The Ruins Part 2 (Sequel to The Ruins)

Chapter 48

Tom escaped the herd, and was now alone. He prayed that Negan and Mal escape before through the tough tree lines, he sees a ball of fire. The fire burned through the walking dead and Brother David's way station. He eventually looked out to see Mal and Negan up in the hill and ran more, letting the forest swallow them whole.

Now, he has to catch them up or go straight towards Wawona hotel. Well, he rather be with Mal more. He still disagreeing Negan's choice of loving her. It's not like Negan is somewhat doing some illegal things- since the Black Night there are no rules- but he's not forcing her. Tom's whole body, mind, and himself couldn't process the thought of Mal liking this man. Was it from the rape she gone through that twisted her mind to like a man way older than her age?

No, why would you think that? His inner mind slapped the stupid thought of Tom. He takes deep breathes before walks it off. He has to think more on the KillGames than his overprotectiveness for Mal.

Tom was at home in the Ruins. He loved the woods, even in the night turning the green world into an almost impenetrable black gloom. Ever since that terrible night twenty-eight years ago, Tom had spent nearly a third of his life in these woods. Unlike Fairview, with its stifled boundaries and pervasive fear, the Ruins was a simpler place. You knew where you stood.

Tom reckoned that it was no different than the way the world had been before humans settled the first cities. Back then there had been predators of all kinds, and life was hard-scrabble at best. Every day was a fight for survival, but it was that struggle that had inspired humans to become problem solvers. The inventiveness of the human race was one of the most crucial tools of survival, and it was the cornerstone of all civilization. Without it, man would never have turned fire into a tool, or carved a wheel from a piece of wood.

Tom knew that there were Infected and Runners out here, but didn't fear them. He respected and accepted them as a physical threat the way he respect as accepted the beasts and cougars and wolves that roamed these hills. But you have to fight for the dead and even the living to protect yourselves. It was the way of things. Survival of the fittest, and no one was "the fittest" all the times.

He ran for a couple a yards to a mile away that he couldn't see the fire, couldn't see a black clouded shaded in the night. He ran lightly, ducking under branches, leaping gullies, running no faster than his ability to perceive what the forest had to tell him.

He continued to ran swiftly. The first was growing quiet, and he moved only as fast as he could go silently. It was a tracker's trick: Never make more noise than what you're tracking. He uses it so no one can track him and whatever he's tracking up ahead.

Crack.

There was a sound, soft and close, and within three steps Tom slipped into the shadows between two ancient elms. He listened. Sound was deceptive. Without a second noise it was often difficult to reliably determine from which direction the sound had come. Ahead and to the left? Off the trail?

A rustle. Definitely off to the left. Tom peered through the gloom. The second sound had been like a foot moving through stiff brush. A long paused and then another crunch.

Tom saw a piece of shadow detach itself and move from left to right through an open patch. It was quick, furtive movement. Something that walked on two legs. Not a Runner, though, he was sure about that. He was sure it wasn't Negan and Mal.

Preacher Jack? If so, Tom was determined to have a different kind of chat with him than they'd had back on the road.

The figure was coming his way, but from the body language it was clear the person had not seen him. The head was turned more toward the north, looking farther along the game trail.

Judging where Tom should have been if he'd kept moving.

Tom nodded approval. A pretty good tracker, he guessed.

"Tom!" called a voice. A very familiar voice. "Tom. I know you're up there behind one of those trees. Don't make me have to walk all the way up the slope."

Tom stepped out from behind the tree with his pistol in his hand. The shadowy figure emerged into a slightly brighter spot of light. From the soles of her boots to the top of her orange Mohawk, the woman was tall and solidly built, with knife handles and pistol butts hurtling out in all directions like an old-time pirate. In her right fist she carried a huge Bowie knife with a wicked eighteen-inch blade.

Something black gleamed on the blade, and though it looked like oil in the bad light, Tom knew that it was blood. The woman's face and clothes seemed to be smeared with it. She tottered into view, and Tom saw that her left arm hung limp and dead at her side.

Tom stepped out from behind the tree. "Sally?"

Sally Two-Knives grinned at him with bloody teeth. "You alone, Tom?"

"Yes."

"Good," she said, and pitched forward onto her face.