Chapter 1— Clementine & AJ

Clementine was ahead by an arm's length on the narrow path, but the consistent crunch of feet on glass and gravel behind assured her that Alvin was close. The constant ebb and flow of the waves below produced an unrelenting swishing sound, almost as if some omnipresent being was shushing them as they climbed the small ridge together, the crashes of the waves as they crested and collapsed onto the sand so loud at first that they enveloped all other noises in their great swells. After a while, the ear began to tune out the swish of the sea, allowing the subtler sounds to creep into Clementine's ear: a tickle of movements in the grasses, the jostling of water in a nearby stream, the distant groans of the infected. Each was unsettling in its own way, but Clementine was so used to this constant discomfort that she wore the anxiousness like hand-me-down jacket. Familiar.

At least it was an afternoon of balmy warmth, the sunlight somewhat scattered by the clouds of dandelion seed and transparent-winged insects in the air. The day was close, thick and heavy, weighing down on her tired body with a resistance that made it difficult to move. The added weight of Kenny's death on her shoulders, like a fresh weeping wound, made each step feel impossible. It was like wading through soup.

"Clem?" AJ whined. Clementine turned on the cliff path once she heard his footsteps cease.
"We're almost there buddy. I promise." She managed a weak smile in his general direction, although she couldn't meet his eyes. The truth was, Clementine had no idea where there was. There was just not here. AJ nodded, not quite believing Clementine's half-hearted lie, but accepting it for her sake. He tugged the baseball cap down further onto his head, squashing it onto the mess of curly hair that poked out from beneath.
"We need to cut your hair again soon, Alvie." Clementine noted, trying to stay positive. She could feel the sunburn stinging on her face, her shoulders, her back.
"Why do I have to have short hair all the time?" Alvin moaned. She hoped he wasn't about to have a tantrum.
"Because," Clementine said, "a long time ago, when I was a little girl, a man called Lee told me I had to so I could survive better."
"Who's Lee?" AJ asked, curiosity piqued. Clementine sighed, pushing some stray curls away from her face.
"Lee was like… my papa. He was friends with our Kenny a long time ago. But I don't wanna talk about him okay? It makes me sad." AJ nodded solemnly.
"It's okay. I know about papas. Like Papa Kenny. Papas make me sad too."

They continued to walk well into the afternoon, occasionally stopping for water or a moment of respite in the sanctuary of the shade. She was unsure where this path lead, but every once in a while, she would catch a glimpse of what looked like a lighthouse above the treetops. That was her goal for today: reach the lighthouse. Everything was riding on this— her life, Alvin's life. Although they had started walking when the absolute blackness of the night began to fade to a silver-grey, Clementine feared that they were making no progress at all. She couldn't tell if they had gotten any closer to the lighthouse in the last five minutes or even the last hour. As the sun began to slip down the horizon, Clementine grew worried. If they didn't arrive before dark, there was no way they would survive the night. In a moment of panic, she grabbed AJ's hand and broke into a light jog up the path. Can't be far now. Can't be far. Please, don't be far.

She almost cried with the relief of reaching the clifftop, but AJ's lip would always quiver when hers did, and he hadn't quite mastered the art of silent tears yet. They had made it by a hair— it seemed that just as the night began to envelop them, the trees began to thin, even small signposts and informative maps had begun to pop up. The lighthouse loomed above them, solemn, grey, yet inviting against the rapidly darkening night sky. There was the remnants of a bench, rotted and broken at the edge of the cliff, and a collection of rocks at the base of the incline that had perhaps once been a fire pit. The the faint, sweet smell of rotting seaweed drifting up from the bay below mingled with the silvery evening mist, and from the very lip of the precipice a wide expanse of sandy shore could be seen, curving round with the coastline and out of sight. A small shack painted white, roof entirely collapsed, lay crumbling at the foot of the lighthouse. It was covered in graffiti, the playful drawings and unskilfully splattered text a painful reminder of the past; graffiti was a crime and murder was unthinkable.

Clementine knelt down, placing both hands on AJ's shoulders to get his full attention.
"Go and hide next to that hut, okay? If anything comes near you, shout for me as loud as you can. I won't be long. Do not move. Understand?"
"Yeah." He whispered, his voice quavering slightly as he spoke. His eyebrows knotted together in worry, but he regarded Clementine with the kind of unconditional, boundless trust that only a child was capable of.
"That's my brave little man." Clem reassured him, stroking his cheek before straightening up. Alvin cautiously made his way to the shack, and crouched against a crumbling half-wall, his tiny hands balled into tiny shaking fists.

Slowly, Clementine turned to the door, knocking gently on the rusted metal. When there was no reply, she turned the handle with a creak. Paint flaked away into her palm as she removed it from the doorknob, the hinges creaking ominously as it opened. Gingerly, she put one foot over the threshold, hand on her gun, when she heard a distinct click from above. Her head snapped up, and immediately she was met with a flash of metal and a pair of steady blue eyes over the barrel of a loaded gun.
"Back the fuck up." The woman hissed, her voice low, threatening. She was stood in the shadow of the stairwell, her features unreadably grey. Clementine raised her hands slowly, in surrender.
"We don't want trouble—"
"We?" She spat venomously.
"Please, he's just a kid. I swear, it's just him and me." Clementine pleaded, glancing furtively at AJ who was crouching as he was told, oblivious to the fact that she was being held at gunpoint. The woman's steely gaze flickered for a moment, her eyes momentarily softening, before her expression closed in on itself again.
"What do you want?" She hissed.
"We just need shelter, just for one night. Please. He'll die without me. We'll both die out there. Please." Clementine was begging now, trying her hardest to keep the tears that were brimming in her eyes from spilling onto her cheeks. The mixture of her exhaustion, stress, and near-constant paranoia formed a dangerous cocktail of emotion that she had held in for too long. The loss of Kenny had hit her hard, and AJ harder. She couldn't be weak. Not now. She had to look after him now.
"How can I trust you?" The woman inquired from the shadows, although her voice had lost its edge.
"Please, I wouldn't put his life at risk like this if I didn't have to." Clem's voice broke at the end of her sentence, and from his hiding place, Alvin heard her distress. He came rushing up to her like a bullet from a gun.
"Clemmie!" He shrieked, throwing himself in front of her with a conviction that both instilled fear and pride in Clementine. He glowered at the woman above with too much hatred for such a small boy.
"Don't make my Clemmie cry." He shouted, although his lip was quivering. To his credit, he didn't move away from Clementine as he began to sob. The woman was taken aback, her gun lowering slowly but her eyes remaining trained on the intruders.
"Fine," she growled, "come in. And bolt the fucking door behind you." She waited for both Clementine and AJ to pass her before turning and marching up the stairs herself, taking several steps at a time. Clementine struggled to keep pace, especially with AJ clinging to her hand like a comfort blanket.

There was another metal door at the top of the coiling spiral staircase, although it was notably less rusted. Clementine reached it after the woman, and pushed it open with a grunt, AJ still clutching her hand. She stepped inside, and in the dim light Clementine could now make out the woman's features. Her face was sharp, pointed, but somehow soft, with slanting blue eyes that made the subject of her glare shrink away. She looked tired, bags under her eyes like bruises, the corners of her mouth turned downwards into a permanent scowl. Clementine didn't pay much attention to this, however. Who wasn't exhausted in this world? Her hair, stuffed under a black beanie even in the sweltering heat, was barely visible. Strands of silvery-blue and lilac hair poked out from underneath the wool. It looked like fading dye— yet another reminder of the way things used to be.

The woman shrugged off her jacket, revealing a bright tattoo curling around her right arm as she sat down on an overturned crate. The room itself was littered with them, some full of blankets, some with bottles of water. Broken glass was swept into a large plastic bucket where a window and shattered, cardboard taped haphazardly over the gap left in the glass. The half-walls were painted a chalky white that left a fine dust on anything that touched them, including the small pile of bedding that was pushed against the curved wall, a backpack and a half-empty bottle of some kind of alcohol. It was almost comfortable.

"I'm Chloe. Mi casa su casa and all that. But seriously, touch any of my stuff and I will break your fucking arms." She said gruffly. Clementine began to wonder if they would've been better finding somewhere else, feeling the uneasiness radiating from Chloe as if it was tangible.
"I'm Clementine," she said anyway, "and this is Alvin Junior. We call him AJ for short."
"We?" Chloe asked, raising an eyebrow, "So there's more of you?"
"I—" Clementine began, but her sentence was cut off abruptly as she bit back a sob. With looking after AJ, she hadn't really had time to mourn Kenny. It had been building up for a week now. Chloe looked confused, wary, defensive as she waited for Clementine's answer.
"Papa Kenny went to see Katjaa and Duck." Alvin muttered quietly, parroting what Clementine had told him, despite the fact that he didn't know who these people were. Chloe frowned.
"He just abandoned you guys? You're fucking kids, for God's sake—"
"Kenny died." Clementine snapped, swiping her hand across her face and looking up with a glower.
"Oh."
"Yeah. Also, don't swear in front of Alvin."
"It's my house."
"He's my kid." Clementine scowled.
"Aren't you a little… young to have a kid this age?"
"I'm 16. And he's not my son. I just look after him." Clementine seemed unwilling to pursue the subject, so Chloe let it drop. An uncomfortable silence hung over their heads as the evening wore on.

Night had fallen quickly, the sun slipping down the sky and behind the horizon, surrendering to the dim light of the moon. The blackness, seemingly impenetrable, was littered with thousands of stars, dashed and divided across the night sky. There was a ring around the moon, a pale, yellowy reflection of light in the clouds, and Clementine remembered reading once that it meant a sign of trouble not far behind— not that was ever too distant now. Sometimes, she could feel the impending doom following her like a shadow: omnipresent, ceaseless, implacable.

"Are you… alone? I mean, do you have a group, or…" Clementine trailed off, gazing out across the bay even though there wasn't much to see in the all-encompassing darkness. AJ lay curled beside her in a pile of blankets, sleeping as deeply as he had in weeks. The small patch of moonlight filtering through the grimy glass and onto his face didn't seem to bother him.
"We… yeah. I have a group." The candlelight flickered, casting shadows across Chloe's face until her expression was unreadable. They were both whispering, partly in an effort not to rouse Alvin from his slumber, and partly because neither of them wanted to shatter the fragile peace and tranquility that the still night offered.
"What happened?" Clementine probed cautiously.
"I— ah, fuck— why am I telling you this? Why should I tell you this?" Chloe turned her face away, her voice cold, her cheek glistening in the flickering orange light with tear tracks. Clementine pretended not to notice.
"You don't have to tell me."
"No, no, it's fine," she sniffed, swiping away her tears with her arm, "I was with my… uh… partner. Her name was Max. We got separated about a month ago and I'm pretty sure she's— anyway. I found Alex and David maybe three or four weeks back. They're out hunting for supplies right now, but they should be back soon." She said, glancing outside in a way that told Clementine that soon meant four hours ago.
"Yeah. They're probably hiding out somewhere safe for the night." She offered with a grimace, neither of them believing her words.
"Yeah. Yeah, you're right." Chloe said with a finality, convincing herself that this was the absolute truth. "I'll take the first watch, y'know, in case they come back later tonight. You should sleep." Chloe said, smiling halfheartedly at Clementine in the dim light.
"Ok. Thanks, Chloe. Wake me up when we need to switch." Clem replied, pulling back the covers around AJ to slip between the blankets. His eyes fluttered at the sudden drop in temperature, but Clementine shushed him gently, a placing a warm hand on his head. He slowly drifted back to sleep, his breathing becoming shallow and even again. She hoped he was having nice dreams.

When Clementine awakened, the sun was still resolutely below the horizon; the moon was low, almost dipping below the curve of the earth as if the sea were about to swallow it whole. She felt the heady pull of her dreams as she broke free of the clutches of sleep, slowly remembering the events of the previous day. Chloe sat motionless on the overturned crate, almost exactly as Clementine had left her. She was rigid, static, her shoulders hunched with defeat and sorrow, but still stubbornly waiting, loyal as a dog.
"Chloe," Clementine whispered, propping herself up on her elbow, "why didn't you wake me?" Chloe started, surprised by the sudden speech after hours of mind-numbing silence, but she quickly recovered.
"You looked like you needed the rest, kid."
"I'm not a kid." Clementine scowled, somehow managing to coax out a weak chuckle from her new friend.
"I guess I am only three years older, huh?" Chloe teased, smiling like she was afraid that a grin too wide would crack her face. Clementine was saddened by this. Chloe seemed like the type of person that used to smile a lot more before the outbreak— those people were few and far between now. Even rarer were the ones that somehow still managed to crack jokes.
"You should sleep a little. I'll wake you if Alex and David get back, ok?" Clementine said, standing up slowly so as not to disturb AJ. Chloe simply nodded, finally surrendering to the exhaustion that had taken hold of her body. She leant back against the wall, closed her eyes, and was asleep within minutes.

It was easily nine in the morning, at least, when Clementine heard a feeble knock at the iron door below. Normally, she wouldn't have noticed such a subtle sound, but her ears had become accustomed to the silence of the lighthouse, and even barely audible noises were enough to set her on edge. She shook Chloe awake as gently as possible, but their was an urgency in her voice.
"Chloe." she hissed, shaking harder when Chloe simply groaned in response. "Chloe—"
The knock sounded again, louder this time. Chloe jolted awake.
"They're back. Holy shit." She got up quickly, taking the steps three at a time, and reached the bottom within the minute.
"Alex, David—" She began as the door swung open, but her sentence caught in her throat once she processed what she was seeing. In the doorway stood a young woman, no older than 25, covered in blood. She had short, black hair that curled softly, streaked with grey despite her age, and large, brown eyes that were somehow both strikingly passionate and expressionless at the same time. Her jaw was sharp, her chin pointed, and her mouth was set in a hard line. From what Clementine could tell, she was on the verge of breaking down completely.
"Alex…" Chloe said softly, bewildered. Alex stepped inside the lighthouse and bolted the door behind her before allowing herself a moment of weakness. She tilted her head back against the rusting metal an closed her eyes, taking a deep, steadying breath. When she opened her eyes again, she was disconcertingly serene. She met Chloe's worried gaze with an unblinking stare of her own.
"We were swarmed. A whole fucking horde of those things, I— I tried, we tried, we almost made it but then—" the calm she had possessed a moment ago had evaporated.
"Then?" Chloe asked gently, already knowing the answer.
"Then David… he tripped over this goddamn floorboard, and they got him. Right on the ankle. He kicked them off and we carried on running, but— oh God— we carried on running and we made it to safety, fianlly, finally I remember thinking, but I didn't even fucking know. He told me to shoot him. Told me I couldn't leave him like this, that I couldn't let him turn. I had to… I had to shoot my fiancé in the head. They're coming, Chloe, they followed me. They're gonna kill us all now." Alex finished. She had descended to tears by the end of her retelling, and let them drip off her chin freely. Chloe was unresponsive. For a few moments, the only sound was Alex's echoing sobs, bouncing off of the walls as if there were four of her, weeping in unison. She slid to the floor, hands threaded in her hair, shoulders shaking. It took a moment, but Chloe snapped out of her stupor and emerged from her brief introspection an entirely different person from the one Clementine had previously seen.
"Alex." She said flatly. Alex looked up, large eyes bloodshot, tears still streaming down her cheeks.
"What?" She half yelled, half sobbed, furious at Chloe's intrusion.
"Get up." Chloe demanded dispassionately. Alex's expression flickered from hurt to anger in a matter of seconds. She stood up, but the unadulterated rage emanating from her body in waves made Clementine shrink back uncomfortably. Alex had not yet noticed her, or hadn't cared enough to ask.
"You don't fucking know what this is like, Chloe. You don't know what this kind of loss is like!" She shouted. Chloe flinched. Outside, the groans of the oncoming walkers drew nearer, attracted to the noise they were creating.
"You think that I don't know," she muttered, her voice low, threatening, "you think none of us know. Everyone has lost someone, Alex! Every single fucking person! Don't think you're special because your boyfriend died. Guess what? So did my girlfriend! Guess what? So did my mom! Guess what? So did Clementine's whole family!" Chloe shouted. Alex glanced at Clementine, noticing her for the first time since she arrived. "Her whole family died, and she's just a kid. You're not the only one who has to suffer. Get it together. We have to get out of here." Chloe finished coldly. She was strangely unsympathetic, but Clementine assumed it was just how she dealt with loss. It seemed to help Alex somehow. Her rage was fleeting, and her shoulders slumped in a mixture of defeat and acceptance.
"You're right. We have to go. I'm sorry I got mad, I know you were just trying to protect us all—" Alex began, beginning to cry again, but Chloe cut her off.
"Now isn't the time for apologies," She muttered, starting up the metal staircase, "I'm sorry too though." She tacked on quickly. The infected had begun to gather outside, pounding at the door. The bolt creaked.
"Upstairs. Now." Chloe ordered. Alex and Clementine didn't argue.

When they reached the upper room, AJ was awake and frantically searching for Clementine. The pure relief he felt at the sight of her was visible, and he ran up to her as if she had been gone for months rather than mere minutes. He sat on the floor beside Clementine's overturned crate cross-legged, holding her hand and listening avidly to the grown up conversation going on.
"I'm Clem, this is AJ. I guess we're part of your group for now, but it was only meant to be a temporary thing."
"I'm Alex." She nodded in reply as she spoke. She had somehow found it within herself to hold it together until they were safe, and Clementine was almost impressed by her emotional detachment.
"I vote we wait it out." Chloe said, quickly turning the conversation back to the problem at hand.
"I second that," added Alex, "there's no way we're getting through a group that large in one piece. I can't watch someone else die, especially now that we have a kid in the group." AJ's eyes darted from one girl to the next at his mention, suddenly interested in this Alex lady. Gripping his hand tighter, Clementine spoke up.
"I know a way we can get out now. If you trust me." She said, gaze flickering between Chloe and Alex as she spoke. Chloe leaned into the circle, one eyebrow raised in disbelief.
"How?" She asked.
"You're not gonna like it."

A/N: Hope you enjoyed that! I'm really loving writing this story, so I'm excited to finally share it with you all. This is literally all of my favourite characters in an apocalypse setting and I'm not even sorry. If you have any character requests I will happily do them but they will most likely die immediately unless I already planned for them to fit into the plot.

I don't have a lot of frequent readers so if you know me, hi again, and if you don't I hope that you'll stick around. Please don't be mean to me! My writing isn't always The Shit (as much as I like to think it is) so I can handle constructive criticism but if ur rude I might cry :( I am a fragile little flower do not crush my delicate self-esteem thank u

Sorry for any spacing errors/punctuation errors. When I copy/paste this from Pages to the work text box, I lose all of the formatting including paragraph breaks, new lines, italics etc. If there is a huge wall of text with no paragraphs, it was probably a mistake :)
Until next time ;)
-Vulpixels xoxo