Chapter 24: The First Day
I awoke with a kick to the ribs. I yelped in pain. With an angry glance, I told Troy, "Don't kick me." He didn't respond. "It's rude." Most little girls would dream of unicorns or being the princess in their favorite fairy tale. I dreamt of living in a world where I would have to watch my back at all times. Then I woke up. Oh right. I live in hell.
Troy stroked his scruffy beard and glared back down at me. "Get up." He shot at me. "Bill's gonna have a word."
He pointed his assault rifle at me and I hobbled out of bed and onto my feet. I walked into the center of the room where everyone else was standing and watched as one of Carver's henchmen opened the gate for him. He strode through the doorway bearing the fake smile he usually wore.
"There's been increased walker activity along the fence, so be mindful when outside the walls." He told us, pacing back and forth. "The herd's moved a little closer as of this morning, but that still doesn't necessarily mean we'll be hit. Know we're monitoring the situation. Now... There are some folks who might be sore about what happened... at how things went. Well, that's all in the past now. Some of you are new to our community. Some of you are members who went astray. But know that you can find redemption here...Forgiveness...by proving your worth throught what will undoubtedly be hard work." He turned to the Pakistani man to the left of me. "Reggie, you're nearly back in. Keep following the path and we'll welcome you back with open arms."
"How'd you sleep?" Sarah asked me as she tapped me on the shoulder. Carver shot an annoyed glance at the girl, but seemed to ignore it. "I was so tired... I didn't even realize it."
"Shut. Up." I spoke through gritted teeth, staring straight ahead.
"Well, you don't have to be rude about it." She complained. She looked back up to the man speaking for a moment, and then back to me. "I just thought it was nice to finally-"
"Carlos!" Carver snapped, interrupting his own sentence, mid-word. Sarah blushed and directed her attention back to the man in shock.
"Yes?" Carlos asked calmly.
"Your child seems to be in need of correction." He stated plainly.
Carlos looked confused. "I'm sorry, I...Sarah, apologize to Mr. Carver."
"S-s-sorry, sir." Sarah stuttered, rubbing her sleeve and looking at the ground in embarassment.
"No, no." Carver disagreed. "That ain't gonna cut it. I can't have this kind of behavior on day one of your reform. You discipline her now, Carlos."
"How do you propose that I-"
"One good smack across the mouth should do it!" He frowned, simulating a slap with his hand. "It'll make her think twice before opening it up again. Go on, we'll wait."
"My..." Carlos started. He raised his left hand, displaying his broken fingers to him. "I'm not sure, with my hand, that I could-"
"Well, that's why you got two hands, Carlos. Come on!" He walked up to Sarah's father and slapped him lightly on the cheek. "And not some namby pamby thing, all right? A good, hard smack. Otherwise, Troy here'll do it for you. And I don't think you want that. He can be...overzealous..." He turned to the guard behind him. "Is that the word?"
"If it mean's I'll slap the sh** out of her, then yeah." Troy clutched the handle of his gun tighter in his hand.
"It's my fault!" I spoke up, trying to break up the argrument.
"Hey!" Troy shouted, stepping forward. "No one's f***in' talkin' to you!"
Carver held out a hand to hold the man back. "Unless you want one of what she's about to get, I'd pipe down, missy." He told me.
He turned his gaze back to Carlos and something in him seemed to understand the severity of the problem. He turned slowly to his daughter, with a concerned expression. "I'm sorry, Dad. I'm sorry!" Sarah pleaded.
"Close your eyes, honey." Carlos spoke softly. "It's only going to sting for a second."
Sarah obliged and closed her eyes, bracing for what was coming. Carlos closed his eyes too, avoiding the action for as long as he could before Carver spoke. "Do it." He said definitively.
Carlos lifted his hand in the air and brought it down onto his daughter's right cheek. The force of the blow sent Sarah to the ground. She sat there, in tears, clutching her face. There was a large red mark where her father's hand had been. "I'm sorry, Sarah." Carlos said, beginning to well up with tears himself.
"Stop!" Carver yelled menacingly. "You're not coddling that girl anymore! Let her sit there and think about what she's done. Troy, get Carlos to his post. Everyone else should have their assignments. It's time to get to work."
Troy walked forward to obey Carver's command, but he paused for a moment to look at the broken child on the ground. "Da**..." He said. "You really knocked the sh** out of her, Doc!"
"Everyone get to work!" Carver shouted loudly just beforeshutting the gate behind him with a thud.
I began to walk over to perform the coddling to Sarah that her dad wasn't allowed to do. As I approached her, the guard with the bushy black hair blocked my path with her assault rifle. "You're working in the armory." She told me coldly. "Follow me."
She turned around and opened the gate a bit so we could squeeze through. I followed her closely behind. Just before I exited the yard, I heard someone yell from above, "Soil coming up!" All of a sudden there was a snap and the a rope with white bags attached came crashing to the ground. Upon closer examination, they turned out to be bags filled with dirt for plants.
"Da** this thing!" I heard another older, gruffer voice say. I looked up to where the voices were coming from and found Jane on the roof staring eerily down at me. I quickly looked away from her to break eye contact.
"Clementine!" The guard yelled, turning around to find me standing still. I ran to catch up with her. I followed her through the empty hardware store through the section of shelves were empty. Not only were they rich, but they had room to fit more. This would have been a great place to live if it wasn't run by William Carver.
"Who's this?" asked a girl a bit older than me with black hair standing to my right.
"She's one of the new people." an older girl with the same black hair answered her, seeming to be her sister. "She was with Carlos and Sarah and-"
"Ugh, Sarah?" The younger girl cringed. "I wish she'd stayed gone..."
"She's had a hard time, Becca." The other girl crossed her arms in annoyance.
"So have we." Becca shot back. "We're not sitting on the ground like babies..."
The guard with the bushy hair pushed open a large metal door to reveal a small room, looking like a tool shed. "Go on inside. Bonnie's waiting." She told me. I walked into the room. On the racks that would have held hammers and screwdrives and any other sorts of power tools there were rifles, shotguns and other weapons. The tables were organized with neat columns of handguns and knives. This must be the armory.
I walked to the other side of the room to find a smiling Bonnie sitting in a lawn chair across from an empty one. She waved her hand to me, gesturing me over. I took a seat in the empty lawn chair. "Hey." She spoke softly. "I guess you're starting the day with me. We're loadin' magazines."
I picked up the rifle magazine from the table next to me and a few bullets. I began to load them just like Christa showed me. Push down and forward...down and forward... "That's it, you got it." Bonnie encouraged me, picking up a bullet and loading it herself. "I suppose I owe you an apology. I wasn't completely truthful when I cam across y'all at the lodge... And I was shown a kindness that I would never have expected from a group of strangers. But...now folks are dead... And I can't help but feel I'm to blame.The plan was no one gets hurt... I truly believe that was the intent."
"Carver's the one who pulled the trigger." I argued with her. "He's to blame."
"Yeah..." Bonnie sighed. "But I surely didn't help matters... I thought that if I was the one that found everyone, I could control it. Keep everyone safe... But that's not how it went. I apologize...which don't account for much, but it's all I can offer right now." We each picked up another handful of bullets. "How was your first night in the yard?"
"You mean my first night in prison?" I corrected her.
"It ain't a prison." She told me. "More of a...work release."
"Didn't they do those in prisons?"
"I...probably, I don't know. I never been to prison. Don't tell no one. Trying to keep a tough reputation." She looked down into the pile of bullets in between us and began loading another handful. "I was supposed to go. When Luke and Carlos and all them left, I was plannin' on leavin' too. When Luke confronted me about it, I thought he was crazy. I mean, we're safe here. We got power. We got food."
"Why didn't you?" I asked. "Leave, I mean."
"If I'm bein' honest, I guess I chickened out." She chuckled. "I justified not goin' by telling myself it's easier to fix something that's broken than start all over. Take this situation with the herd... That's the type of thing that rips a community apart. He keeps things in line. He's got a lot of this stuff figured out. I don't know... I guess I just wanted to be somewhere comfortable for a while."
"Nobody is safe here with Carver around." I scowled.
"You're safe if you stay on his good side."
"I would if I knew where it was."
Bonnie put her fully loaded magazine down on the table and picked up a new one. "I mean, it's not easy keeping a group this big fed and protected. I don't envy that position. Figure that'd make anyone a little stressed. I'm not defendin' what he did. That was..." She paused for a moment and then let out a sigh. "I'm alive because of him. That's just a fact."
"He killed Walter." I stated plainly.
"Only to protect his people." She defended him. "Kenny could've killed us all!"
"But he didn't."
Bonnie opened her mouth to say something and then bit her lip. She sighed before beginning a new thought. "Bill overreacted. He was in the heat of the moment and he overreacted. Luke had ideas about how things should go, but they didn't line up with what Bill was thinkin'. The butted heads. Then Rebecca started showin' and that only made things worse... Maybe Luke was right about him... I wish he was around, but... I just hope he's safe."
There was a static noise and a crack coming from the walkie talkie sitting on the table to Bonnie's left. The voice of the bushy-haired guard issued from it. "Hey Bonnie, is that girl down there? I need to come get her."
Bonnie picked up the radio and pressed the button on the side of it to talk. "Yeah. She's here." She answered.
"Okay." The woman said. "I'll be right over."
"I'm sure it's fine." Bonnie spoke, putting the radio back down on the table "Oh, I amost forgot! I grabbed this for you." She got up from her seat and walked to the other side of the room. She bent down and picked something up. She came back over and placed it in my hand. It was a puffy light blue jacket with rainbow stripes and a sun in the middle where the zipper was. I slipped it on to find it wasn't a bad fit. Bonnie gazed down at me, smiling. "Huh? What do you think? I found it at the lodge y'all were at. Think it might be for skiing. Had to wait til no one was around to get it for ya."
"I don't know..." I said.
Bonnie's smile faded almost immediately. She seemed disappointed. "You don't like it..."
"It's not that." I told her, embarassed by her reaction.
"I thought it was kinda cute..." She forcibly wiped the look of disappointment on her face and looked at me very matter-of-fact with her hands on her hips. "Well this ain't a fashion show. It'll keep you warm. You better watch yourself. I think some folks might be jealous of that cool jacket of yours."
The gruff looking woman entered the room quickly, holding her machine gun. "Oh there you are." She said coldly. "What's with the ugly jacket?"
"Tavia!" Bonnie scolded her.
"What?" She seemed confused.
"Nevermind." Bonnie sighed. She turned to me and sat back down in her chair. "I'll see you later Clementine."
"C'mon." Tavia told me, turning around quickly and walking from the room. She led me back through the store and to a flimsy metal door on the right wall. She opened it to reveal a stairway leading upward. We both walked up until we reached the roof. "Follow me. Come on." She said, irritatedly. She led me across the roof to a small glass building with wooden walls. They must have built it themselves. I could see the leaves of plants through the windows. It must be the greenhouse. "Stay in here for a minute. I'm gonna radio down and find out what you're doing. Don't touch anything."
I looked around the room. There were shelves full of plants going all the way around the outer wall of the room. There were two tables with potted berry pants clustered in them. Carver's camp even had fresh food... I was more concerned about the tiny whimpering sound coming from the corner of the room though. I followed it to find Sarah there, sitting up against the wall, hugging her knees. I could tell the slap her father had given her had taken a lot out of her. "Hey..." I said softly. "Are you okay?" She didn't answer, so I did for her. "I know it's...it's gotta be hard."
"My dad's never hit me before..." She cried quietly. "Even when I was really bad... He never hit me."
"He didn't want to do it, Sarah." I told her. "Carver made him. He's the bad guy. Not your dad. So in a weird way, Carver's the one that hit you...not your dad."
"I guess so..." She said, rubbing her cheek with her hand. "Carver hit me super hard, cause it still hurts like crazy."
"Yeah." I chuckled. "It looked like it."
She looked up to meet my eyes, but couldn't manage a smile. "Thanks...for trying to help... I don't know why people have to be so mean... Like, even when I'm really mad, I still don't want to hurt anyone..."
I looked away from her and to the plants on the center table when the door opened. Reggie walked through the door. "Don't mess this up." I heard Tavia tell him from the other side.
"Yeah. I get it." Reggie sounded irritated.
Tavia popped her head in the door and looked at Sarah and I. "Reggie's in charge here, okay? Listen to him carefully."
"Yep. No problem Tavia." Reggie told her. As soon as she left, he turned his gaze to us. "Okay, we gotta do a good job guys. The camp is counting on us. Come on. I'll show you what to do. It's super easy." He walked to the center table and moved a potted plant in front of him, and placed one in front of Sarah and I as well. He pointed to a stack of iron shears sitting next to the plants. "Pick up a pair of those shears. Okay, so we're picking these berries, right? Just pick them, put them in the basket. Simple. While you're at it, if you see any dead branches, take those shears, cut them off and stack them neatly for composting. Got it?
"Yep." I nodded. I began to cut the berries out of the little tree, and putting them into the basket. It was a very easy job. I definitely could have gotten stuck with a worse job. It was hard to imagine what kind of work the older members of the group were doing.
Before I had even picked ten berries, Reggie walked over to talk to me. "Hey, so... Is she gonna be okay?" He asked me quietly, gesturing to the girl who was just holding her shears in front of her face, deep in thought. "Cause what happened down there, that was straight f***ed up. I don't want her freaking out and getting me in trouble."
"I talked to her." I answered. "I think she's okay."
"Good, good. Because I'm awful at that kind of stuff." He smiled at me. "Look, Bill's had it out for me ever since I helped those guys escape, so I gotta concentrate on my work." He lifted his hand and patted me on the head. I shot him a confused glance afterward. "That was...awkward...I won't do that agian. I'm going to go work now."
I resumed with my work and he resumed with his. Cutting berries, putting them in the basket, snipping dead branches, stacking them... Yeah, the work could have been a lot worse. I looked to my left where Sarah was still standing holding the shears in front of her face. I felt a wave of sympathy for her. Even if I couldn't understand getting that upset over a slap, she just seemed so pitiful that you couldn't help but feel sorry for her.
It didn't take two seconds for me to decide to help Sarah out with her job. I walked over and snipped a branch for her. She looked down to me, surprised. "Hey..." She didn't answer. "Here. Watch me." I told her. I picked a berry off the tree and placed it in the basket. She mirrored my actions and performed the task also.
The job went on for about half an hour longer before I spoke again. "This isn't that hard, Sarah." I told her as she accidentally cut off a live branch and placed it in the pile.
"I know, I'm just afraid I'll make a mistake." She told me.
I was about to tell her she just did, but I decided against it. "It won't be the end of the world if you do." I told her instead.
I heard a rustling noise coming from outside the greenhouse. All three of us in the room turned around to find a smiling Carver approaching from the outside. "Oh sh**..." Reggie muttered.
"Oh no!" Sarah exclaimed.
Before Carver reached the doorway, Reggie glanced at both of our baskets, but had a look of horror as his eyes crossed my near-empty basket. "You didn't do any of your work, Clem!"
Sarah gasped as the man opened the door to greenhouse quickly, bearing the fake smile he always wore. "Just checking in. Seeing how the new girls are working out." He told us. He looked at both of our baskets. When his eyes passed mine, he scowled angrily. "Reggie."
"...Yeah, Bill. Hey." He said nervously.
"What the f*** happened in here?" Carver asked angrily.
I could see Reggie was sweating. "Look, Bill, they're new and...me with my arm, it's just not the easiest-I just have-I have one arm and-"
"Shut up. Shut up. Shut the f*** up." Carver interrupted him. "You better have an explanation for this. And I mean now."
"Bill, please, just-"
Carver turned around, pacing with his hands on his hips. "Sounds like you were about to give me an excuse, when I asked for...an explanation."
"It was my fault." I told him. "I didn't show Sarah well enough...I guess..."
"Nah, this ain't your fault." He said, his eyes fixed on Reggie's fleeting ones. "We talked about this, Reggie. Didn't we? But you just don't get it, do you?"
"Get what? I...I..."
"Why don't you girls wait outside?" Carver asked us. "Reggie and I have a few things to talk about."
Sarah was the first to exit the room and I followed closely behind her. I didn't want to spend another second in the same room as that man. "Thanks for the help, girls." Reggie said, quietly as I shut the door behind me.
I could hear the conversation behind the walls, but it was garbled. I couldn't make out the words. I turned my head to see Sarah standing near the edge of the roof. I attempted to reach out to comfort her. "What's wrong, Sarah?" I asked. She stepped closer to the edge. I started walking toward her slowly, with my hands out in the air. "Are you okay?"
All of a sudden, the door burst open with a thud and Reggie spilled out onto the ground. Carver followed him with a malevolent look on his face. "I gave you plenty of chances!" He shouted at the man.
"NO! NO! PLEASE, BILL!" Reggie shouted at the top of his lungs. Carver kept walking toward him, forcing to back up towards the edge of the rooftop. "NO!"
Carver held Reggie by the shirt collar above the edge of the building. Reggie squirmed around some, looking extremely scared. I attempted to reach out and help him but it was too late. Carver leaned in to him. "Strike three."
As Carver released his grip, Reggie's body plunged to the ground. I couldn't see what it looked like, but I heard a splat. Reggie was gone... The fresh murderer turned to us and crossed his arms. "Weakness...Incompetence...It puts us all at risk, and it won't be tolerated. You think about that the next time you're asked to do something."