Malevolent. The Walking Dead

[ 039 ] when i'm with you

Joey confiscated the generator for a moment, wrapping her hand around the lever and pulling a few times. It didn't start, so she smacked the side hard enough that she felt pins and needles before she tried pulling it again. She got flashbacks to when she was twelve and was helping her grandfather mow the lawn once his back started to give out. She had to pull on the starter cord multiple times until it started and had burned herself when she had to turn it around. Part of Joey was worried she was going to burn herself on the generator, but it shockingly started, the lights flickering a few times before she heard it rev and powered up. "Got it." she whispered, turning around when she heard some sparks flying from the circuit board, falling on the body beside it. It still smelled and she tried to get out of there as quickly as possible to get back to the radio that was left there by whoever was there prior. Joey wouldn't have been surprised if it was a Savior outpost. Maybe she could cross signal one of their messages to each other and try to avoid them if they were pinpointing their location.

When she got back to the radio, Joey messed with the controls a bit to try and get a clear signal, but there was nothing. She angrily smacked the side of the radio and it flipped to the side, revealing a pair of keys underneath it. "The fuck?" she whispered, looking around, half expecting someone to jump out at her. Pocketing the keys, Joey figured she would just wander around and try to open any locked door with the pair of keys and try to avoid Carl at all costs.

Following the stairs down, Joey was slightly in awe of the lights working. Some were flickering, but it felt nice not to have to use her flashlight all the time. She hadn't seen working lights since Alexandria. Joey came across a set of double doors, and she went to push them open, but it was locked. Joey fumbled the keys, trying the first one, but it didn't work. Joey didn't know why her hands were shaking, but she was half expecting a hoard of rotters on the other side or something. She was able to get the key in and when she turned it, a large theater was on the other side, similar to the one she had in her high school.

"Holy shit." she breathed, coughing a bit from the dust. It didn't smell like rotters or dead bodies in there—it just reeked of moth balls and old velvet. It made her chest hurt thinking about how only a few years prior she was sitting in theaters like this, watching movies with popcorn tucked into her side and AirHeads in the cup holders. She used to pay for one movie and sneak into the ones that would play right afterwards. Oftentimes she would go by herself—Joey didn't have many friends prior to the End, and she wasn't sure she had any now. Her one best friend was dead, the other was on the run, and she was pretty sure Carl hated her.

Joey wandered around the backstage of the theater, dusting off the curtains and standing on the stage, looking out onto the hundred seats and just watching. For once, she felt slightly at ease, even though she knew that wasn't going to last long. She kept walking around the back, pushing aside the curtain, and seeing a guitar case perched on a moveable case. Her heart dropped a bit. She hadn't played a guitar since Bill died—she wasn't sure if she could anymore. Opening the case, she coughed a bit from the dust, wiping it off and strumming the strings. Joey wanted to cry—she hated feeling this way. The bottled up emotions pressing down on her chest and making it hard to breathe. She closed her eyes, hoping for some relief, but nothing came. She felt the waterworks, but it was just a burning sensation in her nose and a lump in her throat.

Joey thought maybe she had cried all of her tears. It wouldn't be the first time—sometimes she wasn't sure if she had any emotions left. She wanted to find Finn, but was more worried about killing Negan than making sure he was OK. She enjoyed knowing that Carl liked her, and she cared for him too, but couldn't stomach the thought of having to take care of someone else when she could hardly take care of herself. She had opened up to him about her life, her struggles, and everything in between, but knew that once he saw what she was really like, he would leave her, like everyone else did. Her parents left her, Bill and Finn left her. Why wouldn't he?