Chasing Amy (Daryl Dixon/The Walking Dead)

Chapter 56 - Reunite

I knelt alone on the desk for a while, catching my breath. Blood stained the previously untouched wood, and four large corpses lay in a pile just below me, bodies slumped over each other in a tangle of limbs.

My knife was slippery, coated in blood that was cold and slimy. I quickly wiped it off onto the front of my shirt, before rubbing my hands clean on my jeans.

I made it.

Alone, cold, faint and starving... but I managed to open that door by myself.

And, slowly and cautiously, I slid off of the desk, through the space between where I sat and the upper half of the door.

After my brief burst of energy, however, I'd found myself completely drained of energy.

The light of the nearby window managed to illuminate my skin in a dark blue hue, and I looked down at my pale arms in surprise when I noticed a thin trickle of blood running down my right arm.

My fingers went to touch the substance, hoping that it was cold, that it was the blood of the dead.

Another throb of my shoulder drew my attention again, and I immediately went to touch the base of my neck.

The skin was hot to the touch, searing, in fact.

"Hunhh..." The sound escaped my lips before I could stop it, as my hand pulled back to reveal bloody fingertips.

My vision blurred, and for a moment the walls seemed to wobble around me. However, as I clumsily shifted on my feet, a quiet scraping sound alerted me to my feet.

My second knife.

And I remembered, as I gingerly lowered myself to grab for the knife, the trail I'd made. It seemed like just moments ago I was running alone down these corridors, dodging roamers...

How many were still down here?

My chances of surviving an encounter with any more roamers were decreasing drastically with every moment I spent, standing on the spot, head spinning like I had just been on a roller coaster.

I would have, however, preferred my chances in the corridors than spend another minute inside that abandoned office.

And forwards I stumbled, at my own arduous pace, for what felt like hours. I'd lost track of my knives, making me doubt if ever put them down in the first place...

Because at every turn from there on, I had no idea where I was going.

When I reached a corpse, it was no longer trying to grab for me... Rather, the roamers I encountered were all on the floor, blood spattered around them.

That was odd, too.

In my state I didn't quite think to question what I was seeing, instead I focussed on continuing.

I clambered forwards, my legs buckling beneath me, my eyes closing for a moment as I recovered from the moment of slur that had overtaken my head.

My fingers pressed against the concrete floor, smooth and cold and a hard reminder that I was still conscious.

"I-I..." A voice trembled from a distance, strong and overbearing as my head throbbed uncontrollably. The slightest noise sounded much louder in my mind as I winced back from his next words, "You're, you're dead?"

Despite the ache in my neck, I managed to shake my head once.

I was okay.

"Th-They're dead though--" Footsteps approached me. "They were dead, and I wanted to be with them, all... I wanted all of us to be with them."