When I awoke, I was lying on a very comfortable bed, and the man was dabbing my face with a damp hot towel. When he saw that I was awake, he jumped up and grabbed his rifle, pointing it at my head again.
"What's your injury?" He demanded, cocking the gun. I shied away from him. He grabbed the front of my shirt and pulled me up so that we were eye to eye. His voice was deep and ominous,
"I ask the questions here", he said, "and you answer them. Now I'm gonna ask you one more time. What's your injury?"
"B-bullet wound…" I managed, and the guy raised an eyebrow.
"That's it?"
"Yeah." The guy released me and put his gun away.
"Well, you're not running a fever", he said, "that's why I believed you. How'd you get shot?" He sat down at my bedside and began to dab at my forehead again.
"Helping my dad." I answered.
"Your dad?" The man asked suddenly.
"Yeah, we had a place to stay earlier, but it got overrun", I said, "I barely made it out with my life. I was hit by a stray bullet."
"And you didn't get bit?"
"Bit? No. Just shot." The man grunted and stood.
"Well", he said, "when you're feeling up to it, go ahead and come on down for dinner. My sister's cooking soup." I nodded, and the man disappeared from the room.
When I had worked up enough energy to get up, I went down the stairs. A young woman with long blonde hair was in the kitchen, stirring something in a large pot. I suspected it was the soup that the man had been talking about. The girl who had hit me with the shovel was sitting and reading a book on an air mattress in the middle of the living room. She looked up when I walked in and smiled sheepishly.
"Hi", she said softly, "how are you feeling?"
"I have a headache", I said pointedly, but I smiled to let her know that I was just kidding. She smiled too and patted the air mattress. I sat next to her. We sat in silence for a few minutes as the girl twiddled her thumbs awkwardly. Finally, she turned to me.
"I'm sorry I hit you with a shovel", she said.
"It's…okay, I guess", I answered, for I still wasn't sure why she had done it. Did I really look dead to her? She smiled.
"What's your name?" She asked.
"Carl Grimes", I answered, "what's yours?"
"Natasha Vdova", she answered, "And the man you met earlier is my brother Dylan. How old are you?"
"Fifteen. You?"
"Fifteen." We sat in silence for a bit longer, then the blonde woman came out of the kitchen.
"Dinner's ready", she said, smiling at me, "I'm Wren, by the way."
"That's my sister", Natasha said. I smiled back.
A few minutes later we were all seated around the dinner table, eating the soup that the blonde woman had made. I ate mine quickly, as I hadn't eaten in over two days.
"You've got a bit of a bruise on your forehead", Dylan said, "should be gone in a few days."
"I should hope so", I said a bit more coolly than I'd meant to, "after all, I just got whacked in the face with a shovel." Natasha looked down ashamedly.
"Don't be so hard on her", Dylan said firmly.
"I'm sorry." I responded "I went home, and my entire family was gone. I'm just a bit...scared I guess."
"Well", Dylan said, "we haven't seen anything around here. I'm sorry."
I had heard enough. Suddenly, the knob to the front door started to turn slowly. Our heads all whipped towards the door.
"She's here", Natasha said, and she excused herself from the table to sit back on the air mattress, wrapping a blanket around herself. Wren looked worried, and she stood up quickly too. Dylan followed after her.
"She should be gone by morning", he said reassuringly in my direction, "don't worry about it too much. I hope you don't mind sharing the air mattress with Natasha. It's all I can offer you." I glanced at Natasha, whose eyes were darting back and forth between Dylan and the front door. I figured she could use the company.
"That's fine", I said, "thank you. For everything." Dylan's expression softened a little.
"Of course", he said, "people have to stick together in these times." And with that, he and Wren disappeared up the stairs. I got up from the table and joined Natasha on the air mattress. She was sitting up now, her eyes trained on the front door, and she jumped when I sat on the mattress. We sat in silence for a while, Natasha trembling slightly. Suddenly, she turned to me.
"Your family", she said, "who was in your family?"
"My mom and my dad", I said. Natasha smiled.
"Must be nice", she said, "I had a mother once. That's her outside." I turned in horror to the slowly revolving doorknob.
"You mean…she's…" I couldn't finish the sentence. Natasha nodded, tears welling up in her eyes. Her bottom lip trembled, and she refused to look at me. I don't know what made me do it, but I suddenly pulled her into a hug. I didn't think she would hug me back, since we had just met, but I felt her arms wrap tightly around me, and she buried her face in my shoulder, her tears dampening the front of my shirt. Then she pulled away from me.
"Come on", she said, "let's get some rest." She reached over and turned off the lamp, and we slowly drifted off into sleep.
We were awoken a few hours later by a loud crashing noise. Natasha and I bolted upright, and we glanced at each other. She gave me a quick nod, and we scrambled to our feet. I grabbed a rifle that had been hanging on the wall, and Natasha grabbed her shovel. We edged slowly towards the kitchen, where the crash had come from. Pieces of broken glass crinkled under my feet. Suddenly, there was a loud metallic sound, and I realized that Natasha had just whacked something with her shovel. I pushed her out of the way and looked down into the lifeless eyes of a walker that looked strikingly like Wren. She moaned and held her arms out towards me. It was Wren alright. I pointed the rifle in her face and cocked it. She breathed in a rattling, gasping breath and blinked, clawing more desperately at me.
"Don't let her scratch you!" Natasha said hysterically. She was crying. I took a deep breath, steadied my shaking hands, and pulled the trigger. The gunshot echoed through the entire house, and I heard thumping footsteps running down the stairs. I whirled around and found myself pointing my rifle in Dylan's face. He raised his hands in a submissive gesture, and I lowered the rifle. His gaze moved past me and onto the lifeless Wren on the ground.