HEART OF GLASS
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO !
[ season three, episode three ]
The smell of burning flesh was ripe in the air as Theo, Andrea and Michonne trudged through the smoking forest.
A great plume of thick, black smoke looming over the amalgamation of trees like a veil had brought them this far. Curiosity. Theo had been reluctant at first, afraid it would prove to be a trap inducted by wastrels seeking the equipment and weapons on their backs, ultimately ending in their deaths. But Michonne had impeccably good judgment when it came to approaching precarious predicaments, so Theo followed after her, just as he had been for months.
They ducked behind brambles and bushes, staring pensively at the scene of devastation splayed out before them.
A broken helicopter, twisted and mangled, smoking and flaming. Evidently, the aircraft had recently fallen from the sky, crushing the congregation of trees as it toppled down, down, down into the earth like some falling meteor, littering debris across the forest floor in its wake. Everything surrounding it was broken. The people, especially.
Theo found he had a morbid sense of curiosity when it came to the dead man beside the mangled helicopter.
His body had been ripped completely in half, entrails spilling across the grass, lifeless eyes staring up at the cloudless tapestry above. He was wearing military gear; even this long after the outbreak, he was still clinging to hope and devotion, serving a cause that had been long forgotten. Theo had no idea what type of person the dead man had been before . . . this, but for the sake of positive memorial, he assumed it to be pleasant. Perhaps the military's last combatants had been seeking survivors to assist when the helicopter went down. Perhaps not.
He would never know.
Michonne scurried back into their concealment of overgrown shrubbery as the low rumble of approaching vehicles echoed in the distance, gradually growing louder and closer. Instinctively, Theo reached for the tawdry bow on his back, and slipped an arrow from the quiver.
"Did you see how many?" the young boy inquired in a hushed voice.
Michonne shook her head, "Couldn't tell. Two, three ─ there could be more."
Soon enough, the vehicles were upon them. Parked about thirty metres or so from their hiding spot, the people who fanned out from the cars and into the clearing were armed to the teeth with heavy weaponry. It was safe to say Theo had begun to grow relatively anxious.
Strangely enough, the man who appeared to be the appointed leader of the clan was dressed . . . casually. He barked orders at the men carrying rifles as he slowly meandered toward the broken helicopter, serpentine-like eyes pensively scrutinising his bleak surroundings. At first glance, Theo thought he looked like he could be a kind man, but what would he know ─ he could barely tell the difference between a duck and a swan.
Staying back and out of sight was a safer option. Michonne knew it, and Andrea knew it. The latter stifled a rattling cough with the back of her hand, trying to smother the noise against her flesh in order to remain as quiet as possible.
Fortunately enough, they were not heard nor were they seen.
Although, one of the armed men padded so close to their hiding position that Theo felt nausea simmer in his stomach, the metaphorical hackles on the back of his neck rising in forewarning of the what could possibly unfold as a result of their location being discovered.
The man loaded a bow ─ that, must be added, was in far better condition then Theo's, which left him to wonder if it was used as frequently as his own ─ and fired a sleek arrow into an encroaching walker's head. The grim sound of blood splattering against a cluster of fallen leaves was loud enough to make Andrea gag in a mixture of both disgust and fear.
Theo patted her back reassuringly, though he prayed deep down she would refrain from vomiting. He had never been very good at dealing with retching, nor coping with the look and the scent of excreted bodily fluids; someone in school emptied their stomach in the middle of the cafeteria once, and Theo followed suit rather quickly. He was sent home early as a result. His father hadn't been happy about the circumstances, but his father was never anything other than miserable, so it didn't make a difference.
Theo was incredibly thankful when Andrea inhaled sharply, cleared her throat, and managed to withhold her breakfast.
"We should sneak through the forest. Make sure they don't see us." the young boy suggested meekly. Michonne's nipped expression was an answer in itself; he shouldn't have bothered wasting his breath.
They weren't going anywhere.
Theo continued watching the strangers wander through the smoky wood. The man dressed casually ducked his head into the wreckage of the helicopter, obscuring his back from view. After a brief pause, he turned rapidly and called out to his comrades in an unprecedentedly calm manner, "Got a breather! Tim!"
His men raced across the clearing to assist their leader. Together, they pulled an unconscious soldier covered from head to toe in blood from the blackened debris. They carefully loaded him into one of the cars.
"He's saving them." Andrea said quietly. "We should show ourselves."
Michonne was adamant in her decision to stand their ground, "Not yet."
Listening to Michonne had always been of most paramount importance between the unlikely clan of survivors ─ reason being, she was always right about everything. She was their key to survival. And about this entire ordeal, as usual, Michonne was right. Staying put was the wisest decision.
Why? Well, apparently these men enjoyed stabbing corpses in the heads.
Theo blinked to ensure he wasn't hallucinating. Nope. He wasn't. He watched the causally-dressed man plunge a blade into the dead solider's head, pull it out, wipe the grime and blood and brain matter on his trousers, and proceed to go about his business as if nothing out of the ordinary had ever occurred.
Alright, they had to be crazy. Crazy or sadistic or seriously into mutilation. A loose screw must have been rattling around in their heads.
Theo's stomach tightened with fear when he realised the men were turning their attention to Michonne's designated hiding spot amongst the brambles and bushes. Confusion blossomed. Then he understood. Theo's eyes moved to the chained walkers thrashing and grumbling behind Michonne, growing restless with the opportunity of bloodshed. The noise the jawless-armless-walkers were emitting was drawing unwanted, unnecessary attention from their current opposition.
Gnawing on his lip, Theo nocked an arrow into his bow as a precaution. Michonne's strange choice in pet had been involuntarily following after them for months, and he was reluctant to send an arrow flying through their skulls without permission first. The chained walkers weren't his friends, and they didn't bring him comfort of any sort, but . . . well, they kept them alive through the winter, allowing them to pass through small hordes undetected. Scents mingled, or something.
However, it seemed Michonne's pets were bound to bring their deaths very soon, too, and not their survival. Every man in the clearing was turning to decipher the noise, and soon enough they would locate the three people crouched in the bushes. What would they do? Kill them?
Probably. Every other human they'd encountered over the last eight months proved to be untrustworthy. What was to say these men weren't the same?
He reluctantly dropped his bow, the bottom nestled into the dirt. Before he could say anything relating to the matter of the chained walkers, Michonne had rose to a crouch and whipped her sword through the air in one clean strike.
Two severed heads dropped to the forest floor, landing inches away from Theo's knee.
Well . . . that solved it. Michonne's pets were not all that important to her, after all.
Thankfully, the deaths of Michonne's undead comrades drew the armed strangers' attention away from their hiding spot. The snarling ceased alongside any inkling of suspicion. Theo sagged as relief rushed through him, prying the arrow from his bow and slipping it back into the quiver.
A beat of tranquility breezed over the trio. Only a beat, nothing more.
As sudden as an unprecedented storm, they were alerted to a disturbance in the deeper segment of woods behind them. Within seconds, Theo had a knife to his throat, and a gun was pointed at Michonne's head.
They were the only two with weapons. The only two reaching for deadly-backup in the hasty moment of chaos. And, quite obviously, Andrea's incapability of keeping herself upright ─ never mind wield a weapon ─ was clear enough to these armed men to perceive her as unthreatening.
Theo looked down at the blade pressed against his neck. It was a safe enough distance away from completely tearing his throat to ribbons, but close enough it would take less than a second to gut him like a fish. Unsurprisingly, he did not gain any relief from that perspective. The man standing behind him had the upper hand here. He had Theo's life nestled in the very palm of his hand. If he wanted to spill blood, he would; there was absolutely nothing Theo Peterson could do to stop that.
Michonne's eyes were on the endangered boy the entire time, with little thought to the gun aimed at her head. As instructed, she lowered her katana and dropped it into the dirt.
"Now turn around, nice an' easy." one of the strangers demanded, his hoarse voice teeming with a southern accent.
Again, Theo's eyes flickered down to the blade teetering further toward his throat. Fear had him in a chokehold. Any second now, he could face death. Any second. All it took was one wrong move, and he was a decomposing body stacked against thousands.
He gulped, felt the cool metal graze his flesh, and slowly turned to face their opposition. Obey and live.
The first, incredibly visible thing Theo noticed ─ the man didn't have an arm. A prosthetic stump was strapped in its place, a long blade welded into the bottom of the metal clasp. Unlike his companions, he did not have a victim to threaten with impending doom.
The last to turn was Andrea. She was pale and sickly, and her bones were weak and glass-like, protruding beneath porcelain skin. Every small movement brought her pain. Suffering. She reminded Theo of a broken doll, cracked along the surface, hollow on the inside. Unfortunately, medication could not heal a state of mind ─ and Andrea's battered one was in dire need of help.
The man with the stump stared at Andrea. Behind his beady eyes, curiosity was mounting, stacking in the pallets of pale-green like building blocks. And then his features seemed to slacken with nothing short of recognition, and he pointed at her and bellowed, "Oh, holy shit. Blondie!"
Theo's head slowly, almost comically, twisted to the side. Incredulous, he gazed upon Andrea as if she had just sprouted another head with the face of someone different.
How was their world so minuscule? Out of everyone, how was it she knew this guy?
Speak of the devil. Andrea's old . . . acquaintance ─ if even that was what they were before paths diverted ─ spread his arms wide and gestured down to the pale blonde comically, "Now, how's a bout a big hug for your old pal Merle?"
Nope. Not today, Satan.
The pressure had built and built and built. Andrea could take no more. She fainted, and Merle's botched arms were left vacant.
He frowned, staring down at her unconscious figure nonchalantly, his expression almost bored. "So much for happy reunions."
So much for happy, Theo thought.
In this new world, happy had become an almost unreachable concept, lingering on the horizon beside dreams for the future and trampled ambitions from early childhood. Once in a blue moon, perhaps, happiness blossomed in that shrouded, bleak place of constant sorrow ─ when cries warped to laughter, and laughter warped to jest. But only once in a blue moon. It wasn't often enough to reignite hope. There was too much room for sadness these days that grounds for believing something good might happen seemed to dissipate in thin air.
Theo's happiness had been misplaced for months. He struggled to keep it alive. Every opportunity at ebullience was eventually squashed by the memories of bloodshed. It plagued his mind day and night, and there was no road left to turn. No place to leave it all behind.
He coped with it.
Admittedly, he wasn't entirely sure how he was going to cope with their current situation.
But when the blindfolds were drawn, Theo's heart stuttered in his chest, and he swiftly came to the conclusion that his methods of coping would involve Michonne's strategic way of thinking, Andrea's devotion to retribution, and a solid plan.
And if necessary, there would be violence.
Only as a last resort.
✧.｡. *.
Heartbeat ─ far too high. The doctor tending to Andrea's sickness had told Theo to relax, repeatedly, yet he continued pacing the room like an anxious soccer-dad watching the game's lengthy final minutes tick down to zero.
It was when Michonne placed a hand on his shoulder and gave him a stern look that Theo finally descended from his frenzy.
He folded his arms and stood beside the medical cot. The blindfold had sent him haywire. That was it. With darkness pressing against the corners of his temporarily impaired vision, Theo had felt as though he were a caged animal being shipped away to another continent. He hated it; he was insanely claustrophobic to the point breathing became a problem.
Truth be told, it wasn't the first time he had felt secluded from his surroundings, shoved into an abyss of shadows and solitude. The first time had been inordinately different to his most recent experience ─ it was a cupboard he was shoved into, not a car. And the man responsible for it was someone he was supposed to dote on, an idol to worship, according to social norms. This time, the people responsible for his capture were strangers without assigned names, lacking titles and identities. Silhouettes, if you will.
He wanted to keep it that way. It was easier to digest when there weren't any expectations to meet.
He didn't know who they were, therefore he didn't expect to see them effectuate certain behaviours based on the trusting relationships that had been forged between them. There were none ─ no relationships of any type. Not with these strangers who put a knife to his throat.
Those sentiments belonged to the past. Belonged to a monster lurking in the crevices of his darkest nightmares.
He wanted to stop thinking about it. Not wanted to, he had to. He turned to the doctor, growing agitated at her silence, "Why are we being held here?"
"We want to leave." Andrea added roughly.
"You're not well enough." the doctor said, pushing the end of a sharp IV needle into Andrea's skin. She lowered her eyes to meet Michonne's ─ of whom was sitting on the plastic chair beside the cot, stone-faced and furious. "And its dark. You should stay the night."
"Mind telling us where we are first?" Theo demanded, leaning against the wall.
The doctor looked over her shoulder, watery eyes scanning the bolted infirmary-door. There was something hindering her ability to speak wholly and truthfully, but Theo couldn't discern exactly what it was. A rule? A trick? He decided to settle with the latter, and his guard shot up quick as lightning.
But the doctor only said, with the deepest of sympathies, "That's not for me to say. He'll talk to you."
"Who?" Michonne demanded.
As if on cue, the infirmary door swung open to reveal their captor, a man known by the ridiculous name of Merle. He sauntered inside, flanked by two other men carrying rifles. His beady eyes flicked between the trio, eventually settling on Andrea ─ mostly because he knew he could talk to her without having to break through any premeditated barriers.
He spread his arms for the second time that day, chuckling softly to himself, "Bet you was wondering if I was real. Probably hoping I wasn't."
Andrea glared at him. She was indifferent, cold and detached from any former-relationship they once shared. Something about Merle's vexing demeanour made Theo believe there wasn't one in the first place.
He was just an old face, and alongside him came old memories. A package deal she was less than inclined to indulge.
"Well, here I am." Merle said, pointing out the obvious. He dragged a metal folding-chair to the centre of the room and sat on it backwards, arms folded over the headrest. "I guess this old world gets a little smaller toward the end, huh? Ain't so many of us left to share the air, right?"
Theo detected a flicker of sadness in the man's expression. But it dissipated into stoicism without any indication he had ever felt governed by the sorrows of it all to begin with.
"You know, when they found me," Merle started. Inside his head, Theo groaned in dismay ─ he could really care less about hearing this guy's life-after-the-outbreak story. "I was near bled out. Starving. Thinking to myself a bullet might make a good last meal. Take myself a nice long nap after. Wait for Daryl on the other side."
Daryl. More names? How long had Andrea known this man? She had told Theo and Michonne stories of the other survivors she met near Atlanta city, about the quarry they used as a camp, but he didn't know she had spent enough time there to become seriously acquainted to the other people within it.
Andrea was a woman of many words, but each chosen carefully. She always seemed to be holding something back.
"You seen my brother?" Merle inquired plaintively.
Andrea shook her head, her voice hoarse with sickness as she spoke, "Not for a long time."
"Makes two of us."
"He went back for you. Him and Rick." Andrea added hopefully. More unknown names. "You were already gone."
"Well," Merle chuckled to himself. He began to remove the metal-sheath attached to the end of his right arm. "Not all of me."
What was once a hand was now a stump of mangled skin and badly-healed burns that looked raised and strangely akin to pressed bubble wrap. Theo stared at it for a while, but bodily instincts forced him to look away when bile rose in his throat and threatened to spill out across the carpet. He had a weak stomach ─ though his morbid sense of curiosity often betrayed it.
"Yeah, Rick." Merle spat the name out venomously. "He's that prick that cuffed me to the rooftop."
From Theo's perspective, Merle had likely deserved it. Some form of punishment, at least. The one-handed man had a big mouth, and probably knew how to run it.
"He tried." Andrea said, defending her old ─ likely dead ─ companion. "Daryl stepped up. He wanted to keep looking, but things happened. People died. A lot of them."
Merle looked mildly intrigued.
"Jim, Dale, Jacqui, Sophia . . ." Andrea hesitated, drawing in a deep breath. Her voice thinned with welling emotion, "Amy."
Ah. Now that was a name Theo knew; Andrea had a sister named Amy. Like so many others, Amy was tragically bitten in the early days of the outbreak. She passed away from the blood loss and eventually succumbed to the infection. Andrea had been the one to put a bullet through her sister's head. Even now, months later, she struggled to talk about it without getting extremely emotional. Understandable.
He knew how it felt. Theo had mentioned Sonya once. Never again.
"She was a good kid," Merle said, looking genuine with his compliment. He offered Andrea his condolences. "I'm sorry to hear it."
"There were more. A lot more."
"Those two blonde kids . . ." Merle pondered his own thoughts for a fleeting moment, digging deep. He tapped the chair to help recall the many faces of his past. "One of 'em was deaf. The other was always pesterin' my brother about savin' rations."
"Marley and Sage?" Andrea's brows furrowed. "What about them?"
"Did they make it?"
A light shrug came from the blonde. "As far as I know. We wound up on a farm, and it got overrun ─ that was the last I saw of them both. Same with everybody else. I don't know if they're alive or dead."
"How long ago?"
"Seven, eight months?" Andrea looked over her shoulder at Michonne, who was still stone-faced and furious. "I was separated from the rest of them. Got left behind. I know what it feels like."
Merle reattached his prosthetic arm, chuckling hollowly at Andrea's attempt at empathy, "I doubt that."
They had spent too long neglecting the elephant in the room. Andrea was beating around the bush, and so was Merle. It was getting late. Theo straightened, leaning against the medical cot. He levelled Merle with a glare and took matters into his own hands, "What do you want from us?"
"Damn. Look at that ─ Robin Hood speaks!" Merle's jest elicited a laugh from the two men acting guard beside the door. Theo didn't find it amusing at all. He watched as the man rounded the metal chair and approached the trio situated around, and on, the medical cot. "You're asking me what I want, kid?"
Theo kept quiet.
"Y'all have four walls around you, roof over your heads, she's got medicine running through her veins," Merle gestured to the ceiling, around the bleached walls plastered in medical posters, and lastly to Andrea who sat with the luxury of an IV to keep her steady. "and you want to know what I want?"
He sucked his teeth and moved from Theo to Michonne. She could be frightening when she wanted to be, and Merle had no idea. At least, not until he poked the bear. At current, he was picking up a stick, and the end of that stick was growing closer and closer to prodding Michonne.
It would be a grave mistake. Grave. Theo had bore witness to her enemies' fates ─ both the dead and the living. She did not play around.
"You know what, blondie," Merle addressed Andrea once again, pointing a stumped finger in her direction. "I plucked you, Robin Hood, and your mute here out of the dirt. Saved your asses. How about a thank you?"
"You had a gun on us." Michonne growled.
"Ooh! You speak, too!" Merle's lip curled amusedly. He found this entire situation comical. "Well, who ain't had a gun on 'em in the past year, huh? Anybody?"
He turned around the room, pointing at his guards with that metal-stump of an arm. Have you had a gun on you? Huh? Something about him, about the entire place as a whole, made Theo's chest tighten with anxiety. He wanted to leave. He wanted to bolt out of there.
Just then, the side-door opened. The casually-dressed man from the helicopter crash-site walked into the room. He and Merle whispered indistinctly between one another ─ even when he strained, Theo heard nothing. It seemed they had mastered the skill of silent-speaking.
Or more like, they had mastered the skill of being painfully secretive.
The newcomer gestured to Andrea and began their discussion good-naturedly, "How you feeling?"
"We want our weapons." Michonne interjected.
"Sure," the newcomer shrugged. He was smiling, though the gesture did not quite reach his wrinkled, slightly detached eyes. "On your way out of the front gates."
"Show us the way." Andrea ordered, planting a hand on her hip. "You've kept us locked up in this room."
"You see any bars on the windows?"
"I see two guards by the door." Theo pointed out, scowling. "That's close enough."
The newcomer ─ who Theo ultimately assumed to be their leader, based on the way he carried himself ─ lowered his eyes to the ground, "You're being cared for. Those men are there to protect our people. We don't know you."
"We know enough about you to want out of this place," Andrea argued. She was less accommodating to this man's attitude than she was with Merle's. "We watched you drive a knife into the skulls of two dead men. What the hell was that all about?"
"They turned." The leader appeared mildly bemused, as if this was common knowledge.
Michonne glowered, "They weren't bitten."
He turned his eyes to Merle, and the brief look the pair shared was enigmatic to the onlookers. They looked melancholy. They knew something that Theo and Michonne and Andrea didn't. What was it? The silence that ensued was like an itch Theo couldn't quite reach, and he was desperate to scratch it to find some relief.
Finally, the leader shook his head, "It doesn't matter. However we die, we all turn."
A metaphorical knife burrowed itself deep into Theo's stomach and twisted. He pulled it out and saw blood pool in his hands. He couldn't stop the flow ─ just like he couldn't stop this new truth from destroying his hope.
However we die, we all turn.
Suddenly, it felt like their efforts were all for nothing. Trying so damn hard to escape the walkers, only to discover it didn't matter either way. Theo could have died out on that smoking crash-site, with a thick, red smile painted across his throat, and he still would have warped into one of those monstrous things.
Nausea rippled in his body.
"It's not easy news to swallow at first, but there it is." The leader's voice rose authoritatively as he walked himself to the end of the room and stood in front of the door. "Now you're not prisoners here, you're guests. If you want to leave, you're free to do so."
Great.
"But we don't open the gates past dusk. Draws too much attention."
Not so great.
"And you especially," the man's eyes were pinned to Andrea. She was still sweating, her skin pallid, but she didn't look half as much of a walking-corpse as she did yesterday. "you need a solid night's sleep. You wouldn't last another day out there in your condition."
Unfortunately, he was right. Andrea knew he was right, so did Michonne and Theo. He hated it when people on his might-have-to-kill-list were right.
"I'll have you brought over to my place in the morning, return your weapons." He stepped out into the corridor, leaning casually against the doorframe. "Extra ammo, food for the road, some meds, keys to a vehicle if you want one. Send you on your way. No hard feelings."
Theo exchanged a wary glance with Michonne. That was an awful amount of supplies for three strangers they plucked up from the outside world ─ were they truly worth that much in his eyes? The answer was no, without a shadow of a doubt. It had to be.
But he seemed to think they weren't going to need the supplies. The way he spoke was so liberating and carefree, like it didn't pain him to make such promises. Why?
What was he going to show them?
They followed the man down a narrow walkway, and then turned into an entrance hall. The walls were painted lime-green, the sporadic sprinklings of furniture dotted here and there as white as a string of pearls.
A smile bloomed on the leader's face. He pushed the front double-doors open and gestured out to the surrounding land.
Around them, torches flickered and lifted the darkness.
It was a village ─ a small one. The street was lined with polished houses on either side of the wide stretch of road, which was devoid of debris and waste and decomposing bodies. It was infinitely clean. Even the grass had been trimmed. It looked like it had been purposely preserved since before the outbreak spilled across the entire world. And, the best part about it all was the fact the entire town happened to be surrounded by walls. Thick, sturdy metal walls. Standing atop them were armed guards, gazing out into the night.
Theo's mouth dropped open in shock. He couldn't believe his eyes.
The leader's intentions became clear now. Supplies for the road were unnecessary when this was what awaited them, free of charge.
"Welcome to Woodbury."
⋆.ೃ࿔*:･
welcome to hell more like, sheesh.
anyways more theo content!
alright i love him, he's so funny,
i love writing his thoughts and
the way his mind works. it's so
different to marley.
mama michonne and mama andrea
in his next pov <3