"Well," Jane remarks, staring down into the abyss with concern, "this is one fine mess we're in."
That's a bit of an understatement, don't you think? Hundreds of hungry and lustful walkers are standing right below our feet, and we're standing here wondering what the heck we can possibly do about it. There's no way that I'll be able to sleep properly tonight knowing what's down here – even with how excited I am with being on the road to recovery.
Without a word, I narrow my gaze, pull out my pistol and aim it down into the hole, but Jane stops me from doing it while shaking her head.
"Don't waste the bullet, Clem. It's not worth it – they can't harm us from up here."
"Like hell they can't!" Lilly argues, firing off three bullets before getting the gun wrestled away from her by Jane. "Quit it! We need to kill all of these fuckers before they latch onto somebody's arm!"
"What are you gonna do, Lilly? Empty the entire god-damn clip into their heads? You might get about a dozen of them or so!" Jane retorts, which makes pretty good sense to me now that I think about it. "We can deal with this; we've done it before, and there's no reason why we can't now."
"Still better than doing nothing! We can't just ignore this!" Lilly berates, trying (and failing) to grab the gun back from our third party member. "Fuck sakes, Jane! Give. Me. The. Gun!"
While the two of them bicker like an old married couple, I study the area underneath us from above, careful not to trip and fall inwards to my death by accident. There are rickety, old beams supporting the ceiling above it, but the walls are mostly made up of rocks and dirt. The smell is absolutely overwhelming in here.
Looking at the walkers, there seems to be something similar with what they're all wearing. Black and white striped shirts with grey pants – why do these look so familiar?
"What are they wearing?" I ask, listening as Jane comes to bend down to investigate beside me. "Did the walkers all decide to dress up the same for a special occasion or something?"
"Hmm… they look a little bit like…" Jane cuts herself off, and suddenly I understand where I've seen these before.
Dominic, Mikael, Marcus and all the rest of the prisoners had these on when we were there. The only reason the three of us never wore them was because we just got picked up as survivors, and they probably wouldn't have had enough shirts anyways. But the actual prisoners, the ones that had been there before all of this started… they wore these things.
Which could only mean one thing.
"They sent some of the prisoners down here to kill them?!" I ask in fright and sadness, suddenly feeling a lot more sympathy for these walkers than I had before. Sure, the other prisoners (namely Mikael) may have screwed us over in the end, but they still helped us escape. We're all human, and nobody should be subject to this kind of thing.
"Why the hell would they do something like this…" Jane breathes out, shaking her head in disbelief. "I mean, I knew they were fucked in the head, but not this fucked!"
"What should we do?" I question quietly, watching as Jane stands up and places her hands on her hips; spitting down below before placing her hand over the trap door. "Jane? What are you doing?"
"Locking this place," she replies simply, before slamming the door downwards and immediately getting a reaction out of Lilly. "Nobody comes in here – nobody. We need to seal this whole cellar off and never come back down here under any circumstances. This is our best shot at a normal life out here, and we don't need to ruin it just because of this. We'll be fine."
"Jane, you can't be fucking serious!"
"We'll be fine," she cuts Lilly off, not wanting to hear anything else. "We'll get started on boarding this place up, along with the rest of the house. Hell, we'll fucking barricade ourselves in our rooms if we have to, I don't care! We're not leaving again!"
"You're in so much denial that it hurts just watching you," Lilly shakes her head, stomping on the trap door and getting the walkers more agitated. "Hear that, Jane? Those are fucking walkers, and they were living down here right under our noses for months! And you're telling me that we should just pretend they aren't even fucking here?! That's your solution to this?!"
"Yeah, it is," Jane nods in affirmation, climbing back up the ladder and disappearing.
Lilly and I stand here in disbelief – this isn't an answer to our problem, it's just a time delay.
"I can't fucking believe this… You have got to be shitting me right now!" Lilly yells in aggravation, collapsing the bookshelf onto the trap door by getting a good angle on it. "Clem… I think Jane's lost it. We can't just sit on our asses this time; not when we know what's below us. How much longer will it be before they start to pop outside? Hell, they could manage to come through the damn ground for all we know!"
"Jane said to keep it closed. What else can we even do?" I ask, leaning against the wall to balance myself. I still haven't gotten used to being able to stand quite yet.
Breathing heavily through her nose, Lilly shrugs her shoulders while rubbing her eyes tiredly. That's usually the code for she has no idea, but Lilly definitely has a point – there's an obvious threat down here, and the smart thing to do would be to either deal with it or move somewhere else.
"Could you please try talking to her?" Lilly asks, placing a firm hand on my shoulder as she helps me get up the ladder safely. "I can't get through to her anymore… not that I really ever could before, but still. You're the only one that she really trusts, Clem."
Funny… nearly a year ago it was Jane telling me those exact same words about Kenny.
"You don't think she'd… put us in danger or anything, do you?"
"…hell, I don't even know anymore," Lilly admits, knowing full well that she and Jane haven't always been on the greatest terms in the past. "But we have to try – if not for her sake, then for ours. Jane's not thinking clearly right now… we need to set her back on the path. She's too important for us to lose."
With that, she leaves me as I stumble my way inside Houston Hills – hope dwindling as I notice that Jane's knife has been tossed carelessly onto the kitchen counter. Jane hardly ever leaves weapons lying around, so that's not exactly a good sign right off the bat.
Before closing the door behind me though, I can see that Lilly's looking up into one of the windows with a look of worry etched onto her face. I've never seen her this concerned about Jane before, and to be honest it's actually kind of sweet. It's nice to see that past grievances have pretty much been tossed aside with those two, and that they've somehow managed to see each other on a whole new level. I might even be bold enough to say that they're even friends. Scary stuff, huh?
I wonder what's going through that girl's head though? How could Jane possibly think that sweeping the walkers under the rug is a good idea? The mess is only going to get bigger that way; not cleaned up. Why is she so hesitant to change?
Maybe the sun from Houston Hills has rooted itself into her brain for too long.
Clambering up the stairs for the very first time, I notice the cream-coloured, ugly-looking walls with wallpaper that looks just as bad. The carpet's been worn out after years of use, and there are two doors out in this little hallway of sorts – I imagine that one's Lilly's room and the other is Jane's.
Knocking on the left door, I cringe as Jane almost immediately tells me to go away.
"It's just me," I answer with a sigh, poking my head in as I see that Jane's laying atop her mattress and staring at the ceiling. "You took off pretty quickly out there. Is everything ok?"
When I get no response, I slowly close the door behind me and walk over towards her; sitting on the edge of the bed and placing my hands in my lap. I literally twiddle my thumbs around for a little bit waiting for her to say something, but I stare at my lap and sigh when she continues not to look at me.
"We need to talk," I encourage, looking at her with a slight frown. "Lilly and I talked it over, and we think you're making a mistake."
"That's nice…"
"Jane, come on."
"You want to know the way I see it, Clementine?" Jane says quietly, glancing my way with that determined look that she usually has on her face whenever she's dead-set on something. "We travelled for two months to get here. Two whole months, including the prison stuff we went through. We've got a safe place going here – possibly the safest in the entire country right now. Do you seriously want to go through all of that again just because of some walkers that can't get out of the basement?"
"What's the problem with getting rid of them, then?" I ask, not seeing the harm in trying to kill the walkers from a distance. "It's not as if we don't have enough bullets around!"
"What's the point of doing that? We need to deal with the problems up here – why would we be going down through that trap door anyways? Wasting bullets on walkers that can't hurt us isn't a smart idea, Clem," she explains, though still not convincing me entirely. "Look… I don't want either of you getting hurt trying to do this, okay? Especially when it's unnecessary. We – "
Stopping herself, Jane sits up from the bed and stares intently out the window. Without another word, she grabs her pistol that's sitting upon her dresser drawer (though she really doesn't need it) and sprints out the door down the stairs.
"Jane!" I call out, wondering what could possibly be the matter this time. "Jane, wait!"
I'm a lot slower than her due to my messed up legs, so I slowly make my way out to the hall and grasp onto the stair railing to support my weight. I can hear Jane burst through the front door and yell for someone to drop their weapons, but her voice is muffled after the door is shut behind her. Sounds as though we've got either another family out looking for refuge, or maybe it's one of those guys that tried to kidnap Lilly the other night. Either way, we've got to check them first beforehand.
Knowing that Jane generally prefers to handle these things on her own, I first head to the window and open up a part of the curtains to get a better look at what we're dealing with. There seem to be three of them this time, but something tells me that they're not the friendly sort. They've all got big guns strapped to their backs, and they all look like they mean business. Clearly they don't know who it is exactly that they're dealing with here.
But do we?
"I'm not gonna ask again! Guns down, hands up, pockets out!" Jane demands, aiming her weapon directly at the guy in the middle.
He's a kid by the looks of things, probably a teenager who's a few years older than me. He's got dark brown hair that's tied up in a bun at the back – which is weird in itself. I thought that only girls were supposed to have their hair like that? The boy's wearing a black muscle shirt, even though his arms are super skinny, and he's wearing faded blue jeans. The other two men are big, burly fellows with bald heads; probably a couple of motorcycle gangsters before all of this happened. Now they're just mean-looking guys with big guns.
Mom always told me to not judge a book by its cover, and that just because somebody looks a certain way doesn't mean that they're bad by any stretch of the imagination.
But if she was still here with me, I'm sure that even Mom would agree that these guys look like trouble. She definitely didn't expect me to have to deal with guys with guns.
"This house ain't yours," the boy says cockily, not doing as Jane requested. "You realize that, don't you? This place is our property."
"Doesn't seem like it to me, dumb ass," Jane retorts bitterly, wanting nothing more than to get out of this situation. "Pretty sure that the previous owners are dead – we've taken the place over. Get out, right fucking now."
The boy clenches his fists and whispers something to his companions when Jane mentions that Papa John and Corvo are dead. Maybe these guys were close to them, who knows? But the better question is why anyone would actually want to be closer to those scumbags – they picked off travellers and sold them into slavery, for crying out loud!
The men take their guns off of their backs as Jane backs up on instinct, but they haven't actually started shooting yet.
But in a panic, as I rush over to the front door, the gunfire then starts; causing me to freeze on the spot as my fingers grasp the door handle in worry. I swear to god, if Jane's hurt in any way…
"JANE?!" I cry out, scooting outside after the gunfire dies down. She's on her back near the stairs and is pretty much unharmed, but the two big men are dead while the teen is trying his best to run away from the scene as fast as he can. Jane almost immediately gets up and takes off after him; tackling the guy to the ground and pinning him flat.
"You're not going anywhere, asshole," she comments briskly, whistling for me to come help her as Lilly then steps onto the scene. As soon as Jane sees her, she motions towards the two dead bodies with a shocked expression. "Lilly, what the hell?! You slaughtered them!"
"They had their guns on you! I saved your life!" she argues, shooting them both in the head to prevent them from turning. "You could've died if I didn't try something!"
"We don't need another Arvo situation on our hands here, alright?! Jesus!" she sighs in frustration, forcing the kid to put his hands behind his back as he forces him to his feet. Who were you people?"
"Go fuck yourself!"
"If you don't want to end up like these two," Lilly gestures darkly, "then you'd better answer her question right now. I couldn't be more serious – do you honestly think we won't kill you just because you're a kid?"
"Lilly, you're scaring him…" I scold lightly, shaking my head as she looks down upon me. "Could you tell us your name at least?"
The boy glares at me before spitting on the ground; feeling nothing but loathing and hatred for us as he sobs over the friends that he just lost. It was his own damn fault for threatening us like that, but I still can't help but feel a little bit bad for him. He'd probably be a pretty nice kid if it wasn't for all of this mess.
Jane forces him to move around the house with a gun pointed into his back, as I look at Lilly with confusion before following her.
"Jane, what are you doing?" I ask, slightly concerned that she's just going to take him out back and put him down like a wild dog or something.
"We can't let him go – he'll just run on back to his camp and get all of his buddies to come kill us," Jane remarks, shoving the kid forward roughly as he stumbles to the ground. Jane yanks him back upwards by the collar as the boy stands there; broken and not having any will left to fight back. "And we sure as hell can't put him in the house, now can we? So if he won't cooperate, then I know exactly where he can stay."
"Come on, that's enough!" I argue, not wanting to go through this sort of thing again. "He's just scared, Jane! There's no reason to torture the guy too!"
"Tell that to fucking Arvo…" she spits harshly, causing me to go silent as Lilly opens the cellar door. Jane forces the kid to venture down the ladder, with a gun pointed right at his chest for an incentive. Obliging, the boy shudders as he realizes why I said that this would be torturing the guy – the walkers below the trap door think that they're gonna be getting a sandwich or something.
"There might be some scraps of food lying around in there, not that you deserve any," Jane mentions, folding her arms across her chest. "You fuck around in there, and you'll regret it. We might be back in a little while to check up on you… I wouldn't count on it though."
Lilly then slams the cellar door shut before locking it up, making sure that there's no hope of the guy escaping anytime soon. I firmly disagree with the way that they're handling this, but it's two against one.
Besides, what's my opinion going to matter after what just happened a few nights ago with those goons that tried to take Lilly? And now this? Something's not right here, and this definitely isn't a coincidence.
Stubbornly, I head on inside and ignore the sympathetic faces of Lilly and Jane. I too need to be alone for a little while.
AN: If you're still wondering about the walkers in the cellar, don't worry – I haven't just thrown in that whole underground area where they are for no reason. You'll see the significance of it over the next few chapters. And their teen captive will be further explored as well, so look out for that.
And it seems as though some of you think that I may be hinting at something with two of the main characters… I suppose we'll have to see where this goes, won't we? ;) Anyway, please drop a review and I'll post the next chapter soon!