The Walking Dead: Blood

Chapter 62: Stay Close To Me

Chapter 62: Stay Close to Me

Clem dropped the gun onto the ground and backed away from it, disgusted. I stood up, and brushed off my legs. They were covered in blood. I didn't make a dent.

I had found her. I was standing speechless, but Clementine couldn't understand what she had just done. "I...I...I..." I ran to her and wrapped my arm around her. I had told myself I was going to find her before I died, and I accomplished my goal.

"It's okay." I whispered to her, attempting to comfort her. "It's okay."

"I..." She started. She drew away from me and looked down. She saw the stump of where my left arm used to be. "Your arm's gone...why? That's so scary..."

"I had an accident." I answered her. "We'll talk about it somewhere safe."

"You don't smell good." She told me lifting her hand to her nose.

"Yeah. I know." I agreed, looking down at my blood-stained clothes. "Did he hurt you?"

Clementine's lip started quivering. "No...not really...I'm sorry, Lee!" Clementine started crying and I hugged her again.

"Clem, it's okay." I whispered. I stood up. "We need to get somewhere safe, and then we need to talk, okay?"

"Yeah." She nodded. She wiped the tears from her eyes.

"Everything's okay now." I told her. "We need to get out of Savannah as fast as we can."

I picked up the stranger's gun. There were still five bullets in the chamber. The man was prepared. "Hey." I smiled at Clem. "You pulled the trigger."

"I...I...I know..."

I sighed. "I wish you'd never had to learn that."

"Me too." She cried.

I walked around the room. I decided it was time I figured out what was in the bowling bag. I unzipped it and was surprised to find the biting head of a walker inside of it. It was disgusting. "Don't look in there." I told Clem.

"No." She refused to meet my eyes. She had been through a lot being kept here. "I know..."

I walked to the exit and opened the door. There was a walker standing there. I gasped in shock. It didn't try to bite me. It simply stood there. I didn't take any chances. I put my hand behind its head and threw it to the ground. I put a bullet in its head.

Clementine was confused as she looked down at the dead zombie. "It...it didn't bite you..."

"Yeah." I coughed. The fever was starting to catch up to me. "I know it...must've..."

"You're covered in all that gross stuff." She said.

"I had to get through a bunch of them to get here." I told her. I thought about the situation. The walker didn't bite me because it thought I was already dead. I was becoming one of them. "That's how we'll get out of Savannah."

I walked to the dead stranger and ripped the meat cleaver out of his shoulder. I walked back. Clementine simply stared at me. This was not the tearful reunion I imagined.

I knelt down to the dead walker and cut into it with the meat cleaver. "Oh no..." Clem cried. She turned around so she didn't have to witness the gore of what I was doing.

I pulled some guts out of the body and held them up to Clementine. I was going to need to camouflage her under them. If she smelled dead, the walkers wouldn't notice her as much.

I smeared the guts all over Clementine's back. She was fidgeting. I didn't blame her. This was disgusting.

I had her turn around. I smeared it on her front. "Are you done?" She asked me.

"A little more." I answered her. "I want to be sure." I took the guts and rubbed them all over her arms. She was decently camouflaged now. "There. That should do it."

I looked down at the little girl that stood in front of me. The little girl I had worked so hard to find. She looked back up at me and smiled. Her look told me she was glad to see me, even if she was covered in walker guts. "I hope so." She said.

"And you're missing something." I reached into my pocket and pulled out Clementine's cap. I placed it onto her head.

"I thought it was gone!" She laughed, adjusting it to her head.

"I thought YOU were gone." I added.

She smiled up at me. "Thank you." If there was one thing I did right in this life, it was to take care of this little girl. She was going to make it in this world because of me.

I turned around and started to walk through the door. "Stay right next to me and move slowly. Don't look around and don't panic." She nodded at my instructions. "I'll keep you safe."

We left the hotel. We were walking very slowly, trying to look like as much like walkers as possible. We were two living humans walking amongst the dead.

My plan had worked. The walkers didn't seem to notice us. We made it for about a hundred feet. I bumped into a walker, but it didn't seem to care and moved on. I kept moving, but Clementine was frozen in her tracks. She was staring off to her right. I followed her eyes.

She was staring at a pair of walkers. They looked like a young man and woman. Both were African American in life, but now, their skin was a dark gray like mine was turning. I remembered the picture I had found in Clementine's house.

Clementine had found them at last. These walkers were her parents.