"Aw, fuck! Kill it, kill it!" Clancy lifted himself up from his position on the wall. He had been slumped on the floor with his legs outstretched, both nearly touching the desk on the other side of the cramped office. As of now, however, he was on his feet, bouncing around the small room while screaming.
Clancy recoiled into his sweatshirt, backing away from the encroaching intruder. He bit at his lip nervously and balled his fists hard enough to hear his knuckles crack under the pressure.
Carl looked at him frantically, eyes huge and mouth hung agape. He held onto his hat with his left hand as wild eyes scanned the office. He too had been in the room, however, instead of sitting on the floor, the boy had been laying on a desk, legs dangling off the edge from below the knee.
"It's right there, h— hang on." With a deep breath and shut eyes, Clancy brought up his painted sneaker and slammed down on the ground hard, turning the cockroach into paste under his heel.
"It was just a bug?!" Carl yelled. "Are you serious?!"
"I hate bugs. Fucking hate 'em. Crawling around everywhere with their creepy little legs and shit." Clancy emulated the motion of a bug crawling with his fingers while wrinkling his nose in disgust.
Carl walked back to the desk and plopped down on the side of it, head in his hands and legs dangling over the edge. "I thought you were talking about a walker or something." He said with a smile in his voice.
"A Walker? We're in a ten by fifteen room with no windows and a closed door."
Carl disregarded his response. "You live in Georgia and you're afraid of bugs? Especially now with all the walkers out there?"
"I am not afraid!" Clancy yelled. "I just don't like them." He scoffed. "Plus, I lived in Georgia for like three months before the world ended, and I hated them back then too, so…" Clancy scraped his shoe across the floor, spreading bits of the dead roach across the concrete. He turned back to Carl. "Deal with it."
"Really, though? A cockroach." The boy in the cowboy hat pointed towards the smashed remains.
"Yes, sir." Clancy responded through gritted teeth. "Hey, it's not my fault there's all these bugs in this stupid office."
"You're not even supposed to be in here."
"Yeah, well I'm not spending God knows how long cramped up in a room alone. Not trying to go back to that again." The freckled kid paced across the room, taking a second to bend down and wipe a stain from the tip of his shoe.
"Yeah but—"
"Carl, if we were sick, we'd be feeling it already, okay?" Clancy straightened the flimsy office chair before taking a seat. "We were with him most of yesterday, and nothing's happened so far." He said gravely.
Patrick was dead. A boy Clancy's age who looked like he couldn't hurt a fly was dead. From what he had heard, some kind of flu burned him out, made his face explode in an eruption of blood from every orifice on his head.
He was nice, talked a little more than Carl, mostly about comic books, movies, and other things that Clancy couldn't even begin to understand. He played with Lego too, and in a strange way, that made the boy feel like a time capsule. A time capsule from a world that wasn't rotten and dead at the core.
Clancy had just finished setting everything up in his cell when he came by, introducing himself and lifting his thick-framed glasses farther up his huge nose. Long, gangly limbs leaned on the doorway of the cell, and the boy seemed to be hunched over slightly. Even then, he was a little taller than Clancy, who reached five-foot-nine on a good day.
He gawked at the shoddy chest plate in the corner of the cell and asked Clancy about what he had done when the world ended and where he had been for the past year and a half. Of course, Clancy answered them firmly, half surprised that people in Daryl's group talked more than he did, and half still riding the high of human contact.
He was Italian too, apparently. Lost his parents a few months before Daryl found him in a meat locker and the rest was history. Clancy was also going to be enrolled in the same high school as him, surprisingly. That was, before the end of the world. And now Patrick was dead, so none of that mattered.
Clancy hated thinking like that, but he knew it was true. He'd seen it happen with his mom and dad, as well as the rest of his family. People move on. It never gets any easier, but people move on. And because he only knew him for a few days, the process of moving on had set in swifter than he hoped for. That brought him an uncomfortable feeling in his stomach. Like he'd eaten too much and started to feel nauseous, but the only thing he ate today was a granola bar and a handful of trail mix. It was a thick, churning inside of him that he tried his best to not think about.
Easier said than done.
"I know." The boy added, thumbing the hole in the sleeve of his monochrome flannel. "Just wanna be safe."
"I mean, we're not like spitting In each other's mouths or sneezing on each other, right? You just stay on that side of the room, and I'll stay on mine." He rubbed his eyes with a clean hand, something that he hadn't done in weeks. Cleanliness was something he would never take advantage of ever again. Clancy leaned back in the chair, brown eyes focusing on the stain on the floor that was once the cockroach. "I really hope this all gets sorted out soon."
"Yeah," Carl began. "Me too." He laid to his side and then his back, keeping his blue eyes locked on the plain white popcorn ceiling above him. "Are you sad?"
"What? Sad about him?" Clancy sighed, rolling his shoulders in his grey sweatshirt. "I—" he licked his lips, unsure of how to answer the question. Was he sad? Of course, a kid his age and at least ten others just lost their lives. They would never do anything ever again, feel anything ever again. Zip. Zilch. Nada. But there it was again. The deep, nagging feeling that he'd only known them for a few days and would get over it entirely within a week or two. How the hell was he gonna explain that to the blue-eyed cowboy lounging on the old desk in front of him.
"I guess so, yeah." He coughed, running a hand through curly hair that wasn't greasy enough to lube up a frying pan for the first time in months. "What about you?" Clancy asked the boy plainly, head hung low.
"Yeah. I liked Patrick, he was nice, but… I don't know if he would've survived out there." Carl said coldly, the sentence leaving his lips and crashing through the quiet office like a stack of clattering plates and silverware.
"What do you mean?" Clancy asked, leaning forwards.
"I mean, you saw him, didn't you? He never killed any walkers, he was weak. It's the truth." Carl said gravely, face laden with the dark shadows of the musty office that the pair were staying in. His eyes were deep-seated into his skull, bright blue orbs that looked right through Clancy.
The other boy had to remind himself that the cowboy sitting in front of him was just a kid. Only about a year younger than him. Clancy's lips peeled upwards, eyebrows furrowing. "You don't really think that do you? Carl, he was only a kid, give him a break." Clancy didn't even know why he got annoyed at Carl. He partially agreed with him, but would never say it. Patrick wasn't weak though, that's what he disagreed with. He was a kid. An average, every day fifteen-year-old who found himself in a world that was no longer average or every day, a world where easy access to antibiotics to help against things like the flu didn't exist anymore.
Carl didn't respond. The office suddenly felt twenty times smaller and hotter as the awkward silence grew thicker and thicker. Clancy got up from the chair, digging through his jean pockets for the last remaining cigarettes he had on him. A mostly empty pack. Six left. Six too little. With a sigh, he turned towards Carl, who was still laying down on the desk, cowboy hat laying on his stomach and hands relieving an itch on his small nose.
"I'm gonna go smoke." He pulled the small white stick from the wrinkled box, shaky hands playing with the small cylinder in his fingers. Five more now. Fuck.
That kid scared the hell out of him sometimes. Clancy had met Carl for the first time shortly after his first exposure to Patrick. The teen with glasses showed Clancy around his cell, picking through Lego sets and sketches hanging on the walls. Patrick's cell was pretty nice for, well, being a prison cell and all.
Clancy was taking a look at a rudimentary sketch of some Star Wars character when the other kid walked in, complete with a similarly freckled face as Clancy and piercing blue eyes. The pair shared a calloused introduction, like the sound of metal scraping against metal, and then Patrick insisted that they should go to the pavilion to get some food.
The days leading up to Patrick's death were riddled with awkward interactions between Clancy and Carl. It was like he was an adult masquerading as a child, like there was something bothering him deep down that he could never truly share with someone. Sure, he played soccer, and sure, he read comic books, but Clancy could tell that behind those huge blue eyes, there was something in there. Something dark and brooding that was just waiting to get out.
Maybe he was following what Coach Negan had told him all those years ago. Bottling all his problems in him and then letting them out in one controlled burst. Well, if there was anything that Clancy had learned in his six months living alone; that's total bullshit. He cried while he was alone. Screamed, talked to himself, the works. And the truth is, if he didn't do any of those things, maybe he wouldn't be as sane as he was now. Not saying that he was completely sane, but he might've been worse off. If that's even possible.
But now he was basically forced to talk to this kid. With some sort of deadly flu spreading through the prison, Rick, both his dad and the resident farmer, had the idea to coop them up in the dirty, humid, and constricted office block. He did give them the full amenities that one would expect from such a high-class lodging experience, though: a singular lamp for the both of them, and a bag of non-perishable foods that made the freckled boy wrinkled his nose every time he looked inside. Sure, they were a bit strapped for supplies at the moment, and there were more people than just him and Carl inside the office block, but could he have been at least a little more generous when he picked out the food?
His first interaction with the former sheriff's deputy came shortly after his interview with the Council. He already had some pull with Daryl, so getting the others to come to terms with his residence in the prison wasn't that hard. After getting settled into his cell and meeting Patrick and Carl, Clancy found himself at the edge of the courtyard, staring off into nothing. At first, the small bridge over the creek on the other side of the gate caught his attention, but before he knew it, his eyes were glazed over, and a daydream had come out of seemingly nowhere and swept him up.
"Amazing isn't it?"
Clancy's head shot towards his left before his mind could even keep up. "Y- yeah, it's really great."
The man who had just spoken to him stared back with familiar-looking blue eyes. "You must be Clancy, right?" He raised a dirty hand with a grin. "Rick Grimes."
Clancy took the man's hand in a firm grasp, staring him in the eyes as he shook it. He hadn't had the time to ask what Carl's last name was, and he wasn't going to bring it up out of nowhere. Thinking on his feet, he came up with some sort of response.
"Nice to meet you, Mr. Grimes. I'm Clancy." The boy paused, cringing so hard that he was practically shrinking in Rick's hand. "But… you knew that already. Uh… yeah." He turned back towards the prison yard, running a hand through freshly washed hair. "But the place is really great. I still can't believe that this was a prison before all of this." Clancy looked at the imposing set of concrete and brick buildings behind him. "Well, I mean, I still can, but you know what I mean. Your guys did a really great job." He stared at Rick.
The bearded man smiled back at him. "Yeah, it's something. Took this place right from the dead, since then everyone on the Council's been working really hard to keep it up and running." The man looked onward, reminiscing on what Clancy could only assume were the 'glory days' of finding the prison. "I take it you've already met my son?"
"Carl? Yeah, I, uh, I ate lunch with him and Patrick a little while ago. He's a good kid." Clancy licked his chapped lips, exhaling from his nose loudly. "It's crazy to be around other people my age, y'know."
"Daryl said something about you being alone out there this whole time. That true?"
"Kinda, yeah." Clancy scratched the back of his neck, hand running over a jungle of curls that wrapped around his nape. "I was with my dad and his family, then, uh… well, the walkers came. Tore through that house like it was nothing." He looked at his painted canvas sneakers. "Then I just ran." Clancy purposefully left out the part where he held onto his father's blood-covered hand and then hid in his cousin's treehouse until he couldn't hear the screaming of the monsters in the backyard anymore.
A look of remorse came over Rick, he raised his brow before placing a hand on the boy's shoulder. "I'm sorry." It was a short and simple sentence that surprisingly brought Clancy some solace. "Hopefully, you'll start to see the people here as family soon."
"Yeah… Yeah, definitely."
"I also hope you plan on getting rid of those." Rick pointed towards Clancy's pocket, crumbled Marlboro packet sitting inside as clear as day.
"Yeah, I do."
Clancy lied.
He exhaled a mouthful of smoke with a shaky breath, the back of his throat stinging with a somewhat comforting burning. Was this better than being out there alone? Probably, yeah. Actual people to talk to, safety in numbers, thick concrete walls surrounded by chain-link fences. What wasn't there to like. Privacy, maybe? Living on that hiking trail for nearly half a year had made him almost too acquainted with being alone.
Doing even the most rudimentary things like sleeping or eating seemed to be different with people in his presence again. The first day Patrick took him to the pavilion, Clancy practically inhaled a granola bar and packet of instant oatmeal mixed with lukewarm water. A smile wrapped around the Marlboro Gold as Clancy remembered Patrick's bewildered face staring back at him after he polished off the bowl of oatmeal within a minute, shocked brown eyes hidden away by huge, blocky glasses.
That was one of the upsides of being alone. No relationships, no fear of people you meet being gone forever in an instant. Just yourself and yourself alone to keep you company. Maybe his dad was onto something when he told him to stay hidden. He probably didn't mean to stay hidden from people, but the message still held some merit.
The sun had just begun to dip over the horizon as Clancy took his final drag of the cigarette, counting to five and letting out a billow of smoke that ended in a quiet cough. The boy swam in the momentary bliss of the nicotine rush, taking a squinted glance at the final rays of sunlight that peaked through the tall, ragged trees behind the office block of the prison. It was definitely getting cooler, the nights having recently developed a certain briskness to them that made Clancy jerk his body with a chill and lean deeper into his sweatshirt. Maybe it was almost fall. Or winter. Didn't really matter anymore.
After a few more minutes, he crept back into the office, the setting sun barely providing enough light to navigate the maze-like halls. Clancy cursed to himself as he made a wrong turn, mood only worsening as his stomach growled in hunger. God, he hoped that Rick gave them at least something palatable for however long they'd be staying in here.
"You know what I can go for right now." He said with a lightness in his voice, rolling a dusty raisin through his fingers and popping the dried fruit into his mouth.
"Not an old bag of trail mix?" Carl asked, digging through his own small bag of nuts.
"A burger the size of my head. Like one of those ones you'd get at a diner, y'know, all nasty and stuff, dripping with cheese and like… meat juice and shit." As the words rolled off his tongue the trail mix suddenly started to taste a whole lot worse. And he kept going for some reason. "Maybe like, fries on the side or something, shit, man, I don't know." He looked down at the small blue package in his hand, the Planter's Peanut man staring back at him with an almost mocking grin.
"If I'm gonna be honest with you, anything else but fucking trail mix!" Clancy put a hand over his mouth as the last sentence came out louder than he'd expected. Given the deathly silence from the other rooms in the office block, most of the other "healthy but susceptible" folks were probably fast asleep. He looked at Carl with wide eyes, a smile creeping across his face. "Hope no one heard that." He whispered.
Suddenly the room burst into laughter, a brief moment of carefreeness in a week's worth of shitty experiences. Carl let out a hiccuping chuckle as he picked through the assorted nuts and raisins in his palm. "Yeah- Yeah, it really does suck." Another fit of strangled laughter came from the boy sitting in the old office chair, eyes squeezed shut and shoulders shuddering.
"Who would have thought, huh?" He started. "Sitting in an office in a prison laughing about trail mix." Clancy leaned back in his chair, wiping the start of a tear from the corner of his eye. "So uh-" A sudden jolt of laughter interrupted him. "So, what would you rather be eating right now?"
"Pizza. Without a doubt." Carl paused. "Plain. No toppings."
"No toppings? You're shitting me. Really? No pepperoni, mushrooms, olives, any of that stuff?"
"Nope. One of my dad's friends knew this guy at a pizza place a few minutes away from where we lived. Pretty much every Friday night he'd come over with a couple of free boxes. They were always plain." Carl answered, eyes narrowing at the mention of his "dad's friend" briefly. Clancy noticed and didn't say anything.
"So if someone came up to you right now and offered you like- Let's say an entire pepperoni pizza that you couldn't take any of the toppings off, or a pizza with mushrooms, which one would you eat?"
"Probably ask the guy where he got the pizzas from, have him take me to where he's hiding out, and make one myself. Maybe convince my dad to bring his stuff back to the prison so we can make pizzas here."
"That's cheating. One or the other, man."
"Alright, alright. Uh... pepperoni. I don't really like it but I hate mushrooms."
"Really? They're not that bad. You can't even taste them over the- God, I think I might change my answer to pizza." Clancy said with a chuckle. "That deer Daryl brought back a few days ago was probably the closest we're ever gonna get to 'real food' for a while. Well, until he brings back another one I guess."
Carl leaned forward on the desk, straightening his posture so he sat up against the wall the desk was pushed against. "You should've seen Hershel's farm. We ate pretty good down there, too. Well, I did when I was awake at least."
"What do you mean?"
"I got shot right before we found him. It was a mistake, I was looking at some stupid deer and a guy shot through it, hit me right in the stomach." Carl pointed to his lower abdomen. "I lived though, guess my dad and I have something else in common now."
Clancy lurched forward, eyes wild. "He got shot too?" He took a second to think. "I mean, he was a cop, guess it kinda makes sense. When was it?"
"Right before all of this happened, actually. I thought he was dead until one day he just- He wasn't."
Three muffled crackles came from somewhere in the prison, making Clancy straighten himself in his seat, placing his hands on the armrests, ready to pounce. There was a second of silence. Or maybe a minute, maybe two or three. The boys sat in the office, the only sound coming from their nervous breathing. Then there was a blinding light that shined directly in Clancy's face, eliciting an acidic reaction from the boy as he raised a hand to cover his eyes. The flashlight lowered to reveal Carl's dad, speak of the devil, face distorted in distress.
Car picked himself up from the desk, fastening his hat on his head. "Is everything alright? We heard shots."
"I— I need your help."
The father and son shared a brief glance and Clancy took notice of it. Rick looked at his son reassuredly, a slight smile on his face as the two worked together in unison to raise the wooden beam into place, fastening it against the fence as the walkers continued to bring their crushing weight down upon it. Clancy smiled. It was one of those smiles that left a deep pain in his throat as it choked up and brought the familiar hitched breath alongside it.
He continued to pass glances towards the father and son and the three worked to raise and secure the beam, Clancy hammering in a sharp stake into the small rung at the bottom of the long piece of wood that separated them from sudden, painful death. Rick uttered something to the boys as they worked, probably a mantra of reassurance or something. Clancy was too occupied by the sound of splitting wood and splinters that flew towards him as one of the wooden beams holding up gave way right beside him.
They poured in before he knew it. Clancy was thrown to the ground as the fence toppled over, bringing countless walkers in with it. The boy scrambled backward as they got closer and closer, snapping their jaws and broken teeth at their prey. It was like all of those stupid horror movies where the dumb teenagers tried to crawl away from to killer to no avail had come to life. He just couldn't seem to find his footing as more and more of them got closer, the ground feeling like a huge puddle of molasses that just kept pulling him in deeper and deeper.
Some guy in a torn-up basketball jersey took a firm grasp of his shoe, attempting to pull Clancy into the fray of snarling teeth until two hands wrapped themselves around his underarms, pulling him backward hard. Clancy was lifted to his feet soon after, then spun around to face his savior.
"You alright?" Rick Grimes stared at him, blue eyes wide and panicked.
Clancy didn't even have time to answer as he was practically forward by the man, heading straight for the watchtower that lay at the end of the stretch of the fence the walkers had just broken through.
Slamming against the door, sweaty hands found their way to the handle, wrenching it open and throwing himself into the darkness of the pitch-black watchtower. Clancy looked behind him, seeing both Carl and Rick stumble past the walkers and towards his direction. Calling out whatever his brain could conjure, he let out a frightened "Hurry!" as the other two found their way into the darkness, Rick slamming the door shut with a gasp.
Rick led the two boys into the courtyard, Carl tailing closely behind his father. The walkers had found their way onto the side of the fence that faced them, pushing against it just as they had been doing before. Clancy grimaced as he saw a man with his jaw hanging off get smashed up against the divots of the wall, whatever was left of his face splitting away from the pressure of countless others pushing against him.
"Dad, what do we do?" Carl questioned, voice high in worry.
"Maybe I could back the bus up against the fence."
"Will it hold?"
Rick took a second to think, turning away from the boys and jogging towards the gun baskets lined up against the fence. Digging through the crate of ammunition, he threw shotgun shells, boxes of pistol ammo, and some ammunition types that Clancy couldn't even recognize aside, withdrawing six rifle magazines and laying them beside the gun cart. He handed two magazines to Carl, who passed them off to Clancy. Shoving whatever he could into his jean pockets and waistband, the boy swallowed hard as Rick placed an M16 into his hands.
"Magazine goes in here. Release is here. Make sure it latches. Pull back the operating rod and the rounds feed up." Rick pulled back the rod, quickly demonstrating the round falling into the chamber. "Keep squeezing the trigger for rapid-fire, okay?"
Clancy wrapped his hands around the rifle, barely even paying attention to Rick. He played video games before, that's all this would be. Just like playing a video game. Nothing else. At least, that's what he kept telling himself as he got used to the weight of the gun in his hands.
During his time spent with his family shortly after things started getting out of hand, he learned how to shoot cans and empty soda bottles off of a fence post with a pistol. It was a Beretta Pico to be specific, a gun small enough to fit in the boy's hand in its entirety, and with little enough recoil for it to barely even be noticeable. He was an alright shot with it, but now he had a rifle the size of his arm and actual moving targets that weren't afraid to rip him to pieces to deal with.
"You shoot or you run. Don't let 'em get close, okay?" Rick looked at his son, then turned his head to Clancy briefly before taking a look at the herd.
Clancy aimed the rifle, setting his feet firmly on the ground and taking a deep breath. Oh my God. There were hundreds. Thousands. Millions. They tore through the fence, the unstoppable wave knocking it down as if it was made of tissue paper. They screamed. They screamed and they didn't stop screaming, arms reaching out of the pile of the dead wildly like limbs in a dust cloud in one of those old cartoons. Clancy swallowed deeply as the odor finally reached him, the smell of sweat, decay, vomit, and other bodily fluids finding its way deep into his nostrils, burning them sharply as the acrid scent only got stronger as the horde encroached.
A young woman gnashes her teeth at him, black viscous liquid falling from her horrible maw in globs that splatter onto the concrete and the other walking corpses that are intertwined with her. She's short with blonde, mangy hair that falls from a grey scalp in uneven clumps. Vacant eyes stare back, pus-colored orbs that weren't even looking at Clancy, but directly through him into the endless void of space. They all just kept screaming.
Rick raised his Bushmaster AR-15, sending a barrage of gunfire into the sea of the undead. Deafening crackles blast through the night, followed shortly by blinding tracers that Clancy could see even after he closed his eyes to blink. Everything was loud. It was like every other sound except the screaming of the walkers and the drum-beat-crackle of the gunfire was completely removed from his perception. Carl started shooting soon after, sending round after round into the walker pile.
Clancy looked from side to side at both figures beside him, closing one eye and exhaling. He squeezed the trigger of the M16, sending a three-round burst straight into the horde. The recoil shook his upper body to the core, vibrating his skull and making his brain feel as if it was about to fall out of his ears. He squeezed the trigger again, another three rounds came from the muzzle, bright yellow flashes lit up the prison yard as walker bodies began to be riddled with dark red pockmarks. They weren't stopping.
"Oh right, you idiot." Clancy thought to himself. "Aim up."
Keeping his left eye squeezed shut, he raised the iron sights towards the head of a swiftly approaching man. His rotten eyes stared back, milky in color, tired eyelids drooping over the clouded orbs. Blackened lips were pulled back to reveal a set of cracked and uneven teeth like the mouth of a shark that opened up and closed repeatedly, letting a long groan escape the dark cave of his decayed muzzle. Clancy squeezed the trigger, the man's head exploding in a slurry of purple-red gelatinous liquid that launched from his eyes, nose, and mouth. He dropped like a sack of potatoes, causing another walker to trip over him. Clancy brought the rifle to the fallen walker's skull, unleashing a barrage of bullets into it. The woman's head fell apart like a watermelon, brains leaking through the cracked and discolored skull.
"Holy shit! This is insane!" The boy wasn't even sure if he was saying it out loud. Everything was so noisy that even if he did, Carl or Rick definitely wouldn't hear it.
The father and son backed up, the former pulling out his spent magazine and dropping it to the tarmac, extracting another from his waistband and slapping it into the rifle. Carl seemed to follow, and Clancy just kept firing until the explosion from the barrel ceased, a barely audible clicking noise replacing it. He back-pedaled quickly, pushing down the release and watching the magazine clatter to the floor before he pulled another from his jean pocket. With slick hands, he carefully pushed it into place, delivering a strike at the bottom of it to make sure it was secure. Pulling the operator rod back and seeing a bullet get pushing into the chamber, Clancy couldn't help but crack a smile.
A thunderous clap sounded next to him, jostling Clancy from his brief moment of levity. Carl had pumped multiple rounds into the head of a burly man that Rick had knocked to the floor, a pool of deep red quickly expanding from the walker's butterflied head. The boy moved up, taking careful aim as he picked off the dead that were shambling through the small space made by the toppled fence. Rick looked at his son, then to Clancy, and nodded, eyes wide and face dripping in a cold sweat. He licked his lips in anticipation and turned back towards the herd, squeezing the trigger and letting out a volley of hot lead into the thinning crowd.
Heads burst in brilliant displays of cerebral fluid, sending flecks of it flying onto the oncoming walkers as they screamed, ruined hands outstretched in a display of primal hunger. Clancy screamed a few times as well, out of fear or out of exhilaration, he didn't know. All that mattered was that more and more of them were dropping, and before Clancy knew it, they were all dead. Hundreds of bullet casings lined the prison grounds, as well as brains, skull fragments, eyeballs, and corpses. Dead, rotting corpses that didn't even have to try to overpower the scent of gunpowder in the chilled night air.
Clancy felt like he could run a marathon. He felt like he could run a marathon while breathing through a straw. He felt like he could run a marathon while breathing through a straw all while lifting the weight of the world on his shoulders. The boy practically shook with excitement, sweaty hands squeezing the empty M16 and tongue flicking out of his mouth wildly, wiping the sweat away from his upper lip.
"Yeah, baby!" Clancy dropped the rifle, running over and delivering a swift kick to the skull of a decayed middle aged man. Inky black liquid found its way onto his white Converses as a loud crack filled the courtyard. "You might wanna think again before messing with us!" The boy taunted the pile of limp corpses that snaked its way over the toppled chain link fence. He found himself bouncing on his heels, a deluge of adrenaline still finding its way through his veins. Clancy looked back to the pile, taking focus on an older woman. He made sure to get a running start, something that reminded him of his days playing soccer with Scott after school. Clancy delivered a hefty strike into the dead woman's face, canvas shoe smashing decaying teeth and cartilage, sending an eruption of molding flesh and tissue across the grass alongside the tell-tale deep crimson blood of a walker.
He turned to Rick and Carl, practically flying out of his skin. Clancy lifted a hand for a high five, every muscle in his body fully tensed up, teeth bared with a sound of strangled exaltation escaping through his mouth into the freshly silent night.
Carl slapped his hand with an equal amount of force, a loud, screeching laugh coming from the boy in the cowboy hat. Clancy slammed his arm down, continuing the scream of victory that crumbled into a fit of laughter. It reminded him of gym class. Like he and Carl had just made the goal on the winning team and they were exploding in a fit of success. For a second there, just a second, life felt normal again. Then he realized what they were celebrating over.
A pile of stinking dead bodies lay in the courtyard mere feet away from him and Clancy almost stopped smiling but the adrenaline physically impaired him.
Rick turned to the boys, a smile plastered on his sweaty face as he shook his head, walking over to the gun cart and dropping his scoped Bushmaster into the receptacle with a knowing smirk. "Wait until we gotta burn them all. That was the easy part" Rubbing his moist hands on his jeans, Rick took the gun from Carl and bent down with a groan, picking up Clancy's dropped M16 by the carrying handle. "Good shooting. Both of you." Rick put the guns away, staring at the boys, both still on their own respective adrenal highs.
The freckled boy's knees felt weak, that's how it started at first. He bent down, holding onto them with shaking hands, the entire world moving while he stood still. It started spinning quicker, throwing Clancy off balance as gripped his own knees for dear life. "Oh shit." He murmured as a sickening salty taste coated his mouth, filling it with thick saliva that he spit onto the concrete. "Gonna puke." The world spun at a million miles a minute, he saw Carl and Rick reaching out towards him but they seemed hundreds of miles away. Clancy spat onto the ground again, the rancid saltiness only getting stronger.
Then he lurched forward, letting out an ugly gag that made Carl take a few steps away from him, at least, Clancy thought he did. Tunnel vision held onto him, directing Clancy's view into one singular point on the dull grey concrete. Another wretched gag came from the boy, and with that came a torrent of clear liquid from his stomach, splattering across the courtyard, dispersing in a wild pattern that only made Clancy sicker. He heaved again, nothing coming from him except for the unpleasant sound.
"Sorry." He spat out, wiping away a glob of saliva from his lower lip. "Don't feel so good anymore." Clancy said with a strangled smile in his voice. Everything felt a lot more hot, like he was in an oven and someone had cranked up the heat by a hundred degrees. Clancy's clothes started sticking to him suddenly, beads of sweat going right through them. He shrank away as Rick grabbed his shoulder, looking into his huge brown eyes.
"You did good tonight, go get some rest." He looked towards the pile of clear vomit and dead walkers. "We got a lot of work cut out for us tomorrow. Bright and early." The man smiled, sweat-stained face glowing in the light of a small lamp set up in the courtyard.
Clancy squeezed his eyes shut, taking a deep breath while stretching. He looked back to Rick and nodded his head. "Thanks." He said, turning away from the carnage and walking towards the office block, not even worrying about the sound of a car approaching the prison. Must be the veterinary college run.
Carl looked at him uneasily, brow raised in worry. "I've never killed that many before." Clancy said breathlessly. "I don't know, I kinda flipped, got hopped up on adrenaline, and then crashed. S'why I threw up… I think." He kicked the gravel beneath his ruined shoes, dust flying up around them.
They were really fucked up. Blood was caked along the plastic tip, half of it dried already, and the other half swiftly getting there. The canvas body was completely covered in maroon liquid. Deep red patterns splattered over the paint that he had added to the once pristine white sneaker. If it wasn't for the cover of darkness, Clancy would be able to see the bloody footprints following him, as if he was some kind of murderer that just got away with a fresh killing spree. Isn't that what he was though? A murderer? He'd just killed at least fifteen people without a second thought.
No, they weren't people. Half of them had their faces peeling off and limbs missing long before he pulled the trigger of the M16. They weren't sick either. They were dead. They were long dead, and he was doing the right thing by putting them down, right? Stopping them from eating more people and all that shit? Why did it still feel wrong, though?
"You alright?" Carl lifted the brim of his hat, taking a glance at the taller boy.
"Yeah, I'll live." Clancy responded plainly, scraping his blood-stained shoe across the pavement of the courtyard.
That night, in the confines of the dark office room, Clancy Peters felt more alive than he had in months. Tossing and turning in his makeshift cot on top of a desk, moved from the one he had under it the previous night given the presence of the cockroach, sleep soon came over him, and with it, followed the greatest rest that he'd had since the world ended.
Little did he know, however, in the inky blackness of the Georgia woods, a man watched their home intently, his brow furrowing at the toppled fence. He peered at the new additions to the fortress. A new gate, farms, some sort of irrigation system. They had been hard at work since the last time he was here. They were thriving. The man scowled at the sight, an acrid taste rising in his mouth as the growing discomfort at seeing the current state of the prison matched it. However, as he examined the damage to the fences again, a smirk found its way across his face and he turned back towards his encampment, fastening his eyepatch. There was going to be a war.