[A/N: Hey lovely people! Your feedback on the last chapter (and the fact that this story has cracked 50 favourites and 100 followers) just got me so excited that I had to post this. Enjoy!]
It took a little over an hour to get to Braysville. The bike ate up the miles, and—Asha was pleased to note—barely put a dent in the half a tank of fuel. It was noisy though, and since Asha didn't want to announce her presence to anyone—living or dead—still in town, she pulled into one of rundown houses on the outskirts of town, parking the bike behind the garage and covering it in boxes and debris so it wasn't easily identifiable.
She stretched, cracking her back, and then pulled her neoprene and butcher's gloves on to her left hand, shouldered her pack and spear gun and skirted to the corner of the house to eye the road into town.
The barrel of her old colt revolver—now with plenty of ammo—dug into the small of her back where it was shoved down the back of her jeans. She'd gotten used to carrying it again, being out on the road with Michonne and Daryl. Not her weapon of choice, but it was stupid not to carry it—although she was happy she hadn't had to use it since the prison. She grimaced.
Spear for the dead, gun for the living.
She paused at the corner of the house, looking down the street. Almost two years in from the turn, every town she passed through showed signs of neglect. Windows were broken, porches sagged and paint was faded and peeling. A stiff breeze blew down the street, lifting the dead leaves and banging the shutters hanging on broken hinges.
She waited a moment, gauging whether her entry into town had stirred up any walker activity. It had, but only a little. There were two walkers staggering towards her, well the house really, they hadn't seen her yet. Two wasn't much to worry about.
She had turned over her shoulder and opened her mouth to suggest Michonne take the second one before she remembered her friend wasn't with her. Her heart started pounding and she glanced around nervously.
Stupid.
She couldn't afford to be careless and forget she was on her own.
She grit her teeth and tightened her grip on the spear gun, stepping out to meet the walkers. Her lip curled as their snarling increased and they lurched greedily in her direction. She strode towards the first one, jabbing upwards sharply with her spear to take it under the jaw, and kicking it squarely in the chest to get it off her spear. The second was still a few paces away, so she stepped back, keeping the fallen walker between her and the still encroaching deadhead. As expected, it stumbled as it tripped over it, and Asha swung the butt of her spear gun like a club, collecting the deadhead in the temple. It fell to the ground and Asha finished it with a quick thrust through the skull.
She shook her shoulders as she straightened up and strode down the street, moving quickly back to the sidewalk so she had some cover from the parked cars and overgrown nature strip.
Asha didn't know Braysville. She hadn't bothered to look at a street map, but it wasn't a big town, and this was one of the main roads leading in, so she figured she'd wind up in the centre of town soon enough.
Five minutes or so of walking put her in a semi industrial area, a handful of squat warehouses with roller doors on either side of the street. The wind had picked up, gusting strongly down the deserted street, and slamming a small entry door on one of the warehouses against the metal door frame.
It was probably the noise that drew Asha's attention, but as her eyes roamed naturally over the area, she froze. Heavy scuff marks were visible in the dirt and grime on the concrete outside the door. A thin layer of dirt and scattered leaves had blown across the area, but a long smear trail, as if something heavy had been dragged, led out the door and around the corner of the building.
Asha crouched instinctively behind a parked car, hand going to the gun at her back. Her eyes flickered immediately back to the open door, but after a moment she was comforted by its continued banging in the wind. Surely if anyone was there, they would have secured that door to prevent the noise drawing any walkers. Still it took a long moment of steeling herself, heart pounding, before she moved away from the car and towards the building.
There were long dark brown streaks in the smear trail. Asha grimaced, recognising the colour of dried blood. Comforted by the fact that enough time had passed for the trail to be partially obscured, she ignored the open door and followed the trail around the corner. The trail ended about halfway along the side of the building in a pile of rubbish. Asha approached warily, sucking her teeth to work some moisture back into her mouth.
A gust of wind lifted the corner of a cardboard box in the pile and set it flapping.
Suddenly the pile shifted and an all too familiar snarl came from somewhere in its depths. Asha took a step back and waited. For a long minute the pile just continued to shift, then a broken and bloodied hand emerged from under the pile, followed a moment later by another. The creature clawed its way out from under the pile, its brittle fingers snapping and breaking backwards as it dragged itself along the concrete.
It wasn't an old walker. It had the milky bloodshot eyes and grey pallor of the dead, and it sure had the stink, but its flesh hadn't had time to rot. Couldn't have been turned more than a day or two.
But unrotten didn't mean unmarked.
Every inch of its exposed flesh was a mass of purple and blue bruises, streaked with its own dried blood. It's back caved in behind its shoulder blade, and its jaw hung unhinged, broken. As it pulled itself free of the rubbish pile, Asha saw why it was clawing itself along with its hands. Its legs were broken, twisted at unnatural angles, the femur protruding grotesquely from one of its thighs.
Asha's stomach flipped nervously and she glanced quickly around. The thing had obviously been beaten to death, and not that long ago. Her mouth twisted, and she watched it slobber and snap through its broken teeth for a moment, before planting her spear through its temple. Then she turned reluctantly back to the front of the building.
She waited, just around the corner, listening for a long moment, but she heard only the banging door and the rustle of the wind gusting down the street. She didn't think she heard anything from inside the building, but it was hard to be certain.
She bit her lip.
You don't have to go in.
Better the enemy ya know then the one ya don't girly, Merle whispered in her ear.
She shivered, closing her eyes for an instant. Ain't safe for the prison with scum like that around.
She could feel his breath against her face.
She nodded.
Reminding herself again that no one still living would leave the door banging like that, she took a deep breath, drew her gun, and carefully shouldered the door wide enough to slip into the building.
Back against the wall, she paused for a second to let her eyes adjust to the somewhat dimmer light—although the warehouse was fairly well lit by the high windows in the sawtooth ceiling. The huge space was largely empty, containing just a couple of abandoned cars, which looked like they'd been having work done on them when the end came, and a few knocked over shelves. A handful of miscellaneous tools and boxes strewn across the dirty concrete floor. It smelt like oil and dirt.
Asha breathed at little easier when, after a moment, nothing had moved. She circled carefully around the cars to make sure there was nothing hidden from sight that she needed to be concerned about, before flicking the safety back on her gun and shoving it back into her waistband.
In the middle of the floor, away from the cars, a charred black patch was evidence that someone had lit a fire there—and not all that long ago judging by the fact that the soot was still more or less in the one spot. Asha wasn't interested in the fire so much as the tracks and smudges around it. A tapestry of footprints crisscrossed the area, most smudged and partial, but from what she could see as she carefully paced the area, all men's sizes, and at least three, maybe four different treads. Further out, forming a rough circle around the fire there were a handful of body length smears in the grime, as if a person had laid down on a blanket and tossed a couple of times through the night, working the smudge into the floor. Six body length smudges, which may or may not have included someone on watch or the unfortunate person left outside under the boxes.
She pursed her lips. Five or six of them then. Well, now she knew.
She glanced up at the high windows, the rapid movement of the streaming clouds thrown into stark relief by the immobility of the building. Behind her the, roller door rattled in a particularly strong gust of wind. She shifted the straps of her pack a little. She had to keep moving if she was going to make it back by dark. Pausing for a moment at the door to check that the street hadn't filled with walkers - or worse - whilst she was inside, she headed back into the street.
Twenty or so minutes more walk put her on the town's main street, a wide tree lined avenue which would have been pleasant on a sunny day when filled by the living. Now the trees whipped in the increasing wind beneath a sky darkening with heavy cloud, and thunder rumbled in the distance. The street was filled with tumbling debris, shop fronts were shattered and a car had ploughed across the street, up the side walk and through the front of the drug store.
Asha moved carefully down the street, keeping to the edge where she could skulk carefully from car to car. The howling wind, coupled with her discovery at the warehouse, had put her on edge. She wanted nothing more than to be on the bike, heading back to the safety of the prison. Even the thought of having to face Daryl's wrath over her loan of his bike seemed like something to look forward to. But the chance of finding Nash's sign, the sign she knew had to be here, drove her on.
Suddenly, across the road a deadhead reeled between two parked cars and onto the road, staggering slightly, its head snapping about as the wind rattled down the street. Asha dropped to a crouch behind a car, but the creature seemed disoriented, the noise of the howling wind spreading its attention so that it couldn't focus on any one thing. There was a crack of thunder and the walker's head jerked around, like a dog sniffing the wind. Eventually it staggered down the road.
Asha released the breath she was holding and continued down the street. She hadn't taken more than two steps when a walker lurched from the busted shop front just in front of her. Its head was snapping around in the wind too, but at soon as it saw Asha it surged towards her. Asha pulled her knife, slapping the walker's arms aside with her gloved hand as she sidestepped quickly and buried her knife in its temple.
She absently flicked the blood off her knife, looking at the corpse crumpled on the ground. Looked like her time in this town was running out, the weather was obviously stirring up the walkers, and was going to make the ride back to the prison hell.
Well, if stealth wasn't going to help her, speed might. A quick loop around the block to double back to the road leading back to the bike and she was done. A more thorough search would just have to wait.
She set off a jog down the street, accompanied by a sudden crack of thunder, moving in to the middle of street to give herself more space to dodge any walkers stumbling from the shops. She scanned the shop signs, side of buildings, bonnets of cars as she ran—desperately hoping Nash had found his own can of offensively bright spray paint.
She was breathing a little heavy by the time she got to the end of the street. Glancing around, she noted that four or five walkers had staggered into the street behind her, and around the same number were weaving along the cross road she planned to turn down. Most of them seemed unaware of her presence, heads jerking upwards at the sky as the rattling wind and shuddering thunder dragged their attention around.
She was so focused on the dead that she didn't see it for a second, then her eyes snapped up to the large road sign on the cross road showing the distance to the next town. For a blank moment, her eyes traced the pock marked black spray paint lines, but then they suddenly leapt into focus and her heart leapt into her throat.
A coded marker from Nash. Her heartbeat drummed in her chest. He had been here. Her eyes flew over the sign again. It was only half a marker really, the bottom half of the road sign had been ripped away, taking the bottom part of the mark with it. But the top half of the cross was still visible, showing a '2F' and a dash in the two quadrants, and that was enough to convince Asha it was one of Nash's.
She let out a low cry, hurrying towards it. Second fall and a dash. He was still travelling when he came through, but she needed the bottom of the sign to know the direction. It must have been one hell of a storm that had ripped off half the sign, but with the debris currently skating across the road in front of the howling wind, she could believe it had happened.
She rushed to the pile of rubbish closest to the sign, tearing through it, looking desperately for something big enough to be part of the street sign. She tugged free a thin sheet of metal and the wind screamed underneath it ripping it out of her hands and hurling it across the street to crash loudly into the side of a truck. Asha was relieved to see it flash pink and silver as it flew, the wrong colours to be part of the street sign.
A fat drop of rain splattered on her cheek as she watched the flying metal, jerking her focus to the black clouds above her. Then a second burst against her arm.
'Fuck,' she swore.
She was about to be caught in a downpour. She had to find somewhere to wait it out, but as she looked around she could see an increasing number of walkers staggering onto the street—a storm might send the living in search of shelter, but it seemed to have the opposite effect on the dead. Then her stomach dropped as a somewhere a few blocks away, past the main street she'd recently come down, a church bell started pealing. It's heavy tone rang unsteadily, but carried clearly through the wind and thunder.
Asha's jaw dropped. Was that really the wind? Then she swore viciously as every walker in the vicinity turned towards the noise, and the trickle of walkers coming from the buildings turned into a flood.
Her heart ratcheted up a notch and her breath hissed quickly between her teeth. She had to get off the street. She glanced around, wind whipping strands of hair across her face. Going down the crossroad in the direction she'd intended was suddenly out of the question, as a cluster of twenty or so walkers swarmed out of a store front not far ahead of her. The road in the other direction, and back along the main street she'd just come down, were filling up quickly too, as the dead were drawn by the still tolling bell—which, just as she thought about it again, faded away.
The damage had already been done.
A grey skinned ghoul lumbered towards her and she drove her spear quickly up under its jaw. A second lurched up behind it and she belted it across the side of the head with the side of the spear gun, before driving the tip through its gaping eye socket. She briefly considered the trick Daryl had told her about using walker guts as camouflage, then quickly discarded it as there was yet more thunder and a spattering of rain swept against her.
Move Asha, Merle hissed suddenly in her ear.
She jumped, narrowly avoiding the outstretched hand of walker and sprinted back up the main street, ducking and weaving to avoid the dead as much as possible, and swinging her spear like a club to fend off those who got too close. The rain began in earnest, an abrupt battering of water that plastered Asha's hair to her face and near blinded her as she ran. Sudden light flashed across the sky and thunder reverberated from horizon to horizon.
Something jagged her ankle and she tripped, feet slipping, hands flying and landing hard on the wet road.
She felt pressure on her foot as she rolled on to her back, choking on her panic as she saw the deadhead on the ground, clawing at her jean clad leg and gnawing on the leather of her boot. She flailed desperately and drawing back her free leg to drive her heel into its face when it suddenly went limp—a long slender arrow with green fletching piercing its skull from temple to opposite cheek.
Asha gaped, head snapping upwards in the arrow's direction. On the edge of the roof there was a figure in a dark jumper, hood drawn up against the driving rain, a long recurve bow dangling in one hand. He, or she—Asha couldn't really tell—gestured frantically at her, directing her towards a narrow alley, before quickly drawing and loosing a second arrow at her. Asha flattened herself to the tarmac with a startled cry as the arrow flew over her body and into the face of a walker lurching toward her.
Move, Merle ordered, and she moved.
She surged to her feet, yanking the arrow from the deadhead who'd tried to make a snack of her foot—and leaving the other as it was out of immediate reach—she ran for the alley. She backhanded a walker who weaved in her direction, knocking it to the ground, charged past it and then flattened herself against the wall at the entry to alley, peering carefully around the corner. Never trust, even those who save your life...especially when they have no reason to.
The alley was empty, blessedly empty compared to the walker filled street. She quickly pulled her head back to face the street, chest heaving.
Could still be a trap.
Scared little girl, Merle sneered.
'Yes,' she hissed through bared teeth.
One of the walkers snapping at the air near her tilted its head in her direction, its cloudy eyes suddenly glowing as it staggered unsteadily towards her. She slung her spear across her back and gripped the arrow tightly in her right hand. Breath held, she waited till it got close enough for her to slap her gloved hand on its face, twist to the side, and drive the arrow through its temple.
Ain't got no choice dollface.
She didn't.
She couldn't fight her way down the street. The only thing that had kept her alive—kept her from being swarmed by the dead—was that the noise and chaos of the storm was disorientating the walkers, and she couldn't count on that forever. Even as she looked around a couple more deadheads had turned towards her. Her shoulders drew in and she swallowed hard.
No choice.
She pulled her gun, slipped into the alley, and moved quickly away from the entry.
It was a blind alley, as far as she could see, although the visibility wasn't great. Nothing moved except for the rain, sheeting sideways in the wind and pounding out a tattoo against the concrete that was unnaturally loud in the narrow space. The walls were bare at ground level as far as she could see. There was a row of windows at the level of the first floor, and then above that the edge of the roof.
Asha wiped the streaming water from her face with the back of her arm, steeled herself, and then moved forwards, keeping hard against the wall. She scanned the alley, eyes trying to be everywhere at once, searching for a door and waiting for the moment her supposed rescuer would attack. She suddenly hissed in anger as she realised three walkers had followed her into the alley. She could handle three walkers, but the flesh between her shoulders clenched uncomfortably at the thought of leaving her back exposed to the alley whilst she did so.
There was a sudden crash and a recessed door further down the alley flung open, recoiling off the concrete wall behind it. Yet another walker from the street turned it's attention to the alley.
'Here,' hissed the archer from the roof.
Definitely male. His face was shadowed by his hood, but the tone of the voice was distinctive. Asha slunk across the alley, planting her back against the wall opposite the door and glancing warily between the hooded figure and the encroaching walkers.
'I'm not wasting any more arrows,' he snapped. 'What are you waiting for?'
He beckoned her towards the door.
Asha looked around desperately again, the first walker was nearly on her and she skirted a few steps further along the wall.
'Come on,' the hooded man roared, unfortunately finding a gap in the rolling thunder. Asha winced as she saw several more walkers on the street turn towards them. One of the walkers already in the alley turned towards the hooded man.
Fuck. No choice.
Asha growled in her throat, and then pushed forwards of the wall, jamming the arrow into the skull of the closest walker and then sprinting for the door, boot heels kicking up spray on the wet concrete. She shouldered past the hooded man and he slammed the door behind her. A second later—as Asha and her new companion dragged in shaky breaths and stared at each other—there was a shudder and a thump and the guttural sounds of the dead slamming against the door.