BLIGHT SQUALL: HOW LITTLE ASSKICKER HAD FARED EVER SO AUDIBLY IN THE POST-APPLESAUCE
By Quillon42
It was not so much walking but rather really skulking that either the dead or the living was perpetrating by this point. Survivors and suppurators alike were striving for some kind of subsistence along the barren byway just less than a hundred miles from the long-since neutered nation's capital.
Somehow, by afternoon's expiration, the rummagers under the reign of Rick Grimes managed to make their way to a forsaken semblance of a barn, all desperate for rest and tantalized not only by the façade of security that their frail farmhouse had seemed to pose, what with only a barely barrable rickety double door, but also with the apparent imposture of alimentation presented by a bevy of ostensible water bottles, all "from a friend" but containing who knows what within.
At the feet of the sullen stragglers lay the brightest jot of joy and hope for all. Despite the dismal mood of everyone else concerned, the baby Judith seemed her usual, only mildly-irritable self, she content with a jar of some kind of processed victual and serene otherwise. The remainder of the retinue, adults all, yearned for something measurably more substantial in order to satisfy all the anxieties erupting inside.
There seemed no time or energy remaining to tend to the turmoil inside, in any case. Each of these beleaguered backroads tarriers was too taxed to dwell on the details of drink and grub for the gullet otherwise. Yea, the pangs of hunger yielded to the spur of slumber, and soon the grim yet still-gregarious Georgians settled down into the dust of their shoddy shelter to rest.
What ensued for the Grimesites was more of a catnap than a complete night's sleep, though, as
[THRAKRASSSHHHHHH]
lightning laid across and into the arid evening sky, the unsettling lightshow heralding a deluge of dreary rain and deadly raiders unto the soon-to-be-brashly-beset barn.
First on his feet was that surly swamp rat and future Silent Hills resident (in another life of sorts, anyway) Daryl Dixon. Sensing that his crusty clique was not entirely alone on these grounds as of now, he hauled up and stood stock onto his soiled soles, sauntering towards the dodgy double door to satisfy an impulse to look outside a second.
Glancing outside at the gander of ghouls converging en masse upon the makeshift crib, Daryl flung a look back frantically, he finding most of his mob asleep but soon, in another second Sasha and the last of the Greene Farm girls got to their feet as well, they lending their backs in buttressing up against those incoming outliers of life who were collecting up outside their confines.
Upon the expiration of another several instants, an entirety of individuals on our side of existence had formed up against the farm annex's front door. Daryl and Sasha and Maggie and Glenn and Rick and Michonne and Gabriel and Abraham and Rosita and Eugene and Carol and Tara and Noah all nudging up against the edge of their ever-delicate edifice.
Last to join them here, at least in this reality, was perennial adolescent asspain Carl (who aged like five years in the last two seasons). The abnormally-aging boy carefully set down his indefinitely-newborn sister (who aged like five days in the last two seasons), her fearsomely capacious infant face sucking in its cheeks and choking out sobs at being abandoned even for the merest of moments.
The babe had reason to bawl indeed, as in this rendition of the Roamer Revolution, all the Deputy's disciples were mauled, munched upon, and moved on over to the side of the putrefied. Despite cardinal efforts on the part of the surviving Peach Staters to keep back those baleful claws and choppers of the ambulatory eroded, the latter lathered itself over the former in the churning cataclysm that overtook the area.
Yea, in the shadows and flashes of the furious, freak thunderstorm, Merle's younger brother was masticated brutally by malicious Biters. Sasha was slashed apart by salacious Skin Eaters. Glenn was gobbled horribly by hungry Geeks. Carol, Carl, and so many other C-Words on that contentious team were chomped into by the cantankerous croaked.
And paranoid powerhouse Rick himself was tread upon most terrifyingly by woeful Walkers.
As the deathbound deputy's essence ebbed, he could swear he saw all-too-familiar spirits in the lightning-frayed foreground.
"It's time to come home, my love," said the once-eerily-looming and now-ebulliently-loving Lori, as she spread her white-robed arms openly.
"That's right, man," said the hammer-hitting Tyreese, he raising the blunt weapon as a salute. "We're not walking, or surviving...just resting."
Then two too-cute tykes, visiting Rick just as they did Sasha's sibling.
"It doesn't hurt!" reassured Lizzie, her arm around her own sib, inexplicably sharing the love despite what happened between the two at the Grove. Indeed, Mika now, while sharing a slightly wavering smile with the loony Liz:
"Yeah, it doesn't hurt...like it did when my sister here completely stabbed me in the fucking chest."
In the wake of all of these illusions and annihilations, a lone child on the dingy dirt cried, cried its eyes out, cried its heart apart as it saw, sensed the evisceration of all who helped to usher her through this torpid thaumatrope of terror that was Georgia at one time, years ago by now.
The insistent intensity of the suckling's squeals drew the droves of incoming ex-humans all towards her very plank in the shack, the dead desiring dessert now after their decadent, deluxe dinner.
One unperson galumphed up just now to that cruel corner, he hovering over with hoary, gory jowls, he seeking to stick a sallow palm upon the baby girl now bereft of guardians of any kind.
Beneath him in turn the infant, looking up aghast, gazing blankly now into the pupilless peepers of an evil who sought to ingest her, the thing's pallid teeth parting for this tenderest of human treats.
The Deputy's diminutive daughter, she wasn't aware of very many things in this desolate, dangerous world…but somewhere inside her infantile id, and literally in the hands of this horrid Lurker, she knew what it was she had to do.
"WAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!"
The sudden shock of the scream made the monster stop a second, made it freeze in place.
"WAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!"
It was an alarum of agony and anger, the likes to which no necrotic nommer had ever been exposed. Indeed, within the depths of this dark barn, amidst the remains of so many who had endured the reigns of Greene and Governor and Gareth alike, upon the mitts of this carious creature, the fetus who would be food, she fought back in the most vociferous way imaginable.
"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!"
Then for the first time ever in the annals of the undead, a figure of fester had forgone his meaty morsel. Shakily the sentry of spoil set the babe back down, the creepy carcass coursing along and away on fetid feet, the tough-ass toddler-to-be waving her infant arms furiously in the air as she settled once again onto her back in the soil.
"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!"
Looming curiously over, the other undead crinkled brows at one another sans consciousness. A lady of Lurk this time endeavored a second to retrieve the rugrat anew.
But
"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!"
another instant and this fiend too found it futile to engage the enfant ever so terrible, she opting instead to amble along for any other victuals from the victims already overtaken.
Eventually the dead departed from the barn without dessert, their sullen stares streaking across to the exit of the decrepit edifice, they leaving behind a scaled-down soldier whose squalls within these walls, amongst these blighted crops and these blasted lands, was worlds worse than the storming roars all along the evening ether.
EPILOGUE
It wasn't until the following morning that the infant's form was found.
With tears tripping down his cheeks, that water-bottle-carrying courier who might have escorted an assortment of survivors to an at-least-somewhat Safe Zone, he now surveyed the slaughter surrounding him.
A katana saturated with the blood of dead and alive alike, and cluttered amongst the cut-off arms of an expired, eviscerated pioneer of this now-putrescent purlieu. A crossbow crowning the head of one horribly-hushed and thoroughly-threshed hayseed.
The derby of a deputy, draped upon the dome of a bisected boy who was heretofore growing up too fast in more ways than one.
Emanating from Aaron's eyes now was more aqueous fluid than what might have torn down the throats of these forsaken stragglers, had they only survived this infinitely-iniquitous night. He looked around, desperately, searching for some trace of still-extant existence, some sign of life to suggest that his quest wasn't all entirely in vain.
Nothing. All these people, put down and devoured, diced up into so many tidbits that their turning wasn't even a thought that crossed the brain of this barging-in Alexandrian.
Sighing heartfully, Aaron himself turned—to depart the death-dappled locale with his heart hollow and his morale in the muck.
Just then
"Ennhhh…"
The sound, the utterance of what sounded like something…someone so unlike the undead entered the ears of the steadfast explorer.
With fervor Aaron flung himself back into the shabby structure, he delving into the depths of so many unreturning renditions of pulped-up Peach Staters.
"ENNHHH…"
This second, slight vocalization made the man recognize the space from which it sounded. With ever more vigor Aaron sorted through, uncovered at last the unintentional hiding place of a papoose who was ever so in need of a new tribe.
Just seeing the child, she still utterly intact amidst all this vicious vivisection, made the Alexandrite shine once again with elation. Scooping her up carefully off the weary wooden floor, Aaron carried her carefully along, placing her down precariously upon a small footstool not smeared over with undead slay.
He brought back his knapsack seconds later as the tiniest Grimes looked on innocently, she unable to manage any oral emissions other than the aforementioned "Ennhs," the infant ever so hoarse from her decibel-laden defeat of the dead the evening previous.
"Here," offered Aaron, he motioning with a certain sweetened spoonful towards the maw of the tenacious maiden. "Goodness knows you're much more suited to eat this stuff than I certainly am."
Avidly the babe attacked spoon after spoon of the sauce, she sated by this processed sustenance yet still famished for far more besides—the persistent traveler near to her could see this in her eyes.
"I'm…I'm so sorry…about all of this, baby.
"…
"Let me take you, far from here, to a place where you can thrive, and grow, and call home."
And so it was that Aaron absconded from the barn with the bairn in hand, she still keen for nourishment of so many kinds, all of which would be provided for by the one bearing her, as well as by his loyal lover. Indeed, it was into Eric's arms that Aaron flew next, the two adults holding one another ardently at seeing one another again.
"Come on," the haggard herald said after the two relented from their ravenous embrace. "We can name her on the way back."
In the driver's seat to the Safe Zone RV, that most audacious and audible of Asskickers gurgled and gooed, she lolling on the cushion and gazing absently out the giant window nearby. So it would be that this last surviving Grimes would grow to become one of the brightest, most brilliant stars of Alexandria, she to star most specifically in a My Two Dads that would be even more postapocalyptic than anything ever involving Paul Reiser. (And this author, as always, just dated himself ever so dreadfully with that antiquated, remote reference).