Future Ghosts • TWD

8. No Fear.

Rosie woke up tied to a chair with a bag over her head. She tried to pull her arms away, but she could feel rope rubbing against her wrists when she tried. She could see light shining through the sack, and muttering voices. The voices weren't quite clear yet and everything felt foggy. She felt like she was floating.

Getting bashed in the head twice in the span of 24 hours can do that to a person.

The voices got clearer after a few minutes. Rosie could hear that it was all men. A lot of them had accents.

"You kidnapped a little girl?!" one of the voices asked, sounding extremely pissed off. Maybe he was the leader.

"They have the guns! And Miguel! She's leverage," another voice reasoned. This one was closer to her, she could tell. Right beside her, in fact.

"You don't kidnap little girls!"

"They'll come back to get her, and in return, we'll get our guns!"

"She's seven!"

"I'm nine," Rosie muttered quietly.

"No! Felipe, don't-" was the last thing she heard before everything went black all over again.

•

"Those men you were with, we need to know where they went," Rick said, sitting on a desk in front of Miguel, the man boy they'd taken from the alley. He sat across from him, his lip busted open. T-Dog and Glenn sat nearby while Daryl paced back and forth impatiently.

"I ain't tellin' you nothin'," Miguel said calmly. At least he wasn't screaming anymore.

"Jesus, man. What the hell happened back there?" T-Dog groaned.

"I told you, this little turd and his douchebag friends came out of nowhere and jumped me!" Daryl spat.

"You're the one who jumped me, puto," Miguel said, leaning his head on his hand. "Screaming about tryin' to find his brother like it's my damn fault."

"They took Rosie. Could've taken Merle too," Daryl reasoned.

"Merle? What kind of hick name is that? I wouldn't name my dog Merle," Miguel said, purposefully making Daryl even more angry than he already was.

Bad move.

Daryl marched over and tried to kick the man boy right in the head, but, of course, Rick stopped him. "Damn it, Daryl! Back off!"

"Want to see what happened to the last guy that pissed me off?" Daryl asked Miguel, digging through Glenn's bag and pulling out the blue bandana. He unwrapped Merle's severed hand and threw it down into Miguel's lap.

Yelling out in fear, Miguel scrambled out of his seat and away from the hand, ending up on the ground. Daryl launched himself towards him, holding him down by the shoulders.

"You tell us where the kid is or I'll start with the feet this time," he threatened.

Once again, Rick marched forward and pushed Daryl away from the man boy. He crouched down in front of Miguel, keeping a somewhat calm, somewhat intimidating demeanor.

"The men you were with took our kid. All we wanna do is talk to them, see if we can work something out."

•

Rosie woke up again when she felt someone shaking her shoulders. She jumped, trying to get to her feet, but they held her down to the chair.

"Hey, kid, calm down," a man's voice told her. She still couldn't see anything.