[ The world ended, and no one saw it coming. No one expected it to be this bad. They'd tried to fight back, find a way to rid themselves of the infection, but society splintered as infrastructure crumbled, and in the end, the population fell to a fate literally worse than death. In the aftermath of that fall, nature began to reclaim what humanity took from it, while the infected roamed the earth, hunting what was left of the living.
In short, this is hell, but it's no less than she deserved.
She'd tried. She'd failed. As head of security for a major pharmaceutical lab, it had been her responsibility to keep everyone inside safe, before and after the infection that ended the world. The scientists and technicians left had tried to keep going, studying the thing that had swept across the world like a plague, so confident that they could find a cure... Her world ended again with the Incident when she'd been the only one to walk away.
In the early years, saving people became the only way she could keep going. The only way to alleviate the gnawing guilt of her failure. One life, two. Seven, on a good day. She protected them, saw them to shelter, and moved on. Days could pass without her seeing another living soul, sometimes weeks, roaming like a nomad while avoiding the settlements controlled by an entity that seemed doomed to corruption. But it was inevitable that she would lose more people. Survivors fell to illness, injury, and infection while under her protection and each life chipped away a little more of her soul.
As time passed, she tried to learn not to get attached, to keep herself apart from the groups she found, but it went against her nature and so she failed at that too. Jackson was no different. Four years ago, she came across the settlement, passed their tests, and suddenly had the closest thing to a home since Before. It only took hearing the first child's laugh to convince her to make protecting these people her new priority. If this was the only part of the world she could save, then she would give it everything she had. Every time she comes back to the little town, it feels like stepping into another world — or an old Western movie. There are people living their lives, kids playing and going to school. They even decorate for Christmas, though she's missed that this year. There are still a few weeks of winter left, though spring is inching closer every day. Her timing of arrival is deliberate; she'd traded with another group the next state over for some seeds that will help them expand their planting this year, which will be starting soon now that the ground is finally thawing.
She never stays in Jackson for long. A few weeks, usually, or a few months if the weather's bad enough. Then she's gone again, out on her own with her grief and guilt to do whatever the town needs. Keeping an eye on those who have settled farther out, trading with those found trustworthy enough, and making sure no one follows her when it was time to return. It's a lonely life, but that feeling of coming home is a balm to her tattered soul no matter how much she resists it. ]
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the price i paid —