Chapter 13 – The Bridge

I walked ahead of Luke and Clementine toward the bridge, trying to ignore them bantering about group dynamics. Luke was worried about Nick, always worried about Nick. Dumb kid. Said everyone was just on edge because of the Carver thing. Like it was so easily trivialized. Was Luke totally oblivious or did he honestly think Carver would just stop?

"Why would he still be following us?" Clementine asked him.

Luke didn't answer right away. "What's the most important thing in this world?"

I slowed my walk some, for some reason curious what Clem would say. What would I have said? Food? My stomach rumbled. Sleep. Sleep would be nice.

"What's the one thing a guy would walk hundreds of miles to get back?"

"Family," Clem replied sorrowfully.

"It's a tough world out there without people you can trust. Anyways... you can ask Rebecca. I'm not gonna get in the middle of it."

I was reminded of the first night we'd spent at the cabin, sneaking in through the trapdoor to find supplies and later hiding in the bathroom when Rebecca made an impromptu trip there to cry about her coming baby. Let it be his, she had murmured into the dirty mirror. She meant Alvin, I knew. But if it wasn't Alvin's, and it wasn't anybody else's, there was only one father it could belong to.

Only one reason Carver wanted this group in the first place.

And with me, now two.

I refused to think about my meeting with Carver in the woods, about what was said after I told him my name. And thankfully, we had reached the bridge. Quickly dispatching a couple of lingering walkers, we began to make our way across, Clem and Luke on the left, me on the right, all of us careful to avoid the rotting wooden planks lining the middle. Up ahead, a couple of walkers moaned, one trapped beneath a rail car.

I heard another moan behind us and looked over my shoulder. I made a ssst noise with my teeth to get Luke and Clem's attention and nodded my head toward the walkers.

"Shit," Luke muttered, withdrawing his machete. Clem grasped her hammer, I my knife. Luke stepped away from her, approaching the line of walkers coming from the other side.

"Clem, come over here," I reached my free hand out. She toed the wooden planks between us. They creaked, making her flinch and shift her weight. Enough to make one of them crack. Without any more warning than that, Clem fell through.

"Scout!" she screamed, wrapping her arms around an intact plank. I heard another crack and looked up. Luke had fallen through as well, but I couldn't see him.

"Luke!" I shouted.

"I'm okay! I'm just stuck!"

I stood, backing up to the edge of the bridge and running forward, taking a flying leap from my side to the other. "Alright, come on," I knelt, reaching for Clem. She grabbed my arm and I hauled her up, collapsing on my back, her on her stomach next to me. "Watch out!" I shouted, kicking my legs up as a walker approached us. The creature went flying back, stumbled into the hole Clem had created, and slipped through to the abyss below.

"Luke!" Clem ran to where he'd fallen, shoving a walker aside. I got to my feet, leaping back to the other side. They were coming much faster now, and more of them.

"Clem!" She looked up at me, barely scooting out of a walker's grasp before it clutched her. She raised the hammer and struck it in the knee, bringing it down to all fours and then burying the tool in its skull. I hurried to Luke. He was a few feet down, propped on some metal beams crisscrossing the underside of the bridge. Between us was another walker, trying desperately to reach him.

"Agh!" Clem screamed. I looked up. She was stumbling back, teetering over the edge of the bridge. No. And then it happened. She fell. My breath lodged in my throat and stayed there. But then I heard her screaming again. She was hanging on. I rose, roaring as I pushed one of the walkers into the ground and drove my knife into its forehead. It stilled, and I wrenched the weapon free, pivoting on my knees to jam it upward into the second walker's eye. It fell and I hurried to the edge, grabbing a piece of rebar laying discarded upon the tracks. I spotted Clem and thrust it down. She grabbed it and again I hauled her up.

"Are you okay?" I breathed, almost doubled over from exhaustion.

"I'm fine," she muttered shakily, reaching down to collect Luke's discarded machete.

We hurried to Luke. "Here," I dropped the rebar and he used it to create a step, getting to his feet and hoisting himself back to the surface of the bridge.

We took a moment and caught our breath, hunched over with our hands on our knees.

"Whew," Luke coughed. "Thanks, guys." He straightened up, staring down the bridge. We still had over half its length to cover before we reached the other side. The mountains were just shadows now. It was getting darker.

"Let's keep going."

Clem nodded and we pressed onward. We hadn't made it five steps before Luke threw his right arm out, stopping us in our tracks. His jaw was set, and I followed his eyeline down the bridge. There, heading toward us at a cautious walk, was another person. Another person holding a gun.

"You see him?" he asked, keeping his voice low.

"Yeah," Clem whispered.

"Just play it cool," Luke muttered, not taking his eyes off the stranger. "And you do the talking."

I felt all but forgotten but I didn't care. "Why me?" Clem shot back nervously.

"'Cause I don't wanna get in a fight. You really think he'd shoot a little girl?"

"I'd shoot me," she retorted.

"That's a hell of a thing to say," Luke chided.

"Just saying."

"Well, if it comes to that, I'll shoot him first."

Clem turned to me, wanting advice I couldn't give. We were caught between a rock and a hard place. Any sudden movements would probably make this guy jumpy, and we couldn't retreat. Whoever he was, getting to the ski lodge meant we had to get past him nicely or plow through him. I knew I couldn't handle that discussion and apparently Luke couldn't, either. Clem sighed and stepped forward. I clenched my knife.

"Well, who are you?" the stranger called out first.

"Who's asking?" Luke hollered back.

"I am," he shouted back, stilling. I shook my head. Bunch of smart asses. Great.

"What do you want?" Clem tested.

"Saw ya comin' and I thought I'd meet ya halfway," the stranger replied, his gun angled low as he took a few more steps forward, scrutinizing us. I could make out his features now – short, thin guy with a puffy gray coat and khakis that looked like they'd seen better days. He was Asian, maybe. "Huh," he mused. "You don't look like assholes. Are you assholes? No offense or anything, but you know how it is out here."

"We're just people," Clem assuaged.

"Fair enough." He stepped forward again, mere feet from us now. "You folks headed North, like everyone else? I see at least one group a day moving through here. You all look the same."

"Why do you care where we're going?" Clem countered. I looked at her, beginning to think she was adopting the group's suspicions of Carver. I thought this paranoid, but then again, the man had proven how omnipotent he was. Maybe he did have eyes everywhere. Maybe this guy was somehow part of his group.

"It's sorta my business, considering I live here."

"You live here?"

"Yup. You're in my backyard," he grinned. "I gotta say, you two look like shit. If you need food I've got some canned stuff in that station back there," he pointed at the little white house with the butt of his rifle. My stomach rumbled.

"Well..." Luke started, putting his hands on his hips, "that's awful nice of ya. What's the catch?"

"No catch. I've got plenty."

"Well, alright then," Luke brightened. "Thank you."

"No problem. Nice running into friendly faces out here. Like I said, I've got food and supplies back at the station. And if you want..." he paused, his words trailing off. For a moment it just appeared he was distracted, but his eyes went wide as he gaped at something behind us, and then with a decisive click, he raised his rifle. I pivoted.

Nick was standing a few yards away, his own gun aimed square at the stranger.

"No, no, no!" Luke raised his hands. "He's with us! Nick! No!"

I saw Nick's finger twitch. I sheathed my knife in a second and grabbed Clem by the shoulders, yanking her to the floor of the bridge just as the shot rang out, echoing through the valley and reverberating back up from the water. Slowly, we lifted our heads, Clem's hot breath still on my shoulder. The stranger was clutching his neck, blood spraying out from between his splayed fingers as he stumbled, gurgling, over the edge.