A New Beginning

Chapter 2

AJ took a deep breath and exhaled, watching as the warm air from his breath mixed with the cold air around him and created a small cloud of moisture in front of him. Winter was coming, he could feel it. The weather had been getting steadily getting colder with each passing day since Clem had gotten bitten after their final battle with Lily and the raiders. They would have to find some way to survive winter, their food situation was less than ideal and they were quite low on fire wood, and the idea of cutting down the nearby trees seemed like it would do more harm than good, the noise would only bring walkers and would ruin their concealment in the woods.

That made this mission to see this new group even more vital, they had to hope this was a strong group willing to help them out, they had to be able to strike some sort of trade deal for food and supplies or they would not make it through winter.

AJ looked up, eyeing the teenager walking ahead of him, his bow slung across his back and his trusty weapon, Chairles, resting on his right shoulder. AJ thought back to the terrifying moment when he had cut Clem's leg off, and Louis had come charging in with Aasim and Omar, and how they had fought through the walkers and help AJ escape, while Louis had picked up Clem and carried her back to the school for him.

Suddenly a flurry of movement in the corner of his vision caught his eye, and he turned just in time to see a hooded figure appear, before he could even lift his gun, mysterious figure knocked out of his hand with some kind of wooden staff. At the same time another hooded figure jumped Louis, tackling him to the ground and putting a knife to his throat.

"I'm gonna ask you one time, nicely, the figure behind AJ said, "tell me where your group is now. I have scouts combing this whole area as we speak, and if their report doesn't match yours, we are gonna have problems."

"I'm not telling you anything." AJ said, feeling rage boiling inside him already. This mission wasn't supposed to go so bad so quick, he couldn't believe how careless he and Louis had been. "Fine, if you want to play tough, I'll rough your friend up a little bit."

The man then signaled to his counterpart, who promptly straddled Louis and pinned him to the ground. The man then began punching him, hard in the face. "Don't...tell them....anything...." Louis said between grunts of pain. AJ watched as Louis was beaten, as his face became more bruised and bloodied by the second, weighing his options. This was meant to be a peaceful mission to get help and supplies for the group if possible, from what Louis had reported about the group before, there were at least several dozen. The kids at the school certainly didn't have any real chance if a fight broke out.

Reluctantly AJ gave in. "Ok look, there is a boarding school a few miles behind us. It's where we live. We aren't here to start trouble. We were hoping to discuss trading for some supplies."

After a quick grunt of amusement, the man raised his hand to his partner. Who stopped punching him at once. "Easy Jesus, I don't need you to kill him yet. However, bind his hands, he's coming with us, we need to make sure the story this little man is telling me is legit."

......

A few hours later

"Tell me what happened again AJ." Clem said, her hands gripping her crutches so tight they were flushed white. They were back in the admin building at Ericsons, AJ had ran back to the school as fast as he could but as small as he was he needed to take breaks fairly often and didn't make it back to the school for several hours. When Willy has seen him coming he had sounded the alarm and told Clem Louis wasn't with AJ. Clem had assumed the worst and was nearly hysterical until AJ had explained to her what happened.

"So you just told them everything about us?, just because they were roughing Louis up a bit?" Clem asked, raising her voice to AJ in frustration. "Clem take it easy, you know better than anyone that we are in no shape to fight these people, especially you." AJ replied, glancing at her missing left leg. "Yeah but that's only more of a reason not to tell them where we are. They could overpower us if they wanted to."
"They said they have scouts searching our area anyway, they'll find us even if I hadn't hold them, besides, lying to them would only hurt our chances at coming to a peaceful trading agreement with them. Just trust me on this Clem, like you did in the cave after we talked James down. I know I made the right decision."

"Okay" Clem said, closing her eyes and looking away."I trust you."

Oh and there's just one other thing." AJ said, "you haveto meet their leader tomorrow or Louis might not live past tomorrow."

......

A pounding headache woke Louis, his brain pulsing as it tried to make sense of his surroundings. The last thing he remembered was AJ giving up the info about Ericsons to the mysterious people in the woods and then everything went black. He looked around and checked his hands, they were tied up and he was lying on a rickety, uncomfortable cot in the middle of what appeared to be a tent. Other than the cot there was no other furniture in the tent.

Before Louis could think anything a young man entered through the flap of the tent, he was tall, about Louis's hight with a toned and athletic build. He had jet back hair that came halfway down his neck. But what caught Louis's attention was none of those things, it was his face, a massive hole existed where his right eye should've been, and Louis could swear he could almost see his brain through the hole. The young man pulled up a chair and sat down, his remaining eye locked on Louis with intensity.

"How many walkers have you killed?"

"How many people have you killed?"

"Why?"