The Mini Badass

Chapter 4

After about twenty minutes of the drive from hell Jacqui taps my arm. "We're almost to camp." She says and I nod thanking her.

We drive up and large hill before finally slowing to a stop.

"Come meet everyone." Morales tells Rick as everyone else gets out. Rick instead hops in the back to help me out.

He jumps out of the back first before gently lowering me to the ground. "Hey helicopter boy! Child! Come say hello!" Morales shouts at us.

"We're coming!" I shout back leaning on Rick for some support as he holds my arm to help me walk.

His grip loosens making me look up at him, then to what he's looking at. He's staring at a woman and a boy. "Oh my god." He whispers and I put the pieces together.

This is his family.

They're alive.

"Dad!" The boy shouts running at us, Rick lets go of me to rush forwards to his kid. "Dad!"

He engulfs the child in his arms as I hobble towards them.

A older man runs over to me, grabbing my elbow. "Thanks." I mumble as Mr. Grimes walks to Mrs. Grimes who immediately hugs her husband.

<3

We've been at the camp for a while, Dale - the older man who helped me - wrapped my foot in some sort of bandage before Shane -one of Ricks cop friends- started a couple of fires.

I hobble towards the fireplace with the most people I know and sit down next to T-Dog and Glenn.

"Disoriented. I guess that comes closest." Rick says making me very confused on the conversation I walked in on. "Fear, confusion all those thing but... Disoriented comes closest."

"Words can be meager things." Dale says putting down a cup. "Sometimes they fall short."

"I felt like I'd been ripped out of my life and put somewhere else. For a while I thought I was trapped in some coma dream, something I'd never wake up from."

"Mom said you died." Rick's son says looking up at his dad.

"She had ever reason to believe that." Rick says holding his family close. I turn my attention to the fire while the group keeps talking.

"When things started getting really bad, they told me at the hospital that they were gonna medevac you and the other patients to Atlanta." Mrs. Grimes tells Rick. "But it never happened."

"Not surprising after Atlanta fell and from the looks of that hospital, it got overrun."

"Yeah looks don't deceive." Shane says as I bring my knee closer to me and resting my head on it. "I barely got them out." He continues pointing to Mrs. Grimes and her kid.

"I can't tell you how grateful I am Shane."

"There go those words falling short again." Dale says with a chuckle.

A loud thud followed by some crackling makes me turn to the sound.

"Hey Ed. You wanna rethink that log?" Shane yells over to the man by the now larger fire.

"It's cold man." Ed shouts back.

"Cold don't change the rules, does it?" Shane asks, getting visibly angry. "Keep our fires low, just embers so we can't be seen from a distance."

"I said it's cold." Ed fires backs, not even looking to Shane. "You should mind your own business for once."

I watch Shane walk over to Ed, a blonde girl who's about my age and who I'm assuming is her mother.