Clementine x Louis

Chapter 36

*This fanfic, though it may be mainly focused on Clementine and Louis, will also focus on other characters' arcs*

Clem collapsed to the ground with the rest of her friends. The only one left was... Marlon.

His eyes scanned the four men as they sent a smirk his way. "Listen, fellas," Marlon said backing up as they inched closer. "Meeting you has been fun and all but I think it's time for me to go." He tripped on his own feet and fell to the ground leaving the men to stand and laugh.

"You'd just leave your friends?" Marvin asked, his hands perched on his hips.

"I..." Marlon looked to the ground in shame. He was the main reason any of them were in this situation. If he hadn't stepped up last year when the twins were taken he could've avoided all of this.

Marvin and the others shook their head as they continued to smirk. One of them picked Marlon up like it was nothing and bound his wrist. "What do you guys want?!" Marlon asked as they tied his wrist behind his back and began to walk.  The others were carrying his friends.

"Let's just say... we get hungry very easily," one of the other men named Remy said.

Marlon raised a brow, turning back at the men. "Don't we all? What does that have to do with us?" The men laughed again. Marlon cringed as he saw them carrying his friends, some of them puckering their lips as they carried Clem, Minerva, Brody, Dawn, and Violet. "Stop! They're my friends!"

"I don't care of their your fRieNds," Marvin mocked. "Your friends are going to be a good use to us." The men laughed again though the one woman in their group rolled her eyes.

Marlon wasn't going to wimp out. "What can I give you to let us go?" Marlon pleaded. "We have weapons—"

"Already have them," Dave said waving their bags in the air. "Besides kid, if we just dropped you and your friends off in the middle of the woods while their unconscious, there's no doubt they'll get ripped apart by skullers. You and your friends are safer with us." Marlon sighed and put his head down as he heard one of them kill an approaching walker.

"Why do you call them skullers?" Marlon asked. If he was trapped with these people, might as well make decent conversation.

"The only way they die is with a hit to the skull right? We're not gonna call them headers." The men snickered. "What do you and your friends call em?'"

"Walkers," he answered. "I thought everyone called them that."

"Guess not. We've met people who call them lurkers, muertos or the dead and plenty other things."

Marlon shrugged. They're bickering was cut short when they arrived at a factory but it was surrounded by farmland. "The crops have died out so we gotta do what we can to survive," Dave said, placing Marlon and his friends in a cell with hay scattered everywhere.

"I think I'll keep this for myself," said Sisaleene, the woman of their group, as she waved Clem's hat around her finger.

Remy snickered. "Why? It's old and ugly. It's falling apart."

"Just like you," Sisaleen barked back.

Marlon shook his head, turning around to see a sleeping Clem on the hay. "The girl that hat belongs to isn't going to be very happy. When she wakes up—"

"That's the thing kid," Dave started. "Your friends won't get the chance to wake up. Well only when we're cutting them into small pieces."

"Wait, what?!" With that the shut the cell leaving Marlon and his unconscious friends to sit in the itchy hay. Right as he saw their captures leave the barn they had placed them inside, Marlon got to work shaking his friends vigorously to get them to wake up the slightest. What Dave said couldn't be true.