In The Bird Song | TWD

chapter 34 - Itsy bitsy spider...

Harlow pov –

tonight's the night we are getting out, it's taken a month of careful planning and scheming but the puzzle pieces are finally all in place.

The plan is far from fool proof and its dangerous as hell, but its all I've got so I am doing it anyway. I have to get the kids out; I have to fulfil Eliza's last wish by giving her daughter her freedom back.

The plan is simple really, but it took a long time to set up, the first stage of the plan was easy enough to complete as all It required was successfully building some semblance of trust and good faith between myself and the army. In order to achieve this I have had to kill three more people whilst pretending to enjoy it however despite my guilt and mounting horror at what I had done, I must have been convincing because a week after Eliza's passing, I was offered an honorary position in the army.

Though in hindsight it is also possible that the main contributing factor to my promotion was actually the fact I was blatantly starving myself in order to feed the two children and dog in my care on single salary. They couldn't have afforded me to die at the time as there were only three hunters left and I was the best out of the trio.

So, in order to keep me alive they promoted me to army pay even though the only army duty I am required to do is go on runs every so often because my main job is still hunting.

Stage two of my plan was a little more complicated to complete because it required me to amass a shit tun of sleeping pills. Even with my army income obtaining food for four individuals is not an easy feet and medicine is even more expensive than it was before the world fell. However, I crunched the numbers and figured out I could amas enough payment cards to buy the pills I needed if I only ate every four days over a period of three weeks or so. This would have been impossible on a hunters or workers salary but the army bastards get paid a ridiculous amount compared to everyone else so it wasn't the challenge it could have been.

I have never been so skinny in my life and I'm almost always in some kind of pain because of the constant starvation I have been putting my body through but it's all worth it because I have finally got myself enough pills to knock out a full-grown man for at least 15 hours.

I had to tell the medic I had been suffering with insomnia to get the pills but my lie was easily believed thanks to the purple bags under my eyes and my sickly grey skin. Truth be told I have not been sleeping all that much anyway because in the quit hours of twilight when its just me and my thoughts my mind keeps me occupied by going over the night Eliza died in painful detail and over and over again picking apart every single thing I could have done that might have changed Eliza's fate.

I decided this morning that tonight would be the night as there was no reason to delay the inevitable now that I have enough drugs. For the plan to work my victim needs to stay alive because I won't be there to stab them in the head and if they came back as a walker, it would ruin everything so I need to be extremely careful not to overdose my intended target.

All that's left to do now is carry out phase three which is much easier said than done I will admit. I sigh and look around the small private room the army moved me into after I was promoted revelling in the fact that I will never have to see it again after tonight because come morning I will either be dead or free.

I look over to the single bed posy, Izzy and Annette all share whilst I sleep on the floor and see both children are sleeping soundly despite it only being six o'clock. I made Izzy go to bed earlier than usual because I will have to wake her up during the night though I have neglected to warn her about our incoming escape in an attempt to spare her the anxiety of waiting.