Chapter 17 – Old Friends
Clem and I descended slowly from the tower, landing softly in the grass below, apparently unnoticed by our group or the group of strangers, and crept quietly to the edge of the deck.
"Listen, everyone, just stay calm!" That was Luke. Ever the peacemaker. Or... ever attempting to be the peacemaker.
"Who are you?!" A woman countered. Her voice was high and she had an accent I couldn't place. "Are you trying to rob us?" Clem and I stood on tiptoes, peering up onto the deck.
"Excuse me, honey, but do I look like a fucking thief?" That was Rebecca. Aside from knowing her voice anywhere, perpetually laced with sarcasm as it was, I'd grown to trust her to say all the wrong things at all the wrong times.
I looked to my right, but Clem was gone, already on the stairs up to the deck. "Clem!" I whispered hoarsely. She ignored me. "Fuck," I swore, hurrying to catch up with her and drawing my knife in the process.
"Everyone calm down."
"Hey, man, you calm the fuck down."
"Sarah, get behind me!"
"Just tell us who you are!"
We caught up to the group, but they were too focused on the guns in each others' faces to notice us creeping up. I heard Clem's breathing change as she approached Carlos, but her attention wasn't on him. It was on one of the strangers. I reached out to grab her arm but caught only the fibers of her shirt as she pushed through Alvin and Nick to the front of the line. And then, the yelling stopped, and the stranger in the front dropped his rifle.
"Kenny?" Clem whispered, and my blood went cold.
"Clementine?"
I sheathed my knife.
xxxx
The lodge was massive, but despite its size and walls of large windows, I was blanketed with a comforting warmth as we crossed the threshold into the foyer, tracking our filth across the black-and-white tiles. I stared up at the ceiling. It was so high it almost disappeared in darkness. If not for the absence of stars, I could have been staring directly at the sky.
"Please," one of the strangers spoke, a middle-aged balding man in a red sweater. I'd heard Kenny call him Walt. "Make yourselves at home. You can leave your things on the bench there." He smiled at us.
"The hell we will," Rebecca countered, folding her arms. I narrowed my eyes – despite her perpetually poor execution, she had a good point. I fingered the hilt of my knife, staring at the bench.
"Yeah, I'm holding onto my rifle, thanks," Nick agreed.
"You're our guests here," Walt's voice deepened. "There's no need to worry."
"Tell him to put his gun down, then," Nick gestured to Kenny, who stood at the top of the landing still clutching his rifle. Nick stiffened, maybe surprised that for once, he agreed with his cousin.
"Kenny?" Walt enjoined. Huh, I thought, perplexed by the man's sense of fair play. Now to see if Kenny was the kind of man I thought he was, my only impression of him being the hero of many of the few stories Clem ever told me about her life before me, even before Christa.
"You vouch for these people, Clem?" Kenny looked at her. "If you tell me they're good, then I'm good."
I couldn't blame her for feeling unsure. "They're cool," she replied. It was damned but necessary lie.
"Dad, look!" Sarah whispered obliviously from behind us. "A Christmas tree!"
"Not now, Sarah," I heard Carlos reply.
"Isn't it great?" one of the women, Sarita, chimed in, trying to ease the tension. "We found it all in storage, and we still get power from the wind turbine outside. Aren't the lights beautiful?"
"They're amazing," Sarah replied in quiet awe.
Kenny stepped down from the stairs, and as though Clem and he had come to some silent understanding, he laid his rifle atop the bench, prompting our group to relieve themselves of their own weapons. Clem smiled at him, and I bristled for some reason, laying down her own purple backpack. As she turned away, Kenny and I locked eyes for a moment and I involuntarily clenched the hilt of my knife. He tensed, putting his dominant shoulder to me and saying nothing.
xxxx
Fifteen minutes later, you'd think our groups were old friends. Well, aside from Clementine and Kenny, who in fact were the oldest of friends, everyone – even Rebecca – had settled down for the bleak night. Which, for Rebecca, meant whispering quietly to Alvin when she thought no one could hear about all her worries – the baby, the weather, the walkers, and of course, Carver. The group had spread their bedrolls on the northern side of the second-floor landing, which wrapped around the entire back wall of the lodge, offering a few down to the first level. Clementine had been too distracted to nest just yet, but I set my rucksack on the southern side of the landing, leaning against the rail and surveying everyone.
Walt was at the kitchenette just below me, humming something sweet and stirring a large pot of bubbling brown liquid. As the smell wafted up I caught the scent of peaches again. Sarita and Sarah were swooning over a box of shiny Christmas baubles, looping them one-by-one onto the branches of the great pine tree, behind the plush set of couches where Clem and Kenny sat, bathed in the orange glow of the magnificent fireplace. Clem had one leg pulled up beneath her and they talked inaudibly, backs hunched toward each other in familiarity, at one point looking at a map lying on the coffee table. I felt the pack of cigarettes in my chest pocket and buried my craving for now.
Something gnawed at the pit of my stomach and though it and I were no strangers to each other, the times you spend absent your loneliness always give the naive spirit hope it will never return. It always did. Always does. I watched Sarita pace over, lay a loving hand on Kenny's shoulder. They were clearly a couple. Kenny gestured to her and then to Clem, making the official introduction. Clem brightened suddenly and looked around the lodge for something. Search fruitless, she shrugged, and I realized that she was probably searching for me. The loneliness subsided some, replaced by guilt.
"Hey, Walt!" Kenny raised his voice, peering over his shoulder. Beneath me, Walt looked up from his boiling mush. "Where's Matthew? He still out there rootin' around?"
There was another one? My brow furrowed. Made sense to designate a group member to go scout or hunt or scavenge, I supposed. But it was a long way up the mountain and pitch dark now. An intelligent person would have been back by now or camping somewhere along the valley we'd followed to the top. And while we hadn't scoured the woods, we hadn't seen anything. In fact, the only place as safe as the lodge would have been was...
Then I remembered.
I stood, not bothering to dust myself off, and re-pocketed the watch. The station creaked as the winter wind buffeted it. "Trunk might be worth breaking into. And there's a good knife on the shelf up there." I had spotted it a few minutes before, but felt no urgency about it. Clementine pivoted and reached for the weapon, drawing it out of its sheath. I stepped up behind her, admiring it. Nice handle, good solid wood, and a full tang. It must have been a faithful tool – the previous owner had seen fit to carve his initials into the side. M-something.
I decided to have the cigarette, after all.