It was already noon when Merle opened her eyes. When she straightened up, she groaned, sore muscles! Her throat was also dry and she swallowed hard. Never in her life would she have thought that tickling could push her body to the limit. After a few minutes, which she was already sitting on the small leather couch, she got up and stretched. Her muscles let out a painful voice. She pushed the table away from the door and opened it. One look was enough to show her that no one was there but herself. She directed her steps towards the office, where she hopefully found a way down via the roof of the neighboring building. The young woman went to the window and looked at it, it had a function to open completely because, she saw that now, it was an emergency exit from this building. She tried to open the door, after bending and breaking it did a knock and she stood in the open, breathing heavily and sweating. With relish she held her face in the sun and enjoyed its warmth. A warm breeze swept over her, and lost in thought she ran on over the roof.


The events of the previous day couldn't get out of her head: how was it possible that this creature, instead of killing and eating, had pushed her to her physical limits with tickling? The fact that she was still alive and the doc had saved her life even when the hunk attacked still didn't quite make sense in her head. While she was thinking, she had meanwhile crossed half of the roof, Merle paused for a moment and looked around. She could not see an ascent for a fire escape. Sighing, she went on and reached the next roof - you could only see through a small ledge that a new building was beginning. She was a little luckier on the new building. About in the middle was a small shed with a door to the stairwell. The door, Merle saw from afar, was ajar and moved in the morning breeze. Carefully and quietly, she approached the door. When she was only a little over five meters away, she saw a forearm-long piece of pipe lying on the roof. As an improvised weapon it was ideal! She took the reed in her hand and held it in front of her like a sword - she felt a little safer when she was armed this way. At the door, Merle opened it slowly, the door creaked barely noticeably.


Daylight fell in the stairwell on the first landing and became weaker and weaker downwards. She swallowed, maybe there was still a fire escape on the roof after all. With that in mind, she turned and fixed the edges of the roof. She circled the crate, but neither there nor on any of the other edges of the roof could the top of a fire escape be seen. The only option was actually the dark stairwell. The young woman exhaled noisily, inevitably she had to bite into the sour and extremely dark apple.


With careful steps she put one foot after the other into the stairwell and closed the door behind her to get her eyes used to the darkness. While she waited for her eyes to do this, she listened into the darkness - nothing !! It was dead quiet. As soon as her eyes got used to the dark, she saw that a little light was falling into the stairwell below. A little relief came over her and finally she dared the way down. Slowly and carefully, so as not to fall down the stairs, it went downhill. After a few minutes, which seemed like hours in the twilight, she reached a door that was slightly ajar. Her gaze went into the room and a grin broke out.


 


She opened the door completely and stood in a makeshift shelter. Judging by the dust, nobody had been here for a long time. To be on the safe side, she closed the door behind her and let her gaze wander around the room. A large window was opposite her and showed the alley in which she had been on the run yesterday. She could no longer say what kind of room it was, there were no clues about it. A bed could be seen behind a curtain to her right, and a chest of drawers at the foot of the bed. To her left was a makeshift kitchen and various cupboards and boxes, as well as a table with a chair. A large, solid metal cabinet with a work surface and a hatch at eye level attracted her attention. Merle went and opened the door and looked into another room. Her breath caught, no less than ten walkers stood in the room next door! She quietly closed the flap again. Behind the closet, she knew now, there was a door that was barricaded through the closet. Now she saw the screws that fixed the cabinet to the door frame. Aware that death was lurking next door, she searched the room. In one of the closets she found tinned food, which she put on the table. She kept looking, the kitchen cupboards housed an astonishing number of pots, pans and dishes, but nothing that she could spontaneously take with her. One of the larger boxes was a real gold mine, she found a headlamp with matching batteries, a machete with a sheath and a backpack. There were even a couple of flares and a penknife in the backpack, and she also found some rope. She carried whatever she found useful to the table. While she was looking through things, she opened a can of macaroni in cheese sauce. She shoveled the food into her mouth with relish. Satisfied to have something decent to eat again, she sat down on the chair. After a short pause in which she proudly admired her accomplishments, her eyes fell on the dresser. She had simply forgotten to search through them, so she got up and opened the drawers. As expected, there were clothes inside, she picked out a black T-shirt that didn't seem too big to her and went back to the table.


She took off her jacket and took off her torn top, pulled the t-shirt over her head and tied a knot so that it didn't hang on her like a sack, because it was quite large. Then she made a makeshift belt out of the rope and attached the knife and machete to it.


After about five minutes everything was packed up and she braced herself with a headlamp and pipe and went back into the stairwell. With the light in the stairwell, things only looked half as bad. After another five minutes she reached a chained door that led outside, Merle pulled it open as far as possible and, pushing the backpack, squeezed through the gap. A few moments later she was standing on the street in front of the building. There was no one to be seen anywhere, either dead or alive. She recognized the street from before and turned left to come to the shop on the next street where she had lost her guns.


Once there she heard the shuffling and moaning of walkers, she crept to the corner of the house and peered into the street to the shop. No chance - undead could be seen everywhere. She backed away slowly and sighed softly, then headed for the shelter again. If all went well, she would arrive at night or early in the morning of the next day.



The young woman had meanwhile wandered several hours through the deserted canyons and now came to the edge of the city.


So far her way had remained without major incidents, and except for one or two hungry walkers who had slowly moved a few meters away from her, she met no one.


What she was becoming more and more aware of was that she would no longer make it to the safe shelter, the events of the previous day had cost a lot of strength. She decided to stop at the old nursery a few kilometers from town and continue walking the next day, until then she would have to hold out.


During their short hike, the doc followed their trail a few kilometers away.



Merle's sweat ran down her forehead and back in streams, she kept raising her eyes so as not to overlook the nursery’s shield. From her way to the city she knew that the sign was completely overgrown and barely visible. After another meter of strenuous walk, the young woman saw the saving hint and, inspired by the overgrown sign, accelerated her steps. She turned into the also overgrown driveway and trudged through the tall grass that covered the path towards the nursery.


Hardly to be seen after two or three hundred meters a building came into view that had been completely recaptured by nature. The dim light fell on the tendrils that enclosed the whole house. Impressed by this wonderful force of nature, she walked around the house and found an entrance into the building.


She quickly realized that she couldn't just stay here because it was drafty and there were shards of pottery everywhere on the floor. When she stepped out of the house again, she saw a barn that was overgrown like the house. Merle walked up to the barn and opened the ajar door, it was heavy and she only got it a crack. Inside there was old straw everywhere, here and there it was wet and covered with moss, but further back it was dry. A pile of old, empty sacks of potatoes lay beside one of the support beams near the entrance. The first ones were a bit wet but the lower ones were mostly dry. Merle picked up a couple of bags, but suddenly dropped them screaming when a mouse scurried over her foot and fled outside. "Fuck cattle !!" she cursed, breathing heavily from the shock. She picked up the fallen sacks and steered her steps to the dry straw. She put down her backpack and began to build a camp out of the dry straw and empty sacks.



When she was finished, she looked at her work with satisfaction; she had both filled the sacks with straw and laid straw out. On the whole, it looked like a large bird's nest. She gave a short laugh at the thought. She grabbed the rucksack and sat in her nest, and when the sitting position was comfortable enough, she unpacked the tins and opened two of them. One was pickled pears and the other was beans with bacon. After she had filled her stomach, she leaned back relaxed and turned on her lamp to have some light. Smiling, she looked towards the ceiling, diagonally above her was a hole in the roof, through which she saw the pink sky. Merle yawned heartily and put her hand over her mouth, then she got up again, took the rope out of her backpack and fastened it in front of the gate as a trip hazard. In the corner of the trap she put the empty tin cans and a couple of clay flower pots so that she would know if someone came in here.


After the work was done, she sat down in her nest construction again, she was dog-tired and yawned heartily again.


Merle reached beside him and fished behind the filled sacks for a few empty sacks. When she got hold of it, she pulled her knife out of its sheath and tore open three of the bags along the seam. Many small threads were created on the cut edges that she now laboriously linked to the other sacks. After several minutes of this fiddly job, she got up and triumphantly held up an improvised blanket. Then the young girl lay curled up in her blanket in her nest.



A short time later, her breathing was steady and she was asleep. So she didn't notice how the tendrils began to move around her. A face rustled softly against one wall of the barn, a red pulsating ball on the forehead, the empty green eye sockets focused on the sleeping Merle. Slowly several of these tendrils snaked almost silently towards the sleeping place. The creature proceeded very carefully; it did not want its victim to wake up too quickly and try to flee. Merle rolled over on his back in his sleep and the blanket slid up a little so that one of her shod feet came to light, the tendrils that had paused now slowly crept towards their goal again. When the first tendril had arrived, it snaked under the blanket and the head split into many small string-like tendrils that very carefully felt the body of Merle. Since the creature had no real eyes, it only had an idea of ​​who had invaded its realm. More and more tendrils joined the first and parted at the top. Every now and then Merle giggled when the tendrils got into sensitive areas and quickly withdrew so that she wouldn't wake up. After a while the tendril creature had an exact picture of the intruder and was amazed: it was not an animal, but a living human being.


 


Still undecided what to do, the creature began to look with its tendrils to see what Merle had built before it lay down to sleep, knocking over the cans that Merle had set up as a trap. They rolled over the floor with a loud clang and Merle sat upright in her makeshift bed, one hand reaching for the flashlight and the machete. The creature that had felt this vibration immediately dropped all the tendrils and remained motionless. The light from the flashlight flooded the room, trembling slightly as it fell on the still gently moving cans. When suddenly a small animal darted through the beam of light, Merle gave a sharp scream and winced. But after her breathing had calmed down, she started laughing. "A damn rat!" She laughed, amused at her jumpiness. The creature, who perceived the vibration and oscillation of its laughter, felt a shiver that went through all the tendrils. The monster knew this sound, this feeling, and it wanted more! Merle, who hadn't noticed the tendrils, got up because she noticed that her bladder was squeezing. She crept around her traps, put the fallen cans back down, and went out of the barn with a flashlight and machete. On the way to a small bush she stepped fully into a puddle in the dark, “Whaaa such crap!” She cursed softly and shook her foot. Cursing further, she crouched behind the bush and went about her business.


 


On the way back to her sleeping place she made a wide detour around the puddle and shortly after slipped back into the barn, circled her traps and then stood in front of her bed. She didn't want to sleep with the wet shoe, so she took it off without further ado and placed it in front of her nest. The wet sock followed the shoe and was placed next to it on the floor. “Be dry again until tomorrow morning!” She said, mumbling softly and now lay back under her blanket, wearing only one shoe. Yawning, she stretched and made herself comfortable, while dozen of the tendrils had crawled silently to her bed. Merle was just dawning when she felt a slight tickling on her bare foot, she scratched her shoe with him to get rid of the feeling. But after a few moments she felt it again, only much more intensely. She bent her leg to scratch her foot, but as soon as she had stretched her leg, something on her foot tickled again, so much that she giggled and pulled her foot back and threw the covers over. The plant on the wall grimaced and sent another tendril towards Merle's head. After a short time, a bud formed at the end of the tendril, which grew larger and larger. The bud straightened up and crawled towards Merle's mouth, who had meanwhile fallen asleep and was breathing steadily. With a “plop” the bud burst open and the young woman inhaled a kind of powder through her nose.



"Ha..HAtsch!" Merle woke up to the tingling in her nose and rubbed her eyes, she looked around because she felt somehow observed. Slowly she straightened up. "Ha ... hello?" She whispered into the darkness, there was no answer except for a rustling nearby. She threw back the covers and knelt, noticing that she was moving somehow more slowly and that it was difficult for her to move. When she reached for the flashlight, it slipped from her before she could get hold of it. She turned it on and got up, carefully letting the light of the lamp slide across the room. She took a step forward out of her nest, but stumbled and dropped the lamp, which got stuck in the straw, sending the beam of light upwards. She fell back on her back into the nest and stared at the ceiling. Merle tried to get up but her arms didn't react. "What ... what is that? I can't move! ”She said and it was difficult for her to move her mouth. She tried convulsively to raise her arms, but she could only slowly open and close her hands, and her legs did not respond to the commands to move, as a result her leg twitched only a little.


"Sooooo schhhhhöööööhhhhnnn!" she heard a voice say that sounded like leaves rustling. Merle struggled to turn his head in the direction from which the voice was coming. When she looked ashen into the shadows beyond the cone of light, all she saw was how something was moving there. A face of tendrils slowly formed right next to her sleeping place. Sheer horror seized Merle! She knew the rumors that the mutation had changed plants too, but she thought it was bullshit until now.


Whimpering, she saw a tendril approaching her face, and when the tendril touched her face, Merle tried to turn her head away, but the creature turned it back without further ado. "Bbb please ... don't kill me!", She pleaded and noticed how her tears ran down her face. The tendril face, however, looked at her blankly. Suddenly she noticed how the tendrils wrapped around her shoulders and pulled her into the nest until she was sitting upright. Now she saw that she was surrounded by tendrils, under the straw, on the walls, all over the floor! "How could I miss that!", She thought and swore softly. She looked down at herself fearfully, her legs slightly spread on the improvised blanket. She tried again to move her legs, but other than the fact that she managed to move her toe slightly, nothing happened. Her arms also hung uselessly at her sides, she could only hold her head upright and move it slowly.


 


Merle looked at the strange plant being and it looked back. Slowly the creature let tendrils slide toward them. They carefully felt along her, with a petrified expression she watched the tendrils. She sucked in air as one of the tendrils brushed past her foot, another tendril crawled under her jacket and T-shirt. Suddenly she had to suppress a giggle, the small leaves on the tendril tickled her bare stomach. The tendril got company from a second and again and again another tendril brushed along her bare foot, a giggle loomed. "That can't be true !!", she thought to herself, while the corners of her mouth twitched. “The second creature that tickles me!”. When one of the tendrils passed her armpit to get to her back, she giggled away. That was too much! Startled, all the tendrils stopped and the face looked at them. “Geeeehhhrrräääuuschhhh… .. ooccchhhhhmaaaaalll !! " and with the words the tendrils began to move again, instantly Merle began to giggle again. "Bihhtthhee niiicht !!", she managed to giggle and slowly shook her head. She saw something like a grin or a smile spread across the tendril face, she also saw how another tendril crawled to the zipper of her jacket and tampered with a small tendril at the fastener. With a ratchet the jacket opened and another tendril crawled under her clothes much more easily, but it couldn't reach the armpit properly - there wasn't enough space. Merle already draws hope when she noticed how tendrils wrapped around her wrists and pulled her arms up, "NAAHHHEIN!" she screamed desperately before her scream turned into laughter. All three tendrils with their small leaves crawled around unhindered on her upper body, but whenever they passed the armpits, Merle's laughter grew a bit louder.


This helplessness drove her insane, for whatever reason, she couldn't move and had to endure this ordeal. The young woman screeched briefly, because one of the tendrils pushed its way under her bra and between her breasts and came out of the top of the T-shirt. Never in her life would she have thought that she could be so sensitive there. "STOP!!" she screamed so loudly that the tendrils stopped. Merle gasped heavily and looked at the monster. "Leave me alone, you fucking beast!" She hurled at him, her breath still panting. “Spaaaaahhhhssss !!” said the creature, the tendrils started moving again but more carefully, but that didn't prevent Merle from giggling again. It was a lot less bad, but still it was pure torture. But now she saw how one of the tendrils approached her bare foot. "No ... nahahain ... nahaein!", She giggled and tried to move her foot. Her eyes widened when she saw the tip of the tendril part and become many tiny tendrils. A laughing scream cut the air as the many vines began to explore her bare foot. The only feeling that dominated now was this extreme tickling stimulus that made her nerve tracts glow. Despite the paralysis, she was shaking her head wildly, her hair just flying. Now the other tendrils became more active again. That was definitely too much, Merle's laughter stopped and went silent, in between she gasped loudly to gasp for air. Sweat and tears ran down her face, and her back was now wet with sweat. But slowly she panicked, a dark veil fell over her field of vision and she noticed that she was about to pass out.


 


But then the tendrils suddenly stopped and Merle was slowly able to breathe properly again. Now she also noticed that she could move more again, but she was fix and everyone and her stomach hurt with laughter and her throat was very sore. Her hands came free and the tendrils from her shirt also disappeared. Slowly she pulled her legs up to her and moaned as she moved, her muscles were totally cramped. When she had caught something, she saw how the tendrils withered and dried up, and confused she looked at the plant face, which now resembled a frightened grimace. Where the pulsating ball was, the prongs of a pitchfork came to light, the plant monster withered faster and faster, until it dissolved into dust with a crackling sound and the pitchfork fell to the ground with a clatter. When the dust settled, Merle saw the doc standing at the entrance to the barn. She knew immediately that it was the same as from the city. Shivering, she grabbed her power and pointed it at the entrance, but the doc was gone. She searched the room with her eyes, but nothing moved. With unsteady fingers she reached for her blanket and covered herself, still sitting, the machete in her hand. Then she fell asleep overwhelmed by exhaustion.



Hours later she was woken up by a noise, frightened she straightened up and grabbed the machete that had slipped out of her hand. The doc was leaning against the gate across from her. Merle slowly lowered the machete without taking her eyes off the Doc, she noticed every muscle in her body, everything hurt.


 "What ... what are you?" Merle asked uncertainly, but the doc only shrugged his shoulders in response. She swallowed. "Are you going to ... do something to me?" The doc looked directly at her face and slowly shook his head. Merle eyed the creature, it looked significantly more intelligent since their meeting yesterday and it was sitting! Since the outbreak of the apocalypse she had never seen a zombie sitting, sometimes they lay somewhere to ambush prey, but there were no sitting undead.


Merle noticed how her hunger made itself felt, groaning she threw the blanket aside and grabbed her backpack. Every movement was an agony, two days in a row she had been tickled almost unconscious, her muscles were tense and burned with sore muscles. She searched the backpack and took out a can of unknown contents and a bottle of water. When the can was open, she fished some cutlery out of a side pocket and began her meager meal. The doc watched her the whole time until she was finished. The young woman leaned back, groaning again. "Oh god, everything hurts me!" She moaned as she made herself comfortable. "Why?". Merle winced and looked at the doc she was now looking at curiously.


"Did ... did you just say something?". The doc concentrated, then opened his mouth and said, trying hard: "Yeah!" Merle looked at the doc in disbelief, that was possible! Could it be that this undead was going through another mutation? That he was getting smarter?


"And you ... you ... you want to know why everything hurts me?". Again he looked very strained. "Yes a!". A shiver ran down her spine. "So ... uh ... yes you and this plant thing! You tickled me! And because of that, yes, because of that everything hurts me!", Merle tried to explain and looked at the undead curiously. He returned her gaze for a long time and with great concentration, and after a while he opened his mouth again: "Tickling hurts?" He choked out questioningly.


"No ... well no, more like the sore muscles afterwards! From laughing and trying to escape!". Now the doc actually looked thoughtfully at the roof of the barn. She looked at him uncertainly, her body literally screamed for relaxation and she had to yawn. A look through the hole in the roof of the barn told her that the sun was just beginning to rise, again she yawned heartily. "Sleep, I'll be careful!" The Doc said suddenly, his gaze further directed towards the roof. Merle hesitated, after all he was a zombie! On the other hand, in this state, she would not have been able to defend herself much. So she slowly lay down again and positioned the machete next to her, her eyes on the Doc. After another yawn, her eyes closed and she slipped into a deep, restless sleep.



The Doc fixed his gaze on the young woman, who was now breathing deeply and evenly. An inner warmth spread through him when he looked at her, a warmth that he had been missing for a long time. "Sleep well!" He said with a low growl and looked back at the ceiling, and looked through the hole in the roof at the brightening firmament.