The sky grizzled behind puffy clouds which extended with the time rolling by. Afternoon was slipping towards evening. In an hour the sky would take on an illuminating dark shade with stars sparkling by, and this on the other hand meant that Sophia better hurried before she was stuck in the electrical-control pod in the heart of the Ferris wheel which had giant jagged stars on both sides of the pod in centre.
Sophia climbed towards the middle of the Ferris wheel that looked like a miniature Eiffel tower, she moved agilely and nifty, grasping with her hands in all the right places to move forward with two legs on one pole. She shambled her left foot laterally and her right foot followed shortly after while her hands gripped a pole that levelled with her head. Carl was close behind her, but in the middle of the pole he stopped and just made sure she was getting safely on the other side while the concrete beneath them sent deceptive welcoming smiles towards them, as if luring them to take a jump to meet it with their feet.
Ron cringed for so many reasons; for one, because Sophia carried a knife with her and was in danger of cutting herself on it and the other reason being she was on a hazardous place overall. Hence it prickled under Ron's skin by just watching her endangering herself so selflessly and it only struck him now how courageous she was for he had stamped her as a shy and rather anxious girl.
"Beanies! You love your beanie!" Enid called out next to him and Ron flinched from the volume of her voice "Think about how good you feel after it covers your matted, greasy hair"
"Now thats a way to peep talk him into thinking positive" Mikey said with a eye roll.
Enid gave him a side-eye "Well, how about you take over if you believe your better at it, huh?" The space sizzled between the two and it set and entrance for negative thoughts inside Ron's mind as the situation reminded him of his parents fighting. Internally he hoped the fight between their friends would stay verbal and then right after hoping that, he felt stupid for thinking they would actually throw fists.
"No interest in comforting a pussy, so no thanks" Mikey replied.
Enid's fist lunged out and landed with a hefty smack against Mikey's cheek. Ron didn't feel stupid anymore for his previous thoughts.
...
Carl plopped back inside their pod when Sophia had made it for the middle and he instantly scorned at Enid and Mikey who's arms were entangled in a fight caused by Mikey's lack of self-control with remarks.
"Hey! Break if off! Enid! You were supposed to make sure Ron's thinking positive!" he hollered at the girl then grabbed Mikey by the collar of his shirt and tossed him on the bench opposite to Ron's.
"He started!" Enid accused Mikey, pointing at him with a red face, steam seemed to come out of her ears so mad did she look.
"She told me to take her shift!" Mikey defended himself, crossing his arms over his chest like a little kid "I'm not Ron's therapist."
Carl's eye darted between the two, then he shook his head ever so slightly and walked past Enid and sunk to the bench next to Ron. Enid rolled her eyes and turned her back towards everyone.
"Ron, it's okay you just have to--"
"--Think positive." Ron finished his sentence, he titled his head. "I know, that's what you've been telling me for a while now, but you know what? i'm not even sure if that's what I have to do."
Carl rose his eyebrow at him in a gesture of a mute question that meant so much as: What are you talking about? Go on.
"You say I have to think positive, because negative thoughts feed the monsters, but what if--" he hesitated upon finishing his theory, because it sounded stupid to him, but he ended up saying it out loud regardless. "What if I need to be positive? Not think but be it."
Carl didn't understand what he was getting at, Ron could read it from his face, and Mikey and Enid were too busy in their own thoughts that they completely ignored the two boys.
"I'm sorry?" Carl said. Ron sighed and elaborated as quiet as possible so their friends wouldn't hear "Maybe you have to infect me with you know what"
"Oh." Carl looked away and Ron thought he went too far but then Carl spoke up again "I thought I could change your fate if I tried hard enough, cut every single wire, but it seems like there's no going around it. There's a lot of things you don't know and I'll fill you in..." He paused to take in a deep breath of air "Your nightmare, bloody-Carl, he's a demon and he needs a soul. Yours is perfectly compatible, so is your blood. He won't stop till he has it, your blood is too precious"
Ron was stunned, then he was sour that Carl didn't tell him this before, it could've saved them a lot of trouble. Sophia would've have needed to go and risk her life for this. "Then why didn't you just infect me all along?!"
"I don't want you to die." Carl said in earnest.
"Well now we're all going to die nonetheless." Ron huffed, slamming his back onto the backrest.
Carl's hand found to Ron's hand and laid atop it. "It's not too late, Sophia is cutting the wires"
...
It was a long wait, so long that Negan lost his patience and wasted three bullets on their pod in hope to hit one of the teens inside it, but he missed and just wasted ammo instead.
Sophia weaved to Carl when she was done and he stood up to wait for her in the middle of the pole. She had cut the last wires of the Ferris wheel, but nothing seemed to have changed, maybe Carl was wrong and they were indeed damned.
Sophia's shoes thudded against the pole and everyone watched her quietly with concern in their eyes, Ron started nibbling his fingernails in addition. The pole was sleek and looked easy to slip off from which made Ron assume Sophia had a good amount of balance in her frail body.
Everything went good up until Mikey yelled "You got this! Only a bit more!" which Sophia responded with a bright smile. But this single yell seemed to attract Negan from downwards because Ron couldn't otherwise explain where the bullet had come from that pierced through Sophia's thin leg and threw her off balance.
She let out a highpitched cry, doddered on the pole and as she unclasped her hands from the upper pole to check her foot out, she foundered and lost ground under her feet as she fell into the naked air.
Enid looked away. Carl stared at the fatal scene with his jaw unhinged and his arms stretched out as if he tried to catch her though he was too far away. Ron was the only one who let out a choked scream that reverberated in his subconscious and mixed with the next sound that sought deep into his bone marrow; Sophia's head hit the pavement, her body weight smashed her skull before her neck snapped into half with the wet sound of her bone breaking and the white of it peeked out from the leaking blood.
The sight was horrendous, but Ron was only able to rip his eyes away from it when his stomach acid finally wrung it's way up his throat and spilled on a pink roof underneath their pod. He felt the vicarious pain by his own neck and clutched his hands around it as if he feared he was the next one to drop to his death.
"Ron-- Ron we have to do it now!" Carl shouted, his voice weary.
It took all Ron's strength to follow his friends voice out of his delirious state, he stared at him for a perplexed second before he made a decision to slid his forearm on the sharp edge of the plastic bench. He didn't really expect it to work, but it actually worked and his shock he cut deeper than intended to and felt the warm blood rinsing his pale skin with colour.
"What the hell, Ron?!" Mikey gasped, Enid held her hand over her mouth as she saw blood drawing out of his wound.
He ignored them, wadded towards Carl and pulled the collar of his shirt down to expose his wound from nightmare-Carl and just then, he pressed his forearm against it and mingled their wounds to mix the infected blood with his own pure one.
His blood soaked Carl's beige shirt with a deep red. He was bleeding together with the sunset, drowning his nightmares once and for all, then darkness enveloped him and his vision swam away from his eyes.