~Keith's POV~
"Where do you think they could've gone?" I ask Karson, exasperated. We've been looking for them for hours and there's no sign of them.
"I don't know. Just keep looking, they've got to be around here somewhere." I sigh, nodding.
"Ok, but we're gonna have to find somewhere to sleep, it's starting to get dark." I don't like being out in the open when it's dark, it leaves me too vulnerable to attacks.
"Maybe we should just head back to the house and get some sleep, start looking again in the morning." I sigh again, looking around one more time, then nod.
"Yeah, that would probably be best, by the looks of it, it's going to be dark by the time we get back." Karson nods as we turn and start walking in the direction of the town.
"Every time we catch up to her, she just seems to run off again." I say, chuckling quietly. Karson laughs, nodding.
"It's like she knows we're here and tries to stay ahead of us." I fall silent at his words.
"Do you think she could know that we're following her?" Karson shakes his head.
"She's been too focused on staying alive, she's barely noticed her surroundings unless she has to." I nod.
"Yeah, that makes sense." We're silent for a couple minutes. "What do you think we would've been doing if we hadn't of decided to go after Cassie?" Karson doesn't answer. I'm about to ask again when he starts talking.
"I don't know. We probably would've been holed up in some store, barely surviving off of what's in there. Maybe we would've found people, or maybe we would've died that first day. I'm not really sure, I just know that I'm happy that we made the decision to follow Cassie. What about you?" I think for a minute.
"I don't know, I guess. There's really no way to know unless we would've gone down that path. I'm happy that we came this way too." We're silent again as we walk. "Cassie would've been dead right now." Karson turns to me, looking confused and horrified.
"What?" He sounds terrified.
"When I heard that scream and walked into the room, she was being attacked by a walker. Her own roommate. She was about to bite her when I pulled it off her." Karson is silent.
"Wow, it's a good thing we heard it then. I can't believe I tried to get you to stay in the room. I'm glad you chose to ignore me." I laugh, nodding.
"Yeah, me too. Julia would've died that day too, Cassie saved her."
"How do you think she died?" I sigh.
"I don't know, she ran into those woods really fast, maybe some of them followed her and she couldn't fight them off."
"Julia almost got Cassie killed, she would've died if Blake hadn't of helped her." He says his name venomously. I shake my head at the thought of him.
"Do you think that he's ever going to come back?" Karson shrugs.
"I sure hope not, but by what you told me, it sounds like he plans on it. I don't know how he'd ever find her again, though." I nod.
"Yeah, I guess he wasn't really thinking it through. It'd be nearly impossible to find someone in this world. Maybe she led him down the wrong path, told him that she was going to Montana, then go the opposite direction." Karson nods.
"Yeah, hopefully." We're silent as we walk down the road. We travelled about a mile away from the town looking for Cassie, we should be halfway there by now. I'm about to talk again when a branch snaps loudly behind us. Karson and I whirl around, raising our weapons, but don't see anything behind us.
"What do you think it was?" Karson whispers.
"I don't know. It could've been a walker, but I sounded like a person. Let's just keep going." We turn and start to walk faster, keeping silent, listening. Another branch snaps and I can hear someone talking, cursing quietly. "It's a person." I look back to the woods, still hearing voices, there's more than one. "Hey! Who's out there!" I call out, Karson smacks my arm. "What?" I say, looking at him, confused.
"Why would you do that?! They could be dangerous." I shrug, looking back in the direction of the voices.
"Maybe, but we have weapons, we can defend ourselves." Suddenly, a person comes walking out of the trees. He doesn't have his weapon raised, but he has it in his hand. Five people emerge after him, holding their weapons. There are four guys and two girls in all, all staring at us cautiously.
"Are you dangerous?" The lead man asks.
"No, we're just trying to stay alive. Are you?" I ask, sizing them all up.
"No, we're the same as you, just trying to stay alive. What are your names?"
"I'm Keith, this is my friend Karson. What are your names?"
"I'm John," he points to a blonde haired guy, about my age, "this is Keaton," he points to the guy next to him, he has brown hair and looks to be about my age as well, "this guy is Jack," finally, he points to the last boy, he has dirty blonde hair and looks to be about 30, "and this is Mike. I'll let the girls introduce themselves." The first girl to step up has dark brown, almost black hair, and looks to be about John's age.
"I'm Debby, John's wife. This is my daughter," she points to the girl next to her, she steps up and smiles flirtatiously at me, I refrain from rolling my eyes, I only have eyes for Cassie, "Jessica." Jessica walks over to me, pressing her chest against my arm and puts her hand on my chest.
"It's nice to meet you Keith." She doesn't even glance at Karson. I roll my eyes and lightly push her away. I look over at Karson and see him trying to contain his laughter. I roll my eyes at him and glare playfully. He just chuckles and looks back at John as Jessica walks back to her mom, pouting.
"So John, were are you guys headed?"
"We're going to California, gonna try to get a boat to live on the water. What about you guys?" I look at Karson, raising an eyebrow, silently asking if we should tell them about Cassie. He nods.
"We're trying to get back to a friend. She joined another group and we're just trying to find her." John nods, looking at his wife. They seem to have a silent conversation until Debby finally nods and John nods back.
"Would you like our help? Maybe we can all join together, a big group is better than a small one." I look at Karson, who nods immediately.
"That would be great, thank you John. The last time we saw her was a couple hours ago, she had run off with the group, saying something about a giant horde coming this way." John's eyes widen.
"That's where we're coming from. We ran into the horde trying to get out of town, had to come back this way and ran into you. I guess that's a good thing." I chuckle and nod.
"Yeah, I guess it is. Wait, how long ago did you run into that horde?"
"About 20 minutes ago, why?"
"That means they could be close, we need to get out of here. Follow me, there's a town nearby." I start running in the direction of the town and can hear them following me. I look at Karson beside me and motion for us to pull ahead a little bit. "Well, it looks like we're finally going to get to see Cassie face-to-face." I say, grinning. Karson smiles.
"Finally, I've missed her, maybe we can finally get her to smile again." I nod, sobering up a little. We hadn't seen her smile since the day Julia died, and that was weeks ago.
"Yeah, I've missed her smile almost as much as I've missed her." Karson nods, smiling.
"What do you think she's going to say when she sees us?" Karson thinks for a minute.
"I don't know, hopefully she'll be as happy as we are to see her." He smiles, thinking about her. Should I confront him about liking her too? I sigh, knowing that we're going to have to talk about it at some point, might as well do it before we get here. "Ok, time to address the elephant in the woods." Karson laughs at my wording, then looks at me curiously.
"What elephant?" Well, it's now or never.
"We both like her." Karson falls silent.
"Yeah, I guess we should talk about that."
"Lets make a pact, ok?" Karson nods.
"We won't let her get in between our friendship, we'll always be best friends, right?" He nods. "And how about this, whoever she ends up with, whether it be me or you or neither one of us, we'll be happy for the other, we won't act jealous or be rude in any way. Ok?" Karson nods and I hold out my hand, he grins as we do the handshake we made up when we were kids.
"Ok. Wow, I can't believe that we both remember how to do that handshake. We came up with that when we were like twelve." I laugh, nodding.
"That means it's a true handshake, not one of those lame, fake ones that you forget in a day." I put my hand on my chest. "It's a true friendship." Karson laughs, shaking his head.
"You're weird, you know that right?" I laugh.
"Of course, that's why we're best friends. Our weirdness compliments the others'." Karson shakes his head, still laughing. We fall silent when we enter the town, I look behind me to make sure the others are still behind us. I lead them to the house that Cassie and her group were in and close the door behind the last person, locking it. I take a deep breath, looking around. I go to the place Cassie was sitting and sit down, thinking about her. I wonder what she's doing right now. I shake my head, getting rid of those thoughts. I need to focus now, I don't know if we can trust these people yet. I walk over to John, who's sitting with his wife and daughter. I stop myself from rolling my eyes when I see Jessica straighten up and pull her top down, she just won't give up, not even in the apocalypse. I ignore her when I get to the small group and focus on John and Debby.
"So tell me about your group." He looks up at me and nods, motioning for me to sit. I sit next to him.
"We were all together before this happened. We lived in Utah, in the same community. We were on our way to a neighborhood party when the first zombie stumbled into the road. We immediately got out of there and we've been on the road since." I nod, at least they've always had each other. "What's your story?" I look at Karson, asking a silent question. He nods, so I turn back to John and his family.
"Well, were together in Utah when it happened, too. We were roommates in college, the morning it happened we were going to our class, and I ran into this girl in the commons room watching this history documentary. We started talking and planned a date for later that day. But when we got back from class, the room was destroyed, blood was everywhere. We went up to our room and talked about what to do. We were about to block the door when I heard this really loud scream from down the hall. I didn't think twice before I ran to the room. Someone was getting attacked by a walker. I killed it and looked up to see the girl from the commons room, Cassie. She got her best friend, Julia, and I got Karson and we all met up in her room. We planned to travel together, but she got a call from her aunt, and she was telling her about this community in Montana. Her and Julia wanted to go, but Karson and I didn't trust it. The next morning, they went their way and we were going to go ours, but we couldn't even make it past the building before we turned around and went after them." I tell them the rest of the story, leaving out the part about Julia's death.
"Wow, you really love her, don't you?" I freeze, my thoughts whirling around my head. I love her.
"Yeah, I really do." I see Karson jerk his head towards me from the corner of my eye. I don't look at him.
"It's so great that you've come all this way for her, she must really be special." I nod, smiling at the thought of her.
"She really is." I say, still smiling. I look over at Karson and see that he is smiling too, thinking of Cassie. "Ok, well I'm going to get some sleep." I look over at Karson. "You coming?" He nods and we get up, bidding everyone goodnight. We go to our packs and pull out our blankets. We lay them down and lay on top of them.
"Do you really love her?" I nod, even though he can't see me.
"Yeah, I really do." We're silent for a couple minutes. "Do you love her?" He's silent.
"Yeah, I do." I sigh, silently.
"Ok, lets just stick to the pact, ok? That way no one will get hurt."
"Yeah, lets do that." I smile, happy that we aren't fighting about this.
"We're finally getting her back." I can hear the happiness in his voice and smile.
"Yeah, we're getting her back."
I'm getting my girl back. I smile and close my eyes, falling into a peaceful sleep.