DOVE SEASON
chapter two
In the beginning it had been easy to trust people. Most people didn't even know what was going on, where had been affected, and how long it would take for the world's governments to take action. People had been glued to their televisions for almost 24 hours straight before all local news had stopped transmitting, leaving only a state-of- emergency alert on all stations.
Three hours after that the power went out. Soon people started to panic and pack up their homes. The mistake that many had made was taking the non-essentials with them when they left. People packed up their televisions and game consoles, opting to take things of monetary value rather than actual worth. Ruth had spotted a family on the interstate who had been towing their hot tub on a trailer behind their truck.
No one really thought to stock pile food, water, or gasoline. Those were commodities in the world before the outbreak, something that modern American society hadn't thought much of in the last fifty years. There was a McDonald's off of every freeway exit along with multiple gas stations. Why take things that you know that you can replace on the road?
Within two days the local interstates were blocked with bumper to bumper traffic. By the following week the people were gone but their cars remained. Car graveyards popped up all over the country overnight.
In the early days people didn't understand that everything was lost and because they still had hope, no one was really a threat. People had believed that the Wildfire outbreak was either a temporary threat or that all accounts had been wildly blown out of proportion. No one really believed that the world was ending, that was what paranoid people thought – people who believed in conspiracies, the overly religious who believed the Rapture had begun – you know, crazy people? Normal, sane people didn't think like that in the beginning.
No, most people thought that Monday morning they would be back at their desk, wishing that something exciting really had happened. That way of thinking kept most people docile in the beginning, it left them open to trust one another and act within civilized social norms. Sure, in some places it had been a blood bath and people were forced to change overnight, but most places people held on to their humanity for the first month.
After that, well, people started to lose hope. Once you realized that an entire thirty days has passed since the power had gone out, it was hard to imagine that the grids would ever be up again. They had kept track of the days by counting how many had passed since the power went out.
Thirty days in it was estimated that half of the country's population had been killed. It was hard to know how many walkers populated the country but Ruth had never been with a survivor group bigger than any walker horde she'd encountered. The walkers outnumbered the living only thirty days after the power grids went down.
Karen died on day 495.
Their reaction to her was instant, as was hers to the situation unfolding. They looked surprised to see someone join in their fight as Ruth didn't hesitate to leave the safety of the dumpster to start shooting. A muscular man with a cross-bow watched as she took out four walkers in quick succession before cut off the head another. She didn't hold back as she shot and hacked her way to the opposite side of the street where two of the other survivors were pinned down by a handful of walkers. With the three of them working quickly the walkers were soon lying still on the pavement.
"What are you doing?" Ruth yelled at one of them, a slim Asian man who had stopped running all-together and had turned back to deal with a half dozen walkers at once. He didn't seem to hear her or the other two men who were yelling at him to run. "We gotta go, fucking move!"
The woman with the axe came up beside Ruth, lobbing the head off a walker that had come up behind her. Looking down at the headless corpse before looking at the woman with wide eyes, Ruth nodded her thanks. Ten minutes in and she would have already been dead if it weren't for someone having her back. She had made the right choice in helping them.
"Glenn, let's go, man!" The man with the cross-bow had stopped to grab the other man, Glenn, and was dragging him by the back of his shirt away from the oncoming walkers. "We ain't got time for this shit!"
The man had a point. The group wasn't having issues holding the walkers off, it was that there were too many in total. A half dozen walkers on your own isn't a death sentence if you know your way around a knife and know to keep your distance. While the survivors had strength in numbers, the walkers just had solid numbers and more of them.
"We need to get back to the car," the woman yelled, hacking down another walker as she moved towards one of the others. She looked back the way that Ruth had come from only five minutes earlier. "If we circle back it shouldn't be difficult."
Ruth shook her head, taking aim at another walker heading towards them. "I just came from that way," she shared, killing the walker as she looked at the others. "Three blocks down and you're going to have the same problem."
Three blocks down and you'll find my dead sister, is what she should have said. She didn't know what else to say to convince them that going back that way was not an option. Luckily, none of them questioned her advice and they had already moved on to other routes. Apparently they had a camp that they needed to get back to and a car waiting a few blocks away for transportation.
Ruth didn't hesitate the follow after the group and kept pace as they kept moving down the block. She didn't understand where all the walkers had come from. They had been camped in the small town for almost a week and hadn't run into nearly this many walkers previously. She wondered if maybe Karen had been right and this town happened to be on the walkers' migratory path.
A handful of walkers broke through a window on their left and Ruth couldn't help but scream in surprise as one managed to catch her by the elbow as she ran past. She fell to the ground at an angle, missing the soft cushion of the duffel on her back and landed on the pavement hard. Her knife flew from her hand when she landed, skidding to a stop a few feet away from her. The walker latched onto her arm and pulled it with such force that for a second she thought her shoulder had been dislocated.
Not feeling the broken glass cutting through its stomach, the walker leaned out of the window snarling as it dragged her across the pavement on her side. Her vision went black for a split second as the pain washed over her but she didn't have time to deal with it as she realized the severity of her situation. Karen wasn't there to save her this time and everyone else was busy with their own walker issues.
No one's got your back anymore, idiot.
Kicking her leg out with another scream, Ruth managed to kick off the building with enough force to rip the walker's arm off. It fell to the sidewalk with a wet splat but the walker didn't seem to mind being one armed. His remaining hand gripped the broken window frame, stabbing through his palms and soaking the frame with blood as he tried to climb out of the building.
Before she had a chance to get to her feet, another walker grabbed her from behind, dragging her away from the broken window and the walker that was trying to replace his arm with her own. Scrambling to get her footing back, she flailed away from the walker behind her and attempted to stab behind her with her knife.
A hand caught her swinging arm, using her momentum to pull her onto her feet. She swung around with a fist as she tried to catch her balance and saw that it wasn't another walker attached to her arm, but rather was the man with the cross-bow. He raised an eye-brow at her before letting go of her arm and shooting a walker that was coming up behind them.
"You good?" He sounded genuinely concerned which was confusing to Ruth. She didn't know this man, he didn't know her. The only thing that they knew to have in common was that they were both survivors. Maybe for this group that was enough for them. It wasn't enough for her but she couldn't deny that the man had most likely saved her life.
She nodded her head, bending at the waist to catch her breath and gave him a thumbs up with one hand. "Thanks," she said gratefully.
He nodded before running to catch up with the others, looking over his shoulder to make sure that she was following. Walking over to the walker caught in the broken window, Ruth brought her knife down on its skull before moving to follow him. Soon they were all running down the street and away from the remaining walkers.
The woman led the group around another corner before sharply turning down the next side street. Ruth realized that she was leading them in a giant circle around the area they had just been and where Ruth had told them more walkers were. She was leading them in the direction of the store that she and Karen had been fleeing and she wondered if this group had run into the same problem that they had earlier in the day.
She hoped that they hadn't but as the Big Spot! came into view, she realized with a sinking feeling she had been right. A green SUV sat in front the store, bags of supplies dumped on the ground all around. One of the men tossed the axe-wielding woman a set of keys as they all made easy work of the half dozen walkers standing by the vehicle.
When she and Karen had stormed the store they had only made it halfway through the aisles before they were overwhelmed and forced to leave. It looked like the following group had made their raid after most of the walkers had stumbled off after the Collins sisters. The two groups had missed each other by fifteen minutes at most. She couldn't help but wish that they had shown up sooner.
Looking at the other end of the block she could see the headlights of Karen's Jeep poking out from around the corner. She thought about making a run for it but remembered dismally that she didn't have the keys. Her chances of hot wiring the Jeep before either these people or walkers got to her were low and she didn't want to take the risk. Besides, if she ran into any problems it was good to know that the Jeep would be waiting for her. It didn't have much in the way of supplies but a ride was a ride.
"Get in," the woman ordered, giving Ruth little time to protest before she was pushed into the SUV and the woman closed the door behind her. Suddenly feeling uneasy about her situation, Ruth clutched her knife with a tight grip. The woman climbed into the driver's seat and threw the car into drive, barely closing her own door before taking off down the street.
The air was heavy as everyone sank into their seats, watching as the streets passed by their windows. Ruth didn't look back as the Big Spot! disappeared from view and instead focused on where they were headed. The woman was driving them in the opposite direction that she and Karen had come into town, and she didn't have any knowledge of what was that direction. There were maps in her duffel, she had only grabbed them off a magazine rack half an hour ago, but she didn't want to rummage through her bag and draw attention to herself.
She was glad to not be the center of attention and to have a few moments to gather her thoughts. When she had woken up that morning, Ruth could never have imagined that today would have been the day that she lost Karen. You can't prepare yourself for that, not really.
She had always heard that you could feel in your heart whether or not a person was dead. People always said that when loved ones went missing. Their wife wasn't dead because he would know, he would be able to feel it if she was truly dead. You just didn't understand. Ruth had thought that it was something that people told themselves to feel better – denial of what was more likely to have happened. But now, now it was something that made Ruth feel worse because she couldn't say something like that without lying to herself.
Karen was dead. She felt dead because she was dead. There wasn't anything more to it. She had put a bullet through her sister's head half an hour earlier. She knew that Karen was dead because she was the one that had killed her. Ruth could feel the weight of her death heavy on her chest and didn't think that it would ever go away.
She looked at the other occupants of the vehicle, wondering what their day had been like up until the moment she had seen them running for their lives. There was a subdued air about them all that made her nervous, still. Her knuckles were white from holding her knife so tightly. Feeling the way that she did, she prayed that their day had been free of loss. She had suffered enough for all of them.
The others didn't seem to notice her presence though, all too caught up in their own thoughts to be sparing any for her. About twenty minutes into their drive, the woman driving pulled the car to a stop on the side of the road and Ruth tensed as she saw the two front passengers exchanging glances. They looked back at her at the same time, doing nothing to calm her nerves.
She had heard stories from others on the road. Trust no one. These people had done alright by her thus far, but still.
"Are you alone?" the man in the front seat asked finally, breaking the silence.
He said it so quietly that Ruth wasn't even sure that he had spoken. Was this some sort of trauma-induced hallucination? She let her head fall quickly against the car window, wincing when it caused her pain. No, this was real. These people were real and they were looking for answers.
She couldn't see the point in lying to them, no one was left to have her back or to save her if these people meant her any harm. There was no one else anymore, only her. She didn't have anything left to lose. It was almost a relief until Karen's face flashed before her eyes and all she felt was guilt.
She nodded to the man, choosing to not meet his eyes. He was looking at her too intently. "It's just me now," she said. The words sounded foreign to her because she had never had to say them before. She had never felt more alone and vulnerable in her entire life.
The group looked at each other again before the man looked to the woman driving. She nodded her head in silent agreement before clearing her throat and turning in her seat to better face Ruth.
"We have a camp," she said, motioning to the others in the car. "It used to be a prison, but now it's our home. We've got a pretty nice set-up there and plenty of spare beds and work to go around," she continued. Ruth wasn't entirely sure of what she was hearing. It had been a long day. The woman didn't seem to notice and looked at her earnestly. "Is that something that you would be interested in being a part of?"
Was it? Her only reason for avoiding other survivors was lying dead on a sidewalk twenty miles away. Like she'd said, it was only her now.
Ruth looked out the window and frowned when she saw three walkers coming through the tree line towards the car. She wasn't threatened by their presence, they were still a good distance from the car and couldn't do much if they kept the doors locked. It was just annoying that they were there, another reminder that they were never truly safe. That was what she had forgotten before and she couldn't be caught forgetting it again.
She wouldn't last long on her own, she understood that. It wasn't because she couldn't fend for herself, it was that she didn't want to. Karen had been the only face that she had seen every day for the last sixteen months. No one else had been with her from the start and no one else ever would be. Karen was who she had started this journey with her all those nights ago, and Ruth had been the one to see Karen to the end of her own journey.
But she couldn't do it alone, not now, not yet. One day, maybe. But less than an hour after losing someone who had become a part of herself? No, she couldn't do it. She wouldn't last a week alone and she couldn't risk trying.
She found herself nodding to the woman and meeting her gaze. "I think that I would. What do I need to do?"
There was always a catch and as Ruth heard the man in the front seat start to talk again, she wasn't surprised. Everybody needed something. "Just gotta ask you three questions and then we'll take you back with us, let you meet our people," he said. Three questions didn't sound impossible. "That sound like a fair deal to you?"
She nodded.
"Alright then, how many walkers have you killed?"
A simple enough question. She had to think about it and didn't know how to honestly respond. It had been 495 days since the outbreak and she had killed her first walker shortly after waking up on the first. She'd gone out to pee in the woods and had encountered her first walker while returning to the Jeep. Karen had found her sobbing on the ground holding a bloody flashlight, dead walker a few feet away.
The sisters had needed to kill a few more walkers and drive another hundred miles before they were finally willing to accept what was happening. That had been over a year ago and Ruth had never tried to keep track of the number that she had killed. Keeping count made her give it too much thought and they didn't deserve that. Walkers weren't people anymore and she couldn't mourn them like they were so why waste the energy.
She realized that she was taking too long to answer when she saw them all looking at her uneasily. "Hundreds?" she guessed honestly with a shrug. "Never really wanted to keep score."
It didn't seem unlikely over 498 days, especially in recent days where you had to cut through a dozen walkers to get a day's worth of supplies. Karen had thought that the herds were migrating, taking an instinctual approach to their hunting, but Ruth had never been convinced. Walkers weren't animals, they were dead. They didn't even know what they were doing half the time.
They didn't seem phased by her answer, making her realize that these people were having just a rough a time as she was. They were not untouched by the world around them. Earlier she had been impressed by the way they had taken the offensive against the walkers, now she understood why. These people had gotten good at surviving.
"How many people have you killed?" The woman driving at been the one to ask but they all tensed, waiting for her answer. The question made her lungs deflate too quickly.
How could they ask her that?
Ian.
Marcus.
Shannon.
Did they not live in the same world as she did?
Anthony.
Jill.
Karen.
There were more and she was sure that there were more to come, but even still, their faces flashed before her and she clenched her eyes shut for a moment, willing them to go away. She knew that there was nothing to feel guilty about, she had saved those people each from a terrible fate, but she couldn't make the feeling go away.
Opening her eyes and feeling a tear falling down her check, Ruth quickly rubbed her sleeve across her face and coughed, clearing her throat. They were waiting for her answer and she owed them an honest one.
"Eight," she said finally. The man in the front looked surprised by her answer but didn't say anything. She wondered how many people he had killed, how many any of them had killed. No one had clean hands anymore, they were no different. She could see that in them already.
The Asian man sitting beside her asked the last question, surprising her. She had assumed the two in the front seat were the ones with any power. She was wrong apparently. "Why?"
The question confused her but Ruth was starting to understand why they had asked those three specific questions. To put it frankly, they were trying to figure out whether or not she was a threat. They were just as afraid of her as she was of them. They didn't trust her but they seemed willing to, so long as she answered their questions with reasonable answers. When they asked her why, they wanted to know if she was the kind of person to mindlessly slaughter them in their sleep. It was a small reassurance to know that if they were worried about her, she probably didn't need to worry about them.
It must be some camp, she thought.
"I had promises to keep," she answered, looking back out the window as she loosened her grip on the knife. She looked back to see them all staring at her, waiting for her to elaborate. It wasn't a good enough answer. Ruth sighed. "You know what I mean," she insisted. "Look around you, the world's gone to shit. Those of us left have a promise to keep to one another. You put down the ones you know," she said softly. She had almost said the ones you love but had stopped herself. "The ones that you can."
She hadn't loved Marcus or Anthony or particularly liked any of the others, but she had done what needed to be done and put them down when it was time. Any decent person would do it. Love had nothing to do with it anymore. It was mercy more than anything.
"Ain't that the fucking truth," the man in the front seat muttered as the woman in the front seat nodded in agreement. The air seemed less tense as the group exchanged another look.
The woman gave Ruth a small smile before reaching out a hand to her. "I'm Sasha," she said as Ruth shook her hand. She motioned to the man beside her, introducing him as well. "That's Daryl," she said before pointing to the two men in the backseat with Ruth. "And that's David and Glenn."
All three men nodded to her, each offering a small reassuring smile. Her turn. She had passed their test. Ruth felt herself relax slightly and took a deep breath. These people didn't seem any more of a threat to her than she was to them. She didn't trust them, of course not, but she felt herself willing to give them a chance.
"I'm Ruth," she said, giving them all a short smile that she hoped didn't appear too tight. "Ruth Collins."
Now that her mind was in a less panicked state, she noticed that all of them appeared to be fairly clean and she wondered if there was somewhere to take a shower at their camp. She thought about asking but didn't want to push her luck. Daryl had mentioned others that she would need to meet before being officially welcomed into their group. She couldn't start counting her chickens yet.
Feeling safe enough to put her knife back in its sheath in her boot, she moved her duffel around with her feet so that the zipper was on the top, and unzipped it. Pulling out a box of granola bars, she offered one to both Glenn and David before sticking her hand towards the front seat, two bars in hand for Daryl and Sasha. Both took the snacks, Sasha giving her a wide grin before ripping open the wrapper and shoving it into her mouth as she put the car back into drive.
Daryl gave her a small nod of gratitude and took a bite of his, turning back to face the road. He stuck his boots up onto the car's dashboard as while turning on the stereo. With a wave of his hand towards the road, he shoved the rest of the granola bar in his mouth.
"Home, Jeeves," he ordered roughly, talking through the half eaten food in his mouth. Sasha laughed but didn't argue as she pulled back onto the road. Music played lightly over the speakers.
Ruth watched as the three walkers that had been stumbling down the hill side towards them reached the SUV just as they drove away. Their arms stretched towards the car as it sped off, leaving the walkers behind in a cloud of dust and dead leaves.
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Peace.
