I do not own, nor do I profit from anything having to do with "The Walking Dead, be it TV show, or comics. I am writing this for personal reasons only.

In The Nick of Time

Chapter 2 - Girl

She had been born Gaelynn Isabella Alexander, she'd had a difficult life from the get go. She was removed from her parents home when she was 13. The nurse at school noticed she was turning up in the sickroom far too often, but she did not seem to be faking, she would throw up during about a third of the visits. She was pale and looked as if she never slept. The nurse was concerned enough to send the young girl to a councilor to see if she could get her to talk about any issues she might be having at home that would cause a nervous stomach and a lack of sleep. What the councilor found was that she was being sexually abused by her step-father and had been for about two years. Now the girl was pregnant. She was placed in foster care, agreed to an abortion and stayed with the family until she was 17.

She met Tristan at the bowling alley near her foster home and they hit it off immediately. He was 16 and gay. He was teased and bullied relentlessly at school. They both were so broken and damaged inside that they felt as if they were one person instead of two. They could predict what the other was going to say moments before they opened their mouth. They introduced each other to their favorite bands, movies, books, and found they shared the same taste in a great deal of different things.

After one especially difficult day at school where Tristan was beaten so badly his right eye has swollen shut and they both thought his nose would never stop bleeding, they decided to run away together. She thought it could not be any worse then her current situation, right? Little did she know the world as she knew it was about to change forever, and yeah, it turned out things could get worse, a lot worse.

She and Tristan had managed to survive by hiding in empty houses and scrounging whatever they could to eat. He left their current squatters haven, saying he was going to find some cigarettes or die trying. Didn't he know, when the world turns to shit, you just don't say things like that? Sure enough, he returned so late that she had almost given him up for dead. She cried and hit him in the stomach at the same time, then hugged him close. Vowing not to ever let him leave alone again.

It was time to move on again, the area she was in was getting more and more dangerous each day. They both jammed as much food, and water into their backpacks and headed out early the next morning. Things seemed safer for some reason in the early hours of the day. They had passed out of the subdivision they had been traveling through and into the woods that not only surrounded it, but covered the next several hundred miles. Had they known this, they may have headed into a different direction.

Three days into their journey, they came across a lone man, who was standing next to a 3 wheeler and chopping wood. When he saw the two young people, he called them over and introduced himself as Russell. He said he was out gathering wood for his family who were back at a campsite about 100 or more yards away. He seemed friendly and pulled out his wallet to show them pictures of two beautiful little girls and an attractive woman, whom he referred to as the joys of his life.

"You two should join us, my wife would love another female to talk too, she gets so bored with just having me and the girls around all the time." Russell suggested, adding " You know, there is safety in numbers and you kids should not be wandering around alone in the woods."

They looked at each other, shrugged their shoulders and agreed, seemed like a good idea and maybe the woman had real food and cooked. It has been a very long time since their last hot meal.

Russell finished cutting the wood, and climbed onto the 3 wheeler and rode it slowly in the direction he told them his campsite was. They had no trouble keeping up, he made sure of that. Once they had topped a small hill that was to lead them down to the campsite, he stopped for a moment, saying that the engine was missing or making an odd sound. He dismounted the machine, reached into a large sack that hung from the back of the seat and pulled out small wooden club. Before either Gaelynn or Tristan could react, he knocked Gaelynn out with the club, she was out like a light, not knowing if Tristan had been able to get away or not.

When she came too, she did so slowly, with the sounds muffled at first then growing clearer. She did not like these sounds, they were not good sounds and she wanted to stop hearing them, stop hearing sounds that brought back horrible memories. Her hands were tied behind her back and a hood had been placed over her head, making it impossible for her to cover her ears to shut out the noise. She would have screamed, but her mouth had something stuffed partially inside and kept her from making anything more than a groan or sob.

The sounds reminded her when her foster mother worked to tenderizing a large steak or other piece of meat. She would hit it over and over with a mallet kind of thing, making this smacking squishy noise that was unpleasant to hear even in a kitchen full of light. She could only imagine what Russell was doing and prayed it didn't involve Tristan, her very best friend, her only friend in this entire dead world.

She could hear that Russell was breathing heavily with the exertion of his efforts. Then suddenly, the sound stopped. She was so relieved. Then she heard a soft fumbling sound, the same one she had heard right before Russell had turned to her and Tristan with an object in his hand and struck both of them, knocking them unconscious. That sound had been the beginning of this nightmare she found herself in.

There was a new sound now, not soft and fumbling, not a wet smacking sound, but a guttural gagging sound. One she had never heard before. This sound frightened her more than any of the others. She could smell a coppery odor fill the air, and that smell, she knew. It was blood. She had bled often at the hands of her step-father, and there was no mistaking the smelled of blood, a lot of blood. She wanted to think Russell was dressing a deer, or some other animal. The fact that she had not heard one sound from Tristan worried her but then again, she was unable to make much noise herself, so she held onto the hope that Tristan was lying nearby, as frightened as she was. She wished she could find him, hold his hand, and comfort him as he would comfort her.

She had never wished for something more in her entire life.