[A/N: This Chapter is one I'm half making up, half taking from a deleted scene. I accidentally info-dumped a bunch of horror film trope stuff and can't be bothered to get rid of it since I wrote so much. Literally wrote the opening scene of a horror film I remember exactly, then went and rewatched the scene to check I got it right. Had to change a few things that I miswrote but meh. You can skip it if you want,]
Last Call
-Previously-
We had no destination in mind as we peeled down the streets of Atlanta, one member down, and a glimmer of hope snuffed out.
All we had now was a chance.
---
We drove aimlessly down the roads of Atlanta, looking desperately for a place to stay. I had curled up against the truck door as Daryl followed behind the RV, and watched as shops and buildings passed by slowly. We couldn't speed up, there were too many obstacles on the road, from buildings and bodies alike.
I found myself scanning the bodies, looking for a black-haired woman among the fallen. Maybe if I looked close enough, I might find the corpse of my best friend.
A morbid thought indeed.
Her hair wasn't naturally black, but she had dyed it black a few weeks before we'd come to America, and at most, there would be faint blonde roots showing from her scalp.
But none of the bodies matched her description.
So maybe I'd find her up and about, dead or alive.
---
We had been driving for a while before I was pulled from my thoughts by Daryl honking the horn and screaming at something. I turned forward to see the RV swerving from a massive group of walkers circling a body, and the door opened up to Glenn, who yanked said body into the RV.
"Who was that?" I lean forward in my seat to try and get a better view, but all I see is the pack of walkers skim by the window as we speed by in an attempt to both catch up with the RV and avoid becoming their next meal.
"Damn sonovabitch was out of the RV, had that bag of guns 'n everything." Daryl drawls, following the RV again. He glanced at me out of the corner of his eye as I looked at him in confusion. "Shane was almost walker chow."
"Ah," I replied, then whispered to myself, "Shame."
Then silence settled over us once more as we followed behind the RV. Eventually, I began to recognise my surroundings and look over at Daryl to see that he was coming to the same conclusion as I was.
---
We rolled to a stop outside the dilapidated walls and quickly jumped out of the truck to catch up with the others who had left the RV and headed straight down the path.
"Glenn!" I called quietly as I jogged over, "We really doing this? I mean, we ended on okay terms, but they were struggling badly when we saw them last."
He looked at me but was interrupted by Andrea on the other side of the group asking the same question.
"With the guns we gave 'em, they'll probably throw us a party." Daryl declared, marching forward with his crossbow raised to defend if needed. He turned to Rick as he spoke next, "Good call, for once."
I slapped him lightly on the arm as I passed him, which prompted a scowl and grunt from the archer. "Don't be a dick," I whisper.
It was eerily quiet as we approached the inner walls, jumping down through the crumbing windows and down the path we'd taken not six days prior. I scanned every possible perch imaginable for signs of life but found nobody. "Where are the lookouts?" Glenn hissed anxiously, and I shook my head with a frown. As we walked towards the giant wooden doors to the warehouse, the few of us carrying spread out on the outer circle of the group for protection, and I prayed to whatever god was out there for Guillermo and Felipe to emerge, with spunky Miguel following close behind to welcome us back.
But they never did.
Rounding the corner to the large wooden doors, we find exactly what we'd hoped not to.
Shane curses as we came across multiple bodies, all of which had chunks out of them and around ten walkers stand up as we stare. I hold my shotgun up as they advance, and we look to Rick for orders. "To hell with the noise." He growls, before raising his pistol and firing.
It was mere seconds before the walkers were down for the count, and Rick wasted no time in taking the opening to the building.
We made our way one by one through the building, with no sight of survivors to be found. Down the metal stairs and through the open doors we searched, until the smell of rotting flesh hit us so hard we could no longer deny the truth. Every door was open, some broken off their hinges, and blood coated the floors beneath bodies of old and young, none turned, killed instantly.
Sophia cried out behind us and Daryl whipped around to shut her up. Carol bit back and Daryl threatened to shut her up before Lori told him to back off.
"Calm down for god's sake," I hissed at him, "I don't even like seeing this. She's a child."
He scowled at me before glancing back at Sophia, who was hiding her face in Carol's arms. Of course, she was frightened, we'd just walked into a graveyard. Daryl looked back at me before huffing heavily and turning to Rick as Lori asked for the 'stay or go'.
"We don't have the fuel," Rick replied, before being interrupted by Shane.
"We hunker down for the night," Shane interjected, "Okay Rick. You, me, Daryl, we're gonna do a sweep, make sure we're alone. The rest of you, barricade those doors."
They went off immediately, and those of us left turned in every angle to find anything to push against the front doors. They had already been barricaded once with wood, but it was a flimsy patch job that clearly hadn't worked for the Vatos, and would most likely crumble at the sight of a stiff wind.
We collectively looked to the broken vending machine against the wall a few paces down the hall and beelined towards it. Glenn and T-dog held the top as we women tipped it on its side, and Dale slid a bloody blanket underneath it to help it slide across the floor. Positioning it in front of the doors, we took a step back and unanimously decided it just wasn't enough.
I don't think any of us felt safe knowing there was just a tipped-over vending machine between us and outside, especially since it didn't even cover the boarded-up windows on the doors. I found a small cabinet that I was able to carry to the door alone with a bit of effort and saw T-Dog and Glenn hurling a much larger one from the opposite room. Stacking them carefully next to each other on top of the vending machine, we went searching for more to pile in front of the entrance. We grabbed a hospital bed from the top of the flight of stairs next to us, Glenn and Andrea carrying it down carefully and quietly, and all but throwing it on top of the two cabinets.
Andrea threw something on top of the bed, and we took a step back to check the security of it when we heard the shuffling coming towards the door, followed by broken growls.
"Walkers!" Lori croaked, gesturing for us to get low and be quiet.
The shadows of the dead flitted across the wall where the setting sun's light barely streamed through the other doors window that we'd half barricaded. This close to the door, I could see the walker that took interest in the noise we'd made, but it lost focus and moved on not a minute later, lucky for us.
We didn't stick around to see if it'd come back.
Running quietly down the halls, we followed Glenn as he lead the way to the main hall that we'd found him in before.
And what a sight it was.
More bodies littered the floor, some of which I recognised from when the old man in the chair was having an asthma attack and others that I'd never seen. They had all been shot in the head, which made it a clear case of murder and not the new everyday occurrence of the undead.
As I looked around, Rick began to speak. "Upstairs is our best bet," He explained, gesturing up with one hand while the other rested on his hip. "We've cleared a few rooms, we can barricade those if we have to. We'll be alright"
"You mean it this time, or are you lying to us like all the times before," Carol grumbled, sneering at Rick, and I scoffed silently, walking silently beside Daryl.
"What the hell happened?" Glenn breathed, looking around at the massacre.
Andrea stepped forward with a concerningly relaxed face. "What do you think?" Her arms were crossed over her chest as she looked to the far wall. "They got overrun."
I shook my head at her in blatant disbelief. How on gods overgrown earth did she look at dead uninfected bodies and conclude that they'd been overrun? From what we'd seen and heard, there hadn't been a single newly turned walker roaming the inside of the building, nor had there been an infected body strewn about anywhere. Nobody had simply died and turned, and nobody had been bitten. This wasn't at the hands of the dead, this was the work of the living.
Daryl scoffed beside me as he paced back and forth, prompting Andrea to swivel her pinched face in our direction. "Something to say?" She urged him to continue sarcastically.
"Yeah, how 'bout 'observant'." Daryl snapped, glaring at the blonde.
"'Observant'." She nodded mockingly to the archer. "Big word for a guy like you. Three whole syllables."
"Walkers didn't do this," Daryl continued, surprisingly calm even after an - admittedly shit - insult to his intelligence. "geeks didn't show up till all this went down. Somebody attacked this place, killed all these people, took whatever they wanted. They're shot in the head - execution style." He looks around the room and gestures again. "Y'all worried about walkers? I'd be much more worried about the people who came and did all this."
"There's no infected bodies, no pre-death bites either. Daryl's right." I wave around to the many examples on the floor. "And walkers don't know how to use guns so..." I sighed and rested my hands on my hips. "The call came from inside the house."
Rick tilted his head at me as Daryl strode past, glaring daggers at Andrea.
"Get a dictionary. Look it up." He sneered, before pointing to his head mockingly. "Observant."
Daryl then stormed out of the room.
I make my way to Glenn, but not before circling Rick and muttering to Andrea, "Might be a good idea to actually think before you speak." I patted her shoulder, which she angrily shrugged off. "Save the smidge of likeability you have left."
As the rest of the group dissolved into who' and whats, I stopped beside Glenn and looked down the hall that Daryl had stomped down. I didn't see which way he went, so there was no point scourging the halls for the archer, but I hoped that he'd come back soon. It didn't sit right with me that we were split up in this building.
After a whole assload of arguing from the others, everyone migrated upstairs. Even Daryl appeared through the doorway after we'd all entered. We ended up congregating in one of the only rooms in the hall without either blood or a body inside and sat against the walls, the mothers and their children in the back corner furthest from the door.
Rick and Shane went to check the kitchen and anywhere else that they might find supplies, so we just sat in silence, the room illuminated only by a camp lamp and a few candles. I sat down between Glenn and Dale against some shelves, picking quietly at my fingernails.
---
[A/N: I accidentally info-dumped a bunch of horror film trope stuff and can't be bothered to get rid of it since I wrote so much (1,700+ words). Literally wrote the opening scene of a horror film I remember exactly, then went and rewatched the scene to check I got it right. Had to change a few things that I miswrote but meh. You can skip it if you want.]
[For those who choose to read on, TRIGGER WARNING!!!!: Mentions of stalking, Murder, and CHILD DEATH!!! This is not my story, I'm just writing it as it actually goes.]
---
"Was that a movie reference back in the hall? Uh, 'The call is in the house'?" Glenn leaned into me and whispered low. "Cause that was cool."
I tore my eyes from my cuticles and raised an eyebrow at him. "'The call came from inside the house'? It's not the exact quote, but yeah. I remember it mostly from a film called 'When A Stranger Calls'." I grin at him despite our circumstances, unconsciously delving into my horror knowledge.
"It's originally from an old urban legend called 'The Babysitter and The Man Upstairs', but seen in this horror film released in 1979, which was recently remade in 2006, though it's not really as good. It's centred around the trope that was first seen on screen in the 1974 film 'Black Christmas', this Canadian film where a deranged man called Billy Lenz uses a sorority mums phone - which is connected to another line since you couldn't call a phone connected to the same line - to call and kill off college girls, though some of it is quite funny for its time. They call him 'The Moaner' because he makes weird noises through the phone. It's actually considered the first horror slasher film, along with 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre' that came out the same year, even though 'Psycho' came out 14 years prior. They're the blueprints for all the slasher films that came after-?"
Absolute horror and embarrassment washed over my face at the realisation that I'd started spewing horror film information while surrounded by people literally living in an apocalypse. I stare back down at my nails, hoping that if I chanced a look at Glenn, I wouldn't see a look of pure disgust on his face.
"So the killer taunts someone over the phone and then kills them?" Glenn summarised quietly, nudging me with his shoulder. "Did I get that right?"
I look up and past Glenn to the others listening quietly, even the children. I was surprised that the mothers hadn't immediately shut me down the moment I'd said 'horror', but they both seemed strangely intrigued.
"Uh, sort of... But that's 'Black Christmas'. The movie the quote is from is different." I glance at him in surprise as I wave my hand as if I could physically split the two films apart, to which he nods for me to continue. "You want a synopsis or a storytelling?"
Glenn looks around the room at the others, who were watching us quietly, and tilts his head from side to side in consideration. "Tell us a story," He smiles.
"Are you sure it's an appropriate story for our situation? For the kids? It is a scary story." I ask, leaning past Glenn to the two women and their children. "I don't want to upset anyone."
Lori and Carol look at each other for a long second before sighing. "Go on," Lori assured, holding Carl close. "They've lived through worse."
I mentally ready myself for backlash and take a deep breath. "Okay, you asked for this. Can't blame me after."
---
[You can skip here. It's not vital to the story, I just got REALLY carried away at 3 am.]
---
"So basically, in 'When A Stranger Calls', this lass - name's Jill Johnson, A+ horror protagonist name - babysits some rich kids whose parents are out on a date, right? The kids are already asleep when she gets there since they'd just recovered from a cold so the mother didn't want them to be disturbed, and Jill starts getting these creepy calls from an English guy out of nowhere after talking with her friend for hours, there was no real build-up, just 'ring-ring', you know?"
"It's always the English, isn't it." Andrea quips, looking me dead in the eye. "Seems like a pattern, English people being murderers."
"Just goes to show that you don't want to mess with the English, we're dangerous," I reply, a mean smile on my face. I knew what she was doing, after all. She was trying to get me back for what I'd said earlier. Too bad for her that I could be just as petty. "Best to stay on my good side, you don't want to cross a brit. 'Specially not a Yorkie, we had the highest crime rate in the UK."
That wasn't exactly true, but she didn't need to know that.
"Anyway." I clap quietly, looking around the room. "The film literally opens with Jill walking toward this house, there was no backstory involved. The 70's horror films were just built different. So, she's hung the phone up and is doing homework or something when the phone rings. The call starts off with him near-whispering, 'Have you checked the children?' before hanging up three different times, so she calls the restaurant that the parents are at but they left already, most likely to a movie, so they aren't available. Then she calls the police but do they do anything?" I hold my hands up in mock question, and Glenn shakes his head.
"No! Of course they don't, they just tell her to find a whistle and blow his eardrum the next time he calls, because that's super helpful. Then fifteen minutes later, what happens? Yep, he calls again! The guy asks her 'Why haven't you checked the children?' in a really raspy angry voice, but he still doesn't yell. She slams the phone down and puts the chain on the front door, and looks out the front window for any signs of him, but all she hears is a dog. For some fucking reason she decides to dim the lights and make it darker in the living room, making it harder to see if anyone were to - oh, I don't know - sneak up and kill you? Then, and only then, does she go to check on the children. But she gets stopped at the top step by the phone ringing again. She doesn't answer. She lets it ring throughout the house. How didn't it wake the children?" I peer around to see that everyone looked fully immersed in the story, eyebrows furrowed and head tilted in thought. They were thinking hard.
"The house was so big that they didn't hear the phone?" Sophia muttered first, peering around her mother in the corner.
"That's a good theory!" I nod at her, and she smiles before tucking herself back to Carol's side.
"They're ill. Of course they won't wake up." Andrea scoffs as if it was obvious.
"They just got over their illness, actually." I remind her blandly. "Were you just not listening?"
She just rolls her eyes.
"It's not important." I waved my own question off with a smile. "It's not vital to the story."
"So, she calls the police again, but not before grabbing a cane from the Dad's collection by the door." I continue, and Glenn nods. "The police ask her if she tried whistling - because they're mostly fucking useless - and tell her that she's safe as long as the house is locked up, even after she says she knows he's watching her from outside. But she begs for help, and the officer relents and promises her that he'll alert the phone company and if he calls again, they can try to trace the call. He tells her she has to keep him on the line for at least a minute so they can trace the call, feigning that it was the only way they could help. Why not send an officer to her even just to make her feel safe? Well, there are cruisers around the area so she's so safe. Bullshit. Anyway, they keep an eye on the phone line and let her wait for the call. So she sits for seemingly hours for the stalker's next move."
I remember the film as if I'd watched it yesterday, though I obviously hadn't. The beginning was just a favourite of mine and I had no trouble remembering films I watched and enjoyed, which unfortunately meant nobody would watch films with me if I'd already seen them.
"And then the phone rings again. She answers, 'Hello?', and he replies, 'It's me.'. Jill tells him she knows it's him, and tries to keep him on the phone for as long as possible, promising that the parents would be back soon and she wouldn't be there much longer, but he already knows. 'Can you see me?' she asks. 'Yes.' He answers. Jill mockingly apologises to him for turning the lights down, knowing it would be harder for him to see her, before jeering that she could turn them back up if he wanted her to. He laughs breathily through the phone, then says 'Don't'."
I felt like an okay storyteller, as Glenn looked like he'd be on the edge of his seat if he were sat on one. Then again, it may just be the story itself.
"'Don't?' She imitated, confused. 'You really scared me, if that's what you wanted.' She diverted the conversation, both to keep the call going and so she didn't hear what he would've said if she hadn't. '...Is that what you wanted?' She asks in confusion. 'No.' The caller replied, his voice calm through the phone. Jill was confused, 'What do you want?' She asked." I shake my head dramatically. "She shouldn't've asked."
"Why not?" Glenn breathed, leaning towards me slightly.
"Because she didn't want to know the answer." I lean my back against the shelves and raise my hand up like a phone to my ear and continue. "The man's voice is louder than a whisper now. He replies to her question in a raspy, broken voice. 'Your blood...' He croaks. Jill breathes heavily, fear ice in her veins. '...all over me.' He groans through the phone, clearly enjoying tormenting Jill. 'You don't know who I am!' Jill cried in response, 'O-or where I live!' She grew in confidence, believing to have the upper hand. 'And Doctor Mandrakis will take me home! Or the Police!' The stalker didn't like that. 'You called the Police!?' He all but growled, and Jill knew she'd fucked up. 'I-I wanna talk to you.' She pleaded, but the caller had figured it out. He hung up the phone and the dial tone rang loudly in Jill's ear."
Daryl piped up from his squat in front of the door for the first time, growling in frustration. "What the hell... Why would she mention the police to a creepy stalker?!"
"Because she's scared!" I defend, though I've always thought the same thing. "People say things they don't mean or want to when they're scared."
"Yeah, okay, carry on." He waved his hand impatiently.
"Right okay, jeez. So, Jill slams down the phone. And it immediately starts ringing again not two seconds later. 'Leave me alone!' She screamed down the receiver. But the voice that replies is not The Caller."
"Who is it?" Carl whispers from his mother's lap.
"Keep interrupting me and you'll never find out." I laughed, and he quickly covered his mouth.
I lower my voice as I continue.
"'Jill, this is Seargent Sacker, listen to me.' The officer from earlier commanded. 'We've traced the call, it's coming from inside the house! There's a car coming to your location now, just get out of the house!' And Jill was frozen in shock."
Glenn called out in surprise, his hands on his head as a chorus of colourful words are shared throughout the room. "I completely forgot why you were telling us this!" He admitted, "That's so fucked!"
"It's not even done yet!" I exclaim quietly, just as immersed in the story. They all apologise and settle back down quickly. "Jill knows the call was coming from somewhere in the house, and the only place she hadn't been since she arrived, was upstairs. You know, the place she was going to check earlier before the phone rang the fifth time? Yeah. So, she makes her way as quietly as she can to the front door, which was right next to the stairs. She could see the top step from the front door, and she watched it as she tiptoed towards the exit. As she unlocked the front door, a light began spilling over the wall from an upstairs room."
I pause for dramatic effect, revelling in how everyone - even Daryl - leans forward slightly.
"Someone opened a door."
"Carry on!" Glenn whispers beside me.
"Someone stands in front of the light, casting the shadow of a head on the wall. Jill yanks the door open, but it gets stuck, a loud clang rattles through the house. She put the chain across earlier and forgot to unlatch it. She wrestles with the chain as the shadow grows closer to the stairs. Someone is at the top of the stairs. Jill yanks the chain free and throws open the door, and screams as she comes face to face with a man."
"What?! Then who was upstairs? Does she die in the end?! What? But how did the call come from inside?" Glenn threw his hands out in frustration as I begin closing the story.
"Quick answers?" I raise an eyebrow. "It was possible to have two separate phone lines in the same house. Two different numbers, two different jacks, two different lines. The dad had a phone in his office, which the caller used to ring her. She didn't die."
"Wait, so that's it? You didn't even mention what happened with the kids." He grumbled, dropping his head. "That's such a lame ending."
"No, that was the quick explanation since you asked so many questions." I huff.
"Well, tell the ending properly!" Daryl demanded with a slight pout, crossing his arms. "You can't just leave it like that."
"Are you going to let me finish without further interruption?"
They nodded their heads quickly.
"Alright then," I took a deep breath and thought back to where I was. "So, Jill throws open the door, and it looks like she comes face to face with a man. But in reality, she throws open the door with a terrified scream because the caller was on the landing and she didn't know if she'd make it out alive. The police ended up being less than a block away when Jill got the call to get out of the house, and they sped to the scene as quickly as they could. The man we thought Jill was screaming at ended up being a detective who came to the scene after Jill had fled and the cops had arrived, and this is where we get an explanation of sorts. An officer fills the detective in, explaining that the Caller was still in the house when they arrived. Covered in blood. But not his own blood."
Glenn's face went slack as realisation hit him. Carol and Lori covered their children's ears and nodded for me to continue, despite said kids' protests.
"There was a reason that the kids never reacted to the noise of the phone, or Jill screaming at the Caller. Or literally, any other reason a child would wake up in the middle of the night." I nod my head sadly, lowering my voice in hopes that the kids couldn't hear enough to understand.
"The Caller had been in the house several hours before he decided to call Jill using the dad's office phone. He'd snuck into the house within the first hour of Jill babysitting, bludgeoned the kids to death in their sleep so they'd never made a sound to alert Jill, and then he'd sat and waited in the bedroom for her to check on the kids. And that's why the first thing he asked was 'Have you checked on the children?'. It was supposed to invoke panic in Jill and make her creeped out enough that she would check on the kids even just for her own peace of mind. But she didn't, she stuck by the phone because she was waiting for a boy to call her. And that saved her life. Along with the fact that the Mum had asked Jill not to disturb the kids unless they woke up themselves."
---
[If you skipped, you can start here!]
---
"So, that's the end of the film?" Glenn asked, wiping his forehead. "That's messed up, dude."
I laugh lightly at him. "Oh, no." I smile. "That's just the first twenty minutes of the film. The rest of its kind of shit until the end, so I don't really remember it."
"That's only 20 minutes of film?!" Andrea marvelled from across the room. "How did you manage to stretch 20 minutes of film into an explanation that long?"
"One, it was a narration, not an explanation," I state, raising a finger. "Two, I'm a storyteller at heart, I like to make an impression with my tales of woe."
Lori laughed as she removed her hands from Carl's ears. "You certainly left an impression, Meg."
I smiled at her in thanks as footsteps echoed from the hall. We all turned to the door as Rick and Shane appear, near empty-handed.
"We ransacked the kitchen." Shane began as he entered the room, and we all turned to listen. "And all we found was one can."
"They hit the dispensary too," Rick continued, walking to the middle of the room. "Tore the door off its hinges, took everything 'cept this." He hands some sort of medication to Lori.
Shane hands the can to Daryl and Glenn grabs plastic plates from the shelf behind us to distribute the food between us.
Daryl lifted the can and read the contents. "So we came back for cough drops and a can of garbanzo beans."
"What the hell is a garbanzo bean?" I scrunch my face as he pries the ban open, and I see the image on the front. "Oh, they're chickpeas."
Sophia asks for water and Shane pulls a single bottle from his pack, stating that it was the last of what we had and that it needed to be shared among us all to make it last. He also pulls out some 'fruity snacks' that he'd nicked from the CDC kitchen thinking they'd be eaten as a midnight snack.
How wrong he was.
Reaching into his bag again, he procures a bottle of alcohol and shares it with Daryl.
We take our plates and eat silently, and Dale makes his way over to Andrea across the room, and I use that as my opportunity to sneak away into the hallway and away from the stuffy atmosphere the room had dropped into. I could still hear voices from the room, so I wasn't missing anything by not being in there. I come across T-Dog sitting at the top of a staircase two doors down and nod to him as I make my way onto the step two below the top in silence and pick at the cold chickpeas.
They weren't the worst thing I'd eaten since the shit hit the fan, but they certainly weren't the best.
Dale comes out a moment later carrying T-Dog's share, and we sit on the steps in silence as we listen to what was happening in the room. We hear Shane mention Fort Benning from the other room and groan quietly to myself.
"I shoulda listened to you, Shane." Rick's voice echoed into the hall. "Would've saved us a lotta grief if I had. Jacqui would still be alive-"
"Her choice, man." Shane reminded him. "Do not take that on."
Others began reassuring him that it wasn't his fault.
"All these people..." Glenn muttered, and I could see the sadness on his face, even from outside the room. "Who would've done something like this? Just come in here and murder everybody, even all the old people, how sick is that?"
"Is this something we need to be discussing right now?" Lori interjected, and Shane agreed, saying it was best if we all got sleep.
I finished my chickpeas and lean back against the wall with my leg stretched across the step, the other keeping me stable on the step below.
I hear a door close and recognise Shane's voice in the hallway, telling someone that they'd terrified the kids.
'Good thing he wasn't there when I'd told them that story.' I think to myself, folding the plastic plate from the outside inwards.
"Guys, I'm really sorry." It was Glenn.
"We're all rattled and exhausted, no ones thinking clearly." Rick drawled, also outside. "But we have to start. Our lives depend on it."
Shane mentions never letting our guard down again, and then their footsteps grow closer and closer to us on the stairs.
They came round the corner and I spotted a fourth person with them. Daryl appeared with the bottle of beer still in his hands.
"-No one on watch. People died, maybe didn't need to." I caught the end of Shane's sentence as they came to the landing, and crouched by the railing. I stood up and climbed the two steps to stand beside Dale on the top step.
"Fort Benning," Rick began, and I shook my head again. "That's the consensus. We're wasting fuel were driving so many vehicles, we need to lose a few. We'll syphon the gas out of whatever cars we don't take, should get us free of the city."
"It'd be a start." I agree, leaning against the wall.
"Let's just try to get a little shut-eye tonight, okay?" Shane said first and foremost. "T, you take first watch, see you in an hour."
We all stood once again and made our way back to the group, patting T-Dog on the shoulder as I passed.
That night passed with little sleep, just as most others had before. We packed up quietly, and picked anything useful from shelves and drawers before making our way back to our vehicles.
We syphoned fuel from Daryl's Ford and T-Dog's Wagon church van, and Shane's Jeep, leaving us with Carol's dusty yellow Jeep Cherokee, Dale's Winnebago, and Daryl's Chopper - 'It's a 1976 Triumph Chopper Hardtail Frame Conversion, get it right.' - between the twelve of us.
Rick, Lori, and Carl joined Carol and Sophia in their Cherokee, while Glenn, Andrea, Shane, and T-Dog joined Dale in his Winnebago, and I had the honour of choosing between the Winnebago and the motorbike.
"Dude, like hell I'm sitting in a stuffy RV with five other people. I'll die of claustrophobia." I raise my eyebrows as if it were obvious, and throw my leg over the back of Daryls motorbike and sit down carefully. "You want me to hold onto you or straddle the bike like a bloody bull?"
"Do whatever you want," Daryl grumbled, driving the bike slowly between the RV and the Cherokee. Then he picked up speed and I had to wrap my hands around his waist to stop myself toppling over the back.
"Jesus!" I grab onto his shirt as we weave through cars. "Warn me next time!"
I feel more than hear him laugh as the wind whips my hair back, and I slap his chest, leaning forward to rest my chest against his back as we make our way out of Atlanta.
---
I take one last look at the city behind us as we drive down the empty side of the motorway, knowing I'd left my best friend behind, dead or alive.
But now my new life was just beginning.
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[A/N: I'm so sorry this is so long. S2 is next, And I will try to shorten it so it doesn't take 20 chapters. There's like, 4 of you reading this but thank you non the less.]
[Comments are much appreciated, they help me know what people like and don't like.]
[LMAOOO I WENT BACK THROUGH THIS AND I CALLED DARYL 'ARYL' SO MANY TIMES]
-IWriteStoriesNotSins