A Place Just For Us (Rick Grimes)

Chapter Twenty-One: Stay For Me

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❝ We're not like the rest of them,
Friends with insanity as of lately ❞

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TWO MONTHS AGO:

     Before she found me I was lost, unable to point out my needs, and too frightened to think.

Her stability was what brought me back. It was her who showed me the new world. "Every experience marks you for a lifetime— if you even get to live that long, that is." She had told me that multiple times.

The young woman knew exactly what she was doing in this new world that belonged to the dead. Or, at least, she seemed to know what she was doing, and I simply followed her movements, her words. She seemed to have been ready for this change all along. Unlike me, but I knew that as long as she was by my side, I'd be just fine.

"Sarah?" I called out her name.

The front door shut behind me. I entered the abandoned house that we called our home now.

I passed the kitchen when I caught no sign of her there, and made my way to the living room. It was quiet. It usually wasn't this quiet. I called out her name two times more, brows forced together.

My palms started to sweat, my mouth ran dry. Had she left without having said anything? Maybe she went looking for me. Weird. Because she knew I would only be gone for less than an hour.

Just when I thought the house was empty, that I should return to the grocery store in the hopes of finding her there, a heard a sound coming from upstairs. It sounded like glass breaking, then something heavy hit the floor above my head. We didn't even use the first floor.

"Sarah?" I didn't raise my voice all the way this time. I was scared.

The staircases moaned underneath my feet, with every step that I took they could hear me coming, whoever it was up there, they were aware of my approach. I hoped it was just Sarah— just Sarah.

My hands held onto my gun for dear life. I couldn't tell if I was just too frightened for myself, or overly worried for her. Where were you, Sarah? But then I reminded myself of her insanely personality— was she hiding? So many questions I didn't know the answer to.

"Sarah? You up here?" I asked.

I cursed to myself. My hands were shaking. I wouldn't be able to aim. Get your shit together, Hayley.

In this world there was no escaping, nor hiding. It simply didn't exist— it was a fake thing such as fairytales and magic. How stupid was it to believe in those? How stupid was it to believe you could hide now, Hayley?

When I reached the very last room on the left, the one that used to be a kid's room, I knew I wasn't alone in this house, and it wasn't my only friend keeping me company during this silence.

My gun was aimed at two men, and one woman. I found myself turned inside out, and dizzy.

There she was. I had found her.

Sarah was on her knees, cheeks wet from crying. A gun was pointed at her temple, and I realised— just before I started to panic— that we weren't going to make it out alive. We were never going to.

"Don't— please, don't." I began.

Words weren't going to fix this. If anything, they were only going to make the situation worse.

     Panic was starting to rise in me. I wondered why the three of them weren't speaking, or maybe they had, but I hadn't realised because of my loud breathing. My feet were glued to the floor.