Broken Memories • The Walking Dead Fanfiction

23

short chapter. read the AN please. xx

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SKYE

The sun lowered and the sky drew more watchful as we trudged along its feet with a weariness about us. The beating, unforgiving heat grew higher as the 7 of us, a band of hopeless wanderers, followed on under the command of a man with a mysterious past and an ambitious goal.

As we walked in something similar to silence, the void had noises that dribbled through the space between us here and there: a smart comment by Eugene, a side conversation between Glenn and Maggie, a distant murmur with Rosita and Abe, or an attempt from Tara to get me to speak. But besides those few signs of life that we chose to release through conversation, we walked, as if we were the dead ourselves, in silence on the road with our weapons gleaming and our eyes wide for the threat- the real dead and their purposes- that lingered in the corners of our eyesights.

Just as the day was dying, the road led us to a town- a ghost town to be more literal. Its buildings were hollow and dark, the windows with a silent emptiness about them and the doors dusty and unopened. Trash blew carelessly along the sun-pounded pavement and the white sidewalks that lined the one, two-way road were overlaid with traces of dirt, erosion, and blood. The town had a solitude of the past, but its strength of the memories was crippling as the days went by and the life in the world died more and more.

"How about here?" I suggested to Abe, walking over to a calm looking book store on the corner, peering into it and seeing nothing but books and dust.

Everyone looked and no one intervened, so Abraham nodded. "It'll do. Glenn, you wanna help me with this?"

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Several minutes later, after spontaneous remarks of curse words from Abe and murmurs of clearance from Glenn, the rest of us followed them into the dark, dusty book store, myself being the last one in and the one to shut the door with a sharp closure, affirming that we were locked in for the night. As I wrapped a rope around the door handle and latched it to a bookshelf, I was washed with a major déjà vu, remembering the time that Rick had locked us in the house after Carl and Michonne left to go scavenge.

The first day I was truly a part of the group. I thought with a sadness about me.

I migrated to a front corner of the book store, near Tara, but still far from her to give her a bit of space.

I didn't know why, but I was attracted to Tara as a sort of sister figure. It felt like I was being clingy, but I also liked the thought of having someone to trust, even though trust was dangerous thing.

I set my bag on the floor, not bothering to spew its contents, and I used the hard material as a sort of, uncomfortable and rocky, pillow. I felt filthy, given there was no shower in the book store and unused dust and stale smells seemed to settle on me every second I lie there.

I rolled over onto my side, glancing at the different souls that sat in the book store with me, and I sighed to myself, wondering the mere question: what were we even doing?

Everyone was winding down and escaping to their own privacy as darkness set through the bookstore: Maggie and Glenn were sitting side by side in silence, Tara fumbled with a book lazily as she sat on first watch, glancing from the folded pages to the empty town outside. Eugene stared Tara down, obviously having a blocked crush on her, and Abraham and Rosita had escaped to the back of the store to do things I didn't know, nor wanted to think about.