as the world caves in ◦ [rosita espinosa]

III. GO AND NEVER COME BACK

They don't have to wait long.

The chance for escape comes fast. The lock clicks and the door swings open, Merle and the guard from earlier stepping in. Before they can do anything, Maggie rushes up to the guard and jabs her bone shard into the man's neck, blood spurting out and coating her face. Glenn and Janey are both shocked at the kind woman's display of anger and find themselves frozen for a moment.

The brunette pulls the bone back out, letting the man slump to the floor as he bleeds out. Glenn snaps into action and jumps at Merle, knocking him onto the ground. The two fight while Janey and Maggie come together to take on another armed man who has joined the fight.

After a moment, Merle overpowers Glenn, flipping him onto his back on the floor and placing a knife to his throat. He stops struggling immediately under its sharp pressure on his neck. Maggie's eyes widen when she notices her partner on the ground. She immediately reaches down to steal one of the fallen guard's guns and points it at Merle, screaming, "Let him go!"

Merle keeps the knife fixed on Glenn, making eye contact with the brunette as he presses it tighter to his exposed throat. Maggie drags her eyes from the man's to look down at where the knife rests. She stares for a moment, and then lowers her gun. Janey follows her lead, dropping the bone shard they still hold in their hand.

Merle smirks at this, satisfied. A few more of the Governor's men step into the room, two of them grabbing Maggie and Janey, forcing their arms behind their back, as Merle forces Glenn up and to his feet. They're all ushered back into the hallway from earlier, the guards who hold them forcing them to their knees and binding their hands.

Janey looks over at the couple, who are now holding hands, and sees them sharing a glance that's filled with a thousand words. Maggie says a shaky "I love you," to Glenn before a burlap sack is shoved over all of their faces. There's a gun placed to the back of their head in the next moment, and Janey squeeze their eyes shut, ready to face death.

It doesn't come.

There's a sudden commotion, people screaming and grunting. Janey gets knocked over, nudged hard by someone's boot, falling face first into the ground with a loud smack. Their head spins, pulsing painfully at the new injury to their already bruised face. After taking a beat to recover, they rise back to their knees, a difficult feat with their hands still tied behind their back. They're dizzy, but they shake it off. They tip their head forward and, after a few moments, manage to get the sack off their head, but their eyesight doesn't come back. Smoke fills the room, making it hard for them to see.

Glenn and Maggie aren't next to them anymore, they notice. If they squint their eyes, they can see the space a few feet in front of them, and it's now empty. There are a few bodies of the guards laying there, blood pooling around them, but no Glenn, and no Maggie.

They don't have any more time to process their new friends' absence before gunshots ring out. I need to get out of here now, they think. I can look for them once I'm out.

With that thought in mind, they manage to rise from their knees to their feet, immediately running as soon as they are on two feet, their ankle pulsing painfully, but they ignore it. The smoke is starting to dissipate, so it's easy for Janey to find the door to the building. They immediately rush out, feeling the cold evening air hit their face as soon as they step outside.

It's a relief to breathe in the fresh air when just moments ago they had thought they were dead, but there's no time to appreciate it. They know they need to get out of Woodbury and try to find Glenn and Maggie. They look to their left and see the steel walls surrounding the gate that they had entered the town though. Immediately, they decide not to go that way, knowing it must still be guarded, especially with whatever was happening with the gunshots. They go left instead, running further into the town in the hopes that there will be a back entrance, an exit into the surrounding woods, something to help them get out of the town.