Remy was basking in the silence of the woods around her, her eyes closed, her breathing steady, nothing to disturb her or the places her thoughts were wandering to—which wasn't necessarily a good thing, she realized. Remy hadn't felt so peaceful in months, when she last had the feeling of safety she didn't dare let herself feel ever since, or ever again. Has it really been months? Remy shakes her head and walks farther into the foliage, her boots carefully missing any branches or fallen leaves as to keep quiet. Remy tries to force her thoughts elsewhere. Think about something else. Anything else. Anything else.
"Run Remy!"
Remy sighs, the memories flooding her brain demanded attention, and chills ran up her spine when she heard their screams in her head. You didn't care about them. They were nothing to you. Let it go. Remy treks through the thick bushes, making sure to keep sight of the road behind her so she didn't get lost in the green maze ahead of her. Remy had gotten lost in those months before, she refused to let herself think about it, however the thoughts were inconveniencing her now. Right now, Remy couldn't afford to carry the past around with her, not when there were other things to do. "Don't leave me! Please!" Remy shakes the voice from her head again, but nevertheless, succumbs to the faces swimming through her mind.
"Honey has an unlimited shelf life." Remy thinks bitterly to herself as she pours the thick substance onto another stale cracker as she sat in the isle of an abandoned convenience store. The cracker barely broke apart between her teeth no matter how much she chewed, but the honey covered up the awful taste of the cardboard in disguise. "Honey can kiss my ass."
Remy knew she was unnecessarily worked up over a topping, but she hadn't eaten anything else in two days and she was getting impatient. Remy was told to stay in the store the day before, and cabin fever was hitting hard and fast, the only food she had sitting in her stomach heavily. The store was hot, almost unbearably, but she couldn't expect anything less from the beginning of summer in Georgia. Remy knew she could leave the store, enter the woods, get some fresh air—and kill a squirrel while she was at it—in a half an hour, tops, but it wasn't worth the risk to her. She wouldn't be able to face Jason if he caught her. Remy shoves another honey topped cracker into her mouth and stares at the water stained ceiling, counting the little holes in the tiles to pass the time she had left.
At one hundred and forty eight holes, Remy hears footsteps at the front of the store, moving slowly and steadily closer to where she was set up in the last isle. Remy stands slowly, her hand pulling the pistol from her thigh and pulling back the slide slowly, so the metal wouldn't create its usual clamor. Remy peeks out from behind the wall of the isle slowly, to see if the walker was any closer than it had been before, only to find that there was no walker in sight. Remy moves out into the open, still cautious, but moving forward nonetheless. Remy holds her gun out in front of her, so she could react quickly to anything or anyone that was in the store with her. Remy's heart was starting to race, and it didn't help the sweat already beading up on her forehead.
Remy looked down every isle she passed, expecting a walker around every corner, but finding nothing but half empty shelves and squashed bags of chips. Remy hears the footsteps behind her and swings around, her gun landing against the chest of a perfectly alive human, who was laughing when he got slammed against the wall. Remy looks up at the man, and punches his shoulder. "Goddammit Jason!"
He continues laughing as the gun is removed from his chest and put back into Remy's thigh holster. "Just makin' sure you were alert Rem, don't get all pissy." He chuckles.
Remy sighs and returns to her place on the floor in the rear of the store, picking up another cracker and soaking it in honey. "Did you find food? I'm gonna off myself if I eat another god forsaken cracker."
Something lands in Remy's lap. "Here princess. Wouldn't want you to not get everything you want in the apocalypse."
Remy picks up the box of cereal. "Shut up dickhead. You try eating this shit for two days straight and then tell me it's doesn't make you think about ways to end it all."
Jason rolls his eyes. "I always knew you were dramatic…but this—" Jason is cut off by the sound of an engine outside the store, the noise making Jason instantly crouch down, and Remy get up to her feet.
"Did someone follow you?" she asks.
"I don't know." Jason pulls out his gun, Remy following suit as they move toward the front of the store without being seen. The two move silently in sync as they hear a car door slam and footsteps crunch on the gravel outside.
"Hello?" a woman's voice calls, Remy and Jason wait in silence for a moment before the door opens. "Hello? Hey, we're not here to hurt anyone. We followed someone here…we have a camp, we want to help."
Jason looks at Remy, and points his finger to the back of the store, and nodding his head back, to the right side of the building. He points to himself and points to the front of the store. Remy nods and moves silently back through the aisles until she's at the back of the store, closer to the position Jason wanted her to take.
"Who are you?" she hears Jason ask.
"We followed you here, sorry." She apologizes quickly before she moves on. "We know you were alone, but we figured you were coming back here to someone. Why else would you be in such a rush, y'know? Like I said, we have a camp, we can bring you back with us."
Remy crosses the store while the woman is distracted with Jason and moves up behind them, gun in hand. The woman didn't have a weapon, but the hummer outside had a man in the driver's seat, and Remy didn't know what he was carrying, so she was far from trusting the people who showed up. "Y'all got food?" Remy asks, earning a sharp glare from Jason, and the attention of the woman.
"Plenty—we found an abandoned house about ten miles from here. Looks like the owners just up and left."
"Or died." Jason offers.
The woman nods, looking queasy. "Or that."
Remy and Jason have a silent conversation, Remy successfully getting across that she didn't trust the woman that seemed a little too nice for the apocalypse, and the man in the truck outside that hadn't even glanced toward them to make sure the woman was okay. Jason thought it was a risk that they should take—they could handle themselves if the two ended up being trouble, and that was only if they ended up being trouble. Jason thought that maybe some good could come of it. Maybe they would be safe. That's why Remy and Jason ended up in the backseat of the hummer, the man and woman in the front offering them small smiles as they drove.
"I'm Jenna, this is Roger." she tells the passengers. "What are your names?"
"I'm Jason," he replies, in a better mood than his partner.
"Remy." she mutters.
"Remy?" Jenna asks. "That's different…is it short for anything?"
"No." she answers curtly. The woman looks a little unsteady with Remy's tone, but if Remy noticed—she didn't let it show. Jason sighs lightly—he should have known she'd be like this.
"You two are from around here?" Jenna asks, picking up on their accent that made everything drawn out, their slow and steady speech wasn't something easy to miss.
"Atlanta," Jason responds.
Jenna smiles. "I always wanted to see Atlanta…just not the way it is now. We're from Ohio, we started to move down south a few weeks ago, when we heard that Atlanta was safe."
"Safe is the only thing Atlanta is not right now." Jason replies kindly. Jenna nods at the statement, getting a distant look in her eyes as she does, and turns around to face the windshield again, paying close attention to the asphalt ahead of them. Remy glares at Jason as the hummer speeds down the back roads—it was his fault she was with people she didn't trust…and he was making small talk. "He's just trying to be nice." That stupid voice in the back of Remy's head tells her. "Nice gets you killed." she reminds herself.
The large abandoned house looked safe enough—but that didn't always mean that there would be no danger. These people were weak, Remy couldn't help but notice, and she doubted that they took weapons and searched the house up and down for walkers before they shacked up and called it home. Jason and Remy shared a glance before following Jenna and Roger up the stone front steps of the enormous house, which Remy noted were covered in dried up blood. 'Up and left' my ass'
Jenna opens the wide front door, no weapon poised, no caution displayed. "How are you still alive?" Remy wonders to herself. Jenna was very clearly not prepared for the danger that usually waited around every corner, and Remy almost felt bad for the woman who she knew would meet her demise sooner rather than later.
"We're really doin' this?" Remy whispers to Jason as they follow the two into the house.
"Yes, Remy we're really doin' this. Food, shelter, the possibility of a real bed...I don't see what's wrong with that. I know you have your whole 'trust no one but me' thing goin' on, but you're just gonna have to get over that and survive for a minute." Jason lectures quietly as the two step over the threshold of the house.
Jenna and Roger walk down a dimly lit hallway, the sun not quite reaching far enough into the house to supply light. Remy's hand grazes over the top of her pistol as the small group approach the kitchen area of the old house and voices become clearer.
Roger and Jenna lead them through the doorway of the old fashioned kitchen, with long marble countertops covered in dust and blood, and modern looking appliances that didn't look like they'd been touched in weeks. The creaking of the hardwood floors under the boots of the newcomers went unnoticed as their eyes landed on the group in front of them.
Eight people were sat in random places around the room, a few kids on the floor, a few women talking at the table, men standing in another corner. None of them looked healthy. Malnourished and underfed were the first two words to pop into Remy's mind. The next few words would not have been suitable for the children in the room to hear.
Remy and Jason both look to Jenna and roger. "I thought you had plenty of food?" Remy asks, moving forward, no longer in any mood to deal with the two in front of her.
Jenna can barely hold eye contact. "We did. Three weeks ago."
Remy sighs and looks away from her, looking back to Jason, who didn't think this was such a good idea anymore either.
Remy looks at Jenna. "Why are we here?"
"Because we need help." Roger admits.
Jason scoffs. "The apocalypse happened while you were out, bud...everyone needs help."
"You two have survived on your own this far." Jenna points out. "We're barely surviving and there's ten of us."
Remy lost all patience. "That's because you're weak. Do you know how many times you could have died between you getting in the car and getting here?"
"No, no, I don't." Jenna cries. "That's why we need help. We have no food, we've been eating stale gum and drinking water from the well out back. We need help. Please."
Remy waves her hand around the room. "This? This is not our problem. We have enough to worry about as it is, okay? You're not the only people in the world with nothing right now; you'll figure it out just like everyone else did."
Remy turns to leave the room-and house-but a hand on her arm stops her. Remy turns back to Jason, who we as giving her the look. The look that Remy could read easier than her favorite book. She sighs, and pulls her arm away from Jason, walking straight through the kitchen to the back door that Remy notes was not locked or barred.
"Where are you going?" Jenna asks.
"Hunting. You need food. We have to build your strength up if you're gonna do anything." Remy calls before she leaves the house and treks into the woods.
Remy reenters the house with six squirrels attached on a string to her belt, which was watched by ten pairs of eyes as she walked toward the counter in the kitchen and brushed the dust off of it before placing the string of animal down on the surface. There were two kids standing at Remy's hip when she looked down.
"We're gonna eat it raw?" a little girl asks, a look of disgust on her face as she stared at the squirrels.
"You gotta make some sacrifices in the apocalypse kid." Remy replies. "Sometimes you gotta eat crackers and honey for two days straight, and sometimes you're lucky enough to get a raw squirrel."
The little girl scurries away when Remy cuts the first squirrel open, chest to stomach, and starts to pull out the organs that couldn't be eaten. Remy dumps the contents of the animals into the old trashcan beside the counter, thinking about how far off she'd have to walk to get rid of it later. The eyes in the room never left the animals under Remy's working hands and knife, their stomachs growling at the thought of food, raw or not.
Remy finally wipes her knife and her hands on her jeans to clean the blood off and she steps away from the counter. "Eat."
They all move forward at the same time, all ten members of the group grabbing their own squirrel and returning to their seats in seconds, digging into the meat ravenously. Remy stands beside Jason, watching them. "We're really gonna play house with these people?"
Jason glances at her, an unreadable look in his eyes as he speaks. "They need us Remy. They need us more than we need each other, and that's sayin' something considering how lost you'd be without me." Remy glares at him. "We have to help them, show them their way around a weapon or two, teach 'em how to hunt down a squirrel, or loot an old house. We forgot that not everyone else had it like we did the past couple weeks."
"We ain't exactly had it easy Jason." Remy reminds him.
"No, we haven't, but they've had it worse." he tells her, looking back to the group. "We won't stay long…just long enough to show them how to survive."
Remy sighs and nods, watching them eat like the group had never seen food before. Jason was right, as much as the stubborn girl hated to admit it…these people needed help, help that she and Jason perfectly capable of giving. Remy just didn't want to be tied down—Remy wanted to be able to run when she needed to. When danger was around the corner, Remy didn't want to have to worry about ten people falling down behind her as she tried to escape. Remy didn't want a group. Remy didn't want care or love, or friends or family, no…Remy wanted to survive and to never eat another cracker.
One week was long enough to show most of the men how to take apart a gun, clean it, put it back together and shoot it—fairly straight—as part of Remy and Jason's get the group to defend themselves initiative. The women were learning hand to hand combat with Remy while the men were taught by Jason about the weapons, and they would switch off every few hours to make sure everyone was getting proper training. The three kids observed the fighting and shooting, as their training was saved until after the adults', when they were taught to hunt.
Remy had only lost her patience twice with anyone in the group, the kids who wouldn't be quiet in the middle of the woods. Remy managed to quiet the boy by telling him that noise echoes in the trees, and walkers would find them much faster if they kept speaking. The only other problem Remy had was a man in the group who insisted that he couldn't be taught anything by Remy…because she was a girl and she couldn't possibly know more about fighting than he did. She won the fight and the bet.
Remy and Jason were both exceptionally tired at the end of the day, when they wanted nothing but to collapse on the ground and sleep until morning, but there was still dinner to be killed and weapons to be reloaded and counted for and perimeters to be checked and no sleep was in sight for Remy or Jason whenever they wanted it. The group that surrounded them however, were helpful, despite being the ones who begged for the help. The women helped Remy cut open and clean the squirrel and the kids took the bags of innards out into the woods to bury it, and the men helped Jason with the weapons and the perimeters.
They were all at the dinner table every night that first week at the same time for their raw meal, and they were all in bed at the same time after cleaning up the table and scrubbing the dishes and doing laundry with the water from the well. It was a system that had fallen in place in a week and Remy wasn't letting herself get used to it. Not for a moment, would she let herself depend on anyone in the group for anything.
Remy walks into the darkness of her and Jason's shared bedroom upstairs, her bow hanging loosely by her side, her quiver of arrows in her hand, which she places against the wall at the end of her bed for easy access if she woke up to screams. Remy swung the door shut with her foot as she walked by it again, and sits down on the edge of her bed, to untie her boots. Remy glances at Jason, who's holding the dog tags around his neck between his fingers, staring at the carving on the sleek metal.
"You okay?" she asks, pulling the strings on her right boot.
"Never thought I'd miss the war." Jason scoffs.
"We're still at war," Remy replies, pulling off her boot. "We're just losin' this one."
"Maybe we won't." Jason declares, earning Remy's full attention. "Maybe we can beat this, come out on top like before."
"The only reason we came out on top before was because we had money, and lots of weapons. If you hadn't noticed, money don't mean much anymore, and we're gonna run low on ammo pretty soon." Remy counters, removing her thigh holster and laying down on her bed, staring up at the white ceiling.
"I wish none of this had happened Remy." Jason says quietly. "I wish it would all go back."
Remy rolls over so her back is facing Jason, and he can't see the single tear that falls down her cheek. Remy didn't like crying, not because she was some self-righteous-crying-is-for-children kind of person, no, Remy didn't like crying because when she cried, she could never stop. Remy had bottled up too much in her life to cry about everything that happened. She couldn't afford it. Not before the walkers, and not after. Remy kept it all bottled up, the way she liked it.
"Me too." she whispers.
"Mornin'." Remy greets the group in the kitchen, the women folding dry laundry and the men cleaning the weapons, something she hadn't gotten used to over the past week. A group…doing things to keep the house running…helping each other…Remy would have run if Jason wasn't right behind her. Remy goes right for the back door, running late for her morning hunt, which meant that whatever she caught would be for lunch instead of breakfast.
"Remy,"
She keeps walking, but slows, so whoever was trailing after her could catch up easily. It's Jenna that falls in place beside Remy as she walks toward the woods across the field. "I wanted to talk to you."
"I'm listenin'." Remy states.
Jenna's words get caught in her throat at first, finding it hard to speak to someone who was so closed off to conversation. Remy wasn't the easiest person to talk to, no matter what the subject was, or who you were. "I wanted to say thank you."
Remy stops suddenly, catching Jenna by surprise with her abrupt lack of movement. Remy stares at her for a moment before she forces words out of her mouth. "For what?"
"For staying," Jenna says. "For helping us, feeding us. Thank you for keeping us alive. I don't know if we would still be here if you and Jason had left."
"We've only been here a week." Remy reminds the woman, seeing the sentiment in her eyes, and knowing that she didn't want to touch this conversation with a fifty foot pole, but she was stuck now.
Jenna nods. "I know, and I'm thankful that you are now."
Remy nods once and continues her walk toward the woods, feeling like there was a weight on her chest as she did. Remy took deep breaths, trying to force the pressure out of her body, to no avail. There was nothing to be thanked for, Remy thought, the group was keeping her and Jason safe as well—giving them an actual roof over their heads and as safe as a location as you could get these days. Remy felt safe here, she felt like despite the group, this could work out.
A scream breaks Remy from her thoughts as she reaches the border of the woods. It was a child's scream, and a chill ran up Remy's spine at the fear that echoed through the air before she broke out into a run back toward the house. Remy could see the young girl, it was Ash, and Ash had a walker sinking it's teeth into her leg. Jason reaches Ash first, Remy loading her bow as she sprints toward them. Jason slams his knife into the walkers eye, pulling Ash away from it and toward the house.
"Jason!" Remy calls, seeing two more walkers turn the corner around the side of the house. Remy aims, and releases the draw, the arrow puncturing the walker's eye and slicing through its brain. The walker collapses to the ground and Remy docks another arrow and kills the walker with one perfect shot to the head.
Jason runs back out of the house, seeing the two new walkers on the ground, and three more coming from the woods across the yard. Remy and Jason share a glance and go into the house, seeing the group surrounding Ash as she cries from the pain in her leg. "We have to go." Remy announces.
All ten pairs of eyes on her is unsettling to Remy, as she resists the urge to shift her feet and back down. "There are walkers coming from the woods, we don't know how many, but we have to go."
"There's nowhere to go!" Roger screeches. "Why do you think we're here!?"
"We'll figure it out!" Jason yells forcefully. "Right now we have to get out of here before more of those fuckers show up and try to kill us, okay!? Can everyone agree on that!? Stay alive!?"
A few of them start to gather things up in a rushed manner, panic taking over their bodies and making it hard to focus or do anything properly. Like think. Remy and Jason were loading up the weapons into two backpacks when they heard screams from the kitchen, impatience and anxiety were coursing through Remy's veins as she and Jason rush down the hallway, weapons in hand, ready for whatever was around the corner. Like usual.
The door was wide open, and four walkers were in the room, one latched onto a neck, which was killed instantly, two walkers were being fought off, and one was crawling on the ground, trying to get to an already bitten Ash. Remy and Jason split apart, Jason going for the walker after Ash and Remy going for a walker that Jenna was holding off.
Remy pulls her knife from her belt and shoves the blade into the back of the walkers skull, Jenna thanking her and she walks away to kill the walker that was going for Jason, who had his back turned away from the chaos for just a second, which unfortunately, was all it took for a walker to get to you.
Remy swings her knife around and lands it in the walker's temple, shoving the corpse to ground and off her knife in the process. Walkers were filing into the house, one after the other, a never ending line of death and the smell that came with it as they clawed for any flesh they could get. Remy and Jason pushed the group back, staying in front of them in a loosely held formation. The walkers moved closer and the two pushed the group farther away, killing whichever walker they could get close enough to without taking any damage.
Remy was pulling her blade out of a walker's skull when she heard the front door burst open behind them, and the chorus of screams start again. Remy was still thinking of ways to escape the group that morning, but in that moment she couldn't do anything but protect them. Remy shoves her knife into her belt and pulls out her pistol, turning the safety off and cocking it quickly to let off the first shot, taking down a walker that was too close for comfort.
"Remy, we gotta go!" Jason yells.
Remy looks behind her, following Jason's eyes, to see only one person left standing behind them…a walker. The rest of the dead were on the ground, feasting on the members of their little makeshift group. Remy can't move. Thanks for keeping us alive. Jason pulls Remy away, grabbing their bags from the room next to them, and opening a window to escape out of.
"Please."
Remy stops cold, just as she's about to follow Jason out of the window, she turns to the voice, seeing Jenna on the ground, a walker eating her legs. "Don't leave me. Please."
"Run Remy!"
Remy climbs through the window numbly, gun in hand, her bow hanging off her shoulder. Jason starts running, away from the house, away from the woods, away from the group that was being eaten alive. Remy jogs after him, not feeling her legs as she does. I'm sorry.
