Alice was not worried of the unknown. She was worried of what she already knew. She was worried of the promises that the new people were making to her-the ones bringing the people of a fallen Woodbury into their own settlement. The girl felt sorry t...
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A L I C E
ALICE DUNLAP FELT NO more put together than the car she'd dragged around east Virginia. Pieces of her were left everywhere she visited. Hilltop, the deer blind, the Sanctuary. No part of her was found at Alexandria—at home. She'd crashed and burned and somehow still worked. She travelled with a permanent bodily stutter, her brain rattling around within her skull. The important stuff—the things that held her together—were somehow still with her.
Alice did not feel responsible for it all, she was responsible for it. Olivia and Spencer were dead. Eugene was taken. Aaron was beaten. A bullet she'd helped manufacture—aimed at a man who wouldn't have even been there had it not been for her—was the cause of all of it.
It was all a whirlwind.
It started with a dinner reluctantly cooked in their own kitchen for the clean-shaven man who made himself at home. He found Judith, his eyes enthralled with the most precious thing in this world to use against Rick. Then Rick arrived. He received an entire spiel about how Alice and Carl had fallen down a rabbit-hole and ended up on Negan's front porch. The girl wished that she could've considered herself lucky that the man didn't have time to scold the two teens for essentially aiming to end their lives, but the distraction bleeding out in the street was not worth it.
The part that hit closest to her heart was the pool of blood already drying on the wooden panels of her own front porch, and the boy who was just inches away from the bullet. Alice was out on the street, when it happened. Her safety unknowingly ensured due to her tight grip on Judith. Within less than a minute, Rosita had failed to kill Negan and Olivia had gone cold.
While the others buried the bodies within the walls, Alice was of no use. Instead, she'd taken a shower. Soapy water cleansed the gash cracking along her skin, a burn that meant healing. She was unsure of the shower's duration. The girl was more concerned with regrouping on her own terms.
What felt longer was her stare held on the wall of Judith's room. The toddler was in her cradle, asleep after the day of fun she spent within Negan's arms. Alice wasted no time between the end of her shower and her journey across the hall to Judith's side. She sat atop an ottoman that stretched along the wall, spanning from the edge of the cradle across to the window she once sent a man flying from. The lack of bedding to sulk in was another factor that played into the sudden seating choice.
She was still wrapped in her towel, her strands dripping. Her hair had gone cold, the warmth from the shower having never truly penetrated her.
