Beauty in Death - The Walking Dead

-two-

Waiting

Chloe hated waiting. It made her anxious, just sitting around and hoping their mom would be back when she said she would. So far, she wasn't being good about her promise.

Their mom promised she would be back within the hour, and it'd been an hour and a half since she left. Chloe couldn't help but pace the room anxiously while her twin sister, Kacy, watched.

Chloe and Kacy Bradbury were fraternal twins, but their mom claimed that when they were younger, people always got the two of them mixed up. Chloe didn't really understand how they did that, considering she and her sister had always done their best to look as unique as possible.

Yes, they both had blonde hair, and yes, their facial structures were a bit similar, but that's about where their physical similarities ended. They didn't even have the same colored eyes, Chloe with blue like their father, and Kacy with hazel like their mother.

Chloe thought it was simple enough to tell which one of them was which. Kacy had a beauty mark just above her lip, and Chloe didn't. Kacy always wore her hair up in a ponytail, and Chloe pulled hers back into a braid most days.

She guessed that if someone were looking at them from a great distance, they would look similar, but that was it.

"You need to calm down," Kacy said to her as she set down her book. "I bet Mom's fine, she probably just took a detour or something."

Chloe stopped pacing for a moment and turned her attention to her twin. "How can you be so calm right now?" She demanded. "I don't know if you remember, but there are walkers out there. What if she got caught up by a herd or something?"

"She didn't."

"You don't know that for sure!" Chloe exclaimed. "Maybe we should go out and look for her..."

Kacy sighed. "You know that if we did, she'd ground us for the rest of eternity," she said.

"Yeah, cause grounding us is gonna do a lot nowadays," Chloe replied, her voice laced with sarcasm.

Chloe walked over to the window and peeked through the drapes that had been pulled in front of the window so the walkers couldn't see inside. No one was outside, no one that she could see anyway. She sighed and let the drape fall back in front of the window.

"She said she'd be back in an hour. It's been an hour and a half," She said. "Are you not worried at all?"

Kacy shrugged, picking her book up again. It was an old, raggedy copy of Peter and Wendy by J.M. Barrie. It was the only one of her old books that she had been able to grab the day they left their home in Atlanta and got on the road.

"Mom knows what she's doing," Kacy replied. "If something was really wrong, I think we'd know it."

Chloe rolled her eyes. Her sister could be such a pest sometimes. But, maybe she was right. Okay, I'll just think about something else for a little while, Chloe thought. She turned to Kacy, glancing at her book.

"How many times have you read that book in the past two and a half years?" She asked.

Kacy looked up and thought for a moment. "At least a hundred times, I guess." Her twin shrugged. "It's not like I've got anything else to read. Might as well memorize it cover to cover."

Well, she's right about one thing, Chloe thought. We don't have anything better to do right now.

When they weren't arguing, Chloe and her sister actually got along pretty well. They didn't have all of the same interests, but they always enjoyed talking to one another about their own interests.

"We turn fourteen in a couple months," Chloe said. "What d'you think we should do to celebrate?" She joked.

"Well, first we have to make it to our birthday," Kacy replied. "Then we can figure out what we wanna do."

"You're such a pessimist."

"You know I'm right."

"Yeah, but at least I've got a positive attitude about it."

They both laughed. These were the kinds of days Chloe enjoyed the most, the ones where they could joke around and pretend that everything was okay. Even if it was for just a little while.

Suddenly, they heard the front door of the old house creak open. The girls exchanged a glance and then immediately ducked behind the couch. Kacy quickly grabbed their backpacks from off of the couch and set them down quietly beside them.

Chloe's hand was resting on her knife. It could be their mom, but both of them agreed it was better to be safe than sorry. They waited for a moment, hoping that if it wasn't their mom, they would take a quick look around and then realize there was nothing inside and move on.

"Girls?"

Oh, it's just Mom, Chloe thought, breathing a sigh of relief as she got to her feet. Kacy followed her lead, and the two of them froze when they realized their mother, while she was back safely, was not alone.

There were three strangers standing behind her. All of them were men, and they all had weapons.

Every instinct Chloe had was telling her to grab her knife and throw it at one of them and then run, but she refrained from doing so, instead giving her mom time to explain what was going on.

"Oh, there you two are!" Their mom said and smiled. She turned to the three men. "These are my daughters, Chloe and Kacy."

Kacy raised an arm and waved awkwardly. "Uh... hi?"

The Asian man returned the gesture with a small smile.

"Girls, this is Glenn, Daryl, and Rick," Liz explained. "They've agreed to let us stay at their camp with them for the time being."

Camp? Chloe thought. She looked at the three men, who each looked... clean, actually. Well, clean considering the circumstance everyone was in. Did they have access to water to clean themselves?

Chloe looked over at her mom. "Sorry... what's going on?" She asked.

"They have a camp," Her mom repeated. "And Rick's agreed to let us stay with them."

➵

Liz helped Chloe and Kacy gather their things together—they didn't have much, just a backpack for each of them which held a spare change of clothes (which were dirty now), several empty water bottles, and Kacy carried her book in her backpack. Liz had one possession that she never went anywhere without it, her old Walkman. It had been a gift from her husband, and she always kept it with her.

"The prison isn't far from here, a couple of miles," Rick told the girls. "We brought a car, we'll take that back."

As they headed out of the cabin, Chloe and Kacy walked side by side, following Glenn and Rick who were in the lead. Liz was behind her daughters with Daryl, who had his crossbow slung across his back now.

Chloe still couldn't believe this was happening. She never thought in a million years that they would be staying in a camp – someplace safe. This just didn't happen to them, they were used to staying in a place for a maximum of three days and then moving on, trying to avoid walkers when they could.

If a month ago, someone had told her that she would be staying in a place as secure as a prison in the near future, she wouldn't have believed them. Finally, they would be safe. They wouldn't have to worry about losing each other.

Finally.

➵

Yay! Chapter 2 is up!

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Read on, loves!

~Madison