Short Hair

Chapter 1

Lee gazed over to where Clementine was looking.

Inside another boxed-in room, sat a walker next to a metal shelf of, what looked to be, cleaning supplies. The room had a window with dull red curtains, matching the colour of the carpet Lee had been laying on previously.

"Good. Good girl. Let's go. I might be a little slow." Lee muttered gruffly, as he stumbled his way across the room, holding his bitten arm up to his chest.

Clem swiftly ran past him, before racing back over to him as he fell against the shop's counter, letting out a low groan, his hand in a tight fist on the broken counter.

Clementine rested a small hand on his lower back, looking up to him.

"I'll help you." She uttered softly.

The pair slowly made their way across the counter, Clem's other arm outstretched by Lee's side, incase he fell again.

It wasn't long before Lee's knees buckled beneath him, almost sending the duo to the ground. Clem wrapped her tiny arms around his waist and tried to pull him up.

"I got you. You can lean on me if you have to." Clementine reassured him in a rushed manner, wide eyed.

Lee's pale face was set in a grim frown, wounded arm limply hung beside him, and he shook as he nodded his head speaking.

"I'm okay, I'm okay...." His pained expression and exhausted tone said otherwise, sounding more like he was reassuring himself, and not the small girl by his side.

Clem eyed the ground in distain.

"I thought I was helping by bringing you here." She admitted, swallowing the lump in her throat.

The two stood for a moment, there in the old jewellery store surrounded by the undead's miserable moans. Holding eachother, with Lee against the broken, dusty counter and his sweet pea clinging to his side.

Lee shook his head slightly, "You couldn't have known... I should've told you...."

"It was scary at the hotel." Clementine said in a sorrowful tone, frown evident on her face and eyes sad, like a sad doe-eyed puppy.

"Yeah." Lee murmured quietly, almost unheard as the groan of walkers outside continued.

"Keep going;" Clementine urged, sensing the fatigue in Lee's voice.

"We're almost there." Clem exclaimed, voice pitching higher as Lee and her continued their journey on the broken counter.

Seconds soon passed and they reached the edge. Lee stumbled and tore off from Clem, swaying to the ground with a hand on the wall, groaning in exhaustion.

Once he sat, Lee laid back, mounds of relief off his shoulders as he completely slouched against the gray tinted wall, besides a large clunky radiator.

Clem ran over to him.

"Get up, Lee, the door's right here." She yipped in a tearful voice, gesturing to her side.

And she was right. To add insult to, well, his injured arm, there sat infront of his very eyes was a large steel door with a window and sign labelled:

EMERGENCY
EXIT
ONLY

AUTHORIZED
EMPLOYEES ONLY

Lee nodded, a grimace on his mouth as he struggled to push himself up, to no avail.

"I can't."

There it was, those two measly words. He'd given up, just like that. All because of her, her hopes were crushed. Lee, the man who saved her, lay at her feet, defeated.