What Really Happened: A Memoir from the Apocalypse

Chapter 14: The Cynic, the Optimist, and the Downcast

I stared at the bottom of the top bunk, laying with my clammy hands rested on my stomach. The room was dark, and I was alone. I knew no one else was coming. And I waited it out. I embraced it. Until all the food was gone. It was up to my physical existence to give out. Until I disintegrated and there was nothing left. Until my corpse would fall.

Footsteps walked through the hallway and the cells, and stopped in my room.

Without having to look, I knew who it was. "I tried to find Mom and Carl, but I couldn't see them. I couldn't see anything. I blacked out."

"We've gotta get out of here," Dad said.

"We're gonna sit here, until we die."

"We've gotta keep fighting. You know that."

"They're not here. They either died in the smoke or by all the walkers the battle brought through."

"Don't say that. You don't know that. We need to find them. They wouldn't want you to give up. We can't."

"I'm done fighting. It's gone. They destroyed this place. After what they did to Grandpa, everyone..."

He was silent for a minute. "Is he dead?"

"The Governor killed him before he tried to kill everyone else."

He tried to process it, and handed me a bottle of water. "Drink this, now. Grab your bag. We're getting out of here."

I sat myself up with my elbows and furrowed my brow at him, tears stale on my face. "For what?"

"We're the ones who see it 'til the end. We're the ones who made it. We can't give up. And they're alive. They're somewhere, and we're gonna find them. They're not giving up on us. So I'm not giving up, and neither are you. I'll carry you out of here if I have to." He handed me Mom's riot gear. "Put this on."

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The smoke still didn't clear from the air, and it fogged my glasses. Walkers, who were brought in by the dinner bell of the explosions, roamed inside the gates and below our feet. Dad and I, wearing helmets and bulletproof suits, made a run for it.

The dead pushed us, keeping us in the middle of them. One stared at me through the glass of my helmet. I stared back, and didn't flinch. Dad escaped the walkers that surrounded him and cleared the ones around me, giving me a way out.

Near the gate's opening, a woman sat in one of the watch-blocks, with her head bowed. She was a fighter from the other side. Against us. We kept walking, until Dad stopped in his tracks. I sighed.

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She wouldn't look up at us and bowed her head with her gun in her lap.

Dad grabbed the gun from her and saw that it was fully loaded. "Did you even fire a shot?"

She shook her head.

"All right. Let's go. Let's go."

She didn't respond.

He knelt in front of her. "Are you just gonna stay here, huh? You're just gonna die?"

She tilted her head at him. "I was a part of this."

"I know. I need your help." He poured a bottle of liquor on a white washcloth, struck a match to it and lit it on fire. "Back up." He threw the bottle into a car, causing it to blow into flames, and attracting the walkers to it.

Running through the gates, we left the prison.

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