The guy who jumped me was going to be one sorry son of a bitch when I was through with him. I flopped back against the cold, hard floor as the elder residents of our home gawked at me. The world spun as the stars shimmered on the curtain of black that surrounded my view. It then came to my attention that my neighbours were still stood, admiring the view of a boy struggling to breathe and myself fighting not to spew from exhaustion. My body screamed in protest as I hoisted myself into the seated position in order to yell at them and tell them where to shove their sympathy.
"'Aint you got somewhere else to be?" A glare was all that was needed to disperse the crowd. Nodding in satisfaction I allowed myself to resume looking up at the night sky, before remembering the kid I was so determined to get back home. Herschel was tending to the boy, his mother crouched over his side holding his hand so tight I could see his fingertips go bright red from the pressure.
I dragged myself to my knees and hauled myself as close to his side as I could whilst giving the boy enough space. Herschel was consumed by concentration as his hands pumped in unison on the boy's chest, it only then occurred to me he was performing CPR. I'd done my best, he was the only one I could salvage from the onslaught of gunfire.
The bus had overturned as one of the college kids drove, sending those seated on the right straight into those on the left. I was sitting on the left and had managed to catch the boy that now lay on the ground next to me before he could damage either of us. I remember that he'd cried as I shoved his head down towards the cold seat to prevent him from taking a bullet to the head, hopefully he'd thank me for it when he woke up, if he woke up.
Our attackers had made their way onto the bus to ensure everyone was dead and I had crammed my crossbow against the floor and the twisted metal of a broken seat, thrown the boy on top and then covered him with my body. No way was a kid dying for me and no way was my crossbow being snatched from under my nose. His breath had been short and hurried as though struggling to get the air to his lungs, but he'd pulled through. After they'd announced there was nothing to take and I was certain there was no one left at the site I checked the bodies of everyone in the bus. They were pocked with bullet holes and some of their faces had been blown off, others had bones jutting from skin at awkward angles from the crash. I came across little Beth Greene's boyfriend laying against the glass of splintered window with his eyes still staring up at the ceiling above him, a trickle of blood escaping his open mouth. I had to get out before they came back as walkers, though I'm sure most of them had taken at least three bullets to the head at a minimum.
With the only survivor slung over my shoulder and crossbow in hand I trekked back towards the prison. We hadn't got that far and there was no telling if the guys who shot our bus up would next attempt to take the prison, though it was well known to the area that the prison was overrun by walkers.
With my mind acting on raw instinct and body moving on coarse adrenaline I'd managed to limply push the gate to alert the person on watch that I'd returned and then made my way to the front of the prison when my legs gave way and the boy had come crashing down on top of me.
A gentle touch pulled me away from the boy and his sobbing mother as Herschel tried to revive him. What had gone wrong? I made sure he wasn't shot, so how could he …? As I was pulled away his face became clearer. What was his name? The anger boiled inside me as I tried to remember, I went through hell saving this kid and now I couldn't remember a simple thing like his name? The pressures of the evening had become too much for my fried brain to contemplate and so submitted to the soft hand pulling me from the attempted resuscitation.
"It's real sad." I heard a voice and frowned. The words were dripping in a sticky sweet tone that could only belong to Beth. I knew my shoulders were sliced open from the shattered glass that had exploded when the bus overturned, but it didn't stop the pain when she pulled at my skin to examine the damage.
"Do ya'mind?!" I yanked my arm away from her and tried getting away, but she gently rested her hand on my shoulder to stop me from scampering away.
"If I have to endure two hours a day of trainin' with you, you have to deal with havin' your wounds bein' tended to." Her voice was jagged as she held me in place, the kid acted like she was smarter than she was. No one likes a smartass.
"Shuddup, Greene." I spat at the ground beside her but let her continue with what she had to do, so long as she didn't go too close to my back which was a mess of ridged flesh and scarred welts. "Why you helpin' me anyway?" I growled at her, ignoring the fact that she was actually doing me a favour, having her tend to my wounds was far less painful than having Herschel or Maggie. They were ruthless.
"Because everyone else is busy and I'd rather not have my family take your place in puttin' their lives at risk." Her hands were still gentle as she pulled the glass, which sent a stinging pain through my nervous system and left the skin surrounding the wound burning hot.
Merle would never let himself be manhandled by a teenage damsel who couldn't tell the difference between a knife and a sword. Merle would never let himself get into that predicament in the first place. The thought of Merle was the only thing that drowned out the endless stinging from my shoulders.
When she had finished pulling out as much as she could she cleaned the wounds and bandaged them, so I decided this was a good time to at least try and piece together some sort of friendship. We were going to need it if we were going to be in the presence of each other with armed weapons.
"Any weapons you know how to use?" I said in a strained voice as she patted my lacerated flesh into a bandage
"I was good at archery." She mumbled softly, even her voice was soaked in determination to get these wounds healed.
Archery? Not much I could help with that, apart from find her a bow. I thought I knew where to begin looking though.
"Listen, I got an idea to make sure you train with whatever you're comfortable with, understand?" I could almost hear her interest pique.
"How?" She stopped tugging at the mangled flesh in my shoulder to let me answer.
"Back at Woodbury, if we go tonight we could-"
"You think they'll let their star scavenger out after almost havin' his shoulder shredded?" She snorted as she dismissed the idea. I could feel my blood boil in impatience, someone would have to hold me back if she was this infuriating and I had my crossbow in my hand, locked and ready to aim.
"That's not what I'm sayin'. If we get through the fence we 'aint got no worries in gettin' to Woodbury." My voice dropped to a whisper as I tried to hint to her that we were sneaking out and not simply asking to go.
"What do you mean if we just- oh, oh…" Her breath tickled my ear and I felt her nod slowly. "Okay."
I couldn't help but chuckle at her innocence. It was funny for someone of her age to be so naive in a world like this, especially someone who had lost so much. It was stupid, stupid got you killed.
"Say you're goin' to get some things. I'll follow you there, alright?" I studied her face and a bead of sweat formed at the top of her forehead, she was nervous about lying to her Daddy. How sweet.
Beth had wandered off to the gate, the walkers began to rustle against it with a worrying amount of noise though it seemed they hadn't quite caught the attention of my fellow 'inmates'. After a few minutes I followed her down, she was waiting by the hastily patched up hole in the fence.
"You ready, Greene?" I smirked softly, though my humour didn't seem to raise her spirits in any shape or form.
"I'm only here for the bow, Dixon."
I was astounded by the way she had spoken to me. Here she was, sweet doe eyed Beth Greene sass mouthing me, someone who used to scare the shit out of her. I much preferred the scared teen she had been, looking for our group to protect her to this imposter who felt like she could take on the world with only her grit and determination. I had been like that once, when the world turned upside down and the dead started walking. Merle and I were going to rob that camp blind before taking off, but when he'd been left on that roof … Well, things had changed and Beth needed to see that she wasn't gonna get anywhere on her own.
Twenty minutes later we were headed towards Woodbury. The place had only bad memories for me, yet Beth was numb to the anger the residence caused. It would be hard not to notice the girl had become distance over the year that we had known her. She had been a docile creature, scared of the world as it is today, but she had grown along with this hell we were living in and it had turned her mindset from it's fragile porcelain state to the toughened and unscathing steel we see today. Beth walked in front of me, her body clearly tensed. she was wearing her hair in a ponytail to keep it out of her way if she ever came to fighting walkers which was a smart strategy, perhaps I hadn't given her enough credit. She wore a thin yellow vest that was concealed underneath a shorter grey vest to keep her torso warm but gave her the leverage in the arms if she needed it. Her trousers were grimey and stained with substances I didn't want to know and they were rolled to her knees. She wore a pair of boots I remember taking from a wardrobe whilst on a run a month or so ago. Glad to see someone was making use of them.
"How much farther?" Beth stopped walking and turned to face me. Her pale white skin was all that was visible in the glimmer of moonlight that spilled from the fragments of broken clouds above us.
"Not too long, another mile or so." I spat at the ground and continued walking, overtaking her.
"Do you have to do that?" I could hear the disgust in her voice as she quickened her step to walk with me.
"Do what?" I turned my head slightly to her face her, she just rolled her eyes and we continued on in silence.
Woodbury was a very different place now to the one I had encountered two months previously. The security of the town had dwindled to mere remnants of the superior safe haven it had been. Beside me I heard Beth whistle in admiration.
"Good place they had here …" She nodded, drinking in the buildings that were visible to her before ducking under one of the boards that still held up a disfigured gate.
I followed her in and looked around, the dark made it harder to spot walkers, but as far as we knew it only made us less visible to them too, we were at a disadvantage, not knowing all that much about them. Beth kept to the side of a building, crouching low to hide her visibility as I made my way towards the wreckage of a building. I knew there was a bow here somewhere. It took the better part of an hour before I finally managed to pull the bow from the wreckage of an old library they must have cornered off` when they were building the town. Merle had mentioned the library to me before, so I quickly picked up the first book I could find which would now serve as the only piece of him I had left.
"You found it?" Her whisper was light as she jogged over to me, eyes transfixed on the bow in my hands.
"You know how to use this?" My voice betrayed the uncertainty I felt giving her the bow, but hey she said she knew how to use it, I wasn't gonna just keep it from her, especially with that look in her eyes.
She nodded once and took it from me and I caught the small smile that sneaked its way to her lips.
"Show me?" I nodded to the bow and she went slightly red, reminding me of the girl she was when I'd met her.
Carol cared an awful lot about Beth and I wasn't going to let this world beat her, not if it meant Carol being dragged down too. Beth was a kid, I didn't know how to talk to kids unless they were Carl. Beth was one for tender words and soft whispers and I couldn't do that, which was where we clashed.
She raised the bow after taking an arrow from my crossbow, she explained it wouldn't work as well because crossbow arrows were heavier, but she'd try her best. Her slender arm pulled the string taut and her body relaxed as she shot the arrow. It soared through the hole in a tyre and snapped upon impact with the ground.
"Remind me not to piss you off." I shook my head and made my way back to the prison with her.
We walked in silence before I realised I should tell her about Zach. They'd been together for only a week or so, but she'd lost a lot of people and this was just another to add to the list. Carol wouldn't want to tell her, and there wasn't any possible way Herschel was going to get to tell her tonight, which meant she'd find out from one of the snot faced brats we'd picked up from Woodbury.
"I'm sorry about Zach … I wish I coulda helped him sooner, shoulda helped him sooner."
"It's okay." She shrugged. "It happens." Then she sauntered on as though we'd been discussing the weather.
We made our way back into the prison without anyone noticing. They were all too preoccupied with the kid I'd brought home, as soon as I walked into our cell block I was told he had an asthma attack and there was nothing I could have done to save him which I dare-say was an attempt to make me feel better. Troubled by the way Beth had reacted earlier on I searched the block to find Carol who was sat in her cell with Judith.
"Hey there, Lil Ass Kicker." I smiled softly and sat beside Carol. "Listen … We gotta talk." I saw the gleam in her eye I had seen from only a few other women in my lifetime. Oh no … Before she could say anything I quickly progressed. "I'm doin' this because I'm lookin' out for your best interest, you hear me? You should talk to Beth. You'd be worried about her." I recited Beth's reception of Zach's death. "We don't need a psychopath runnin' around causin' chaos, sort her out or I will." I flashed a quick smile to Lil Ass Kicker before I gathered my things and left before she could even formulate an answer
I stared up at the ceiling and watched the light of the moon slip into the my sleeping quarters. The perch allowed less room than the cells, but sleeping in a cage wasn't something I was eager to do too soon, so the perch was mine. It had to be the early hours of the morning when I heard a feathery voice drift from the cells below me. Beth. It seemed even when she was meant to be sleeping she lived to cause me inconvenience.
After today I decided I was going to be careful around Miss Butter-Wouldn't-Melt-Even-If-You-Tried. She was on edge, cut off from human emotions and distant from any sense of comfortable society, it was only a matter of time before she became Shane 2.0. I thought about telling Rick about what I'd seen today, but he'd either dismiss it or tell me to talk to Herschel and there was no way I was going to shatter the old man's heart.
I was even wary about letting her near the baby, but if I let suspicion overcome me I'd be Glenn or worse yet, like that prick Morgan. After what felt like an eternity of singing I decided enough was enough. I went down the stairs, two at a time before gently pulling aside the flimsy fabric that served as curtain to Beth's room.
"Hey, you wanna keep it down in there?" My voice was tinged with accusation, something she wasn't very familiar with and it was obvious to see by the way her back erected and her eyes narrowed.
"Sorry, sir. I'll be quiet." She smiled softly at me, eyes locked onto mine as she flicked her head slightly, indicating for me to leave.
"Listen, Greene. I don't know what's wrong wit'you and quite frankly I couldn't care less, but as soon as you start threatenin' this prison I won't hesitate to take you down. You clear?" My fists clenched by my sides as she considered my response, my words processing in her mind.
"Crystal." Beth nodded, shooting me a glare of utter contempt as Judith was slowly lulled to sleep.