the truth about survival part II • an Alicia Clark fanfiction (girlxgirl)

xii. forgive her

"We promised them," Alicia muttered, grip loosening around her weapon.

"Kamille, they're starting to head to you, you gotta get out of there!" Morgan called into the radio, earning their attention. "You got Jason and his brother?"

Kamille frowned, glancing at a distracted Alicia, before answering the radio. "Change of, er, plans. We're–" She cleared her throat. "We're coming. We'll meet you at the car."

There was a pause, before Morgan answered. "Okay. See you."

Kamille breathed out deeply before looking out the broken window they came through. Some infected were closing in, with half the group on their trail.

"We've got to go, Alicia," Kamille said, glancing at her. "Come on."

Alicia clenched her jaw, nodding slowly. She stabbed Jason in the head, putting him out of his misery, before following Kamille out the window. Narrowly missing the teeth of the infected, both girls managed to make it back to the car where Morgan and Al were. As soon as they were inside, Al floored it.

Kamille could feel Al's eyes on them both in the rear view mirror, but she was too distracted by Alicia sat next to her, who was glaring out the window.

"What happened?" Morgan finally spoke, breaking the silence.

"We were too late," Alicia answered emotionlessly.

Morgan exchanged looks with Al before looking to Kamille questioningly.

"I think Taylor was bitten," she said, voice filled with sadness. "He must have turned and got to Jason. We found them there. It wasn't... it wasn't pretty."

Morgan sighed, unsure what to say.

"We couldn't have known," Al tried to make everyone feel better. "Bitten or not, we couldn't have stopped that."

"We could have come sooner," Alicia mumbled.

Al chewed on her lip, focusing on the road.

"It was the first person," Morgan said calmly. "We tried. Our goal is to help people, right? We still do that. This doesn't change that."

Kamille ran a hand through her hair, leaning back into her seat. "Right..."

As much as she knew that was true, as much as everyone knew that was true, it still felt hard to believe as they were missing the two people they had driven there for in the first place.

–

Being unable to help Jason and Taylor took its toll on everyone, but nobody let it get to them more than Alicia did.

As soon as they arrived back at the factory, Kamille noticed how Alicia was silent and sticking to herself. She considered checking on her, but realised she didn't want to get into an inevitable argument, so left her to it. Besides, Strand or someone would check in – she wasn't Kamille's problem.

Almost a week later was when Kamille really took note of Alicia's absence around the place. June had called everyone in after dinner, claiming to have fixed the TV up so they could finally have a movie night.

Kamille was sat in the third row with Al, looking around and noticing how excited everybody looked. It was the perfect pick-me-up after all the bad luck they'd been having lately. But she couldn't help but notice the lack of Alicia.

"Hey, Al," Kamille said, glancing at the journalist. "Is, er, is Alicia not coming?"

Al smirked. "What, you been keeping tabs?"