𝐖𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐄 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐃𝐄𝐀𝐃 𝐋𝐈𝐕𝐄 | CARL GRIMES [TWD]

1 | wildfire

— CHAPTER ONE —
wildfire
[ 4627 words ]

Before day one, she was naive. She thought she knew just how much evil this new world has birthed, how far it's broadened people's limits of cruelty, but this is something else. It's not day one anymore — it's day thirteen, her third day alone in this train car since the Termites took Wes — and a fortnight spent toiling in the darkness, stewing in cries and screams, has severed her naivety. That which she once accepted as truth has been split open, and she is sure of only one thing now.

Wes is going to die and she is too.

Every morning and every evening, Termites drop food in from above. For the first few days they ate like normal people: canned ham sandwiches, fresh fruit and raw vegetables. But she was naive — she believed the humanity would last.

One evening, somebody pulled open the big door. Some cowered, some wailed, some begged, but he didn't take and he didn't kill — he gave. He clanged the door shut and, in the darkness, left behind a basket. For hours it remained untouched, until someone tentatively peeled back the stained cloth on top and uncovered a generous helping of cooked meat. Nobody so much as prodded it. But she did. She ate, and after her, the rest reluctantly tucked in. She knew what it was, but they needed it. They were ravenous, starved dogs, surviving only on whatever the Termites allowed them, which so far had been rationed thin. That, and refusing to eat it would anger them. They weren't fattening them up just to keep them alive; the adults whispered about glimpses of Terminus' kitchen when they thought she was asleep. But they haven't whispered in a while. Now they only scream.

Since they seized everybody else, they've been giving her scraps: half-eaten toast for breakfast and cold meat between firm and flaky bread in the evenings. If they're planning on feasting on her next, they'd need her to be eating well — nobody likes stringy meat. But maybe they aren't far enough gone for that yet. Today they haven't given her anything, but today has been different.

She tracks the phases of the day by the light which slips through the few gaps in the walls: orange at dawn, bright and yellowish at day, purple at dusk, nothing at night. When noise roused her, orange spilled along the floor in slim columns. She gave into the familiar and comfortable ache of impulse, pressing her ear to the door and holding her breath. Gunfire spread like a stain across the courtyard, until finally that blond man Gareth's smug voice rang out. Whoever came across this place had put up a fight — they're fighters. But it's been silent since the afternoon: they didn't win.

Like them, she used to be a fighter. She still could be. She could forge something from the wood panelling on the doors, maybe file off a section with the rope on the floor that used to be around someone's wrists. But it's too much effort for something so futile. So she tucks herself beneath the threadbare blanket they'd tossed in on day one and plucks up an old bone to fiddle with. From its shape and density, it must be human. But there is no other way to pass the time. She is already tired of watching the light.