I wake up with a pounding headache and fuzzy eyesight.
"Deryn!" Sumner cries and hugs me as best as he could, considering I'm on a bed...
A bed! My eyesight comes into focus and suddenly I'm panicking. I shoot up boltright, grabbing the closest thing to me: a pen.
Sumner stares at me and looks at a woman behind him with short grey hair. She looks back at Sumner helplessly. "Deryn these people helped us. They're good people," my brother says in a gentle voice.
I find it hard to believe those words anymore. I try to ignore the pain in my ribs and head. "What happened, then?" I asked harshly, staring at the grey-haired woman.
"Well... a man named Rick Grimes shot you, thinking you were a Biter. But before you get mad he got confused between us and the Biters because they were so close behind us. He really is sorry," Sumner quickly says. I'm still wary.
I slowly get up, pen still clutched in my hand, and look at Sumner. "When are we leaving?"
He pauses, runs his fingers through his light brown hair, and says, "We're not."
I'm out the bedroom door before Sumner can stop me. My ribs hurt, but I ignore it. Right now my prime mission is to get out of this house. I storm down the hall, through the kitchen where a boy about my age is desperately trying to open a can of soup, and through a door I assume is the Family Room's.
However I'm not greeted by an empty room and a open door as I expected, but by four adults and another boy my age in a cowboy hat. One man is standing by the front door with a crossbow.
They all stare at me like I just crawled out of hell itself. Then I realize how crazy I must seem. I look down, and realize I'm in a cami with bandages around my ribs. My old jeans - ripped and torn - are fortuately on, but my combat boots were gone, leaving me sockless also. Not to mention I'm gripping a pen like it's my last hope.
Then one of the men stand up from the couch, and approches me slowly, with one arm out stretched, as if to take away the pen. I jerk my fist back and end up hitting Sumner in the stomach with my elbow. He'll get over it.
"I only wanted a hand shake," the man said. "I'm Rick Grimes -"
"The guy who shot me," I cut in rudely. What do I care? I'm leaving anyways. I start to walk towards the man near the door, rejecting Rick's handshake, but Sumner grabs my hand with the pen and pulls me back.
"Don't tell me you're planning on going out there in a cami, no shoes, and a pen?" Sumner said. "I thought you knew better than that."
"Apparently not," I said and went towards the door, the man moved to the side and I grabbed the door knob. However the pen was ripped from my hand, and I was scooped up into the air by Sumner.
"Hey!" I shouted and thrashed in his arms. I was put back in the room I started out in, and the door was shut in my face. I tried opening it, but they had shoved a chair under the knob and locked me in. How could he do this to me? I didn't want to stay in a group where someone shot me! I threw myself onto the bed and stared at the door across the room. They'll have to let me out eventually.
It was probably hours later before there was a soft knock on the door. I didn't say anything. A knock again, and the boy who was opening the can walked in. He was tall, with dark brown hair and bright green eyes. His stature was relaxed, but he was musclar at the same time.
"Rick wanted me to come get you to eat," he said. When I didn't reply, he walked in and stood by a bearrow. "Carol said that there was a new shirt in there for you, because your other one had a hole in it. Come out when your ready." And with that, he left.
Slowly, I got up from the bed and went over to the drawer. Inside was a blue t-shirt that was just my size, and with a brush full of blonde hair on top of the bearrow, I brushed my hair until it looks at least a bit decent. Drived by hunger, I opened the door again and closed it silently behind me. I gripped the hem of the new shirt. The house was large now that I actually looked at it.
There were many doors down the hall as I walked towards the kitchen. I peaked carefully around the corner, and there everyone was, at least the whole group, at a retangle table eating soup. I limped out into the kitchen. My ribs still hurt, but I didnt want to seem weak infront of a bunch of people I didnt know. There was one open seat between the boy with the cowboy hat, and the soup-can boy.
I walked up behind the chair and stood there quietly. Everyone stopped talking about chickens on a girl with short brown hair's farm, and instead looked at me. I forced a gentle smile, and with that, Rick gestured for me to sit down, and the woman with brown hair passed a bowl of soup across the table to me. I whispered thanks as I took it.
No one starts talking again. I eat slowly, and awkwardly, because they keep casting sideways glances at me, as if I was going to eat them. Finally I cant take the silence anymore.
"So what are your names?" I asked, looking up from my bowl of soup. Rick was the first one to speak up.
"I'm Rick," he said. He had dark brown hair, and looked like he was growing a beard, or he just hadnt shaved for a while.
The man next to him looked like a red neck. He spoke up in a gruff voice, "Daryl."
The girl with short brown hair and apparently lived on a farm said, "Maggie, and this is Glenn." she looked next to her at a man with short black hair.
"I'm Beth, and this is Carol," a girl with blonde hair spoke up, and pointed to the woman with grey hair.
Tyreese was well built, but he was gentle with his greeting. Abraham was gruff, with ginger hair and glared at me suspiciously. Heather was slightly rude when she talked to me. Micchone was straight faced but was polight. The last person was the boy with the cowboy hat. He didn't say anything.
Rick sighed and spoke for him. "Thats my son, Carl Grimes."
