Day's End

Shared Sorrows

        Sidney slammed the building's door behind them, locking the door for good measure as they backed up from it. The boy looked around themselves, and, of course, the house was empty; even more surprising, there weren't even any furniture. The wooden floor was thickly covered in a layer of dust; however, Sidney didn't bother paying much attention to this small detail as they were consumed with the need to find a way out.
        Sidney dashed up the stairs to the next level, but was stopped in their tracks as they soon figured out why there was no furniture. A pile of chairs and tables all entangled together sat at the top of the stairwell, covered just as thickly in dust. From beyond the barrier, they also spotted an untouched couch blocking access to a door, what Sidney guessed was a bedroom. With some struggle, Sidney managed to heave themselves over the dirty tables and chairs and into the narrow hallway, which was made even more narrow with fallen shelves from a drawer and books scattered haphazardly around it. With a grunt, the boy pushed the large couch away from the door, and, barely pushing it, the door easily glided open, having not been entirely shut from the start.
         Sidney tensed up, their right hand hovering over the holster that held their gun as they were met eye-to-eye with another survivor, who held up a large bat between the two. The other was quite a bit taller than Sidney, and, even as they stood staring at each other, the survivor didn't speak and only made waving motions with the bat towards Sidney's firearm. Sidney, taking this as a sign to surrender their weapon, slowly pulled it out of its holster and bent to lay it on the ground. The stranger picked up the gun and lowered his bat so it was idly hanging by his side. "So, uh.." Sidney began, lowering their hands that they had previously raised in surrender. "What's your name?"
The stranger looked around the room, swiftly picking up half of a pencil and a book. He hastily wrote something down on the cover of the book and held it up for Sidney to read.
"Micheal, huh?"
Micheal simply nodded.
"Are you.. Are you mute or something?"
He nodded again, his shaggy blonde hair sweeping at the movement.
Sidney folded their arms across their chest. "Well, Micheal, it seems to me that we'll be stuck together for a while."
Micheal titled his head, shaking it as he did so.
"Do you hear that?" Sidney asked, cupping their right hand over the respective ear. "That is the sound of us being trapped together."
Micheal rolled his eyes and scribbled something down on the first page inside the book, holding it up once more, which read, 'So how old are you anyway?'
The other offered a small frown and a pout in response, "Thirteen."
Micheal smirked and silently chuckled, ruffling the brunette's dark hair.
Sidney smacked his larger hand away, striding over to a boarded up window and peeking through, before saying in a prideful, if not rather silly, voice, "I believe we have found ourselves in quite the predicament."
The elder walked up next to the younger and looked through as well. He leaned down and wrote below his previous statement, 'How do you plan on getting out of here?'
Sidney plopped down on the messy bed, which they realized belonged to Micheal, but did it anyway. "I don't know. Maybe wait it out? Unless we can somehow leave without the dead noticing us, that's all I've got." Sidney stroked their chin. "Do you have a backdoor, backyard, anything like that?"
The other shook his head.
"Damn."
Micheal wrote once more, 'What about going through this window?'
Sidney glanced at the window, making an indecisive noise. "We're pretty far up, right? And, besides, they're all crowded up down there."
'We could distract them with something.'
"Like what?"
'Something on fire would be best, I think.'
"On fire? That's.. dangerous.. but I love it! Let's do it." Hyped up on the idea of setting something on fire, Sidney scurried around the room for their victim. They snatched a large notepad and held it in front of Micheal, who quickly shook his head, grabbing it away from them.
'I'll use this for speaking. We can use this book instead.''
"Alright," Sidney confirmed. "Let's get to it, then," they eagerly urged Micheal to begin.
        Micheal tore away the weak boards and opened the window, which, judging by the resistance it gave to open, hadn't been opened in quite some time. Climbing down on the short over-head roof, Sidney following, Micheal ignited the beige book with a lighter he had kept; the book took to the flames, and Micheal had the honor of, once in a position he could aim correctly, tossing it of the roof a little ways beside the group of walkers. However, to the two's disappointment, only a few near it caught on to the distraction; the others blissfully unaware. "Well, shit!" Sidney cursed in a loud whisper. "Do you have anything bigger?"
Micheal merely shrugged.
        By now, the horde of a dozen or so walkers had lost interest in the single house and had now spread apart into the street. Because the walkers had abandoned their initial habitat, the gate to the place they were holed up in was wide open, and, inside the fence, was a large, slightly dilapidated building, along with a broken-down car and a dumpster on opposite ends of the lot. Sidney hummed in thought and leaned forward, suddenly remembering something. "Hey, uh, Micheal."
Micheal nodded, signaling his acknowledgement.
"Can I have my gun back now?"
He sighed and pulled their weapon out, holding it for them to grab.
"Thanks." Sidney leaned back. "Well, have any ideas?"
Micheal scribbled down with his broken pencil, 'We could go to that building over there.'
"Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Problem is, how do we get there?"
He shrugged and wrote on the yellow paper of the pad, 'I'm not sure, but, by the way, I saw someone right before you came.'
"You mean Rose?"
Micheal nodded, now having a name to match a face.
"Yeah. I'm not really sure how she's doing. Hopefully she's alright."
'She is. I meant that I saw her before you came, as in after you two were separated.'
"Really? What was she doing?"
Micheal shrugged, pausing before writing more, 'She was covered in something.'
Sidney snorted before chucking a loose roof tile into the street. "Probably the blood of her victims, like usual."
The other jumped slightly, his eyes showing his surprise, 'victims?'
Sidney nudged Micheal's arm. "I'm just kidding." Sidney laid back on their arms. "Was she heading for that building?"
Micheal nodded, remaining in his seated position.
"Figures." Sidney switched into a fetal position. "She seems really obsessed with this Natalie person."
'Natalie?' In order for Sidney to see Micheal's words, he had to tap them on the shoulder to notify that he had written something.
"Yeah, it's this girl she was with since this all started, I think. I offered to help look for her if Rose agreed to take me with her."
'What happened to her?'
Sidney shrugged. "I'm not really sure. All she said was, 'It's a long story.'" Sidney sighed, closing their eyes. "All I know is that they were separated."
Micheal pat Sidney's shoulder, holding up the writing pad, 'Do you regret going with her?'
They dryly chuckled. "Nope. I might have starved to death if she didn't take me." Sidney paused before adding, "I wasn't brave enough to go out on my own."
The other nodded and laid back, pushing the pressure on his hands.
"Now, we should probably find a way out."
Micheal nodded.
        Rose, covered in the entrails of a walker she had gut, finally reached the entrance to the dilapidated brick building that the walkers had previously been blocking. She flung open the door and was met with a putrid smell, which triggered her gag reflex. However, she managed to control the reflex and continued on her way, covering her nose and mouth with the inside of a part of her jacket. Because the building was half torn down, the room immediately inside was rather small. Soon after entering, Rose was met with the origin of the disgusting smell: metal tables with large chunks of meat laid upon them were set beside the walls. Some of the meat looked rather fresh, whereas some of the others looked older and even rotted. The blood that had come from the meat simply pooled around several of the slabs, staining the metal tables, and the meat, however, giving off the rotten smell.
         She tensed in her already frozen state as muffled voices pierced the eerie silence. Rose couldn't quite make out what the voices were saying, but they were just loud enough for her to differentiate the speakers. She heard footsteps next; footsteps growing louder as they neared the room she stood in. Quickly coming to her senses, Rose dashed for the nearest hiding place that she saw, which was behind a stack of crates; crates that emitted the same odor she was met with upon entrance. The footsteps completely entered the room by now, but, unfortunately, Rose's presence did not go unnoticed, as the stranger noticed the bloody footprints leading up to where she hid. Fortunately, Rose still held her hook she had received from her time at the abandoned truck; her stick, on the other hand, she had dropped when running from the oncoming walkers.
        As the footsteps drew nearer and nearer towards her hiding place, the grip she had on the hook grew tighter and tighter until they stopped all at once. As she strained herself to keep from moving, a deep voice whispered from behind her, "Why so shy, little rose?" Rose shot up, randomly slicing her hook through the air to, of course, no avail. She stumbled backwards after doing so, almost falling down if it weren't for the man grabbing her wrist before she could. "I remember you. Do you remember me?" Too frightened to respond, Rose simply tugged and pulled in an attempt to be set free. Evidently, the man was strong, as just one stroke sent Rose sprawling on the ground. However, the man, after doing so, let out such a loud, sickly cough that caused even Rose to cringe. After recovering from his coughing fit, the man spoke again in a raspy voice, "You see, Rose, I needed the things you took, and, on the other hand, food is running short nowadays." The last words slipped through a spine-chilling grin he gave. "Don't worry, I think your companion has supplied us with enough to last quite a while." Turning to face the slabs of meat, the man stroked his short, rough beard. "After all, Clydesdale horses are typically very large, yes?"
        The man fell into a coughing fit once more, gripping his side as the end of the coughing neared. The man grabbed an iron bar that rested against a smashed window, dry blood splattered across the straight end. Rose grabbed the hook that had fallen out of her hand and, just as the man brought it down on her, hit the hook against it. The grip the man had on the pole was too strong for the blow to knock it out of his hand, but it was enough to throw off his balance. As Rose scurried away, she sliced the hook in the air, only managing to land a small strike on the man's forearm. The man hissed, "Damn!" As he was about to land a strike on Rose, a voice interrupted them, "Mark?"
The man immediately lowered the pole, quickly striding away from Rose. "Brie, please, go back to the room."
"What are you doing in here?" The woman pushed past Mark, meekly walking up to Rose. The woman held out her hand, grabbing one of Rose's and resting the other on her shoulder as she pulled Rose up. The few grey hairs and slight wrinkles brought present by her gentle smile made her age present, and the gold bands on both of their fingers made it clear that they were married.
        Brie froze, her grip on Rose going stiff as a gunshot rang through the small, concrete room. Rose's eyes darted to the open door, and there stood Sidney, their gun pointed towards the trio, and Micheal, bat in hand. The woman stumbled back and clutched her bleeding torso, struggling to even stand. Her legs gave way, and Brie fell limply to the ground as a devastated Mark watched blankly onward. Rose, her hook held tightly in her hand, slowly staggered backwards. Before she managed to get past the tables, Mark, in a hushed whisper, said, "Leave."
         Rose, once far enough away, dashed the rest of the way to the two teens and, either of their hands in one of hers, practically dragged them outside the door just in time to avoid Mark's pole that he threw at the group and his last shout, "Leave, now!"