Torn Apart • TWD

Chapter 11 - Maggie

Tessa and the woman who introduced herself as Maggie, are trudging through the woods, the girl has been mute for the last two hours and she plans to continue that streak till they get to the halfway mark and tells the woman to tie a cloth around her eyes.

A duffel bag is swung over her shoulder containing antibiotics, bandages and a dozen cans of food. Not knowing how much food the girl had, they gave her a little more than what she asked for.

The woman notices how lightly the child steps, barely leaving an indentation which prompts Maggie to push her weight when she steps, leaving an obvious trail for the leader and hunter who she is certain is following the pair.

Rick wouldn't take the chance that something would go wrong and that the baby could be hurt, and Daryl wouldn't leave his crossbow with a girl who is a flight risk.

Maggie had tried the coax the girls name out of her, but she was greeted with silence. She would occasionally turn to look at the child, since she was told to walk a few steps ahead, and see one eye watching for dangers and the other already set on the woman, watching her every move.

The woman doubted the men were in listening distance with how closely the girl was surveying her surroundings, so she took the time to ask something that had been bothering her for the whole journey.

"I saw that when you were deciding who to take, you only looked at the women. Is there a reason you didn't want to take any of the boys?" She asks calmly, hoping the child doesn't have a bad history with the opposite gender.

"Too tall, too strong. My friend told me not to be alone with grown up guys," the girl throws her a bone, hoping that if she gets the answer to one question then she's stop altogether, but it only persuaded the woman to keep going.

"Do you know why?" Maggie asks, silently praying that she doesn't.

"She was scared of a lot of things, flinched a lot, probably didn't like how they were bigger than her," Tessa sighs, thinking how the woman will never shut up. Her friend, Kate was a girl in her twenties, she was a part of the one good group the girl had encountered, and she died when the group was attacked. Her friend gave her lots of advice, some of which she still follows to this day; never be alone with a man, if she meets people shes doesn't know, run, and if someone ever tries to do something with her that she doesn't want, kick them between the legs.

When the child asked why she needed to know this, Kate always told her how she had previously been with another group that weren't very nice, and that she wants the girl to be safe if they run into one like that. She was the one that had covered her eyes when a man took a girls clothes off as she screamed, and since then the child followed her instructions to the letter.

"So four months with the baby, did you name her?" Maggie tries again.

"No," Dolores Alvarez was under her care, but that baby isn't going to be with her anymore, why tell them so they can call her a name that was designated for Tessa's use only?

"Put the blind on now," Tessa orders after finally hitting her breaking point of how much talking she can deal with.

The deal was that she can take it off if she hears a biter close by or if the girl starts running, Maggie looks around before complying and securing the bottom of an old shirt around her head.

Tessa hesitates before placing her hand around the woman's wrist, needing to guide her through the trees. The girl had suspected that the group would follow her, but since she can't turn back to search, she just keeps the crossbow pointed at Maggie, and at the first sign of being followed, she will shoot.

So far, their game of follow the leader is going well, Maggie moves when she tells her to and only had to free her eyes once when there was a biter stumbling by, but luckily there was nothing memorable about where they were so she didn't see anything. Tessa would lead her with random turns and twists in case the woman could somehow remember every direction they took and lead them back to her.