Shared Blood (A Walking Dead fan fic.)

Objects in Mirror are Closer Than They Appear - Chapter 16 (part 1)

There's a certain heat about Atlanta, Georgia. This lingering, relentless humidity that plays tricks on your mind. There isn't a single spot of dirt that ain't dust dry in this place, and there ain't a single human being that don't look like dirt in this place. Everything is so unfathomably dry that the desiccated faces of the dead fit right in. So yeah, things are dead and dry in Georgia because it's hot as fuck and there isn't a guy for miles that is capable of using a watering can that isn't Hershel Greene.

Georgia is hot and Georgia is dry, and the driest thing in all the land is the nasty fuckers that plod the earth like living death (literally). They walk around with cracked lips and weeping sores, the only thing marginally damp about them is the typical spotting of fresh blood oozing out of god knows what. 

Caylx wonders if she'll look like that when she's dead.

However, if she's not concentrating on how damn dry the whole place is, she's focusing on the heat, and the sweat trickling down her forehead. That's one thing you can count on in the south, stagnant heat that blisters your skin and drys up your tongue. But she should really learn to stop counting on anything at all, really should learn to expect the unexpected or expect nothing at all. Because right now-- in the darkness beneath this pale moonlight and stars that don't shine quite as bright as they used to, the long blades of uncut grass tickle her ankles and she feels cold. And she's starting to think that the only thing that can warm her stiff hands lately is the warmth of thick, hot blood.

"I always thought I'd go out differently than this..." The voice of the dying girl whispered.

The scruffy bearded man flashed a gaze at her before returning his attention back to the dark streets in front of him. It'd only been a few minutes, thirty, forty, an hour, time--... They had plenty. The only thing that needed remembrance these days was the amount of daylight and the amount of nightlight. Time didn't limit them anymore, time wasn't an obstacle-- it was the virus that was. It was the virus that placed deadlines on their lives and it was the virus that brought society's obsession with keeping a sense of time and place to an immediate halt. There was daylight, and there was moonlight, and then there was the light of life itself. However long those lasted was out of their hands. Just like the virus, time is rampant, and it's inevitable. The only difference between time and the virus is that the virus' continuance relies upon their survival. And then even the virus' time runs out because their host has been decimated by the billions. Time... it's forever. The only thing that can even come close to competing with time's perpetuity is death.

Death, it's immortal and it's forever. Because even time runs out, once there's nobody left to keep track of it.

"Yeah?" Rick sighs, blue eyes scanning the scene. "Well I think we all pictured ourselves somewhere else than where we are now."

Caylx scoffed, sick smiles tended to curve at her lips more often now a days. There was nothing funny to laugh at, only irony and the universe. 

"Guess you're right about that." She murmurs, hanging her head for a moment, sickness consuming every ounce of expendable energy she possessed slowly. "I just mean--..." She cut short.

What did she mean? 

What had she expected? Someone heroic bravery, bronze armour and guns blazing, profound speeches and a pillow in her casket? No--... Caylx hadn't expected that. She was smarter than that. They all were. The only thing she hadn't expected was a death this slow, a death which involved her reliance upon others. Because if she was being honest, which she hardly ever was now a days, she'd planned for being bit. And her unofficial protocol stated that she take her own life before she turned into one of those things. She didn't really care if there was some magical cure twenty, thirty years from now that allowed her to live if someone found her lifeless corpse wandering the earth. She didn't really have anything left to live for, there was nothing left for her here.