Chapter 35

                                    

                                          
Dawn is up and it's still scary as the night alone. The area is covered in fog, she couldn't see a clearing. The place was like a graveyard with the echoes of Runner shrieking and groaning as they came to Mal.
                          
She searched fast and hard to find the weapon before the Runners come close, touching the ground for the blade. One Runner, however, leaped over Mal and she screamed in terror. The terror was for what was reaching for her- this dead and aggressive thing and the rage was taken away by fear- and Mal backpedaled away from those clutching fingers, her feet slipping and sliding on the pavement until her back struck the floor and a hard edge. Touching behind, it's her machete. She spun off the frame and bolted towards the highway. The Runner followed her then crashed into a small Flat car. Mal took the chance to kick the back of the kneecap, no cry of pain as it fell, and rammed the tip of the machete against the Runner's head.
                          
With her weapon in her hand, she began slashing and dicing off a couple of rounds into the heads of the Runners that stood in her way as she made back up a road with skeleton vehicles in the way, running back to the RV. Mal screamed and furiously sliced another as more came out of nowhere in the deep foggy forest. A response in her body shakes into physical trauma. Mal tries to adapt her body to stop, knowing she survived worse. However, more of them came and she becomes scared.
                          
There were six Runners chasing her through the woods, screaming and snarling, looking to feast on the trembling girl as she ran towards the RV, crashing into metal bars of a ladder. Turning back she swings, one lodged into the head of one Runner, killing it instantly while the other barely chipped the jaw. Mal cursed as she pulls it out, the jaw open and dangled out of the mouth. In an instance she climbs the ladder, the Infected and a few Runners bumped into the vehicle, and she gets on top of the roof, gasping and hyperventilating and below the RV was the sea of Infected. Every single one of them is reaching for her, black mouths opened, wax grey hands high in the air.
                          
She fell to her knees, each muscle of her whole body felt like one lump of useless muscle. Nothing seemed to work, none of the muscle as bone seemed to be connected to her brain. Then she realized where she is. She was back to the road of the crowded vehicles with fresh bullet holes, of the empty bones scattered everywhere. Behind her was not what she had seen and it was an old ratted body, hanging off by a rope from a bridge.
                          
"Bet you thought you were all gonna get away with this. Charlie Pink-Eye being proud of you all and congratulating on a Sunday dinner." Negan said under Mal's feet of the RV.
                          
"No. Doesn't work like that. Not anymore. Yes, people die. Doesn't mean the rest of them have too. I let some of you live. I didn't want to kill teenagers like yourselves. But, seeing the slaughter you've made, I had to do it."
                          
She rolls over on her back. Her head felt broken. As broken as her heart. When she touched her face she was surprised to find fresh tears, but later the surprise turned to panic when she realized that she was still crying. That she could not stop crying. There were no sobs. Just tears. Cold against the fevered heat of her skin.
                          
"Let you make this clear, it's now the adults to take over. You teens thought the Ruins is your place, that you owe it and can rule it. Fuck no, we do. Now, get me my machete." She finally moves, rolling on her hands and knees. "I thought you were the guy. That you were like them. I was wrong. Seeing you attacking those boys it turned the tables around. We'll give it one more go, to see you are truly not them. Not like Charlie. Now, I really want you to try this time."
                          
Tears broke and rolled and fell in a terrible silence.
                          
"Last chance. Bring me my machete!" The roof of the RV was being struck by gunshots, trailing her behind. Her body came back and she flings herself up. She grabs the machete, running forward as the shots shot up, and Mal leaped over the RV and hugged the hanging man.