Fragmented Morality

Ch. 10

The way back to the highway was silent. Everything that transpired in the day left everyone confused and exhausted, myself included. I was worse off for wear than when I started the day and had to basically be carried back by my mother.

Of course, that wasn't really the case, but it very well could have been. I had my arm wrapped around her shoulder and she had hers around my waist; I was leaning probably seventy percent of my weight on her just so I could make it back. There was no sugar-coating it, I had pushed myself far beyond my limits and I was crashing.

She didn't express a single complaint the entire way, not even when she had to literally lift me over the guard rail; she lowered me to sit on the metal rail because there was no way she could actually lift me and there was no way for me to step over it myself. Once I was sitting, she positioned herself on the other side and rotated my legs over the barrier. It was painful with the way the metal dug into my thighs, I didn't exactly rotate smoothly, but it got the job done.

"Where are the others?" Dale asked upon our arrival.

"I don't know, but Carl was shot," Glenn replied sounding all too panicked over the situation.

"Shot!? What do you mean shot?"

I didn't wait around for the same conversation to transpire: do we stay or do we go? At what point is Sophia gone gone?

As soon as I was situated on the same side of the rail as my mother, she helped me up and supported me into the back of the RV.

"Mum, we're going to find her..." I whispered as I sat hunched over on the small mattress. "We're not going to leave her, right?"

In response, a hand rested on top of my head and patted my hair down. The action brought me to lift my gaze where I could see the tears in her eyes as she nodded her head quickly and unsteadily.

"Of course," she whispered back.

●

"No!"

I burst upright out of bed. At some point, I had fallen asleep and the day drifted into the night, the area falling silent.

"No- It isn't real... It was just a dream. You're okay. You're okay..." I muttered to myself indistinguishably over and over again as I tried to rid my mind of what plagued my dreams.

Sweat pooled on my skin like I had just been working out and not like I had been laying asleep for who knows how long. The dream was unlike any I had experienced since I spent most days passing out rather than drifting off. It was, honestly, a nightmare, no matter how childish it sounded.

While my body began to come down from the feeling, there was nothing I could do to comfort myself but let my fingers find a home gripped in my hair. It wasn't the most effective method of comfort, however, it was all I had at that moment. The stickiness coated my entire body and I trembled at the memory- I couldn't just sit still and ride the feeling out without feeling something that was a hundred percent real.

"You okay?"

The voice seemed to come out of nowhere, somewhere in the dark where my eyes couldn't quite reach. Paired with a perfectly timed hand coming to rest on my shoulder, the interaction just added to the stress on my body.

"No!" I yelled as I withdrew completely from the touch.

"Hey, hey! It's okay."

The more the man spoke, the more distinguishable the voice became and, soon, I was able to comprehend that it was Dale who had heard my restlessness and came to check on me.

"I didn't mean to frighten you, I heard you wake up and wanted to check in."

"...I'm fine," I muttered, placing my hands down beside me on the mattress, trying to even out my breathing. "Thank you."