MAD MAX, the walking dead

one: TERMINUS

"HI, I'M MAX."

***

It was cold and dark inside the cell.

A cold air seemed to sweep through the room in short but chilling gusts every few seconds, making her fingertips shake. Her breath was visible in the air, but the darkness of the night prevented her from seeing it. She managed to bring her fingertips up to touch her pale cheeks after a few moments, trying to regain the feeling in each of her fingers. They felt like ice cubes against her blood encrusted face, but she kept them there, gradually regaining the feeling in each finger with the heat radiating off of her face. She looked down, blinked her eyes harshly, and looked up again.

She still couldn't see a thing.

She could barely feel any sensations either, from her fingertips to the soles of her feet. She felt like a plank of wood, almost unable to move anything. It seemed like she could only feel the cold parts of her body: the exposed corner of her neck, her shoe-less feet, her fingertips, her nose that seemed to jut out of her head like a popsicle dangling off of the edge of a small wooden stick. Not that the frozen dessert was common anymore, but she had learned that imagining such luxuries almost made them come true, if only for a moment.

She reached down to feel the edge of the cell, discovering that it was, in fact, made of metal. The wall underneath her bare right shoulder felt almost like tin roof material (like the one on the local farm), confirming her thoughts that this wasn't a prison.

It was somewhere they made after the world went to shit.

Ignoring the pain in her left knee, she stretched her right leg out in front of her, trying to gauge the width of the cell she was in. To her surprise, the container was much larger than a prison cell. Her foot could not find the opposite wall, even as she felt her muscles strain to reach the other side. She wouldn't be able to tell its actual size without moving from her sitting position, and there was no way that was happening.

She shivered again, as if noticing the chill in the air for the first time once again. Her body was pressed to the metal wall behind her, and the touch of the metal was making her much colder than she would have been otherwise. But based on the echo of her labored breathing in the space, there wasn't much else in the cell with her.

She shook her head again as she shivered, accidentally taking in the distinct smell of her own blood layered on top of the skin underneath her nose.

This was another level of shit. When she was younger, they taught her how to not get abducted.

In a car? Kick out the tail light. Grabbed from behind? Kick their shins and run like hell. Never get taken to a second location, yell for help as much as you can, and whenever you get the chance: kick the crap out of whoever tried to take you.

She let out a small breathy laugh at the thought. If only her brother could see her now.

Here she was: totally and completely abducted. In the middle of the fucking apocalypse, no less. Apparently, dead bodies getting up and walking around wasn't enough for people. They had to continue to abduct young women. They were almost too predictable. Even worse, there was no tail light to kick out, there was no one grabbing her from behind, she'd let herself be taken here (albeit reluctantly), and it was too damn cold to yell for help. The beating the crap out of whoever those people were was still up for negotiation.

She tried to move her body a bit more, shifting her right foot flat against the floor so she could attempt to push her leg, and the rest of her body, up. She felt her toes curl and gasped in pain when she heard her left knee emit a small pop.