Chapter 21.

"Aiden, do you mind bringing these supplies over to our new resident?" Deanna asked her son while he relaxed on the couch in their living room, his feet up on the coffee table while his hands were cleaning his automatic gun.

The last thing he wanted to do was bring a basket full of supplies over to the new girl who was living three houses down but he wasn't in the mood for arguing, they had lost a friend today while they were out on a supply run. Stupid fucking roamers.

I heard the knocking on the front door and jumped from the floor. I still hadn't looked around yet, nor did I really want to. This was just a safe spot until I reached DC and Eric had helped me out of a jam so I thought I'd see what the fuss was about. I didn't think these people would give me a damn two story house with running water and electricity. It had been nearly two years without electricity and for some strange reason I didn't feel like I relied on it anymore.

"Who's there?" I called out and stood up with my back pressed against the wall. I wasn't moving from this spot until I knew it was safe.

"Aiden Monroe" The man called out. Monroe… was that Deanna's son that she spoke about during the interview process?

I took my hand off of my knife at my waist and walked towards the door and unlocked it quickly and cracked it just a small bit so I could see him. "What do you want?" I asked him through the small crack and that's when he motioned down towards the large laundry basket full of things. Toilet paper, a few clothing items, and Shampoo from what I could see from the position I was in. I hesitated but finally pulled the door open more.

"Didn't take a shower yet?" He asked as he took a step forward and I put my hand back down on my knife "Don't worry, just gonna put this down on the coffee table for you, it's heavy."

I nodded and stepped to the side to let him come in but I kept the door wide open just in case he tried to pull anything.

"It's a big house, I don't really…" I started to say as I watched him put the basket down and then he stepped away from it to look over at me.

"I get it" He said "We've brought in people from the outside and it takes a while to adjust but they all eventually do, or they just leave."

"They leave?" He nodded "So you let people leave" He nodded again with a small smirk.

"You were with a group before this, right?" I nodded "How long have you been on your own?"

"You haven't seen my audition tape?" I asked and he shook his head "Why not?"

"Haven't gotten around to it, been a lot going on…" He said as he crossed his arms over his chest casually.

"I was in Georgia. Macon I think… I was with a group but then we got separated and I've been on my own for eighteen days I think"

"Wow, that's a long time" He said "I couldn't imagine… you're not from Georgia originally though, are you?" I shook my head.

"Chicago actually. My um…" I curled my fingers into my palmed and felt my dirty nails dig into the rough skin. "My sister, my dad, and my brother… we were on vacation visiting my grandparents in Atlanta when it started"

"They all dead?" I nodded and took in a deep breath while walking around him towards the basket "What do I owe you for this?"

"Owe me?" He asked "No charge… it's sort of a welcome to Alexandria thing my mom does, plus you look like you could use a shower or two" I looked up at him and he grinned, but I didn't break my glare from his until he looked down at the basket "So you have the essentials, anything else you're gonna be needing?"

"This doesn't feel right; this is a lot of 'essentials' for just me"

"Well it's yours and it's free of charge" He said while he made his way towards my open door "Get some sleep tonight" I nodded as he winked at me before closing my door and I walked towards it while shaking my head and double locked it.

I walked towards the basket and sat down on the edge of the couch to scan through the items. There were two bath towels, two toilet paper rolls, a shampoo bottle, a razor, two bars of soap, two white cotton t-shirts, underwear and a few other toiletry items. I hadn't looked in a mirror in weeks, maybe even a month, it's not like I had to rely on my looks to get by in this world… but maybe now that I'm here I should make an effort and when I heard that this community had running water all I wanted to do was take a shower.

So I headed up the stairs with the basket and dropped it down on the floor, taking out the shampoo bottle, the soap and the razor and put those off to the side so I could undress. I undressed in the dark and once those grimy clothes that I had been wearing for a half a month were finally off of me, I tossed them onto the floor and stepped into the bathtub and turned on the faucet. It took me three tries on how to figure it out but once I did, the spray hit me hard and I shivered at the cold but soon enough it warmed up and I started to wipe my dirty face with the water and grabbed the soap and started to clean myself off.

The last time I had a shower was at the prison but it wasn't anything special. The woman kept their tank tops on and underwear on because it was a shared bathroom, so being undressed fully in my own bathroom with no one looking over my shoulder was something that I wasn't quite used to. It was a nice but eerie feeling, it was as if all of this shit that had happened in the past two years was just a nightmare and not real.

After I shampooed my hair several times and got to shave for the first time in so long, I shut the shower off and stepped out of the tub to dry myself off with one of the bath towels. It was fluffy and soft and it reminded me of the material of those bath robes I used to get at hotels.

I wrapped my hair up in the towel after drying off my body and then pulled on the underwear and the small white t-shirt. Grabbing my dirty clothes from the floor, I walked down the steps and went to the washer and dryer in the kitchen that I passed when I had walked up the stairs to the bathroom and pulled my belt from the loops of my black cut up jeans and then shoved those in there along with my jean jacket, my bra and my grey tank top.

I poured in the right amount of Tide and then turned the knob and it started up. Electricity. Maybe I was going to take advantage of this after all.

After tossing my boots by the door front door, I sat on the kitchen table with a glass of cold water in my hand and sipped on it while watching the clothes spin around. The house was so silent other than the machine working its magic, but this was a different kind of silence. The silence out there on your own with walkers on your trail was some type of panic triggering silence. Paranoia is a real thing and it affected me a great load out there in the last few days I was on my own. Then there was the type of silence when all you could hear was your heartbeat ringing in your ears, that was a silence I heard when I had gone to Richmond to see if Noah's adoptive mom and dad were still alive but I ran into people who weren't them… I shuddered and put the glass down next to me on the marble counter and took in another deep breath and exhaled slowly.

Then there was this kind of silence, the type where it was okay to be sitting alone in the dark in just underwear and a t-shirt without a care of the outside world. This was the silence that I could get used to. When the day comes when I need to leave this behind to go to DC, it's going to be really tough.

Aiden sat on the edge of his bed with the television in front of him and he finally pressed play on his remote to play the DVD of Aurora's interview from this afternoon. She looked even filthier than he remembered, maybe because it was so dark in the house that she now lived in… but she was covered in dirt from head to toe, her hair was tied off to the side in a braid and her eyes were narrowed at his mother who was sitting just to the right of the camera.

"How long have you been out there?" Deanna asked her and Aurora's blue eyes looked around at the room and then back to the woman sitting across from her.

"Since it happened"

"Were you with a group? Or have you been by yourself this whole time?" She asked

"I was with my family at the start of it, and then with another group after"

"After what?" Deanna asked

"After my dad was killed in front of me" she said without breaking eye contact from Deanna.

"I'm sorry that happened to you" Aurora shrugged and then leaned her back against the cushion on the couch. "Do you have any sisters or brothers, what about your mother?"

"Mom died when I was younger, sister died after, brother is dead I think" Aiden knew his mother was going to apologize again because what could you say to something like that? This girl had lost her whole family.

"So this group that you were with after, how long were you with them?"

"A year maybe, I know it was a year but it might have been more…"

"Are they dead?" Aurora shrugged

"Not all of them. Our… camp was attacked by these people who wanted it and we lost I think. I don't know who survived"

"How did you make it out?"

"I was sick. I had the flu, I was almost dead; thankfully we had a doctor there to help keep me alive, got medicine and then I was about fifty percent when it all happened. I got out of there with a few survivors but they turned and I was on my own from then" she said quickly and she looked down.

"Before this, what did you do?"

"I was a photographer, a model, on television and stuff" She didn't look interested in talking about her life before the outbreak started.

"Aurora Austin" Deanna said after a moment and Aiden finally understood why she looked familiar.

"Yeah, that was me" The blonde said with much emphasis on the word 'was'.

She didn't see herself as that anymore.

Aiden wondered how she got that long scar on the side of her throat that looked like it stretched down the whole left side of her body. Where she got those scars on her wrists and forearm. Her eyes didn't give much away but the battle wounds on her body showed that she had been through a lot out there. Deanna thought they needed those kinds of people, the kind that have seen the worst of it; but Aiden wasn't sure it was a smart idea.

I nearly fell off of the couch when my alarm went off on the coffee table next to me. Quickly I size the button to off and I rubbed at my eyes. Eight in the morning… that was the most I've slept in weeks. Usually I'd sleep in intervals of 2 hours just so I wasn't getting attacked by walkers, but a full seven hours of sleep was ridiculously unheard of. After zipping up my clean black jeans, I walked into the kitchen and grabbed some water and then headed outside onto the porch. It was surreal; this was my life right now, for however long that would be.

As I was sitting on the steps sipping on the cold water, I looked around at the expensive houses and then I heard my name being called by none other than Aiden Monroe.

"Aurora" He started to say and then he came into view from the sidewalk; an automatic weapon was slung up onto his shoulder by a black strap. "You showered" He said and I could only roll my eyes.

"Yes, I did" I said

"You look good" He said and then cleared his throat when I narrowed my eyes at him "So I'm headed out on a supply run, I'm sure my mom will be around to see how you're feeling soon" I nodded "I watched your interview last night."

"Did you?" He nodded

"I'm sorry that happened to you" He said and it actually came off sincere.

"Thanks" I whispered as I stood up and grabbed my glass from the step by my feet.

"Where did you get that scar?" He asked once I moved my curly hair to the side.

"Which one?" I asked and he pointed to the side of his neck.

"It looks fresher than the others" He said

"I uh, I was in Richmond and ran into some people who weren't very friendly"

"Did you kill them?" He asked and I shook my head

"Didn't have the strength or I would have myself" He raised an eyebrow at my choice of words.

"Someone else killed them?" He asked

"Their leader" I said as I took the last gulp of my water and leaned against the blue railing of the porch. "Apparently he didn't like when men took advantage of women, which was a nice change of pace until he decided to slaughter them all in front of me."

Aiden was quiet for a few moments as he just looked at me with confusion and then he opened his mouth, "Did you catch his name? Guy must have been your knight in shining armor" He joked but I could sense he was fishing for more information.

"No, he didn't tell me his name and psychopaths aren't really my type" I said as I turned around to go back inside. "Be safe on that run today, it looks like it's going to rain soon" I said as I glanced at the blue sky.

"It's not going to rain today" he called back to me and I turned my head to look at him

"You never know" I said and winked at him, just like he had done to me last night and then headed back inside of the house.