The Walking Dead: Danielle Grimes

77.

"You saw where we left the truck?" The man asks. "Mmhmm." She nods.

He continues. "We opened the valve and drove it all the way in from farm view road. Ran from the tree line until we got to the pavement. Lit a matchbook from the Sweetwater and dropped it in the trail.....then we just ran for the car. Got in and the dead ones were there. They were beating in the hood and then.....boom! Knocked them on their asses and I took an ax to each one."

"Then we just watched it go up." The brunette adds. "No more moans, no more of that wailing. It was just the fire, just burning them all away." I can't keep quiet any longer so I open my mouth. "You did all this?" I ask the brunette.

She nods, looking around the damage. "It was right at the start, everything stopped. The TV, the radio....we were here. The forest was full of them. And the other ones in town were drawn to it. They just walked into the flames."

I look down at the dead walkers. We haven't used a fire to kill them before. Any time I had seen a walker on fire, it didn't seem to be bothered by it. A few of them were still moving beneath our feet but there ain't much of fight to them.

The brunette keeps walking, though she glances over her shoulder at me. "We got most of them. Thought we ended it for us, and she was in DC. We thought everyone was fighting them wherever they were......"

The man moves so he isn't so much behind me as walking beside me. They had all relaxed some as they told me their story. If they hadn't taken me hostage, they didn't seem like bad people.

"Yeah, we thought that what everyone was doing. Fighting it. That we'd all win together....we was stupid." The man says shaking his head and steps around me. I stop and glare at him. "Y'all on't think ya being stupid now?"

The man pulls out the gun again and stalks back to me. "You saying I should kill you?" He challenges. "I mean it, are you gonna try and pull something on us?" He glances over his and I can tell how protective he is of the woman. Reminds me how protective I am of Dani. "Are we just being thick here by not removing all doubt?"

I move, rocking on my weight slightly and he follows me with the gun. He's stressed and tense but he ain't stupid.

"Right now, by me not pulling this trigger, is that a mistake? I'm serious. I really want to know. You made a choice to kill for someone else, to have them own you for a roof over your head and three squares, so maybe I'm not considering all aspects. So tell me, am I being stupid?"

What in the world is this guy going on about?

I breath out harshly. "No." I rasp. I take a step towards him and the gun hoping I could reason with him. "Look, I got somewhere to be, someone to get back to. We can make a deal, I can help you out."

"You're one of them. You're hurt and you're alone, you'd say anything. We should've never trusted you people to begin with. Go on." He motions with the gun. "Keep moving." He shoves me ahead of him out through a clearing. I stumble of the change in ground but manage to find my feet.

"Damn it!" The man exclaims as the three of them come out behind me and approach the ten foot high chain link fence in front of us. The brunette drops the bag that has my crossbow to ground and walks to the fence in shock.

The three of them speak in hushed tones as the blonde starts crying. "Then we make another plan." The brunette snaps in frustration. "Yeah, we get out of here, that's the plan." The man tells her. "Then that's the plan." The brunette agrees just like that.