- I can't believe Violet forced me into this.
Mitch complained once again that morning, breathing in irritation as he stared at the abandoned greenhouse.
- Will you stop complaining so fucking much? Jesus Christ.
Clementine said, looking through one of the darkened windows of the greenhouse, noting some silhouettes moving slowly inside. The girl turned away from the window and tried to open the door.
She rolled her eyes when she realized it was locked. She moves a few steps away and kicks the door a few times.
"great, there's something on the other side" Clementine thought.
- It's fucking locked. It's not going to open, if you haven't noticed.
Mitch said.
Clementine rolled her eyes again, wondering mentally why Violet thought it would be a good idea to put her and Mitch together.
- Are you going to complain all day, or are you going to do something useful?
she asked, looking at the rather fragile windows.
Clementine took her machete and slammed the handle a few times on the window, breaking the glass and drawing all the zombies inside.
- Ahm, Clem? What are you doing?
Ruby asked, looking at the girl with one eyebrow arched in confusion.
When one of the zombies got close enough, Clementine killed it and pulled its body out of the greenhouse. The dead piled up over the window, which made it easy for her to kill them.
- Dealing with them in a safe way, help me pull their bodies out, and burn them afterwards.
She said, killing the last zombie that was trying to get through the window.
Mitch and Ruby stood beside her and began pulling the bodies out of the greenhouse, where Mitch dragged them to a far corner, forming a pile of bodies.
Clementine jumped through the window and removed the boards blocking the door.
- Now it opened.
Clementine said, looking at Mitch, who just rolled his eyes and walked past her.
-... Not bad...
He said softly, walking toward the corner.
Clementine looked at him with a raised eyebrow, but shrugged shortly after.
- You look... happy?
Clementine said, looking at Ruby a little puzzled.
- I used to love this place, it's not as beautiful as I remember it, but, the memories are still the same. Not to mention that these herbs will do wonders.
Ruby said, running her eyes over the herbs.
Clementine looked at her for a moment, and then took a few steps away, looking at the abandoned interior of the greenhouse;
It didn't look like there was any barbed wire in that place.
She walked towards the closet ahead, trying to open it, but it was locked.
Clementine rolls her eyes again and turns around, looking for something in which to unlock it.
She walked over to a table in the corner of the wall, looking at a shovel, and a crowbar, still in good condition, next to each other.
- We can use these as weapons.
She mentioned, taking the crowbar and walking back to the cupboard.
- Or use it to dig a grave. You weren't there when we dug Marlon's grave, we had to use cups and bowls. It took forever.
Mitch said, looking at the shovel on the table, in an even slightly less angry tone, which Clementine was beginning to get used to.
- Have you ever had to bury anyone, Clem?
Ruby asked, and Clementine looked at her for a while.
- No, apart from AJ's mother, I haven't been able to bury anyone.
She answered, using her crowbar to pry open the closet door, and smiled a little when she saw a lot of barbed wire in there.
- We found what we wanted.
She said, putting the crowbar to the side, looking with an arched eyebrow at Mitch, who crouched down and looked awkwardly at the fertilizer on the bottom.
- Why couldn't you bury them?
Ruby asked.
Clementine ran her hand down her neck, and put the other one on her waist, looking down as memories once again flooded her mind.
- They all died in situations where it was not possible to bury them. AJ's father died in the office of a crazy man who kidnapped us, another person died in an unknown place where he was forced to fight zombies for entertainment, another two died blown up by a grenade... And the list goes on.
She explained, and Ruby, even Mitch, looked at her somewhat incredulously.
- You ... you've been through a lot.
Ruby said, almost in a whisper.
Clementine shook her head in dismay, turning to Mitch.
- Look, Mitch... I understand that you are pissed off at AJ for what he did to Marlon. But you have to understand that our reality, is different than yours. I taught AJ to kill for a reason, because I know it's kill or be killed out there. Do you know how many times I met people who came with kind smiles and sweet words? Many, and they all tried to kill us afterwards.
She explained, looking at Mitch, who stood up and stared at her somewhat seriously, but attentive to her words.
- I told AJ that he must kill anything that threatens us. Everything out there is a threat. Whether it's a group of bandits who kill and rob all the survivors they find, or an ordinary guy who hasn't eaten for days. You don't have to like us, that's fine, but at least try to understand our side.
She said, looking slightly at Mitch.
She didn't want to have an enmity with the boy, it was just a waste of time, they were going to go through this together, fight together, so they had to at least have a friendly, or purely cooperative relationship.
Mitch stared at her for a few moments, thoughtful.
He sighed defeated and put his hand behind his head, looking at the ground.
-All right... I... I was being a jerk anyway.
He said after a while, shaking Clementine's hand, who nodded at him.
- Sorry about the punch.
She said.
- You hit hard, I''ll give you that.
He said, taking one last look at the fertilizer, before walking towards the front door.
Clementine looked at Ruby, and arched an eyebrow at the look on her face.
- Hey, I think I just made our defense plan a little more... defensive. I can make bombs out of this fertilizer.
Mitch said, trying to look through the fogged up glass of the door.
- Bombs? Are you serious?
Clementine asked, looking at him a little dubiously.
- Totally. I just need propane and something to create a spark. And we'll have a nice little homemade explosive.
he said, somewhat excited by his own idea.
- He used to blow things up. That's why he was sent here.
Ruby said, walking towards him.
Clementine stared at them both for a while longer, if this was really true, then her plan had just gotten a little more deadly.
- Okay, where do we look for this?
Clementine asked, and Mitch turned, pointing to the door behind him.
- If I remember correctly, there's a science lab here, it might have some of what we need.
He said, and Clementine approached. She took her machete from her back and stood quietly in front of the door, trying to hear some noise coming from inside.
After a while without hearing anything, she slowly opens the door, entering the place after realizing that it was empty.
Her instincts screamed, and Clementine jumped to the side, evading the grasp of a zombie that was trapped in a small garden of some sort.
- Clem, what...
Ruby tried to say, but stopped as soon as she looked at the zombie.
Clementine arched an eyebrow at the girl's shocked expression, and was slightly worried to see her approaching.
- This is Ms. Martin. Our nurse. At school.
She said, staring at the woman's decomposing body, covered in mud and with a few plants sprouting through her flesh.
- She stayed, when all those assholes left.
She said, bowing her head a little, trying to find the strength to keep staring at that disfigured body.
- Do you... do you want me to do this, or do you want to do it yourself?
Clementine asked, handing the machete to Ruby. The girl stared at the blade with a surprised look for a while, even a bit hesitant.
- One day we came looking for food, there were zombies here, we thought we could kill them. But there were too many, and she told us to run, and we did.
She said, a distant look and a wistful tone.
- She taught me how to patch people up. Stitching, anesthetics, painkillers, fever reducers.
Ruby took the machete from Clementine's hands and turned to the woman.
- I'm sorry...
she said softly, before stabbing the machete into her head.
Ruby lowered her head, and Clementine could see her body trembling. The girl pulled the blade back and turned to Clementine, handing the weapon back to her.
- Thank you...
She thanked her softly, taking one last look at the woman's body before walking further into the science lab.
Mitch looked at this with some regret, but soon, he turned and began to search the place.
Clementine sighed, wiped the little bit of blood from her machete, and put it back in its sheath, beginning to rummage around the place soon after.
While searching, Clementine looked at Ruby, who had a depressed expression as she stared at some random spot in the place, avoiding looking at the woman's body.
- Did you have to kill a loved one, Clem? Someone who transformed?
Ruby asked after a while in silence, drawing the attention of both Clementine and Mitch.
- No. I've had to abandon loved ones, and kill other people I knew so that they wouldn't turn.
She answered, reaching down and picking up an object.
- Mitch, is this useful?
she asked, turning and showing the object to the boy.
- Fuckin-A. I was hoping to find one of these, this is an igniter. It can make a spark.
He said, going back to rummaging through some shelves while Clementine put it in her backpack.
- How did you manage to kill them? I mean, I feel like crap for killing someone who has been a zombie for years. I don't even know how I would feel if I had to abandon someone, for example.
Ruby asked again, and Clementine stared at her for a moment.
- They were shot, we were between some crazy people, and a horde of zombies. They weren't going to survive, so I put them out of their misery. It was better than leaving them for the dead, or to be shot by more bullets and come back as zombies later.
She explained, looking with some interest at some drawings on a chalkboard beside her, wondering what that was.
"Something about chemistry?" She thought, slightly curious as to what it would be like to study that. Especially seeing so many jars with strange liquids scattered around the tables and shelves.
She missed school, although she didn't remember much of it.
- Is that all you have lived? Running away from bullets, zombies?
Ruby asked again.
- Yes, that, and watching people around me die, whether it was my fault or something else.
She said, opening a cabinet and finding a red tank. Trying to concentrate on her work and not let those destructive thoughts return to her mind. She couldn't afford to feel sad, or useless, not in those days.
- Mitch, is that it?
she asked, watching with some curiosity as Mitch seemed to snap out of a trance, as if he were trapped in his own thoughts.
- Yeah, perfect.
he said, reaching over and grabbing the propane tank.
- Hah, and it's still full. Let's go back and tell the others, we can get the barbed wire later.
He said, walking towards the door.
Clementine looked around one last time before following Mitch, walking right behind him.
- We should bury Miss Martin first.
Ruby said, walking toward the woman's body.
- Why? She's a zombie.
Mitch said, looking ruefully at the woman's body.
- She's the reason we're alive, that's why.
Ruby answered, hugging her own body.
- We burn the others, and bury her at the same time. It won't take long anyway.
Clementine said, walking out of the greenhouse, ignoring the stares behind her back.
Mitch didn't complain too much about this, and Ruby felt grateful. As she herself had said, it hadn't taken long, not with the shovel they had found on one of the tables.
- I'm sorry I treated you like that, and the boy...
Mitch said after a while, looking at the pile of bodies burning in front of him.
Clementine stared at him for a while, looking away from the woman's grave in the far corner.
- Relax. You're not the first person to treat me that way, and you probably won't be the last.
She said, crossing her arms as she was mesmerized by the soft dance of the flames.
- I know, but the way I treated the kid was not nice, I mean... I was pissed, I didn't even try to think about your side, and the things Marlon did, were... well, like you said, our realities are different, I shouldn't have judged.
Mitch said, looking at Clementine a little depressed, and ashamed.
The girl arched an eyebrow at him, and smiled slightly; it was rare for someone to apologize to her for something.
- You're forgiven, just don't cry on me.
She said, laughing lightly as she felt her shoulder being pushed by the boy.
- I'm done, let's go find the others.
Ruby said, approaching the two of them as she looked into the fire.
They nodded to her, and the three of them walked back towards the main building.
