You're Too Young To Be So Broken

A New Chapter

Clem and Duck were startled awake by Arvo.

The boy was rambling something about how they needed to get the front gate open, and the only person who knew how to work the gate was Duck. He waved his walkie in the air, talking about how Javi had told him so.

The boy groaned, but rose from the bed.

"Let's go. the sooner this gets done the better."

Clementine rubbed the sleep from her eyes but gathered her things quickly. The two were out and back on the street within minutes heading toward the front gate.

The streets were bare, no one in sight but the dead and the walkers that were now roaming around. Duck saw many of the people he called colleagues dead in the street, some children, women. There were a lot of casualties for sure.

Clementine watched out for Duck as he climbed the ladder to the main gate.

With one press of a button the gates opened. A bulldozer came barreling through the gates leaving a trail of crushed walkers in his wake. The scooper held many bodies as they drove, scooping up any of the dead and tossing them in a pile.

Mariana hopped off running up to her just as Duck climbed down the ladder. "The plan is to put the bodies all in one place and burn them. It'll make cleaning up easier." She wore a huge smile on her face. "You should have seen how we drove through that herd!"

Duck stood behind Clem, wrapping an arm around her, pulling her into him. "I'm sure it was cool." He looked toward the gate, then back to Mari.

Mariana gave a knowing smirk, pointing between the two. "I see what's going on here."

Duck smiled brightly. "Mhm. It's exactly what it looks like."

Clementine blushed suddenly, very interested in her feet. "Oh someone's shy." Mariana playfully hit Clementine's arm. "Congrats!"

Duck looked around at the streets of Richmond. His stay was finally almost up.

"Our time together is coming to an end." He said he held out his hand to Mariana. "Thank you for being a friend to my Clemmy, I'm sure she needed it."

Maria smacked the boy's hand away before pulling them both into a hug. "No problem! I'd do it again, even though I thought you were a bit crazy at first."

Clementine warmly smiled. "I'll never forgive your friendship, I don't think I would have gotten as far as I did without you."

"I'm sure you would have kicked ass with or without me."

Clementine watched as the others got to work removing the walkers, others from the community had even come from their apartments to help. She watched as they pat the back of Javi, the people were clearly thankful for him and the other's help.

The sun had begun rising over the horizon. They had been active all night, the dark night sky began turning a light orange shade. Sun risings had always been a peaceful thing to experience, it was the start of a new day.

"We should start gathering supplies to leave...we have a long journey ahead of us."

"When you find Aj, you should come back. It'll be safe here, with new management hopefully those bad memories can be replaced." She looked between her friend, and the newest addition to her friend's list, Duck. "You can trust me and Javi, he'd be safe, and Javi could teach him baseball."

"That seems like something to look forward to." Clem smiled at the thought. She then took off her hat, her curls falling right over her face.

"Maybe we could cut your hair before we leave Clem, keep it short and safe." As much as Duck loved running his hands through her hair, he knew she had preferred to keep it short and in two puff balls.