Poker Face

Prologue (pt 3)

Content warning: Sexual assault

Aven didn't care about the crunching leaves and snapping twigs under her feet as she tore through the humid forest. At this point, stealth wasn't going to save her. She would outrun them, she thought in a feverish haze.

She'd made it out of worse than this, and her captivity was only the beginning. That man took her as a naive child, but when she left him she was a champion survivor. The new world seemed to be the only place she'd fit in now, too hardened for society's fear and whimsical judgement. All she knew how to do now was keep living with the most dignity possible.

The only person Aven had really bonded with after escaping was Miles, the neighbor who had burst into her house to see if she was okay. He introduced her to the apocalypse, though he was careful with his detail, unsure how fragile a state the girl was in.

It wasn't long after meeting Miles that the two decided to leave town to try to find more people. They came across a few small groups, groups of three or four people, but always ended up heading off to a different destination. There was no handbook on where to go or what to do in case of such an emergency, so everyone was entitled to their own plan (even if that plan was sure to get them eaten). Aven quickly learned how to recognize the people whose well-meant intentions would bring death and how to disconnect from them when they were torn apart in front of her.

She began waking up every morning to her stomach churning, rolling over to vomit the contents of the previous night's small dinner. After months without a menstrual cycle, she panicked. Her worry increased when she began to have sharp abdominal cramps day in and day out. She was lucky to find the medical help she needed, a gynecologist hiding out in his old clinic where he was able to remove the miscarried fetus. But the baby wasn't the first or last casualty she'd experience. She'd never wanted a child and she still didn't, and she wondered if she was only mourning it to make herself feel worse.

A few weeks later when she left Miles, a pile of biters was tearing him limb from limb as he screeched for help. She never looked back. She knew it would be stupid to do so.

Aven quickly decided she didn't want to get too comfortable anywhere. She'd already lost everyone she'd had when the world went to shit: her parents, Cindy, Melanie, Miles. At first after losing Miles, she made sure she usually had someone else around just in case. She'd spend a short time with one small group before coming across another and leaving the first. She worked together with them, always doing her part and providing what protection she could, but those people were just faces that she knew would eventually turn or be eaten. If they were attacked and she couldn't save them, she just took it as her cue to leave on a new path.

Two years after escaping that basement, Aven was confident enough to travel completely on her own. She was confident enough, and disconnected enough. Still, when she'd come across small groups, after assessing the threat she usually used her charm to get a few nights' food and shelter before going back out on the road.

The last group she observed confused her; she didn't know what to make of them. They were set up in a prison, on a property that looked far too large for them to secure with the numbers they had. She watched them for a few nights from the edge of the forest before one of the lookouts spotted her in their sniper scope and his bullet barely missed her left ear. She considered running but gave herself up as a hardened-looking group of people came out of the opening gates, two of them sticking knives in a few biters' skulls on the way towards her. She knew she presented no real threat and could show them that.

At the time, she'd recently lost her handgun and was only carrying a pocket knife, so it pissed her off when the guy in charge, Rick, treated her as threat level A and locked her in a cell. She'd answered all his questions and been polite and cooperative, but he wasn't willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.