Walking With The Dead

Let It Out

"So what your story?" Carl spoke up after a long time of silence.

"Well, my name is Adrian, im 16 years old. I used to live in a small house just outside of Atlanta with my parents and baby sister. My mother died before the outbreak, and my dad not long after along with my sister. I spent the the remainder of the outbreak alone until four months ago when i was reunited with my best friend Theo. Hes no longer with us, i lost him a few days ago. Left him for a few minutes to check a house out, came back and he was fighting off a walker. The walker won. Ive been alone until you got in the car with me."

There was an uneasy silence for a few moments.

"If you dont want to talk about your past Carl, you dont have to."

He mumbled something under his breath that i couldnt make out. I didnt think much of it.

We continued to drive in silence, with the odd sentence or two pointing things out, or sometimes little questions about ourselves. Carl told me a bit about his past, but not much. I could see it pained him to speak of it.

We came across what seemed to be an old motel along the side of the highway. We stopped in and cleared ourselves the top floor, and blocked off the staircase just to be safe. We went into the room, locked it up, and settled down. Carl took off his boots and sat cross legged on one of the beds. I could see tears rolling down his cheeks.

"Boys.. boys arent supposed to cry."

I sat next to him and pulled his head into my chest, slowly stroking his hair on the back of his head. He was almost a foot shorter than me, so this felt right.

"Shush now, just let it out, alright? I'm not going to judge you. Youve made it this far, I'm sure you can go farther. You'll be okay."