Chapter Text
The Walking Dead: A New Ally
By DemonRomantic
Running was bad, unless it was necessary. I’d learned that much. These things came towards noise, so the less you made the better. That was a cruel irony in my case, after what those bastards in that place had done to me. For the longest time I had wondered why. Why would people be so cruel to each other when the world was already a mess? That question was almost idiotic to me now. People weren’t all good because they wanted to be; some just played along until it suited them… When it came right down to it, everyone else just did what they had to in order to survive.
I didn’t know where the hell I was now. Somewhere close to South Carolina? North? It didn’t matter anyway. All that mattered was getting somewhere without those things. Maybe up North in the Artic they wouldn’t be as bad? I knew that they slowed down some in the winter. I had to make it up there and find a warm place before…
I heard twigs snapping, and my senses immediately heightened and went into defense mode. Looking around, I found a tree with limbs close enough that I could reach and scrambled up before one of those things came walking underneath me. I watched it walk passed, keeping as still as possible and breathing heavily. All I could think about was how evil people were, how stupid they let their ambitions get until they destroyed their own humanity. Until they literally turned themselves into monsters.
Ugly wasn’t alone, though. They rarely were. Two more came skulking under, but these ones were moving slower. It was constant anxiety caused by these ‘Changed’, as we’d called them back at the camp. If it wasn’t worrying about when they’d show up, it was waiting them out, or running and fighting them off. I hadn’t ever gotten close enough to one of these things to finish them off like the fighters had. I was too much of a coward. At least that’s what they’d said. Who would want to get close to something that’d rip you to pieces while you were still alive?
The other Changed moved away far enough that I felt I could move now, but I wasn’t climbing down until I was sure that was all of them. I’d seen too many people go down thanks to these things, and I wasn’t about to get turned into one of those monsters. I looked at my wristwatch, something I had held onto with my life and constantly made sure was working. After ten minutes had passed without spotting another one of those things I moved on.
The woods were safer by far than the streets. There were trees here, and cover, and less Changed. There were also less people to worry about. Since I’d left the camp, I’d come across only Changed, something that was both a blessing and a curse. It meant that I would be safer, but it did get maddening having no one to listen to but my own thoughts. Getting bored was rare, but when it did happen, I’d experiment with traps. I was forever grateful that my dad had taught me enough about hunting and camping that I could manage for myself out here.
I wished that I had been able to swipe more things before escaping, though. I had my sleeping bag and backpack with a water bottle, a swiss army knife, some rope, a notepad and pen, and a few granola bars and cans of tuna. I never risked starting a fire at night, afraid that the light would attract those things, so trying to sleep was freezing, but at least I never got bothered as long as I employed my trick of burying myself so that only my face poked out of the ground. The Changed would walk right over me sometimes without even noticing I was there. I constantly prayed that none of them would ever walk over my face.
That’s how it was. Until one morning when I accidently stumbled into an abandoned campsite where some unlucky bastard had gotten turned and was tied up in a hammock. Instead of walking on, as I should have, I tried to salvage anything that was edible or otherwise useful. I didn’t realize that there was another one trapped inside of a tent, and unzipped the damn thing. Now it was necessary to run. I bolted into the trees, trying to get as far away as possible, but it was no use. The noise attracted more of those things.
I scrambled up a tree, knowing that they couldn’t climb, and stared in horror at the herd of them that swarmed around my sanctuary. They snarled and gnashed their teeth, clawing up the trunk. There was no way out, I was trapped. I knew that as long as they were preoccupied with me, they wouldn’t do anything else but try to get at me. I was a goner.
Three agonizing hours passed without a single one of them going away. I tried breaking off branches and chucking them away, but they weren’t dumb enough to go after them apparently. The only dumb one here was me. I laughed morbidly. If only I had a weapon…
My survival instincts kicked into overdrive and I hunted the uppermost branches for a long sturdy shaft. Once I snapped off my makeshift spear, I pulled out the pocket knife from my backpack and began wildling down the stick into a point. Once my spear was ready, I climbed down to the lowest limbs, just out of reach of the pack of Changed. I wasn’t sure if I could stab hard enough, but I knew to aim for the head.
Hope was restored after I managed to get most of them. I was so busy poking at them, that when an arrow came flying out of nowhere, pinning one of them to the tree, I nearly dropped my spear. Looking out a few yards, I saw a group of men coming towards me. One had a crossbow, while the others brandished machetes and hunting knives. It took mere minutes for them to finish off the rest of the Changed, but I stayed up in my perch, waiting for them to come to me.
The one with the crossbow eyeballed me with a confusing expression, that was a mix of hesitation because of the spear I had angled at him and… sad familiarity? He looked between me and the arrow shish-kabobbing the Changed to my tree. I pulled my spear up so that he knew I wasn’t planning on stabbing him with it. Not yet anyway.
The rest of his group came over and stared up at me. One of them spoke, and I automatically pegged him as the leader from his demeanor. He held up his hands, showing one unarmed and the other with a knife that he quickly put back in its sheath.
“Why don’t you come down now and we can talk. The Walkers are all gone.”
I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life up in the tree, so I came down, but held onto my spear with both hands, keeping my eye on each and every one of them. I knew that people were a far bigger threat than the Changed.
“What’s your name?” The leader asked, lowering his hands.
I shifted my spear to one hand and unshouldered my backpack while they all tensed up at my movements. I unzipped the bag, slowly, and withdrew the pen and notepad inside, making sure to show all of them what I had so that they wouldn’t immediately attack me. I used the pen to write down my message on the paper and ripped off the sheet to hand to the leader. The guy with the crossbow and another man with a baseball cap who looked Asian, stood closest to him and read over his shoulder.
‘My name is Kat.’
“My name’s Rick. Can you talk, Kat?” The leader asked.
I shook my head. Writing down another message.
‘I was hurt by the people I was staying with.’
He shared a look with the men flanking him and then turned back to me after they each gave him a nod.
“How many Walkers have you killed?”
I scribbled down on the paper.
‘If you mean the zombies, 15?’
“Alright, and how many people have you killed?”
‘1.’
“Why?”
I stared at him with a serious look, before closing the space between us and scribbling down my answer. I held up the notepad so that it was right in front of his face and frowned with my jaw set tight.
He nodded with a frown of his own, taking the notepad from me and removing the page I had written on, crumpling it into a ball before placing it in his jeans’ pocket.
“I promise you that no one here is going to hurt you, Kat. We have a place, it’s not far from here, where you can be safe. If you want to come with us?”
I turned to look at each of them in turn. They all had the look of every person I’d met since this whole mess had started, but I noticed that they all looked clean shaven and were wearing fresh clothes. These people were fighters, but they had a place to go, and I knew that If they had intended to kill me, they could have just let the Changed take care of that for them. Looking Rick up and down, I noticed a wedding band on his left hand, and allowed my eyes to linger there. I nodded.
“Alright. We’re out scouting now, so I’ll have Daryl and Aaron take you back. Do you have any other weapons besides that?” He asked, pointing to the spear.
I pulled out my swiss army knife and showed him the rest of the contents of my bag.
“Okay, well that should be enough for now.”
Rick began walking, leaving me with the two I were assuming were Aaron and Daryl. The one without the crossbow extended a hand towards me while the other continued to give me his weird look.
“I’m Aaron and this is Daryl. Kat, was it? Nice to meet you.”
I nodded my head in greeting, giving him a tight-lipped smile.
They both began walking, Aaron ahead of me and Daryl behind with his crossbow still in his hands but lowered. Neither of them spoke for a long time, probably out of curtesy to me, but I found the silence in the presence of those who could speak to be annoying. So, I began writing and handed my note to Aaron.
‘Where are we going?’
“To Alexandria. There’s a community with a wall. It’s got food, shelter, everything we need… Where are you coming from?”
‘Tennessee. I was traveling to Atlanta when my group decided to head to Washington D.C. instead. They said that it would be better to be nearer to the government when they discovered a cure.’
“Passing notes back and forth. That’s real cute. This ain’t elementary school…” Daryl said.
I wrote at the bottom of the note before handing it to Aaron.
‘(Read out loud so that Daryl doesn’t feel left out. ;) )’
Aaron smiled back at me and read out loud, omitting my last note.
“So what happened to the rest of your group? Did you get separated.”
I slowed my walking to a stop, shaking my head when he turned.
‘We joined with a camp in Dalton and it turned out that they were only interested in making their ranks stronger. Soon things fell out of control and people started fighting for power. After a while, everyone became savages. They were all turning on each other. So, I left.’
“No one came with you, huh? Would’ve been a good idea to have back-up stead of climbing up trees like a squirrel.” Daryl said.
I turned to throw him a dirty look over my shoulder. He wasn’t looking at me though, he was preoccupied with looking off into the trees, but I could tell he wasn’t watching for Changed. He was the biker-type and had an intimidating anger vibrating off of him, but I could tell by the way he’d been looking at me earlier and the way he wouldn’t look at me now, that there was something else I was missing.
He walked passed me, muttering as he went. “Bad idea if you ask me. Taking in a mute who can’t stay out of trouble.”
I stuck my tongue out at him and Aaron snickered. I sucked it back in as Daryl turned around and threw a suspicious look between us. I just smiled smugly at him as we continued walking, no longer in a single file, but side by side. I looked at him until he started throwing glances down at me.
“Why don’t you take a picture, it’ll last longer.”
I wrote down in my notepad and held it up in front of him.
‘Who do I remind you of? A sister? Old girlfriend?’
“I don’t got a sister.” He said.
I raised my eyebrows promptingly.
“You’re a nosey one, for somebody that can’t talk. What if I decide not to read those little notes of yours?”
I half-heartedly slugged him in the arm and he looked at me like I was crazy, but there was just the faintest hint of a smirk on his face.
I decided that I liked him. He wasn’t afraid to say what was on his mind. That was something we had in common.
After about an hour of walking, we made it to the tree line and came upon a clearing that lead to what looked like a closed community with iron walls. There were several cars scattered here and there outside the gates. A wave of nausea rolled over me and I used a nearby tree to brace myself as I vomited. Once it passed, the both of them looked at me with concerned disgust. I wiped away the drool on my lips before writing another message and handing it to Daryl who was closer to me. He read it to himself and huffed out a single laugh of disbelief before handing it over to Aaron.
Aaron looked up at me with raised eyebrows. “You’re pregnant?”
I nodded.