Author's Note: I'm not exactly sure where this idea came from, to be honest. But sometime in the future, I'm possibly thinking of doing a piece from Jack's perspective; maybe not of this exact moment, but of the zombie apocalypse in general. I hope you lovely readers enjoy it. xo.
Resurrection.
Even after he starts thinking of them as his family, Glenn never tells the group about the man he saw come back to life. He's not exactly sure why he doesn't; part of it might be because, to anyone who hadn't witnessed it, the event would sound impossible. The fact of the matter was that believing in the undead was one thing; after being attacked by them at least once a week, it was rather difficult to deny their existence.
But that wasn't what Glenn had seen. Over the months (or maybe it had been a year now), Glenn had seen plenty of people be reanimated as geeks. He'd watched as Sophia had stumbled her way out of Hershel's barn and he'd watched as their group was slowly picked off. But back at the beginning, back in Atlanta before anybody really knew what was going on and the streets were still filled with screams and fire, Glenn had witnessed the impossible.
He'd watched someone come back from a Walker attack.
He'd been hiding at the time, on the third level of the department store he'd later use for his supply runs. The place had been sealed up pretty tight and so, he'd picked up a baseball bat and waited, glancing out the plate glass windows now and then to see how the situation was progressing. The answer, of course, was not well. The army had come through at one point with flamethrowers but that had done nothing; in the end, the soldiers had either run away or been brought down and now, their small fires crackled merrily in parked cars. Every once in awhile, a moving vehicle would come through but they either got stuck or blew through before Glenn could even think of running downstairs and hailing a ride.
And so, he stayed where he was, munching on beef jerky, ears attuned for the slightest sound. His heart had stopped racing long ago, out of necessity; if it had kept going at the top speed it had reached, he was almost certain he would have just keeled over of cardiac arrest. That didn't mean he wasn't scared, however; he was definitely frightened and the sweat drying on his forehead was evident of that. He'd seen a couple of zombie films in his life and had watched enough 'torture porn' flicks to be comfortable watching gore but those were movies. It was one thing to watch a movie and know that the blood was fake. It was another to watch a pack of geeks descend on a single woman and tear her to shreds.
Or a single man, as was the case.
He, seemingly, appeared out of nowhere. One moment, the street was clear of the living; the next, it simply wasn't. Standing in the middle of the street was a man; from the height, Glenn could only pick out a few details but he seemed to be in his late thirties or early forties, with a conservative haircut. His clothing, however, was quite unusual. Glenn thought that the man's ground-sweeping jacket and suspenders were more suited for an old war movie than the twenty-first century. Then again, he had seen people wearing some pretty weird things in his pizza delivering days; maybe the guy had been caught at some cosplay meeting or something. If so, that was just really inconvenient and-
Glenn took a deep breath and forced himself to stop concentrating on the man's clothes. After all, they weren't even that strange when you compared them to the situation overall because the man was just standing there. Even with the geeks approaching him, their jaws slowly opening and closing, he just stood there, feet planted, arms spread apart, head turned towards the sky. Glenn couldn't be sure, but he thought that the man's eyes were closed.
His stomach turned but he was powerless to stop what was inevitably about to happen. Within seconds, the Walkers had descended upon the man, their fingernails scratching at his clothes, tearing them to shreds in a matter of moments. Even from his position, Glenn could see their teeth tearing at each inch of skin that was revealed, the blood hitting the ground in garish spurts. And still, the man just continued to stand there, his mouth open in a silent scream. The smell of his flesh seemed to have attracted more geeks and soon, the man had disappeared, surrounded by undead bodies. Glenn tried to tear his eyes away but he simply couldn't; the whole situation was still so strange and so horrifying that he felt like he needed to watch everything, just to make sure it wasn't a dream. It was only when a chunk of some unidentifiable organ came sailing through the air that he averted his gaze, stomach leaping up into his throat.
There was no doubt about it now. He really wasn't dreaming.
He forced himself to stand up and move around, both to stretch his legs and distract himself from the scene that was continuing three stories down. He managed to find a pretty sizable backpack, which replaced his tattered pack and started to fill it with the, admittedly, meagre supplies he'd accumulated. When that was done, he risked another peek out the window, stomach already preparing for the disgust.
The geeks had dissipated, wandering back down the street in search of more food. The man had been reduced to nothing but a heap of bones, gleaming in the middle of the road. His clothing lay in tatters around him, barely recognizable. Surprisingly, Glenn only felt a little bit sick about the sight; he seemed to be developing an immunity to the horror.
He wasn't sure how to feel about that.
He didn't ponder the issue for long, however, because the man's bones started to move. At first, Glenn thought that he was just seeing things but after a few minutes, it became quite apparent that he wasn't hallucinating. The man's bones were moving seemingly of their own accord, falling off of each other and dragging themselves across the pavement to form a shape roughly like a skeleton. Pressing his face against the glass, Glenn could feel his heart racing, beating in his ears.
"What the hell?" he whispered, squinting. A red film seemed to be appearing over the bones now, forming the vaguest outline of muscles. The process was definitely slow but after about half an hour, there was definitely a muscle system lying in the middle of the road, squirming on the hardtop. The geeks didn't seem to be paying much attention, even when patches of skin started forming. Perhaps somewhere, in whatever brain they had left, they were ignoring the impossible.
Glenn wasn't sure if he believed in the word impossible any more.
He wasn't sure how long it was before the man was whole again; at least an hour, but most likely longer. Nonetheless, he stayed glued to the window the entire time, throat growing dry as he watched tan skin cover up muscles and nerves and bones. Even after the reconstruction was complete, the man's body just laid there in the middle of the road, naked as the day he was born, not a hair out of place and for a few moments, Glenn was afraid that he was going to have to watch it be torn apart again. Maybe this was his personal version of hell; watching this man be killed and brought back again and again and again.
But then, he breathed. The man sat up in one, swift moment, mouth and eyes flying open at the same time. It was only then that the geeks starting paying attention again, their heads turning on stiff necks, arms outstretching in anticipation of their meal. This time, the man seemed to smarten up; he quickly scrambled to his feet, took a second to grab the tatters of his clothes, and ran down the street, out of sight, easily moving past the geeks. Even for a few minutes after he disappeared, Glenn continued to stare out the window, still convinced that he was actually in hell and not firmly planted on planet Earth.
But the man never came back. Not on that day and not on any of the other days Glenn ended up back in Atlanta, searching through that same department store and its ever dwindling stash of supplies. He never again caught a glimpse of that strange, distinctive coat or a pile of bones that reconstructed itself. Some nights, when he replayed the scene in his head over and over again, he thought about asking the others if they'd ever seen the man when they'd passed through the city. But he always ended up biting back his words, swallowing them whole.
Truthfully, he didn't know why he stayed silent. Part of him thought that he didn't want to scare anyone or to do the exact opposite: to give them hope. Part of it was that he didn't want to be laughed at, although he wasn't sure what the chances of that happening were.
Mostly though, Glenn thought that it was because every member of a family was entitled to a secret or two. Carol had hers, Rick and Lori had a few, Daryl had an entire frigging book of them.
Glenn thought he was entitled to have at least one.