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Two weeks.
It was a long time to be completely alone and isolated from the rest of the world: nobody to talk to or even smile at, not that Katy had been doing much smiling in that time. She had been lucky, only running into single walkers but she knew that when she came into contact with a group of them (and she knew that she would) she would be completely screwed. An old train line had been the only thing constant with her depression, it seemed to stretch out forever and never end. Her mind was blank but the boredom wasn't the most troubling emotion that she had. Sometimes she liked to imaging throwing herself onto the tracks, if trains still ran along it that was.
A branch snapped to the side of her and bushes began to rumble, she knew it was trouble immediately and her reactions were quick. A herd of the monsters began to tumble out unevenly, way too many of them for her to kill and survive. She thought that she was going to die and running was all that she had.
Timing was unfortunate, the clearing she sprinted into being full of the creatures as they feasted on somebody's unrecognisable body. They smelt their next meal as it approached and noticed her quickly, moving off their knees and falling towards her
She was one person with a knife and although she fought with all of her might, kicking, scrambling and managing to kill some of them, it wasn't enough. She was grabbed by one of the dead and pulled to the floor where it crawled on top of her -- the foreign gunshots couldn't be clearly heard of the moans that came along with the appetite of the monsters -- the creature lowered it's ugly head and bared it's decaying teeth. It was about to bite the helpless woman when an arrow pierced it's head.
Katy exhaled loudly and would have released the tension from her body if she hadn't been aware of the man standing over her after he easily picked up the limp body of the dead one and threw it to the side. She examined him thoughtfully: long, shaggy hair that fell into his face and was thin enough to allow his ears to stick out. His eyes were blue and compelling but unwelcoming.
He looked at her too, unsure about everybody even before the world got to the way it was then and not any more accepting of a pretty girl than an intimidating man. There was tension between them and it was awkward for both but neither seemed to know exactly how to break it or carry on the situation.
"Alright?" The man's voice sounded almost like a growl and it made Katy gulp.
She nodded. "Thanks for killing it."
She had forgotten how to speak to people or even be around them, it was unfamiliar to meet strangers even though she had been social in her younger years. Daryl Dixon had never been good with people and he shrugged instead of saying anything to the girl because he didn't know what words she would need to hear or what he wanted to say.
Neither of them moved so Katy focused instead on her breathing and getting it back to normal but she wasn't stupid enough to trust a stranger and she kept her eyes on the man that she didn't know.
