I'm alive!
I'm sorry I haven't had time to update. Taking an insane amount of college and working part time can do that to you. I'm up to date on the show, however, and boy oh boy, do I have plans for you!
So buckle up, dry your tears from the season finale, and enjoy!
This chapter features some good old fashioned walking and indulges my hatred of nutrigrain bars.
Please review! :)
She leaned on the metal railing, looking out at the dull gray sky above her calmly.
The cool metal railing in one hand, she lifted the other to her mouth, capturing the familiar paper cylinder with her lips and taking a long, slow, breath in. the embers on the opposite end of the cigarette flared, brighter than the sky at the moment, and she felt the warm comfort of nicotine swirl into her lungs.
She breathed out, and the smoke swirled into the sky before vanishing, off into the dawn, towards somewhere better.
A wet inhale sounded below her.
She looked down from the fire escape, finding a rather bug-eyed walker starting up at her with interest. She was on the second floor, well out of reach.
It looked up at her, gaping. The stringy hair, slick and greasy with bits of decayed scalp, barely clinging to her skull. Ripped and torn gray shirt, marinated in the oozing fluids of the walking corpse as it trudged along, looking for its next piece of flesh to eat. The lips had fallen away, and the teeth opened and closed as the creature growled and hummed up at her. The skin around the sewage green eyes had sunken in, however, given the walker a rather bug-eyed look.
It wordlessly stumbled over to the wall beneath her, yellow fingernails clawing at the brick building, as though it would somehow get her up to her.
The corpse mumbled gibberish, simply making noise, sucking air, and being a nuisance. Wasn't worth the bolt- she wasn't going to risk going to there to retrieve it, not when, just outside this little alley, at least thirty more dead were milling around. Wasn't worth the bullet either.
She lifted the cigarette to her lips, taking another pull and letting it out. At least she could enjoy breathing. It sounded like the walker had inhaled a gallon of paint fumes with all the gargling it was marking.
It's fingers left oily marks on the brick wall below that it clawed at, and she frowned, looking down for a moment, wondering about the woman the corpse used to be...
The sky had changed from a harsh dark navy to a light gray- like a light slush on the road after a fresh snow.
At the very base of the horizon, she could see it growing brighter- rays of orange and pink edging out. One more drag on her cigarette, before she put it out on the railing, flicking the butt down into the alley below. It hit the walker on the head, and the woman mashed moldering teeth together in a snarl...
It was time to go.
She grabbed her backpack, looking over- it was about seven feet across and three feet up to the next rooftop. Jumpable- probably.
She took a breath, standing on the railing, her palms beginning to itch as she balanced, before she was lobbing her backpack over. It hit the rooftop across fro her with a satisfying thud.
Her bow was next- she held her breath, hearing it clatter onto the concrete. It was probably a little scratched, maybe the sight had been knocked around a bit- but it'd been through worse. It wouldn't break. Just like her.
Only thing left was her.
She crouched slightly, looking down at the bug-eyed walker. A three story fall to the pavement would suck- if she could even get up and kill the corpse under her, then she'd have to deal with dragging her injured self through the mob of walkers in the town...
The obvious answer to that predicament was right here, right now. Jump. Don't fall.
She too a deep breath and jumped- her legs left the metal, and for one terrifying moment, she wasn't tied to anything solid at all. Her elbows hit the asphalt of the next rooftop, and she dug in, ignoring how it grated at her skin and scrabbling, moving her hips frantically, the toes of her boots catching the brick side of the building as she hauled herself up and rolled over, laying on the rooftop and letting out a breath.
Her elbows stung like shit. One of her arms was scraped pretty good, and her elbows themselves would probably bruise, but she wasn't on the ground. she was one more building away from main-street, which was infested with the undead. It was a good start.
She pulled the folded paper map form her pocket one more time, studying it. She was heading north. The route that led parallel to her current one- only, instead of through this ganked up walker-den of a town, it led through a subdivision of homes, then to a small bridge, onto a road that would eventually take her to the kingdom.
The next roof of a shitty apartment complex was easier to get to- it was level with this building, and closer, and she stared up at the sky. Sun rose in the east, set in the west. To the north, there were trees... she could see them in the pre-dawn horizon. She scaled down the fire-escape in the side alley, listening to every sound as she did before she was dropping into the alley, bursting into the deserted parking lot, and breaking into a run towards the north.
Every step seemed to make her feel lighter somehow, knowing she was leaving that mob of corpses behind. In three hundred yards, she'd reached some sparse trees, and she ducked into them, melting into the landscape with ease.
The sky was nearly all pink now, and she could see the sun clearly. She had a lot of ground to cover.
The woods here was dense- not like easily-spaced trees. No- the late summer foliage was in full bloom, and vines and black berry bushes tore at her skin and hair, catching on all manner of things as though it were trying to restrain her by force.
She resented it, having to break her own trail, and as the sun grew higher in the sky and started to sweat.
She stumbled and fell over a tree trunk hidden in vines for the umpteenth time, swearing quietly, before she was dragging herself back up.
The highlight of her day was finding a couple of black berry bushes. It wasn't more than two or three handfuls, but it made her hate the plants slightly less.
By the time the sun was overhead in mid-day, she'd managed to find a game trail- narrow and low, but better than breaking her own way through the brush.
The dirt was packed well and cool beneath her as she walked it. It was narrow- a deer path, if the tracks were anything to go by. Sometimes it descended into thickets of bushes and brush so low, she had to pause and listen for any dead before dropping to all fours and crawling through. It was like a hidden world, following the path of the deer- through the dense foliage and bushes on all fours. If the brush hadn't been so dense, she'd have been worried about walkers falling on top of her. As thick as it, was, though, she doubted they could get close without her hearing them stumbling through the brush.
Eventually she'd come out of the thicket, and be able to straighten up and walk like a human again, shambling through the woods.
It wasn't horrible out here- it was like she was hunting with Daryl... only she was alone. But she'd see him soon, if she just kept on walking.
The foliage gradually grew less dense, giving way from green leaves and briers to pines. A carpet of death leaves met her feet with every step, and beneath the natural shade, she watched the terrain start to drop sharply and realized where she was headed.
There was a ravine.
She looked down it hesitantly. She still remembered the time she'd fallen into a ravine with a walker as a kid, hunting with Daryl. The frantic feeling of her heart punching her ribs as she'd stabbed for all she was worth, just trying to kill, to kill whatever that walker was to survive.
The hills all dropped down sharply, leading to a ravine with some hills and some shale rock walls. She could hear the water flowing, see it a little...
This ravine wasn't as steep as the sheer cliff she'd fallen off of as a child. Though it was lower- and if a bunch of walkers had fallen in it, she'd most likely have to move her ass. But she couldn't hear anything, and she peered around- all the dead pines sloped downward- none large enough to serve as a make-shift bridge over the gouge.
She situated herself on the top of the hill, leaning down, and slid. It was easy, letting gravity take her down- she scratched through the carpet of dead leaves, like she was sledding through dirt and leaves, gaining speed. she dug the sides of her boots into the ground to control her speed, and as she leaded towards the bottom, she reached out, latching onto the rough bark of a pine tree to stop herself, before she was jumping down the final five foot sheer drop into the rocky bed of it.
It wasn't so bad, really. She pulled her nearly empty water bottle from her bag, opening it and placing it into the stream of water. It looked relatively clean, and she was running low, having been drinking throughout the day anyways.
Water bottle filled, she walked across. to the other side. There was no real easy way up- a fourteen foot shale cliff, mostly. She found her handholds, but the rocks were mossy and slippery, and one deceitful handhold send her tumbling back down, cussing quietly, before she managed to scramble up it successfully a second fine, and then use the branches of a fallen tree for guidance up the steep hill, giving her purchase on the dead leaf carpet.
She made it to the top, leaning against a tree and wiping at her face, congratulating herself on a job well done. The terrain seemed to even out from there, no longer dense or steep, but still a dead-leaf covered pine forest.
Mid-afternoon wore into evening as she ventured, until she finally came to the road. She paused just before breaking out of the treeline, looking out.
The road was bare, trees on either side.
No sub-division of houses in sight.
She felt a momentary panic lance through her, and she fumbled for the map. Enid had drawn the subdivision even with the little antique shoo town- but the map was hardly perfect, so there was no way to know if the subdivision was back towards Alexandria, or towards the Kingdom.
She had an hour of sunlight left, tops, and something within her recoiled at the thought of having to spend the night alone in the woods, unprotected. She hadn't been alone like that for a night since she'd lost her brother all those years ago... and even then, she'd found Rick's group within a day or so.
She could always sleep in a tree somewhere. She hadn't done that for awhile- she'd barely slept while she was in the antique shop, and had gotten two hours at the most, since the walkers in the street didn't allow her sleep much. A tree would be uncomfortable, but not the end of the world. She could sleep there and not worry about walkers, at least...
She looked at the map and swallowed. No going backwards. She'd already wasted a day trudging through uncharted territory because of the herd- if she kept East, she might hit the subdivision Enid had mentioned. And regardless of whether or not she did, she'd be getting closer to the Kingdom.
That was what she had in mind when she started walking.
She watched the sun sink lower and lower in the sky, and as her shadow got longer, she saw the shadows of the subdivision in the distance, about forty five minutes later.
She didn't have time to be picky- with night setting in, she chose the first relatively secure place she saw- a two-story house with a chain-link fence back yard. They'd probably had a dog. She leapt over it, glad for the safety. There was a garden shed, and she thought about it for a brief moment before looking towards the house longingly.
She peered into the dark windows carefully. They were grimy- before hesitantly banging on the siding, hearing nothing. The back door was locked, she'd tried knocking and heard nothing, as well as jimmying it.
The back windows were locked, but protected relatively well by the fence, and she calmly used a rock to shatter the window, climbing in carefully.
With the last dingy remains of sunlight and her zippo, she scanned the living room. A small floral couch, an arm chair, dusty TV- deserted sitting room leading to back patio, kitchen, garage, bedroom, basement... she eyed the basement door warily before making sure both the front and back doors were locked, mounting the steps to the second deserted bedrooms- probably had belonged to teenagers by the style, and the books and CDs she found lying around. a tiny bathroom, and an office...
The place was deserted.
Except she hadn't checked the basement.
She steeled herself for the task, lighting a few candles she dug out of the kitchen drawer. She banged on the door first, hearing nothing move, before she started down the stairs...
She smelled it before she saw it, stopping halfway down the stairs. She turned and ran back up, slamming the door behind her. She'd made enough noise, and she listened, heart hammering, waiting to hear clumsy footsteps mounting the stair behind her... only they never came.
Still, the stench of death was unmistakable, and she took several breaths, arming herself with her pistol and opening the door, peering downstairs again. The ceiling was low, only about six feet, and she paused half-way down, banging on the wall. Still, no response. The smell was unmistakable, but the absolute silence of the place unnerved her.
She descended the last stair, candle casting warm light on the small basement. It was the scent of moisture and concrete mixed with death. The light of her candle illuminated booted feet, and she kept ehr pistol up, stepping forward...
Leaning against the wall, seated next to a washer and dryer, was the what was left of a man. There was a hole through his head and a revolver in his hand. She lowered her gun. She wasn't used to seeing a dead body that hadn't come back.
She swallowed as a few centipedes that'd been running over his legs scurried away in the light. He was long gone. It wasn't a fresh corpse by any means- it'd dried up instead of bloating, and a little colony of beetles with the red x on their backs scurried out of one eye socket.
She pulled the gun from brittle fingers carefully, tucking it into her waist band and found a white sheet handing on the little clothes line, wordlessly draping it over the remains before heading back upstairs, shutting the door behind her.
She scrubbed her hands in the sink before raiding the cupboards. They were empty, mostly- she found a nutrigrain bar, still in the wrapper. She chewed it thoughtlessly- it was hard and dry, but nutrigrain bars always were. She was too hungry to care, and she found herself basking in the luxury of having a house- a safe house that she could sleep in without the undead clawing at the walls- to be stunning and wonderful.
She finished off what was left of the nutrigrain bar, heading into the second bedroom farthest from the stairs and throwing herself on the blankets of the bed. She could sleep in a bed. It was both wonderful and unbelievable comfort compared to huddling on the floor fo the antique shop, jerking awake at every scratch and sound.
Her eyes opened as she realized how thirsty she was, and she went for her water bottle before remembering- miracle of miracles- this house had a well or something, because the faucets still worked.
She got up and stumbled into the bathroom, bringing her candle with her, setting it in the little toothbrush holder, turning on the tap, and drinking straight from the tap. She drank as much as she possibly could, feeling the need to conserve water leave her mind for the moment and repaying what'd been stolen by the summer heat.
When she was done she lifted her head, wiping her mouth on her sleeve. In the mirror above the sink, she realized how filthy she was. Her face was smudged with dirt, and a scratch from some thorns was splayed across her right cheek, just below the eye. Her hair was greasy with sweat, and she picked a piece of broken glass out of it from when she''d been crawling in the window. She paused for a moment, studying herself before she picked up her candle, heading back to the bedrooms and shutting the door, blowing out the light.
Hand on her pistol, pillow under her head, she pulled a blanket over herself, feeling absolutely rich.
Maybe she was filthy- or maybe, she was going back to her roots.
As she fell asleep, rain started to drum on the roof.