to almost choke me to death, or maybe that’s just my lungs begging for more oxygen? My feet moving on autopilot snaps me out of my roaming thoughts as they come to the mouth of the alleyway. The surroundings around me have shifted drastically, causing my feet to stop in their mission. It looked to be a small white picketed fence community, but its hard to tell with all the houses blown to pieces. Bits and pieces of black burnt wood and bricks litter the street of abandoned cars. Weeds have grown out of control, they over run the remaining houses that still have some type of structure almost like an army over ruling a small country. On one of the still standing houses black graffiti covers every inch of open space with words like “hell has arrived,” and “this is the end.” A sudden desperate scream from the little girl gets my feet moving back into action. They sprint along a sidewalk dodging up rooted tree roots, and concreate that’s been up lifted. They carry me past house after broken house as the screams grow louder. My feet reach the end of the small town and come to a screeching halt. There on a bridge about fifty yards up is the cause of all the mayhem. It looks to be a girl trapped on top of a rundown mini-van surrounded by walking corpses. A tire stripped car catches my attention in the right corner of my eye a little ways up. Is today no control over body day? My feet move toward the car and I quickly crouch behind it using it as a way of coverage.

“This is ridiculous NoName, get a grip on yourself,” I whisper glaring down at my non-cooperative feet.

Oh just great, I’m a loon talking to herself now.

An enraged snarl rips from the burnt lips of a corpse ahead. My eyes snap from my feet to the scene ahead. My initial thought was wrong, it’s not just one child it’s two. A girl with flaming red hair and tear filled eyes stare down at the walking corpses below the mini-van while clinging onto what looks to be a teenage boy. The boy also has red hair but it’s not as bright and fierce as the girl’s hair. He holds the girl close to his chest his hand smoothly rubbing her back in a soothing way trying to calm her sobs. His body is calm and collected but his eyes show his true panicked emotions. They scan frantically around looking for a way to escape. The car is pushed up against the guard rail. A raging river rushes low below the bridge. The fall would probably kill them. Walking corpses surround the front, side, and back. All in all it’s a hopeless situation and he seems to know this. He lifts his head up to the sky and slowly closes his eyes. A silent tear falls from his eye to his cheek. This is when I should get to my feet and run the other direction. Cold hearted, I know, but I’ve learned that in this life it’s every man for themselves, or woman in my case. I get ready to turn face and run, really I do, I even get as far as standing to my feet. That was till he stopped me. He didn’t physically stop me. He didn’t even yell out to me. All he did was stare at me. Through the tinted vision the sunglasses provided me I could still see how vivid his green eyes are. They’re like pools of liquid green silently pleading with me. They don’t plea for his life, instead they plea with me to save the girl, the girl who has now shoved her face into his chest in an attempt to muffle her sobs. His eyes lock mine in a trance and makes it impossible to high tail it out of there. Once again my body snaps the connection between common sense and logic. My hands move on their own accord. My left hand pulls my bow from across my chest and lifts it over my head, while my right hand pulls out five arrows. An arrow for each corpse, I’ve never missed. My hand loads an arrow and I take aim on the closest corpse. Within a breaths time I release the arrow letting it fly toward the corpse with a face that’s been badly burnt and an arm hanging limply from its socket, time slows as my eyes follow the arrow that flies into the air. It follows the wind soaring into the air flying up into the air slightly before it makes it’s descend to its target, the corpses already empty socket where an eye is supposed to be. The arrow slices through the corpse’s empty eye socket exiting in a swift motion through the back of the skin ridden corpse’s head. The arrow pierces the van’s side after exiting the corpse’s mushed brains and weak skull with black blood slathered on the arrow its self. The corpse lets out a halfhearted groan almost as if it feels the pain of the arrow killing it. The corpse falls to the ground with a heavy thud at the mini-van’s side. Black blood trickles out of the hole the arrow entered the corpse’s eye in a slow trickle, almost as slow as a snail trying to move across a sidewalk. Clumps of what look to be rotten brain entwine with the black blood. Slowly the black blood of the corpse makes a pool around its head. The blood looks like a flattened pillow now.

Gross not a pillow I’d like to use in my sleep.   

Instantly I can feel the girls eyes snap to me. Making it a point to focus on my unwanted task I don’t dare look up at the children standing on top of the mini-van. I find myself moving out from behind the car and taking aim again. Quickly arrow after arrow fly ahead of me, each of them plunging into a corpses head till the only sound that can be heard is the occasional hiccup from the girl in result of her previous sobs and the slush of corpse’s black blood dripping to the street. The street falls silent while the connection between my brain and common sense finally re-connects. Over the course of my flinging of arrows my feet have moved to stand a few feet away from the van. My eyes dart up to the children on top of the mini-van and I freeze. The boy stares at me. His stares almost as if he’s studying me. The girl on the other hand has gone silent with surprise. Awkward silence fills the air as I throw my bow over my head to rest over my chest. I look up at the kids, my shades sliding up my nose toward my eyes. They remain on the top of the mini-van looking down at me.

“Took you long enough,” the boy says no longer studying me now, instead, he glares.

My jaw dropped.

“Excuse me?”

“Are you deaf?” the boy says slowly pulling out of the girl’s death grip and climbing down from the van, ”you stood there for five whole minutes just watching this happen.”

He walks directly toward me his eyes narrowing with every step.

“You were going to just leave us there and you know it,” he says coming to a stop in front of me. He stands a few inches taller than me, with a washed out blue jean colored hoodie and brown boots. In the corner of my eye I watch as the girl shakingly climbs sown from the van and quickly skippers to hide behind the boy. My shades hide my eyes and the emotions with in them. It’s a good thing, because they won’t see what I’m going to do. Without so much as a second thought I spin quickly on my heel and take off away from them back toward the bomb-blasted town.

“Wait!” yells the boy.

The sudden sound of two sets of feet slapping against the ground follow me as I enter the town.

“Wait, please!” an echo of the boy’s voice pleas distantly behind me.

I push my legs to run faster to put more room between us. I ran so fast that I hadn’t realized I made a huge mistake. I didn’t hear the sound of my most prized possession hitting the street. I didn’t even hear the sound of their footsteps coming to a halt. All I heard was the wind in my ears, the pulsing heartbeat of my frantic heart, and the little voice in my head whispering to run away NoName, run away.