It wasn't that Clementine couldn't run. It wasn't like she didn't want to run. It wasn't like that at all. With the shouting behind her – which came from a man at least twice the size of her seventy pound, not yet four-foot-nine frame – there was no reason not to. But there was a huge difference between not attempting to run and barely being able to.
Rain splattered down on her face, wind blowing it into her eyes and all over her, obstructing her eye sight. The mud on the forest floor was making it much more difficult to stay upright, but the surrounding trees and the darkness of the night made it even harder to figure out where to go.
Clementine slowed, as the rain began to pick up; she wiped the water from her face and quickly turned her head, just in time to hear the angry shouting that came from back behind the trees.
"Get the fuck over here! NOW!" the man shrieked, like a child throwing a tantrum. A tantrum, Clementine reminded herself, that included more than one deadly weapon.
She jumped when she first heard the demand, and scrambled behind the nearest cover, a tree. A loud squelch of mud reached her ears; she didn't dare peak out to see if he'd stopped, but the sound of slow, wet footsteps was answer enough.
"Motherfucker!" he grumbled. Clementine heard more of the slow, wet footsteps, which sounded like they were beginning to move away from her. She could run. She could get away – maybe she could hide. She didn't know where. The only idea in her mind repeatedly echoed, away from him, away from all of them.
Kneeling, she peeked out from behind the tree. The man was facing away, to Clementine's left. His back – or rather his bag and several bundles – was turned to her, as he spoke, "Come out here, girl." He spat this in a condescending manner. "I'm not fuckin' around!"
There was a rock parallel to where Clementine was, to the right of the tree. Could she fit behind it? Maybe, if she was squatted down. She took the leap of faith – and promptly failed. The man turned, as soon as he heard movement, shouting something she couldn't make out. He made a mad dash towards her; with every amount of energy she could muster, she took off, away from him, narrowly avoiding the large rock, and the smaller ones that dotted the ground.
"Get the fuck over here!" came the shouting behind her.
A humongous boulder and a narrow log resting on top of it stood in her way. At the last second, Clementine dove underneath it, then swiftly stood up and continued her run forward into a patch of long, dried grass.
She let out a gasp of fear as she stopped in her tracks for barely a second, nearly colliding with a female-looking walker. It let out a deep throated growl as Clementine ducked underneath its outstretched arm – and then she stopped.
Stretching across her path was a huge tree log – nearly as wide as she was tall, with several large branches stretching out that looked like they could impale an elephant. So Clementine turned back to the walker, which turned around, facing her and shambling closer. Behind the walker was the man, who said something that sounded like, "Fuck." followed by a few more choice words. He kicked the walker's thigh, knocking it down onto the ground, and then stomped on its decomposing head, effectively killing it.
He turned to Clementine, who had backed herself against the log; she grabbed a hold of the nearest branch, a thick, pointy one with several pieces sticking out, and turned back to him, holding it protectively in front of her. She darted to the left hastily as he ran at her. The man stopped just before he ran into the branches.
The man let out a shriek and yelp as she stabbed her branch into his shoulder. She took off again in the opposite direction as the man screamed, "Jesus, are you fuckin' kidding me?"
Clementine's run was cut short when she stopped herself, sliding and landing on her backside. The ground ended in a sudden ledge, dropping off several feet into a quickly-moving stream that seemed to only get faster with each passing second.
Her clothes were streaked with everything from sweat to mud, and her knees both felt as though they were scraped and bleeding. He'd chased her, he'd tried to hurt her, and God only knew what the other men who'd chased after Christa had done, or were trying to do. She felt a pang of panic in her chest. It was with great, pent up frustration and fear that she screamed, "LEAVE ME ALONE!"
The man grabbed her from behind, lifting her up off the ground as she squirmed and fought back.
He replied, "Then stop fucking running! Stop squirming!" He wrapped his arms around her, using his knee to keep her elevated as he tried to get a better grip on her. His hands rested, unguarded on her shoulders – as quickly as she could, Clementine buried his thumb in her mouth, down to the carpel bones, and bit down as hard as possible. A painful howl reached her ears as immediately as it was let out, but she held out.
She shifted his thumb slightly as the man tried to pull it from between her teeth. Clementine placed more panicked pressure on the pad of his thumb and the bone and tissue underneath with her molars and left canine – and she finally tasted the choking, irritating coppery blood, joined by a sickening crack as her captor's screams reached their highest intensity.
"ARGH – LET GO, YOU LITTLE BITCH! Jesus Christ!"
Clementine let go of his thumb at the same time he dropped her. With her mouth, and part of her nose filled with his blood, she immediately darted towards the hollowed log that lay a foot away, extremely grateful for her small size. She crawled into it hastily, and then scrambled to grab onto anything she could, as a pair of bloody hands grabbed a hold of her ankle.
"Come out of there!"
She let out a cry of fear as her nails dug into the insides of the log, and she kicked the man's hand with her free foot multiple times. Her hands slipped away from the inside of the log; he dragged her out, despite the small girl's cries and squirming. With a delicate hold against her foot, Clementine reached out to the nearest object: a thin tree. In the dark, it was one of the only things she could see. She wrapped her arms around as tightly as she could. The man's grip had loosened slightly; Clementine supposed it was his bloody and likely pain-filled thumb that was preventing him from pulling her with his full strength.
"Jesus, are you fucking kidding me?" the man repeated, lifting her lower body off of the muddy ground by her leg. But there was no way in Hell that Clementine was going to let go of her only lifeline. "Come on, girl!"
A strong, well timed tug pried Clementine's hands off of the tree – and it knocked the man pulling her to the ground.
"Kid, you are on my LAST FUCKING NERVE!" he shrieked, lunging towards the downed child, positioning himself over her as she turned. He grabbed the bony fists that she'd waved in her blind panic, and was promptly met with a kick to the chest, from one of her bent legs. Eyes wide, Clementine kicked his sternum again with the other leg.
"Stop fucking kicking!"
Growling and a clap of thunder filled her ears as a walker with torn clothing shambled towards the man. But he didn't seem to notice. The walker suddenly fell on the splintered stump, only inches away from them both. It began to reach out, and though Clementine knew for a fact that it wasn't picky about which of them it was going to rip open, she knew it was reaching out for her captor.
Carefully, Clementine continued to press her feet against the man's chest, squirming and resisting so that she could move herself further left. The walker was on the right, reaching out towards the man's shoulders, and just the right amount would tip him into it. She pushed against him, legs beginning to cramp under his weight, and then aimed a well-timed kick at his groin, effectively shoving him right into the arms of the walker.
The walker grabbed his arm as he cried out. Clementine backed away, heart still pounding, and stood up, only to be greeted by a slimy, rotting hand grabbing her wrist as well. She cried out, pulling away from an androgynous walker with close to no skin left on its bloody face, when another hand latched onto her other arm: her captor.
She looked over to see that he seemed to be free, and with a sickening crack, the walker's arm detached from its body. He'd pulled her away, but Clementine knew that it wasn't for her own good. No, he wanted her for himself. The two of them both hit the ground, with the arm landing a few inches away.
Clementine looked back to her left to see another walker, this one both taller and larger than the previous, greedily grabbing the air in front of it and coming straight towards them both. Just as she moved from her position and got to her feet, the walker fell right onto the man, who shouted and screamed in fear. The walker pinned him down and tore right into his throat with a horrifyingly disgusting noise that Clementine could only think of as a cross between a thump of a heavy object on a sopping carpet and a choking, gurgling noise.
She backed away slowly at first, but then took off in the opposite direction when she finally realized it – she was free. The man who was trying to do God only knew what was dead, not chasing her, and she could get away. She took off right back into the trees, away from the feasting walker and that ledge, jumping to the side in surprise when the one armed walker from earlier lunged from the brush. It fell to the ground, and Clementine turned, only to be faced with two more, thoroughly mutilated walkers.
One was missing its arm from the elbow down; the other was wearing a sports jacket. Both of them had the flesh and skin rotted away from their faces.
Clementine ducked and changed direction when the walker in the jacket lunged at her, turning back towards where she'd come from, and back towards her former captor's corpse, and the reanimated corpse that was feasting on it. The walker that was feasting on the man, like the others, lunged at her, receiving a shriek in response as Clementine leapt to the side to avoid its touch. And immediately lost her footing, tripping herself on a rock.
She turned onto her backside, a whimper of unease leaving her mouth as she attempted to back up. Every part of her body suddenly felt like jelly as she grabbed the first rock her hand touched – one roughly the size of her fist - and examined the walkers several feet away.
There were six of them coming from different directions, creating a semi-circle around her escape route. Clementine launched the rock at the walker in the middle as hard as she could manage to, though the rock missed by a few inches. Mouth open and eyes wide, she backed up, reaching her hand back to grip the ground. It was only after she'd backed up that she realize that there was nothing but air to grip, and she remembered the ledge.
Clementine's heart skipped a beat as she tumbled into the freezing stream several feet below, water immediately filling her mouth and nose, forcing its way down her throat.
A/N: Thought you saw the last of ol' Clover? Nah. I had a large amount of personal struggles going on in my life, but I'm back with a fic I've been planning for about a year now.
Updates with most likely come either every Friday (I know today is Saturday, but bear with me) or every other Friday. The entire story isn't written now, but I do have a good number of chapters written. The update time will depend on whether or not I have access to my computer and what is going on in my life. Summer break is coming in about a week and a half, so I should be able to spit out chapters more and more because of that.
This is also cross-posted on Archive of Our Own under the name TheGuardianAngel.
Anyway, thank you so much for reading this chapter! If you liked it, please favorite. If you liked it, disliked it, have a comment, etc. please leave me a review and tell me your thoughts! Thank you so much for giving me chance!
~ Alexis