« Jesus Christ… » Jamie felt to the ground a second time. Her legs were weak, she couldn't get far even if she wanted to. She had walked through the forest for a couple hours in vain. She had disappeared. Her forehead was profusely sweating due to the pain in her ankle. She had hurt herself while running after a little girl. She hasn't seen the root on the train and had jammed her feet right into it while the rest of her body was still moving forward. She could still hear the sound it made when her bone cracked.
Slowly, she leaned on a trunk, trying to rest a little bit. Normally, she would have climb to the top of a tree to be safer but for now, it wasn't even an option. She could barely walk and the sun was going down fast. What she needed was a shelter of some sort. On the map she had found in an abandoned gas station, she could see that there was some community near her, something that looked like a sect village, but she tried not to think about it.
Looking around her to be sure that there were no walkers near, she proceeded to slowly hop her way to the village before it was completely dark.
The village looked creepier then she thought. Old and rusty kids toys, burgundy traces on the walls that was either dirt or blood, she didn't want to know where they were from, and the whole post-apocalyptic look. She used to enjoy that, follow blogs that posted pictures of abandoned places. She thought those were fascinating. Now, they didn't have the same feeling.
She entered the first building she saw, her knife in her hand, ready to be used. She could hear walkers in a room at the back. They were groaning and scratching at something.
When she entered the kitchen, she saw two of them trying to get into the cupboard. Cries. There were cries coming from the cupboard. A little girl cries.
Christ…She was alive.
Forgetting about her injury, Jamie took a pan that was still on the counter and attacked both of them at the same time. One with the knife and the other with the pan's handle. Trying not to cry with the pain that was growing rapidly in her ankle, she pushed to bodies away from the door and opened it. The little girl started screaming, not able to see the face of her savior in the darkness. Slowly, Jamie crouched to be face to face with her and took a soft voice.
"I looked for you for hours… Are you alright sweety?" She said while smiling painfully.
"I… I… Are you with my mom…?"Cried the little girl.
"I am not, but we can look for her together, what do you think?"
The little girl nodded, still a bit frightened. She looked so fragile with her extremely pale skin and her baggy clothes. Out of nowhere, she jumped in Jamie's arms and hugged her the stronger she could. Feeling the warmth of another human being felt so reassuring for both of them. Loneliness in those days could kill you.
Jamie took the next hour to secure the house, looking for any more walkers and barricading the doors with furniture. The little girl that she know knew went by the name of Sophia helped her even though she didn't had the strength to push an old piano. They then eat some granola bars and a can of peaches. Not the best of diners, but Sophia seemed pleased with her sugary food.
"It tastes better than Daryl's squirrels."
Jamie laughed slowly "He's a member of your group?". Sophia nodded "Yes! He used to be scary and all, but he gave me this doll."
She showed her the doll that she was clutching ever since they met. It was dirty, old and let's faces it, quite ugly, but who cared? If it made her happy, that was the principal. Sophia talked a lot to her, told her about her group for her long time. She talked about Carl who was her best friend, Carol who was her mother, Rick, Lori, Jim, Daryl, Merel. There were so many names that Jamie couldn't remember all of them. Sophia seemed to admire every single person in that group, for her, they were the coolest and nicest people in the whole world.
"You told me about your mother, what about your father?"
The little girl fell silent; she couldn't look at Jamie anymore. She realised she had said something she shouldn't have. Her father was a sensible subject. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to…"
"He was a really bad man. I'm glad he isn't with us anymore." She lifted her head to look at Jamie. Her eyes were full of tears. "Come here sweety, I'm sorry bad things happened to you…".
Sophia snuggled into her arms without saying anything. Time passed and she felt asleep still against her chest. Jamie couldn't stop thinking about what that man had done to his daughter. She just hoped that it wasn't what she thought. Nobody deserved to go through that.
The next morning, Jamie woke up first and lifted Sophia's frail body to the old couch. She then removed some curtains in the kitchen and used them to secure her ankle. She had no idea how her injury could eventually heal, but for now, she had so little options that it would do.
The sun was beginning to set and some walkers had come in the area and were walking aimlessly around the houses. They could wait a bit, enough for them to wonder away. There were too much for her to handle in her condition, plus with Sophia, she didn't want to risk anything. She was determined to reunite the little girl with her mother, no one deserved to be away of people they loved for that long.
Softly, she walked towards the kitchen and began looking in the cupboard and other parts of the house she hadn't looked to last night. All the owners' belongings seemed to be still in their rooms upstairs. They were probably away when the outbreak occurred and never had the chance to get back to their home. That's when she entered the basement that shit hit the fan. The whole set up was so… She had no words to the describe it. She felt like vomiting, run away from that place. There, before her, was a bed in front of a camera. On it, was attached a walker, a little girl. Those obscene bastards had left that girl that they probably abused to die. Sick place…
Jamie hopped to the bed and sit next to her, sadness in her eyes. "I'm sorry"she simply said before putting her knife through her head. She hadn't even the time to retrieve the knife that a scream coming from upstairs made her blood run cold.
"Sophia!" She tried to run upstairs, forgetting her injury. The pain made her slip and fall on the hard floor. She blacked-out instantly.
