Torn Apart • TWD

Chapter 4 - blue teddy bear

Crying. So much crying. Which isn't very surprising considering how violently she was ripped from her mother and into this dark and cold world.

With the wriggling, screaming, newborn wrapped in her mother's purple shirt, the two stood before the freshly dug grave, a piece of wood forced into the dirt with the smoothed-out second piece attached to the end of the first, with the name 'Laurie' wonkily carved into it. As Tessa had a friend in school who shared the woman's name, she assumed they were spelt the same.

The little baby had been screaming her entire life, nestled snuggly in the blood-soaked arms of the girl who brought her into this world, her little fists were flailing, almost as if angry to be here. The girl had placed the baby in the basement while she buried her mother. She was bringing too many biters to the girl's doorstep, now many of her traps have to be reset since the moronic corpses tripped them.

The infant was hungry as Lori said, but since it would take over a day to walk to town, she decided to try her luck with the nearby houses. So with her bag strapped over her shoulders, and feathers from the arrows poking out the top, she grabbed the baby so Lori could hear that her daughter was alive, Tessa made sure to stab her brain before she turned but her father taught her that sometimes people are still around when they're dead, so she thought she'd give it a try.

"I'll protect your girl," she says with a sigh and one last look at the grave that sits behind her house, she rocks and shushes the baby as they return to the basement. There was a dusty box filled with old CDs that had been replaced with pillows and a blanket to substitute for a crib, and the baby did not like it one bit. With a last attempt to quiet her that failed the same as the other times she tried, the girl gently puts her in the box and ran up the basement stairs. It's more important to push the bookcase over the door now since the chances of biters coming are stronger than ever, she knows it's soundproof but that girl has some lungs on her.

After deciding to reset the traps later since time has already been wasted burying Lori, she quickly does a mental coin toss on which direction she should begin her journey, after deciding to go left she starts jogging to a neighbouring house. There are at least five miles between all houses in the woods, so she has quite the trek ahead.

Tessa can't stop worrying about the baby, having no idea how long a baby as small as her can survive without food makes the girl want to sprint out of her jog, but she has to conserve energy.

She starts to think of what this little baby means, am I a mother now? No, she decided, she is not a mother. She took care of her siblings when they were babies, they were triplets so she and her parents had to always have a baby with them whenever they were home. It was a contributing factor to why she never wants children, but seeing how they are birthed was the tip of the iceberg.

She's chosen to be the baby's guardian, tv had shown her that's when someone who's not the parent takes care of a kid, so that's what she'll do. Though it doesn't matter what she is, all she knows is she'll protect the baby and eventually find her real family.

She knew it may take a while since in her many months living here, she had never come across a prison, and if there was an attack it was very likely the group had moved on. But if the husband is the leader he might have wanted to stay for his wife, but she's seen from past experiences that if the group made a decision that went against the leaders then he may very well be dead by now and the group fled, but whether the son Carl is alive is another thing.

She reaches the broken-down house rather quickly and with no interruption from the dead. This house has taken a beating since its residents fled, there's holes in the roof, the door is broken down (courtesy of Tessa when she first scavenged the neighbours), the pain is chipping off the walls, and inside all items are sprawled on the floor.