The Truth Is

Chapter 12 - In the Distance

"We have to go. Now." Rick repeats himself. "Why?" I ask. "Well when Daryl and Michonne went on a run-" I cut him off. "Daryl and Michonne went on a run?"

I guess I never realized. "Yea. If you weren't upstairs getting it on with Carl, you would've noticed." Daryl jokes and I can see carl blushing a little. I give Daryl a look and turn back to Rick.

"Anyways, when they were on the run there was a herd about 20 miles away. So we have to go before it catches up to us." Rick continues.

I focus on the word 'it' because they aren't people, they're things.

"Everyone, get your stuff together. We are leaving in 5 minutes."

Everyone gets all their stuff. I go to the upstairs bedroom to get my stuff. I find a book on the bookshelf and put it in my bag.

"A book?" I turn around and see Carl. He's smiling. "Yea, why? I like to read. I haven't read a book in years."

He goes over to the bookshelf and looks it over. His eyes lock on a book. "I'll take this one." He holds it up and I laugh quietly. He puts the book in his bag and we gather the rest of our stuff.

We all meet downstairs. "Everyone ready?" Rick asks. Everyone nods and we head out the door.

Just like that. We leave another home. We can never stay in one place.

Since we only have one car, and it only has 23 miles of gas left, we figured we'd just leave it. It wouldn't get us far and we can't fit everyone in it anyway.

So we just walk.

We walk for a while. It has probably been three hours. It's getting really hot outside. Everyone is tired. Not tired because of lack of sleep, tired because of the sun.

The sun beating on your skin and it feels like you're slowly melting away.

Carl taps my shoulder and hands me a more than half-empty water bottle. I refuse to take it. "Brooke, you need it."

"So do you. It's almost gone. Just drink it." He shakes his head and reaches his arm out farther for me to take it.

I take it and put my mouth to it. I lift the bottle just enough so it'll look like I drank some. I don't want any but he will keep bugging me. He won't even know.

I hand him back the bottle. "Now you drink." He drinks some but he doesn't finish it.

There's a herd of walkers behind us. Not the one we were running from. That one was much bigger. This one consists of about thirty walkers.

Since the cave of walkers, I don't think of any herd big. It's mostly just small to me.

We decide to turn around and take them.

We kill them all.

I turn around and we start walking again. I hear groaning again but before I can turn around, Carl stabs it.

"Thanks." I say. He nods.

I look to my right. I see a small tower with a tall peak in the distance. I squint my eyes to see if I'm seeing it right.

"Oh my god." I say. Everyone turns to me and looks in my direction.

"Oh my god! Good eye Brooke!" Daryl says. We all smile and start walking towards the tower.

I've found my group another prison.

Carl hugs me tight.

"What was that for?" I ask, smiling.

"This." He smiles.

He's referring to the safe sanctuary I've found for everyone.

At least, I hope it's safe.