United We Fall

Chapter Sixteen// The Parting Glass

The house was still, the air inside it musty. The people who lived in it are long since gone, and it showed. Dust had settled upon every surface, the corners of the windows mildewed from humidity. Winter had come and gone, but was stubbornly clinging to life with a chill to the air. Everything was still.

With two harsh kicks, the front door buckled, and in a formation, three adult men with knives entered the house, knocking on the wall to attract any walkers. None came. Rick motioned for the rest of the people to enter the small house, and trickled in a line of people. Rick's son Carl, Lori, Hershel, Beth, Carol, Glenn, Maggie, and Leya.

"Carl, you're on food. Daryl, let's search the house," Rick declared, and him and the hunter started going up the stairs.

"You okay, Mom?" Carl asked, nervously eyeing his mother and her distended belly. "Do you need help sitting down, or-"

Maggie cut in. "Carl, it's okay, I got her. Leya, can you help Carl look for food?" She spoke in a harsh whisper, like the rest of them did to avoid attention.

The much smaller girl nodded rapidly and went to join her only and best friend.

"Cool," Carl nodded. "Come on, Leya."

The cupboards were, unfortunately, as bare as the lack of presence of people in the house. The only things left in them aside from opened packages of saltine crackers that showed signs of mice being in them were cans of dog food. Carl shuddered at the thought of eating it, but it was food, and they weren't in too much of a position to be extremely picky.

"Let's hope it tastes good," Carl muttered, putting it in his bag.

"Que?" Leya asked when she hopped off the counter, looking in the higher cupboards.

"It's dog food." Carl held up the can so she could see it. "You know, comida de perro."

Leya knitted her eyebrows together. "Perro?"

"Like this," Carl said, pointing at the singular picture of the dog taped onto the fridge that neither of them were eager to open. "It's an animal. Remember the zoo?"

"Si. Dog, perro: animal." Leya gripped one of the straps of her backpack. "Eh, is comida."

"Yep," Carl replied.

The group gathered in the living room, mostly sitting on the floor except for Lori, who needed a chair to avoid back pain. They sat in a circle, not talking much, but the communication was still there. Beth held up flash cards from Leya's backpack for her to guess while Daryl cleaned his arrows, and Carl pulled the cano f dog food back out of his bag and began to open it.

Raising an eyebrow at the suspicious can, Rick grabbed it from his son. Upon reading the label, he threw it at the wall out of frustration, leaving a round dent in the dirty drywall. That left the group of eleven people to eat the one owl Daryl had gotten earlier. What meat they'd get off of the bones wouldn't be enough for Lori, even if he sacrificed his share. It wouldn't even be enough for Leya, the smallest one who ate the least. They needed more food, more supplies, and a place to stay, and fast.

They were back on the road within an hour, trying to figure out where to go from there.

"The herd's probably around here," T-Dog drew an imaginary circle on the map they had spread out of the windshield of one of the cars. "We scavenged here, and over here's not safe."

"We need to find a place we can stay for a while," Hershel interjected. "We've been running all winter, and soon we won't be able to run for much longer."

"We'll find someplace." Rick said. Lori was not going to give birth on the road. "There needs to be somewhere. We've got quarter-tanks, right?"

"Yep. But once we run out, we're on our feet. It wouldn't be smart to put all the gas in one car, either. We can't fit in one." T-Dog replied. "There's a town about twenty miles away from here, though. We could drive there and stock up."