Clementine trailed through the near pitch-black forest. It was difficult to see but the teen managed, it wasn't too bad. She would just have to pay attention to where she was walking. She'll probably miss or pass by something while absorbed in her thoughts.
It'd been a few since she left the foreigners, or more specifically the French group. Berthe, although reasonably worried, Clementine couldn't help but get irritated at how she persisted that she'd stay with them. As if the teen didn't know how to handle herself. Honestly, they were struggling way more than she was.
Clementine wasn't even struggling. She had everything figured out. She had her cabin, a stash of all sorts of weapons; she was perfectly fine.
The way Berthe had implied that she needed a group to stay alive was all the more reason why the teen had gotten irritated. Her concern wasn't appreciated, as harsh as it sounded, Clementine couldn't care less about why she was.
The teen made it home. She entered the cabin, tossed her Ithaca onto the couch and made her way to the bathroom. Before she approached the stairs, she picked up a candle, lit it and began making her way up.
She pushed open the door and set the candle on the counter. She took off her hat and began untying her bandage. The teen spent most of her time cleaning out her eye, the socket was healing as well as it could.
It was still messed up to look at but it looked a lot more better than what it initially did. The first time she took it off it was bloody, essentially mutilated.
After she was done cleaning her eye, she went back down to the living room. The teen picked up her Ithaca, setting it over by the corner of the room. She began getting ready for bed, changing into more better, more comfortable clothes. She switched on some music at a low volume, she would usually drift off to it.
She laid onto the couch and allowed herself to fall unconscious.
A week had passed since she came across those scavengers that were rummaging through her supplies. Clem wondered how the French group were fairing. The last time she saw them was when she escorted them to the river. She hadn't seen them since then.
The teen was cleaning her dishes when something caught her eye. Outside of the window in front of her covered by curtains, she saw movement coming from the woods.
Her initial thought was walkers but she was soon proven wrong when the man from before with the goatee who had previously ransacked her house had come back. This time he brought more people with him.
Probably his whole group this time. It looked that way, they were packed with weapons, rifles, pistols A.Ks. Although one thing she noticed was that the kid wasn't with them anymore. The only person she recognised was the bald guy with the goatee.
"Come on out bitch! I ain't through with you yet!" He exclaimed.
"How do you even know for sure she's here anyway?" Max inquired, walking beside Badger. "She could be long gone by now."
"Yeah well, I don't give a shit. Whether she's here or not, we're going in; there's plenty of shit in that house."
"Unless she packed up and got the fuck outta there."
"Like I said, I don't give a shit." Max shook his head in contempt which went unnoticed by Badger.
"Hey, you two!" The bald man pointed at two of his other group members. "Go around back, make sure nobody escapes!" The two group members squared around the cabin. It was a man and a woman.
Man holding a rifle and the woman had a pistol. They both made it to the back of the house and went to take position on both sides of the door. As the man planted himself on the wall, he heard a loud bang go off which echoed throughout the area.
Immediately after, the whole world turned black.
Clementine shot the man in the back of the head, blowing his temple clean open. She had been watching the two as they made their way around her house; Unbeknownst to the fact that they were being watched.
She took out the woman he was with before him. She cocked her shotgun and began cautiously making her way around the outside of the house. The others definitely knew she was here now.
"Where the hell are you bitch!?" She listened to the group.
"You ain't getting out of this one!"
"You're gonna pay for what you did!"
As she crossed the corner, she saw one of the scavengers. A middle-aged female. She aimed her weapon over at her pulled the trigger.
The teen then heard gunfire and ducked under the railing. The rain of fire was mostly hitting the wall behind her, a board nailed up on the window.
When the gunfire stopped, Clementine took the opportunity to fire back. Unable to pinpoint the target's location, she circled back around the corner.
As she crossed it, she stopped immediately when she saw one of the scavengers coming around. She aimed her weapon and began firing.
She missed the first shot, attracting the man's attention. She quickly cocked the gun and fired again before he could do anything.
The railing was a terrible place to use as cover. Making a split-second decision, she leapt over the railing onto the dirt ground and began searching for the rest of the branded group.
She didn't have to look very far, the man with the goatee came around the corner. He had another person with him, another man who wore a beanie. They both immediately noticed her and began firing.
Having no other choice, she also started firing back. The first few shots had missed her but unfortunately, she was missing too until she managed to hit the one wearing a beanie in the leg.
Suddenly, she felt a wave of force kick her back and immediately felt immense pain coming from the lower part of her stomach. She leaned against the foundation of the house before aiming her gun back at the bald man and fired at him.
He quickly ducked out of the way and Clem had missed. He went to drag his friend to safety before she was able to finish him off.
"Oh shit..." she trailed off, gazing down at the wound in the left side of her abdomen. She clutched onto it with her left hand, her breathing beginning to pick up. "Oh shit... oh son of a bitch..." She felt her face turn cold. She was shot, she had been shot.
She looked around making sure no one was around her then she heard something shatter. What followed made everything stop, she noticed the smell. A burning smell. Mustering up every bit of strength that wasn't leaking out through her wound, she took a few steps away from the cabin and saw the black smoke coming from the other side of the cottage.
Fire. The cabin had been set on fire. It wasn't hard to tell what that smoke was. She weakly jogged around to the other side and was greeted by gunfire.
The teen had taken cover behind the corner, the only one's who happen to be left was the bald guy and his friend.
"You think you're getting out of this!? After what you did!? No, it ain't going down like that!" He shouted as he continued firing.
She could feel the heat of the flames building up further, consuming her cabin. Suddenly, a couple of walkers soon came out of the woods. The firefight must've attracted them. She surveyed the area and saw that there wasn't just a "few" walkers but a whole herd stumbling out of the woods toward the cabin.
The gunfire had stopped, she was unable to figure out what was going on until she saw the two men running away from the area. The bald guy was giving support, as his friend hanged onto him limping.
In one last attempt to end it, Clementine pointed her gun in their direction. She doubted that it would hit them but she didn't care... she needed to kill them. She fired a shot, the recoil worsening the pain of her wound and she dropped the weapon.
She groaned, clutching both hands around her wound which was oozing with blood. It seeped through the gaps in her fingers. If it wasn't for the adrenaline pumping through her, she would've noticed how numb the wound was beginning to feel.
The heat was beginning to become unbearable and she was forced to move away. She went to pick up her shotgun. Her legs were trembling, and a sharp pain shot through her as she knelt to pick it up.
After doing so, she began to run as fast as her body would allow her. The herd was closing in fast and she didn't have time, not energy to deal with them. Once she made her way over to the woods, clumsily dodging past the walkers, she took one last look at the cabin. Or what was left of it anyways. It became a fiery beacon, the whole thing had been engulfed by the flames.
Whatever was left in the house, she would need to forget about. She couldn't go back in, it was a lost cause and she turned around and entered the woods.