Our Life (Sequel to "Remnants")

Death In Between

-Riley-

Carl's safe.

He's alive. We're both alive... For now, at least.

There's still about a hundred walkers lumbering between us and the safety of Alexandria, though, and we have no weapons to tackle them.

All we can do in this situation is pray; pray to a God that most people now believe not to exist.

—

"We've got at least a day or two's worth of food if you put together the stuff in the backpack and some cans of beans left behind here," I pointed out optimistically.

"The herd's literally a road away," Carl sighed in defeat, "and I think it's gonna be more than two days before it clears off."

"Surely our group'll help us - Michonne, Tyreese, Sasha and Daryl won't just leave us to die," I justified myself.

"Maybe, but they won't know where to look. We're at least a few miles from Alexandria as it is, and as far as they know we could be a few miles in the opposite direction."

Carl was ever the pessimist, not helped by the fact that he had suffered a painful burn on his back from Michael's... explosive personality.

Whilst I was trying persistently to give hope to my negative boyfriend, this too was being exhausted, and I was inclined to agree with Carl on a majority of his opinions.

Still, we couldn't loose hope.

However, something else was plaguing my mind. Something that happened when Michael was holding us at gunpoint.

I had hit Carl. Not the sort of light, playful, friendly hit that we often exchanged. Nothing like that - though I wish it had been. No. I had punched him violently, hatefully, and out of nothing but spite. The realization that Michael had essentially killed my parents had driven me to a point where I sincerely did not care who I hurt.

My PTSD was getting undeniably worse, and there was no doubt that it was none other than this 'condition' which provoked my anger earlier.

My parents' deaths had been avenged... But at what cost?

I had to take my mind off this, so I came to a rash decision that would at least temporarily relieve me of my guilt-ridden conscience. I opted to go outside for a while and observe the herd's position whilst Carl slept soundly upstairs.

Collecting what remained of my supplies - a pistol, two clips of ammunition, a bottle of painkillers and a cereal bar - I opened the bullet-riddled front door and stepped out into the sun baked outside.

Instantly hit with a wave of heat from the sun, which was hanging comfortingly in the sky, I felt at ease with the serenity of my current surroundings.

Regrettably, however, that only made me more worried, since quiet and comfort are two things that, no matter how hard you try, simply never seem to last in the apocalypse.

For the moment at least, I was safe, and took this opportunity to inhale a deep breath of clean, unpolluted air - a welcome change to the stagnant stench of the house.

Walking down the road, I passed multiple corpses. Almost now nothing more than skeletons, the only remnants of these ex-survivors were their tattered clothes. Each shirt or coat featured a large stain of blood in the chest area, with the decaying corpses containing at least one gunshot wound each; the spent bullets that littered the grounds around these bodies were identical to those found back in the house, indicating that these people were the former owners of the residence that Carl and I now sheltered in, and that they were most likely rounded up and killed by lowly scavengers who care for nobody but themselves.

We will probably end up with one of those outcomes - either worthless shells of humans killing others for petty things with no regard for fellow human lives, or laying on the floor riddled with bullets with nobody left to give a damn about it - before this world gets any better.

I ignored this grisly yet poignant sight as I reached the top of the dust and blood caked road, peering out onto the surrounding barren land.

The herd lumbered just a few hundred meters away, almost utterly motionless, dormant, laying in an almost pathetic state until the arrival of a potential victim.

Our home was out there. But there was a shit tonne of death in between...

Carl and I will not be those victims.

We won't end up like those bodies by the roadside, or the corpses that shamble around up ahead.

I will make sure of it - if it is the last thing I ever do.

We will get home again.

But we had about a hundred walkers to get through first...

—-

Sorry this has took so long to do.

Exams have finally arrived, and for the next two weeks I'm afraid you will have much sparser updates :(

Still, how are Carl and Riley gonna get through this? With nobody else to help them, they're all on their own now...

See you all soon (hopefully) :)