EMILY RHEE.

DOSSIER.

BIOGRAPHY.

while her sister and brother were away at their job and school, respectively, ava was left with their parents when the apocalypse began. they lay low for a while, staying indoors except to go pick up groceries, medications, and other necessities, until there was a massive herd that was struck down by the police, ultimately contaminating the neighborhood's water supply. the family then decided to leave, heading east to lake erie where several other survivors set up camps with their boats on the water. the family stuck together there for a few months, managing to get by with little food, having to scarf down the flavorless fish from the lake and often getting sick because of the bacteria at the bottom of the lake, until a passer-by mentioned a safe haven in north carolina, right off the shore and along the islands bordering the pamlico sound. the family considered it for a while, until ultimately asking the older man who brought it up to them to join them in their journey. their request was delivered right on time; soon the people living at lake erie and along its shores would discover that the waters weren't safer than the land at all, for there were walkers crowding the lake, their bites just as lethal. with that, the survivors from the lake erie camp head to north carolina and its safe haven.

the journey was long and treacherous, and many people died along the way. they couldn't stay in cabins for multiple days at a time like humans tended to; they had to keep moving, and many people fell ill or grew too weak to continue, one of which included ava's mother, jun. the group was small, consisting only of ava, her father, i-hsiang, and mark, the man who shared the information about the sound's safe haven. their only choice was to use an old fishing boat to get to ocracoke from stumpy point, where the safe haven was reported to be located.

however, on their way across the sound, a hurricane ended up hitting florida, and the rain bands were wide enough to reach all the way up north to the sound. after crashing into a wave, ava blacked out, and she woke up all alone on a small island in the sound, her father and mark nowhere to be seen. she assumed they were dead, lost in the storm that caused her to be shipwrecked and abandoned. she had no time to grieve; she had to set up a camp, for it wasn't safe, mainly due to the walkers in the water. she assumed that someone from the safe haven might pass by and see her, but after months of waiting for that to happen, she assumed that maybe that wasn't going to happen. in her despair, she figured that maybe the safe haven wasn't real after all, and that what mark told her was just speculation, a story he heard via word of mouth from someone he knew or passed by. she decided to make use of her time by writing letters to the people in her life she hadn't seen since the apocalypse began, many of them addressed to glenn and emily. she made two copies of each letter, one to throw in a bottle and toss out to sea, the other to bury in the dirt at her bedside table at her camp. stranded and alone for almost nine months, she came down with dysentery and likely some other severe viral infections, continually worsening likely due to her malnourishment, and she knew she was dying. she decided to write a last letter to glenn and emily each, telling them exactly where she was and how to find her, before slipping away the same night she threw her last two bottles into the ocean.

STORIES.