Hey guys,
I just finished watching the first part of the fourth season of The Walking Dead and it prompted that short story out of me. There is the possibility of further chapters - then, of course, with some of the series' characters.
"If I Ever Leave This World Alive" - Flogging Molly
If I Ever Leave this World Alive
It was in a small circle of light in an abandoned bar. Chairs sat upside down on tables that were pushed to the walls from which the tapestry came down and stains of water showed. It smelled of mould and spilled alcohol, yet the group of people sitting on blankets on the floor was as sober as one can possibly be, in every sense of the word.
They were a group of five, sharing hard bread and passing around a bottle of filthy water. A few hours ago, they had been nine, but four of them had not made it as far as to the town's border before they got killed.
In this new world, three hours were enough to get used to death and the pain that goes along with it; the grudge is being skipped automatically, as is the question why it has to be the way it is. Nevertheless, shock and grief stay, although they are mingled up with a sort of shameful relief of having survived, of being able to keep breathing for just a few more hours to come.
In the middle of their little circle, a small device has been placed by one of the three women. She was four years older than the one on her left, a blonde girl with grey-blue eyes that wore a small, cynical smile which made her older and somehow sadder than she actually would have seemed.
The other one, a woman of age with greyish hair, raised an eyebrow as the woman in the middle, the one with the device, pressed the play button.
"Won't it attract their attention?"
The other one shook her head slightly as she turned down the tune until the music that came out was barely audible, only for them to hear in their close, intimate silence.
Irish folk.
If I ever leave this world alive
I'll thank for all the things you did in my life
If I ever leave this world alive
I'll come back and sit beside your feet to-night
"That's not macabre, not even in the slightest", said one of the men. He was around thirty and had thick, black hair and eyes as dark as the night, although they sparkled with humour in the flickering candlelight.
The woman that put on the music hushed him and gestured him to listen.
If I ever leave this world alive
The madness that you feel will soon subside
So in a word don't shed a tear
I'll be here when it all gets weird
Hey I may never leave this world alive
The song ended in a fast, contagious rhythm, that, in a time long gone and this bar filled with people, would have brought cheerfulness, probably ecstatic grins filled with hope and reconciliation of past's horrors.
"All of us are goin' to leave this world very much alive", the elderly woman said.
"Yeah", said the black-haired, "and I doubt you'd want us to join you then."
The woman that put on the song – she wore a parka of fading green, which was crimson with blood on the upper arm and left part of her shoulder – shook her head again, this time more vigorously. She wanted to say something, but the young blonde spoke before she got the chance.
"That's not at all what it's about, you fools", she said. Her eyes lay upon the parka woman with a glint in them that came close to admiration.
"Yeah", the black-haired man said, "we got it, Shakespeare. It's about never-ending love. Like in every other fucking love song on earth."
The smile crept back on the blonde's face, but it was not cynical at all. Only sad.
"It's about hope, dumbass. About getting on with your life. And 'bout how the dead accompany us, and how their memory keeps us going even when we think we can't deal with this shit any longer."
"Watch your tongue", the older woman said in a tone that was far from scolding.
The black-haired raised his eyebrows.
"Fucking well the dead accompany us. They're like everywhere."
Parka woman raised her head at this, looking the black-haired straight in the eye.
"You're right", she said. "You're completely right."
"Thank you."
"But can I listen to this song now, please, without your interruptions, before the battery of my player goes dead? There's not much else to do, is there?"
Her voice was trembling a bit as she spoke. It could have been fear or exhaustion or anger, probably all three of them at once. Yet the mixture of it made her sound tired, and in the light that the candles provided her face was pale, surrounded by this hair that shimmered so intensely and appeared black in the gloominess of the room.
The older woman's eyes met the black-haired and transported a warning. So the man said nothing any longer; instead he kept listening, his lips pressed tightly together. Aware of, like all of them, the rattling noises on the outside of the bar. Of the hands that banged against dirty windows. Of moans of hunger, coming from deep down, from the hollowness of decaying bodies.
Of the herd, containing hundreds of these living dead, demanding excess into their circle, into their flesh.
If I ever leave this world alive