Author's Corner

Slightly faster update this time because I've been away, so I felt like giving you more. ;)

RUNNING BLIND

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Beth had been grateful for the light provided by the flashlight at first . . . Well for a few seconds at least before a walker had come lunging at her from around a corner because it had seen the light.

The appliance and axe fell from her hands as the walker caught hold of her shoulders and threw her up against one of the lockers. She thrashed against it, trying to push its snapping jaws away from her neck, before Morgan swung the axe into the thing's head just as its teeth were about to lock into her flesh, killing it.

It sagged against her before falling to the ground at her feet, black blood pooling from the wound in its head where the axe had hit.

"Thanks." she breathed heavily.

He half-smiled and handed her back the bloody weapon. "Don't mention it," he said with a shake of his head, as he bent to pick the flashlight up too and point its light down another corridor.

They walked down another hallway, several bodies collapsed at the sides, with papers and books tossed across the floor in messy piles.

"All that homework sure does seem like a waste now," Beth commented at the sight of all the papers strewn across the floor.

Morgan hummed in agreement, gaze traveling upward to a hole in the ceiling, where broken lights hung by wires, and moisture dripped down from the rotting plaster. The sound of dripping echoed out down the wide corridors, water splashing onto the cool marble of the floor, stretching out into the deafening silence. Drip! Drip! They listened to that silence and painfully loud dripping, senses screaming with alert and Beth's veins running with fire once again.

Like they usually did when something wasn't right.

"Let's keep moving," she said quietly after all while, walking past Morgan and brushing his arm with her fingers. "I don't like this place. Let's get out as soon as we can."

They walked down a few more corridors with flickering lights overhead and creaking from the locker doors. Beth read the signs of the offices they passed, read the names of those who were likely long dead by now. And then they arrived at the teacher's lounge, situated right at the end of the hallway, illuminated by the flickering electric lights and the beam from the torch.

"Could be stuff in there. Wanna check it out?" Morgan asked, and Beth nodded.

"Yeah."

They went and opened the door to the room, wary of any walker that might come flailing out. The metal of the handle was cold, and Beth shivered at the contact. She swung open the door finally and held the axe in her hands, peering into the hauntingly sinister room.

The staffroom office was quiet, gloomy, eerie in fact. Beth felt the uncomfortable shift in the atmosphere the minute she and Morgan entered the room. The air was colder than out in the corridor, thinner, chillier in a way that crept down Beth's spine and forced her to suppress a shudder. But the air was the least of the problem when she sniffed, and her nostrils were flooded with an immensely strong scent of damp and decay.

Morgan must have smelled it too—Beth couldn't see how he possibly could not—because he pressed the sleeve of his coat up over his mouth and frowned. Even with everything happening, and everything she saw . . . The smells were something Beth found she'd never been able to get used to.

And imagined she never would.

Yet also, and though she didn't know why . . . Her gut was screaming at her that something was very, very off. And quite frankly, Beth had grown to trust her gut over time to know that when it acted like this, it usually meant that something was indeed, quite wrong.

"Not much in here is there," she remarked quietly, not wanting to startle anything that might be there with them.

Morgan didn't answer. Nor could she now see him. She resisted the urge to panic and swallowed. Where had he gone?

She wandered around one of the worn leather sofas at the center of the room, and found him on his knees there, staring at something. Beth followed his gaze and was about to ask what was wrong . . . When she saw it.

The source of the foul smell . . .

The reason for Morgan's uncharacteristic drop to the floor . . .

Before them, sprawled out on the tattered rug on the floor, cries broken and limbs painfully thin . . . Was what looked to be a very young boy walker.

Beth felt her heart ache as the pitiful creature lifted its head and made a reach for them, only to no avail as its skinny limbs were far too weak, so it fell in a crumple on the rug once again. It's awful choked groans were shrill and excruciating to hear, as the decaying thing made a reach again and fell.

It was only, or what had been, a little boy. A student of the school, Beth realised from his ragged uniform remains. He must have holed himself up in the teacher's lounge back when the virus started, seeking refuge until someone came for him . . . Only to starve to death, from the looks of his thin, bony form. An awful way to die. A way that she and the others had nearly died that winter when they couldn't find food.

Beth could feel her heart breaking with every hopeless attempt he made at nearing them, as he toppled to the floor again and just groaned that awful cry of death.

She looked to Morgan then, on his knees beside her, body sagging and expression lifeless. Only his dark eyes danced with sorrow, and loss, and heartbreak. Everything Beth had seen in the eyes of her loved ones upon their losses, upon all their losses. And she found herself lowering to the ground so that she was level with the broken man.

"Morgan?" she called, softly, never pushing, because pushing was something you didn't do in a situation like this.

Pushing was something you never did.

"Are you okay?"

He hadn't stuck her as the type to act like this in the presence of a small boy walker. He was too strong for that. Too guarded. So, of course, it was something else. Something weighing him down that he just couldn't put away . . . Alone, that is. He couldn't put it away alone.

". . . My boy . . ."

The words fell from his lips quietly, so quietly Beth almost didn't hear, but they were still audible. He spoke like he was talking for the first time, voice small and words trailing.

"My boy," he said again, eyes swimming with what looked to be tears.

Though Beth knew he would allow none to fall. Men were like that. Never wanting to show their tears, even in the roughest of times.

Daryl had felt great shame on letting his fall in her presence, and she knew he had hated himself then for what he saw as a weakness. But it wasn't a weakness. It was a sign that he was human, that he still cared. Crying showed that you cared, even with the world the way it was. And if bringing yourself to still care in a world like this was seen as a weakness, then what was a strength?

"What about your boy?" Beth asked after another silence from Morgan, whose eyes remained still fixed on the struggling helpless walker. Still never pushing, but sometimes just a certain amount of push was needed.

Just a tiny, gentle push in the right direction. But never a shove.

"This could'a been my boy . . ." he mumbled, "My son could've been like this . . . Alone, afraid . . . Left for dead. He could have . . . He was . . . Until I took care of that for him."

Took care of.

Another silence, and Beth thought that was all he would offer, until he opened his mouth again.

"I shot him . . ." he said, "Killed him because of what he became . . . What he became because of me. Because of me not being able to keep him safe . . ."

". . . You saved him," Beth whispered, and his eyes widened and he finally turned to look at her.

"You saved him," she said again, gaze firm and head nodding slowly. "You may not think so, but you did. You took care of him . . . You were his dad."

The tears glistened brighter in Morgan's eyes and she saw his lip wobbling, but the tears still wouldn't fall, because he would never let them. Beth's heart went out to him in that moment, and she wanted to cry for him. Cry because he wouldn't. But there was something else she could do for him. Something he probably had no one else for back with his son.

She could do this, at least.

"But I'll take care of this," she said with traces of a smile and put her hand on his shoulder. "So you don't have to. Not this time."

She rose to her feet, Morgan's head following her as she did, and made her way over to the crippled walker, red axe in her hand. But then she stopped and looked down at the axe in her hand.

And put it down on the table.

Instead, she reached down into her boot and pulled out the slim bodied bolt, and went to kneel beside the little walker boy.

He made several grabs at her( none ending in success) and Beth stared at the creature with big, wobbly eyes. She gripped the bolt and breathed deeply... Before sinking it down into the walker's temple, killing it as quickly as she could, and watching as it fell to the ground for good this time.

Beth wiped the bloody body of the bolt on her sleeve and squeezed it in her palms.

She was strong, but sometimes, she needed some strength that wasn't hers.

She needed his strength. And this arrow was the closest thing to him she could find. The closest strength to his she had. A strength that she needed, and wasn't afraid to admit to herself.

I need you.

Let me rely on you.

". . . Thank you."

Morgan's breathy choke cut through the air and made Beth jump. She turned back to face him, and he was staring at her from where he sat on his knees, lips curled into a sheer beholden smile. And Beth knew he meant it.

So she didn't say Don't mention it, or Nothin' to it . . . She just smiled and nodded.

"He's with your boy now."

". . . In Heaven? D'ya believe that too?" his mouth trembled, "Does that help?"

". . . I believe . . . I believe that everyone we love is in heaven, an' I hope that they're watchin' over us . . . And that they're at peace."

"I sometimes wonder what it even means to be at peace anymore," he admitted. "Or if there's even such a thing as that pacifying tranquility."

And Beth just watched the sorry, broken man kneeling before from her lift his head to the ceiling and sigh, and blink the forming tears in his eyes away.

"But peace . . ." he continued, "I guess such a thing is heavily desired by mankind. The desire t'lay his head down and rest for the rest of eternity. Heavily desired indeed."

"So is life," Beth added, "Life is heavily desired too."

"Not as much as death these days."

"I don't want death." she argued, "Not anymore . . . I wanna fight, try, live . . . Because there're still things worth fightin' for. Worth living for." Still people left. "And I know that I didn't use to get that but I do now, and I want that."

I want to live.

Morgan's brow furrowed, and he regarded her carefully from where he knelt. "Why are you so confident that that's true?" he asked. "Why do'ya fight so hard for that lone belief?"

She smiled.

". . . Because I believe all life is precious, Morgan."

Precious.

Beth pondered on the meaning of that word as she lifted a white cover from the sofa and draped it over the boy walker's unmoving body. Life is precious, she thought covering him.

It does matter.

Life is precious; a gift. Because it can be stripped away at any given time. Therefore one must fight hard to retain that gift. Fight oh so hard.

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Beth and Morgan had parted ways at a fork in the corridors and ventured in the direction of their separate tasks.

Morgan had let her keep the flashlight, saying he had no real need for it because he was no stranger to darkness, having lived in it for years now. But somehow, Beth sensed that was starting to change. That despite cowering in a dark corner, afraid of the sunlight for so long . . . He was willing to poke out his foot and try ever so slightly, stepping into the light . . .

But without his company, she was now quite alone, and the corridors were long and empty. She pointed the torch down the long hallway and shone the bright beam onto a series of doors at the end. There looked to be what was a medical cross on one of the doors, suggesting it was the pharmacy, and Beth approached it.

But that white cross, beaming metallic in the darkness reminded her of awful things. Of being taken in a car branded with that very symbol. Away from everything left that mattered . . .

Beth walked and stopped just in front of the door with the green lined cross. Her gut was churning again, and the air felt damp and chilly. Faint dripping echoed from down another corridor, one which she was reluctant to explore, mostly because of the distant groaning she could hear coming from it. Hopefully, from the failing plumbing system, she prayed intensely. And not . . .Them.

She tried the door, but had no such luck in getting it open. Damn it. She scowled. Kicking it in was an option, but there was still no way of determining how many threats were in the school building, and Beth didn't want a herd of walkers coming running at the sound. There had to be an easier and quieter way to get inside.

The groans at the other end of the corridor were getting louder, so Beth turned off the flashlight. She tried the door again, thinking that maybe it had just been stuck the first time, but it was still locked solid.

—She really wanted to kick the damned door in that moment.

Trying not to panic over the sound of snarling and groaning that seemed to be getting closer, Beth looked around for something . . . Anything.

And then she saw.

Sagged against a wall corner, collapsed in a crumpled heap . . . Was what looked to be the remains of the school janitor. He was wearing the torn up uniform, and the trolley of cleaning equipment was nearby. And then an thought sparked like a lightbulb in Beth's head . . .

Didn't janitors carry keys?

There was only one way to find out, so she held the axe tightly and made her way over to the body in the corner, steps quiet and breathing laboured. She came to a crouch just in front of the body and studied him for what she was looking for.

There was a set of keys strapped to his waist belt, just like she'd expected. Jackpot.

She reached down for it slowly, eyes trained on the rotting man's face, afraid of him suddenly springing to life as a member of the undead, though he looked quite dead already. But you couldn't afford to take chances anymore. That was another one of the things Beth had learned over time.

She flinched at a particularly loud distant groan and knocked the keys with her thumb. It was only a small clatter thankfully, and the fallen janitor still didn't reanimate.

"Come on . . ." she whispered, making another reach for the keys. "Just a little more . . ."

Just a little further . . .

The set of keys slid off his unbuckled belt and Beth cupped them in her palms. "Got ya." she grinned, and then went back to the door to the pharmacy.

It was when she was stood in front of the locked door again, however, that she realised how many keys there were to try out. There had to be well over a dozen, all different shapes and sizes. She would be here for days trying them all out!

If only she could work out which one was the master keyevery janitor was supposed to have . . . The one Jimmy had stolen to get them into the projection room for a secret makeout session once. She blushed at the memory. Perhaps not the best thing to be thinking about at the time. Oh, poor sweet Jimmy... Torn apart and lost at the farm. Never to be seen again.

The groans from down the corridor were increasing in volume, and Beth began to hear the shuffling of feet. Shoot! She needed to act fast.

One narrow bronze key . . . Nothing. Another smooth silver one . . . Nothing again. This was going to take forever, and the distant snarls were only getting less distant by the minute.

She picked a chunky gold one next. The door remained locked. Then a smaller silver one. Again, nothing each time.

This was getting ridiculous.

Why did schools feel the need to have so many rooms!? She was willing to bet half of these keys were just for private lockers or closets.

If only she knew how to pick locks. She missed Daryl and his lock-picking abilities, and regretted not asking him to teach her. How she'd thought it was a useless skill before was beyond her. It was perfect for situations like these. If only she'd asked him to teach her along with the hunting and tracking lessons . . .

But then again, Beth also thought that if she and Daryl had never been separated, she never would have needed to learn anyway, because he would have been there to do it. She wouldn't have had to rely on her own capability because she'd have him there to rely on.

You can't depend on anybody for anything, right?

I can take care of myself.

But this time she would. So she reached for another key and tried it. Still no luck though, but she didn't give up, she would never give up. Not now. Not ever. Because giving up was for the weak, and Beth wasn't weak.

Not in the slightest.

The groans were impossible to ignore now, and Beth looked up from the lock to gasp in horror... as a walker stumbled around the corner.

Her movements with the keys became more frantic, testing as quickly as she could, more walkers staggering after the first. She could take them. She could. But there was no telling how many there were in total, and there was nowhere to run this time. If only she could get this damned door open things wouldn't be so—

Clink! The sound of the lock unlocking with one faded brown key was music to Beth's ears. Unluckily though, it wasn't the quietest sound in the world, and the walkers' full attention was drawn to it . . . And her.

She pulled the door open and darted in without hesitation, slamming it shut behind her and standing with her back pressed against it. The walkers growled loudly from behind the door and pressed up against it, paws bashing against the wood and all stockpiling their pressure to burst down the door.

Beth panicked.

One had smashed its hand through the glass in the door and was reaching in for her, forcing her to duck to avoid having her hair ripped out. Stupid hair, always in the way. Maybe she should just cut it off. Okay maybe not, but it needed to be tied up definitely. Having it down was not in any way practical.

She looked down at the axe in her hands, then slid it into the door slots, holding the door in place temporarily. But that didn't silence the walkers, as their snarls echoed even louder throughout the school building, and started the throbbing in Beth's head.

She ran further into the room, the axe serving as a decent method of safety for now, and searched the medicine shelves. The torch flared back to life under the pressure of her thumb, and she shone it along the few aisles of the pharmacy.

She took the necessities—bandages, painkillers, headache pills for that damned throbbing pain she got, and even some spare plastic (since glass was impractical in emergencies) syringes for Edwards and the serum. She stuffed as much as could fit into her bag and made a dart for the door when she remembered the hungry walkers on the other side. Oh yeah.

Now, where was she supposed to go? That was the only exit! The only way out! . . .

Or was it?

There's always another way out.

Think. She needed to think, which was pretty hard when there was an array of walkers banging on the door, and a pulsing pain in her head.

Her head darted up instinctively, eyes spotting the entrance to a ventilation shaft leading up above the room.

Perfect!

She strapped the bag onto her and knocked down one of the shelves to use as a lift to get up. She tried to force open the metal casing covering the hatch, but it was stuck. And there was no keyhole for her to stick a key in this time, and she doubted the bolt in her boot would be enough. She needed something with more force than her hands... Something stronger...

Something that was the only thing keeping the door shut.

Beth's eyes moved to the red axe that was slotted into the door and paled. That would get the metal hatch open easily, but would release an army of the undead upon her as a consequence. She weighed her options, but found she had almost none. The axe was the only way.

"For the love of–!" she hissed, jumping down from the fallen shelf and making towards the poorly barricaded door.

Just one pull and they would be able to burst in.

One pull, and it could all be over.

One stupid movement of something sharp . . . And she could die.

An axe . . . Scissors . . . They were all the same. Both granted death passage to knock on her door . . . Could risk letting it in . . .

Only this time would be different. Because Beth was ready to open the door for death, for she had a streak of ruthlessness now herself, and this time she was ready.

Ready for whatever was thrown at her.

She was a fighter. A survivor. A victor. And she didn't need Daryl or anyone else to be those things.

"I get it." she spat. And she did.

I can win.

The axe was pulled from its holding and Beth bounded back to the fallen shelf instantly, a crowd of snarling walkers right on her tail.

Wasting no time, she swung the weapon up and knocked the metal shaft open, taking out a walker in the process, then leaped up so that she was hanging from the entrance to the vent by her hands. It was a little awkward to hang on with a huge cast covering one of her wrists, but she managed. It wasn't exactly like she could afford to let go at the time, with all her friends gathered below.

She threw the axe up into the ventilation shaft and dragged herself up, muscles worn and aching, but not weak enough to allow herself to fall down into the sea of monsters below.

She was better than that.

She knew how to win now.

It was all only a twisted game, and never again would she allow the vulnerability of risking a checkmate again.

She wasn't losing again.

Having hauled her tired body up into the small space, Beth collapsed onto her stomach and breathed heavily, breaths forming clouds of condensation on the cold metal of the shaft. She lifted her head from pressed against the cool metal and gazed down the narrow passageway ahead. Obviously crawling was required, but Beth didn't complain. Not when she'd just so narrowly escaped death again.

If there wasn't a God, then Beth didn't know who was giving her all this impossible luck Molly had pointed out her having.

When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth.

Only God could unleash these souls from hell onto the living. Only he could create such a vast plain of dystopia and ruin . . . To see who could make it out. Just like Noah and his ark. But not just alive . . . Still keeping a hold of their humanity. Because that's what a lot of people Beth had come across had lost.

Lost the very thing that made them human. And without that, Beth didn't see what was left.

She remembered what that old man, Dale, had said . . . I can say when the world goes to shit, I didn't let it take me down with it.

Keeping our humanity . . . That's a choice.

A choice Beth had already made.

She would rather die clean than let the world chew her up and spit her out full of poison. She wanted to keep her humanity until the very end. That was the choice she'd made.

"I'm human," she whispered into the emptiness of the cold ventilation shaft. "And I'll die that way . . . But not now."

She reached forward for the axe she had thrown down the shaft and crawled over to it. She tucked it into her belt and crawled down the narrow shaft.

If she thought the air was chilly before, it was freezing in here, and Beth could feel the goosebumps forming on her skin beneath the long sleeved checked shirt she was wearing. The metal was just as bitingly cold, and she winced when her palm collided with something wet when she pressed her hand down. Her brow furrowed and she squinted her eyes to see better in the dim lighting of the confined space. She'd dropped the flashlight back in the pharmacy room, she remembered with a groan, so she tried to figure out what the wetness she could feel was with little light.

What can ya smell?

Beth instantly regretted sniffing the odd liquid, and she jolted back in disgust and hit her head against the top of the vent.

"Agh!" she groaned, rubbing the back of her head and trying to ignore the tiny spots of white forming around the edges of her vision. But that was the least of her worries, because that wetness her hand was planted in was definitely not water . . .

It was blood.

Old, thick, strong smelling blood. Clumpy between her fingers as she wiggled them, and unbearably sticky. The overwhelming stench of decaying copper flooded her nostrils and she held in a choke, covering her mouth and nose with her sleeve. Where this rotting blood had come from was a mystery, since she couldn't see how walkers would get up here . . . But it wasn't completely impossible.

Nothing was impossible with them.

Even if it was a game, they always seemed to have the upper hand. Always making the clever moves, always taking out pieces with hardly any of their own being lost.

It was like they were cheating.

Cheating death, they were.

Beth stilled in the vent and quietened her breathing. She listened, intently, deeply. For anything. The pumping of blood through her head... Her rapidly beating heart... She could hear her gut screaming now, as well as feel it, and then she knew something was indeed very wrong.

Was there ever a time when it wasn't wrong?

She crawled further down the ventilation shaft, knees and thighs sore from the rubbing of friction against them. Her hair fell into her face in oily thickets, lined with blood and sweat; and her breaths were loud and drifting down the space. The axe at her waist was bashing against the metal every now and then, and her boots were clicking against the sides as she moved, sending small, echoing taps down the vents.

Beth could feel the tension coating her skin, and shuddered at the cold.

The trail of blood was thickening as she crawled on, and patterning the base and walls of the shaft in messy, uneven zig-zags . . .

The pattern's all zigzaggy.

Beth stopped moving when she heard a soft dripping coming from just around the vent corner, her entire body stilling as she just listened. There was dripping, gnawing and crunching, and the sound of something shifting. And the gritty grunts audible confirmed Beth's thoughts, as did her very own eyes as she peered around the corner and saw exactly what she'd expected.

. . . Its a walker.

A walker sat crumpled against the side of the vent, devouring a body hungrily. Intestines being ripped out and forced into the creature's mouth, organs spilling out onto the shaft's floor and filling the cold air with a humid, sickly smell. A truly sickening sight, of death and horror.

Beth felt the bile rise in her throat and swallowed.

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