Chapter 9
"So, how are we going to convince your Dad?" Sam asks, looking at Carl.
Carl frowns for a moment, thinking about his options but he shakes his head. "I have no idea; my Dad is very set on his own decisions."
We all think for a moment, well they all probably are. Instead, I'm trying to decide whether I should just go with Georgia. Hershel was right; if any of us died it would be my fault. Too many people have already died; I'm not letting it happen to anyone else especially if I'm putting them at risk.
"What are you thinking about all this, Mads?" Sam asks taking me away from my thoughts. I looked at all their tired faces and realised how much I do care for them.
"I think I should just go alone," I admit and watch as Carl's eyes grow wide.
"There's absolutely no way you are going alone!" Carl says, in a firm voice.
I place my hands on my hips and stare at him. "Carl, Hershel is right. I'm risking all of your lives to do this."
"But it's to save the whole world so if anyone dies it's not in vain!" he replies, throwing his hands in the air.
"But what if he's incapable of making a cure when we get there? What if he's already dead by the time we reach him? Then who ever died, died for nothing!" I shout, biting back my tears. I will not cry. I will NOT cry.
"I'm not letting you go alone and that's final." Carl says as he steps closer, lowering his voice into a cold, empty but firm one.
"If I may cut in," Jet starts, "We're all willing to go, Maddy. It's not your fault or anyone's if we die, whoever has decided to come has done it by their own choice."
Jet was right, it's not like I'm making them go, they chose to go all on their own. "Then if we're going we have to leave tonight."
"How?" Georgia asks. "You guys say this Rick guy isn't the one to agree to these types of things ever so quickly, how are we going to go?"
"If Rick says no we'll leave anyway. At least he knows what we're going to do. If we just leave without asking him he'll freak out a lot more than if he already knew. He wouldn't know why we left so we're going no matter what Rick says." I say and we all agree.
"Should we ask if anyone else wants to join?" Sam asks and I shake my head. We didn't need anyone else, majority of the people have to stay here otherwise the group will fall apart.
"Alright then it's settled, I'll go tell my Dad and if he says no we'll meet up here later tonight, after dinner. Prepare your belongings, we need as many supplies and food as we can get but don't take heaps otherwise this group won't have enough." Carl states and off he goes, ready to talk to Rick. I look around nervously and hope that everyone isn't just doing this because they'll be seen as a coward if they don't. I really hope that all of them wanted to do it because they wanted too.
"Alright, see you guys later then. And… Thanks for doing this." I say, they all nod silently and I watch as they all walk away. Except Jet, he waits with me until everyone leaves and then steps closer.
"So… Uh, I was wondering… How old if your friend Georgia?" he asks sheepishly, blushing a little. I already can tell by the way Georgia looked at him through the group discussion that she was interested and I'm glad he is too.
"She's sixteen like you, and I caught her looking at you a few times by the way," I say, wiggling my eyebrows. He blushes and mumbles a 'thank you' and then walks on after Georgia.
"Everyone here?" Carl asks, as Georgia and Jet stumble towards us.
I nod at Carl and he picks up a bag, soon we all have our bags on our backs and start to walk away. Rick said no of course, like we predicted but as planned we still snuck away without anyone noticing.
I watched as Carl sped up to the front, acting like the born leader he was. I thought about walking over to him so I jogged up ahead and stood next to him, falling in step with his own steps.
He notices me and says, "Oh hey, everything OK?"
I stifle a yawn and reply, "Yeah everything's fine; I just wanted to walk with you… if that's OK?"
He laughs quietly and replies, "Of course it's fine. I'm pretty sure you can walk with me if you've already kissed me." And he laughs again, tilting up his hat a little.
I laugh and blush at the memory; it feels like it was ages ago since we last kissed. It wasn't my first but it was sure memorable. Suddenly I feel a warm hand slip into mine and without looking down I knew it was Carl's, of course. I smiled to myself and he laughed a little. My blush grew redder and I held onto Carl's hand a little firmer.
I hear a groan, a loud, long, deathly groan that echoes through the darkness of the forest that surrounds us. I start to feel a little panicky, like I was suffocating. But I take in deep breaths and let them out slowly.
Carl notices, "Are you alright? Do we need to stop for a bit?" he asks, worriedly.
I shake my head and continue breathing and squeeze onto his hand tighter as the next groan echoes through the forest. It was close but we decided to just try and by pass them since it was quite dark. But I couldn't shake the feeling away that this walker was close, closer than it really was. As I see the body limp through the trees to my left, my chest starts to feel tight and I could no longer take in deep breaths. I was having another panic attack but I seriously needed to get it together so I don't freak out the other guys. But I couldn't.
In one moment I let go of Carl's hand and leap towards the walker, stabbing it through the head in one quick motion. It's decaying body falls to the floor and my shaking hands on barely keep hold of my dagger. The blood on my weapon freaked me out so I quickly wiped the almost black, scary looking blood onto the walker's smelly, rotten t-shirt.
"You didn't have to kill him…" Sam starts but I just ignore him and grab onto Carl's hand, almost tripping over from shaking so hard.
I heard whispers behind me and I felt as though they started to think I was crazy, so to stop this feeling there was only one thing I could do.
I whip my body around to face them, their eyes wide and reflecting the moonlight that beamed from above. "Alright, I'm not crazy. Ever since I could remember I have had this… this anxiety problem. I just didn't want you guys to see me in that state, once a panic attack starts it's hard to get over it but I've mastered the trick on how to get over it. But the walker's groans reminded me of…" I say, the memories flooding back, every bite experience I've seen from dreams to reality. "I just wanted it to stop so I killed it." And then I turn around, and for now their whispers had disappeared. They were no longer judging me behind my back.
Instead of feeling Carl's hand wrap around mine, I feel his arm wrap around my waist, pulling me close to him. At least he understands why these things happen. Telling him all these things turned out to be the right decision, he really was caring.
"Alright," Carl says, stopping in his tracks and letting go of me. Suddenly I felt too cold without him. "We'll set camp here; we're far away enough so they can't catch up if they go looking,"
We drop our bags and lay out a few tarps and one small tent that we managed to grab. Two people would sit watch and we'd go in shifts except one of us would have to go twice because there were only five of us.
"Who wants to sit watch twice? You don't have to do it twice in a row; you can have a sleeping break while the other two go." I ask. Everyone looked at each other so I spoke again, "Okay, me and Carl will go, then Georgia and Jet and then me and Sam."
Everyone nods in agreement except Carl; he frowns at me with crossed arms over his chest. I shrug and walk over to the circle we formed.
"Alright everyone, we'll be up early next morning so get as much sleep as you can." Carl says, and everyone gets under their blankets or sleeping bags, Sam crawls into the tent alone.
I walk over to where Carl sits and we take out our weapons and hold them at the ready. Soon everyone casually drifts off to sleep and I hear a few mumbles from time to time. Some of them are groans and some of them turn into screams… but before I can get to them they're silent again.
"It was just Sam again…" I say to Carl as I sit back down, stretching my arms. "I hope he's feeling better."
"But what about you?" Carl asks, looking directly at me. "Are you OK?"
I look away for a while and then reply, "No," I decided to tell him the truth, he was the only one I could open up to without feeling embarrassed or feeling like I'm irritating him with my problems.
"Do you want to talk about it?" he asks, cutely. To be honest, every time Carl spoke his voice gave me shudders, in a good way though. I stare at him for a while, only just seeing his ocean coloured eyes stare back. "Wow… you're beautiful…" he says. "It's not like I haven't noticed it before but I just felt like- like telling you now because you- you know…"
This time my hormones took over and I pulled him by the collar so he was closer to me, inches away from my lips. I stared into his eyes just for a second more before I pulled him in for a kiss. At first the kiss was slow and soft, like we had forgotten how each other's lips felt. Well, we probably did since it was a long time ago since we kissed.
But soon after the kiss became hungrier, we kept on begging for each other's touch. His lips against mine were the feeling I had been waiting for, for ages now.
We pull back for a moment, breathing loudly. I didn't notice it but his hand was on my back and mine had wrapped around his neck, one hand against the back of his head. We looked at each other and then I saw a smile spread across Carl's face, making his eyes grow a tiny bit smaller. I smiled back and bit my lip as rested his forehead against mine. After a while we turned to face the front, and I started to lean on him. His arm wrapping around my body, keeping us close.
"I'd been waiting for that kiss, that kind of surprised me you know," he says, laughing a little.
"Well, I couldn't hold it in any longer." Is all I say, tilting my head to rest on his shoulder.
"What made you finally decide to take that road?" he asks.
"Sam and Chelsea," is all I say before falling asleep in Carl's arms. I knew in the back of my head that I shouldn't fall asleep, I thought that Carl would wake me up, but he didn't.
By the time I woke up it was morning and the sun shined through the trees above me creating a yellow glow. It almost felt like that the whole 'end of the world thing' was just a dream –a nightmare but as soon as I hear someone move next to me, hear their breath and feel their touch I soon remember about the cure we were supposed to find. Well, more like the doctor.
I turn my head to the side and see Carl, asleep. I remember falling asleep in his arms but no one never woke me up for the next shift I was supposed to take. Carl must have filled me in because usually he'd be the first one up. As I continue to stare at his sleeping face I hear someone else's body move and shuffle around so I quickly shut my eyes. Then I hear two, walking away from the camp site with giggles filling the air. It sounded like Georgia.
You can already guess who the other person is.
When I open my eyes again I lightly poke Carl's cheek, repeatedly. His eyes blink open and he smiles that cute smile that just makes me want to throw myself off a cliff.
"Morning," he says in his morning, husky voice. My body almost melts at the sound of his voice but I only just manage a reply.
"Good morning, sleep well?" I ask.
"Sleeping beside you may have been the best decision of my life. I always sleep well when I'm with you." He mumbles sitting up. Suddenly, he kneels over me but he doesn't touch my body anywhere, he supports himself by his hands and knees.
I look up at him wide-eyed and he laughs a little. "I missed kissing you all night. I had to wait until you woke up." He whines.
"You could have just woke me up," I say but he quickly replies.
"I didn't want to wake you, you looked so peaceful." And then he bent his head down so it was inches away from me. I stare at his lips and they form a sexy grin.
"You really can't resist me can you?" and I laugh. I notice his stare focuses on my lips and I place my hand on his face.
"Just kiss me already…"
"I'm just about too…" and his lips press against mine causing my mind to literally explode with excitement and happy feelings. As his lips move mine do too and the kiss becomes heavy and passionate. All I could think about, all I could feel was Carl…
"Break it up, lovebirds. We've got more ground to cover today," I hear Sam say and Carl's lips and mine immediately pause. Before he breaks he quickly slips in his tongue which makes me smile and giggle. But his lips leave mine and I see the longing in Carl's face.
He stared at me for a while before starting to move off of me but I quickly grab him and pull him down again, he was caught off by surprise and he laughed as I smashed my lips against his for the final time. In one quick movement his flipped us over so that I was on top, I quickly regained my balance and kept kissing him. It must have been a sight to watch because our kisses were filled with smiles and random bursts of laughter. You could say this was one happy kiss.
Then he sits up and I straddle his lap, his arms around my back. I carefully place my arms around his neck and smile at him.
"I never knew how sexy you could be," he says, smirking that wild smirk of his.
"I never knew you could kiss that good," I say in reply and we both laugh.
"Seriously, c'mon guys we have to get going…" Sam says, in a serious tone of voice. I had forgotten that he was there, did he see everything that we did? I guess it wasn't too bad…
Or maybe it just reminded him of Chelsea…
I kiss him on last time before getting off of his lap and he stands up too, brushing his jeans down. We all pitch in to pack up camp and soon after we're all packed and ready to go. I notice Georgia and Jet hanging around each other quite a lot and I smile to myself. What cuties.
"Yeah you dopes, we need to leave. Stop kissing each other." Jet says.
"Stop kissing each other?" I say and burst out into laughter and Jet's face turns red. "Don't think for one second that I don't know what you two have been up to," and Georgia starts laughing nervously while I wiggle my eyebrows at them.
We all pitch it to pack up camp which takes around ten minutes, careful not to make too much noise so we don't attract any unwanted attention from the dead and the living.
"So, we're almost there I guess, if we get to this point," Georgia says, pointing on the map, "By tonight, then we'll only have a little to go."
"Alright then, let's get started," Carl says and we follow him onwards. Our journey made us all feel excited, weak and tired but we still kept trekking on, determined to get to the finish place.
I was a little nervous about getting there, what was he going to do? Extract blood? Would he have the right equipment?
If he didn't… I guess it's worth it if I save all humanity.
Pushing the anxious thoughts aside I start to focus on Carl, I watch as he steps ahead of me. Keeping on the track he planned out, his determination, his bravery. But suddenly, a wild walker appears taking us off by surprise. Georgia stabs it through the head, saving our bullets for emergencies. We could easily make it, with only one walker now and then, we could definitely make it. Too bad a whole herd came by…
The groans and moans from the dead sounded unreal, it was almost marvellous. There hundreds, probably thousands that headed towards us. Georgia screamed and Sam ran away, Carl following. Jet took a hold of Georgia's hand and led her away. I stood still and stared at the pack. I flinched as one brushed pass me, not taking a second look.
Three other passed by, not caring that I was actually human. I was alive. I was something that they could eat.
I was surrounded by the shuffling dead. But they moved around me, shuffled past me, occasionally bumped me but were not interested. Not in the slightest.
Hope you enjoyed this chapter, sorry if it was too short! x