In The Bird Song | TWD

chapter 33 - Take them and run

Harlow pov –

It's a couple days before I find myself back in front of another group of survivors. There has been a lot of them in the area recently so something must be pushing them in this direction like a horde of walkers or whatever.

This group is big about 25 folks in total and we probably would not have been able to overpower them if it wasn't for the fact there group had no guns on them or at least not ones with bullets.

The bald army man was about to give his usual 'come with us or die' speech but he gets interrupted by a hacking cough let out by one of the captives.

We all turn to look at the young women it came from and upon closer inspection nobody fails to notice how ill she looks. Her skins coted in a sheen of sweat and her eyes are swollen and rubbed red raw. Her lips are practically blue and she is trembling violently but not out of fear. She is swaying on her knees slightly like she is struggling to stay upright and she looks like a gust of wind could do her in.

"You been bit?" our leader barks at the poor women and we all watch the lady in either pity or disgust as her mouth opens and closes in a pathetic attempt at speech. "Please she hasn't been bit there just a sickness going about." The man next to her cries clearly fearing we are going to shoot the women.

"It's not just her boss look at them" a woman from the army says causing everyone there to scan down the line. as my eyes work their way along the terrified individuals faces, I count six others who are obviously sick. However, what bothers me the most is the women kneeling at the end of the line.

She is small and very young maybe 18 or 19 if I was to guess, her hair is a short mousy brown colour styled in a curly pixie cut atop her head. She has large brown doe eyes and tan skin that is splattered with chocolate freckles. She is concerningly frail and she shares a striking resemblance to a baby fawn, however the most troubling about this women was is the bundle clutched protectively in her arms.

The baby must be a new-born judging by the size of the bundle which is no longer than a loath of bread. I can tell Eliza has also spotted the women and child because when I turn to look in her direction I see that her eyes are blown wide and she's biting her lip nervously.

Even if Eliza had never actually experienced or seen the conditions for unit workers, she knows enough to understand that it is nearly impossible for a new-born to survive in the unit. Sure, it's been done before but the infant mortality rate is still extremely high for the workers. New-borns don't have fully developed immune systems making them extremely susceptible to diseases and the first floor is crawling with sickness. If the doe eyed girl is the mother of the child and able to breastfeed then food would at least not be an issue for the baby as long as the mother can feed herself enough to continue producing milk.

However, the girl is still very young and frail which doesn't exactly rule her out as being the mother but it does make it more likely that the baby isn't hers. The mother could very well have died in labour like Lorrie did or she might have been bit. Besides Even if the fawn girl is the mother, she looks so malnourished that I wouldn't be surprised if her body couldn't produce milk anymore much like how I stopped getting my period.

So, to put things in simpler words the baby will probably die in the unit and though I have seen many children die the thought still stabs at my heart painfully making it difficult to breath. the whole situation reminds we of Mary and her daughter who I helped deliver a couple months ago. I've tried my best to avoid thinking of poor Mary and her very likely now dead baby however the sight of the curly haired girl clutching her new-born brings back a wave of carefully supressed memories.