Chapter Twenty: Trouble
"We were at the table by the window in the view,
casting shadows, the sun was pushing through,
spoke a lot of words, I don't know if I spoke the truth...
It's been a few minutes. Carol and Daryl are quiet, so am I. There's nothing else to talk about, nothing to do except wait for the night to pass and morning to come. The three of us lie on the bottom bunk in a row and I think this might be how we fall asleep; our legs dangling off the edge and midsections pressed together, side by side. It wouldn't be the first time. Probably won't be the last.
Someone lets out a breath and then there's a distant banging somewhere in the building.
My eyes open. I didn't realize they'd been shut-maybe I was already falling asleep, despite the churning anxiousness in my belly. Regardless, we're all climbing off the bed and grabbing our weapons without a word. Carol takes her rifle from the top bunk; it's a massive thing that I'm surprised she can even carry. I leave Len's bow here because it'd probably do more harm than good.
Quietly, we make our way down the hall, past doors and closets and windows, until we take a left and there it is; two glass doors with the number 7 on the wood border. Behind it is a silhouetted walker, until another one presses itself against the other door. It's small and frail and I realize that this must have been a mother and daughter, locked in here for all eternity.
I blink at it. Watch them claw at the doors, snarl against glass and fog it up even more than it already was. A part of me sees my brother and my mother, even though I buried my brother and I never figured out what happened to my mother. But I still see them and it makes my spine go rigid.
Beside me, Carol stares. Her face has gone expressionless, unmoving, and I think I hear her breath hitch right before she takes a step forward. Daryl holds an arm in front of hers.
"You don't have to."
Carol looks at him. Moves forward, nearly grabs the doorknob, but Daryl moves with her.
"You don't."
She backs up. Turns around, walks past me and goes on back to our room without another word.
The next morning, Daryl wakes me up. He gives me a water bottle, tells me to drink some and get something in my stomach, so we sit at a small table in the quiet.
"You talk in your sleep," Daryl says after a few minutes. I blink at him.
"I do?"
"Mm-mm."
"What did I say?"
"Jus'... whole lotta nonsense."
"I say any names?"
Daryl nods. "Isaac."
Of course I did. I don't remember my dream from last night, only that it left me with a sick feeling and that dark, lonely atmosphere you get after a rainy day turns into a rainy night.
"Who was he?" Daryl asks me. I think maybe he knows what's bugging at me, that I keep thinking about that mother and daughter in the other room. Maybe he's telepathic and has known it all along.
"My brother."
"Older?"
"Younger. He was eight."
"When did he die?"
"About… four. Five months before that day you and Sasha and Glenn found me."
Daryl nods and then he's quiet for a few minutes.
"Did… Carol have any kids?" I ask him.
"Daughter."
I say nothing. Take another swig of water and pass the bottle to Daryl, and then he's telling me to follow him. I do. We leave the room, go down the hall and to the double doors. He tells me to open one of them, let one out, so I do; the mother comes first and Daryl is gentle when he stabs her in the head. And then comes the daughter, her legs are so thin and small and then it's over, just like that, and we're rolling their bodies up into sheets and carrying them outside to a back lot. We set them down, side by side. Daryl pours lighter fluid on them, drops a match and then they light up like they've been waiting for fire this entire time. Waiting for release. And I suppose they have; all you can do as a walker is wait.
Sometime later, Carol comes outside. She walks over, stands between us and murmurs, "Thank you." Daryl and I stay silent and for a while we all just stand there, watching as a mother and her daughter finally go somewhere that isn't here. And then we go inside as if nothing had happened at all.
"That car was headed downtown," Daryl says. I'm tying my flannel around my waist because outside is way too hot to be wearing it, even if it may protect my skin from sunburn (I rarely ever burn, anyways). "I say we get up in one of the tall ones, get ourselves a view. See what we see."
Carol picks up her rifle and I'm still surprised at how fluid her movements are; as if she's done this her entire life. "We can stay close to the buildings and keep quiet, but sooner or later we're gonna be drawing 'em."
The dead. Relentless fuckers, to say the least.
Outside, the city is a completely different place in the daytime. Trash is littered everywhere, bodies sprawled out over the concrete. Grass is overgrown and pokes out through the pavement, trees take back the small parks they'd been secluded to by man.
Daryl leads us up an incline. The shadows of the tall buildings make for good protection against the sun, and then we stop, press ourselves against a wall. He peeks past the turn, looks back at us.
"Alright. We can get up there, there's a bridge."
Daryl yanks a notepad out of his bag, lights it up, then tosses it into a pile of trash across the street. It bursts into flames and the walkers are all drawn to it, and once they're all there we're sneaking by and making our way into a parking garage. It's one of those big ones with more than three levels and quite a few cars still parked in the spaces, forgotten by their previous owners (dead and alive). We get to the skybridge, open up a boarded up door.
This used to be a camp.
I don't know how many there are, but at least four of them are in sleeping bags, reanimated and writhing around with nothing to do. They see us and seem to reanimate from their dormancy, but we kill them before they can tear out of their cocoons.
"Some days I don't know what to think," Daryl says after putting a bolt in the final walker. Carol and I look at the same thing; two bloody bullet holes in one of the sleeping bags. In further on down the skybridge are three tents, each of them with their own walkers. One tumbles down right before Daryl walks past it, but other than that they seem to be trapped; so we continue, getting all the way down to the other end, where the double doors are chained shut. Luckily we can squeeze through, so we do just that and make our way into the building.
It looks to be some kind of office; there are ugly paintings on the wall and fake plants in corners, and the wall is a creamy off-white color. Daryl opens a door to an office, peeks in; when he whistles, giving us the all clear, we file inside after him.
The office looks like… well, any other office in a high paying American job. There's a coat rack with a hat and a jacket in the corner of the room, a table with two oddly shaped vases under a painting, and two leather chairs and a desk in front of large windows that take up half the wall space. When we're up by one of the windows, staring down at the charred streets burned up by napalm bombings from two years ago, Carol asks, "How did we get here?"
Through pain. Sweat, blood and tears. Wishing it would just get easier and not letting it disappoint you when the reality check hits, and you know it won't be getting easier. You know it, but you keep hoping anyway, even if it tears you apart to try.
Right?
"Mm-mm," Daryl grunts. "We just did."
Wandering, stumbling, walking. Running. Sleeping under bridges and in closets. Hiding from the dead and running from them when they find you.
"You still haven't asked me what happened. After I met up with Tyreese, the girls."
Daryl slings his crossbow over his shoulder. "Yeah, I know what happened. They ain't here."
Just like so many other things.
"It was worse than that."
Daryl watches her. He glances at me.
"The reason I said we get to start over? It's 'cause we gotta. The way it was…" He trails off.
"Yeah…"
Daryl's face changes and then he's peering through the glass.
"You see something?"
"I dunno. Hand me that rifle."
He looks through the rifle scope for whatever he saw, and after a moment, hands it back to Carol and pokes the glass. "Right there." Carol repeats his action.
"It's been there a while… definitely one of them."
"What is it?" I ask, and then Carol hands me her rifle. I raise it up to my shoulder, ignore how heavy it feels and look through the scope. For a second, all I can see is charred buildings, overgrown trees and vines and wreckage, until my eye catches something white; a dirty van, hanging off the edge of a bridge with two white crosses on the back windows.
"It's definitely some kind of lead," Daryl says, and I give Carol her rifle back. We're quiet for a moment but I'm bustling with anticipation. Whatever we find in that van has to lead to Beth.
"We should fill up," Carol tells us, but I don't want to fill up I wanna to find Beth-find her and grab her and bring her back to that church with us so we can all eat and drink and have fun and I can kiss her again like it's our last day on Earth.
"Alright," Daryl replies, and I want to shrivel up inside myself. But I don't. It's anatomically impossible.
Carol uses one of those half empty water dispensers-the one that makes bubbles when you get water from it-to fill up her canteen. She takes a drink, offers it to Daryl, and he points at a painting by the window. "I bet this cost some rich prick a lot of money. Looks like a dog sat in paint and wiped its ass all over the place."
Despite the buzzing in my chest I laugh.
"Really?" Carol says, her hands on her hips. "I kinda like it."
Daryl scoffs. "Stop."
"I'm serious. You don't know me."
"Yep… you keep tellin' yourself that."
I shake my head and follow the others when we finally leave. On the way back to the skybridge, I say, "My grandparents had a ton of paintings like that in their house. My grandfather said it was for my grandmother, that she was the one who liked that kinda stuff, but he liked it, too. Just wouldn't admit it."
"Your grandparents had good taste," Carol says, and Daryl arches an eyebrow.
"Yeah… I bet."
We get back to the skybridge, and like before, Carol goes in first; but when Daryl sticks his head through, I hear her say, "Daryl, don't!" and a gun cocks.
"Get up!"
Not Daryl's voice, not Carol's, not mine. A stranger. "Hands up, both of you." Daryl crawls through the door and it shuts behind him and I want to go, want to pull out my Colt and shoot whoever's on the other side of that door.
"Lay down your crossbow."
It's a man. A man with a gun who might blow holes in Daryl and Carol and I'll be here on my own, again.
"You got some sack on you."
"Look, nobody has to get hurt-I just need weapons, that's it! So please, lay down your crossbow."
Something clatters to the ground.
"Back up."
Nothing for a long moment, then, "Sorry about this," and my heart almost explodes because I expect to hear a burst of gunfire-two bodies to hit the floor. "You look tough. You'll be alright."
No gunshots. Something tears and the walker snarls get louder, and then, then there's a gunshot; one, two, and I'm climbing through the doors because fuck not being seen, fuck hiding. But there are only the bodies of the dead, neither of which belong to my companions, and I want to scream from relief. Daryl and Carol are standing, they're alive, but both look equally pissed off. "C'mon," Daryl orders and I do, I follow them down the skybridge and to the door in which we came. But it's locked, chained up, and we have to find another way out.
"How much ammo you got left?" Daryl asks us. He's stomping forward with so much force I think he might just crack the foundation.
I check my clip, look around my satchel at the loose bullets I haven't put into a baggie yet. "Full clip of seven and some change. Five arrows."
Carol closes the cylinder to her revolver. It's a tiny little thing that's probably older than all of us, and I think that's what made the gunshots earlier. "Three bullets. We're in the middle of the city and he was stealing our weapons…"
Daryl says nothing.
"Did you think I was gonna kill him?"
I would have. Is that bad?
Daryl is still silent, he barely glances at her as we turn a corner.
"I was aiming for his leg. Could that have killed him? Maybe, I don't know, but he was stealing our weapons."
We get to a door and Daryl tries to open it; locked. He pulls out his knife.
"He's just a damn kid."
"Without weapons we could die." Carol glances at me. "Beth could die."
"We'll find more weapons."
Daryl struggles with the knife, trying to pry the door open, so I take one of mine and hold it out to him. "Try this." He glances at it, sheaths his knife and grabs it.
"I don't want you to die," Carol says. "I don't want Beth to die, or Michael, or anybody at the church, but I can't stand around and watch it happen, either. I can't. That's why I left." Carol is pacing now, back and forth, back and forth.
"I just had to be somewhere else-"
"Well you ain't somewhere else," Daryl interrupts. He yanks the knife from the door and spins around to face her. "You're right here. Tryin'." And then he goes back to the door.
Carol shakes her head. "Look, you're not who you were, and neither am I."
The door opens. Daryl hands me my knife back.
"I don't know if I believe in God anymore or heaven, but if I'm going to hell I'm making damn sure I'm holding it off for as long as I can."
Will I go to hell if there even is one? My father was Jewish. He believed in Hell. Heaven, too, but he rarely ever spoke of that. Maybe he's in either of those places right now. I'll never know, though.
We go through the door. Get down the building, out into the city and make our way to the bridge as quickly as we can. It takes us a while, since we have to dodge around walker clusters and wreckage, but eventually we're on the bridge and making our way to the van.
Daryl opens the door. "Alright, let's get this done."
"It's not stable," Carol protests. "I'm lighter." Daryl looks at her, then hops into the van. Carol and I look at each other.
"Keep watch," she tells me, and I nod. She gets inside, the van shudders but doesn't fall. A cluster, drawn by the sound, approaches. I try to do a headcount, stop when I get to twelve.
"Guys!" I call. "Walkers are almost here!" I look to the other side and there's more, way more than twelve. "Guys!"
Carol is out, then Daryl, and we're fighting off the dead. My Colt runs out of ammo, way too fast for my own comfort, so I resort to using my bow… but before I can even nock the arrow, Daryl is pulling me into the van and we're shutting the doors.
"Anything we can use?!" Carol asks. The van shakes and I almost fall into Daryl.
"Nothin' but what we got-"
And then Daryl stares ahead, through the windshield, and he's climbing into the driver's seat.
"Buckle up," he tells us. My stomach churn but I climb into one of the back seats on Carol's side and strap the seatbelt around me.
"Fuck, fuck fuck fuck fuck," I groan. There's a figurine of Mother Mary on the dashboard. I stare at it, even when the van screeches and Daryl is telling us to hold on. I think Carol is crying. The van leans forward, I feel my gut slosh around and a scream rises in my throat because then, then it's falling, falling through the air quicker than a bullet train. Something crashes, we hit the ground and my scream is cut off with a yelp; the van rocks back and forth one, two, three times, and stills.
"We're okay," Carol breathes. Something slams into the windshield; a head explodes. The walkers from the bridge continue to tumble down, landing on the van again and again and I have to hold my ears until it's over. Carol and Daryl climb out, and when I look down to unbuckle my seatbelt I let out a soft, "Oh."
There's an arrow sticking out of my side.
"Daryl," I groan, unbuckling. "Daryl, my- augh-" I leaned forward too much. The back doors are opening up and then there's Daryl, crouching down beside me. He looks from me, to the arrow, then back to me and I feel like throwing up. "I don't even know how…"
"Easy," he murmurs, cutting at my shirt to get a better look at the wound. He examines it but I have to look away because there's a fucking arrow sticking out of me. "It went through," he tells me. Carol's here now, too, looking at it over Daryl's shoulder. She's holding her chest and winces when she moves a certain way, but other than that she looks… fine. But then Daryl grabs the arrow and I can feel it move, so I let out a shriek, grab his hand and try to swat it away because it hurts, it hurts so bad. "We gotta get it out, Michael-"
"Won't that make it bleed worse?!"
"It's jus' a flesh wound. If it nicked any of your organs you'd be bleedin' out already."
"Oh…"
"You ready?"
"Wait, wait- fuck. Fuck! Okay. Do it. Just… just fucking-"
Daryl pulls it out and I have to tell myself he's not tearing a hot bar from my gut.
I can't stop the scream from coming, the tears from pricking at the sides of my eyes. Daryl tosses the arrow to the side and Carol is holding my hand, squeezing it as much as she can and even though it makes me feel weak and not strong at all, it helps. Daryl tells me to take my flannel off, so I ease it away and let him cut it into strips. As he's pressing a fold to the wounds and tying strips around, he says, "We can't stay here. Dead'll be drawn by the crash…"
He ties it tight and I wince, but then it's over and we're leaving. Daryl helps me out of the van, then Carol, and side by side we're walking away from the scene like the three musketeers.
We stop at a loading dock, hidden behind a cluster of brick industrial buildings.
Daryl tells me they found some kind of lead in the van-Grady Memorial Hospital. But I can barely focus on his words, instead try to keep myself upright and sit down beside Carol when we finally take a break. He makes her drink to prove she's okay, and Carol visibly winces when she swallows.
"How bad is it?" He asks.
"I've had worse."
She pulls her shirt collar down, and I can see a big, purple bruise festering on the right side of her chest. Daryl shakes his head.
"Damn… that was stupid."
"We made good time down," Carol says, because even when we just almost died she's making jokes.
"Who knew falling from a bridge was a good time saver…"
I add to it, because why not.
Daryl scoffs, then sits down on the other side of Carol. Wincing as I move, I take the loose bullets from my bag and start loading them into the Colt's clip. One, two, three, four… and that's that.
"There's only three blocks between the three of us and Grady," she tells us.
"We should find a place nearby. Scope it out, look for anything sketchy." Carol looks at him. There's a scrape above her eye and even more bruises have started showing up on her face.
"You really think we'll find out what we need to know just by watching?"
Daryl reaches over Carol to hand me the canteen. I take it, gulp down some and let it ease my nerves.
"It's where we start. C'mon."
We find another office building. This one has lobbies and cubicles, a lot different than the other one with paintings and leather armchairs. The door squeaks when it moves but Daryl walks through it anyways and we follow him. There's a walker on the ground with a machete. Daryl takes it, cleaves its face in half and then the room is silent. Carol and I move past it and I'm holding my belly because it still hurts. It was a bitch to climb up the stairs and we even had to take a break (mostly because of me), but we made it up here easy peasy.
"It's them," Carol says. We move forward, looking out the window to stare at a large, high story building. Daryl carries a plastic bag and inside it sits a few small bags of chips.
"We wait. See what we see."
And we do. It's like one of those police stakeouts; we munch on chips and warm water and are quiet for a while. I sit in a chair, let Carol nurse my wound even though she can't do much. It's still bleeding, slowly, and I'm feeling a little queasy but don't tell them. Can't. I have to keep going because we have to find Beth and that's all that matters.
I think I doze off.
"You said I ain't like how I was before?" Someone says-it's Daryl. He must think I'm asleep. I think I was, for a minute. But I don't move, don't open my eyes. I'm comfortable.
"Yeah."
"How was I?"
"It's like you were a kid. Now you're a man."
"What about you?"
Quiet.
"Me and Sophia stayed at that shelter for a day and a half before I went running back to Ed. I went home, I got beat up, life went on, and I just kept prayin' for something to happen. But I didn't do anything. Not a damn thing. Who I was… with him… she got burned away. And I was happy about that-I mean, not happy, but… And at the Prison, I got to be who I always thought I should be, thought I should've been. And then she got burned away. Everything now, just… consumes you."
"Well, hey… we ain't ashes."
Yet, I want to say. But I don't. Won't let myself. I can't lose that hope, right?
A door far away shuts. I'm jolted out of that half-asleep state I was in and dropped to my feet beside Carol. She hands me my pack and my Colt and then we're off, following the sound as I rub the sleep from my eyes.
As we go further into the building I can hear more noise. Thudding, a walker snarling. We turn a corner and there's the source of the noise, one of the dead pinned to a drywall column with a crossbow bolt.
"Is that yours?" Carol asks. I look at the green and white fletchings and yeah, it looks to be one of his.
"Yeah."
Daryl kills the walker, yanks the bolt from it, and then automatic gunfire is bouncing down the halls. Carol runs forward ahead of us and then, from around a corner, a walker is thrown into her. They both tumble to the ground and she's screaming, and I don't even think about it when I toss myself into the walker. We both go over Carol and onto the carpet and I feel fire in my side, feel the cry force its way out of my mouth, and then Daryl's cleaving the walker's face off and I'm clutching my belly. I crawl over, pat at the top of Carol's chest like a madman because I swear the walker bit into her; but there's no bite, no blood, just bruises and dirt and a woman telling me she's okay.
Daryl's already chasing after whoever did this. Carol and I help each other up, move on down the hall. There's a grunt and a crash and when we get into a room we see Daryl, standing over a teenager, pinned down by a bookshelf. A walker paws at a door that's just barely inched open, clawing its way through it.
And then I see Daryl's crossbow on the ground. Right beside it is Carol's rifle.
"P-please," the teenager says. He has dark skin and a beat up face and he looks like he's getting crushed. "I had to protect myself."
I recognize his voice. Blink a few times, and then I feel anger rising in my chest because this is the asshole that took their weapons. Held them at gunpoint and tried getting them killed.
"Why you followin' us?!" Daryl snarls at him. He hands Carol her rifle.
"I didn't, I didn't I swear! I thought you followed me!"
"Bullshit," Daryl spits. He leans over, grabs a pack of cigarettes.
"Come on, man- please-" the teenager begs, but I've had enough.
"Fuck you," I say to him. "You almost got us killed!"
The walker gets just a bit further through the door. Has its arm and head through the gap.
"I'm sorry! Please, please…"
"Nah," Daryl says. He puts the cigarette up to his lips. "I already helped you once. It ain't happenin' again."
Daryl lights his cigarette, bends down. "Have fun with hoss over there."
"No, nonono, please, no please, I'm sorry! Please!"
Daryl walks away and I want to, too, but I don't. I can't, because even though my wound is in pain and I want to curl up into a ball and sleep the hurt away, I can't let him die. Not like this. Not defenseless. Despite all that anger and all that hurt, I can't.
It makes me feel weak. But I think Carol is thinking the same thing, too, because she calls out for Daryl and tells him to stop. She sounds so weak and frail but I probably do as well. Daryl looks back at her like she's insane.
"You and Michael almost died because of him!"
"But we didn't!"
Daryl's eyes flicker to me, then the teenager.
"Nah. Let him be."
"Daryl!"
The walker falls through the door. Lands on the bookshelf, grabs at the teenagers collar and pulls it away. I'm about to put a bullet in its cranium when Daryl shoots a bolt into it.
Carol drags the walker body away. We get down, all three of us lift the shelf up, and the teenager is dragging himself out.
"Thank you, thank you, thank you," he pants. Breathing hard and loud. Daryl ignores him, walks straight over to me and Carol.
"Y'okay?" He asks us.
"I'm still here."
I wince. Grab my side but nod.
"Gotta be."
"I gotta go," the teen says all of a sudden. He mutters it, again and again like a mantra. He'd pulled himself off the ground, clambered over to the window and is staring out it like he's looking for something. "They're gonna come. They probably heard the shot. If they find me…"
"Who?" Daryl asks.
"Them, the people at the hospital."
Carol and I look at each other.
Daryl stops him from moving any further. "Wait, waitwaitwait, just tell us- is there a blonde girl there, you see a blonde girl?"
"Beth?"
Beth.
Our Beth.
My Beth.
Carol and Daryl share a glance and then I'm there, stomping right up in front of the teen and glaring at him like he isn't a good seven or eight inches taller than me.
"Is she still there?" I ask him. I'm manic, my eyes are wide, they might be bloodshot because they itch and are hurting. "Beth, is she still at the hospital?"
"You know her?"
"Is she still there?!"
"Yes, yes-she helped me get out but she's still there."
Oh, God. Oh my God. OhmygodohmygodohmygodBeth…
Carol looks out the window. "They're coming."
The teenager pushes past me and I want to stop him, but I'm too weak. "We gotta go now. We gotta go, we gotta go," he repeats, and we follow him all the way down to the bottom lobby.
"The building next door has a basement, it's clear. We'll be safe," he tells us. I notice he has a limp, and he tries to run but ends up tripping over himself and tumbling to the ground.
"Go, I got him," Daryl tells us, so we go. Carol pushes past the door and I stay, holding it open, and I only get one glance back at Daryl and the teenager before there's a loud bang and tires are screeching. I look over, my eyes go wide, because Carol is falling to the ground and a car just fucking hit her.
I can't see straight. There's blood dripping from my hands, pooling around my gut but I ignore it, stumble over to her and don't even stop when two policemen jump out of the car with a stretcher. One of them walks up to me, right in between me and Carol. I have to get to her, have to get to her before they get her. I try hitting him, try to stop him and move him away, but all I get is a fist to the face and…
When I wake, it's dark. I'm lying in a bed that smells too clean and I don't feel right. My belly aches. There's something attached to my hand. I move, whimper when something flares up on my gut, and then someone is beside me and the thing attached to my hand is moving.
"Michael- you're awake… how are you feelin'?"
I look over. Blink a few times, stare, because I think I've seen a ghost.
"Beth?"
"Trouble on my left, trouble on my right,
I been facing trouble almost all my life,
my sweet love, won't you pull me through?
Everywhere I look I catch a glimpse of you…"
Hello, all! As you may or may not be able to tell, we're almost near the end of the story; only a chapter and a half is left (more on that with the next upload) of A World Alone! I'm so incredibly excited to share the conclusion of this arc and to tease what may come next. That being said, my next upload will be the "chapter and a half"-a sort of interim part 2, if you wish to call it that, and immediately after will be the last chapter. Thank you all for the reviews and the favorites, it means everything to me. Until next time!