Beside the Dying Fire

Cameron's POV

3 weeks have passed since Gavin had his arm amputated. He seems to be holding up fine, ever since a created him a hook hand using my sickle. He complains that he looks like a pirate, but all of the others think that it's fine.

I was taking a stroll through the base until I decided to take a pitstop in the hangar that our squad slept in. I walked over to my sleeping bag to collect my water bottle. I took a few gulps before I heard a rustling from the other side of the large room. I slowly pulled each of the medical curtains to the side that we use for privacy and revealed nothing for a long while. The last one that I yanked back showed Kai. He was packing a bunch of items into his backpack.

"Heh," I chuckled. "Where are you going, slick?"

"I'm going back to Seattle for a week or 2," Kai told me.

"What's with the emphasis on I'm? Are you going alone?" I asked.

"In fact, I am."

"No way in hell am I letting you make that trip. You'd die."

"You're not stopping me from going, Cameron," he began to get angry.

"That isn't what I'm getting at. Take me with you, and bring Sarah and Savannah. I don't even know why you wouldn't take them, your like... oh, I don't know... some sort of weird family? Savannah would be like the badass little sister like the one from Drake and Josh, and Sarah would be your twin sister."

"Why twin sister instead of just a normal?" he asked.

"Because you both have similar interests, and... you know, you both have glasses?" I tried explaining.

"Oh, alright," he laughed as he complied. "I'll go get my twin sister and my little sister."

I immediately went over to Riddley's hangar and told her that I was leaving. She hugged me tight before I began packing. After an hour, all four of us met at the gate, stacked with supplies and weapons.

"Why are we going back there anyway?" Savannah asked Kai.

"Reasons," he responded.

"Dick," Savannah muttered under her breath.

"The last pickup here has low fuel," Sarah informed us, "so we need to use that gas to find a car in the next town. You know, where Savannah led the group to get ammo from to save you, Payson, and I."

"Oh yeah," Kai told us. "There should still be plenty of army jeeps there for us to siphon fuel from."

Kai ran off to get the pickup and pulled it up. Sarah joined him in the cab while Savannah joined me in the bed of the vehicle. As we zoomed off, the 2 of us had a talk about what was going on.

"Did Kai tell you why we're going?" she asked.

"No. My guess is that he left something important to him there," I suggested.

"Maybe his pencil," she responded as we zoomed down the highways.

"Why would we go back for just a pencil?" I asked.

"Not just any pencil, the pencil. 6 years ago, Kai saved my friend, Jacob Stoffer, from the first walker that we had ever seen. It was our old school nurse. She had been bitten and Kai stabbed her in the eye with his pencil. A group of like 10 of us witnessed this and we followed him. Of those witnesses, Sarah, Hailey, and I are the only ones remaining. Sam, Taylor, Jacob, Katie, Paige, Carly, Macie, and Gabe all saw that go down, but they weren't able to stick with us today," Savannah shed a tear out of her singular eye.

"Biters get them?" I asked.

"Some. We lost them all to walkers and people, but that wasn't the worst way that someone that I knew died. In the end, it wasn't the dead that killed them, it was the lack of humanity."

I slumped down, "Well... that got deep."

Savannah looked out upon the horizon.

"I'm just now realizing that you have known Gabe since day one. I couldn't imagine losing someone like that. I'm so sorry for you all," I consoled her.

"At least I still have Kai, Sarah, and Hailey's upper half since the lower half isn't working too well."

The car began to sputter. I could see Kai pounding on the wheel from inside the car. Sarah placed her hand on his shoulder to tell him to calm down. They both exited the cab.

"Out of gas," Kai mumbled.

"We are only 2 miles out from the town. We go on foot," Sarah told us.

After walking for a long time, the town was in sight. Kai called for a race to get there so we all broke into a sprint. Savannah got there first, Sarah second, and Kai and I tied for last. As Kai had mentioned, the Jeeps were still there. I siphoned all of the gas from 2 Jeeps and transported it all into another one. The other 3 went out into the small town to see what supplies were remaining. Once they returned, I took the wheel. Savannah sat in the passenger seat while Kai and Sarah took the back, discussing why they are like twins.

"Okay, you little Leprechaun. We've waited long enough," Sarah taunted.

"Oh, am I a Leprechaun because I'm short and Irish?" Kai joked.

"Also because you seemed to get very angry when someone steals your Lucky Charms," I laughed.

"Hey, I found that box of cereal. I would have been willing to share if someone *cough* Savannah *cough* didn't eat half of the box."

"I can't help it!" she laughed hysterically. "I need fooooooooooood!"

"Tsk, tsk, tsk," Sarah jokingly wagged her index finger at her.

After about an hour of joking around at Kai, we finally realized we had got off task again.

"Why are we going back there?" I asked again.

"Uhh, I... How far are we from Seattle?" Kai changed the subject.

"Tell us," Sarah insisted.

Kai sighed, "I can't. I don't have the guts to tell you."

"That reminded me of when Gabe kept taunting me about that back at the ski resort," Savannah reminisced.

And from there, we didn't ask Kai again. After we finally reached Seattle, Kai had me drive around while he looked out the windows. We drove for 20 minutes before he told me to stop. 6 walkers rambled down the street as Kai got out. The rest of us got out and stood next to him.

"What is it?" Sarah whispered not to attract the walkers.

"The corpses," he whispered back.

"What about them? Their just a bunch of geeks? Is there some-" I stopped mid-sentence when I noticed one of the corpses from the backside.

The walker had long, shaggy hair...

...and artificial leg.

Sarah covered her mouth with her hands and Savannah began to breathe heavily. The reanimated corpse of Gabe turned around and started walker towards us. Kai unsheathed his sword.

"Last night," he spoke as he slowly walked towards the carcass. "I realized that he his brain wasn't destroyed. I realized that he had turned. I realized that he shouldn't have to remain this way."

Once Gabe's corpse had gotten close enough, Kai sliced off it's head. It made a thump upon hitting the ground, but the head was still moving it's jaws.

Kai lifted his weapon above his head with the blade vertically pointing at the skull. Tears swelled in Kai's eyes as he whispered, "I'm so sorry."

Kai struck the sword into Gabe's head. It stopped biting instantly. Kai yanked out the cane-sword and cleaned it off on his shirt before placing it back in his sheathe.

"This is why I came back," he informed us as if we hadn't realized this already. Sarah and Savannah ran up to him and they consoled each other.

"We've gotta go," I told them as a herd began to form near us from all of the noise. They gathered in the Jeep and we took off.