"So you got it in a bun now, huh?"
"Uh, yeah." He said, disinterested, staring down at the book in his hands.
"Who told you to do that? Was it the big guy from the Kingdom?"
"Jerry? No. I just… wanted to grow it out, I dunno."
"I liked it better before. When you had it short."
"Yeah, well I liked it better when you didn't kill my friends but hey, you don't see me complaining."
The man behind the iron bars leaned back and laughed, the bellows bouncing off the walls of the concrete basement. "Got me there, kiddo."
Dick.
Clancy's eyes fluttered open and it took him a second to get used to the popcorn ceiling. Oh right, he was still in the office and not his five-star prison cell. With a yawn and a smack of his lips, the boy lifted himself from his "bed," immediately letting out a noise of discomfort given the sudden jolt of pain in his lower back. Swinging his legs over the side of the desk and stretching, He retreated to a hunched position, body swaying from side to side as he got used to consciousness again. Carl came into view suddenly, kneeling in the corner of the office and digging through a duffel bag with a camo pattern on it. He looked at him through squinted eyes, the vale of sleep still well over him.
"What time is it?" Clancy asked, voice horse and quiet.
"A little past noon, I think. Dad decided to let us sleep in after yesterday. I only got up like an hour ago."
"We still gotta clean up the bodies?" The other boy asked, a growing annoyance in his voice that somehow made him sound even more tired.
Carl chuckled quietly, continuing to move things around in the large bag. "No. Michonne and Hershel are doing most of it, actually. Loaded them up on a truck a few minutes ago."
"Really now? That's something." With the sweet feeling of relief washing over him, Clancy was half tempted to fall back onto the hard bed and drift off again, but the better part of him was yelling at him to get off his lazy ass and out of the musty office room.
"Now that you're up, there's something that I want to show you, actually. Dad brought me out there this morning, it was pretty cool." Carl turned away from his bag, looking at Clancy with expectant eyes, waiting for the other boy's response.
He sighed deeply, wiping his eyes. Clancy stared back at the cowboy, blinking languidly with a thin smile spreading across his lips. "Well, I'm barely awake right now, gimme a second. Can we get breakfast or something first—Actually wait, your dad probably still wants us to stay away from people, right?."
"Well the thing I want to show you involves food, so maybe the pavilion can wait. As for the second thing, uh... Daryl and the others came back from the college right after you threw up all over the floor yesterday, so things should start to go back to normal soon. I hope." Carl finished rummaging through the bag, turning around to Clancy, head resting in his hands and eyes closed.
"How's Sasha, Glenn, and everyone else?" He asked through shut eyes, voice muffled by his hand pressing up against his mouth.
"Yeah, uh, dad said that they should be okay. I think they got some medicine or something to help them. But, uh, I actually was just gonna ask you if you were alright. I came in here to check on you after I helped dad finish up with the walkers yesterday and you were already knocked out."
"Yeah, I'm fine," Clancy said quickly. Was he ashamed of how he reacted last night? A little. Throwing up all over the floor after gunning down a few dozen rotting corpses definitely won't leave the best impression on someone, in this case, Rick. Poor guy probably had to clean it up himself. He yawned. "Did get the best sleep of my life, though, so I'm not complaining."
"Really?"
"Yeah, it was— it was pretty awesome. Say, what were you doing with the bag? Bringing more clothes? Is your dad making us stay longer or—"
"I just stopped by my cell, grabbed some stuff to take over here. A few books, comics, and yeah, some more clothes. You should go to yours too after I show you the thing ." Carl itched his nose. "Maybe you can take the stupid armor thing you made too."
"It's not— it is not stupid, alright!" Clancy pouted, socked feet dropping onto the creaky wooden floor of the office. He looked towards his shoes beside the desk and grimaced. The blood had almost completely dried from the previous night, leaving them both a muddy red color. All the paint that the boy had added was totally covered by a new, macabre burgundy layer that he could already smell from here. They were his favorite pair, but nothing was stopping him from getting another from his cell. But shit, man, he really liked those.
"Alright, well get the hell out so I can change." Clancy looked away from the shoes, staring at the cowboy beside him. "C'mon. Chop, chop."
He wore the bloody shoes to the garden and based on the looks given to him by others in the field, it was probably the wrong decision. Clancy wasn't actually walking near the crops, though, so the damage that he would possibly be doing was slim to none. That's what he told himself at least.
Standing awkwardly behind Carl, who was leaning on one knee and thumbing through the mass of green vines, Clancy looked at the fence with surprise. In a matter of hours, almost all evidence of the walker invasion had been wiped clean, save for a section of the wall that was still leaning inwards slightly. They'd fix it later, maybe he would do it personally, given all the trouble he caused with the vomit yesterday.
Before he knew it, something cold and round was placed into his hand. Eyes bulging, he looked down to see a perfectly ripe tomato.
"It's not gonna bite you. C'mon, eat it."
The boy didn't have to be told twice. He was starving. That was a common factor of pretty much every day of his life recently. Being hungry. Now, he was usually always hungry before the world ended, which probably coincided with his weight, but when the chips were down and shit hit the fan a year and a half ago, food wasn't as easy to come across. What he did have, he savored, and what he didn't have, he fantasized about. Now here he was, eating a tomato. A fresh piece of fruit in the middle of the end of the world. Maybe his days of always being hungry would be ending sooner rather than later.
"So? How is it?"
"Oh, it's good. Great actually. I don't usually eat them like this… y'know, plain, alone, like a piece of fruit or something… but these things, they're probably the best tomatoes I've ever had."
Carl smiled, a look of pride flashing across his face. "Yeah. It's a shame we have no way of saving them for the winter, though. Gonna have a lot more than we can eat, I think."
"Can we freeze 'em somehow?" He asked through a mouthful of tomato, wiping the juice falling down his chin.
"That's what I asked dad, too. Turns out freezing them pulls out all the flavor." Carl examined the tomato crops in the yard, picking at the leaves growing off the sides.
"Damn, that sucks. Him and Hershel are freakin' magicians with the vegetables, though." Clancy looked at the red fruit in his hand, enthralled at the simple fact he was eating something that wasn't from a can or bag or spoiled for the first time in nearly a year. It was delicious, plain and simple. "Hey, maybe your little pizza dream might come true after all, huh? Find us some wild cattle out there, get us some cheese and stuff." He elbowed the boy next to him, closing his eyes and taking another bite of the tomato.
Then the world started shaking. It was like the ground was splitting in two beneath him and would suck him into the core of the Earth at any moment. The fireball showed itself soon after. Clancy stared slack-jawed at the watchtower in front of him as the crow's nest was torn to shreds by an unknown show of force, sending shards of glass and rock and metal everywhere in the prison yard. He felt the heat soon after, a faint scent of kerosine following it as the fireball slowly subsided atop the desecrated watchtower, leaving nothing but a smoldering pillar of concrete in its wake.
He dropped the fruit as he stared at the massive army on the other side of the chain-link fence. There were people with pistols, people with shotguns, people with light machine guns, armored cars, people in armored cars with light machine guns, oh, and a tank. Of course there was a tank.
He started running. Running faster than his legs have ever carried him. Fast enough that he passed by Carl, who had begun running before Clancy could even process the danger in front of him. High-tailing up the small hill and through the gate to the courtyard, he turned and looked at Daryl. "Who is that?" he asked breathlessly.
He didn't get a response, but the look on the archer's face gave him all the information he needed.
"It's him isn't it? The Governor." Clancy had heard of him once. His name was brought up during a quick story uttered by Beth as they all ate at the pavilion. From the little that the boy could gather, he was a bad man who tried to take the prison from them, wore an eyepatch, and led a town that had most of its inhabitants moved to the prison after he went crazy. Maybe those Mad Max predictions he had made when Daryl picked him up were finally coming to fruition.
"It's not up to me! There's a council now! They run this place." Rick yelled from the safety of the prison, voice loud, but still obviously shaking in nervousness.
"Is Hershel on the council? What about Michonne? She on the council, too?"
Suddenly, the pair were brought to the foot of the tank, both on their knees and feverishly glancing at the insurmountable amount of power that these people had.
"I don't make decisions anymore!"
"You're making the decisions today, Rick." The Governor grimaced. "Come down here. Let's... Let's have that talk."
And so he went.
There were so many of them. There were so many of them and they all had guns and they had a tank. They had a tank.
"We can't take 'em all on." Daryl whispered. "We'll go through the admin building, through the woods like we planned. We ain't got the numbers no more. When's the last time someone checked the stash on the bus?"
"Day before we hit the Big Spot. We were running low on rations then. We're lower now." Sasha answered, scratching her arm nervously.
"Yeah, we'll manage. Things go south, everyone heads for that bus. Let everybody know."
"What if everybody doesn't know when things go bad? How long do we wait?" Tyreese questioned.
"As long as we can." Daryl seethed, squinting at The Governor's troops.
Clancy turned away from the fence, looking at Carl. "I— I don't know what we're gonna do." He whispered. "We can't win this, man."
"Don't say that."
"They have a freaking tank." he annunciated. "Am I the only one that sees that?"
"Nah." Daryl interrupted. "We're not giving this place up that easy."
"Let 'em go right now. I'll stay down here. Talk as long as you want. But you let 'em go. You got a tank. You don't need hostages." Rick begged as he continued down the path, thrusting a finger in The Governor's direction.
"I do. This is just to show you I'm serious. Not to blast a hole in our new home. You and your people, you have till sundown to get out of here or they die." The man atop the tank said with a smile in his voice.
"Doesn't have to go down this way."
"I got more people, more firepower. We need this prison. There it is." The Governor pointed behind the lone man, the same slimy smile plastered across his face.
"It's not about the past. It's about right now. There are children here. Some of them are sick." Rick's voice faltered. "They won't survive."
"I have a tank. And I'm letting you walk away from here. What else is there to talk about?"
Daryl grunted as he rolled the cart of guns down the courtyard towards the fences. He began to dig through the weapons, pulling out an assault rifle with a scope on it and handing it to Bob.
"You good?" He asked, voice low and head hung lower.
"Yeah." Bob muttered, grabbing the barrel of the rifle, hands slick with cold sweat.
"Clance, c'mon." Daryl motioned the boy over and gave him two more assault rifles. "Pass 'em around."
He grabbed each by the barrel, looking at the jet black guns with eyes the size of frisbees. He tightened his grip on the weapons, shaking his head in acknowledgment before preparing to turn around.
"Hey."
Clancy looked back towards the archer, his utter horror being hidden by a thinly-veiled expression of stone.
"We're gonna get through this, alright? We always do." Daryl reassured the boy, putting a dirty hand on the boy's shoulder. "Now c'mon, start handing those things out, no time to waste, man."
Clancy took one in each hand, nodding and stepping towards Beth and Maggie.
"Hi." He held out the gun to Maggie, her eyes transfixed on Hershel, who was kneeling in front of an army big enough to kill all of them five times over. She barely even noticed that Clancy was there, her undivided attention placed on the scene transpiring before her as she squeezed Beth's hand as hard as she could. They were shaking. Clancy tucked the first rifle under his armpit, tapping Maggie's shoulder lightly with his free hand as he reached out with one of the guns. "It's gonna be alright." He whispered. "I'm nervous too, but Rick's gonna fix it. It's gonna be fine." It wasn't going to be fine. He knew that any second now all hell would break loose and there's nothing he could do except put his head in the sand and wait for it to all blow over.
The sisters took the guns, wrapping the shoulder strap over themselves and turning right back to the ticking time bomb in the prison yard. "Thanks, hun." Maggie choked out through a lump in her throat.
"Yeah. No problem."
"I could shoot you all. You'd all shoot back. I know that. But we'll win and you'll be dead. All of you." The Governor boomed, scowling at Rick.
"Doesn't have to be like that." Rick pleaded.
"Like I said, it's your choice. Noise will only draw more of them over. The longer you wait, the harder it will be for you to get out of here."
"We gotta do something." Carl provoked.
Clancy wasn't even listening to what Carl was saying. He wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead as he dug through the gun cart, pulling out pistols and shotguns and passing them around to whoever he could. The gun cart was getting lighter and lighter. Was this really all the guns that they had? It seemed like so much more five minutes ago.
"Your dad's got it." Daryl shot back, keeping his sights on the tank in the field.
"They're talking. We could kill The Governor right now."
"From fifty yards?"
"I'm a good shot. I could end this right now." Carl commented.
Clancy looked into the cart and saw that it was empty except for a small semi-automatic pistol; a TEC-9. He checked if the safety was on, and being pleased with his search, held it tightly in his right hand.
So if he fired this thing, where would he hold it? Both hands on the grip? One on the grip and one on the funky-looking magazine that hanged from beneath the barrel? Clancy tried both quickly as he made his way back to the fence. The second one worked better for him, or at least, he hoped it would when he had to actually shoot someone. He shuddered.
"Yeah, or you could start something else." Daryl's conversation with Carl continued, pulling Clancy out of his laser-focused experimentation with the pistol. "You gotta trust him."
"You got a few hours of sunlight left. I suggest you start packing. The longer you wait, the harder it's gonna be for you to get out of here." The Governor continued.
"We can all- we can all live together. There's enough room for all of us. More than enough."
"But I don't think my family would sleep well knowing that you were under the same roof."
"We'd live in different cell blocks. We'd never have to see each other till we're all ready."
"It could work." Hershel turned towards The Governor. "You know it could."
"It could've." The Governor curled his lips "But it can't. Not after Woodbury. Not after Andrea."
"Look, I'm not saying it's gonna be easy. Fact is, it's gonna be a hell of a lot harder than standing here shooting at each other. But I don't think we have a choice." Rick added to Hershel's proposition, staring at the old man momentarily before facing The Governor once again.
"We don't. You do."
"We're not leaving. You try to force us, we'll fight back. Like you said, the gunshots will just bring more of them out. They'll take down the fences. Without the fences, this place is worthless. Now, we can all live in the prison or none of us can."
"We'll fix the damn fences." The Governor growled to himself as he jumped off the tank, taking Michonne's katana from one of his soldiers and putting it against Hershel's neck.
Clancy suddenly felt hot again. His face started to burn and his throat hurt and cotton balls filled his mouth. They were about to die. They were all about to die. It would start with Hershel, then Michonne, then they'd drive the tank right through the wall and kill all of them, one by one. Clancy heard Maggie and Beth screaming and it brought him back to reality for long enough to finally move his body. He ran up to the fence, clammy hands barely keeping a grip on the pistol behind his back. Suddenly, the TEC-9 started to feel a lot heavier. Clancy held onto the chainlink, squeezing it between his fingers until he swore he could feel the fence warping under his pressure.
"You. You in the ponytails. Is this what you want?" Rick pointed, sounding frantic. "Is this what any of you want?
"What we want is what you got. Period. Time for you to leave, asshole." A man peeking his head out of the tank said with a smirk.
"Look, I fought him before. And after, we took in his old friends. They've become leaders in what we have here. Now you put down your weapons, walk through those gates... you're one of us." Rick boomed. "We let go of all of it, and nobody dies. Everyone who's alive right now. Everyone who's made it this far. We've all done the worst kinds of things just to stay alive. But we can still come back. We're not too far gone. We get to come back. I know... we all can change." Rick looked down to Hershel and the two shared a quick glance. The old man nodded at the other and smiled.
"Liar."
The Governor winded back, gripping the hilt of the katana with both hands as he swung directly into Hershel Greene's neck. The old man stood still for a second as if the very nerves that processed his rapidly approaching demise had been severed by the slice of the blade. Then the blood came. The first burst shot out of the side of his split neck like a geyser, sending out a spray of scarlet fluid that coated the Governor's jacket like a drizzle on a rainy day.
The old man choked out something, a series of garbled words escaped his mouth as the explosion of blood from his severed neck subsided, slowing down to a steady rush of fluid that escaped the gaping hole and stained his button-down shirt a deep red all around his shoulders, pooling around his suspenders and finding its way further down his torso. Hershel's head fell sideways as if finally realizing that his imminent death was closer than ever. With a single cough that coincided with another burst of blood shooting from the cavity carved into his neck, the man fell into the grass.
There was silence at first. Deafening silence. The type of silence that made your ears ring. Then it all came back.
Clancy grabbed his head in shock, fists clenched with handfuls of curly hair. "AGH! NO!" A guttural yell of anguish escaped him and then the shooting started.
It was like a million firecrackers were going off in his ears at once. At every direction Clancy turned, another skull-vibrating crack of a rifle or explosion would send him nearly tumbling to the ground. His hands slipped around the TEC-9, switching the safety off and aiming into the field.
Michonne was gone and The Governor was standing over Hershel. The one-eyed man picked him up by his suspenders, raising the katana in his left hand and bringing it down with a powerful thrust that shot another spray of blood into the air and onto his face. Hershel continued to squirm under the blade until it was brought down again on his jugular. The old man's eyes rolled back as the sword pierced the skin, letting out a gurgle as brown blood oozed into the grass and glistened like a puddle of molasses.
The Governor sneered as he brought the blade down a final time, completely separating Hershel's head from his shoulders, the former plopping into the field with a weak thud that wasn't even audible due to the sheer volume of the volleys of gunfire that lit up the prison yard. Hershel's lower body twitched wildly as The Governor threw him back to the ground, and then as if nothing had happened, he fell still.
Beth and Maggie's scream may have been one of the worst things that Clancy had ever heard. A raw, unbridled sorrow escaped the sisters as the blonde held onto Maggie for support, knees giving way as a sob wracked her body. Clancy turned away from the mourning sisters in a daze, eyes locking onto the mess of Hershel's corpse and the Governor's army that quickly made their way past the fences that he, Carl, and Rick had tried so hard to keep up merely the night prior.
The tank rolled through the outside fence and toppled the farm, grinding the crops into mush as it fired a shot into the wall of D Block. The explosion knocked Clancy off of his feet and sent the TEC-9 flying from his hands, landing on the concrete floor of the courtyard and discharging. Great, another loud noise. It was loud enough to help him realize that he hadn't been able to hear anything but gunshots for the past few seconds. Or minutes. How long had it been?
Daryl pulled him off the ground and shoved the pistol he'd dropped back into his hand. Clancy nodded at him and fired blindly into the prison yard, missing every shot. Where was Rick? Where was Carl? Clancy grabbed Daryl's shoulder, leaning his face near the other man's face and screaming.
"What- What do I do?!"
Daryl turned towards him, eyeing the boy for a moment before turning his attention back to the tank in the yard. "Go to the cells! Get people and bring 'em to the bus, then get in and wait!"
Clancy nodded his head at the man, taking a deep breath and looking towards the smoldering watchtower, Clancy began his run across the courtyard, trying his best to keep out of the gunfire.
As he rounded the corner towards the entrance to D Block, Jacob Mendez stopped him, a burly Mexican man with a big nose and dark skin. He grabbed the boy by his arm, screaming into his face. "Clancy, where's Glenn and Sasha!? We need to get the council together to talk about leaving!"
"I- Sasha's out there somewhere!" He pointed towards the fence that separated the prison from the courtyard. It was so loud. "Maybe she'll know where-"
Clancy heard the crack of the bullet before it hit its target. He was ready to fall to the ground and scream in pain as he slowly bled out, but that didn't happen. Instead, Jacob's face exploded. One second he was there, and the next, the entire top half of his face was a mess. Blood, pieces of brain, and bone scattered across the courtyard, liberally splattering Clancy's face. Jacob let out a drowsy croak of pain and his knees gave out. The man fell to the ground with a soft thud, and Clancy looked down in horror, mouth agape at the dark liquid spreading from under the man's head.
"Oh my God!" That was all he said. What else could be said? Clancy looked at Jacob's convulsing body that was taking in persistent greedy gasps of air. He was still alive.
Swallowing the bile rising in his throat, Clancy ran away. He wrenched the door to Cell Block D open and flung himself inside, slamming it shut and taking a deep, shaky breath that echoed throughout the empty halls. People. People; he needed to find people. A distant explosion rocked the prison as he made his way through the deserted cell block, peering into every cell. Clancy squeezed his eyes shut with every volley of muffled gunfire or scream. Things had to let up soon, right?
Running through Cell Block D, he passed his own cell, pausing as he stared at the football gear that lay in the back corner, shrouded in shadow. No. No, it wasn't worth it, right? There was no way in hell that it could even work, it was a piece of sports equipment with some junk hammered into it.
Clancy opened the door of the cell, wriggling himself into the chest plate and hitting it with his closed fist a few times. The thing stood true, which made him feel a little better, at least. The boy took a final look around his cell. He hadn't been here long, but the place had definitely started growing on him, and somewhere deep down, Clancy knew that this would be the last time he'd be seeing it.
Another explosion shook his world, followed by the horrible sound of crumbling rocks that made the boy cringe as he left his cell. There was no one. Not a single soul inside the prison. It was almost like nobody had ever even lived here. Part of him wanted to stay in the quiet hallway, let everything outside blow over while he was hiding in the safety of the cell, but he knew that wasn't possible. He needed to get to the bus, and he hated that fact.
Opening the creaky metal door into the courtyard was like stepping directly into the middle of a raging tornado. People were running past him, getting picked off one by one, guns were being fired from both sides, sending a steady stream of smoke into the air as the tank continued its unstoppable warpath through the prison's fences.
The hull of the beast rotated slowly as if sizing up its next target. It was quiet at that moment and at that moment alone. Like all the air had been sucked out of the world, leaving Clancy in a vacuum that only he and the tank were a part of. A shell came flying past his head, smashing into something behind him and sending chunks of the concrete flying away in its wake. Okay, ow. Clancy fell to the ground, grabbing his ears and screaming in pain as the world collapsed around him. He never thought that the expression "seeing stars" was actually true, but he could've sworn there were small glowing dots in his perception. Clancy wasn't in the vacuum anymore, actually, everything was louder than it had ever been. He got up and kept walking with his eyes fluttering as they started to make sense of the world around him again.
The sky bridge was gone, crumbling in on itself as the tank shell exploded as it made contact. This wasn't right. This shouldn't have been happening. Things like this shouldn't be happening to people like him. Kids. They should be at home, playing video games, watching TV, hanging out with their friends. Not… whatever this was.
The bus. He needed to get to the bus. Where was it again? Wasn't it right there a few minutes ago? Clancy narrowed his eyes at the empty place where the bus once stood. Nothing. His shoulders fell and he kept staring. Waiting for the bus to come back around the corner with Rick and Carl inside, scooping him up and taking him to safety. It didn't come. He kept waiting for some reason. Standing in the middle of the courtyard in front of the smoking pile of rubble that was once the sky bridge.
Something hard hit him in the shoulder. Something really hard. Made a high-pitched "pinging" noise and knocked him onto his ass right after he'd just gotten up. Surprisingly enough, Clancy didn't even make a sound as he fell to the ground, chest throbbing. He just lay there, looking up towards the sky as everything around him just spun and continued to spin and never stopped. Was he shot? Is that what just happened?
Head bobbing drowsily, he looked down to his chest, lazy eyelids raising as he saw the significant dent in the piece of scrap metal nailed into the football gear. Clancy's head fell back, letting out a small snort of amusement. The sky was so blue, it was surprising actually. It was a nearly perfect cyan, the type of stuff you see on postcards. Maybe he'd just lay here. Maybe he'd lay here and let the whole thing blow over like he was planning to inside the cell block a few minutes ago.
"You think it's gonna hold?"
"I… shit, son, yeah I think it will."
"Dad. If- if they get in…"
"They won't, okay? They're sick. They're sick people, and no sick person I know can get through something like this."
"Yeah… yeah, you're right. I hope Aunt Terry is okay. You saw what the news was saying about-"
"Yes! Yes, I saw what the news was saying about Atlanta. Something happens, though… you run."
"What?"
"If they do get in… you run, get the hell outta here. Live."
"What about Luca and Ella?"
"Uncle Joe can get 'em out. I just… I need you to be safe, alright? For… for her."
"Okay."
"So you understand?"
"Yeah… yeah, run."
Yeah, run. Get up, asshole.
Clancy sat up, a splitting headache tore through his skull and made him clench his eyes shut as he counted to five. Alright, the pain wasn't leaving. Time to push through it. He fell to his side, flipping onto his stomach and placing his hands on the ground, pushing himself up with his knees placed firmly beneath him. He was moving through mud. He was moving through mud and his joints were filled with glue and every part of him felt like it was about to lock up at any moment.
He put a blood-stained shoe underneath him, placing both hands on it and pushing down hard. Clancy was up. He was on solid ground, and although he felt like he was about to crumble into a bunch of bite-sized pieces where he stood, it didn't matter. He was standing and he could walk, or at least, try to walk. Then there was someone standing in front of him. Of course there was.
The woman with the big gun stared at him with shaking hands. An opened button-down shirt revealed a grey band tee that he didn't even bother to read. This was it, now he'd finally get it. That is, unless her gun magically jammed and she was forced to run away. Clancy slowly raised his hands above his head as the two stared at each other for what felt like years, both either too scared or confused to make the first move.
Then from somewhere else on the battlefield, whether it was fate or just bad luck, a series of gunshots crackled. Neither of them had any time to react to the small brass projectile hurtling towards them.
He didn't even process the explosion of blood that covered his face in a feathered splatter. Then the pain struck him. It wasn't there at first, like a second of levity as Clancy noticed what his injury actually was. Then it came. It came all at once and he wanted to roll into a ball and wait for everything to be all over. A strangled cry left his lips as the woman looked on in horror at the boy who was now hunched over in pain, gripping his left hand as bright red trails snaked their way down his arm and onto the concrete.
His left index finger had been blown off halfway through the second digit. It was a clean cut, but that didn't mean it hurt any less, or in turn, looked any better. His finger was gone. It was gone and there was no way of putting it back. No ice to keep it preserved on, no quick stop at the hospital to sew it back. It was just… gone.
It was on the concrete, actually. Sitting there like a perfectly severed cut of sausage ready to be fried up on the grill. He wanted to vomit. He wanted to vomit, then keel over and cry into his mom's shoulder until it would all stop and he'd be okay again. He couldn't do any of that now though and that made him want to do it even more.
"Oh my God! Are you— are you okay?"
Clancy turned away from his severed finger, dazed expression locking eyes with a young woman. Dark hair, average height and build, and an assault rifle held limply in her hands. He'd never seen her before, she was definitely a part of The Governor's militia. She took part in helping with the destruction of his home and now she was asking how his hand was?
"W— what?" he stared back dumbfounded, eyes wide with both confusion, pain, and fear. The woman didn't do anything, she just stood there next to the burning remains of the bridge that connected C Block and D Block. Alright, so she wasn't going to kill him. Still, that wasn't saying much. "I— I gotta go."
What actually came out of his mouth was something that could be best described as the mumbling of a sleepwalking person. It sounded like he had a mouthful of marbles, and Clancy wasn't even sure if she was able to hear it because, by the time he said it, he was already stumbling down the remains of the courtyard with a hand that was dripping blood like a leaky faucet, and she stood exactly in the same place.
It was weird, really; living through something like this. He could've sworn that he was seeing everything through someone that wasn't in his body. He muttered something to himself as he stepped over a smoldering chunk of concrete that was covered in something sticky and red. Saving Private Ryan. The guy who gets his arm blown off and has to pick it up and walk away. That's who he felt like. He wasn't sure if he was making a joke to himself due to the comparison, but he wasn't smiling if it was one.
"Carl!" A ragged, raspy voice belted, wrenching Clancy from his trance. It was Rick. The boy was almost brought to tears at the sight of the man. He was crawling up the hill from the prison yard, body bending and twisting in all the wrong ways. His face was red. Clancy didn't know if it was from blood, swelling, or a mix of both. Whatever the hell happened to him, he didn't want to know. The man looked like he was thrown through a meat grinder and came out on the other side. Clancy's lip quivered as they locked eyes. "Have you… have you seen—"
"No— I don't—"
Two gunshots cracked beside the pair, which were shortly followed by two walkers dropping to the ground with dull thuds. "Dad!" There he was. Hat falling off his head and face slick with tears.
The father and son embraced, Rick letting out a sob as he held his son. "J- Judith, where is she?"
"I don't know."
The baby was dead. Clancy had passed by the tiny pink car seat before and didn't even give it a second thought, but looking into its blood-stained interior, he covered his mouth, screaming something through his fingers that even he couldn't understand. She was dead. Someone who hadn't even begun living was just taken like that; torn to pieces in her own stroller. The boy tried to wipe the hot tears from his face, breathing in deeply as he looked away from the car seat.
Turning around to face the other two, he raised his hands at them, screamed, cried, pleaded, did anything to keep them from looking, but they just walked past him, looking into the car seat for themselves. Rick let out a pained moan at the sight, he and Carl's backs facing Clancy as they looked down at the sight of the empty carrier. He cried too. Cried like he hadn't cried since his first night in the treehouse. Cried hard enough to pique the interest of a walker that found its way around the corner of the remains of Cell Block A.
It's head was off in an instant, and even quicker than that, Carl was over the body, pumping round after round into the corpse until he was squeezing the trigger on an empty gun. Rick stumbled over to him, wrapping him in a hug and pulling him away from the bullet-riddled walker. They both wept, holding onto each other as if they were both the last things tethering themselves to the Earth itself.
Clancy looked towards the yard, sucking in a wet noseful of snot and rubbing at his puffy eyes with a sleeved hand. It really was over. A sea of black had come from all directions, and with it, the roaring waves of thousands of them screaming and groaning and mewling as they made their way past the collapsed wall and into the confines of the prison. The people who were killed in the war started getting up soon after, their newly reanimated forms lurching over the soldiers that had been lucky enough to get shot in the head. Somewhere in the yard, a final gunshot rang out.
"We- we gotta go." The beaten man wept. "It's over."
And so they went. Away from the burning prison. Away from their home.
Oh a little town in USA
The time has come to see
There's nothing you believe you are
But where were you when it all came down on me?