Red River Blue

Chapter 43

Whoever the previous owners of this house had been, they weren't very fashion forward. And the undergarments the woman who lived there had left behind made Harley laugh. The cups of the bras were so big she could fit her entire head in one of them. Michonne laughed along with her as she tossed Harley a snug fitting boys tank top to wear under her tshirt while her own undergarments soaked in a bucket of lukewarm water downstairs. Harley winced as she lifted her arms above her head to pull it on.

"That's why you're staying here," Michonne reminded her. The woman stepped closer and lowered her tone, adding, "Rick was unconcious yesterday. I don't want to leave him alone." Harley had a feeling Michonne was placating her. The woman had probably said the exact same thing to Rick while Harley was out of earshot. But the truth was Harley actually felt too much like dogshit to argue. Spending the night up a tree after having the crap kicked out of her had taken a toll on her body. The worst were her ribs. Every time she took a deep breath they burned. They didn't have the proper medical equipment to see if her ribs were cracked or just badly bruised so all Michonne could do was tape her up and give her body time to heal.

They didn't have much in the way of pain medication but Carl had found a half a bottle of ibuprofen in one of the houses on the block. Harley took two and settled in on the upstairs bed next to Rick with what actually looked like it might be a halfway decent book. It was her favorite type of story, a murder mystery. After the first chapter Harley could already feel her eyelids starting to droop. She figured the chances of Rick trying anything with her once she fell asleep were slim to none. The only time he had even come near her was to hand her another pillow so she could lean back without stressing her ribs. But just in case, Harley refused to allow herself to fully relax until she heard soft snores drifting over from his side of the bed.

Harley's paperback book sunk slowly to her chest as her head tipped back into her pillows. She was both physically and metally exhausted. Sleep came on hard and she fell into the type of hard deep sleep that leaves a person wondering what year it is when they wake up.

"Harley," Rick hissed at the girl. He was trying to be gentle as he could as he shook her awake but there were strange men inside the house and he didn't have time to waste. He could hear their voices downstairs and from the sounds of them there were at least half a dozen of them. And the only gun he had with him was out of bullets. Harley woke with a start, one fist flying at his face as her other hand reached for the knife at her waist. Thankfully Rick had been expecting her to swing at him. He ducked away from her clenched fist and slapped his hand down over her mouth. "There's people downstairs."

Harley stopped fighting him, her ice blue eyes getting wider as she strained to listen. The first thing she heard was footsteps on the stairs. Rick yanked his hand away from her mouth.

"Quick," he gasped, "Under the bed." There was no time to argue or rethink what was actually a rather terrible plan. Harley hissed in pain as she rolled to the floor and positioned her body under the bed. Her bow and arrows were leaning up against the wall in the corner of the room. Which might as well be a million miles away for as much good as they were going to do her. She cursed under her breath. The only thing she had to defend herself with was a pitiful little hunting knife that was barely long enough to kill a walker. And she was in no shape to put up another physical fight.

Peeking out from under the bed, Harley could see the back of the man she had heard on the steps. He had a bandana on his head and a large fresh bandage tied up around his shoulder. Harley bit down on her lip until she could taste her own blood in her mouth. She felt powerless to control her reactions as her body start to quiver with fear. When she turned her head to glance at Rick he could see the fear in the girl's eyes. It shocked him. He hadn't had a lot of interaction with Merle's older daughter but he had spent enough time with the girl to know she didn't scare easy.

"It's them," she whispered. "The men who jumped me in the woods. It's them." Not only was she sure she recognized the man on the stairs she could hear the rest of the talking downstairs. They were yelling about finding her bra and Michonne's shirt soaking in that bucket. They were arguing about which one of them was going to get to rape her first when she came back to the house.

Harley's fear was slowing dissipating as her rage began to bubble up inside her. Anger had always been a comforting feelinf for her. It wasn't much but it had always been there to fill the empty places inside her. Her hand clenched, fingernails cutting into her palm. She could not take one more moment of waiting and watching under the bed. The man she had stabbed before was skulking around inside the bedroom. Only a few feet away from her now. So close she could smell him.

Harley was going to take him out with her knife as quietly as she could and then go for her bow. She was sure she could take out a few more of the men downstairs if she ambushed them without warning. Harley unclenched her fist. She reached down and pulled her knife from her belt. Getting a good grip on it, she started to move across the floor towards the edge of the bed. Rick grabbed her and pulled her back. He shook his head at her and held one finger up to his mouth to indicate he wanted her to stay put and be quiet.

If it wasn't for the terrribly precarious situation they were in Rick might have laughed when Harley thrust her middle finger into his face. She flipped him off but she also did as he had signalled her to do and stayed put. He put his finger to his mouth again and then pointed up towards the man that was settling in for a nap on the bed above them. Rick put his hand to his cheek and mimicked like he was sleeping. Then he made a stabbing motion with his hand. The message was clear. Let him fall asleep first. Then we will kill him and get the hell out of here.

Harley nodded. She pointed to herself and then repeated the stabbing motion Rick had made. If Rick was going to make her lie in wait while a disgusting man snorted and farted on top of them she wasn't going to let him have all the glory. She wanted to stab the man herself. Rick shrugged and nodded at her. This made the girl's lips curl up into an evil grin that reminded Rick so much of her father that it gave him a chill despite the hot cramped space he was stuck in.

The wicked smile on Harley's face quickly faded and her bottom lip began to quiver again. Rick reminded himself that as tough as she might act Harley was still nothing more than a frightened young woman who had been recently separated from her family. Rick hesitated a moment, not sure if she would appreciate any physical offers of comfort from him. Then his battered hand slowly crept over until it was wrapped around Harley's slimmer one. He wasn't sure what to expect and knew there was a chance she might just jerk her hand away from him. But she didn't. Instead her fingers twined into his and she slid her body a little closer to his under the bed.

With no clocks or working watches between them, time in the apocolypse always seemed to speed up or slow down depending on the circumstances. And waiting under the bed with the dust bunnies swirling around her, it felt like it took a hundred years for the man above her to fall asleep. But in the end he did. His snores became audible and obvious. Harley pressed her palms flat against the hardwood floor and started to ease her bruised and battered body towards the edge of the bed. The moment she got a little more than halfway out she heard footsteps on the stairs. Rick caught her by the shirt and dragged her quickly back under the bed with him. Harley cursed under her breath, wincing at the pain in her ribs.

Harley hoped the man on the steps might head for another room down the hall. But to her aggravation he stomped his filthy boots right up to the foot of the bed she was hiding under and woke his sleeping comrade. The toe of his boot was only inches away from her face. And Harley was tempted to whip her knife out and stab him in the foot. If she stabbed down hard enough she figured there was a chance she might make him lame in that foot. Or even give him tetanus. That would be nice slow death, a fitting end for a man of his low calibur.

After waking his sleeping companion, two men started fighting. Harley kept still and waited to see how the fight was going to play out. She figured if she was really lucky the two men might just kill each other. These men had to be some of the most ignorant people she had ever encountered. Fighting like children over who got the bigger bed when life and death were on the line was just plain stupid. It made her angry at herself that she had been clueless enough to let them get the jump on her in the first place.

The man that had come up the stairs second pinned the injured man to the ground and began choking him. He turned his head and looked right into Harley's face. She saw the instant flash of recogition in his eyes. And for a moment she was sure she was going to be found and caught by these men. But the man's companion did her a service. He choked the man who was staring at her until he passed out completely without giving him a chance to tell anyone that he had seen Harley and Rick hiding under the bed.

Once his comrade was knocked out cold on the bedroom floor, the other man climbed into bed above Harley and Rick. It didn't take him as long as it had taken the first man to fall asleep. Harley wasn't wasting any time. She slid out from under the bed and darted across the room to grab her bow, feeling thankful that none of the men had found it sitting slightly behind the open bedroom door and taken it.

With her weapons back, Harley started back towards the bed. Her knife was in her hand and she had a firm grip on it despite the sweat on her palms. Her intentions were to kill the man that was sleeping on the bed without waking him and then kill the man that was passed out on the floor. He had to go because he had seen her hiding under the bed. While these men were greedy and stupid, Harlye knew that if they had made it this long there was no way they were without survival skills. And the last thing she needed was to have them tracking her as she tried to get away from them.

Rick caught Harley by the arm, propelling her forcibly out of the bedroom. She yanked back, struggling against his grasp. But she couldn't fight back hard enough to get away from him without making more noise than she wanted too. There were still more of those men downstairs and she didn't want them to hear her. Rick tried the windows in the next bedroom but none of them would budge.

Harley paused a moment, her strong fight response warring inside her with the more sensible part of her brain that was telling her to get away while she had the chance. She slung her bow over her shoulder and darted towards one of the windows that Rick hadn't tried yet. Her ribs screamed as she applied as much upward force as she could. The window didn't budge. Now that she had chosen escape as her route Harley felt desperate to get out of this house. She followed Rick into the next room and started trying to open the windows in there. None of them budged and most looked like they had been painted shut.

Footsteps on the hall caught both Harley and Rick's attention. He pulled her with him, placing his body in front of hers and pressing them both against the wall behind a door. Harley's heart was beating so hard that she could hear it beating in her ears. Stringing an arrow would have made too much noise so she wiped her damp palm on her pantleg and adjusted her grip on her knife. She forced herself to take slow shallow breaths when what she really wanted to do was gasp and pant for air. The man came close enought that Harley could see the stubble on his face through the crack between the door and the wall. She would have never admitted it but she was grateful for the presence of Rick's heavier from between her and the other man. Especially since he was the one that had held her arms down while that other man had ripped at her clothes and humiliated her.

The man headed back out of the room. A few moments later Harley heard his heavy tread on the steps as he headed back down the stairs. Looking down, she realized her knuckles were white and Harley forced herself to relax her grip on her knife.

"Let's get the fuck outta here," she hissed. Rick nodded his agreement. He peeked around the corner to make sure the hallway was clear. Then he motioned for Harley to follow him. They had alreadt checked the windows in the bedrooms. So Rick pushed the bathroom door open and pulled Harley in behind him. She noticed the foul odor immediately and started scanning for a walker. But instead she turned her head only to come face to face with another of the men that had attacked her. He was sitting on the toilet with his pants around his ankles, apparently in the process of grunting out a very large and stubborn turd. The man seemed as surprised to see her as she was to see him. He opened his mouth, presumably to scream out a warning to his companions. But Rick grabbed him before he could, wrapping his arm around the man's neck to choke off his words.

The man swung his arms wildly, smacking into Harley and sending her slamming against the bathroom counter. She dropped her knife and had to dive for it. Coming up she lifted her arm. In one fluid motion she brought it down and sunk it into the man's chest. The knife made him bleed but the blade wasn't long enough to penetrate anything vital. Harley put her opposite hand on Rick's forearm and slashed at the man's throat, being as careful as she could not to cut Rick's arm up in the process.

Unlike the chest wound, which was only trickling, blood poured from the man's throat. With a choking gurgle he went limp and Rick released his body, letting it slide to the floor with a heavy thump. Harley wrinkled her face up in disgust at the sight of his naked lower body as she moved closer, correcting the grip she had on her knife so that she was ready to stab with it instead of slash.

"Let him turn," Rick hissed, pulling her back away from the body and shoving her towards the bathroom window. Harley felt her spirits lift as the window pushed up and open without much effort. She unhinged the screen. It feel outwards and landed on the roof with a loud slap. Harley jumped, startled by the loud noise. She didn't wait to see if anyone else heard it. Lifting one leg and trying to mind her ribs, she climbed out the small window and moved to the side so there was room on the small patch of roof for Rick to climb out behind her.

"Hold on," Rick said. His body was halfway out the window when he darted back inside the bathroom. He quielty eased the hallway door open. It took Harley a moment to catch on to what he was doing. Then she smiled. The dead man was going to turn. And with any luck he was going to reanimate quickly and then attack his former companions.

Rick scrambled awkwardly across the rooftop. He noticed that despite her injured ribs, Harley had no trouble balancing or propelling her body across the roof to the edge. She stopped at the edge and pressed her body flat against the shingles. Edging out, she dipped her head down to peek at the ground underneath them. As quickly as the girl recoiled from the egde, Rick knew she had seen something below.

"One of them is right under us," Harley mouthed at him in a voice that was scarcely above silently mouthing the words. She pointed down. Not only was one of them under her. It was the man that had mocked her and dumped liquor in her mouth. He scared her more than the rest of the men. Because he had seemed more in control of himself. She didn't want to be forced into another confrontation with him.

Gunshots rang out from inside the house. Harley dipped her head down again. She saw the man pick up his gun and head inside.

"Now!," she told Rick. The men inside were being so loud there was no longer a danger of her words being heard by them. Harley lowered her body and hung from the roof. Her ribs screamed out in protest. The pain shot through her and little black dots swam in front of her eyes. She had no choice but to let go as her hands and arms refused to obey her commands. Harley closed her eyes and braced herself for the hard landing she was about to take. But instead she found herself caught, her legs kicking out. Rick had caught her in his arms. But not very gracefully. Her forehead smacked into his and he winced and nearly dropped her. Taking a step back to steady himself he set the girl down on her own feet. He already had a head injury and taking another whacking blow made him feel dizzy and about to pass out. The world was moving by him in a blur.

Harley could tell that Rick was about to faint again. His face went pale white and his eyes started rolling back in his head. She grabbed for his arm, placing it over her shoulder. He was stumbling but at least he was still holding his own weight up. Harley wasn't sure how far she could drag the man. Just when she thought she couldn't take another step she looked up to see Michonne and Carl running towards her.

**Big thanks to anyone that took the time to leave a review. I was going for friendly and fatherly between Harley and Rick so I hope none of that came off sexual or romantic 'cause they are most definitely not getting paired together. **