Salvation. The Walking Dead: Season Five.

Our Last Days - Part One.

*

She was back in the basement with Brody, stuttering croak once again present in her vocal chords as they transformed; along with her reanimating corpse. She was stirring out of sight and in the shadows.

Clementine knew her task - she had to find the flashlight. Finding the flashlight always invariably lead to her extraction from the nightmare. She just had to follow the blinking beams of its dying light. Except she couldn't.

In this version there was no such beam to aid Clementine in her search. Just her own sense of touch along the cold, stone floor, her hands flailing frantically at the sound of Brody getting to her feet and beginning to stagger around.

Clementine could hear her distressing snarl growing, the echo of it richocheting around each wall of the basement making it hard to pinpoint just how close Brody was to success in her search to consume her victims throat.

Clementines hand had palmed down on something lying on the ground, and tightening her grip on it she realised it was the base of the flashlight. She had found it. But in that same moment Brody also found her, bowling Clementine over onto her back and knocking the light source from her hands.

Her head hit the stone floor beneath her, causing a disorientation that thankfully only lasted a few moments, dissipating just in time for her to stick her knees up to her chest as Brody threw herself on top of Clementine. Roaring and gnashing her teeth with only a single desire on her hijacked mind in the black hole they fought in.

Clementine resolved to keep Brody at arms length, pushing her knees and by extension keeping Brodys clawing hands at bay while she reached out to the flashlight, the only thing she could now use to disable her wouldbe killer. She stretched desperately, willing her fingernails to grow the extra half inch they needed to roll the flashlight back toward her - igniting it and bashing Brodys bathed features into anonymity.

But it was too late. Clementine felt the splatter of warmth pebble over her face. Brody must have sunk her teeth into an artery. Clementine always figured that getting bit would immediately result in a severe drop in strength, or drive.

However she found it was quite the opposite. Even as Brodys dead weight got moreso Clementine found her legs still pumping even as her own blood cascaded down her face - extending them enough to push Brody off. Calling out into the darkness as she exherted the capacity of her lungs before for bloodloss took her away forever.

She heard Brody hit the ground with a thwack, her gutteral noises still ringing in Clementines ears. She still didn't know what missing piece of flesh her blood escaped from but she jumped into action anyway.

Though her attempt to end Brody was halted by a bodiless figure, restricting her arms by pulling them behind her back and shouting out, though Brodys unrelenting screeching drowned out whoever it was.

Then the flashlight was ignited. Clementine was awake. Bathed in its blinding light from her left. Turning her face from it she saw her attacker on the ground.

Brody had stopped her gruesome growling. She had stopped moving. She had stopped doing anything at all. Going even so far as ceasing to exist.

Clementine let out a wail of confusion, still in her restrained state. PTSD coarsing through her synapses as the tears began to slip from her eyes, meeting the blood dripping from her chin.

Aasim lay in an expired condition. His eyes were wide open, but devoid entirely of any pigment they had once had. Just a look that said his soul no longer resided behind them.

He was dead.