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ALONE—A DAUNTING silence like a toxin.
They had been alone before, but simply nothing could describe loneliness such as this. Not knowing the status of friends, or family in their trajectory of survival. Not knowing if there had been any such thing as survival anymore. Had there been anyone left at all? Had humanity become a myth? There had once been many—thriving, indomitable magnates—each their own colour in a prismatic picture. A picture of family. It hadn't seemed real when suddenly they had each ceased to exist before their very eyes—dust of ashes in the wind.
Survival. It was nothing more than the grains of sand left in shoes; an irritant of necessity. Ellie couldn't quite swallow the jagged pill that was—there was simply nothing left. The only thing left now had been the incessant burning of muscles struggling to hold Rick upright in his battered, bleeding state. Wheezes of punctured lungs sliced the silence like his own machete, not only red on the handle, but dripping rubies of blood. Even so, Ellie's attention had rested solely upon the misery clinging to the backs of the teenagers ahead; striding fast to evade the grips of grief, yet it still seemed to catch up.
They could only sulk in silence, though, it was certain Carl had been the one plagued by sorrow the most proficiently. If not for his trembling lip, then for the troughs filled with tears sunken beneath his eye sockets. River struggled as she clawed outward, attempting to yank the broken boy back to the comfort of her grasp. Still, even River's touch had become but ice to him.
A haunting revelation lingered behind Ellie's eyes; unable to blink away the truth as it tried to swallow her whole.
The Governor had won.
His very promise had been to take Rick down; to end his divinity and success in leading their prison. All because of jealousy. It had been opium for the evil that roamed the Earth. And now, Rick had been on the very precipice of eternal, unearthly release of peace, only to be drawn back. The sound of Judith's gurgles. The desperation in Carl's eyes. The hairpin curl of Ellie's lips.
Even so, the Governor had won. Ellie might have killed him, but he still lingered like a bad smell. The aroma of rotting corpses; entrails torn by infected, undead entities and littered along the ground—a stench, somehow, less powerful than the stain the Governor had left behind. This had been exactly what he had wanted. If he could not have the prison for himself, the. he was certain that he would scatter its habitants until it had been hungry walkers that tore them apart, or simply hunger itself.
The ground rattled with heavy footsteps trudging with them the grief of losing everyone they knew. Simply now another component of living. Yet, the leader on the doorstep of death had been clinging to faith more than those around him. Certainly more than the beaten husk of a woman hauling him along on their journey with no destination. Bruises and blood became regalia for the empire they had once fiercely ruled. Empty, soulless occupants of a world they had lost faith in. But not Rick Grimes. Rick Grimes would hold on until his very last breath.
