Alice was not worried of the unknown. She was worried of what she already knew. She was worried of the promises that the new people were making to her-the ones bringing the people of a fallen Woodbury into their own settlement. The girl felt sorry t...
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A L I C E
ALICE DUNLAP HAD LEARNED not to rely on hope to get herself by. Hope had, so-far, gotten her nowhere. Even the things that she never even knew she was hopeful for seemed to slip through her fingers. She'd learned that those things were what she'd foolishly come to take for granted.
The first of many of those things was Tyreese.
She'd known the man ever since her short time at Woodbury. He quickly became a source of stability for her and Elliot, easing their transition into life at the prison.
After Beth—and later she would find out Bob—Alice thought that she had it all figured out. She would no longer hold out hope. If she had no expectations beyond an approaching death, anything more would be considered a miracle. She first chose to implement her new tactic as half of the group broke off to seek refuge in Noah's old settlement.
Noah was supposedly a friend of Beth's. He and Alice had hardly missed one another as he escaped from the hospital just before she was brought into it. Beth was planning on going with him to find his people—to see if his community was still running—but she never lived to see the outcome for herself. The outcome, of course, being the first of many that Alice Dunlap accepted with a defeated grace.
While Alice expected nothing fruitful to come of the group's naive dedication to Beth's legacy, Tyreese's demise was not on her radar.
After weeks spent out on her own two wobbly feet—and three funerals—the girl had finally found it in herself to be thankful for something. Just a few days before the group's first real meal came around, Alice had discovered that there was no use in eating, as she could not keep anything down.
Attempting to eat, for the girl, would've been a waste of resources. So, by whatever amount of optimism granted in her own delirium, Alice was satisfied with having an excuse to starve as opposed to eating dog. She knew that nobody in the group would let her skip a meal if they had any say in it.
So, as the girl tried to rid her mind of the smell of sizzling dog-meat, she held her stare on the torn, cotton padding of her cast, using her other hand to pick at it. The yellowing material reeked of body odor, sitting just above her sunburnt skin.
Alice was wearing clothing that was slightly too big for her bloated, sickly body. It was clear that her new shirt and shorts were meant to be worn by a boy. She didn't mind, as she would've done anything to get out of that hospital gown.
