𝒃𝒖𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒘𝒐𝒍𝒇 𝒔𝒖𝒓𝒗𝒊𝒗𝒆𝒔 ➪ «𝑑𝑎𝑟𝑦𝑙 𝑑𝑖𝑥𝑜𝑛»

ch. XLVIII pt. II

A/N: if you haven't read part 1 of this chapter, don't start reading this yet!

oOo

Turn around, Diana pleaded, holding her breath. She's not here. You're not her. Please turn around.

"Diana," Glenn called, making her jerk back to action, air finally returning to her lungs. "You alright?"

She had to physically move her head to tear her eyes away from the walker. A sharp emptiness opened a hole inside her rib cage as her wide eyes turned to Glenn, and she nodded with an affirming hum and a tense smile.

Glenn said nothing to contradict her, he simply frowned and caressed her cheek with the back of his fingers, smearing something wet across her skin.

Diana flinched away, embarrassed by the slip-up, and wiped her face on the collar of her shirt. "It's fine. I'm fine." She focused on finding Sophia, purposefully avoiding looking at the dark-haired walker the way some people avoid beggars on the street. "I see her."

Glenn didn't say a word and directed his gaze to where she was pointing.

The pushing and shuffling of the dozen walkers had forced Sophia's smaller self to the back of the mob. Convenient, really. These walkers really knew how to play along.

Diana stood up and took a stance, drawing an arrow with her bow. The weapon hummed in her hand, but it somehow never affected her aim, which made her conclude that the feeling must be induced in her psyche and not her physical self. It also explained why only she could feel it.

"Should we say something?" Glenn asked, a hand on her flexed arm to halt her. "I feel like we should."

Diana released the arrow, and Sophia's corpse fell to the floor. "Rest in peace."

Glenn sighed in defeat and gave a one-shouldered shrug. "Guess that works." He cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled out to the others. "It's done!"

The banging and ruckus ceased instantly, but the walkers persisted.

Now back to her and Glenn; their job now was to be loud and obnoxious as they could to get the walkers distracted enough not to notice the doors opening nor the two meals on legs that came to collect Sophia from behind them.

They did a decent job; being annoying was a talent Diana kept hidden most of the time.

Rick and Shane were almost back out the door when a single walker turned around and saw them. The dark-haired one from before. That one wasn't very good at following cues.

What happened next seemed to play out in slow motion.

The walker latched onto Shane's shirt.

Diana's heart rose to her throat. Panic froze her limbs.

Glenn shook her by the shoulders and yelled in her face, but the words were indistinguishable to her ringing ears, and her eyes couldn't be torn away from the scene.

Shane pushed Rick with Sophia out of the barn and slammed the doors shut behind him, barring them with a wooden plank that had been conveniently propped against the wall beside him.

The walker had gotten to him, bad. Diana could see the blood soaking his sleeve and running down his arm. There was no amount of noise that would distract the walkers from that scent.

There was a sudden sharp sting on her cheek as Glenn's palm connected with her face, making her stumble back, unfreezing her. Her neck hurt from the whiplash and her cheek burned, but her ears had stopped ringing, and she could finally hear the screams and gunshots and banging on wood and the unrelenting undead.