𝐃𝐄𝐂𝐈𝐌𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍.
[ around every corner; part three ]
━━━━━━━━━━
When the two girls finally arrived at River Street, it seemed they had gotten there just in time, as Lee got knocked down to the ground by someone wearing a red hoodie and a backpack, holding a mountain climbing ice pick. She was masked so they couldn't see her face, except for her dark-colored brown eyes. The woman crept closer and grabbed Lee, ready to deliver the finishing blow-
"No!" Clementine shouted, startling the girl and causing Lee to look up, dazed at the sight of seeing them.
"Clem? Kass?" Lee asked, confused.
"Please, don't hurt him," Clementine pleaded softly.
The girl hesitated, looking back and forth between Lee before reluctantly releasing her hold on him.
Lee stood up and dusted himself off, walking over to Clementine and Kass, placing both hands on their shoulders, assuring them that he was alright.
"You're not from Crawford," the girl concluded as Lee turned to face her. She took off her hood and mask revealing her short, dirty blonde hair.
"Crawford? The hell are you talking about?" Lee asks confused.
Before she could reply, Kenny slowly crept up out of his hiding place, gun at the ready, aiming at the back of her head. Unfortunately, she heard his footsteps.
"Kenny, don't!" Lee exclaimed.
But he didn't listen, and before they knew it, he was on the ground, gun firing, and the woman going to swing her ice pick at him.
"Don't!" Lee exclaimed. "He's with us!"
"Wait! That's my dad! He's with us!" Kassidy cried out as the girl readied to strike him with her ice pick. Kass heard the sound of walker's growling, and slowly turned to notice the walker barricade, "Holy..."
The blonde backed off as Kenny stood up, rubbing his wrist and glaring at the girl.
Kass ran over to get father and threw her arms around his waist.
The blonde looked between the four of them before asking, "Who the hell are you people?"
"Everyone just calm down," Lee said, but Kenny responded by shouting over him.
"I'll calm down once she tells me who the fuck she is!"
"Back off, asshole. The name's Molly," she told them, rolling her eyes at the older bearded man.
"Molly. I'm Lee, this is Kenny, Clementine, and Kassidy. We're not looking for any trouble," Lee introduced.
"Hey," Kass and Clem greeted, waving at Molly.
Molly looked at the two kinds for a moment and back at Lee, "You guys aren't from Crawford, are you?"
"We don't even know what that is," Lee told her, shaking his head with a scoff.
"Everything beyond that barricade," Molly concluded, gesturing toward the massive walker barricade behind them.
"What the hell happened here?" Lee asked her.
"You really want to know?" Molly asked.
Kenny and the other duo nodded while Kassidy leaned forward with interest.
"When everything started going to shit, some people closed off that whole neighbourhood. People who will do anything to stay alive, try to keep the dead out. I try to avoid them," Molly informed.
"Why?"
"Let's just say they have a zero-tolerance policy for people who won't or can't- live by their rules," she scoffed.
"So how'd you know we weren't them?" Lee asked, tilting his head in confusion.
Molly turned to look at Clem and Kass, with a sad look upon her face. "Because there are no children in Crawford. Not anymore."
"What do you mean, no children? Why not?" Lee asked her, brows furrowed I'm thought.
"No children, no elderly, no one with an advanced medical condition," Molly walked over to the large barricade of dead bodies, walkers hanging on spikes above it. "Basically no one who will be a burden on the community. That's how they survived, while the rest of the world went to shit around them."
Kenny scoffed, shaking his head, "Jesus Christ..."
"Well, just the opposite, when you think about it."
"What exactly did Crawford do with with all these 'burdens'?" Lee asked. "What happened to them?"
Molly gestured to the walkers behind them, "Well, you met some of them already."
Kenny shook his head, grumbling, "Fuck me..."
"Yeah. Anyone who got sick. Anyone they thought was too old. Anyone they figured wasn't strong enough to survive. To them, those people were just mouths to feed. A drain on their precious resources."
Kassidy looked over at her suspiciously, eyes narrowed, "How do you know all this?"
"Everyone in Savannah knew what was going on in Crawford. It was passes around like a ghost story," she turned away from the walkers, walking down the street as the others followed. "Except this one was true."
"Any idea who was ringing those bells all over town?" Lee asked.
"Yeah. That would be me."
Kenny's face scrunched up in anger. "I knew it! Lee, I knew she was the one watching us, fucking with us!"
"Get that finger out of my face, grandpa, before I jam it up your ass. I haven't been watching you. Hell, I don't even know who you people are."
Kass snorted in amusement, "She called you grandpa!"
"Relax, Kenny," Lee said, trying to diffuse the situation. "The guy on the radio was a guy, remember?"
"Yeah, well," Kenny turned back to look at Molly. "Ringing that bell this morning almost got us all killed. Raised the dead all around us."
"That's the idea, genius," Molly huffed out. "I ring the bell in one neighbourhood to get all the local geeks towards it, then it buys me some time to scavenge the areas they cleared out."
"Geeks?" Kenny scoffed, bewildered. "Is that what you call them?"
"Yeah, you know, like the the carnival. They'll eat anything, alive or dead."
"That's pretty smart," Lee praised the young woman, "what you do with the bells."
"It doesn't take much to outsmart the dead, they're a bunch of dumbasses. Just gotta make sure you clear out, get in and out quickly, before they wander back again." Molly crossed her arms, "Now. I'm going to ask you people one last time- if you're not from Crawford, who the hell are you? And what are you doing here?"
"Down here looking for a boat," Lee told her. "Hoping to get our people out of here, get them someplace safe."
Molly scoffed, "Yeah, good luck with that. Those who had boats got out of here as soon as people started eating each other. Any that got left behind got stripped for parts. Cars too."
Kenny folded his arms over his chest in disbelief, "There's got to be something."
"If there was, do you think I'd still be here? I've been over every inch of this city, it's picked clean."
"Goddamn it!" Kenny exclaimed aggressively. "Fuck!"
"Hey, moron, want to think about keeping your voice down?" Molly hissed over at him.
Kenny looked out toward the docks, slowly lowering his head in defeat. "Shit."
"Since you folks aren't getting on any boat," Molly turned back to Lee and the kids. "I'd advise you to head back to where you came from, before-"
She was cut off by the sound of groaning from behind them. Walkers came pouring from out from one street, making their way toward the living.
"Great," Molly sighed. "Just great."
"Shit! The gunshot brought them back!" Kass exclaimed, eyes wide in a slight panic.
Kenny looked at them. "Shit. Isn't that the-"
"Way we came?" Lee finished, sighing. "Yeah."
"Isn't there another way back to the house?" Clementine asked with worried and wide eyes.
"Molly," Lee turned back toward the woman. "Is there a-" but she was already running, vanishing into an alley, and when they followed her, she was climbing up a fire escape.
"Hey!" Lee looked up at her. "You're just going to leave us here?"
"Sorry, I must have missed that part of our conversation where you became my problem!"
"Please don't leave us!" Clem called up to her, voice shaky with fear.
Molly closed her eyes and sighed, squatting down and reaching her hand out. "Come on! Make it fast!" Lee picked Kass up and raised her so that Molly could grab her hand, pulling her up onto the fire escape. He did the same for Clem just as the walkers started coming down the alleyway.
"Come on, come on, hurry!" Lee exclaimed urgently as he lifted Kenny up.
Molly quickly helped pull the man up, leaving Lee all alone down in the alleyway.
"Lee! Come on!" Clem and Kass exclaimed urgently, panicked as the walkers poured into the alley.
Kenny leaned down, holding his hand out for Lee to grab onto. "Come on, man, one good jump!" He exclaimed.
Lee jumped up, grabbing onto Kenny's hand, but, unfortunately, Kenny couldn't hold on and dropped him instead.
"Gaaah!" Lee grunted as he fell back to the ground, the walkers drawing ever closer to him.
"Lee! No!" Clem squealed, eyes wide with fear and concern.
Quickly, Lee backed away and stood up, pushing the dumpster behind him aside and trying to run for it, but more walkers appeared, cutting him off and trapping him in place. Lee frantically looked around for an escape route.
"The manhole cover!" Kass exclaimed, gesturing toward it, Lee pulling at it, but it wouldn't budge. He couldn't get it off.
"Argh! It's stuck!" Lee groaned as Molly sighed, looking down at the man in contemplation.
"Here!" she threw her ice pick down to him. "Use this to pry it off!"
With more leverage, Lee pulled and the manhole cover was finally removed, revealing a sewer tunnel beneath. Quickly, he climbed down before the walkers could get to him.
"Lee!" Clem squealed, watching as the walkers gathered around the manhole, a few of them falling down after Lee.
The group stood waiting for a response, but there had been nothing. They feared the worst until they could faintly hear Lee saying something about getting back to the house.
"We should go back to the house," Kass concluded, causing Clem to look over at her in shock.
"But what about Lee?!" the little girl exclaimed.
"Clem, hon, I'm sure he'll be fine, but right now we have to go. Okay?" Kenny tried, but he sounded like he was trying to convince himself more than anything. Clem just meekly nodded in response.
Molly began climbing up to the roof. "Best we can do is get you back to the house. Where is it?"
"You sure you wanna come with us?" Kenny asked her, lifting his brows in confusion.
"I know my way around here and we obviously can't go back on the streets, so yeah."
Kenny looked her up and down for a moment before he sighed. "Thanks," he responded softly.
"Stay close to me, I'll lead," Molly ordered as Kenny followed suit, leaving Clem and Kass alone for a moment.
"Kass?" Clem asked quietly.
"Yeah?" the older girl questioned, looking back at her.
"Do you think Lee is going to be alright?" the younger girl asked in a state of worry.
"I'm sure Lee will be fine, he has to be. I promise," Kass assured her young friend with a gentle smile.
Clem smiled and stood up, the both of them following Kenny and Molly up the ladder, setting out back toward the manor.