The Kat/Isaac backstory series is coming soon :)
~TheChuckles
KAT'S POV
"Abraham, where the hell are we going?" Michonne asks after about 10 minutes of random swerving all over the streets of Atlanta.
"Out of this damn hell hole, that's where." He replies, keeping his eyes on the road. Michonne rolls her eyes and looks out her window. She's sitting in the passenger's seat. Gabriel and Rosita sit in the far back on the bench seat. Tara and I sit in the two seats ahead of them. Connor sits on the floor curled up in a ball, knees tucked under his chin. Poor guy.
"We need to get back to the church. We got supplies there." Tara says, watching the decayed city as we zip through the streets.
"We'll get there. Rick won't abandon us." Michonne replies sternly.
It's a miracle that we haven't run into any large clumps of walkers yet. Otherwise, we'd be in some serious trouble. Beside my hatchet and bow and arrows, Michonne's katana and Connor's axe, all we have are guns. Guns attract noise. We'd be basically ringing the dinner bell to any walkers in the area.
As if hearing my thoughts, a rather large pack of walkers block the street up ahead. Abraham curses one of his weird military curses and slams the breaks. Everybody lurches forward. Connor smacks his head on the seat. Gabriel actually falls in the space between Tara and I.
"We can't go around them." I point out.
"There's a couple behind us." Rosita says.
Abraham rubs the bridge of his nose. "Okay, everybody grab your shit. We're on foot from here. We haul ass for that building over there." He points towards a rather large office building to our left. "Nobody better dare fire a damn shot. Let's go!"
I slide open the door, hatchet in hand. The revolving doors to the building are completely smashed, a gaping hole in their place. I can hear a couple moans from inside. Everybody else piles out of the minivan except for Connor, I realize. He's still curled up on the floor, staring at the faded green carpet inside.
"We're going in!" Abraham says.
"Wait!"
"What?" He sounds aggravated. I nod my head to the van. Abraham huffs angrily.
"Get him. We'll push inside." And with that, the rest of the group advances into the building. All but Father Gabriel, I realize once he's standing off to my side.
"What?" I snap.
"Uh...I think you should have this. I mean, I held onto it and, well, take it." He says quietly, holding out a machete. No, hold the phone. That's...no, it can't be. It is. I wrap my free hand around the hilt of Isaac's machete slowly, almost in disbelief. All the pain of his death and all the joy of the two years we spent together come flooding back. All the good, all the bad. All the fights and all the makeups. All the times we had to save each other and all the time that we waited together for somebody to save us. Every time our group got smaller and smaller until it was just the three of us. Dad, Isaac, and myself. The three musketeers. The last ones standing. And here I was thinking I'd have nothing left of him but memories. No, I have something now...woah...it's just a little much to take in.
"Thank you." I whisper hoarsely. Gabriel nods, smiling slightly, "It's what I do." I'm brought back to the current situation when the disgusting moans of the dead assault my ears. Damn it. A few stray walkers have gotten close enough to have become a threat. The larger pack is still a ways down the street.
"Get Connor, can you? I'll deal with them." Gabriel nods again. With Isaac's machete in one hand and my hatchet in the other, I begin to work my way through the walkers. A wild sense of bloodlust takes over. They fall left and right, heads severed from bodies. I slice heads off with the machete and drive the hatchet deep into the skulls. Everything becomes a blur as I find myself surrounded with the dead. I start to spin, and it turns out to be the best idea i've had in a long time. Anything that comes close to me gets its face shredded. All I can hear is a sweet ringing in my ears, accompanied with the sounds of the dead dying.
When all the walkers are dead, I realize that i've wandered about 30 feet away from the minivan to seek out more walkers. Gabriel and Connor stand near the building, motioning me to come inside. The ringing in my ears dies down. As I run towards them, I nearly slip in walker blood. Looking down, I see i'm splattered in the nasty red and black goo. Ugh.
The three of us enter the building together, hearing nothing but scary silence. We're in the ruins of what once was a lobby, the red carpet stained with even darker red stains. It's dark as night once we get farther inside, when the entrance appears to just be a shining beam of a big flashlight.
"Abraham? Michonne? Tara?" I call out, my voice echoing in the eery silence. A small hand grabs onto my own, shaking and cold. I don't have to know that it belongs to Connor. Poor boy. Separated from his siblings, stuck with virtual strangers except me, 12 years old and completely inexperienced at killing walkers. That'll have to change.
"Kat?" I hear Tara call out. What a relief.
"Tara! Where are you?" A flashing light answers my questions. Tara wonders up to us, turning the flashlight towards the ground.
"We've set up on the second floor. C'mon." She leads the way up a small flight of stairs. We emerge from the dark stairwell into a very well lit office workplace. Windows bring in copious amounts of sunlight. Cubicles remain in neat, orderly rows, but Abraham is already at work moving several out of the way, pushing them with brute force. Michonne and I help him, and within minutes we have a space big enough for all of us to sit. Rosita works on a fire while Michonne and Abraham pile random desks and other furniture in front of the stairwell.
"We don't have any food to cook." Gabriel says to Rosita.
"Fire's still fire. Warmth, light, a sense of security." She crumples up several pieces of paper, making a wick out of them. She ignites the top with a lighter, and lets it drop into the bundle of pencils and wood scraps. The fire catches, and within seconds we have fire.
"Boom. Fire." Rosita smiles. "Only if we had food..."
"Kat and I can search a couple floors up." Tara suggests.
"Okay." Rosita says simply, sitting back against a turned over cubical wall. Silently, Tara and I walk towards the opposite side of the large room, which leads into a small hallway. It's darker here, so Tara switches on her flashlight. The hallway diverts into four rooms, two on each side. It ends at an elevator, but I spot another door with stairs labeled on it.
We search the rooms first, finding nothing but boring office papers and office chairs that roll around. The third floor is almost identical to the second, with the exception of a couple walkers that surprise us in the cubicles. I was hoping to find a pantry or something, but we had no such luck.
"Could there be anything in the desks? Snacks and stuff?" Tara asks me, resting on top of one of the desks.
"Let's find out, I guess." I search through the desk, shuffling through papers and staples and highlighters. I pull out all the drawers, emptying their contents onto the floor. Tara hops down and helps me search through the heap of office supplies. We find two peanut butter flavored granola bars.
"We've hit the jackpot." I say sarcastically.
The next half hour is spent trashing the hell out of the floor, looking for snacks. By the time we're done, we have a backpack full of granola bars, stale chips, chocolate, and a handful of fruit. Compared to the breakfast we had yesterday at Sweet Brown's, this is a huge downgrade. But honestly, food is food.
After we return, Abraham blocks the door to the stairs with a couple desks, just in case. We pass out snack food to everybody, sitting around the fire. The only sound is that of wrappers being ripped open and the crunch of stale chips. Abraham insists on having a watch, even though the only way somebody could get in here is through the windows. Rosita and Michonne agree to take first watch. The rest of us spread out. Tara and I drag an old couch and a recliner chair from the managers office into a corner. I take the couch, sighing deeply as I sink into the warm leather.
I'm gentle push wakes me up. I open one eye to see Tara nudging at me with her foot, still in the chair. "Your watch." She says sleepily. Groaning, I reluctantly pull myself away from the soft heaven of the couch and assume my position sitting by the fire. Abraham and Rosita opted to sleep in one of the other rooms, leaving just five of us in the main room. Gabriel lays by himself a couple feet away from the fire. Michonne has put a couple of the desks together and piled some of the left over clothes on top as a makeshift bed.
Hmm..maybe there are still some more clothes around here. I need to change out of my current clothes, because the walker blood has dried, leaving my clothes crusty and smelling bad. Using a flashlight, I search the ground for any clothes that would fit me, zig zagging around the turned over desks and the cubical walls. Finally, I find a long sleeve blue shirt with a pattern of black flowers streaking down one side. A few minutes later, in the employee storage area, I find a pair of tan slacks that fit just perfectly.
Just as i'm changing my shirt, I'm startled by a soft voice.
"What're you doing?" I jump, turning around to see Connor watching me from the doorframe. Only wearing a bra, I quickly slip the shirt on. Talk about awkward.
"Just finding some new clothes." I reply dryly, holding up my old, ruined clothes. Connor nods. When I shine my flashlight on him, I notice that the skin around his eyes is red and puffy.
"Hey, are you alright?" I ask, stepping closer to him.
"Define 'okay'." He sounds sad.
"I don't know, how are you feeling?"
"Absolutely horrible." He rubs his eyes.
"We'll find everybody, you know that right? Tomorrow we'll get back to the church, and everything will be fine." As soon as I see his scowl, I know I made a mistake by saying that.
"No, it won't be alright. Everybody else could already be dead! Maybe we're the only ones left!" Connor rubs his eyes again, but this time I suspect it's to wipe away tears.
"Hey, you don't know that." I make my voice sound as soothing as possible. With a sore throat, that's hard to do, but I pull it off anyways. "Your brother is strong. No matter where he is or who he's with, he'll make it. And I think you know that too." Talking about Alex makes me feel weird. I guess I still blame him for Dad and Isaac's deaths, but at the same time, I know it's stupid to do that.
"Alex has a bad ankle though, and Ashley has asthma. She can't run, and she can't kill any walkers. What if they're by themselves? Oh my god..." He starts breathing heavy.
"Hey now, don't think like that." He doesn't hear me though. Connor leans on the doorframe, clutching it with white knuckles. Tears leave clean streaks on his grime covered face. Without thinking, I close the distance between us and wrap my arms around him. I'm taller than him, his head only reaches up to my neck, and it feels totally wrong holding a teenage boy's head to my chest, but I don't think Connor cares anyways. He continues to sob, and I hold him close until he lets it all out. Trust me, I know how it feels, I think with regret, remembering my breakdown yesterday. Soon enough, he wares himself out and falls asleep. Gently, I lay him down on the floor and cover him with a random blanket I find on the floor.
The next day is entirely spent trying to get out of the city. We were already near the edge of the city anyways, but we have to move by foot and dodge any large groups of walkers. By sunset, we reach the interstate where we entered the city from. As we search for a vehicle, I hope to see a big firetruck driving towards us, but that proves to be a fantasy. We end up grabbing two cars, a silver Chevy truck and a beat up white van. We loot the cars for whatever we can scavenge. Parts, clothes, food, tools, everything. We end up filling half of the white van with supplies.
We carry on into the night, reaching the church when the moon is high in the sky. A big white RV blocks the doors completely. Since the church's windows are so high, we can't peek in and see who's there. Could be our people, but most likely, it could be some hostile people.
"Somebody else has made this theirs." Abraham comments solemnly.
"I think you're right." Michonne says, eyeing the RV. "Big vehicles aren't exactly Rick's style."
"Where do we go now? We don't have a home, and we don't know where the hell everybody else is." Rosita says, voicing everybody's thoughts.
"Rick said north, but he didn't specify where..."
"What if he meant Washington?" Tara asks. Abraham stiffens up at the mention of the city. I can't help but remember that argument two days ago. Bessy the Shotgun suddenly feels heavy in my backpack.
"What the hell would he be doing going there?" Abraham asks bitterly.
"Where else would they go? He must know it's a bust, but still, that's the one place we all know of. And it's north of here. It's worth a shot." Rosita says.
"Michonne?" Abe asks.
"It could work."
"Kat?" I'm surprised he asks me for advice.
"Might as well. No harm, no foul, I guess."
"Okay, then the mission to Washington is back on." We all get back into our vehicles, and pull away from the church with a renewed goal: Get to Washington D.C.