Malevolent. The Walking Dead

[ 041 ] ruined

041: ruined

The woods were eerily quiet. Joey had been walking for what seemed like hours. She was following the map that Carl had given to her—which had the hospital circled—and she was ninety-nine percent sure she was going the right way. She had followed the Route that went through the city until she came across such thick shrubbery she wasn't able to follow the road anymore and had to divert her path into the woods. The sun was hidden behind a huge mass of clouds, to the point where Joey wondered if it was actually night or not. It very well could've been, and she wouldn't have known. Joey had stopped keeping track of the days since they left Alexandria.

The woods were quiet. Quiet enough to throw Joey into her own thoughts. It was unsafe in her head. Oftentimes she thought about hurting herself. It had been something recurring since Bill's death. She often thought about what would happen if she killed herself, but it seemed so out of reach, so she thought about taking her knife to her wrist and giving herself tiny little cuts. They aren't deep enough to kill her, but deep enough to make her bleed. It made her contemplate her life and whether she deserved to live over Bill. He was a better person than her, he always would be. Even in death.

Her feet crunched the leaves beneath her, and she winced as the noise echoed throughout the woods. Her head was pounding and she realized she hadn't eaten or drank anything for over a day. When she clawed at the bag on her back, her bottle was empty, and she nicked herself on the blade of her knife. She cursed quietly to herself. When she pulled her hand away and stared at the blood on her fingers, she got a vision of Bill, right after Negan had beat his skull in. It happened in just a blink, and Joey stumbled up against the tree, trying to keep her balance. She rubbed her fingers against the bark of the tree, trying to regain feeling in her body, but her breathing was coming out as if she didn't know how, and her chest was caving in on itself. Joey clenched her fist around the shirt over her chest, as if that would help her slow down her heartbeats.

The woods stayed quiet even against her breath. It was too quiet, and Joey wanted to be on edge in order to keep her guard up, but she kept clawing at her chest and the thin shirt that covered it as if if she stripped herself of her clothes, she would be able to breathe again, and she would've stripped herself from everything else in her life. Joey couldn't understand why her body was putting her through something like this at the worst of times. But she still couldn't breathe. Even when she crouched to the ground and writhed dirt in between her fingers and tried to feel the botany that swarmed the base of tree trunks and collected around her feet. Everything felt fake. When she closed her eyes she saw Bill, Finn and Carl.

She tried to get up and walk, and stumbled over to a small creek that was running through the trees. It was too dangerous to drink the water, so she just splashed it over her face. She saw her reflection and shivered at the sight of herself. Joey tried closing her eyes to forget about it, but everything and everyone she was betraying kept flashing before her eyes, like it was taunting her. She heard a whistle from further into the woods that made her snap back to reality. Quickly, Joey clutched her gun in her hand, clicking off the safety slowly to not make too much of a sound. More strange, short whistles followed, that sounded like the Saviors—the ones she heard that night. Taking a deep breath, Joey crouched down keeping low to the ground and inched her way toward a tree she could hide behind. A lone man was lurking a bit further away, his back turned to. He was skinny in stature, and was crouching down and prodding his fingers in the dirt. Joey believed he must've seen her footsteps. He whistled again. It must've been some sort of communication method.

She tried to inch closer, keeping herself low to the ground and intertwined with the bushes that had overgrown and taken over most of the ground. He turned around when he heard her, and she stopped, slinging her gun back in her belt and taking her knife out of her pocket. He pointed his gun in her general direction, but he didn't see her, and only turned back around. Joey tried to carefully creep up behind him, discreetly wiping her knife off on her pant leg until she got close enough to him and his crouched position to stab him in the neck. He had been in the midst of standing up, and his weight fell back onto her when she stabbed him, his blood dripping on her hand and going down her arm, soaking the sleeve of her shirt. She covered his mouth with her other hand to prevent him from screaming, and he tried to bite her, but she only retracted her hand and stabbed him in the neck again. He clawed at her arm and face, more blood spreading from his neck and soaked her clothes. Joey cursed to herself and let him fall limp to the ground. Wiping off her knife on her leg, she searched his body and found a pack of bullets. She clicked them into the magazine of her gun.