broken claims

Part 9

"Well, it isn't pretty," Sharley said. Some of the others were stretching fencing material across the one end of the parking lot while a tight group stood together with a mix of sporting goods for weapons. She saw a flash of a baseball bat and the silver of golf clubs held tight, everyone on edge as they watching distant shapes of walkers in the distance. "But it'll do just fine, won't it?"

"Home sweet home," Leigh complied. Her mother raked her fingers through her hair like a reward.

Her grandmother's car looked obscene in the parking lot amongst the rusty and older models of cars. She had never seen it casually parked so long outside like this. At home it was always in the garage, a pristine white space that looked more like a museum than any garage she had ever known, and she rarely ever saw it without the private driver her grandmother favoured.

"Besides, sweet, this'll blow over when somebody comes along. Don't worry about it."

"I'm not worried," she lied. They pulled over when the gas tank hit low and ducked into the nearby grocery store with the others that sought refuge. The radio stopped working. The television went black. Their world was asleep and they were awake, watching the nightmare amble along. Theo, the store manager, had a pistol he kept on hand but the rest had whatever they could carry, shuffling for space amongst the aisles. It was awkward being pushed up against each other but Leigh liked knowing that others were there, that she wasn't alone with her mother anymore. 

"You probably don't even remember but we used to sleep on this mattress together, just like this. It was this starter apartment down by the water, barely big enough to do a two step," Sharley smiled fondly. "You were so little. It was so little. You'd barely be able to stretch two arms out without brushing the walls somehow. Whole place was just like a box. But we made it work."

Leigh didn't know how much she really remembered of living with her mother. She knew her father's trailer, a memory engraved into the back of her hand, and even the dingy apartment building Merle lived in. Daryl always got mad when he brought her over. He didn't like the people living down the hall, the way they'd collect in the stairwell together and shared Advil and drinks. The mansion itself was a different world. "It was really nice. I remember," she said, because Leigh knew it was easier to comply with someone erratic, to stabilize them from trying to prove something else. "I was just thinking about it, yeah."

"What do you think about Theo? He's kind of handsome, right?" Sharley teased, gesturing in the direction of the older man. He had his hands buried in his pockets as he watched the process of anchoring the fence by wedging in wooden supports on an angle, preventing the barricade from falling inward. Two nights prior walkers had slammed against the thick glass windows for hours, faces smearing in bloodied streaks, desperate like they were all fish inside a fish tank. "Think he'd even out this lil' family?"

Instant distrust rose up inside her. Merle told her to steer clear of any man Sharley ever brought around. Leigh stopped bothering with their names. They were simply Sharley's boyfriend and she kept them at a distance, nervous of what could happen if she got caught by one of them.

Something prickled the back of her neck. There had been one, she thought. He wore pointed dress shoes to dinner. He had been there, a fixture around the table, and then never appeared again. Sharley was weepy about it, sniffling into a phone as she called him before he vanished from the face of the earth all together. Clark, the name snapped back into place. Clark, there and gone, but something about it left Daryl angry and everyone else livid.

"I don't know. Why bother? We're not gonna be here long."

"Everybody needs a little fix. Something to pass the time by."