Fawn
Fawn is an absolutely beautiful instrumental track from Tom Waits' album Alice. I thoroughly suggest giving it a listen :)
I don't own the Walking Dead or any characters or plot you recognise.
Chapter One: Deer Season
All I want is the best for our lives my dear,
And you know my wishes are sincere
- Beirut, A Sunday Smile.
The strangers swept through the camp just after dawn, decimating everything in their path. Gathered together to eat and shake away the fears of the night before with meaningless chatting, the medium-sized, well stocked group didn't stand a chance when the bullets came like rain out of the early morning fog. Of the fifteen that lived in that little camp only one escaped, slipping into the undergrowth in the confusion. She would have made it out unnoticed as well, were it not for the group's leader calling out to her desperately as she disappeared into the thicket. She heard him scream her name as she left the camp well behind her, running as though demons of hell itself were nipping at her heels. She heard the gunshot that ended his life, and the mocking calls of the attackers behind her.
"He say Fawn?" Laughter, the cruel kind better suited to a hyena than a man. "Looks like it's deer season boys!"
The men followed behind her, the sound of their voices still echoing in her ears over the ragged, torn pants of her laboured breathing. She struggled to move silently, weaving through the trees, dodging branches that scratched and clawed at her thin arms, leaping the fallen trunks and densely packed bushes which clung to the bare skin of her legs. She could hear them laughing, calling her name tauntingly in the distance. "Come back, little Fawn! We only want to talk!" Gritting her small, white teeth she pushed on, cheeks wet with tears that streamed from her huge, brown eyes and cursing the well-meaning man who drew the attackers attention to her.
An arm shot out like a snake from the shadows behind a tree she races past, grabbing her around her thin waist. She let out a small, shocked scream only to be immediately silenced by a calloused hand across her mouth. The arm's owner spun her around, hand still firmly clasped around her mouth, and her panicked eyes met with the stormy green ones above. Recognition filtered through her adrenaline soaked mind and she was calm finally, throwing her arms around her saviour with a muffled sob.
The newcomer pressed a skinny finger to her lips, holding the grief racked girl at arm's length, and motioned silently to the branches above. Sparing no time to acknowledge the gesture, the girl scrambled up the trunk with a small, encouraging push from the woman below. From high up in the tree's comforting arms she could only watch her friend's skinny back disappear into the forest beyond and wish desperately that she would return.
She listened, trembling with fear in the early morning chill, as the men draw closer to the base of her own tree, still laughing among themselves. They called to her again, mocking voices drifting up from the forest floor, but their tone had become more subdued, bored even, once their prey was momentarily lost. All too quickly they fell to complaints and childish bickering, throwing themselves down on the dirt and lighting cigarettes, some even leaning their backs against the very tree in which she hid, while their leader pawed at the leaf strewn ground, searching for her tracks.
She shivered violently and held her breath, clawing back a sob as the leader, a heavy set man with a cruel blade where his right hand once was, stirred the earth around the base of the tree with his remaining hand. He glanced up, gaze sweeping across the leafy canopy. Fawn could almost feel his cold blue eyes settle on her, though there was no change in his demeanour that would suggest that he was aware of her presence. For too long his sharp glare settled on the at the canopy near where she hid, a sickening grin seemingly permanently slapped across his face, and the small girl shook like a leaf in the wind on her branch, willing herself to be still. She considered moving higher into the tree top above, or perhaps abandoning the dubious safety of the branches all together and taking her chances on foot, anything to escape that icy gaze. But she silenced those thoughts, instead pushing her scrawny back harder against the rough bark behind her. She had something most had lost in this world, and it is that which kept her rooted to the spot, though her eyes were squeezed shut and her breath caught in her throat.
In the distance a gunshot rang out, breaking the awful, painful silence, and Fawn opened her eyes in time to see birds swarm to the East, flocking like dark shadows against the blinding orb of still rising sun as they took to the skies from the comfort of their perches, seeking to put distance between themselves and the crack of gunfire. With new energy the men below sprung to life, shouldering their weapons and racing off towards the sound, petty squabbles swiftly forgotten with the promise of a new chase. At last the girl could allow herself a few deep breaths, calming her thundering heart before pulling herself up to the higher branches.
From her new vantage point on the world, Fawn caught a few fleeting glimpses of her would be pursuers in the distance, between the thick, verdant branches of the forest roof. When she judged them far enough away she relaxed, wrapping her bony arms around herself, and waited.
She, unlike many others, had not lost faith, though the hope and loyalty she treasures greedily is not exactly the biblical kind. Fawn, a sensible girl throughout, chose a long time ago to instead place her trust in something far more tangible than the great beard in the sky.
She had faith in the woman with the stormy green eyes. And so she waited.
The sun had begun its slow descent into the horizon a while ago. Fawn watches the woods change from the warm serenity of the day to the unnerving shadows of the evening. She pulls her knees up to her chest and covers her ears with the palms of her hands, trying to ignore the suspicious forest noises around her. Twigs crunch in the silence and she imagines the moans of the dead surrounding the tree below.
"Please come back" the voice she hears, though her own, is unrecognisable to her, so lost and pathetic. She holds back the tears that threaten to spill and dismisses the rumbling of her empty stomach. "Please come back" she begs again, more forcefully this time, staring out into the rapidly darkening woods.
Please come back.
It began with the riots. They spread across the globe like wildfire. Her parents hadn't wanted her to see, banishing her from the room whenever the news came on, but she and her brother stood at the living room door, taking it in turns to peer through the cracks in the frame.
London, Rome, Moscow, people took to the streets in a way never before seen in history. The reports blamed the 'protests' on public rage over the lack of treatment for the infected, but there was no anger on the faces in the crowds, only fear. Through the crack between the door and frame she sometimes caught a glimpse of them, the infected, in the press of bodies. The camera always tried to pan away quickly, but if you paid close enough attention you saw them. There was something off about the way they moved, something not quite right about their faces. Fawn tried to believe the reporters, her brother knew better though. These people weren't rioting, they were running for their lives. But at every turn the army kept pushing them back towards whatever it is they feared so much.
Soon enough the 'riots' weren't just on the TV anymore, they were down the road in Atlanta, they were happening in the town centre. The neighbours children were sick, and sometimes she caught glimpses of them through her bedroom window. The youngest stopped moving one morning. Roscoe, her big brother, dragged her away and ordered her not to look. She peeked at them that afternoon but the boy was no longer in his bed. There was blood on the window.
The next day Fawn watched a woman die on live television. Roscoe covered her mouth with his hand to stop her screaming when the dead woman crawled back up and sank her teeth into the reporter's throat. They didn't leave the house after that. Their father boarded up the windows and locked the doors.
Curfew, contamination, infection, fever, death, reanimation. Fawn began to fear words before even knowing their meaning. She was only eleven, and, though she didn't understand it, the world she knew was ending.
Two weeks after the first reports the news began broadcasting the first messages of hope. Safe zones, they promised, places free from infected and protected by the army, places where families could go. For the first time in days her parents seemed hopeful. They even laughed, though it was that choked, forced laugh that adults use to reassure children.
They left her. They'd only be gone a few hours, they reassured her over and over, they would collect her grandparents and come straight back. They took Roscoe with them and locked her in the basement with their food and water supplies.
She lost track of the days after a while. The lights went off and they never came back on. She lived in total darkness for a long time, her eyes eventually adjusting to the scant daylight that crept under the door at the top of the stairs. A few times she tried to rattle the locked door open, only to be frightened away by the moans, thumps and scratches from the other side and scuttle back down into her rank darkness.
She ate cold beans and tuna and went to the toilet in a bucket. She cried almost constantly.
Then she came, the woman with the green eyes. Fawn had cowered in the corner of the room when she had descended the stairs, holding a flash light in one hand and a gun in the other. She'd been ashamed when the woman's nose had wrinkled, embarrassed by her filth and the stench of the squalid room, and let out a small sob. The tiny, human noise made the stranger jump and she shone the blinding light from her little flash light in Fawn's face. Strange really, she'd been sure that she would die, yet almost relieved by the thought.
She opened her eyes after a few moments and was shocked to find those stormy green eyes only inches away from her own. The look on the intruder's face was thoughtful, if not a little shocked. She didn't seem bothered by Fawn's unwashed scent, but the little girl hugged herself tighter in shame regardless. The silence stretched out for what felt like an age before the stranger spoke. "You're the Addams girl" Fawn nodded although the woman seemed to already know the answer. "Do you remember me?" She shook her head and the elder frowned. "My family used to live next door"
She managed to squeak "The Lyons?" And with a forced smile the woman nodded. Fawn remembered Mrs Lyons, who used to make French pastries for the neighbourhood every Christmas. She remembered Mr Lyons pulling into their driveway on his police motorbike. She remembered the little boy, lying completely still in his bed, and the blood on the window. Tears streamed down her dirty cheeks.
"Hey, hey" The woman patted her shoulder awkwardly. "It's Fawn, isn't it?" She nodded, eyes fixed on her filthy trainers, no longer bothering to hold back her tears. The woman took her grubby face in her long, thin fingers and lifted her chin until their eyes met. Fawn tried to return her warm smile. "My name is Alice. You can come with me, if you like"