Malevolent. The Walking Dead

[ 039 ] when i'm with you

039: when i'm with you

Joey had roamed through different areas of the theater to make sure it was safe, and no one was squatting there. A rotter was wandering around in one room, and Joey put it down. There were letters compiled around a sleeping bag that Joey believed to be from the rotter she had killed. They wrote about how they were bit and left alone. They were deprived of water but tried to drink all the rain that opened from the sky. Joey felt sick reading the letters—they were dying for days. She knew the illness following a bite affected everyone differently, but this person was like a prisoner in their own body for days straight.

There was a radio accompanying the body on one of the tables. It appeared to be dead, since there was no power in the theater, and Joey tried to turn the knobs, with nothing working. She continued to wander around the different parts of the theater, finding small makeshift, abandoned camps. Joey prayed that there wasn't anyone else there. She didn't feel like fighting or killing anymore—she had to save her strength for Negan.

Truthfully, Joey didn't know if there was any hope left for her actually finding him. They had only been out for hardly a week, and she had already killed more people and drew more attention to them than she hoped. But every time she closed her eyes, Bill painted the back of her eyelids. She could look up to the sky, maybe talk to him, talk to Finn, talk to anyone who was listening while Carl dozed next to her. Joey could stay up all night and hope that maybe, there was some sort of answer for her, that what she was doing was what Bill would've wanted. Carl could tell her all he wanted that it wasn't what Bill would've wanted her to do, but she didn't care. She had spent the past few years of her life surviving for him—so she had to keep going.

The wires and extension cords littering the floor had her wondering if there was some sort of generator that had kept this place going after the outbreak. There had been lamps next to the camps set up inside that supported her thoughts, but she knew she would need gasoline to keep it going, but wanted to avoid going out in the open rain to siphon a car. Joey decided to just follow the trail of cords until she stumbled upon the generator—which hopefully didn't need much gas to stay running.

The rain pattered against the door frame while Joey pulled her hood over her head. The thunder made her jump as she gripped the door knob and gently pushed it open, using a side door hopefully to avoid Carl noticing. She felt guilty for snapping at him, but she also was mad at him. Granted, Joey would've done the same thing in his situation—not said anything and hoped it went away. But Carl wasn't like Joey. At least, she hoped he wasn't like her. He was going to live long, live on without her. Joey hoped he did outlive her—get with Enid in the future and have babies. Not get strung along by her until she left him out to rot.

Joey pinched the skin between her elbow through her jacket. The pressure wasn't hard enough to break skin considering the layers of clothes, but it still hurt. Joey liked it. She liked making herself hurt—she wasn't sure why. It was some sort of comfort to her, digging her nails in her skin, holding her lighter to the flesh between her thighs. She would pick her nails until they bled or scrubbed herself too hard in the shower until her skin was bright pink.

When she went outside, the rain felt like bullets against her skin. It was raining so hard that she couldn't hear herself breathe. She kept following the cords and tried to wipe away the rain that was blocking her vision. "Fuck." she cursed, starting to run a bit and nearly tripped over the weeds growing through the cracks of the pavement.

When she finally reached the pavilion that the generator was under, Joey realized why the person that had been squatting in the theater was no longer there. They were dead on the ground, body so charred that she couldn't even make out their face, let alone their gender. "Got fried didn't you." she winced, covering her nose to mask the putrid smell. They had been messing with the circuit board—she wasn't sure what they were even trying to do. The generator was stationed not far from the body, and she stepped over it, nearly tripping.