Prologue
Holly turns out to be right, as she so often did.
Magic was too good to be true. But for all her fear and late night imaginings of the many ways in which the Wizarding World would eat her alive, she’d never thought it’d be quite this literal.
For her, it started at a Holiday Inn just west of Daytona Beach. Vernon Dursley had won round trip tickets for a three week stay in Florida and unable to find anyone able to care for her over such an extended period of time (and Holly herself still too uncertain to ask her Hogwarts friends) was reluctantly purchased the cheapest ticket they could find.
It was her first time on a plane, and (despite having a much worse seat than her Aunt, Uncle and Cousin) she enjoyed the experience immensely.
Between both the spectacular view of the world from so far above where a broom might reach and the personal air-blower-thingy that she had autonomous control over, she was having a blast.
Probably the only downside was being squished between her chatty seatmates, an overweight elderly couple, Leila and Jim, who were journeying home to Orlando. They’d taken an early retirement trip, married for 57 years. They told her all about their doctor son, and were a bit annoying, but they also shared their candy, so it wasn’t all bad.
The cheap hotel room Uncle Vernon had booked was pretty crappy though.
It was on the ground floor, facing the road where street lights glare came through the window each night, two lumpy queen beds and a smelly roll-out just for Holly. The air conditioner barely made a dent in the oppressive heat and Aunt Petunia bemoaned it all.
While she agreed the place itself was far from grand, it more than made up for it in location. Just a thirty minute walk to the beach, so each day while the Dursleys were off on all sorts of expensive adventures (that she was not to be included in) Holly could spend her time exploring the boardwalk, and the surrounding neighborhoods.
Florida was like nothing she had ever seen. So hot you could see it shimmering in the air all around you, but heavy, damp from her own sweat. The people were loud, boisterous in a way that bordered on rude. Sometimes, it reminded her of the Weasleys.
The boardwalk was especially fun, a mile stretch of sand scattered wood planks hosting rows of kooky tourist shops, cheap rides and food stalls that smelled like something Dudley would kill for.
People meandered, pink-skinned and smiling, some in swimwear or on rollerskates, or shuffling along ladened with towels and other trinkets for a day at the beach. She spent her time dipping in and out of the tacky little souvenir shops and wading out cautiously into the sun-warmed water, never going further than her knees. She still couldn’t swim.
It took nearly four days of sucking up, but eventually she’d charmed (bribed) one of the bored, dead-eyed attendants into letting her duck onto whatever ride he was running that shift.
At night, the rides and amusements along the boardwalk were lit with bright, blinking fluorescents, happy colors against the dark waves. At the end of the night she liked to sit with an ice cream and swing her legs off the edge, watching the lights bounce across the water.
She had traded Hermione her remaining galleons for a fistful of muggle money before they’d departed from school, so she had funds to gorge herself on greasy slices of pizza, muggle soda and fried pickles (a surprising new favorite).
She bought a necklace she’d found in a funny little shop that made strange jewelry from bits and oddities they’d found along the beach. Hers was a key, sort of heavy, old-fashioned, silver but starting to discolor from rust and time, it hung on a long braided string and sat low and heavy on her shirt.
Dan (the guy that ran the shop) explained all about how he’d found it one morning with his metal-detector on a ‘blood red dawn, the kind that creeps up on ya’, pretty pink and then wham, knocks ya flat out’, and he just kept talking and by the time he’d finsihed she was walking out the door with it, not sure when she’d actually agreed to purchase the damn thing.
Tricky, tricky garbage shop man. She came back nearly every day after to talk to him. There was all kinds of weird junk to content herself sorting through,
He rambled endlessly about his past, which was incredibly interesting if not obviously fabricated at times. His (brief) stint in the navy before being dishonorably discharged. That time he trained an alligator to obey him like a dog and his record for most beers while still able to drive a boat, were among some of the notable stories. Dan was also big into the Peace is Love (and also Drugs) movement of the late 70’s, and consequently had five children from three relationships that resulted in two divorces and a widow (as he’d also faked his death and changed his name before moving to Florida and opening his Beach-Garbage-Jewelry-Shop).
Dan loved fishing and pork-rinds and Dolly Parton and other men (as it turns out).
Holly really liked Dan.
One day, he even shut his store down a little early and showed her how to fish off the end of the pier without a pole. Eagerly showing off all his handmade sinkers and lures made from bottle caps (nearly all had googly eyes), and let her hold the recycled soup container dark with earthworms. He kept it all in a beat up red cooler. They never caught a thing.
It was shaking up to be the best damn summer of her entire life and that should have been her first clue that it wouldn’t stay that way for long.
///
She spent three days in the room with the rotting bodies of the Dursleys before coming to the conclusion that it was really time to leave.
It’d been a long, terrifying week. Beginning with her morning walk to the beach being interrupted by a strange scuffle in the street. Ending with a blood splattered Petunia dragging her into the room by her collar when she stumbled back in all the confusion, patting her down with a frantic worry she’d never been on the receiving end of before. Vernon pale and moaning on the bed, bloody arm wrapped with a dingy hotel towel, red dripping onto the sheets. Dudley wide-eyed, unspeaking in the corner, a strange gash across his cheek where spider-web veins of black were already starting to spread.
The next days were like those times in her cupboard when Dudley and his friends would stay up late watching R rated films, they would always choose the goriest shit imaginable and crank the volume all the way up. Petunia took pills that knocked her out for the night and Vernon didn’t care as long as it wasn’t Holly making the noise. It was unsettling, trying to sleep, hours locked unseeing in the dark to the sounds of screaming and sirens and shit were those bombs? What was going on?
So far, the apocalypse was a lot like that.
It had quieted down by now but when she pressed her ear to the cheap wood of the door she could still hear breathy snarls of untold undead shuffling around in the carpark.
Holly was strict about keeping the curtains drawn after that one time one of those things caught a glimpse of her peering outside and stayed pounding (hair matted with blood, dark smears down the side of its neck, shrieking with hungry inhuman delight) at the window for the better part of a day, unrelenting until some distant gurgling cries for help finally drew its attention.
She couldn’t tell how many were out there now exactly, but it sounded like… less than before? Maybe? Hopefully?
Holly huffed, glanced down at the tin of mixed nuts she’d almost finished while working up the nerve to step outside.
There were totally not that many, probably as safe as it was gonna get. Ideal time to pack up and leave.
Nothing to do with the glaring fact that she was down to her last bit of food and that the sweet stench of her rotting family was becoming unbearable. Hermione had once told her something about nose-blindness being a thing, that the brain could get used to anything if exposed to it long enough, but so far that had not happened.
It was time to go, no two ways about it.
She re-checked Dudley’s backpack for the fifth time, still blatantly stalling. She just.. she really didn’t want to go out there.
It wasn’t even that she was afraid exactly--well she was but that wasn’t what was bothering her. She’d seen fear, come face-to-face with nightmarish evil and come out the otherside alive, if not stronger for it. She’d raised herself for years, done most of the physical labor in her household, and taught herself to read.
Holly was really quite good at surviving.
So she wasn’t scared, it was more that she had a pretty decent understanding of what life would be like for her once she opened that door. That it would be horrible and hard for a very very very long time with little to no reprieve and that she would be alone in a way she’d not been since starting Hogwarts.
She had no delusions of anyone coming to save her.
(She’d already tried. Over and over again that first night, amidst the fevers and howling and the fear fear fear. She’d summoned her magic, what little she could still do without her wand, just small bursts of it. Balls of different colored light that floated uselessly from her fingers, hoping for some nameless person in the Misuse of Underage Magic office to appear or, hell, even send another howler her way. And she’d tried it every day since with no luck. Either no one was answering or there was just no one there anymore.
If the magical world had fallen she had no faith in the muggles)
Whatever came next Holly was on her own.
Though perhaps not completely, she had one more hope holding out but it wasn’t a very strong one.
Holly puffed out a nervous breath and squared her shoulders. She’d taken Dudleys better shoes, backpack and the travel-mace from her aunt's handbag. There was nothing else useful.
She was ready as she’d ever be.
///
It was probably stupid, but first she went to the boardwalk, just in case.
Getting there was easier than she thought it’d be, all those years of evading Dudley’s gang had honed her evasive instincts apparently. She caught glimpses of the undead, heard the occasional guttural groan as she ducked around upturned cars and between abandoned buildings. Her planned route took twice as long as it should have, following her gut and turning away from each hint of danger, looping back around til it was safe.
It was odd how like, and unlike normal it seemed. There were the obvious signs of trouble, broken windows, cars smoking on their sides, blood in the street, but a lot of it looked sort of untouched. Just… abandoned, like everyone had decided to close up shop and get out of town for the day.
Eerie, and too quiet but not a warzone. Much more like a graveyard.
Holly moved quickly.
The hollow thump of wood under her trainers reverberated like a gong in the near silence. A string of little triangular flags blew unmoored on one end, curling across the deck like a long sweeping arm, and somehow the air still reeked of stale popcorn and B.O. and gasoline.
She passed the body of a man, or what was left of him anyway, his vertebrae exposed along his spine, no flesh on his lower legs and a long smear of blood as if something had dragged itself away.
Holly hitched up her backpack and stepped carefully around him, he lifted his head and growled weakly, broken jaw cracking audibly as it swung open, blood bubbling on his lips, reaching for her with pale, swollen fingers.
She stared at him for a long moment in muted horror, watching as he struggled to claw the air, and then kept on moving.
His shop was nearby, right past the bumper cars and tucked away behind the lane of concession stands. She moved carefully over the threshold, a soft crunch of shells breaking underfoot as she stepped past the overturned necklace display made her wince. Sorry, Dan. They really were very pretty. She made her way around the counter, a curtain of gaudy orange beads separating the front of the shop from his little work area in the back.
Please please ple-
Holly slumped like her strings had been cut, one hand still holding back the strands of glinting plastic and stared mournfully at what remained of her weird one-time friend.
His shirt was soaked red right around his stomach, thick and still not quite dry, with a lump in her throat she had the terrible thought that this had happened recently. That he’d still been here, even yesterday, that maybe he’d remembered the scruffy haired kid who liked his stories in the midst of all this mess and might have waited around to see what became of her.
Or maybe she just wanted to think that.
His eyes were still open, clouded pale, blue where they should have been brown, and empty of anything Dan, even as they focused on her with single minded intent.
The creature leaned forward, rasping, landing palms splayed up and snapping its wrist, it pulled itself forward. Leg broken in several different places, unable to hold its weight each time the-the thing tried to stand.
She could hear the bone grinding.
It chittered, jaw snapping and she stumbled back, eyes wet. Why was this so much worse than the Dursleys? It followed her, scrambling, back into the main shop, more excited now that its prey was within reach and she choked on a gasp, chest tight and fuck, what was wrong with her?
I’m alone, shecouldn’t stop thinking, I’m actually, properly alone again.
Unbidden, she thought of the Hogwarts castle lit up at night from the lake and began to sob, her breaths came in short panicked gasps, her vision blurred and she almost lost her footing stumbling back into the shelf that rained more tacky souvenirs down around her. A beach-themed-snow-globe shattered at her feet, and the thing-that-was-not-Dan crawled unbothered over the broken little bikini clad figurines he’d once been so proud of. She choked on her sobs, still trying to be quiet and just kept backing away and shaking her head, unsure of what to do next.
Inferi were supposed to be burned, (She knew because Hermione found them particularly interesting while researching possible dark creatures inhabiting the chamber of secrets, and had rambled adorably about them for the better part of an hour), but she didn’t think these things were Inferi, not precisely. Inferi were already dead corpses placed under a powerful enchantment and used as a puppet to do a dark mages bidding. These things were dying and then just reanimating all by their goddamn selves. They didn’t follow an order or pattern that she could see, just a blind instinct to consume, to spread its foulness to anything and everything it encountered.
It was pretty close to her now, she’d backed herself stupidly into a corner, a tight space already cluttered with (sorry) ridiculous nonsense, and she could feel herself hyperventilating as specks flickered in the corner of her vision.
Dan growls pitched in triumph as it got hold of her leg, pulling in towards its mouth, Holly let out a wordless sob of protest, thrusting her hands down to do something, maybe push it away, but instead she felt the familiar tug in her gut she got from pulling on her magic. She sobbed harder, a wave of relief as it shot from her aura in a javelin of dark blue light, rung like a churchbell when it struck.
She cleaved its skull down the middle, bits of brain and blood misting back to cover her lower face and chest. She spluttered and gagged and then gave in and threw up all over the fish-net doilies.
One down?
///
She’d say the canned beans tasted like ash in her mouth but that would be a lie. They just tasted like beans, sweet with tomato paste and herbs, not bad lukewarm and scooped off a bent lid.
Dan seemed to have liked this brand cause he had several cans stored below his work bench. Good man. She cheered the air and then grimaced when she realized it had been in the general vicinity of his corpse.
Ah, well.
She sat hidden below the front desk, facing the inside wall of the shack and watching as the sun warmed the dark wood in pink and orange hues. An altogether odd way of watching the sunset, but the groaning shuffle of the other tourists on the boardwalk had picked up over the last hour, so it was the safest way for now.
She didn’t really mind missing the view, the idea of trying to appreciate anything overtly beautiful right now made her itchy. The stained pine was fine.
She sighed and kept eating her beans.
It was probably stupid to have spent the whole day here but whatever, after Dan and the wandless magic she was tired, and had seen altogether too much of the new world for one day. She spent the idle hours before dusk picking her way through the neighboring stalls and shops, nevering going too far from Dan’s place and just seeing what she could see.
(Enjoying the last moments in the place that had given her some semblance of freedom and peace, just saying goodbye)
She didn’t find a lot that was useful, but enough to feel satisfied. Besides the beans (and accompanying can opener) she’d pilfered a huge bag of honey-roasted peanuts, a single grape soda, snack-size oreo packets and a red and white flowered overshirt to replace Dudleys bloodstained tee.
Dan’s place also provided her with a weapon besides her magic, feeble as it was. She’d found a wood-handled carving knife in a sheath on his workbench, it had the initials D.T.K. burned into the leather, and it was a small blade, a little over three inches, but sharp and strong and it made her feel safer than nothing. She immediately tucked it in her belt and kept snooping.
He had so many pretty things, open bins of brightly colored beads, smooth rocks and shards of sea glass. Marbles, bottlecaps, and vintage coins freshly buffed, left on a soft cloth for display. All lengths of wire and twine, fish hooks, other funky twisted bits of metal, she ran her fingers curiously over all of them.
Useless little oddities, they reminded her of Dumbledore.
She scooped handfuls of her favorites into a small tupperware box and a thick roll of fishing line into her bag, snagged a few of his best looking lures while she was at it. Why not?
///
Getting back to Britain was a pipedream and Holly knew it. The moment she found herself idly considering if she could maybe teach herself to sail was also the moment she killed the whole idea.
But still, she needed to go somewhere, and she absolutely needed a wand.
The fact that she hadn’t even tried to smuggle it abroad was something she still could barely believe, and was actively kicking herself over. So her phoenix wand and her fathers cloak (and Hedwig, to her mounting nightly despair) were heartbreakingly gone, and her magic was far weaker without a wand than she remembered it being in the past.
She didn't know it at the time, but she’d been doing wandless magic since she was small, usually in accidental bursts, but sometimes all she had to do was screw up her face and hope really really really really really really hard. Intent, Hermione (and their various professors) called it. And that was all magic was to her when she was younger, wishes being granted.
It, annoyingly, did not work that way for her now.
The power, focus and skill required to do spells wandlessly was still far beyond her own capabilities, something most people didn't start learning until well into sixth year. She could certainly try, and was able to produce small wonders that would dazzle the average muggle; floating balls of lights, melodically chiming rainbow sparkles, flowers that wiggled their petals like they were waving hello, a flame the size of her thumb that sputtered out after only a few seconds, but nothing particularly helpful.
She’d even tried a simple alohomora on the cash register just to see, and could feel her magic shiver, almost annoyed, and throw her meek attempt off like a mare bucking away from its rider.
Annoying.
It’s why wands were necessary, more often than not magic did not want to be wrangled. It had a mind and will of its own. You had to coerce or force it, neither Holly could currently do with any hope of repeating.
So, a wand.
There were magical communities in America, of course, the MACUSA was renowned for its diverse and widespread population sprawled across all corners of Northern America. At least, that’s what the brochure boasted of.
Once her frizzy haired best friend had heard of her trip, she’d sent dozens of brochures to various magical landmarks across the US that Holly might have wanted to visit. She’d packed them more to humor her than anything else, knowing the chances of the Dursleys allowing a magical stop on their vacation were less than none.
God, she owed Hermione her life a hundred times over. She really really hoped she wasn’t dead. If anyone was smart enough to find a way to survive this, it would be Hermione.
Anyway, the nearest one to where she was staying in Florida was a renowned halfblood market in Atlanta. To American mages ‘halfblood’ was synonymous with anyone classified as a ‘partial creature’, and while they generally had more rights than anywhere in the UK, they were also segregated rather strictly. Atleast, from the ‘pure’ communities of just mages, plenty of individual witches or wizards lived or shopped in halfblood areas, it's just everyone else was prohibited from doing the same if they were on the registry. Fucked, for sure, but also largely irrelevant to Holly.
This one was known as the Winders, named for where it was originally conceived, on a spot still smoldering from a raging fiendfyre accident and consequently riddled with ashwinder eggs for the next 50 years, prompting a lucrative market to crop up around it. The blurb said there were some parts of the market where the stone was still warm, sometimes it smoked, dark magic smoldering deep in the earth but held back through powerful wardstones and sheer grit.
According to the brochure the Winders was in downtown Atlanta, accessible through the back alley behind a Chinese restaurant called the ‘Bao Wow’.
400 miles, if she walked for six hours a day, it would take a little over two weeks, probably. (She was pretty pants at math)
Night gathered on the pier as she stared forlornly into her beans and wished desperately for a broom.
Her magic shimmered and zapped her fingernails blue.
///
Holly swipes a map, jerky and a gallon jug of water from a gas station on her way out of town and then hikes along the 95 towards Jacksonville through miles of sweltering heat, abandoned cars, and half rotten men.
She knows it's probably an unrealistic fear but she keeps expecting to come face-to-face with an alligator or something. She takes to sleeping on top of cars when she can just in case one wanders up.
Sometimes when she’s half asleep the dead just walk past her without noticing. It's an odd feeling.
///
The heat is weird and damp and feels like it takes her sweat and pumps it back into her body through her lungs. It wasn’t that bad closer to the coast but deeper inland, even just a few miles, it sucks.
Usually she’s not half bad at cooling charms.
Holly tugs curiously at her magic, picturing the cold morning air after a night's rain, a refreshing cup of pumpkin juice, the darkened rooms in the dungeons. She waves an arm vaguely at herself, and her entire body runs cold-hot-freezing, before fading away and leaves behind a stinging sensation not unlike a sunburn, and a purpled skin tone that lasts for a day.
///
Her hair is becoming a problem, she knows from experience it will only grow back overnight if she tries hacking away at it.
She finds a pack of hair ties, and loops another few onto her wrist, pulling it into a low messy ponytail at the nape of her neck, throws on a cheap cap over that to keep the sun out of her eyes.
It’ll have to do.
///
Turns out, the dead are pretty dumb. She weighs her pockets with small rocks, easy ammo used to distract them long enough for her to slink by. It's a lot easier to get around the car graveyards now.
///
Five miles outside of Jacksonville is a station wagon with the backdoors flung wide open. There’s spilled luggage in the road. Holly finds a pair of cargo pants with deep pockets that fit much better and a small jade statue of the buddha. She keeps both.
In the backseat she finds two booster seats, stained red and not… empty, exactly. Not bodies either, but something chunky and viscous and-
She feels her magic slam down like four heavy corners in her mind. She takes a few panicked breaths, exhales slowly and keeps on moving.
///
Jacksonville is bigger than Daytona, smaller than London, absolutely crawling with corpses. Recently firebombed.
It seems really dangerous, like the red lights blaring, everybody running, big unfriendly buttons screaming ‘absolutely DO NOT push this Holly Potter, I mean it!!’ dangerous.
She decides to go anyway.
How can she not? There are actual sporting equipment and camp goods stores on the goddamn map (like some highly specific miracle) but also Holly figures Atlanta has gotta be bigger than this. And probably, definitely more populated and therefore dangerous, she needs the practice.
She’s gotten pretty good at being sneaky and smart, if she does say so herself, but is she willing to bet her life on it yet? No, no Holly is not.
Hence, Jacksonville. What could possibly go wrong?
///
Ron always said she liked to tempt fate, and was better off keeping her mouth shut for everyone's sake, but especially her own.
She could very much use a Ronald Weasley right now.
///
Jacksonville is bad. It’s.. bad things happen there and there are maybe more monsters than people now even the ones who are still human and she can barely breathe and she doesn't even know how she survived and she doesn’t want to talk about it anymore-
Her magic shivers and walls of her mind smooth over with waves of blue that smooth out the wrinkles until Holly can almost forget.
///
The map does not lie and there is, thankfully, a third Dicks Sporting Goods right outside the city.
It's Mecca; the promised land, and it’s barely been touched.
After clearing the store (mostly just standing really close to the exit, banging loudly on a bunch of nearby stuff to see if anything pops out and going yay, when it doesn’t) She immediately dumps her (Dudley’s) backpack and strolls thoughtfully down the aisles.
She ends up picking an Ospreys Tempest Junior Hiking Pack in dark purple, it's got a lot of pockets and places to hook things on carabiners, which she has always wanted to do. She grabs some gold and black ones on her way past the front desk where she carefully repacks her remaining things first.
There’s lots here she could potentially use, but her bag is not huge or anything, and she doesn't fancy the idea of lugging around much more than she has to in this climate, so she sticks to essentials;
A silver lighter with a skull on it
A multitool
Bigger, better hunting knife she can actually clip to her belt
Rope (cause why not?)
Sleeping bag
Compass and binoculars
A thin book on the local edible/non edible plants
Socks
New timberland boots
A collapsible tin pot, bowl and spork (speckled green)
There were also a lot of silver packets of something called ‘Adventure Meals’, freeze-dried ready-to-eat dinners designed for long hiking trips, relatively lightweight and in a ton of flavors. Holly happily stocked up on a few choice options: lasagna (with meat sauce), buffalo-style-chicken mac-and-cheese, beef stew and the entire row of chicken teriyaki. She snags a few of the chocolate-peanut butter energy bars while she’s at it.
Holly then meandered over to the sporting goods, idly wondering if it would be worth it to get some sort of padding gear to protect from bites when she spots it: thin, sharp, orange-some sort of tinted steel, black rubber grip, and neat as hell. It looks like a scythe, or a curved ice pick or something, the tag says it's for climbing.
It could absolutely be a deadly weapon, no two ways about it. She takes it and flips it over in her grip, feeling very cool. The pick-ax actually fits really nicely through a strap in her bag too, right within reach, tucked snug against her shoulder blades.
She does end up also grabbing a pair of shin/arm guards plus the knee pads and reluctantly straps them on. She’d done an awful lot of crawling lately, and also noticed a good amount of rotters have bite marks around there. This seems like a good compromise with her anxiety for some peace of mind whether or not it will actually be helpful.
She spots herself in one of the high mirrors on her way out, turns her hat backwards and grins to herself. She looks awesome.
///
After Jacksonville she tends to avoid towns or anywhere there might be people, she still follows the highway but she hikes off the road just within sight through the trees. It's both quieter and louder there, little sounds of animals or shifting brush turns to white noise, it's comforting.
And also easier to hear rotters coming, they are very loud underfoot.
She takes a detour once to cut through the Okefenokee national wildlife refuge and ends up camping there for almost a week.
It's beautiful and empty and lucious and green. Flooded prairies of tall grass, cyprus and blackgum and pine shade the trail. Holly's book turns out to be very useful, she feels like she’s learning a lot, she spots blooms of blueflag irises, swamp sunflowers, fetterbush and white water lily flowers.
Holly can hear the happy-hungry-horny-hisses of a dozen different kinds of watersnake at any given time.
She finds an old ranger station to stay the night and in it a book on bird watching, and spends her days looking for swallow-tailed kites and sandhill cranes, Bachman's sparrows, red-shouldered hawks and prothonotary warblers. She doesn't see any Barred Owls her entire time and misses Hedwig terribly.
And yeah, there are absolutely alligators but they mostly dont bother her and she never sleeps anywhere near water. She tries hissing in parseltongue at one but it just glares at her darkly from its submerged place in the swamp, bubbles rising threateningly to the surface.
She heats chicken-teriyaki-mush over a fire she sparks with her magic and can see the stars through the trees and smoke at night. She finds the constellations but cannot remember their names.
It’s beautiful here.
She really is sad to reach the end of the trail and be back to treading on asphalt, but soon none of that matters because soon she’s officially crossed into Georgia.
Nearly halfway there.
///
About fifty miles outside of Albany she runs into a herd, it's the biggest one she’s seen outside the city, and Holly's forced far off the road, moving deep into the trees to outrun them.
By the time she’s shaken the herd, Hollys pretty turned around. Trying to find the highway again will probably be annoying, and what does it matter anyway if she just keeps heading north? She’s got a compass. She’s gotta hit a road or something eventually, right? Then she can use that to reorient and get back on track.
Plus, it's been less than two days since the refuge and she already misses the trees.
///
A few hours later she hears screaming.
///
SOPHIA
She's dead. She's totally dead. Oh my god, shesdeadshesdeadshesdeadshesdea-
“Erm, hello?”