Future Ghosts • TWD

40. Run, Hide.

Rosie pulled her slingshot out of her waistband and loaded a rock into it. She wished that she had brought her gun. Now that they were safe inside the prison walls, the fact that she didn't have a silencer wasn't so important. The only reason she hadn't been keeping her gun on her was because it was uncomfortable in her waistband and made it so she kept having to pull her pants up higher on her waist. That didn't seem so important now, though.

Shots were fired all around as Hershel and Beth hurried to safety. Rosie kept shooting rocks at the walkers heads, but she only had so many rocks with her and the walkers just kept on coming.

Spinning around in a circle, Rosie made sure that Hershel had gotten to safety. She felt a little wave of relief seeing that he and Beth were safe behind a fence. But when she looked away, she felt something grab onto her shirt, pulling her backwards.

"No!" she shouted, quickly trying to spin herself around. She came face to face with a walker and it snapped its jaws in her face. Dropping her slingshot to the ground, Rosie pulled her knife out of the sheath on her belt and stuck it into the side of the walker's head. The walker fell backwards and Rosie reached down for her knife, but she couldn't get it out of the walker's skull. She wrapped both of her hands around the handle, but it wouldn't budge.

Much to her luck, though, T-Dog was close by her side. He reached down and, with one hand, he was able to pull the knife out of the walker's skull and handed it back to Rosie. "Go with Maggie!" he shouted. But when Rosie turned to run towards Maggie, Lori, and Carl, she saw that the gate they were safe behind was completely surrounded by walkers. "Shit! Just come with me!" T-Dog said as he grabbed onto her arm.

T-Dog kept her close by his side as they ran through the crowd of walkers. She stood on high alert as T-Dog started to close the gate. She didn't understand how the gate was open in the first place. It was always closed. No one would have opened it unless they had a death wish.

As she was standing there, another walker grabbed onto her arm and she stuck her knife into its eye. Just after she got the knife out of its eye, she heard a loud scream behind her. Turning around, she could see that it was T-Dog. A walker had sunk its teeth deep into his shoulder and was tearing out the flesh as he screamed in agony.

Without hesitation, Rosie jumped onto the walkers back and stuck her knife into the back of its head, before falling to the ground with it. When she stood back up, she looked to T-Dog with wide eyes. There was a large chunk of his shoulder missing. They couldn't amputate that.

"Over here! Hurry!" Rosie heard Carol shout. T-Dog grabbed onto Rosie's arm again and started pulling her towards the door that Carol was hidden behind. Once they got inside, Carol slammed the door shut.

The three of them started walking quickly through a dark hall that Rosie wasn't sure if she'd been in before. Then a loud, annoying alarm started blaring in their ears. Rosie felt like her face was on fire. Her head felt heavy and everything seemed so loud. She wasn't even sure what T-Dog was saying as he dragged her with him and Carol down the hallway.

Rosie was brought back to her senses when T-Dog stopped pulling her and leaned up against a wall. "What- what's wrong?" she asked him, trying to catch her breath.

"Nothing. Nothing," he said breathlessly. Carol showed up by his side and started helping him walk. "We're almost there," he said, his voice weak. The lights began to flash as they rounded a corner, Rosie trailing behind Carol and T-Dog.

The growling and snarling of walker's got loud again.

"Oh, shit! Go back!" Carol shouted, pulling T-Dog backwards. Walkers started flooding from the hallway, leaving only two directions to go in. "I'm out of ammo," Carol breathed out. More and more walkers started coming.

"Go! You go! I'm dead!" T-Dog shouted. Rosie didn't understand at first, but then T-Dog took her knife from her hands and pushed her down one of the hallways. He stayed in the center, killing as many of the walkers as he could with Rosie's knife. He screamed and shouted as the walkers tore into his flesh, but he kept on fighting.

Through the crowd of walkers, Rosie could just barely see Carol on the other side of them. "Just go, Rosie! Run! Hide!" Carol shouted as she disappeared through the door she was standing near.

Rosie knew that there was no way either one of them were getting through that crowd of walkers without getting bit, so she was on her own. T-Dog's screaming began to weaken until he couldn't scream anymore, and Rosie started running.

Her heart beat hard in her chest, adrenalin pumping through her veins. Everything was so loud. The blaring alarms; the sound of her feet slamming against the cement flooring; the distant growling of the walkers; her own shaky breaths. Everything was loud.

Keep running, keep running, keep running. No one is coming to save you.

The hallway was dark, the only light coming from the blinking red ones in each corner. Not for long, though, because after just a few more moments, the alarms stopped and the lights went out.

Everything was dark. Rosie couldn't see a thing. But she could hear. And now that the blaring alarms were gone, she could hear the walkers even clearer. And the sounds of the snarling and hissing were getting louder with every second that passed by. She had no weapon, no sight, and no one there to help her.

Run! Hide!

She ran, it didn't work. More walkers were coming from both in front of her and behind her. They must have had enough of T-Dog. Rosie was up next on the menu.

Hide!

Rosie quickly slammed herself up against the wall, spreading her arms out as she felt for a door handle- or anything. Even an air vent would do. She just needed somewhere to hide. Anywhere. She came up empty. Not even a crack in the wall. It was perfectly smooth. She threw herself against the opposite wall, repeated the process. The snarls were getting closer. So close that she could hear their shuffling footsteps. The louder their raspy breathing got, the louder the ringing in Rosie's ears got.

"Rosie!" a voice said. Rosie couldn't see a thing, but she knew who the voice belonged to. "What are you doin'? Over there. There's a door. Hide!" Fraser said. His voice wasn't panicked or angry, his voice had the same unserious tone it always had. Like everything was funny, even when it wasn't. "Over here," Fraser said.

Keeping her hands against the wall, Rosie followed Fraser's voice. And she felt a slight bump in the wall. She froze in her spot and ran her hands up and down the wall vertically until she felt her hand hit against a door handle. Just as the walkers got close enough that she could hear each raspy breath, she swung open the door and threw herself into the room, slamming the door shut behind her.

In this new room, there was a tiny sliver of light coming from some sort of window in the corner. The window had bars on it and only let a little bit of light through, but it was enough for Rosie to see that there was a table in the room. As quickly as she could, Rosie pushed the table in front off the door to hopefully prevent any of walkers from getting through.

Once the door was blocked, she pushed herself into the back right corner of the room. Her hands were shaking uncontrollably and her breathing was labored. Tears stung at her eyes as she thought about T-Dog in that hallway, being torn apart by the dead, and soon enough, she was crying. She pressed her left hand over her mouth to quiet herself, while her right hand dug into her hair, pulling slightly as if it would relieve the pressure built up inside of her.