Among the Lost | TWD

I carry their screams wherever I go.

The fire had long gone out, leaving only the acrid taste of smoke lingering in the air, mixing with the damp, earthy smell of decaying leaves. Shadows stretched across the burnt walls of the ruined house, twisting in the moonlight, making the darkness feel alive. Elijah crouched low, knees pressed to his chest, fingers curling into the splintered wood beneath him, feeling each rough edge dig into his skin. The night was quiet—too quiet—but that wasn't unusual. Not anymore at least. The dead didn't shout. The dead didn't beg. The dead only waited, relentless.

He could still hear it, though. Their screams. Sharp, raw, desperate—the ragged, terrified sounds of people he had loved, tearing themselves into the tide of the hungry dead to protect him. The horde had come in wave after wave, bodies stumbling, claws scraping, teeth snapping with an inhuman hunger, and his parents had been there, throwing themselves into the chaos of it all as if their very existence could hold it back. He could feel their presence, even now, the memory pressing against his chest like a weight he could never lift.

His mother's hand had reached for his face one last time, trembling and slick with blood, fingers ghosting over his cheek. Her eyes had been wide, shining with both fear and fierce, unyielding love, speaking a promise he could feel more than hear. I won't let you fall. And then the world had ended a second time. Blood, heat, the stench of smoke and decay, terror clawing at his chest—and he had run. Legs carrying him faster than thought, heart hammering like it would shatter, every step propelled by a mixture of instinct, panic, and the unbearable grief of survival.

Afterwards came the wandering. Days that bled into nights, nights that stretched endlessly into more days. Hunger gnawed at him, raw and hollow. Thirst scorched his tongue. Cold crept into his bones, and fear became a constant companion, whispering that anyone could turn, that any shadow could kill him. Silence became both shield and punishment. He learned to move quietly, to avoid attention, to trust no one, to rely on nothing but himself.

He had found a small group once, a handful of weary survivors with cautious smiles and the faintest flicker of warmth in their eyes. For a heartbeat, he allowed himself to hope, to imagine that maybe he could belong again. That maybe, just maybe, someone could care if he lived.

But belonging required trust. And trust came at a cost he could no longer pay.

The attack came sudden, sharp, and unavoidable. One of the dead lunged, teeth snapping, eyes milky and unblinking, and the stench of decay thick and suffocating in his nostrils. Instinct screamed at him to move—to dodge, to strike, to run—but his body betrayed him. He froze. Every muscle locked, every thought caught in a web of panic. Memories of his parents falling, their screams swallowed by the chaos, the helplessness, and the terror flooded back in vivid, burning waves. He couldn't move. Couldn't run. Couldn't fight.

The group shouted, voices sharp with fear, anger, and frustration. The words hit him like blows, but he couldn't respond. He could only watch as one of them swung, ending the dead one's threat, and then silence.

He saw them leave. Saw them turning their backs, stepping into the night without a backwards glance. And in that instant, he felt the verdict settle over him, cold and absolute: too weak. Too weak to save. Too weak to protect. Too weak to matter.

He carried that moment with him like a stone lodged deep in his chest, cold and unyielding. The shame pressed down, heavy and suffocating, settling into his bones as if it had always been a part of him. The guilt burned and lingered, sharp and raw, gnawing at the edges of every thought, every memory, every decision. And the sting of betrayal—of being abandoned when he had needed someone most—etched itself into the core of him, a permanent scar he could neither hide nor erase. Every day since, every careful step through ruined streets, every person he allowed himself to approach, every choice he made was measured against that one brutal, inescapable truth: he was not worth keeping around.

And yet, somehow, he survived. Somehow, he kept moving through the overwhelming darkness and the ever-present groans of the dead. Each heartbeat, each ragged breath, was both a defiance of the past and a quiet acknowledgment of it. Even as he believed solitude was needed and the shadows whispered reminders of weakness and failure, he did not stop.

The ghosts of the past followed him everywhere—his parents' screams, the eyes of the group as they left him, the echo of every mistake he had ever made—but he carried them like armor, as much as a burden. They reminded him of what he had lost, of what he had survived, and of the fragile, terrifying truth. Even if he was not strong in the way the world demanded, he was still here. Still moving. Still alive.

And that, perhaps, was something worth holding onto.