Malevolent. The Walking Dead

[ 003 ] silent language breeds fire

003: silent language breeds fire

There was a brief moment where Joey could tell she was unconscious. Her eyes felt hot, mouth caked with sand. She thought perhaps she had drowned and she was in the purgatory. Maybe she had already descended to Hell. Either way, she tried to pry open her eyes that had been weaved shut by her sticky eyelashes. She wasn't sure if it was blood, until she realized it was just water and other remnants of the river. She was alive, unfortunately, and it took all her strength to roll over as her limbs screamed at her to stay still. Joey saw Billy stirring from the corner of her eyes. He was on his back, chest rising and falling as he seemed to be choking on something foreign. Like an invisible creature was laying atop his chest and cutting off his air as he tried to fight them off, closed lipped and eyes glued shut. Joey, her skin burning from the frying of the sun and her limbs aching from being thrown about in the water, army crawled toward her savior and attempted to push him over to make sure any water or other remnants he swallowed would fall out, as it seemed as though he couldn't do it himself. There was a brief moment where Joey was pushing, pushing, pushing, and she was about to presume he was dead ━ but she was able to roll him over on his side, and the water and seaweed that was in his mouth spilled out over to the sand. Joey sighed in relief and rolled on her back. "Holy shit, I thought you were dead," she breathed, partly out of relief and another because she had to make sure she was alive too.

Bill rubbed his eyes, dislodging any guck that remained and rolled over to look at Joey, who was still laying on her back trying to get herself back to normal. The sun was high in the sky at that point, Joey presumed it was about noon, and the heat pierced the backs of her eyelids. She heard Bill groaning from beside her. "What the fuck happened?" he grunted, shifting up to sit. Joey grasped the the sand beneath her hands in order to feel it again, to make sure she was actually present and alive, and not trapped in whatever post life, heaven like dream world she may have been stuck in. There was a moment when she felt a pebble go beneath her nail that she realized that perhaps she had just been passed out from not being able to swim, and from being thrown around in the rocky, rough waters of the river. It took all her will to push herself up to sit. Her clothes were soaking wet, which was a nice parallel to the deafening heat, but her skin had been blistered from exposure to the sun for multiple hours without protection, and it hurt to touch the sensitive skin. Bill noticed her pain, and as he pushed himself onto his feet, he reached forward to grab her hands. She pulled herself up and readjusted on the sand.

"I told you not to jump," he scolded, backpack soaking wet a few feet away from them. Joey narrowed her eyes. "If we didn't jump, we'd be dead. You should be thanking me, really," she breathed, trying to regain her composure before reaching for her own pack. She picked off the seaweed that littered over the top, as well as a few other remnants that had drifted from the ocean. Both of them smelt of the sea, and as if Joey couldn't already stand the smell of herself after these two months of no bathing, she definitely couldn't now. She reeked and nearly wanted to vomit just by the scent of herself. Her stomach growled feverishly, and she held a hand to her abdomen. "I'm starving," she complained, as Bill began to set off toward the city. He seemed to be trying to figure out where they were. "You ate all of those nuts before,"

"Yeah, and then I fucking threw them up,"

"Can you try and get through one fucking minute without fucking cursing?" he scolded, to which Joey scowled at his hypocrisy, but soldiered on not that far behind him. There were some dunes and rocks they had to climb over, and Joey felt her limbs growing weaker and weaker every time she lifted them up. She needed sleep, real sleep, and not being knocked out by a force of water. She was praying they were in San Jose, and that the quarantine zone wasn't too far from where they were ━ and she could rest her eyes for the time being. Bill sighed as the map was soaking wet, as it had been in his pocket, and the ink was beginning to run all over the pages. Joey pulled a lump of seaweed from her hair.