When The World Ends

A New Enemy, A New Hell

It was suffocating in that tin box. The air smelled like sweat, fear, and rust, like the walls themselves had been rotting long before we'd ever stepped inside. Hours passed without sunlight. We couldn't tell if it was night or day anymore—just the slow drag of time as we waited for whatever came next.

And waiting meant preparing.

It didn't matter how hopeless it looked; we were still breathing, and that meant there was still something to fight for.

Maggie tore the leather straps from a duffel bag she'd found. "Belts," she said, voice hollow, hands working fast. "We can sharpen the buckles against the floor if we rub long enough."

"Give me one." Sasha took it without hesitation, already wrapping it around her wrist like a garrote. "Anyone seen Tyreese?"

Silence.

"No," I said quietly, sawing the edge of my knife into the splintering corner of a bench. Lucky me. They hadn't thought to check my boot. I worked at it in the dark, carving off jagged slats of wood sharp enough to stab straight through someone's eye socket.

"I saw him before we ran," Maggie said. "But... I don't know where he ended up."

No one did.

The hours crawled. Abraham was hunched in the corner, tearing apart the metal zipper from someone's abandoned jacket. "You get it tight enough around the throat, it'll cut through skin," he said like he was talking about the weather. His voice was low and steady, as if the idea of killing the next man who touched him was just something to pass the time.

We all kept our hands busy.

Because the second you stopped working, you started thinking.

Thinking about who was gone.

Carol. Tyreese. Beth. Judith.

Gone. Dead. Taken. Worse.

Daryl sat near the door, keeping watch through the thin crack of light that came in from the warped frame. He hadn't said much since we got shoved inside. Just sat there like a coiled snake, foot tapping, chewing his bottom lip raw.

It wasn't until the quiet started getting too loud that Maggie finally broke the silence. "What happened to Beth?"

Daryl didn't even look at her at first. But then he exhaled hard through his nose. "Black car. White cross on the back window. Took off with her when we were on the road."

"Where?"

"Don't know." He shook his head, and that little bit of hope we'd all been hanging on to shriveled right up.

Nobody spoke after that.

Because what was there to say?

We spent the rest of the night in that rhythm—sharpen, tear, wrap, check the door. Sharpen, tear, wrap, check the door. None of us were sleeping. We'd all made peace with the fact that if we were going down, we were taking as many of those bastards with us as we could.

Then, just before dawn, Daryl stiffened.

Footsteps.

"Okay, there's four of them pricks coming our way," he whispered, turning his head back toward us.

Rick stood up, wiping his hands on his jeans from where he'd been shaving wood into something pointy enough to puncture a jugular.

"Okay, you know what to do," Rick said. "Eyes first. Then the throat."

It was cold. Precise. Beautiful.

We all moved into position without a word, backs pressed against the trailer walls. I gripped my knife so tight the handle dug into my palm, the wood shards I'd shaped tucked in my waistband.