Apocalypse Orphans

12

Rick walked forward, dropping his axe and gun, as he went to go past in the way that they had come from but Maggie stopped him. Rick started crying, and fell to his knees and Glenn moved to make sure Maggie was okay, other than the mental scaring she would have, and Nick and Jay stood of to the side, much like Daryl did.

After five minutes, Rick was staring off into space like he was hallucinating and Daryl walked over asking if he was still with them, but didn't get any reply.

Maggie then handed the baby to Carl and Hershel requested to see her, so Carl brought it over and Daryl asked the logical question of what we were going to feed it with, because even though they have had nine months they hadn't gotten any baby formula. Hershel bidded the baby healthy, but demanded that we get formula and fast, otherwise she wouldn't survive.

"Nope. No way.  Not her. I'm going for a run." Daryl declared, and boh Maggie and Glenn said they would back him up.

Daryl told them to think about where they were going, and pulled Beth to the side and told her to look out for Carl, and got the two prisoners to get the fence to stop too many dead from piling up. While they were all discussing action, Rick grapped his axe and practically ran inside the building.

"Nick, you and Jay on the gate. Let's go, we're gonna lose the light." Daryl ordered before storking off, Glenn and Maggie in persuite.

Nick and Jay ran down towards the gate, and so did the prisoners, and Nick told them to take one side while he and Jay took the other and they started to pop the walkers of through the fence to sort out some of the crowd control to help for when they were ready to leave.

Daryl came down one his bike, Maggie on the back and Nick and Jay pushed the gate open enough for them to get through before closing it, and all four of them made their way back up to the court yard.

"While we wait for them to get back, we can disolve some of Lori's old vitamin pills in some water, tape a bit of cloth over a hole in a lid of a bottle and give that to the baby. It won't be as good as the formula, but it will keep it kicking a little longer." Nick said to Hershel as they walked back into the cell block, and Nick helped keep the old man steady against the dead bodies.

"How do you know that?" Glenn asked over hreaing.

"I don't like people, so I would help out in the orphanges nursery, and we couldn't always afford new bottles or new formula so we would use what we had and it worked for a short period of time." Nick supplied.

"Nick is actually really good with babies, he was the only one to get every single one of them to sleep." Jay said lighting the mood a little.

"Great, you're on baby duty each night." Glenn declared, "And diaper duty."

"In yer dreams China Man." Nick said making his way to the perch. 

"I'm Korean!" Glenn called after him.

Nick rolled his eyes, and put on a less bloodie shirt, grabbed a bottle uses his antler handled knife to poke a hole in the lid and ripped a sleeve off one of his shirts and cut it into a smaller strip to tape it over the hole and to give the baby something to suckle on.

"You got the vitamins and warm water?" He asked Hershel.

Hershel nodded and pointed at everything on the table. Nick nodded and filled the bottle with the water and cut up the vitamins into quaters, before putting a quater of each on into the bottle, shaking it so it would desolve a bit better then walked over to Carl who still held his sister.

"May I?" He asked the kid.

Carl nodded and handed the baby over, and Nick bounced her a bit to get her in the right position, before he began feeding her, and she greedily stared gulping down the vitamins.  Everyone smiled, but were all still worried about whether or not Maggie and Daryl would get back okay.

Once the baby was fed, he burped her, and handed her back to Carl, before he left to check on the task that was assigned to the prisoners. Seeing that they were spreading the walkers out along the perimeter he left them too it and saw Glenn digging and silently started to help him with the pickaxe.

"You know, I don't mean offence when I call you China Man, just like how I don't mean anything when I call Hershel, Santa Clause or Old Man." Nick said breaking the silence, that he usually loves, but he knew that the man could use something else to thing about.

"So why do you do it?"

"I have never been good with the whole emotion thing. I was never properly taught what they are and who to control them. I have also never been good with physical contact. So you hug people, patt them on the back, hold hands, all that jazz. I have never understood it."

"So to show that you care about someone, you use nicknames." Glenn concluded.

Nick nodded. "Yeah. Me and Jay wrestling is the way that we show eachother that we care, we do it through the only thing we were taught, which is violence, so we use that, but we change it, so it's more friendly, we laugh, we smile and we never actually hurt eachother.
I know you guys aren't really into the whole fight your freinds thing so I use the names instead."

"You said you weren't taught properly, so you were still taught something?"  The man asked.

"Yeah. Growing up I spent every weekend and holiday with my grandfather. He wasn't allowed custody of me, dunno why but, every week he would take me hunting, and one time, I can't remember why, but I was angry, really angry and he sat me down and told me a tale of two wolves that live inside of everyone." Now both of them had stopped digging as sat on the edge of the grave.

"The tale says that inside of everyone, are two wolves fighting a war. One wolf is evil, he would say, he is filled with anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. and the other is good, and that he is filled with he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, honesty and faith." 

Nick looked like he was in a far away land as he contiued. "I remember asking him which one wins, and he would always tell me that it would be the one I feed."

"Which one do you believe you feed?" Glenn asked curious.

"More times than not? The evil one. More often then not, I have been filled with anger, resentment, false pride, self pity and envy. I know it's bad, but until all this happened." He said gesturing around them, "I hadn't had much hope, or joy. I don't know how to be empathetic, compassionate, haven't had much serenity, I'm not very kind, or generous."

"If you let us in, we can teach you." Glenn offered and he meant it, he had never seen or heard the boy be so open and it surprised him. "And for the record, what you did today with the baby, was kind, compassionate and generous. You didn't have to do it, but you did."

Nick allowed a small smile to show on his face and looked to Glenn shocked. "Do you mean that?"

"Of course. You're family, we help our family." Glenn affirmed, wrapping an arm over the boy's shoulder.

Nick immediatly tensed at the contact, but slowly relaxed dazed by the fact that Glenn called him family. No one but Jay and his grandfather had called him that and it surprised him. 

"We should probably get back to digging." Nick suggested.

Glenn agreed and they got back to work.