zombie_apocalypse_ready_16/set?id=112732558
I wake up on my bed, Carl's arms wrapped around my waist. I feel his steady breath on my shoulder, and feel somebody touch my arm. I shoot my eyes open, flinching before I see Michonne. "Relax, girl. It's just me," she says, smiling. I take Carl's arm off of me, careful not to wake him up. "I was told to wake the two of you up, but you seemed so cozy, I could barely bring myself to," she says. I smile and punch her arm a little, standing and rubbing my eyes.
"Oh, hush," I say through a yawn.
She chuckles. "Wake up sleeping beauty and come down and eat." She smiles and I watch her leave, turning my attention towards my pile of dresses on the ground.
I see a knife lying on the pile, thinking maybe Delilah put it there in the night. Very protective, as I said before. I pick one of my dresses out and am about to change when Carl's eyes flutter open.
"Morning," I say, happy. He stretches, yawning. "Morning," he says.
"Michonne just woke me up. Time for you to get your butt moving out of this room so that I can change," I say. He frowns at me.
"This bed is extremely comfortable."
"I don't see what that has to do with anything," I say, putting a knee on the bed.
"It means, I really don't wanna get up," he says, pouting.
"Well, I really need to change,"I say, mocking him.
"Go ahead, nobody is stopping you," he says, smirking. I punch him in the arm. "Hey! That actually hurt that time."
I giggle a little. "Good! Now you can either turn around and bury your head into that pillow or get out so that I can change," I say, wishing I hadn't given him the other option, because he turns around and does just as I say. "You're impossible."
"I'm waiting!" he yells through the pillow.
I laugh before slipping out of my other dress and quickly putting on the new one. "All right, you can turn around now," I say, zipping up my combat boots. He sits up and looks at me. "You're really pretty, you know?" he says. He's in a very good mood.
I smile, grabbing his arms and lifting him from my bed. "You're really pretty, too. Now, let's go eat some breakfast." He stands and wraps an arm around my waist, kissing my cheek. "Fine, but only because you called me pretty."
When we had made it downstairs and were about halfway through our bowl's of stale cereal, holding each other's hands, Michonne came in to eat with us. She's wearing a giant white shirt. Carl starts laughing and I hit him playfully on the arm. "Do you have something to say about my extremely comfortable and attractive shirt?" she asks, rolling up the sleeves.
"No, no, it looks great," Carl says through laughs.
"Don't listen to him. You look fabulous," I say, smiling. She takes a seat across from me and pours herself a bowl. "I wish we had some soy milk," she says. I take a bite from my spoon.
"Seriously?" asks Carl, looking disgusted.
"Yes, seriously. Have you ever tried it?"
"My… My best friend in third grade. He was allergic to dairy. And every day he would bring this soy stuff to lunch." He chuckles. "And I tried it," he says.
"And?" she asks.
"And I threw up!" he laughs.
"Yeah, right!" I say, laughing.
"Alright, alright. I almost threw up. But I was like -" he continued to make a gagging sound and I just laughed at his silliness. It's nice to see him like this. Regardless of what's going on right now, we are genuinely happy people. It's amazing when that side of us comes out.
"It wasso gross!" Me and Michonne just keep laughing. "I mean, I would literally rather have powder milk than to have to drink that stuff again! I mean, I would rather have Judith's formul-" he cuts himself off. Michonne and I both stare at our bowls. Carl mumbles something and gets up from the table, letting go of my hand in the process. Michonne and I look at each other.
"You have no idea how amazing it is to have you back," I say. She tries to smile at me.
"It's been hard… I know," she says, waiting for me to say something in return.
I breathe in deep. "I just… Daryl. And Beth… Maggie and Glenn, they could still be alive," I say. She looks at me, wondering where I was going with this. "Regardless of the fact that I have no idea if they are dead or not… there's still a chance, you know?" I pause. "He's lost that chance."
"I know what it feels like," she says. "To lose people that you care about."
"Your boyfriend?" I ask.
She shakes her head. "I had a three year old," she says quietly. I take in the impact of her words, when I see Delilah walk into the room, her tall figure hard to miss. "Hey, baby sister!" she says, kissing me on the top of my head. I look at Michonne, asking silently for some kind of conformation on the words she just said, but she simply gets up with her bowl, walking off.
Delilah sits down next to me and pours herself a bowl of what's left of the cereal. "You know, the last time I saw you, you had red hair. In fact, I can't remember a time when you didn't have red hair," she says, smiling. I touch a hand to my hair, which has gotten extremely long, all the way past my chest and to my stomach.
"It's pretty brown now, huh?" I say.
"Actually, kind of black. It's a really dark brown, you know?"
"Well, it's been a while since I've seen it's original color, so I wouldn't really know." She just smiles at me. "It looks pretty, either way, so I don't think it matters," she tells me.
"Did you put a knife in my room last night?" I ask. She just smiles and takes a bite of cereal from her spoon. "Maybe I did, maybe I didn't. I think it's better if I did though. Let's make sure that you don't get shot in the middle of the night, shall we?" she says, and I chuckle.
"Hey… do you know a lot about Michonne?" I ask. She shakes her head.
"She was always kind of a mystery to me. Still is. She's tough, though, so she can be as mysterious as she wants."
"Well, I mean, do you know anything about her past?" I prod.
"I know that she used to walk around with her walker brother and boyfriend. Not much other than that." I nod, keeping my mouth shut. I take another bite of my cereal before standing. "I'm gonna go ask them what we're doing today," I say. She nods and I leave to the kitchen.
I see Michonne and follow her when she walks into the kitchen. Rick see's the two of us walk in.
"Thank you," he says. "I heard him laughing in there. I almost forgot what that sounded like." It's sad when the words leave his throat. "I know I can't be his father and his best friend. He needs you two." I expected the words, but Michonne seems a little thrown off.
"I know that's a lot to throw at you, Michonne, so if you need a break-"
"I'm done taking breaks," she simply says. Rick nods, and I look up at her. She's so nimble and strong and content. I wish that I was like her. I turn and lean on the counters. "So what's the plan?" says Michonne. "This place… is it home? Or just a stop along the way."
"Well, let's… Let's just stay here while we figure it out.
"Well, we'll need more supplies, so I'll go and get some," she says.
"I'll come too," says Rick.
"Same here," I pipe in. Michonne turns to Rick, ignoring my comment. "You were unconscious yesterday," she says. "Well, I'm awake today," he says.
"We need you strong. Get some rest. Just one more day," she says.
Rick doesn't argue, and Michonne and I walk out of the kitchen together. We find Carl laying on the bed in his room, and I lean against the frame as Michonne walks farther in. "Cool room," she says. He sits up on his bed. "We're gonna go out and get some supplies. Figured maybe you'd wanna come along," I say. He nods his head, standing from his bed.
"Is my dad going?" he asks. "Nope," says Michonne. "He's gonna stay and get some rest." He just nods.
"Well, come on then. Let's get going," says Michonne walking past me. I'm about to follow her when Carl grabs my arm. I turn around to face him. "I don't want you to go," he says. What's up with people not wanting me to go on runs? They're my favorite part of this goddamned zombie apocalypse, you'd think I'd be allowed to go more often.
"Why not?" I question.
"Well, if my dad is here, then I think that somebody should be… you know, here to watch him. He could go unconscious again and get killed. I don't know. I don't mean to sound crazy, I just-"
"It's fine. I'll stay." I say, feeling like he's realizing his dad is really the only family he has left. He lets go of my arm and nods, walking past me, and I follow behind him downstairs, where Michonne is asking Delilah if she wants to come along.
Delilah says yes and I almost intervene, but I force myself not to. I can't just smother her since she's here. I feel the need to, but if I'm not nervous about Carl or Michonne leaving, then I shouldn't about her. Well, I mean, I should, but not to the extent where I force her into staying with me twenty-four-seven. I just smile and nod, feeling nervous on the inside as all of them pack up and remove the couch from the front door, all of us filing outside to bid them off.
"How long do you think you'll be?" I ask.
"To fill a couple bags…" starts Michonne. "Shouldn't be too long," finishes Delilah. She snakes an arm around my waist.
"It's eight-fifteen now," says Rick.
"We'll be back by noon," says Michonne.
Rick turns to Carl. "You follow their lead. You understand?" Carl just nods. they're about to walk away, Delilah's hand slipping from my waist, when Rick stops Carl. "Hey, everything okay?" he asks.
"Yeah… Just hungry," he says, lying.
"Okay…" says Rick. "I'll see you in a couple o' hours," he says. Michonne and Delilah turn and walk off, Rick turning back inside as well. "Be safe," I tell Carl, who didn't budge. He walks a few feet and kisses me once, lightly. "I will," he says, looking at me before turning away and jogging over to catch up with the two of them.
I walk in the front door, shutting it behind me. I help Rick push the couch back against the door. He sits down on the edge of it. It's silent for a moment. "It'll get easier," I tell him. He looks at me. "Once he has more time to move on… It'll get easier." I pause, as he gets up about to walk out of the room. "Just…" He stops walking. "Don't give up on him," I say.
"I would've told you that. Not the other way around," he says.
I smile a little bit and he hobbles up the stairs slowly, leaving me to do whatever.
I go upstairs and into Carl's room, looking around. I shuffle through the video games, all for XBox. I had one, and I recognize a lot of these games. Some of them were my favorites. I was quite the gamer for a girl, if I do say so myself. I look around and find a bookcase with a lot of books in it, obvious of the title.
I pick one up and sit myself down on his bed, opening it and beginning to read. I reach into my jackets pocket and find my MP3 player sitting in it, the earbuds attached. I hate the earbuds, but I love my music, so I put them in anyway and turn on the MP3, figuring I'll just listen to a few songs so I don't kill the battery. I have it setup so that if I listen to four songs in a row, it will automatically turn off. Pretty handy.
watch?v=c1p2CIda...
I sort through my library and start playing Reflecting Light by Sam Phillips. The lighter side of my music, considering the rest of what isn't folk or acoustic is rock or punk, not including the few songs from the forties and fifties that I have on here. Almost five hundred songs, and yet back then, there was never anything to listen to. Now, I could listen to all five hundred songs, and never get sick of a single one of them.
I open the book to the first page, and start to read.
I wake up to the sounds of a man screaming. In pain. My eyes open and I slowly move myself up, tucking the earbuds that were lying on the bed back into my pocket.
I don't remember falling asleep, but I think that is the least of my worries right about now. I hear other people, too. Yelling, fighting, kind of. I stand off of the bed and push myself up against the wall, looking out slowly into the hallway. I don't see anybody except somebody asleep on the bed in the master bedroom, and somebody lying on the floor in front of it. I turn back inside of the room and shut my eyes tight, opening them again only to see that I'm still here, and that this is still happening.
There's a constant pounding going on downstairs and I try to ignore it. I look around the room for anything; a gun, knife, really sharp bookmark. I don't know. I'm afraid I'm being loud, and my heart is pounding loud and hard inside my chest. I'm frantic. I run a hand through my hair, which is greasy and disgusting at this point.
I hear the pounding get closer to my room and look into the hallway. I don't see anybody, but I know that there is a kitchen knife in my room. The one Delilah put there earlier. I hear the pounding get a little louder and slide my way into the hall and into my room, backing up against the wall once I get there. I look outside of the door a little, hearing footsteps and seeing a man walk inside of Carl's room. Thank god I left when I did.
I quietly walk my way over to the pile of dresses next to my bed, and look around for the knife. I crouch down onto the ground, putting my head to the floor. I can see it under the bed. I reach my hand under it and grab it carefully, gripping the handle. Once I stand again, the noise of the banging gets farther away, more annoying by the second, and I let go of a breath I didn't know that I was holding.
I look out into the hallway again, and see nobody.
I try and decide what to do. I run over to the opposite wall and try and open the windows, but have no luck. A fall from here would end up breaking my ankle again, anyway, which I don't think even fully recovered, so it wouldn't have worked out very well in my favor. I go back to the door, clutching the knife to my chest.
I remember that Rick is here. Or was here. Or is dead in here.
I slip out, taking one last look at the room that I've grown to love, including the giant stack of records and the pile of dresses I made.
I hear the men downstairs talking and yelling to each other about a shirt or something. I'm pretty sure they're looking for somebody, and I'm more sure that if they saw me right now, they'd kill me.
I slip into the hall and across into the bathroom, where I know for a fact the windows open. I shut the door behind me and turn around, where a man is standing there just staring at me. My heartbeat raises and my head races a thousand thoughts in less than a second. I put my hands on his shoulders and kick my knee up to hit him right between the legs. He lets out a gasp and quickly falls over, and I know that I'm going to have to kill him.
He tries to get up but I hit him with the butt of my knife and push him back down, wrapping my arm around his neck to choke him. He struggles against me, and I suppose that I've grown strong in all of the runs and training that I've done over the past year, because regardless of the fact that it's a struggle, I manage to keep him down. His fingers are reaching for scissors on the bathroom sink, and I lay myself down by force so that he's farther away from them. He writhes and I tighten my grasp on him.
My arm is basically like a wire, at this point. It's strong, sturdy, but it's thin enough where I could strangle him well. He stops moving, and I couldn't care less if he was passed out or dead. I slowly unwrap my arm from his neck and hear the door open and close from behind me, and I immediately flinch up, holding my knife in front of me when I see Rick. I sigh in relief and he just looks at me and the unconscious man on the floor and nods.
"Window opens," I lip. He nods and maneuvers past me and the man to the window. He opens it, careful not to make any noise. I open the bathroom door just a crack, just in case he's dead.
I breathe hard. I could have just killed somebody. It's not like a I haven't before, but I've grown a little more civil than I was when I was on my own or with my parents. I crouch down next to him and put two fingers to his neck, looking for a pulse. I don't feel one, so I stand back up as Rick is trying his way through the window and onto the roof.
I'm not immune to this world; it still scares me. Still, I'm willing to do whatever I have to in order to stay alive. That isn't going to go away.
My breathing slows and I follow Rick's lead out of the window. We're both crouched on the roof, and he looks back once into the bathroom, reaching in and grabbing the gun off of the counter. I put the knife in my boot, and watch as Rick puts on his jacket and heads to the edge. He grabs onto the drain and slowly moves himself until his legs just drop and he's dangling from the side. He drops himself and my heart drops, as well.
He looks back up at me from the ground. He waves his hand for me to follow, and I try my hardest to follow his lead. I hate falling. It seems like a stupid statement, but God, I couldn't even count the number of times that I've fallen from trees or the roof of my friends' houses. I always was a daredevil as a kid, but now jumping off of a roof is just surviving - not like this is that great of a fall anyway.
I hold myself up by my arms once my legs are off of the pipe and it creaks. I lower myself slowly, and feel Rick's hands on my legs. I slowly let go of the pipe, and he lowers me to the ground. I breathe in deep once my feet hit it, and don't even remotely miss the daredevil side of me that used to jump from that height instead of slowly lowering myself down.
Both of us back up against the house, Rick holding his brand new gun. He takes the lead and crouch-walks over down some steps and to the side of the building through a few bushes, and I follow closely behind, my hands feeling the wall to my left.
He stops once we hear that annoying banging noise again. I look up and see a ball flying through the air. It's a tennis ball. I roll my eyes and crouch down deep into the corner, trying to hide myself.
The banging stops but I hear footsteps. Rick looks up to see what's going on and quickly comes back down. Somebody who is fairly close to us whistles. I look out to the street and see Michonne, Carl and Delilah walking back to the house. My heartbeat picks up, and my head fuzzes. Shit.
I can tell that Rick saw them, too, and he puts a hand on the foundation of the house, about to lift himself and shoot, it looks like, or at least make a run for it.
Just as Rick turns himself up and around to make a run or shoot, we hear yelling going on from inside. Whoever was just out here makes his way back into the house, and the second that he's gone, I see Rick sprint out to the street. There are gunshots, and I take off running as well.
Looks like he turned into a walker, after all. Serves these men right.
"Go, go!" whisper/yells Rick, and all five of us take off jogging down the street.
Once we're pretty far away, Rick stops himself to catch his breath, and we all follow suit.
"What the hell happened in there?" asks Michonne.
"There were some guys. They just… came in, I don't know," I say.
"Started what sounded like… torturing somebody," says Rick, between breaths. "I hid and the two of us got out."
"Had to kill someone," I say, standing up straighter. Carl puts a hand on my back.
"You guys get anything good?" asks Rick, starting to walk again. We all follow leisurely.
"Some," says Delilah, smiling. Nobody says anything else, but I feel Carl put something in my hand. I open my fingers and see earrings. Little pink roses. I smile.
"Thought you'd like them," he says, giving me a nervous smile. "I wasn't sure if you had your ears pierced or not. I do have them pierced, and back at the prison I used to wear some of Beth's earrings that she couldn't wear anymore since her holes had closed up. I didn't have any in when I got sick, so I wasn't wearing any now.
"I love them," I say, kissing his cheek. He smiles and blushes a little bit, wrapping an arm around my shoulder as we all walk.
I not-so-carefully manage to get the earrings in, and smile a little at the familiar feeling. I know it isn't smart to not disinfect or anything, but the chances I'd find something that could aren't very likely right about now, so I just figure it doesn't matter.
We walk, the five of us, for a while along train tracks.
I reach into my leather jacket pocket and make sure that my MP3 is still there, which it is, so I zip the pocket back up to make sure it doesn't fall out.
We soon come up to an abandoned train. There's a sign on it, and all of us walk over to it.
The banner reads "Sanctuary For All Community For All Those Who Arrive Survive"
I furrow my eyebrows a little and feel Delilah's hand wrap tight around mine. "What do you think?" asks Michonne. I look at the map. It isn't too far from here.
There's a long pause, all of us thinking it over. We could be safe. We were safe at the prison, but then we had enemies. Maybe this place really is just safe.
But what about the others?
"Let's go," says Rick. I cringe a little at his words, but accept the fact that we need to take care of ourselves first. They're all strong. Maybe they've found this place, too.
If they aren't, I'll go after them. There's no doubt about that.
I feel Delilah pull on me, and I make my way to her side, all five of us walking in a row. I guess it's decided then.
Maybe we've finally found our sanctuary.