Living with the Dead.(twd)

Escape. (220)

MADISON'S POV.

Seconds feel like minutes and minutes seem like hours as they drag me away.
I can't see, I can barely hear and I'm gasping for air as they keep my head shoved inside a bag as I'm tugged down long hallways to 'the room.'

I feel my heart hammer against my chest and pound in my ears.
My skin crackles to the point where the heat is overwhelming and I feel like I'm suffocating, choking on the heat. My skin is sweaty and my palms are clammy making it hard to form a proper grip on something around me to stop them bringing me to my death.

I'd rather be dangled and thrown off the building. At least then you die quickly and you hardly even recognize the pain. But this... a room of walkers.... I can't! I haven't come this far to be torn and mauled by those things while I'm still alive.
This is a cruel world where even you get to watch your own death.

I hear the dreaded sound of the door unlocking. I know I'm here because there's only one door in this building that's locked.
I hear the door swing open and feel a harsh shove on my back. I fall forward and hear the door slam shut behind me.

I hear the growling in the room before I see it. I quickly reach up and tug off the bag on my head. For a second, I see only a white blinding light and then my eyes adjust and with both shock and horror my heart drops.
With a gasp, I quickly scramble to my feet and push myself up against the furthest wall I can find.

In front of me isn't the packed room of walkers that I expected. Instead it's something I would've least expected.
A dog.
Not the cute kinda dog that makes you swoon with it's big brown eyes and waggy tail.
No, no...
This dog is a whole new breed, a whole different animal almost, yet not at all.

The large dog stands with its back legs bent, ready pounce at any sudden movement. It's lips are pulled back to
reveal its sharp canines. The teeth point in a vicious, horrific, fang-like way that it already paints the picture of your death in your mind.

The dog is distinctively a German shepherd but last time I saw one was when I was young. I seen a boy walk his dog by my house everyday but that dog was tall and large, well fed and happy with its tongue lolled out to the side as it trotted along the pathway ahead of the boy. This dog is tall and skinny, so skinny that I can easily count the ribs on it's side. It's starving and I'm it's next meal. I stare at the horrifying fangs dripping with blood from its last kill, only a few hours previous to now.

"Nice doggie." I whisper.
I don't even recognize my own voice.
It growls loudly at me and I push myself harder and harder against the bloodstained wall hoping that with any luck I might disintegrate into it and come out the other side and run for my life.
But this is it. This room was made to be inescapable. This dog was tortured into thinking that we are food.

Then it clicks with me that this might just be the dog Clover once told me about.

           **** FLASHBACK****
"We had a dog. A big dog. Huge. A German shepherd. He was gorgeous, just a few months old when shit hit the fan. We all got hungry when we couldn't find food to eat after a while, but the dog got more and more irritated each day. My husband mistreated him. Always knocked him around and bullied him but one day the dog got so fed up of his games and he was so hungry she attacked my husband." She explains.

The silence in the room is awkward.
"What happened to the dog?"
"Did you not just hear me? The dog killed my husband! Why do you care what happened to the damn dog?"
I shrug. "I like dogs."
"I did what I had to do." She remarks and I shudder.
"You killed it?"
"I didn't say that." She answers.
"So.. you didn't ?"
"STOP! Stop talking."
"....that dog got what it deserved."
**************