Survive ( twd carlgrimes)

Chapter 27

CARL'S POV.

After pacing the kitchen for a long time wondering if I should follow Madison or not, I decide against it. I need to stop this obsessiveness. I shouldn't be listening into her conversations or thinking about her twenty-four-seven and I definitely should not care why she's left the house.

I resist everything inside me that tells me to follow her. Instead, I go back to the sitting room and fall asleep on my spot on the floor.
****

I wake up to a loud scream. Piercing and full of horror. Had the kitchen windows not been opened I probably wouldn't have heard it. The scream, all though loud and shrilling, sounded far away.

When I sit up I find that I'm not the only one who heard it too.
"What the hell was that?" Abraham grunts from the couch.
I watch as Carol points her finger at each of us, counting.
She shakes her head. "We're all here."
Dad groans. "No, we're not."

Everything happens in a blur. Maggie, Glenn, Michonne, Daryl, Tara and Carol all jump to their feet simultaneously and sprint from the room. The sound of thundering footsteps on the stairs echoes through the house and Judith stirs in her sleep.

Nick jumps off the second last stair and shoved his way into the sitting room, breathing heavily.
"Did you guys hear that scream?" He pants.
We all nod.
"M,My sister... She isn't in her ... Room." He exclaims between breaths.
"Neither is my mother." He adds.

This information wasn't entirely new but in the midst of everything I'd forgotten about Madison leaving. I never heard her mother leave though. The thought strikes me. Had I missed it ? Did she follow her?

"That fucking kid!" Dad curses as he storms back into the kitchen. I hear the back door open but it doesn't shut behind him.
A million question fly through my head.

"Well, where is she?" Maggie says panicked and flustered.
"No idea." Nick shrugs. 
"You're her brother, can't you think of anywhere she might be." Michonne asks.

"She's in the field." I answer confidently.
All heads turn to me, shock written on all of their faces.
"What?"
Of course they don't know about this field. They haven't even seen it.
I'm on my feet at once and I almost run into Daryl who appears in the doorway.
"Her bow is gone." He explains.

Again, not surprising but the scream has me on high alert so I must look as shocked as the others. Probably best, no need for questions.
"How did you know where her bow was?" Glenn asks as we grab our stuff and hurry out the back door.

"I've had my eye on that bow all night. I was gonna take a few arrows but it looks like she took it before we actually went to sleep." I hear him respond.

I vaguely fill them in about the field, leaving out the details, well, most of the day to be honest.
"The field, that's where we went today."
I know that Maggie would have made me a face or smirk at me or maybe a smart remark about me being in the field with Madison, but its too serious of a situation right now.

I lead everyone out of the house and into the garden, explaining that we're gonna have to climb a tree and jump off the other side because of the fence underneath, too big to climb over.
They weren't impressed by that.

I jump first and the moment I land I can hear desperate cries. I squint into the darkness to find Madison kneeling over her mother. I know this isn't good and a bad feeling settles in my stomach.
I don't wait for the others to land in the field. My feet carry me over to Madison.

On my way over I scan the field. I spot corpses scattered all over the field. Walkers of different shapes and sizes, dead, laying still in the long grass. Almost all of them have an arrow sticking out of their heads.
I look back to Madison.

As I get closer to Madison I can hear her chanting something but I cant quiet hear, her voice is muffled. I'm right next to her now and my eyes glance across the walker only inches away with her knife lodged in its temple.

Madison has torn up the bottom of her shirt, tying it around her mother's wounds and applying pressure to her most damaged area. It's hard to see the worst of the wounds not only because of the dark but because she's covered in blood.

I notice scratch marks from her mother's cheek all the way down her throat, only to be met by teeth marks in the crook of her neck. But it's her wrists and stomach that Madison clutches, trying to stop the bleeding I guess. Even though I knew what was coming, my stitch still drops. It's useless, I hope Madison knows that. She has to know that.

I listen closer to what Madison is chanting.
"No! No! No! No! No! You're not dead! You're not dead! You're not dead!
This is horrible. It's like slowly watching Madison go insane. Her face is panicked and full of distress as if she was desperately trying to save her mother when in reality she's already dead. Madison doesn't cry, she doesn't sob, she just chants over and over as if she's praying her back to life.

I look away, I don't want to watch anymore of it. I'm glad when I see Dad and Glenn move forward first to help her. I didn't want to be the one to explain this to her again. They each take one of her arms and drag her backward away from her mother's corpse.

I feel someone behind me drop to their knees and it takes me a minute to realise that it's Nick. I hear a strangled choke from him before a sob rips through his chest. Tara is kneeling beside him with one hand on his back. She's whispering reassuring words to him but it can't do much good. His mom is dead.

Looking back to Madison now, she's yelling, which isn't much of a surprise. She's always yelling at someone. But this is different. Her voice is pleading, begging as she tries to escape dad and Glenn's grip on her. She kicks and punches and eventually she manages to punch Glenn's wrist. He flinches, allowing her to wriggle free. She immediately scrambles back to her mother.

Madison gets back to her mother in seconds but unlike last time she doesn't fluster over her body, trying to help her, trying to save her. She stares at her mother's face and her hand flies to her mouth but a sob escapes her lips before she can muffle it. She falls back onto her knees and buries her face in her mother's torso.

Madison stays still in that position for a while but her shoulders shake feverishly. Nick's sobs become louder and louder. If we don't find away to get them inside soon, they'll both attract more walkers, there's no doubt about it.