(TW!! mentions of suicide!!)
(Inejra Beaumont's POV:) I haven't stopped looking for Adrian and her family, I've explored every single day, even since we've been at the Commonwealth. Kelly sometimes comes with me, though, she thinks we won't find them. I've started believing it too; I guess it's just something to do since Alyssa died.
I know why Adrian left, I mean, I've heard the whispers and rumors since she was a Savior, even the rumors she didn't know about. That's why about two years after Rick's death I beat some woman's ass because she was saying some dumbass shit about Adrian. However, even though I know why she left, I'm still pissed she didn't even ask me. I would've gone...I think.
They've been gone for a little over two years now, which means Beatrice should be about seven or eight; crazy. I still remember the day they were gone and the panic that grew deep within my stomach.
"Gabriel!" I yell, running into his room as he and Rosita are asleep.
"Woah," He shouts, sitting up and looking around confusedly. "Is everything okay?"
"What happened?" Rosita asks, noticing my panicked breathing.
"Adrian, Magna, and Beatrice are gone!"
They look at each other and then back at me, "What?!" Gabriel exclaims, leaping out of bed.
When I lead them, along with Aaron and Daryl back to Adrian's house, the eerie silence from the house immediately swallows us. Their stuff is all still here, most of their food, their shoes, and a lot of their clothes. But their beds are messy and all of their weapons are gone. It feels like the house's windows are watching us walk through, like there's a secret we don't know about.
"Was there a note?" Daryl asks, searching through drawers.
I shake my head, "No, I looked. That's the closest we're gonna get to one, though." Daryl's eyes follow my finger as I point to the bracelet-making kit and the tattoo gun on the kitchen counter. They both look oddly colorless, almost like Alyssa and Adrian each took the color with them when they left.
Aaron runs his hand through his hair and sighs, "Did they leave or did that group find them?"
Daryl shakes his head, "They're dead. And, Adrian woulda' shredded their skin off and made 'em eat it for what happened to Alyssa. We woulda' known if they were here."
My eyes well with tears and I turn to Gabriel, "They left." I whisper, barely able to contain my composure. "They left me."
He nods and pulls me in for a hug, "Adrian didn't do it to hurt you, she hasn't felt a part of this group since..." His eyes meet Daryl's.
"She's never felt a part of this group." Daryl says, leaning against the counter and staring at the couch. The couch still has a bug book on it and Adrian's pain medicine for her wounds after she got beat by those Whisperers is on the side table.
"I know," I reply, sniffing and breaking the hug with Gabriel. "I know."
"So what's the plan?" Rosita asks, looking around. "Are we going after her or letting her leave?"
"She's hurting...bad. What's she gonna do if she has a gun on her twenty-four-seven?" Aaron asks.
Daryl shakes his head, "She wouldn't leave and then kill herself, that's putting Magna and Bea at risk. We can look for her...but we gotta think if she wants to come back, that's if we find her. She knows how to cover her tracks, she knows how to get far without bein' seen."
I nod with a heavy, upset sigh. "We're gonna have to leave her. She obviously doesn't want to be found." Bull-fucking-shit. I am not leaving Adrian. Though, they're not gonna let me go so, gotta go in secret.
I've distanced myself from a lot of people, not by choice, it just kind of happened. The only people I really let in, mainly because they forced it, are Gabriel, Kelly, Connie, and Rosita.
I miss the whole Walsh family, even though Alyssa didn't go by the last name Walsh. A chunk of me died with her, and a part of me left with Adrian. I'm holding onto hope that she and her family are out there somewhere, and until I find a body, I'm not stopping. I don't know what I'm gonna do if I find them, but, as of right now, the chances of that are incredibly slim.
I've been searching for about four days consecutively. I told Gabriel that we were going to train Kelly on how to sense Walkers without using her hearing aid, she should be avoiding him so he doesn't get suspicious. I've never been to the town I'm in, it's pretty far for the amount of times I've been searching so, hopefully, I find something.
It's starting to get dark, the sun is beginning to lower into its dark blue blanket and the trash around me on the town road is dancing with each bitter gust of wind. Small droplets of rain dampen my clothes, irritating me to the brink of explosion. The town around me is full of rotting buildings with sad, jagged windows and Walkers stuck under abandoned cars. The browning autumn leaves of the trees growing out of one of the buildings flutter past me like the wings of frantic birds.
I don't know how long I'm gonna stay out this time, the longest I've stayed out was with Kelly and that was two weeks. We didn't make an excuse because we're fucking adults but the group had a stroke about it so, now we have excuses locked and loaded.
As I'm searching for a place to stay for the night, the sound of heavy footsteps comes from the alleyway to my right. It doesn't sound like just one pair, no, it sounds like a dozen, possibly more.
Fight or flight kicks in and I dash behind a wall, pressing my back up against it and gripping my knife until my knuckles turn white. I make sure to pull up my ski mask to cover my face if they manage to find me, that way if I get away they can't identify me by my features.
"I saw her." A man's raspy voice says. "Shut up and listen." Swiftly, the footsteps stop and the only noise around us is the sound of the rustling leaves and the wind. I put my hand over my mouth to cover the sound of my breathing and inch to my left, slowly putting distance between the group and me.
Snap.
I pause and look down at my feet, and to my horror, a stick is under my boot, cracked in half. "Go!" The same man roars.
"Shit." I gasp, taking off running.
Why the hell do you do this alone? That's so fucking stupid of you, what the hell?
"She's right there!" Another man's voice yells as I cross the street and run through an alley.
"Damn it, damn it, damn it!" I whisper as the air I'm inhaling turns painfully cold. With every inch I run, it seems like the group behind me runs four. I haven't even looked back to see what they look like, but by the sounds of their boots and shotguns cocking, they're terrifying.
My boots screech on the ground below me as I make a sharp turn and jump onto a fire escape ladder of an old, four-story antique store. The rungs are rusted and rough on my hands, no doubt slowly breaking under the weight of my body.
After a few rungs, I yell out in frustration as someone grabs my ankle, forcing me to hold onto the ladder with the strength of a god as they try to yank me down. "Fuck off!" I shout, trying to kick their hand off of me. I can feel the rung underneath my foot slowly begin to bend, so I maybe have fifteen seconds to get this man's hand off of my ankle before the rung breaks and I'm holding myself up by just my hands.
"We'll shoot!" A man from below me bellows, cocking his gun.
"Do it, asshole!"
BOOM!
A bullet whizzes past my head and indents into the bricks in front of me. "That was a warning!" The same man says.
Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!
"Let go!" I plead, my hands beginning to shake from exhaustion. I don't know how much longer I can hang onto the bar, the rust is starting to sand the skin of my hand off.
Finally, with one final kick, the man's hand slips and I leap up the fire escape, the rung that was about to break snapping as soon as I begin to climb. By this point, the sun has fully set and now a dark, ghostly blue is cast onto everything around me.
When I get up top, I scan the roof for anything of use or an escape route. The only thing I can see is a door to a staircase. If not, that's a pretty far jump to get to the ground.
If I stay up here, I'll get cornered.
When I peek over the edge of the roof, the group dressed in all black has begun climbing up the ladder to my roof, inching me closer and closer to my death.
Damn it!
Without wasting another second, as if my feet have a mind of their own, my body is slamming through the metal door to the staircase of the antique shop. When it shuts, I rip a thin pipe off of the wall next to me and put it through the handle of the door and a curved pipe, locking the group out. My breaths echo around me as I speed down the stairs and into the floor below me, the third floor of the building. When I get inside, there are shelves upon shelves of antiques, each artifact with its own story. Along the walls are more shelves but instead, they're encased in a glass wall, keeping people and now Walkers from breaking their things.
On the ground, there are three dead Walkers with fresh stab wounds on their foreheads; someone's in here with me. Though I can't leave through the door I came in, I'm already too deep in the room and they could be anywhere.
I have to stand my ground.
With a breath of closure, I grab my knife and slowly make my way through the shelves, whipping my head around every corner to hopefully catch them before they catch me.
I can't hear anything except for the pitter-patter of rain on the foggy windows at the back of the room and the clanking of the pipe on the staircase door. I don't hear footsteps, I don't hear anyone's breathing except my own, and I don't hear the sound of banging from someone running into something or dropping something. Every few seconds, I feel like someone is watching me, so I whip my head back to catch them. Nobody is.
As I turn back around, I yell out "Ugh!" as someone tackles me to the ground. Without getting a good look at who it is, blood fills my mouth as two punches get thrown at my face by strong, skilled hands. Remembering what Adrian and Alyssa taught me, I buck my hips up and fling the person over my head, sending them flying onto a shelf.
Before the shelf falls and everything on it shatters, they get up and scramble away, narrowly escaping death. I breathe heavily, spitting out blood onto the ground with a gross plop. "Don't be a goddamn pussy." I seethe, walking through the shelves once again.
"That's a funny fuckin' joke." A woman's voice says from a few aisles away from me. As if we read each other's minds, we both take off in the direction we heard each other's voices, meeting in the middle as I slam her to the ground.
Unfortunately, I can't see her face as she's wearing a skull mask over her identifiable features. I grab her shoulders and slam her into the floor twice before punching her in the jaw through the mask. She grunts in pain but quickly bounces back and grabs me by the biceps, turning us over and pinning me to the ground.
A crushing pain fills my nose, eye, and cheekbone as the woman above me continues her ruthless assault, her leather finger-less gloves now with a thin line of blood on them from my face.
I try to fight back, I really do, but she's good, and eventually, with the exhaustion and pain my body is going through, especially after she knees me in the ribs, I slowly stop fighting back. When the woman feels my body grow weaker, she grabs me by the throat and squeezes her hands together, hard.
The air around me disappears and my face begins to tingle uncomfortably, little black dots making their way into my vision. A small rasp comes out of my throat as I fight for air, my hands trying to claw at the woman's mask to rip it off of her. Instead, my right hand drops and I rip her sleeve, revealing a tattoo with a Red Socks hat, weed symbol, nail bat, four-leaf clover, and a middle finger.
"Adrian?" I croak quietly, widening my eyes in horror as much as my body allows me.
I can see the woman's eyes widen from under the mask and she releases her hands from my throat. Her mask is quickly gripped by her hand and torn off, revealing a very familiar woman with a scar going across and into her eye.
"Inejra?"