The bird took flight at the sound that ended Vincent's life as the grass continued to dance in the breeze. The world had come to an abrupt end a few weeks before and Zoe's last piece of normality had been ripped away. She had flinched and buried her head deeper into Alex's chest with a choked wail. Alex refused to let herself cry. Not now. Instead she sniffled back the tears and cradled her friends head, stroking her hair soothingly.
As Zoe's heart-wrenching sobs subsided into sniffles Alex plucked up the courage to speak.
"Come on, let's get you inside"
Zoe pulled back, panic written across her tear-stained face as she shook her head fiercely, gripping Alex's arm.
"No no no no. I can't. I can't go back in there. Not while he-he's in there."
"Okay Zoe, listen to me, you need to breathe. Just breathe for a second." Alex tried to calm her as she began hyperventilating. "I won't take you through there, okay? I'll go in and see what we're going to do with him now and we'll get you through to next door without you seeing him if that's what you want?"
She nodded at Alex' reassurance and hugged her knees to her chest as Alex stood.
"Are you alright on your own for a bit?"
Zoe nodded again.
Moving from the garden into the kitchen, Alex paused with her hand on the door knob. Her heart began to thud and her hands were now clammy at the realisation of what was behind the door. Vincent was dead. His body was in the living room and Alex would have to see him. She would have to see his dead body. She had seen blood and guts and gore. She had heard the screams of someone being torn apart. She had taken down a handful of walkers herself. But she had never seen somebody she had know die. This was a first. One of their owns lifeless corpse in her home. With a deep inhale to steady her shaking, Alex slowly opened the kitchen door.
Vincent's body lay across the couch, head drooped across the armrest, bullet hole in his temple. Alex tried not to focus on the steady trickle of blood pooling on the wooden floor. Or the gun that had fell from his limp hand. All sign of life had drained from his skin. It no longer looked like Vincent. No more flushed cheeks or furrowed brow. No smile or soul was left of this great, bubbly man that Alex grew up knowing. Nothing. Only a shell.
However it wasn't his dead body that made Alex's skin crawl and bile rise in her throat. It was the blood stained sofa. Her sofa. The sofa where she remembered feeding Charlie and Freddie a bottle for the first time. Where she would jump around with Sam, pretending they were pirates when they were young and carefree. Where she would lay sprawled with her cousins on Christmas Day when they had ate enough to stay full until New Years. Where her mother would complain about the dog jumping up and scratching the leather. Where her father would snore when he dozed off in front of the TV on a Saturday afternoon when he claimed to be watching the football. Where she would stay up all night huddled under a blanket, binge-watching a new series until the sun rose on the next day. The sofa that made so many happy memories that Alex didn't realise she held so dear until it became the resting bed of her father's best friend.
It took her a moment to tune into their crying. Peter and Daniel held one another in a bear hug as they mourned their friend. Their best friend had been taken from them too early for them to comprehend. Each of the men had a framed picture in their houses of the day the trio started secondary school together. They all wore a toothy grin and a blazer that was three sizes too big for them. It was because of those three smiling faces vowing to never break their brotherly bond all those years ago that lead to their daughters sharing a similar friendship. When Alex closed the door behind her, Daniel lifted his head from Peters shoulder and quickly turned away to conceal his tears.
"What are you doing here? Go on, go back outside."
She didn't take her eyes off Vincent as her spoke.
"What are we going to do with him?"
"I... umm... I don't... What do you mean?" Daniel stammered.
"I need to get Zoe inside but she doesn't want to have to see him." Her voice was level and soft and didn't catch in her throat like her father's did.
"We need to give him a proper funeral." Peter said painfully.
"Yeah. We're going to need to find tools to dig a grave. I was thinking out on the square next to one of the trees?"
The men nodded but confined to stare blankly at their friend, making not move to help execute her plan. Seeing how broken her father was made a sudden sense of loneliness wash over Alex and for the first time in weeks, she pined for her old, boring life back. With tears in her eyes, she straightened her back and spoke again.
"Okay, so... umm... I'll... I'll go and get the others to help with that."
Before going through to next door to recruit the rest of the group in the task of digging Vincent's grave, Alex headed upstairs to the linen cupboard and pulled out a large white sheet. On her knees, she bunches up the cloth and inhaled it deeply. The scent was faint but it smelt like home, reminding her of her parents and siblings. She saw the tears on the sheet before she realised she was crying. For the first time that day Alex let her emotions get the better of her and cried knowing she was away from prying eyes.
'Don't blame yourself.' Vincent had told her; Alex couldn't help herself. If she didn't leave this would never had happened. Vincent would be alive, Zoe would still have her father and Peter and Daniel would still have their friend. Alex remained on the floor, letting the tears drip down onto the linen until her eyes stung. The tears dried on her cheeks by the time she felt empty again and she clambered to her feet, still clutching the sheet that was stained form her breakdown. She paused at the top of the stairs, breathing deeply to compose herself.
'Go downstairs. Cover his body. Take Zoe next door." Alex mentally listed her tasks.
'Go downstairs.'She repeated as she descended.
With another deep breath she entered the living room. Daniel and Peter were no longer crying but now sat on the sofa opposite Vincent, watching him- as if a bullet in his brain was still not enough to keep their best friend down for long.
'Cover his body.'
Spreading the sheet over his legs and pulling it up to his shoulders, Alex faltered before moving to cover his pale face. She glanced towards her father. Daniel didn't move. Hands quaking, she leant forward and placed a kiss to his forehead before finally covering his face and then walking herself into the garden.
'Take Zoe next door.'
Zoe was still hugging her knees on the doorstep where Alex had left her. Gently, she placed her hand on Zoe's shoulder and the younger girl turned to face her as Alex motioned for her to stand. Snaking an arm around her shoulders, Alex guided her out of the house through the living room. Even though she wouldn't be able to see her father's body, Alex used her other hand to press Zoe's face against her body as they moved, shielding her from the blood-stained sheet.
Next door, Layla was sat on the stairs- eyes puffy and skin blotched, waiting to embrace Zoe the moment they walked through the door. Alex was tall enough to wrap her arms around the both of them and hold them while they wept. She didn't join in the crying this time. Simply held them until they were finished.
"Take her upstairs." Alex whispered to Layla, voice hoarse. "Don't leave her alone. I have to help do some other things."
Alex planted a kiss on Zoe's head before Layla steered her off upstairs. Opening the door to the other living room, she was greeted by a sea of anxious faces, all awaiting the inevitable news. The rest of the group knew what Alex was about to say; the announcement she was about to make. Vincent was dead. They all knew it. But they were waiting for her to say it. The words caught in her throat as she opened her mouth to speak and Betty rushed to her side. She took a second to compose herself and continued.
"Vincent is dead." Alex spoke clearly as more tears began to spill in the room. "He had been bitten on his shoulder and there was nothing we could do to stop it."
The words hung in the air as the group adjusted. Tobias met her eyes but Alex quickly looked away, afraid that holding his gaze would cause her steely demeanour to crumble- they both blamed themselves and his tears were certain to start hers again.
"Did he turn into a walker?" Billy questioned. He had only known Vincent these past few weeks, having minimal interaction with the man so his dry eyes were much easier to take the interrogation from.
"No, he uh, he shot himself... in the head... before that could happen. Kept saying how he 'didn't want to become one of those things' so he ended it before that could happen."
"No." Adrian groaned "Fuck no, man."
"Where's Zoe, the poor thing?" Claire asked through sniffles. "And Peter and Daniel?"
"Layla took Zoe upstairs for some quiet. The other two are still next door. They want a proper funeral for Vincent so I need to get some things to dig a grave."
"What, right now? Isn't that a little soon?" Asked Christie, cradling her baby.
"We don't exactly have a morgue to keep him." Tobias interjected before Alex could answer. "Give it a few hours and his body will start rotting and stinking the house out."
Alex inclined her head towards him, grateful at how quickly he was to defend her but not able to muster up a usual smile.
"Yeah umm we're going have to get moving quickly. We need a pickaxe and a few shovels from the garden shed. It will probably take the rest of today to dig." She then turned to address Adrian, Jayne and Claire. "You three should go next door. My dad and Peter are... well... they're not doing so well and could probably do with having you guys with them."
They nodded and immediately made their way through to the other house to share their grief with the two men.
"And what about you? Are you okay?" Tobias asked gingerly.
"I need to go and get those shovels." She avoided his questions but managed to keep eye contact "Will you help me?"
"Yeah of course." He agreed standing and gesturing for Alex to lead the way.
She needed to escape. The moment she walked into the room, the group had turned to her for answers and her head began to spin with the sudden weight of responsibility. Nobody else knew how this had come to happen and it was Alex they saw dragging the half dead man back inside the gate and it was Alex who emerged first after the gunshot that finished him off. With Daniel and Peter losing themselves in grief, it was left to Alex to pick up the pieces.
Outside, Alex fumbled with the latch on the garden shed, hands to jittery to wriggle the rusting bolt free. Tobias reached out and placed one hand on her shoulder, the other hand hovering over her own where they continued to yank at the lock.
"Hey, hey. Stop for a second." He said, his voice trying so hard to sooth her. "You don't have to do this you know. You can go and be with Zoe and Layla if you prefer?"
"I need to keep busy and help my dad with this."
"Did he ask you to collect the tools for digging?"
"No. They wanted to give him a funeral and you can't have a funeral without a grave. And neither of them were in the right frame of mind to be coming out here and digging a grave for their best friend so I'll just do it. We need to have him buried as soon as we can otherwise he'll start rotting..." she trailed off, finally wrenching the bolt open.
"And what about your state of mind, huh? Vincent was like your uncle and you're out here getting ready to dig his grave." He coaxed. "You need time to process this too."
She screwed her eyes up and shook her head at Tobias' words, acutely aware of his hand still planted on her shoulder.
"Look Alex," he continued with a sigh. "it wasn't our fault. It wasn't yourfault."
His voice cracked and Alex couldn't turn to face him. In that moment she knew that he was only saying what she needed to hear, not what he believed; of course he blamed himself too. They both blamed themselves. How could they not? If it wasn't for their naive stupidity they would have never attempted the trips over the walls on their own and Vincent wouldn't have given his life for some canned food that wouldn't even keep them fed a week.
"You don't need to do this. We couldn't have known..." he continued but Alex cut him off.
"Tobias, please. I know you're trying to help but please listen to what I'm saying; I can't just go and sit with Zoe and Layla while they cry. I'd rather be here doing something helpful." Immediately she regretted snapping at him and sighed. "I'm sorry."
"No no, it's fine. I'm sorry, I shouldn't be telling you how to deal with this. You tell me what you need to do and I'll try and help you."
Alex covered his hand on her shoulder with her own and gave it a squeeze.
"Help me dig this grave?"
"Anything." He agreed leaning into the shed to take the shovels. Alex grabbed the pickaxe and followed the boy back through the house and onto the square.
They walked to the top left hand corner of the grass, furthest away from the houses they inhabited. Using the pickaxe, they hacked away a rough shape of a rectangle into the ground to loosen the dirt and provide a template for their dig. Wordlessly they begun. Stamping the shovels into the ground and throwing the dirt into a pile. Alternating between the pickaxe and the shovels, they were able to dig a foot deep in just over an hour. Frank appeared baring a bottle of water and a couple of dry crackers for each of them, Adrian in tow, to relieve the pair from the labour. The small group then worked in an efficient rotation system, allowing each of them to have short breaks on the grass.
In the haze of the afternoon Alex could feel her loose shirt clinging to her back and her head throbbed from squinting her eyes against the sun and her tears. With each repetitive swing of the pickaxe and shovelling of the dirt out of the deepening hole, she was able to numb the grief for a few more hours as her hands began to sting with blisters. The deeper they dug, the harder the earth became, slowing their pace and earning a grunt with every strenuous swing. Her wild hair stuck to her sweaty brow and she had fire in her cheeks- looking as though only an ice bath would quench her flames. Tobias however, with his darker complexion, became more like a polished stone. Even when her arms grew tired, she continued swinging and heaving the dirt, determined to get closure before the sun set.
Five hours had past and Alex clambered out of the grave, taking Franks steady hand with her shaky one. The 4 of them stood back to gauge the size of the hole. At best, they had dug four and a half foot downwards but the sky had become washed with hue of pale red and they were quickly losing light.
"I think that's deep enough." Adrian declared, leaning most of his body weight onto the shovel.
"Doesn't it have to be 6ft deep?" Tobias questioned, exhausted and dreading the answer.
"No. Not this one at least." Alex spoke up, breath still ragged. "Graves are usually 6ft deep because at that depth scavengers, like foxes, can't smell the body anymore so it stops them from digging it up."
The men looked at her, confused, but didn't further question the information she reeled off. Alex wiped her brow with the back of her sleeve, smearing mud across her face.
"I'll go and get the others. We need to do this funeral now unless we want to be burying Vincent by moonlight." Said Adrian, walking off towards the houses.
Ten minutes later, he had re-emerged struggling to bear the dead-weight of Vincents body along with Daniel and Peter. With as much dignity as they could provide, they solemnly walked his body over to where they were stood; the rest of the group following the short funeral march. Zoe hung off Layla and both of them were sniffling as they made their way back into Alex's embrace.
Peter had hopped into the grave and quickly nodded towards Daniel, silently telling the other man that he was ready. Daniel nodded back and locked his jaw against any emotion before scooping under the shoulders of the cloth-wrapped bundle off the ground. The once white sheet was now stained with blood, dust and mud. Daniel bore the brunt of the weight, while Peter manoeuvred Vincent's feet as they lowered him into the ground. They held him, just for a second longer, not wanting to let go of their friend once and for all.
Alex had never been to a funeral before. She didn't expect the sky to be painted with a beautiful sunset or to dig the grave herself at the first one she attended. Yet here they were, on the dusk of the same day Vincent had passed, mumbling a few choked words of apology and love to his body in the ground. They vowed remembrance to his smile and protection to his daughter. Stories from Vincent's childhood, teenage years and adulthood had been affectionately reeled off by those who knew him until there wasn't a dry eye around the grave. Whispered goodbyes and heartfelt words of respect came tumbling out of each persons mouth, one by one. Plagued with even more guilt than before, Alex could do nothing more but rub Zoe's back in slow, comforting circles despite the girl being inconsolable.
When they fell into a pensive silence, Daniel reached for the shovel and begun returning the dirt to the hole. Alex had to remind herself that he couldn't feel the clumps of earth and rock being thrown back onto his body. Peter took the other shovel and joiners the effort. The sun dropped lower and lower in the sky as the grave was slowly filled. Nobody dared moved as they watched the white sheet disappear beneath the ground. As they patted down the last of the unearthed dirt, Billy stepped forward and offered out what seemed to be a white bathroom tile. On the front, 'Vincent' was painted in neat, black lettering. To Alex's surprise, Zoe took the tile from Billy and placed it at the head of the grave.
"I love you dad." She managed to whisper through the tears.
The group retreated from the moonlight back into number 14 for some food before they turned in for the night. Betty and Frank kindly offered to take the first night watch shift with Jayne and Christine taking over later. The dark circles under everyone's eyes highlighted both the physical and emotional exhaustion they all felt. As the rations were passed around, the room was vacant of its usual chatter. At the adults table, there was an empty seat that nobody could bring themselves to fill.
