[Finished] Living Among the Dead

46. Dead or Alive Or

When the kingdom survivors get here, I start hiding in the trailer more and more, keep out of sight.
Morgan, Jerry and Carol keep stopping by, every day I get their visits and visits from Jesus. It drives me insane. Each visit making me want to hit someone, anyone; more and more.
"Hey," Jerry greets, coming inside and immediately picking up Hope from her and Gracie's playpen.
I glance at him before looking back down at Gracie who has only just stopped crying and fell asleep.
"No signs of Mason yet, but Morgan's going to go search in about an hour, and if he can't find him, no one will. And we all have hope that the Alexandria Survivors are going to meet us here.
"Can you go?" I ask, not raising my voice. Not throwing a tantrum, but calmly asking him to leave me alone.
"Oh... yeah, for sure. I'll stop in tomorrow, catch you up to date."
I close my eyes at his annoying promise. He puts Hope back down and leaves the trailer, thank god.

"Your coming with me," Maggie says, barging into the trailer.
"Excuse me?" I ask, taken aback.
"Gregory wants to speak to me, and Jesus is out scavenging, I need your brains. Nabila is here and she's going to watch Hope and Gracie while you come be my advisor.
I nod once, and follow Maggie out the door, handing Hope to Nabila.
We approach the cell fence and Gregory greets Maggie, "Margret.Thank you for speaking with me."
"What do you want, Gregory?" She snaps.
"I know we haven't exactly seen eye-to-eye on anything. Loyalties have been questioned, fingers have been pointed... All of that aside, you have to admit that, since you threw me in here, my behavior has been pretty good."
"You're staying in, Gregory."
"What? So you're not gonna hear me out? You can't just leave me in here forever."
"Give me a reason to kill you, and I won't have to."
"He's right, you know." The human acting Savior says. "We've been good. We've done everything you've told us to do. And still, last night, you took one of us out and-"
"Yeah, I know what I did."
"Okay.... The longer you treat us like the enemy, the more we're gonna act-"
"You are the enemy."
"I don't think we have to be."
"I think we should listen," Maggie turns on me at my words. I put my hands up, "You asked for my opinion." I shrug, "I think we should hear him out.
"Fine." Maggie snaps, turning back to the Savior. "What do you want?"
He glances behind him before answering, "Time outside the pen for good behavior. You know, one at a time, a couple minutes a day, some... some shade, exercise. You can have all the guns on us you like. What do you say?"
"I don't have the resources to oblige you, even if I wanted to."
"So, that's it, then?"
"No. I'm cutting off your rations. A few days, maybe longer."
"What? Maggie-" Gregory says, sounding indignant.
"My people come first. I don't have a choice."
"I think you do," the savior disagrees.
I follow Maggie as she storms away, "How bad off are we?" I ask.
"We have to cut everyone's rations by a third. Even with cutting off the Prisoners." She responds.
"Shit..."
"Yeah, its bad."
"I'm going back to my trailer."
"We'll find them, both of them."
I shrug, "Or we won't."
"You can't think like that."
"And you can't promise if we find them, that they'll be alive. And I don't want to think about Daryl dying... and." I take a deep breath, "And if Mason dies, I don't want to know. I don't want to know if Mason died. If I lost another kid," I shake my head. "Well then I don't want to know."

"It's them!" I hear from outside the trailer, and I run outside leaving Nabila with the girls and as soon as I see everyone; all I see is everyone crying and Enid on the ground on her knees.
I rush forward as soon as I see Daryl I rush up, and as I run towards him my anger gets the better of me and I smack him, right across the face.
"Dammit, Woman! What the hell."
"How dare you!" I yell, tears streaming down my face. "How dare you! You leave me with our daughter, send me another baby with Aaron, and then send our son here alone! He left, he went looking for you and he hasn't come back... and you didn't come back." My voice breaks.
He pulls me into his chest and I sob into his neck as he mumbles, " 'm okay. I'll find him."
"No need," I hear from behind Daryl and I look over his shoulder to see.
No.
"NO!" I scream, running towards Jesus who is carrying the body of my beloved son. "NO!" I pull my son from Jesus's hands and fall under his heavy body. I scream and cry into his lifeless body, see the bite mark on the side of his neck and the obviously self inflicted gunshot wound on his forehead.
"No... no..."

[A.N.] So... I thought it only fitting for Mason and the love of his life to die together even though they were apart. So I know I didn't touch on this at all in the story, but it wasn't something I saw Mason confiding in his mother or in Daryl in front of his mother; and honestly I didn't quite know how to write it in the story believably as I felt he'd have hidden his feelings from everyone but Aaron and Eric. I think he probably confided in Tara as well at some point, maybe even Denise. But I couldn't ever see Mason telling his mom he was gay. Or that he was in love with Carl. I will probably have Aaron or Tara mention it briefly in the upcoming chapters, but it just wast something I could see happening yet. I always planned on him dying with Carl, but I didn't know how to write that make the storyline progress the way I'm hoping to do so. You'll see what I mean in the upcoming chapters.