my tears ricochet

Chapter Twenty Seven

The night stretched ominously around her while Ivy's boots squelched in the soft mud as she crossed the field. There wasn't much light from the moon but she managed to see the shapes of walkers looming along the fence, their fingers clinging to the chainlink material.

She had listened to them all day from her cell where she pretended to be asleep, politely shutting the world out in favour of tucking her knees as close to her chest as she could manage, hiking the blankets up around her shoulders and face like a shield. Nobody had bothered her but she heard the whispers of conversations, voices circling around what had happened, picking the trauma back like she wasn't there.

Oscar hadn't said a word when she crept out of her cell once everyone had mostly gone to bed. The larger man had been seated a table with his slippered feet crossed, reading some ancient newspaper pulled from some corner. He had a pen in his hand and was filling out the crossword in silence, nodding towards her as she crossed the space on light toes.

She had carried the boots in her hand before shoving her feet into them outside the doors, not prepared to risk Daryl waking at the noise.

Her breath caught in the still cool air as she grabbed the long piece of metal rebar, huffing as she prepared to slide it through the gap in the fence. Winter still had a presence that lingered even where the land was slowly thawing. Night seemed to make the body ache from chills and brought her back to the long car rides between temporary safe houses, bodies pressed together as the car heater struggled to keep going.

The metal jammed through the left eye of a walker and she felt the shift of weight, the way the body was caught on the rebar but wanted to drop. She yanked backwards and awkwardly drew the body against the fence to release the hold her makeshift weapon had before lining herself again, this time to what had been a man.

His overalls were in tatters. Old blood stained his chest and the cuffs were torn. Somehow over time, she had gotten use to looking past the trauma of the body. They had stopped being human and Ivy had treated them like a rabid animal, something to be dealt with. Ivy looked at the side of his face that had been clawed into ribbons, the violent bite mark at his throat. It hurt striking with the rebar but she felt it, hoping that when the body dropped the ground, the soul found some kind of release.

It was like what she had said to Glenn in the parking lot. She could always hear their hunger no matter where she stood in the prison. There wasn't an escape from it. They gathered in clusters along the fence and pushed until the material buckled inwards. Eventually it would succumb to weight and there wouldn't be much that could be done to fix that kind of damage. Ivy started pacing her way down a long line of walkers, driving them into husks and silence, their corpses piling up along the edges.

Glenn was up in the watch tower by the fence with a thermos of coffee but she didn't look up. He had taken first watch because he didn't want to sleep and Ivy had gone out because she didn't want to risk dreaming.

One of the walkers rasped at her, mouth pulling back to show teeth, glazed eyes peering through the fence. Ivy paused, gasping as she placed her hands on her knees. It was almost a mirror. The body looked about her age, almost, small and unfinished, blonde hair matted from gore. Whoever she had been, something had happened and it had changed everything.

Ivy saw the bare remains of nail polish on fingers. Aqua blue, she imagined, but the darkness made it difficult to be sure the exact colour. "I'm sorry you didn't make it," she said as she hefted the rebar up. Ivy didn't need to aim as high as she had for the older walkers. "But you can go now."

The body hit the ground in a soft thud, head tilting backwards as the moon cast light across cheekbones and mouth. It would have been almost peaceful if Ivy didn't see that gash on the bridge of the girl's nose that never had a chance to heal properly, black blood crusted around her mouth. All the little details of violence frozen on the shell of what had been a girl, a girlhood spoiled in rot and decay.