❝ IM NOT AN OPTIMIST LIKE YOU ❞
–
Everything seemed more desolate in the apocalypse.
More stagnant, dull, and dirty. The streets, even dirt ones, were lined with detritus that undulated, trailing the car in the wind as if it were hopelessly running after them. The trees were darker and ominous, especially more dense with the pine branches merging together as if they were pieces of a puzzle. She'd seen enough forest to know. It went on for miles and miles. If it weren't for the corpses floundering through the dirt, clawing at nothing, it would have seemed as if nature had repaired itself.
She didn't know where they were going. The car jostled for on forever, it seemed, down a stretch of some dirt and cement roads mixed together. They hadn't shared more than a few words in over thirty minutes. She couldn't think of a single place they would be going.
"If you could go anywhere in the world," he said, breaking the silence, "where would you go?"
She pursed her lips. It was a heavy question. "I don't know. Disneyland, maybe?"
"Disneyland?" He repeated, furrowing his brow. A nearly silent scoff came from under his breath. "Out of all the fucking places you could go?"
"I guess. I never went there as a kid." She shrugged, as if it were a simple answer.
"Imagine all the poor fuckers that were there while the world went to shit. Probably couldn't get out if they tried." She scrunched her nose, feeling an ounce of pain for those people. At least she had a chance. Those people didn't. "Hell, no sense in thinkin' about that shit anymore," he said, once he noticed her uncomfortable expression.
"I just think it would be nostalgic. I don't know. I don't think you had to ever go there to feel it, its just a nostalgic place."
He raised his brows, his finger tapping against the leather wheel.
"I guess."
There was another period of silence where she leaned her head against the window and crossed one foot over the other. She didn't really give a shit about Disneyland. It seemed like the answer to give, that was all. In reality, the only place she cared to be was back home with her grandmother. God, she missed them all like crazy.
From the corner of her eye she saw the corner of Negan's mouth turn upward. "Disneyland. God, you're a fucking nerd."
She clicked her tongue and directed her gaze to the window. "Better than a tyrant, but that's just my opinion."
"Ouch," he breathed, with a hitched laugh. "Here I was, thinking we were having a friendly-as-fuck conversation."
She gave him an arrogant smile and flicked her middle finger up.
"So mean." He seemed more pleased that he should have. "Would you look at that. We're here."
She looked out the windshield – directly in front of them – a small diner, surrounded by many other buildings that would have been small companies in an even smaller town. It was a ghost town littered with animate bodies. Old-style cars with cracked windshields and sixties styled restaurants and barber shops. She was at the bottom of a hill, a church at the very top which towered over the whole town.
"What is it?" She asked.
"What's what?"
"Why are we here?"
He opened his mouth then shut it quickly. He merely shrugged his shoulder, and grabbed Lucille by the hilt. "Never said I had to tell you what the fuck this is."
She held her hands up in defence. Quickly after Negan stepped out of the truck, she did too, into the dusty diner parking lot. He began toward the front doors, and she followed suit, only taking a short glance to the sign that hung above them. Sunshine Diner. The R was crooked, barely clinging to the wall.
He shoved the door opened, not bothering to check for a single walker, and strutted in with all the confidence in the world. His regular Negan strut, pants hung low and his steps heavy as his steel toe boots stomped against the floor. Just the sound of a single footstep would draw a crowd of walkers if he wasn't careful. She grabbed his wrist harshly and pulled him back.
"Wait," she whispered, wrapping her fingers around the handle of Lucille, just below where his hand was placed. She smacked the bat twice against the floor, making sure it was loud enough to draw any walker that may have been lingering in the back.
"There's nothing here," he said.
He was right. She was expecting a corpse to come, crawling at least, from the back, but the diner was completely desolate. Quite clean as well, only a few splatters of dry blood dirtied the tile floors.
"How did you know that?"
He shrugged. "I know shit."
She resisted the urge to roll her eyes, and meandered around the front entrance. It was definitely sixties influenced, with black and white floors, a jukebox in the corner attached to a few spider webs, and photos of mustangs and Elvis and Madonna all along the wall.
"I'm guessing you've been here before," she questioned.
He glanced back at her, Lucille swung over his shoulder. "What gave it away?"
She sat down at the front counter, one leg swung over the other, and peeked over the counter. It looked like someone had been murdered there, a dried blood stain nearly covered the whole floor. She turned away.
"So, you gonna tell me about it, or what?"
"I told you," he said, looking vexed. "I don't have to tell you shit."
"You don't have to. But it would be appreciated." She observed him for a few moments. He was standing as still as a statue, eyes fixated on one specific booth in the corner of the diner. The light seemed to shine perfectly onto it as if the sun favored only that corner of the room. She stared with him at the bright green chairs and round table, because she wasn't sure what else to do.
Out of nowhere, a walker slammed itself against the wall, jaws gnawing and scratching against the glass. Its fingers clawed, grime and blood streaking the pristine glass. Negan curled his lip in a snarl and gripped hard onto Lucille.
"Let's go," he said, then swung the bat onto his shoulder.
She didn't question but followed behind. Negan walked to the middle of the small parking lot and beckoned the corpse forward with his spiked bat. The body turned around, growling, and began to limp forward.
"C'mon fucker. Come here."
Negan spun the bat in a way that made her think he'd probably done it a million other times before. Then, when the walker was close enough, he swung it so hard the head nearly departed from the rotting body.
She looked at Negan, then back at the diner, and to the corpse that was splattered across the parking lot. He cared for the place, for whatever reason. Maybe it wasn't her business, but there was no doubt it meant something to him.
"Dirty ass mother-fucker made a goddamn mess." He looked at the blood and griminess that smeared across the glass. He shook his head.
She hesitated before speaking. "Should we clean it?"
He tapped Lucille twice against the ground, getting rid of the slab of skin that stuck to the barbed wire. "No."
With that, he began in another direction. Up the hill, toward the church.
She decided it wouldn't be so wise to ask many more questions. Keep them to a minimum, and maybe he'd be more apt to answer some of them.
The church was beautiful. A clean, milk-white that shone so innocently in the sunlight at the peak of the hill, adorned with a cross placed at the forefront of the building above the doors. The church back home wasn't so nice. It was old and it showed through the decor, but a church was a church, nonetheless. For a small town like the one they were in, something so ornate was unexpected.
Negan stopped and peered over his shoulder. "We can go in if you want." He took a step toward the building. "Can't tell you I know how many fuckers are in there, though."
"We could take a look." She said it calmly, but she was buzzing to see what the inside looked like. She couldn't help but think about how much her grandma would love it. She would go to church every Sunday, no failure. Most of the time Winona would go along, but every weekend was a stretch for her. Her grandma always did scold her for spending more time in the forest than in church.
Winona stepped before Negan, so his chest was to her back, and she wrapped her fingers around the handle of the towering doors. She gripped the knife in her waistband, and slowly began to open pull open the door. Expect the worst, she told herself. That's how you survive.
Negan was close behind her, his loud breath fanning against the back of her neck, and his chest pressing against her back. She figured that's the way they both felt the safest; close, her in the front, with her life in her own hands, and him in the back, being tall enough to see everything in front of them. It worked.
There were only three walkers. He pushed past her to head for the first one, and she went for the other two, taking them out back to back. Idealistically, no corpses would have been better. It only disfigured the beauty of the church. But that was wishful thinking.
"Look at this fucker," Negan said, grimacing as he stared down at the dead one he took out.
She glanced over. The rotting body was dressed head to toe in black, with a small white collar peeking out at the top. The priest.
"He died in his church." There was nothing to be too sad about. "Where he wanted to be."
"Well if you look at if fucking that way, I guess."
Despite the few corpses that littered the floor, disfiguring the cool, pristine elegance of the building, it still had its divine feeling. The calm, soothing sense that washes over your body when you step through the threshold of a church door. Maybe it was the power of it all. The large, stain-glass windows that filtered sunlight into the pews, breaking up the brightness into different areas of the church. The brightest was the pulpit, like a scene from a movie. With a window on the ceiling above, light shone down on the unopened bible.
She walked over and stood directly under the sunlight, looking out at where she would have sat in the pews years before. To the middle-back right section. At the very end of the pew so she'd be out of there quickly after the sermon was over. Releasing a sigh, she placed her hand on the bible. It was soft, velvet almost. It didn't feel much like leather. She opened it up.
"You know much about the bible?" She asked. Negan was off in his own world but still managed to glance up.
"I don't know shit about religion, sweetheart." He said, stepping over the walker and sitting at the back pew. "Never gave a fuck."
She nodded and trailed the paragraphs with her finger, hovering over each word, recognizing phrases every now and then. She'd remembered the exact way her priest would say them. The exact way her grandmother would say them.
"And now these three remain faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love."
She said it the way she imagined her grandmother world. A long pause after remain, and emphasis on love. With a fervent tone to her soft voice, almost mellifluous in a way. Negan's lip turned upward, not in an appreciative way, but as if he were about to laugh.
"Ain't that fucking sweet."
"It was my grandma's favorite. Corinthians. I don't know how much I believe it, I just know it reminds me of her." She stepped off the platform and headed toward the doors. "We can go now."
"You don't wanna take anything?" He asked, eyebrow perked up. "The Bible? Hell, do you even have a bible back at the Sanctuary?"
"No, I have one at Alexandria. I'll get it back soon enough." She opened the door and closed it behind her, not bothering to hold it open for him. The sun felt hotter than it did before they entered the church.
"You have got some mighty big balls for a female." He shoved the door close, walking by her with a look of annoyance. She furrowed her brow and followed hot on his trail.
"For a female? Please, all of your men are pussies. If it came down to it, I bet half of them wouldn't do shit for your ass."
"Watch what the fuck you say."
"I could say the same for you."
The next few minutes were silent, walking side by side up the steep dirt hill. It wasn't awkward. It was never awkward with Negan, it didn't seem possible. There was some tenseness to the way they refused to walk too close to each other, or brush arms, but it was mainly pride. For both of them.
A stretch down the road there was another small building, less ornate than the church they had just come from. It was a school, small like an elementary but had no play structures or anything to indicate it was a kid's school. She could spot the football field from behind the small building, it was nearly the size of the school as well. When they reached the parking lot, she stopped and looked up at the dilapidated sign. In dusty white letters, it read out Ridgeview.
"So what is it? Did you grow up here or live here before the apocalypse?" She asked. It was either or. There was no reason he'd choose to come here for his birthday if it wasn't.
"I lived here. Moved in my thirties." He continued on toward the front doors but stopped before he reached them. She took her time strolling behind him. He stood as still as a statue peering up at the letters that read out the name of the school.
"You were a teacher here, weren't you?"
It seemed obvious enough. He gave a small, barely noticeable nod, but it was enough for her.
She spoke tentatively. "Do you want to go inside?"
He waited a few moments before shaking his head and swinging Lucille onto his shoulder. "Maybe next year."
Then he walked past, back the way they came. She stayed by his side.
Next year. That meant it was an annual thing, visiting his hometown. It was sweet, the way he seemed to care so much for every little aspect. The diner. The school. Even the church. It was poignant, seeing the dejected look in his eyes, but it was beautiful at the same time. She'd give anything to go back to King County and visit home. But that would take a lot of fuel and hours to travel there and back, just to be able to have that sense of nostalgia. She could do that simply by talking to her grandmother, or cracking open the same books she'd read while sat on her tree above the river.
"I wanna go in," he spoke up. "Haven't been able to grow the balls. It's fucking scary. I taught those kids for years, watched them grow into fucking adults, some of them. I'm just grateful I wasn't there when it went to shit."
"Where were you?" She asked.
"The hospital. I watched my wife turn."
She winced and directed her gaze to the ground. "I'm sorry."
He shook his head. "It was gonna happen either fucking way. It's cancer. A goddamn bitch. But watching my students get ripped apart by those fuckers – I don't wanna think about that shit."
"You don't want to go in because you're afraid you'll see one of them?"
"I like to imagine they survived." His expression hardened. "But I know they didn't. I'm not a fucking optimist like you."
"I'm not much of an optimist. I know how shit this world it."
He glanced at her and gave her a half smile. Desolate, but a smile, nonetheless. "Then you get it, sweetheart."
She thought for a moment how wild their conversations were – going from bickering to heavy topics like life and death. But it was one of the things she enjoyed about being with him, as odd as it was. She could hate him and like him at the same time. Every new thing she learned, digging deeper into his personal life, gave her a better understanding of who he was. She could get through the bad parts. It almost made her upset that she'd have to leave him soon, but that's the way it worked. That's the way it was always going to work.
"Yeah, I get it."
She was the one to smile this time, and the two of them continued down the hill and to their truck. Negan pegged her as an optimist, but that was never really her strong point. She worried. She worried and worried, and it was the pessimism inside her that fuelled that anxiety. Soon, she'd be gone, and there was nothing to be expected. She didn't underestimate Negan. He'd look for her. It was the question of how long and how hard he'd search, and that's what scared her. After all the time she'd had to learn about him, the number one thing she got was his strength. Maybe optimism was all she needed.
A little hope.