EXTINCTION EVENT | CARL GRIMES

s e v e n t e e n ↣ dull

Feeling remorseful is one thing, even missing him is. But needing him to survive is something completely different. And I don't.

The crunching, dead leaves rustle as my feet shuffle their way through them. Because the sun has yet to fully rise, the blaring heat hasn't come, maybe giving me a few more hours of the cool morning breeze.

My eyes dart around the forest before they land on a walker. For a second, I thought it was just another tree until it started to move.

I make my way toward it. During the night, I told myself it'd be smart to kill every walker I see to eliminate the possibility of it coming back to bite me. Literally.

Sucking in a breath, I bend my knees a little more as I duck behind a tree that lies in between the walker and myself. After waiting for a few moments, the walker passes me up.

I take this as an opportunity and creep up behind him, jabbing my knife upward and into his head. After its faint groans cease, the weight of whats left of its entire body falls downward, taking my knife along with it.

A growing concern is the energy I repeatedly have to waste while using this dull knife.

After struggling with the knife for a few moments, I finally pull it out of the walker's head. I stand up from the scene and look around, wondering where the walker came from.

My eyes land on a building. The large, metal warehouse has its garage doors open, pulled all the way up.

Dusty cars fill the interior of what I assume to be an auto body shop. Before considering the danger, my feet race toward the metal stairs on the side of the building.

Alongside the stairs lies the fresh dead body of a man. This man was clearly killed before he was a walker. Although severely beaten, his skin wasn't decayed, his open eye wasn't crusted over with the yellow, milky film of the dead.

The other eye, however, has an arrow in it. The familiar green and orange feathers on the arrow raise the hopes inside me, despite the circumstances.

Holstering the knife, I instead grab my gun before swinging open the door to the shop. I step inside and my eyes dart across the room.

Scuffs of dried, red blood mark up the floor in the center of the building. Old pick-up trucks and motorcycles that never got repaired remain parked evenly throughout the warehouse.

Once I see no threat in sight, my eyes find a thousand places that walkers or people could be hiding. Deciding to use a few tricks from Carl's book, I step back into the doorway, and bang on the loud metal with the back of my gun.

A few breathless groans start to sound out from several spots in the warehouse. Soon after, a few walkers peel themselves off of the ground, rising to their feet.

Before they can see me, I quickly duck and run down the stairs behind the first car. Keeping myself concealed, I wait for the moment to strike as the walkers make their way toward the metal door. I bend down and look under the car, seeing a few pairs of feet dragging along the concrete floor.

Licking my lower lip, I suck in a quick breath before walking out and approaching one of the walkers. Almost silently, I slip my knife into the back of its head. I catch its body before it can drop all the way to the floor to stop it from causing noise. Lowering it gently, I tug on the wooden handle of my knife.