"Tears shed for another person are not a sign of weakness. They are a sign of a pure heart."
― José N. Harris, MI VIDA: A Story of Faith, Hope and Love
The group had looked for the two missing girls without rest. The trail went cold the first day. They all went into the woods the following day but had no luck either.
Carol was a complete mess. Her husband died some days ago then her two girls, the people she loved the most, were gone. She kept her hopes up, though, or at least tried to. She was going to find them, she couldn't give up on them now, she had done that her whole life. They needed her more than ever now.
It had been more than twenty-four hours now since they went missing and some people were starting to lose hope, especially Shane, Oliver and Sean.
Unfortunately the search had to be stopped. Carl had been accidentally shot by a man named Otis, who was hunting a deer.
The man told Rick to take him to Hershel, an old man in his early seventies. Rick had no choice but to take his boy there.
The place where Hershel lived with his two daughters, Jimmy, Otis and his wife, Patricia, was perfect, it was like taken out of a dream. It seemed like nothing bad had happened there, like if the place was immune to the apocalypses. It looked like what the world looked before all of this happened.
But Rick didn't notice any of that, he was scared to death about his boy. He kept bleeding and came in and out of consciousness.
One of Hershel's daughter was kind enough to offer to go look for Rick's wife. He needed her, he wasn't strong enough to do this on his own.
Shane and Otis had left to a school to find medical supplies Hershel needed to do a surgery on Carl to remove the six fragments of the bullet.
It was already getting dark again when Glenn and Teresa had to take T-Dog to the farm. He had cut his arm really bad with one of the cars when he hid from the walkers on the road. He had a blood infection and he was going to die if he didn't find antibiotics and soon.
Andrea, Dale, Oliver, Sean, Daryl and Carol stayed in the highway, inside the RV, in case the girls came back. It would be devastating for them to be able to get back and find out the group, especially their mother, had left them. They couldn't do that to them.
Daryl was the guy who didn't give a crap about anyone. He was rude and wasn't afraid to speak his mind. But deep inside, he cared. He was worried about the two girls and he really wanted to find them, he just couldn't leave them and give up. Some people were starting to lose hope but not him.
He even went out to look for them on the second night, Andrea joined him but not to look for them, she just wanted to get away, she needed some time to think things through.
Only a few miles away, Shane had successfully come back with the medical stuff that Hershel needed, but unfortunately Otis didn't make it back.
Carl's surgery was a complete success, even when Hershel was just a veterinarian. Meanwhile, Patricia and Maggie, Hershel's oldest daughter helped T-Dog with his injury. Some of Merle's pills for the clap saved his life.
The following day they all woke up very early. Dale finally drove to the farm to meet the others. Glenn drove the car Shane had fixed back in the highway while Daryl drove the motorcycle and Oliver drove his own car.
"How is he?" Dale asked.
"He'll pull through, thanks to Hershel and his people," Lori answered him with a smile.
"And Shane," Rick added. "We'd have lost Carl if not for him."
"Thank God," Carol exclaimed as she gave Lori a hug. "We were so worried."
"How did it happen?" Dale asked.
"Hunting accident," Rick said. "That's all. Just a stupid accident."
After that they all walked further into the farm to have a funeral for Otis. The day was really beautiful, the sky was cloudless and the temperature was quite high. It was such a shame they had to do a funeral on a day like that.
Some people, like Teresa, Glenn, Carol and Daryl, understood it was just the honourable thing to do but they were more than eager to go out into the woods and go look for Cecilia and Sophia. The others were just losing hope of ever finding them.
Hershel did a prayer for this man, Otis. Most of the people there didn't even met him but they paid their respects. Then, Hershel asked Shane to say a few words.
"I'm not good at it. I'm sorry."
"You were the last one with him," Patricia, his wife, said to Shane. "You shared his final moments. Please I need to hear. I need to know his death had meaning."
"Okay. We were about done, almost out of ammo. We were down to pistols by then. I was limping. It was bad," Shane told them. "Ankle all swollen up. 'We've got to save the boy.' See, that's what he said. He gave me his backpack. He shoved me ahead. He said, 'I'll take the rear. I'll cover you'. And when I looked back... If not for Otis, I'd have never made it out alive. And that goes for Carl too. It was Otis. He saved us both. If any death ever had meaning, it was his."
The funeral was over now and now they had to focus on the girls. Daryl, Shane, Andrea, Lori, Rick and Hershel gathered around Carol's Cherokee, using the surface of the car's hood to put the map Hershel had given them.
"How long has these girls been lost?" Hershel asked.
"This will be day three," Rick told him.
"County survey map," Maggie informed as he set the map on the car. "Shows terrain and elevations."
"This is perfect," Rick said. "We can finally get this thing organized. We'll grid the whole area, start searching in teams."
"Not you. Not today," Hershel told him. "You gave three units of blood. You wouldn't be hiking five minutes in this heat before passing out. And your ankle," he said now to Shane. "Push it now, you'll be laid up a month, no good to anybody."
"Guess it's just me," Daryl said. "I'm gonna head back to the creek, work my way from there."
"I can still be useful," Shane exclaimed. "I'll drive up to the interstate, see if Sophia and Cecilia wandered back."
"All right, tomorrow then," Rick told them. "We'll start doing this right."
"That means we can't have our people out there with just knives. They need the gun training we've been promising them," Shane told Rick.
"I'd prefer you not carrying guns on my property," Hershel spoke up. "We've managed so far without turning this into an armed camp."
"All due respect, you get a crowd of those things wandering in here..."
"Look, we're guests here," Rick said, interrupting Shane. "This is your property and we will respect that."
Rick then put his gone on top of the car, with a sigh, Shane did the same. He wasn't really happy about it.
"First things first: Set camp, find Sophia and Cecilia," Rick said.
"I hate to be the one to ask, but somebody's got to," Shane exclaimed. "What happens if we find them and one of them or both are bit? I think we should all be clear on how we handle that."
"You do what has to be done," Rick said with sorrow.
"And their mother? What do you tell her?" Maggie asked.
"The truth," Andrea replied.
"I'll gather and secure all the weapons. Make sure no one's carrying till we're at a practice range off site," Shane commented. "I do request one rifleman on lookout. Dale's got experience."
"Our people would feel safer, less inclined to carry a gun," Rick added and Hershel nodded after a few seconds. "Thank you."
"Daryl," Rick called as the brown-haired man walked out with his crossbow on his shoulder. "You okay on your own? I heard Teresa, Oliver and Sean will look for them as well."
"They are just a bunch of teenagers, I'm better on my own. I'll be back before dark."
"Hey, we got a base. We can get this search properly organized now."
"You got a point or are we just chatting?"
"My point is it lets you off the hook," Rick told him."You don't owe us anything."
"My other plans fell through," Daryl simply said and walked away.
Maggie and Glenn prepared to go on a run to get antibiotics, bandages and medical stuff. They went into town, to a pharmacy that wasn't that far.
Dale and T-Dog were going to fill some containers with water and then Dale was going to be on lookout, Lori and Rick had to stay close to Carl, who was out of danger but still was in and out of consciousness. Andrea and Shane cleaned the guns. Daryl had already left to go looking for the girls, Teresa, Oliver and Sean were going to look for Cecilia and Sophia as well when something back at the farm happened.
There was a walker in one of the wells and they couldn't just leave it there. It was so disgusting, his body was all swollen up.
"Looks like we've got us a swimmer," Dale commented as everyone gathered around the well.
"How long you think it has been down there?" Oliver asked.
"Long enough to grow gills," Andrea said.
"We can't leave it in there," Lori said. "God knows what it's doing to the water."
"We got to get it out," Shane said.
"Easy. Put a bullet in its head," Sean commented.
"It's a stupid plan," Andrea said. "If that thing hasn't contaminated the water yet, blowing its brains out will finish the job."
"She's right. Can't risk it," Shane said.
"So it has to come out alive?" T-Dog asked.
"So to speak," Shane told him.
"How do we do that?" Glenn asked.
Unfortunately for Glenn, they came up with a plan that concerned him. They tied a rope around his waist and the other end to a pole. And now they were going to make him go all the way down so he would wrap a rope around his body and take the walker out of the well. Easy...not.
"We're gonna get you out of here in one piece," Shane assured Glenn.
"Living piece," Glenn said. "That living part is important."
Everything was going good until the poll fell and made Glenn go down more than expected. No matter how hard they tried they couldn't pull him up at first. For about two eternal minutes they couldn't pull him up until they finally started to pull the rope and slowly they got him out.
"Are you okay?" Lori asked as she knelt next to the Korean boy, who was hysteric at first.
"Back to the drawing board," Dale commented.
"Says you," Glenn said, giving Dale a part of the rope. Somehow Glenn managed to get the rope around the walker.
All of them started to pull except T-Dog because of his injury. He was even heavier than Glenn so it took more effort and more time to get it out. The had pulled the walker all the way up, he was now on the edge of the well, they needed a bit more effort to pull it a bit further but it got stuck. They pulled with more strength, giving everything they had to pull and then they felt like if what they were pulling didn't weigh at all and fell backwards and it was because the walker's lower body had fell back into the well, but the other part, the head and the arms and the chest, was right next to them, snarling.
"We should seal off this well," Dale finally suggested.
"Yeah, that might be a good idea," Shane agreed.
"So what do we do about..." Andrea was asking when T-Dog started to hit the walker in the head with a pickaxe. Maggie almost threw up right then, it was the first time she saw how someone killed a walker.
"Good thing we didn't do anything stupid like shoot it," T-Dog said sarcastically and walked away, just after Maggie. Soon enough, the others followed them.
Finally Glenn and Maggie could go on their run to the pharmacy, they got two horses and left while Carol, Shane and Andrea had driven back to the highway. They had written on the glass of a car the words 'CICI, SOPHIA STAY HERE WE WILL COME EVERY DAY'.
"We'll come again tomorrow," Andrea told Carol as she put an arm on her shoulder. "You know there's always the chance..."
"Don't," Carol interrupted her. "I really don't need to hear it anymore, Andrea. Save the thoughts and prayers." Andrea nodded sadly and walked away.
"You never know, Carol!" Shane spoke up from behind her but Carol stopped him, raising her hand. He also walked away, limping. Leaving Carol alone for a few minutes, she needed that.
A few miles away from them, Daryl spotted a white farm house. Carefully he went inside, his crossbow ready if anything was there.
He saw an empty can of tuna on a trash bin, he smelled it and he could tell whoever ate that, didn't eat it that long ago. A day or two at the most.
Then he saw a closet, the door were half opened. He opened the door fully and saw a blanket and a pillow inside, only a kid could fit inside. Right in front of the closet he saw another blanket and pillow, meaning a second person had slept there. As he looked more thoroughly, he found a little Cartman earring next to the blanket, he knew that belonged to Cecilia, he had seen her wearing them, surprising him, he never thought Cecilia to be the kind of girl to like South Park and well, Daryl wasn't the type of man to notice that kind of stuff but somehow that caught his attention only about a week after he met her.
But just finding that made him feel hope filling him once again, he was sure the girls had been there. He picked up the small earring and put it inside his pocket.
After searching the whole house, every corner of it, looking for them and looking for more proof that they had been there, he walked outside and looked around him.
"Sophia!" he shouted. "Cecilia!"
He kept calling them until he noticed something peculiar in front of the house. A white flower. He cut it and grabbed it.
About an hour later Daryl went back to the farm, he didn't find the girls but he had found the flower. Daryl went into the RV, looking for Carol. The first thing he noticed was that the RV was spotless, everything was in their place, the dishes were clean and put on a pile, there was no mess there for once. Daryl walked to the very back of the RV and sure enough Carol was there, knitting.
"I cleaned up," she told him when she saw him. "Wanted it to be nice for them."
"For a second I thought I was in the wrong place," Daryl said, attempting a joke.
Daryl then put an empty beer bottle on the counter, it was serving as a vase to the flower he had found earlier.
"A flower?" Carol asked a bit surprised.
"It's a Cherokee rose," he told her. "The story is that when American soldiers were moving Indians off their land on the trail of tears the cherokee mothers were grieving and crying so much 'cause they were losing their little ones along the way from exposure and disease and starvation.
A lot of them just disappeared. So the elders, they said a prayer; asked for a sign to uplift the mothers' spirits, give them strength and hope," Daryl said, making a short pause. "The next day this rose started to grow right where the mothers' tears fell. I'm not fool enough to think there's any flowers blooming for my brother. But I believe this one bloomed for your girls."
By then Carol had tears in her eyes, she wanted to thank him but she was afraid her voice would break. Daryl understood and turned around to leave then he stopped, turned to look at Carol and said, "They are gonna really like it in here," before walking out of the RV.
Deep inside the woods, Cecilia found herself tired, hungry, cold and alone. After the first night, when they found the house, she woke up around 9:00 in the morning to find out her little sister was nowhere in sight.
She checked every corner of the house at least five times before running out of there. Most of the times she just ran frantically around the woods, trying to find her and just a few times she dared to call out for her but she never got a reply.
She didn't stop running until it was getting dark. She knew it wouldn't help to keep looking for Sophia in the dark. So that night, she had to climb a tree and sleep there. She had randomly ran all day and she would be extremely lucky if she remembered or found the way back to the house.
She knew sleeping in the tree was dangerous, she could fall in her sleep but she didn't have a rope to tie herself around the tree but luckily it wasn't that tall. If she fell she wouldn't die or hurt herself that bad.
She hadn't brought a blanket with her but she was smart enough to wrap the sweater around her waist, the days were hot but the nights were cold, she was more than grateful to have the sweater at the moment.
The following day was not different. She was running out of energy and her will to keep on, it had been days since she had last eaten something. Running had taken a toll on her and she knew it, she could feel how hard it was even to just walk. She jogged for a few minutes before she just had to stop to catch her breath before jogging again.
No food, no water, running, not getting a good sleep and this heat made everything against Cecilia. She was drenched in sweat, she was getting dehydrated and fast.
It was around 4:00 in the afternoon when her legs gave in and she fell to the ground. Everything went black for a few seconds and her head was spinning, slowly she managed to sit up.
"I'm sorry," she muttered.
Cecilia started to cry, her body was failing her. She wanted to stand up and run and look for her sister but she couldn't. There was nothing she could eat in there and if she kept like that, she was going to lose the battle. She was lucky there was some water in the house but she was too scared for Sophia she didn't think to take a bottle, she just grabbed her gun and knife.
Cecilia walked around for two more hours but at a very slow pace and she had to take breaks very often because she would black out or get dizzy.
During that third night by herself, she climbed another tree. She had found a rope earlier and took it. She tied it around her body and the tree so she wouldn't fall.
But for hours she didn't sleep, she just cried and thought about Sophia and the others in the group, hoping they were all okay.
She also thought about the gunshot she heard during the second day. She was so tempted to go in the direction the noise came from but she knew no one of her group would be dumb enough to shoot, not when a big herd of those things walked through the highway just before they went missing, so it had to be someone else and she didn't want to risk herself. What if they weren't good people? It scared her.
But now she was regretting that decision. They could have helped her, maybe give her some water and food, maybe even help her find her group and Sophia but there she was, up on a tree by her own.
It was not until around midnight that she finally fell asleep, only to have nightmares of losing Sophia over and over again and her dying. She also dreamt of every member of her group and all of them died and turned into the monsters that now control the world.
First was Rick, then Shane, Dale, Lori, Andrea, Glenn, Teresa, Oliver, Sean, T-Dog, Carl, Daryl and lastly, her mother. She even dreamt with the dead ones, Jim, Amy, Jacqui, Jenner, her father.
Everyone died and turned and now they were chasing her, trying to bite her, to eat her. Everyone.
Hello guys! I have written this story until the people at the prison get sick and I still haven't watched Season 5 and I need to if I want to keep writing this, do you know of any site besides Netflix where I could watch it?
How has been your friday? Went shopping today? My grandma bought me two Under Armour shorts! :D
QOTD: Who is your favourite character from TWD and who is your least favourite?