Author's Corner
"Running Blind is an action/survival work of fiction set after Coda, following the travels of Beth Greene and a group of Crawford survivors as they venture through the U.S. Eastern coastal states during the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse to find her missing family."
Okay so after what happened with Beth in the mid season finale of season five, my bones were thoroughly rattled and I was very annoyed (weren't we all?), which inspired me to start writing this monster. The Walking Dead kills a lot of characters before what I think was their time, so I suppose this is me trying to fix that.
If you don't like the idea of Beth possibly surviving that gunshot, which is cool if you don't, I'm not going to force the idea on you, then you probably shouldn't read this. You can if you want, by all means, because after all fanfiction is just a way of exploring and altering the canon storyline of an already existing story. So if you wanna come along on this journey exploring what I think could have happened after that mid season finale, hop on board! (why did I write that that is the most uncool thing I have ever written)
Questions/thoughts/general discussion is welcome on here or my tumblr (bethsmaggiedottumblrdotcom), and without further ado... let's begin the journey.
Disclaimer: I do not own TWD or any of its characters.
RUNNING BLIND
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Hazy.
That was the best word to describe Beth Greene's mind in that precise moment. A fine, misty haze that had settled over her consciousness and clouded her mind. Her lids felt heavy over her eyes as she struggled to open them.
They opened to darkness, a confined space, and the heavy scent of copper coating the humid air. Her head throbbed, and her cracked lips parted to suck in a sharp intake of the thin air in her confinement. As her vision slowly cleared, she realised that she was in what appeared to be the trunk of some vehicle, the memory of hiding in one during a storm resurfacing through the haze. More memories began to re-emerge with that. Images of scissors, and the blistering sound of a gun being fired.
Beth dragged her disoriented gaze down to her hands in the darkness, which were dampened by a sticky liquid, much like much of her body was She couldn't breathe. She felt trapped, imprisoned and alone. Her mind instantly went to the others, to her family. Where were they? In fact . . . where was she?
Digging deeper into the fuzz of memories, she remembered the hospital, the exchange, Dawn and Noah, and the short moment when she thrust those tiny scissors into the woman's shoulder before everything went black.
She was dead.
That's what had happened.
She'd died.
But if that was the case, then what was she doing here?
Beth had always believed in God and the promised utopia of Heaven, but waking up alone in the pitch black of a car wasn't exactly the image she'd had in mind upon each of her weekly visits to church.
Perhaps this was Hell? The coffin in the Underworld in which she was forever doomed to lay, and atone for her many sins. She wouldn't be surprised if that was where she'd ended up, to be honest, considering all the things she'd done to survive. All the lies. All the kills. But that aside, something told her that she was not dead, but very much alive . . .
Very much alive indeed.
A pain in her head blossomed like a rose as she attempted to move. A piercing sting, penetrating her skull and sending burning fire through her brain. Her body moved painfully slowly, her joints sore and heavy, and she shifted her foot around to try and somehow force the trunk open.
To crawl out of the darkness and into the light.
The sunlight was harsh as her foot collided with the part that opened the mechanism, and the door rose skyward and opened to allow blinding streams of light into the former shadowy space.
She blinked slowly, her vision ever so slowly adjusting to the intensity of the bright light, and lay there, tucked neatly in the trunk as if it were a casket. Her hair tie had fallen out so her dirty hair laid fanned out all around her, grimy blonde locks laced thick with lines of deep red.
The dampness she could feel was blood.
Her own blood.
It pooled around her, leaking down her forehead and cheeks and into her hair, then all over her body. The bandaged cast on her right wrist was practically soaked in the crimson, as was the rest of that arm, and the grubby grey cardigan she wore was coated with a dry brown layer of it.
She pulled herself up and toppled out of the car trunk, landing back-first on the hard gravel of the floor with a choked yelp. White vision; head throbbing loudly; and silence other than a shrill siren sounding in one ear, slowly being overpowered by the nearby sounds of groaning . . . and snarling.
The white curtain covering her vision slowly parted and her mouth opened to gasp, only no sound came out due to her throat being so parched.
Walkers.
Walkers everywhere.
If not for the dryness of her throat, Beth would have screamed. Instead, she rolled her head back onto the hard gravel and waited. Waited to be devoured. Waited for the decaying teeth of monsters to sink into her flesh and rip her apart, the same way they'd taken Jimmy and Patricia . . .
It was ironic, she thought, that after miraculously surviving something as impossible as a bullet to the head, this would be the way she went.
She accepted that fate and waited . . . Waited for the end.
It was when nothing happened that she opened her eyes once again, the pain in her head growing almost unbearable. The bullet wound seemed to have swelled massively to stop the bleeding, but from the pain she was feeling, she guessed it wouldn't be long before it re-opened again.
She watched the walkers passing her by, seemingly oblivious to the easy meal laying as good as dead mere feet in front of them. Why didn't they attack? she wondered, but then it dawned on her . . .
They must already see her as dead.
She was as good as dead really, and everyone knew that the dead didn't eat their own kind. So maybe . . . just maybe . . . She could work this to her advantage.
Shedding the itchy grey cardigan and peeling it down her bloodied form, it dropping to the ground to reveal the stained yellow polo beneath, she tried to stand. Her legs were wobbly after not being used for so long, and she toppled over multiple times initially. Still, the walkers failed to notice.
They must be used to this, she thought. They toppled over themselves all the time with their weak and decaying ligaments.
She used the car she'd climbed out of to pull herself up again and steadied herself against its hot steel body, poisoned with heat by the sun, thus burning her palms. This kind of pain felt good. It reminded her she was alive. Alive and fighting. But her heart sank into pain and misery along with the wound in her head as she looked out into the vast abyss of walkers that stretched out through the streets of the city.
Atlanta. She was still in Atlanta, and judging by the surrounding buildings . . . Grady couldn't be far. In fact, she was almost certain that she could see the spire of its roof sticking up through the forest of skyscrapers. And though the last thing Beth wanted to do was go back to that awful place, she was no fool.
It was a miracle she was still alive right now, and she knew that without help . . . she would certainly die.
She couldn't do this alone. She needed help. And if that help had to be from the very woman who'd almost killed her and the doctor who'd betrayed her to save his own life, then so be it.
Her head hurt more when she thought too much, so she practiced standing upright without the support of the car, and slowly wobbled out into the sea of the undead in what was hopefully the direction of Grady. Covered in old sticky blood, she wasn't even sure that she was going the right way. This was probably a lost cause, but still, she had to try. Because if you gave up in this world, there would be no one left alive.
Dawn hadn't given up. Sure, she'd fought on in the wrong way, but she'd still fought to make it. To survive. And right now, Beth vowed to fight until she quite simply couldn't go on. She vowed to fight forever, because she'd rather go down fighting to live, than surrender to pain and give herself over to death. The acceptance of her own death she'd felt a few seconds ago had only lasted that—a few seconds.
Now, she would defy that providence.
Dirtied blonde locks spilled down into her face and over her shoulders. The bullet wound had re-opened as she'd predicted and gradually spilling out more blood, increasing the chances of her bleeding out. But she still just wouldn't give up. She wouldn't be beaten by this. Couldn't. Because she had another chance, and that was a real rarity in the world now.
She'd be damned if she was going to waste that rare chance she'd been bestowed with.
Every now and then she would bump into walkers, who snarled at her and then merely carried on their way like they didn't even sense her still beating heart. She supposed she was as close to the walking dead a person could get, but she still went on.
Because this was her last chance.
Her last chance to prove that she was a fighter.
Just as her body was about to give out and shut down for good, the Grady building finally came into view up ahead, the huge medical cross and bold lettering on the side of the building quivering in her blurred vision. She stumbled into the parking lot with a deranged smile on her cracked lips and fell against an angry red fire truck that was parked there, before trudging on towards the building.
She wasn't sure exactly what had gone down after she'd naïvely stabbed Dawn with those scissors, but she hoped to God that there'd still be people in the hospital. There was no telling how Rick and the others would have reacted after seeing her shot like that in front of them. It would be a miracle if any were left alive in that place because if there weren't, she really was as good as dead.
But then, like magic, a man came out onto the roof of the hospital building. A man that shivered and distorted with her deteriorating vision, doubling with hallucinations, and clad in a pristine white lab coat. Too pure and perfect to belong to this world, more like it belonged in a dream.
Her hopeless smile widened at the sight of the man, blood trickling down into her mouth and leaving the warm taste of copper on her tongue. She reached out to him, cast and arm coated in dark red, and mouthed just two words with her barren lips.
Help me.
Then she fell to the hard ground for the final time, and saw several pairs of feet running towards her before everything went fully dark.
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Author's Corner
This is just a short prologue to get the story going. Future chapters will be longer, I promise., and coming soon as well! For I have all summer to write! Favourite/Follow for updates and don't forget to review with your thoughts. I'd appreciate all your support if you like this story and I shall try my best to make it a good one! Also check out my other stories if you want~