What's the worst he could do when-
-if-
-he finds out?
He wouldn't be able to get away with much. Not with his uncle around. On the other hand, Amelia hadn't forgotten to be just as worried about Pete's reaction as she was Nick's.
He might scream. Maybe at her. Might start breaking things again, this time because he needed to more than wanted to. He probably wouldn't talk to her anymore. She told herself it wouldn't bother her. Then told herself again.
She wasn't a stranger to this. She'd shown herself over and over that, for reasons she didn't understand, she couldn't resist digging holes and jumping into them. But this one seemed particularly deep. And narrow. She was five days into a transgression she didn't know that these people would have forgiven on day one. It didn't bother her at the time because she didn't care either way. Then she made the mistake of getting to know them. And starting to like them. She'd made friends, both a gift and a curse she wouldn't return if she had the chance. But it meant she now had something on her back. Something the others would despise her for unloading onto them. Something that would crush her if she kept it to herself.
Make your choice.
Not yet, she decided. She wasn't going to choose yet. That was the beauty of carrying the burden alone: no one around her would make her do otherwise.
Or judge her the way she was judging herself.
"Amelia…" Clementine said, arms crossed and raising an eyebrow. She passed a hand in front of her face, a half-hearted wave that whiffed just in front of her nose. Asking "Are you listening?" while knowing the answer was no.
Right. Clem had been telling her something. About…hats? No…about her hat. Dad's hat.
Amelia nodded, coming back into focus and paying attention to her surroundings. To her sister, to the massive chasm of a ravine cutting through the valley behind her, and the rust-red bridge that ran across it. She crossed her legs in the grass, having taken a seat to wait for Luke to find the bridge on the map.
It had been a few minutes – long enough for her mind to float away, wander to other places– and she found herself thinking he should've had Nick do it.
"Yeah…" Amelia said, tore her gaze from Luke's back and focused again on her sister. "I was…listening."
The bluff was so obvious Clem didn't even feel the need to call it out. "Amelia."
"Hm?"
"I was saying your hair is getting long."
"Were you?"
"Yes. I said you made me cut my hair when I was little. And you cut yours but it's growing back out."
"Hm." Amelia already knew where this was going. She wasn't a fan of this particular topic of discussion. But her sister was relentless. This, she already knew. It was probably why Amelia had tuned her out in the first place.
Clem started tapping a foot in the grass, stepping on dead leaves in a rhythmic pattern. Crunchcrunchcrunchcrunch. "Amelia."
"Yes, Clementine?" Amelia heard the warning in her own voice, both in her tone and in her punctuated use of Clem's full first name. Should've dropped her middle name, too. Amelia thought bitterly as the memory resurfaced out of nowhere, quick and nimble. A little whack-a-mole popping up out of her recent past to take a lightning-fast jab at her pride. Yes. She remembered that. She wouldn't be forgetting it any time soon.
"You said we had to cut my hair because it was too easy to grab." Clem wasn't deterred. Didn't even slow down. "You said it was to keep me safe. You remember saying that?"
"I do remember saying that." Under different circumstances, Amelia would have applauded her. She'd figured out at a very young age that Amelia wouldn't argue with her own words, and had used them against her more than once. And here she was, still doing it. Damn. Kid's good. "So?"
"So your ponytail is really easy to grab."
A slow ten seconds ticked by, wherein Amelia refused to break eye contact, trying not to show that her resolve was any weaker than her sister's. She weighed safety and practicality against the fact that she liked her ponytail and didn't want to give Clem the satisfaction of being right today. Again.
"…"
Clem tilted her head. Waiting for something she knew would happen eventually. "Hm?"
She was patient. One of the many things she was that Amelia was not. One of the many ways she balanced the two of them out. On most days, it didn't bother her. Having someone who could make up for her shortcomings made Amelia's life easier. In most cases.
"Get me a knife."
Clem broke out into a smile, sudden and small. She turned on a heel and went straight to Luke, who was speaking with Carlos not three feet away. Clem came to a stop – almost skidded in the dirt-
-roadrunner-
- and waited quietly to avoid interrupting Carlos, who asked,
"Do you really think it's a good place to spend the night?"
"Well, that'd depend on how fast you think we can get there," Luke answered him.
"That's not what I meant." Carlos said. "Do you think it's empty?"
Luke didn't answer, likely because he hadn't thought of that yet. He looked up to the ski lodge situated near the top of the mountain, as if he could gauge whether there were people inside from down here. She wished he could. He noticed Clementine as he was folding the map to put it away.
"Hey there, Clem."
"Can I borrow that, please?" she asked, pointing to the pocket knife he kept clipped to his belt.
"Uh-" Luke covered it with his hand, like he was worried she would snatch it and run before he answered. Amelia wouldn't have put it past her, and she realized maybe Luke had gotten to know her sister more than she'd realized. She saw him hesitate and realized a part of him still lived in the world that used to be. The world in which he would never give a camping knife to an eleven-year-old, no matter how smart she was or how politely she asked. "What for?"
"I need to borrow it."
He looked over her head to Amelia. Since she couldn't tell whether he was looking for a judgment call or an explanation, she gave him a shrug. She watched him process the idea, and watched his face change as he remembered that things were different now, that Clementine and everyone around her was likely safer if he put a knife in her hands.
He pulled it with a faint click and handed it to her slowly, still reconsidering his choice even as he was doing it. "Just be careful."
She ran it back to Amelia, who almost swore she saw a skip in her step, and dropped it into her hand.
"Thank you."
Clementine heard the sarcasm dripping from her words, and answered in a tone to match. "You're welcome."
Once it was in her hand, Amelia flipped the blade out with a sharp flick of her wrist.
Luke started to speak behind Clementine, and trailed off. "What are you…?"
With one final look to her sister – not entirely friendly – she reached behind her head and wrapped her ponytail around her hand, trapping it in her fist. She slipped the blade's serrated edge up underneath her hair and with a single sharp, upward jerk, cut it nearly down to the hair tie. She was left with six inches of brunette curls loose in her fist and a ponytail half as long as it had been. She tossed her severed locks to the ground, where they camouflaged with the dirt.
She closed Luke's knife and carefully returned it to her sister, who took it back but didn't leave. She tilted her head this way and that, like she was trying to decide if the liked a painting in a museum. Or trying to come up with a particularly frustrating word for a crossword puzzle.
Finally, a smile. "I think it looks cute."
"Aren't you sweet."
"I mean it, Amelia. I like it." Clem turned the knife over in her hands, looking down to flick at the metal clip that kept it attached to pockets and belts. "And I like that it's safer than…the way it was."
Amelia felt her own face soften. As persistent as Clem was, Amelia had known from the beginning that it was for a reason. One that had nothing to do with malice or spite.
"Same."
"Well," Luke approached as Clementine held his knife out for him. "Alright, then. Clem, why don't you use your binoculars to check out that ski lodge?"
"Okay," she answered, and before Amelia knew it she'd climbed the boulder until she was leaning over its top, binoculars out and scanning the distance for signs of movement.
Forgot how fast she is. Zoom.
Luke stood behind her, and though it wasn't obvious, Amelia could see in the way he was watching that he was spotting her, in case she slipped. "See anything in the windows?"
"No…" she shifted, looking for better footing while she moved her binoculars over each of the lodge's massive windows in turn. "It just looks dark inside."
"What about the bridge? Does it look passable?"
"I think so…" Clem trailed over to the bridge, adjusting back a little after moving too far. "There are…some train cars, I think. But I don't see any walkers."
"Alright. Good."
"There's this little house on the other side, too."
"We have to cross that bridge. Let's go." Carlos seemed to think they'd already wasted enough time, and Amelia agreed. But she didn't move. Five days with these people had been enough to show her how they did things. By now, she knew better than to think the decision would be made that simply. She stayed seated on the ground, knowing this wasn't the end of a conversation, but the beginning.
"Hold on, now," Luke said. "We can't all go sprintin' across that thing, okay? We get spotted out there, we're gonna be trapped."
"Going around that lake will take too long."
"Right…"
She hugged her knees to her chest and looked around to see if anyone else felt the way she did. She glanced at Rebecca and Alvin, who exchanged a look but otherwise stayed out of it. She ran her eyes over Nick to see he was already looking back. The eye contact lasted for a count of three before ending in a one-shouldered shrug from her and a head-scratch from him. They went back to minding their own business, leaving Amelia unsure which one of them had broken it first.
Amelia stood up, deciding she wanted to wander. She heard something about splitting up the group and bad ideas but at the same time had a crick in her shoulder she really, really wanted to pop. Letting others make the decisions, after all, was one of the few things she'd managed to get used to. It was a relief, to be honest. When the choice was made, they would fill her in on whatever part she needed to play in it, if any.
They could do the arguing. They could handle the pressure of making the right decision when wrong decisions could get someone killed. It was a burden she'd carried for years, and didn't need anymore. Knock yourself out.
"Well, I think it'd be easier to just ask her," Luke said. Suddenly she was pulled back into the debate, her attention snared involuntarily by the sound of her name. "Amelia?"
She looked between him and Carlos, between two faces characteristically friendly and unfriendly, and realized she'd been asked a question.
After a beat of silence, Clementine elbowed Luke in the hip and talked to him in a conspiratorial whisper. Like she was giving him test answers or letting him in on a secret Amelia could've done without him knowing.
"She wasn't paying attention."
Amelia did her best not to scoff, something else she and Clem both knew she did when she was caught off-guard. "Thanks, Clem."
"That's the face you make."
"I'm not making a face-"
"Enough." Carlos held up a hand to silence their argument. Which was fine by Amelia, given that…she'd been losing. "We think you should go with Luke to make sure the bridge is safe. Can you do it or not?"
She nodded, answering quickly both because she was ready to do something, anything…and because the impatience in Carlos' tone made her feel she had a time limit to tell him what he wanted to hear. "Yeah. No problem."
"And me," Clem added. "You're coming with Luke, and me. Right?"
Amelia couldn't tell who she was asking, but she had a guess. Clem already knew what her answer would be.
Luke tilted his head. She might've thought he was thinking about it carefully if he'd taken more than a second to answer. "I don't see why not,"
"Excuse me?" Amelia buried a laugh beneath her words, putting a hand over her bruised shoulder and pushing back, slowly. Pop. There it is.
Clementine crossed her arms, in a way Amelia had seen too many times already. This is where it starts, then.
"I can do it." she insisted. "We won't-" She hesitated, for a second just long enough to notice. "-have any problems."
"I believe you think there won't be problems," Amelia shifted in the short silence that followed. She looked out again at the bridge, and the drop beneath it that was easily a hundred feet. "Clem, come on. You already know I'm not going for this." Let's skip to the end, please.
Clem turned to Luke, an expectant look on her face as if she thought he could, and would try to change her mind, when Amelia knew only one of those things was true. He scratched the back of his head, buying time. "I…look Clem, I wanted to bring you. But…" he gestured to Amelia with a wave of his hand. "You heard her."
Oh.
Amelia hadn't been expecting that.
"Um. Thank you."
He nodded to her and smiled at Clem, trying to play it off as the pleasant end to an easy conversation. Clementine saw it, and it didn't stop her from looking heartbroken anyway.
"Really?"
"Sorry, kid."
Clementine's attention was back on Amelia before she was ready for it. She crossed her arms and planted both feet on the ground. Like Amelia was trying to physically knock her over rather than get her to stay put for the next ten minutes. "I'm going."
"We don't know what's out there, Clem." Amelia sighed heavily, exhausted in a way that had nothing to do with the day they'd spent walking uphill. They weren't doing this again. Again. Not here and not now, when they had things to do and a limited amount of time to do it. Not when a madman and God-knew-how-many of his people were somewhere in the forest behind them.
But it was more than that. Amelia was just…tired of it. So, so tired of fighting the same fight with her sister every time she refused to let her make a water run on her own. Every time Amelia told her to hide while she went out looking for food. It had been easier when Clem was younger, when she still listened to her out of some obligation to obey authority figures, despite nearly all of them being dead and gone. When she got old enough to realize it, to understand that the new world didn't include any of the rules she was raised to follow, she started insisting that Amelia needed to make a better case than I'm the adult, you're the kid.
"Duh." Clem told her. "We never know what's out there. I can handle it."
Still, for as long as she refused to duct tape her sister to a wall, it was all she had. "You're the kid. You don't have to do these things."
She heard the dismissive tone of her own voice, and knew she'd apologize for it later. But for the time being, there wasn't time to repeat Clementine's second-favorite argument again, just for the sake of arguing. The clouds in the distance were a darkening shade of orange; the sun had already set, the air was getting cold, and the group was running out of time to make it into the lodge before night came and brought all its dangers with it. She waved to Luke as she passed, gesturing for him to come with her despite not knowing exactly where she was leading him.
Clementine spoke from behind them, once again sincere when Amelia would've expected her to be angry-
-why do you always think she's going to be angry? She's not you-
-and once again, compelling Amelia to listen against her better judgment.
"You took care of me for a long time. It's my turn to help."
Amelia stopped. And she thought about it.
They were the same. Equally protective and equally stubborn and in the past two years neither of them had given in and decided the other should be in more danger than themselves. And she was tired of it. Which meant they could keep fighting the same fight, once every few days for the rest of their lives…or one of them could decide to change something.
"Okay."
"…okay?"
She turned back, arms crossed defensively because she didn't like what she was doing, didn't entirely know what she was doing.
"Yeah." Are you really about to say this? Idiot…"We've been separated twice-"
-not counting the first time, the worst time-
"-now, and both times, you…you did good. You showed me, and everyone that you can handle it when…things go wrong. So I'm not going to tell you what to do anymore. Because you're smart, and tough, and I know you can handle it."
"That's it?"
"That's it. Now, I'm asking that you choose to stay here. For me."
She watched Clem mull over the idea, and hoped she'd been right in thinking that treating her like an adult would get her act like one. Amelia tried to ignore that there was a reason she didn't want to be treated like a child, despite knowing exactly what it was. Clementine had been a kid, once. But that was before Macon, before Savannah, before she'd visited the dairy farm and the Marsh House and other places that made up her own intimately personal hell. The closets hiding the monsters that ruined – ended – her childhood, the people that made her realize before her age reached double digits that the monsters in her books weren't real and the monsters that look like people are much, much worse. She'd been a kid who listened to her parents and always said please and thank you and never did anything she was told not to do, aside from the time she dared to steal cookies from the jar in the kitchen.
And then she saw things.
Things that left her feeling "too old" for toys at nine and had her stomping her walkie talkie to pieces in a Savannah alleyway when she thought Amelia wasn't looking, despite how much she'd loved the flower stickers Ben had given her to put on it. She learned to shoot guns, to shoot walkers and eventually shoot people.
She'd seen and survived just as much as Amelia had. She would never stop being Amelia's responsibility but that didn't mean she couldn't treat her less like a burden and more like an equal.
Clem didn't seem to know what to make of it. Amelia guessed from the look on her face that she suspected her of pulling some kind of trick. It was something Clem wouldn't have put past her, a long time ago.
"I want to come with you. I can help."
"I know you can. But it's a narrow bridge, over a huge drop. It could be crawling with walkers. So just hold onto this…" She held out the handgun they shared, hoping Clem would notice it was the first time Amelia had given her one when she hadn't been forced to by lack of choice. A real weapon she could do a lot of damage with. Something that made her claw hammer look like as childish of a weapon as it was. "…and let me take this one, okay?"
Clementine took it immediately, and Amelia tried to calm her own nerves. If she's old enough to walk through a horde, she's old enough to hold a gun. More thoughts followed, each more unwelcome than the last.
If she's old enough to get locked in a meat freezer-
If she's old enough to watch a man's head get crushed-
If she's old enough to shoot a man in the back of the head-
Amelia gritted her teeth until it stopped. She saw her sister consider the offer, turning the gun this way and that in her hands and checking the safety. She saw Clem look past her, over her shoulder at Luke, and though she knew it wasn't what she was thinking, told her, "I'll keep an eye on him. He'll be fine." She smiled for the first time in days, without even having to force it. "Okay?"
Amelia felt her nerves jitter back to life, protesting again the fact that she'd just put a loaded firearm in the hands of a child. An objection she'd get every time, no matter how many times she'd done it before. Relax. You taught her everything Carley taught you. She'll be fine.
Clementine stuck out a hand, without words at first. Amelia looked down at her open palm and back up, waiting for the term she was about to demand. "I get to do the next thing."
"You get to do the next thing." Amelia agreed. Hand shake. Done deal. She couldn't go back on it now if she wanted to. "We're good?"
"We're good."
They walked out toward the horizon, approaching the bridge on a wide, downhill path. Their job had been to clear the way – that's what Amelia had prepared herself for – and so far there had been nothing and no one to clear. Which meant they were just scouting, essentially. Not far from the job she used to have, when she had another group. A group of people she tried daily not to think about.
It was a quiet walk. At first.
"How are the stitches, by the way?"
"Itchy."
"Yeah, I think that, uh…means they're workin', right? Reminds me of this time I messed up my ankle playin' soccer. Compound fracture. Needed a cast and a whole bunch of stitches. Itched like you wouldn't believe. And I couldn't get to it…you know, 'cause of the…cast…"
It wasn't the first walk the two of them had taken in total silence. For reasons Amelia couldn't guess, Luke seemed determined to make it their last.
It was something she'd noticed about him. He wasn't comfortable with silence. Even if he was only talking to himself, telling her things he already knew she wasn't going to respond to. He preferred it to silence. He didn't see the unanswered words as a waste, the way Amelia did. It was more like he was filling space. Filling it with something, anything because he couldn't stand it being empty.
Not like Nick, who seemed to prefer it that way. She liked that about him. She recognized the irony. A week prior, she'd been very sure she didn't like anything about him. Now she had a mental list of things, some of them shamelessly superficial and some which took time for her to learn. They ranged from the color of his eyes to the way he bit his nails when he was nervous to the amount of liquor he could put away in a single sitting to the way he laughed incredibly loudly when Luke brought up a good story from when they were kids. It was a list she'd never share, not even with him; a decision that was reinforced with each quirk of his she added to it.
"You ever broken a bone?"
"No." She had. But no was a shorter answer. If she'd said yes she'd have had to explain. Tell him which bone and how she did it when the blunt truth was she didn't like talking as much as he did.
You could try.
"That's good to hear. It ain't a picnic. Hurts. A lot."
The silence settled over them again. Luke had used his last conversation point, she guessed, and needed time to come up with more. She could see him trying, running through a list in his head as they walked, and wondered when and if he'd ever give up on it. She wondered why he was doing it at all, wondered why he took their inability to have a conversation as a challenge on his part, not a shortcoming on hers.
"You know, Nick's never broken a bone, either. Don't know how he made it this long. Pretty much everyone I know had some kinda accident at some point."
He was trying, and even she could see it. It was what got her to take a breath and tell him, "I did. One time."
"Yeah?" he grinned. "How'd it happen?"
She squeezed her eyes shut, cringing even as she smiled. "It's…embarrassing."
"You're talkin' to someone who once knocked over a fish tank. Shattered the whole thing. Water's everywhere, I'm soaked head-to-toe..."
Amelia tried not to snort, and only half-succeeded. "Is that a joke? Please tell me that really happened."
Luke scratched the back of his head and looked the other way, but not until Amelia caught him blushing. "I…cut my hands all up on the glass tryin' to save the fish."
She believed him. Her story wasn't flattering, but his…
Should win some kind of award.
"It was a big tank, too." He went on. "Flooded Nick's living room, just about. Got a helluva yellin' at from his mom. And from him. Yelled at me all the way to the ER."
A light-speed reenactment of the whole ordeal flashed through Amelia's mind, making her imagine Nick's mom scolding him for hurting himself while Nick berated him for killing his fish until she couldn't help it anymore, and laughed.
"Look at that," Luke grinned. "I knew I'd get one out of you eventually. Most of my stories aren't that funny, but persistence counts."
Maybe it did. More than Amelia wanted to admit.
"All I'm sayin' is there's nothin' you could tell me that I would find more embarrasin' than that." He said, reminding Amelia that he wasn't the only one with a story to tell. "So go on. Tell me about it."
She already regretted bringing it up. But she spoke anyway, knowing she was talking to a person who could listen to embarrassing stories without making her feel embarrassed. In fact, the idea that he could even make her feel better about it wasn't much of a reach. "Clem had a treehouse in our backyard. I…fell out of it...trying to climb down. Landed on my wrist and broke it."
"See, now that's not that bad."
"I was eighteen years old." Arguably too old to be in the treehouse in the first place, let alone lack the coordination to safely get back to the ground.
"That's…a little embarrassing…" His smile was huge, and genuine, and very obviously trying to keep a laugh down below the surface. "…but it's okay. You're not the only one."
She was starting to agree. She wasn't. Not anymore.
The two went quiet as they approached the entrance of the bridge, not because they were struggling to find words to speak but because their conversation had ended, naturally and pleasantly. It was the first conversation Amelia had ended that way in a while; the first one in days that hadn't ended because they were attacked by the dead or because she walked away midsentence.
"Thanks for comin' with me. You…probably would'a preferred to do this alone, but…" But that's not how your group does things, Amelia knew. "…the group wanted two people out here."
Amelia tried not to shrug; she didn't want to look as indifferent as she felt. "It's…no problem."
"I figured it was best to do what they wanted. They're still on edge after the whole…you know."
She didn't, really. She knew what he was talking about. But over the last week she'd come to realize this group was as good at avoiding the subject of William Carver as she was at avoiding people altogether. Over the last five days she hadn't learned a thing about him. And she'd asked.
"I need to ask you something."
He came to a stop on the railroad tracks just in front of the bridge, and the way he cleared his throat as he turned to face her told her he knew what it was, and wasn't looking forward to it.
"Yeah?"
"What does he want with you?" Amelia shook her head. He knew as well as she did that this had been coming for days. She only hoped for a straight answer this time. "Why would he still be following us after five days?"
"It's…"
"Please don't say it's complicated."
Their conversation had been nice, while it lasted. She hoped to go back to telling stories one day – good stories, the kind that made her smile to think about and laugh for the first time in months – but she needed an answer first. Now that they were away from the group she thought she had a better chance of getting one.
"You can ask the others. I don't want to get in the middle of it."
She didn't know why she'd thought this would go somewhere. She never had a reason to think Luke would tell her something Nick wouldn't. Suddenly she was bitter, wondering why she was vilifying herself for keeping her secret from the group, when they had one of their own and seemed to agree unanimously that she and Clementine didn't need to know about it.
My secret isn't going to get anyone shot and drowned in a river.
Yet.
"You are in the middle of it. So am I. So is Clementine."
"It just…it ain't my place to talk about. Ask the others. If they…want to tell you, they will."
Others. Amelia noticed the word only after he'd used it a second time. "Why won't you name a person? Who are you talking about?"
"Amelia, please. Just let this go."
"I can't. I'm sorry, but I can't." She meant it. She never wanted to resort to prying answers out of him, or anyone. She hoped he at least understood why. "You know why this is important." She took a guess, thinking it was better than asking again. "Is it Carlos?" She thought back to the way she'd heard Carver talk about him, though not by name. Smug son of a bitch. But a smart man. I miss him. The signs of a personal grudge were hard to miss, even when punctuated by a lie she could tell was horseshit from the other side of the kitchen wall.
Luke didn't answer. He seemed determined to avoid answering her, but had run out of vague terms to use. Others. Not my place. It's complicated. So Amelia guessed again, hoping his face would answer for him, even if he didn't speak to her. He crossed his arms and cut his eyes away from her, looking out over the water and maybe expecting the same thing.
"Is it Pete?"
Nothing from Luke.
"And a pretty little pregnant lady."
"Rebecca?"
Growls. Choking, wheezing, mangled voice boxes. Amelia's least favorite sound, a sound that always meant someone around her was about to die.
Luke reached for his machete. "Shit."
One dragged itself out from under the overturned train cart. Another came lumbering out from behind it. Luke turned around to see two more, limping onto the bridge behind them. They were coming from both sides of the bridge, closing in on the two of them in the center.
They were slow, and it gave Amelia time to think; plenty of time to notice she and Luke had nowhere to go. She drew her ice pick from its harness and backed herself up against the bridge's steel siding.
Yeah. Shit was right.
"I'll get these over here," he said, stepping out onto the boards to walk between the train tracks.
Amelia turned to face the two coming from the other side. The corpses lumbering between them and where they needed to be. The walkers weren't a problem so much as the lack of space. She stepped carefully, constantly threatened by the steep drop into the water she'd make if she stepped too far to either side. It was the reason she hadn't wanted Clementine here, and was grateful she wasn't.
She raised her axe and-
Breaking wood, crashing boards, cracking and shattering and a scream and the heavy thud of a body hitting something solid. She jumped so abruptly she almost dropped her weapon, sprinting to the gaping hole in the tracks expecting to see nothing, nothing but the whitewater remains of Luke's body hitting the water hundreds of feet below. Drowning because water was rock hard at a fall from this height and the impact knocked him unconscious. Already dead because he was too far down for her to get there soon enough to pull him out.
"No, no no no nononono…." She kneeled by the edge of the hole he'd broken in the flooring, leaning over further than she was comfortable with and knowing the walkers were still coming from both sides but ignoring them because she had to see.
And she saw.
He was caught on the support beams just beneath her, clinging to the metal pipes running across the tracks, barely holding himself up with his arms looped around one and his feet pressed up against the other. He almost didn't reach from one to the next, even at his height. At hers, she'd have fallen right through the middle.
Another reason he's lucky to be tall. Those were the words in Amelia's head, as irrelevant and unhelpful as they were. She was slow to realize how grateful she felt. How lucky she was that it hadn't happened again. That another person hadn't been pulled out from under her in the time it took to blink.
"You're not dead," was all that came out.
"I'm okay, I'm just…" he didn't look up, kicking at something with one foot while he struggled to keep his grip. Amelia had only just noticed the walker he'd been about to kill had fallen with him; it landed on another support beam and had skewered itself through the neck on a piece of broken metal. It kept it in place, Luke just out of its reach.
Good. That meant he had time.
"I can't reach you from here," Amelia sat up on her knees, watching the walkers as they closed the gap she'd put between herself and them. "I-I need a minute." Or five.
"You just watch your back. Don't-" the walker managed to grab the cuff of his pants, tangling its knotted fingers in his shoelace. He kicked it off, and almost slipped when he did. "Don't worry about me. I'll be fine-"
He didn't sound as sure of himself as Amelia wanted him to. Make it fast.
"Be there when I get back," she called down the hole as she stood up, getting a better grip on Hilda. "You better be there when I get back."
"Amelia, watch out!"
She swung for the kneecap, her favorite place to strike despite the fact that it always made a horrifying sound. The walker dropped to one knee, hobbled and still trying to limp toward her because as long as there was something living to eat, it had no intention of stopping. It had lost all human processes of thought, like awareness that Amelia was about to end its life, or that it was about to step into a hole in the floor shit-
Not there not there not thereNOTTHERENOTTHERE
Amelia rushed for it as it slipped, coming up behind it, catching it by the back of its collar and dragging with all the upper body strength she had, which still didn't seem to be enough. It reached down for Luke, arms out and drooling and gnashing rotten teeth. It almost slipped out of her hands; its body weight was almost too much for her as it was, without it purposefully trying to crawl into the opening. She planted a foot against the edge and pushed back, trying desperately to pull the walker back with her.
She released its collar and looped her arms around it from behind, ignoring the smell harsh enough to make her eyes water and the disturbing feeling of a corpse's body moving against her own. She hurled it toward the edge of the bridge, suddenly struck with a lightning bolt of an idea when she realized she and Luke weren't the only ones in danger of falling to their deaths.
It started to pick itself up, and had just gotten up on its only working knee before Amelia sent it over the edge with a merciless, albeit cheap, kick to the center of its chest. It fell through the steel supports and though she wasn't watching, she heard it hit the water below.
Two left. She could do this, she told herself. Pick it up. The longer you take, the longer it takes you to get back to…
"Clementine?"
No, that wasn't her. It was another little girl in a baseball cap, it had to be because her sister wasn't about to drag herself into the clusterfuck going down on this bridge. Everything was going wrong and the only good thing about it had been that Clementine was far away from it, and not standing at the entrance to the bridge with her claw hammer gripped in both hands.
It wasn't her, it couldn't have been her because Amelia wouldn't know what she would do if it was. It was a nightmare that wouldn't go away when she blinked. There she was, short, purple, unmistakably her little sister…
And sprinting for her.
"Clementine, no!"
She was fast. As fast as Amelia had always known she was, no longer the road runner but a bullet fired with bad intentions, speeding by the walker on the other side of the pit and shattering its left knee with her hammer as she passed.
What the hell is she doing?
"Help Luke!" she called as she passed Amelia, jumping over weak floorboards and refusing to slow down, like she was trying to cross the bridge in record time. She waved her arms and whistled, getting the other walker's attention. It turned around and took a half-step in her direction before Amelia buried her ice pick in the back of its head without bothering to hobble it because I don't fucking think so.
She pulled her weapon free, dragging it out of its skull and taking a thick trail of blood with it. She kicked the body aside and called again. "Clementine!" Get back over here before I-
The last walker snarled behind her, dragging itself by its hands because it couldn't move on its mangled legs. Amelia looked in the other direction, trying to keep eyes on her sister as she climbed around the overturned cart and-
Clementine jumped as more hands reached for her out of nowhere. Grey, rotting hands belonging to walkers that dragged themselves out from behind the cart, who hadn't been disturbed by Amelia yet but were drooling and gnashing at the living thing who'd just ran in front of them. Clem cried out, and Amelia knew that specific scream meant she was surprised and scared and it was nothing compared to the knife twisting in her own stomach.
No, no, no this isn't happening, this can't happen…
Amelia ran, keeping to the steel siding and the metal pathway underneath it; she resented how it slowed her down but couldn't fall, not now. Not until she got to Clementine.
No. She had to speed up. She was moving as fast as she could and it wasn't fast enough, move or you're going to watch her die-
She stepped out onto the wooden tracks, watching from twenty feet as two walkers that fucking came out of nowhere startled her sister enough to make her trip. They lumbered toward her with nails out and teeth bared while she pushed away from them on the ground, trying to get back up but not getting there fast enough. Clementine got to her feet, took one step onto the tracks, and lost a foot somewhere beneath the boards when they collapsed beneath her.
Amelia lost all of her thoughts in a drug-like haze of panic and rage. She lowered a shoulder as she ran down the length of the bridge toward one of the walkers and put the momentum into slamming it to the ground. The collision was abrupt and painful and rattled her brain inside her skull. She stopped just long enough to kick it in the head when it was down. She heard a crack and saw blood but didn't bother to check that it was dead.
She stared at the two figures across the tracks, keeping Hilda in her hand in a white-knuckled grip that was starting to hurt. The walker kept coming with no intention of stopping until it ripped her flesh from her body and Clem couldn't go anywhere and Amelia was too far, across the tracks that might cave underneath her and leave them both dead.
She got another idea, not a lightning bolt of inspiration but a near-dead light bulb, barely flickering to life in the depths of some laboratory that was long forgotten. It was something that was barely better than nothing and she raised Hilda above her head, not for a swing but for something that took better aim than she thought she had.
You can do this, you can do this, she was too panicked and adrenaline-shocked to tell that she was lying to herself. Don't fuck it up, don't fuck it up, don't-
She threw it when Clementine didn't have any time left. It happened fast. It barreled across the bridge, a pinwheel with a razor's edge seeking a home, which it found deep inside the walker's chest cavity as it buried itself there with a heavy and wet thud. The walker jolted with the impact, arms out and jaw unhinged and, having long lost its coordination and balance, stumbled one step, then two. Pushed by the force of being hit in the chest, it tripped over its own ankles, reeled backwards and tumbled over the edge.
She watched the flash of yellow disappear, first lost in a mud-brown spray of blood and then falling below the tracks, gone as quickly as the walker was.
Amelia didn't like how quiet the street was. The fog rolling in was like something out of a horror movie and the air was so silent that every one of her footsteps seemed to echo like she was in an empty gymnasium. Every footstep, every cracked knuckle, every shivering breath.
In hindsight, she'd decide it was why the stranger heard her coming, and ducked beneath the newsstand before she got there.
It happened fast. She'd barely reached for the wrench she'd taken from the train's maintenance panel before it was twisted out of her hands by a person she didn't even know was there yet. She reacted fast but not fast enough, taking a swing that her attacker caught before forcing her arm down, popping her one in the face, and tripping her up with a leg behind hers. Amelia hit the ground, the impact knocking the air out of her chest, and realized she'd been pinned in the time it took her to breathe again.
The stranger in the red jacket had sat on her, keeping her legs down and pinning her arms to the concrete with their hands. Amelia stared, and now that she stopped to look, noticed long eyelashes and a delicate, heart-shaped face underneath the white surgical mask. She realized when the stranger brandished a yellow ice pick from their back that the hand her wrist into the ground was too small to be male; they were almost the same size as her own.
It wasn't much. It said nothing about this girl's policy on murder or her mental stability or her taste in friends…all things that would determine whether Amelia was about to die here in the street.
But it made them the same, even in one small way. It wasn't enough to spare her life without question, she knew, but she hoped it would be enough to make this girl feel the same sense of kinship that she did, as reckless and sentimental as it was. Sharing her gender and likely her age might've meant their journeys had had more in common than they realized. Might've had them feeling empathy for each other that they'd been denied by so many other people who were nothing like them and therefore didn't understand them.
Amelia did. She saw the anger and mistrust in the girl's eyes and knew exactly where it came from.
She worried that the stranger disagreed, before she lowered the ice pick and sighed loudly in the manner of someone who knew she was about to do something she'd regret. Sitting back on Amelia's hips, she reached up to her own face and pulled the mask down.
"Are you going to try to kill me if I let you up?"
"Wasn't planning on it."
Amelia hurried to her sister, daring a single step onto the wooden tracks that immediately cracked the board beneath her foot.
"Careful!" Clementine warned, hands flat against the flooring as she tried to pull her leg from the hole she'd wedged it in. Amelia had run out of energy to care that she was eleven, that she hadn't done it in years – not since Clem gotten too old for it – and picked her up with two hands under her arms. She was heavier than Amelia remembered. But not difficult to hold up at arm's length. "Hey- ow-!"
Her foot came free as she was lifted from the ground, and Amelia had to force herself to put her back down. Even as she did, she wondered where the kid would take off next. How will she get herself killed the next time you turn your back? She shook it away, equally because it terrified her deeply and because she didn't have time for this. Not yet. She picked up a piece of lead piping, three feet long and jagged at one of its broken ends.
"Stay here." She said, noticing a sharp edge in her tone she hadn't meant to put there…but didn't regret at the moment. "Stay off the tracks."
"Amelia-"
Amelia had already walked away, and called over her shoulder, "Don't. Move," unsure that Clem had even heard it. She held the pipe sharp-end up as she moved, gripping it so hard her hands were shaking. She couldn't lie to herself about what was in her heart, couldn't pretend she didn't feel what she felt, as much as she wanted to, and she knew it wasn't fear that was making her shake but rage. Rage brought on by loss and the grief it always brings with it. The only good thing about the virus that had torn the world apart, turned millions of human beings into monsters was the only thing at the forefront of her mind.
At least they don't feel pain. Perfect for people like her, when they were hurting more than they could handle on their own so they needed to inflict it on something else. She knelt by the edge of the hole in the tracks, ignoring the persistent fear in the back of her mind reminding her he might not be there when she looked, and eyed the walker that still reached for him, pinned to the platform it had fallen on.
She turned the jagged end down and punched a hole right through the top of its head. Impaled its skull with all the force she could muster and no small amount of satisfaction. She pulled it back out with a loud suction noise and moved it slowly, bringing it over to Luke so he could grab it by the bloody end.
He did, and he laid it across the gap between the two supports to create another place to stand. He stepped up onto it and Amelia watched it roll beneath his feet, offering a hand that he took just before it slipped out from under him. It would have taken him with it if he hadn't already had one hand in hers and the other on the ledge.
She pulled, exhausted and inwardly apologizing because they both knew he was doing most of the work. In a few seconds he was up, and over. On his knees on the bridge again, doubled over and catching his breath. Amelia noticed him holding his ribs, and when he looked up, bleeding from his face. Gushing from a cut beneath his eye on one side of his face and above his eyebrow on the other. She tried not to stare. She already knew the fall hadn't been gentle. She realized she wasn't surprised, but troubled. Seeing him bleeding and in pain was a sight she didn't like. Hated, actually. He didn't deserve it and watching it put an uncomfortable twist in her chest.
Don't act an idiot. Say something friends say.
"Are you…okay?"
He was still breathing hard, but he spared enough to say, "I heard Clementine…" He leaned to look past Amelia, down the bridge in the direction she'd been running. "Where'd she go…? She alright?"
"She's fine." Amelia looked over her shoulder, seeing without surprise that Clementine was coming to join them, keeping to the metal walkway on the other side of the tracks.
"Good," Luke's smile was small and fleeting, but still there, leaving Amelia wondering…if this didn't do it then what the hell would it take to knock it out of him? She hoped she wouldn't ever see it.
"Amelia," Clementine approached them wringing her hands. Something Amelia hadn't seen her do in quite some time. Then again, she hadn't been this angry with her in quite some time. "I'm…sorry…about your ice pick…"
"Are you kidding?" she stood up, her words as pointed as she could make them. "It was a thing. An object. A fucking…thing." She struggled for a new word and gave up. This wasn't the time to exercise her vocabulary, this was the time to rip her sister a fucking new one for trying to make the worst of her nightmares come true. "You said you would wait with the group. You fucking shook on it!"
Luke stood up behind her, pressing his hands to his knees and taking a few seconds to do it. "Hey…" He paused until he was upright, and put a hand on her shoulder from behind which Amelia didn't hesitate to walk away from, taking a few steps toward her sister.
"That…was the most careless, most dangerous thing I've ever seen you do. It was worse than every reckless thing you've ever done, and you know that is a lot. A lot."
"I thought you needed help," Clementine started running a hand up and down her arm, a nervous tick Amelia guessed she'd picked up from Sarah. "I saw Luke fall through and didn't want you to fight all those walkers alone."
"We didn't need your help. In fact, you came charging in, and you were the one who needed help. When are you going to get that you should listen to me?"
Luke spoke up, a little louder this time. Raising his voice slightly because he didn't know Amelia well enough to know that volume didn't quiet her, but only challenged her to bite back. A game she was very, very good at by now. So far she had only been outdone by one person in the group, and it wasn't him.
"Amelia. Ease up, alright? No one got hurt-"
"She almost died in front of me because she didn't listen to me. Don't tell me to back off."
He sighed and looked out across the bridge, and she knew she was exhausting, knew she was draining him of what little energy he had after nearly falling to his death; she still made the conscious choice not to stop and did it without regret. Some battles were worth giving up. Some white flags needed to be waved for the better of the group or for some greater good that was more important than she was, but not this one. Nothing was more important than this, and if she had to scream and curse for days to get the point across to her sister, then she would. Clementine knew better than to put it past her.
"Let's just get off this bridge," Luke told her. "Alright? Y'all can talk this out when everyone's over safely."
She'd take that. She closed her eyes and took a breath, trying to slow her pulse and figure out whether it was racing due to adrenaline or unhinged fury. She decided on both. "Fine. Let's…"
Luke stepped around her, with a hand on her arm and something far too gentle to be called a push. He guided her out of his way, suddenly in a hurry to be in front of both of them. Clementine took a step forward and he put a hand out in front of her to keep her where she stood. Amelia looked over his shoulder to see a man coming from the other side of the bridge. He'd clearly seen them; it was hard not to say he was walking straight for them. He carried a hunting rifle with a scope that could easily pick them off at his distance.
Amelia wanted to grab her sister and dive behind the abandoned train cart. Take cover before anyone starts shooting. But she knew the sudden move might provoke him, and would leave Luke without cover and presumably, caught off-guard. There had to be a better way.
She pulled Clementine back and shouldered up to Luke, closing the gap between them and becoming the second half of the barrier between her and the stranger.
She wasn't sure who he was talking to when he muttered, "You see him?"
Clem answered for the both of them with a nod, peering through the small space between Amelia's left arm and Luke's right. "Yeah. I see him."
"Just…everybody play it cool." He stared straight ahead, moving only to wipe away blood on his face. Amelia got a strong feeling that everybody meant her more than it did Clementine. "And you do the talking, Clem."
"No." Amelia objected before he finished making the suggestion.
Luke cut her a sideways glance, trying not to take his eyes off the man as he came toward them down the tracks. "He won't shoot a little girl."
"Plenty of people would." Is he joking? Did he really think it was a good idea to give him a chance like that and hope he wouldn't take it?
"What should I say?" Clementine asked him, on board with his idea. Amelia expected nothing less from her these days.
She answered before he could. "Nothing. You should say nothing. Did you bring the gun?"
"Amelia, trust me on this," he put a hand over the gun at his hip, touching it but not about to draw. "I don't want to get in a fight. It's better if you and I stay quiet."
Ah. He'd been subtle. Tactful enough that Amelia didn't notice right away. She was used to seeing transparency from him, so accustomed to his honesty that she didn't notice when he meant something other than what he said. She took his words at face value until she stopped to read between the lines.
"'You and I?' Or just me?"
"We don't have time for this, alright? Not everyone'll just start shootin' without half a reason."
"And we have to be ready in case he does." She hissed back, out of patience for the both of them. "Clementine, do you have the gun?"
"I gave it to Carlos…"
Luke muttered a curse under his breath, still watching the man and lowering his voice, maybe worried he was close enough to hear them. He pulled his eyes away for a moment, just long enough to shoot Amelia a look over Clementine's head. "You ever think life might be easier if you try makin' friends before you go shootin' people?"
Amelia glared back, and bit the words out like they tasted as bitter as they sounded. "All the time." She knew he hadn't moved past what she did. She tried to take it as news, but she'd already known he wasn't going to forget about it that easily. She'd already known, and in a way it made it hurt more. She'd been lying to herself, trying to hold on to what she'd wanted to be true.
Clem looked back and forth between the two. Reached up for a handful of Amelia's shirt and gave it a tug. "Guys. Not now…"
And then they were out of time to argue. The plan they had was all they would get. The man stopped, far enough that he had to yell to be heard but more than close enough to have a clean shot at any one of them. No one moved or spoke, tread carefully flashing in Amelia's mind like a dying neon sign.
"Well?" he called. Amelia waited for him to lift his gun, to prompt them for an answer when he didn't get one right away. She didn't know what to make of it when he didn't. "Who are you?"
Luke rested a hand over his own gun. Amelia looked down when he moved and noticed the blood drying on his knuckles. "Well, who's asking?"
"I am."
Rigid silence.
Luke cleared his throat quietly. A message meant for Clementine, not the man in front of them. "Clem? You want to…help me out, here?"
She hesitated, trying to look at the man through the small space she had between the two of them. "We're…a little lost."
"Lost, huh?" Amelia tried to listen for some trace of happiness in his voice. Some hint of gleeful cruelty in knowing that they were lost, and needed his help. She didn't hear any, as hard as she watched and listened as he came a few steps closer. "Huh."
Huh. That was it?
Silence. Then: "You don't look like assholes. Are you assholes?"
Assholes. Not the word she used. But she knew what he meant. Exactly what he meant. She knew he was asking if they were the kind of people to shoot him on sight. Kill him for his supplies or hurt him just because they can. And despite the difference in word choice and appearance and numbers, they had the same caution around strangers. She found herself thinking one thing above everything else.
He sounds like us.
"No offense or anything," he added quickly, reminding Amelia that the assholes he was talking about didn't care who they offended. Hurt, stole from, murdered. "But you know how it is out here. You run into a lot of assholes."
"Um…" Clementine looked between Luke and her sister again, maybe for a hint as to what to say. Neither of them told her anything. "I'm not an asshole…"
Luke looked down at her, surprised at her choice of words but not too shocked to smile. "Are you callin' me an asshole?"
The man was quiet for a moment. Then he laughed. It was a nice laugh. Friendly. There was a world of difference between it and the kind of laugh she was used to hearing. The kind that made her hair stand on end like a paranoid cat.
This one told her she could relax. Not let her guard down and share her life story. But relax.
He walked toward them again, closing the gap and standing close enough for them to hurt him as easily as he could hurt them. Amelia wondered if it was a gesture he'd made on purpose. A peace offering where there had never been a war. She decided it wasn't. He was more likely just a person trying to talk to other people like they were…people. Human beings instead of threats. Instead of assholes.
"You folks headed north like everyone else?" He had a nice face. Open, gentle. Nothing like the fake smiles and empty eyes of monsters pretending to be nice. Not at all like look, we own a dairy farm a few miles up the road and while Amelia didn't trust him immediately she couldn't decide right away that he was dangerous.
She had to force herself not to stare; she hadn't seen a face like that on a stranger since she met her new group, but here he was. Taller than her, shorter than Luke. Zipped up in a hoodie and talking to them like a new neighbor introducing himself or a stranger asking for the time on a park bench. It made Amelia think back to a time when conversations with strangers rarely ended in gunfire or first-degree murder, and the more she thought about it the more she began to agree that she shouldn't do any of the talking here. She was too out of practice for this kind of talking.
"Everyone else?" Luke asked cautiously.
"I see at least one group a day move through here. You all look the same. It's like a great migration of the dazed and confused." He kept his gun down, pointing off the bridge and holding it without a hint of a threat.
"Do you know Carver?" Clementine's question was out before Amelia could stop her. She thought their business-
-it's not your business if they won't tell you anything about it-
-was better kept to themselves. That, and she doubted Carver could've beat them here. She hoped.
"You mean…George Washington Carver? The peanut guy?"
"What?" Clem frowned, reminding Amelia that her second-grade history class hadn't gotten around to 19th century inventors. That, and Clem didn't care for peanut butter. Loved peanuts. Hated peanut butter. This, Amelia could never forget. "He's a man."
"Nope. Now I want some peanut butter, though." He smiled, hoping she'd find the joke as funny as he did. The smile faded slowly as he realized Clem didn't get the punchline. "I gotta say, you guys look like shit. If you need food, I've got some canned stuff in that station back there." He gestured to it with a shrug, pointing the barrel of his rifle toward the shack.
"That's, uh…awful nice of you…" Luke crossed his arms, the wary look on his face almost making Amelia smile at the irony. There had finally come a day when he was more mistrustful of strangers than her. It was here sooner than Amelia expected. "What's the catch?"
"No catch. I've got plenty."
"Well, alright then. Thank you."
Amelia thought about thanking him herself, and realized it would be the first and only thing she'd say in this exchange. She was trying – maybe too hard – not to come across as cagey and strange as she felt. She offered him half a smile, knowing it wasn't the same thing.
"Hey, no problem. Nice running into friendly faces out here. Like I said, I've got food and supplies back in the station. And if you…want…"
His face changed in a way that made Amelia's eyes go as wide as his. Something was happening, and she didn't need to know what to know it was going to be terrible. A storm, here to disrupt their smooth waters and capsize their rowboat. She followed the man's gaze and whirled to see what was behind her, afraid that one – if not all – of them were about to drown.
Nick came to a stop on the other side of the cart, having come sprinting down the tracks with a loaded rifle. Close enough to see but still at screaming distance. He took aim at the four of them – not the four of them, she realized, but it was all the same at this distance – and stared at them through the scope, looking as terrified as Amelia felt.
The man did the same. She didn't like his tone, didn't like anything about this any more than he did. Now he was accusing them of something, "What the fuck, man?" while Luke tried to explain away the misunderstanding before someone died.
"No, no, no, no, he's wi- he's with us!"
Nick! No! overlapped with Put it down and Don't shoot, a cocktail of white noise and too many voices, all of them panicked and afraid. Amelia could only hear beating wings and her own beating heart and grating metal screaming as it bent out of shape and gravel in a blender, all sounds trying to force her to shut down, to respond to sensory overload and crippling fear by trying not to exist until it was over. A ringing in her ears drowned out her thoughts, all the same because there was no time to think, make a choice but not the wrong one or someone you love dies.
She had no faith in the people around her, didn't think for a second that the stand-off was going to end itself well. She expected bullets to fly and blood to spill and so she hit the floor with every intent of taking her sister down with her.
She landed on a pair of shoulder blades that didn't belong to Clementine, her arms – tucked down beneath her own torso – the only things between her body and that of someone else who got there first. They tumbled, panicked and adrenaline-shocked, hitting each other then the ground, one collision after another. Amelia landed on her back and rolled, pushing herself up on her forearms just enough to look – she didn't dare sit up higher than that.
There was too much to take in and all of it was happening at once. There was red and screaming, a collapse, a struggle. Choking and heavy footfalls, the echo of a gunshot that rang out for miles in every direction.
The man struggled toward them with a hand over his neck, trying and failing to cover an open wound that was spitting blood like a broken faucet. There was enough of him left to realize he'd been attacked and to know who did it – in the last few moments of life he had, he tried to raise his gun to shoot back, but it was heavy and slow to lift with one arm and Amelia knew before it happened that he was going to fall over before he got the chance.
She watched him become the second body she'd seen fall hundreds of feet and disappear into nothing.
The chaos was over as quickly as it had started.
Quiet. Complete silence.
The ringing in her ears was still there, faint and high-pitched. Her heartbeat pounded in her head. Muffled voices, non-words somewhere behind her, shouting but still too quiet to be heard. She rose to her feet slowly and kept her thoughts silent as she wandered to the edge, replaying it one, two, three times in her head, stepping in the blood puddled on the floor. Death was permanent – she'd learned that, if nothing else in her life – and she stared down at the water, already still again after swallowing his body whole. It happened and it was done and nothing she or anyone could do would -
Clementine quietly reached for Amelia's hand, and her mind fell silent.