𝐖𝐀𝐋𝐋𝐅𝐋𝐎𝐖𝐄𝐑 - carl grimes .

❸ - crazed superheroes

act one - chapter three
"crazed superheroes"
- soobriety -

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MAY CLARK WILL NEVER FORGET the horror of watching a camp get overrun. Frantic screams blend in with the sound of ravenous snarls, and create a living nightmare.

It's like a plague, the way it haunts the back of her eyelids at night. It keeps her up, within the endless hours of nightfall, wide awake; alert.

She closes the door to her cell each night. It's more of a comfort, than anything. Anyone, anything, could get in. The door's padlock is sitting in a corner of her cell, broken. Useless.

Still, she likes to think she'd hear the squeak of a rusty metal door opening before a walker has its hands on her, splitting her open, knawing on the sweet taste of her flesh.

One week, and May still feels the guilt of settling in.

She thought, semi immaturely, that she'd be able to incorporate herself into this environment with ease. She could let loose; forgive, even. But no matter how hard she tries to shake it, the feeling is there, binded to her muscles in irreplaceable instinct. Constantly, she's tense. Fearful. Distractions are fruitless.

She unsure how it's happened, or why it's happened, but she's become a popular character amongst the rest of the kids. Mealtimes are a full course meal of questions brought on by wide-eyed innocence and naive intrigue. Lizzie and Mika Samuels are the leaders of the lot, something about their excitement about there being another girl at the prison. Their questions are harder to answer than the more mundane ones, a churn in her stomach whenever Lizzie speaks with her peculiar sincerity.

Sometimes, relief settles at the bottom of her heart when Patrick comes to drag her away. She's taken up a chore: cooking. She minds the grill with him and Carol, sometimes others, inhaling the fresh scent of cooking deer and pig. An occasional squirrel finds its way onto the rack, courtesy of Daryl. Another attempt at a distraction, busying herself in any way she can.

It's a simple job. Flipping pieces of meat and plating them isn't a task particularly difficult, but sometimes, her mind drifts. Sometimes it's the fence clingers — the walkers pressing into the fences, the way their legs buckle as shanks drive through their brains, the way they just keep coming as more die from the hands of the people lined against the inside. She's heard — by accident — Carol and Daryl discussing how hard it is to keep them from crowding together. Sometimes, she wonders if she'd be better off down there, helping pick the walkers off one by one.

Sometimes, unsurprisingly, her mind finds its way back to her family; how much she misses them. She's put it all together, how it would be if her brother was at the prison with her. He'd be in the group that goes out on runs, because despite his ability to settle down somewhere, he's always had that adventurous spirit. It's harder for May to settle, she's noticed. It brings her envy, watching how everyone around her has managed to find a place to call home.

Especially when her eyes stray onto Carl. He's always out in the fields, tending to the gardens. She watches, most days, with something like jealousy seeping into her nerve endings, as his father works with him. They're in their own world, safe, connected.

Rick Grimes is a name she's heard plenty of times within her few days here. He's spoken about like an urban legend, floating rumors glued together to act as further details completing the vague stories told by Rick himself. His presence, May can notice even from a distance, is eerily resembling to Carl's. It's confident; headstrong. He has an intensity to him, the same as Carl's, that has the ability to come off intimidating at times.