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Chapter 3 - Halt

Blinking up at the heavy clouds dragging by, diluting the intensity of the beam of light burning the ground beneath him, Glenn felt his leg quiver with a sudden shot of tenseness, a crick in his neck quickly forming as he grunted quietly, blood leaking lightly from a scratch on his arm, dripping onto his shirt. Beside him, absently trailing her wounded fingers over her bloodstained arm, Jeanie stayed quiet, her head leaning awkwardly against a stray brick, legs haphazardly folded over each other as they trembled minutely, supported by her bulging bag full of supplies.

For a while, they had been sitting there, falling back for a much needed rest after introducing themselves to one another, finding themselves suddenly drained of any strength to stand. They hadn't spoken at all since then, stuck in silent ponderings and subconsciously trying to avoid shafts of blinding light as they tried to relax somewhat ineffectually. Glenn didn't have the wits about him to suggest they eat or drink something in the down time they had been afforded, too caught up in his personal discomfort to have the thought of offering her something. Jeanie seemed out of it, herself, eyes glazed over slightly, tinged with a faint hint of the pain her injuries were inflicting upon her.

It seemed to Glenn that they had been there for hours – probably minutes, in all actuality, but his sense of time had become somewhat skewed as of late – when her soft voice abruptly croaked across to him, "Are you alright?"

Lifting his head slightly, eyebrow quirking before a surge of hurt brought it down again, he replied, voice equally rough after all the shouting he had suddenly forced himself to do, "Yeah, I'm in one piece," he glanced down to his seizing leg, raw hands rubbing the flinching muscle, "just about."

She shifted slightly, leg catching for an instant that set her teeth on edge and tinged her answer with some strain, "Good."

Catching himself, Glenn looked round at her, watching as her hand moved away from the drenched gauze tightly wound round her shoulder. Eyebrows furrowing, he fumbled for words, "Uh," he gestured to the blood leaking down her arm, "are you okay?"

Pausing, she turned to him, careful about her movements. After a moment, she admitted quietly, a wry, tired smile straining on her lips, "I've been better."

Eyes flicking down to her wound, he mumbled, "Yeah." Taking a moment of studying the bandage, grimacing at the stark contrast of an overpowering red and dirty white, he sat up, grunting lightly at the action, moving nearer with a painstaking slowness, "You know, we should probably do something with that."

Raising an eyebrow, glancing down at the gauze, she sat up as well, groaning and biting her lip as her legs groaned in protest, "Probably." Frowning, she looked down again, her eyes giving the wound an unconvinced one-over, "Really, though, not sure I can do much, apart from clean it up a little."

Nodding vaguely, already pulling his bag of supplies raided from the abandoned drugstore over, Glenn replied, "Well, let's do that, then – something." She paused for a moment before nodding, and he began to rummage through the supplies, upturning and removing a number of different bottles and foil wrappers before he finally found antiseptic wipes and clean medical gauze. While he had looked away, Jeanie had taken it upon herself to prepare something of a work station, shoving her bag up between her knees and holding it there as a stabiliser for her weak arm, ignoring the blood trickling down onto the thick, mud-covered plastic. Setting down the things he would need, haphazardly shoving everything else back into the bag, swiftly removing a bottle of rubbing alcohol before closing it up again, he spoke, gesturing to the wound, "I'm gonna have to take that off without scissors – I don't have anything like a knife," he thought about the wrench he sometimes took along with him for protection, having left it at camp, abruptly considering the fact that he should probably carry a weapon at all times, "It might hurt, with me pulling at it," she frowned, tensing, and he fumbled for words of comfort, blurting out a weak, "but try not to think about it."

"Wait," she stopped him, and he halted, allowing her to open the bag she was using as support and immediately extract something – a large knife, with a thin handle and long blade, a 'machete', he thought. Passing it over to him, she closed the bag back up again, as he inspected the new tool, "Use that."

Nodding, he shrugged, "Alright." Deciding to not delay the unpleasant business any further, taking a breath to stop himself from being visibly unnerved at the prospect of having to deal with a serious, gashing injury himself, he brought the machete up, carefully nicking the outermost layer of bandage, ripping upwards to the edge at her sunburnt collarbone. Looking up, searching her steady face for any sign that he had hurt her, finding none, he continued to tear the gauze away from her skin with the blade, wary of worsening the wound beneath.

As he advanced further into the thick layers of material, more blood poured out, unnervingly dense. The faint outline of the gash was beginning to form before him, alarmingly vast across her flesh, an intense dread starting to crawl through his mind as he began to realise the extent of the damage dealt. Still, despite it all, her face remained stone in its movement, eyes looking steadily over his shoulder, uttering no whimper or grunt of pain. It got to the point where he was afraid of using the machete any more, unable to trust that he wouldn't carve her skin inadvertently, dispensing of the weapon and instead slowly pulling apart the gauze with his hands, willing them to stay firm in the face of impending gore.

Finally, he had reached the last section to be taken off. Peeling the completely saturated material away, his eyes widened, and he subconsciously shifted away, hands dropping the gauze to the floor with a sickeningly wet slap.

A gash larger than his hand was split across the plane of her shoulder, at least a square-inch of flesh on the outer edges missing completely, dotted fragments of carnage swept across the area, blood festering and coagulating around the worst lesions. Pus was in the early stages of development, oozing from what looked like a section of exposed muscle. A stench of decay permeated the wound, alarmingly reminiscent of the putrid reek walkers secreted.

With a wound like that, she should be part of the crowd below.

It took a lot of his willpower to suck down an abrupt need to vomit, biting his tongue so hard that it bled, the sharp, metallic sting seeping down his gullet. Forcing himself to swallow the threat of bile, he slowly moved closer again, carefully picking up the bottle of rubbing alcohol, a vague thought at the back of his mind, ignoring the panicked bursts of horror, telling him that he would be just as well dumping the lot of it onto the gash, for all the good it would do. Knowing that they were coming upon the most painful part of the whole thing, he glanced up at her, realised from the sudden sharpening of her eyes that she already knew that, and unceremoniously tipped the entire contents of the bottle over the wound.

Jaw clenching, Jeanie tensed, hand jerking and eyes flickering for a few moments before slowly edging back to their spot above his head. Quickly looking away from her, finding himself too distracted, he quickly tore open the pack of antiseptic wipes, shaking one out and bringing it into his hand, grimacing in the faint moment before abruptly swiping across the edges of the lesions. This time, she positively jumped, a grunt escaping her bitten lips, shoulder recoiling from the agonising touch, held unwillingly in place by Glenn's guilty grip, a curse escaping him as he tried to hurry the process of cleaning the wound. Each hurried, clumsy stroke forced her legs further up to her chest, her face pressing harshly into her knees, biting the surface of her jeans.

Wasting no time, Glenn finished cleaning, dropped the wipe carelessly to the ground, and grabbed the clean roll of gauze, attempting to tear it open anxiously for a few seconds before a glance at the thin sheen of sweat beginning to form on her skin pushed him to rip it open with his teeth, the bundle tumbling out onto his lap, snatched swiftly up into his grasp, the plastic wrapper quickly abandoned to the wind. Having never taken a first-aid course, the extent of his medical experience being holding his friend's hair back as he vomited into a basin during a drunken bender, he ineptly wrapped her shoulder as tightly as he could, awkwardly spinning the roll of gauze around itself over and over in an imitation of what he had seen of medical practices on TV. Eventually, the swathe of material came to an end, and he clumsily cut the last remnants of it in two before tying it together in a serviceable knot.

Finally, he was finished.

Moving his hands away, he shifted back, allowing her room to breathe. After a moment of still silence, her head slowly pulled up from her knees, eyes painfully opening up and glancing immediately across to her newly dressed wound. Allowing her legs to sink back down, right arm falling to her side, she studied her left shoulder, elevated on her bag, closely. Pausing, absently accepting her machete back, placing it back in her bag, her eyes bored into the fresh bandage.

Eventually, blinking firmly, she looked up at his grim face and gave him a grateful smile, "Thank you."

Tearing his eyes away from the disheartening red spot already beginning to seep into the fabric, stopping his shoulders from slumping, he looked at her, grinning weakly, "Don't mention it."

For a while, they sat in silence, until she abruptly found the power in her legs to hike herself up, both alarming and impressing him with her audacity, wasting no time in walking to the edge of the roof once more, gently holding her left arm out from herself slightly, careful not to thump it against anything. Looking on in curiosity for a moment before realising that she was checking the state of the situation they were both in, Glenn followed, gritting his teeth and shoving himself off of the brick floor, limbs groaning with tiredness, and stumbled over next to her, leaning heavily against the low edge of the wall beside her.

They sat in silence for a few moments, staring at the mass of walkers below, who were still insistently clawing at the wall, having lost sight of them above but possessing enough remnants of instinct to know that if they wanted food, they had to get through the building. Pulling himself away from the gritty bricks to lean back on a rusty air vent, he spoke, quiet so as not to rouse the attention of the walkers, "I think we're stuck here for now."

Nodding distractedly, frowning lightly before turning back to him, she replied, soft, "I think you're right." Eyes back on him, she looked down from him to the large, standing vent, pausing for a moment before her eyes suddenly flashed with recognition, her voice raising slightly before she brought it down again, flinching and glancing below to see if she had been heard, "Hey - where's that go to?"

Confusedly looking to where she was for a moment before realising she meant the vent, Glenn stepped away from it, joining her at a couple of feet away, staring at it. Pausing, she moved forward, crouching next to it, not yet sticking her head in, obviously wary of falling into the large gap after her last battle with gravity. Allowing her a moment to study the thing herself, he went over to the edge of the roof again - this time to the front, to look out onto the main street.

Looking straight down, gripping the cement tightly so as not to fall over, quickly scanning down the length of the building, he spotted what he had been hoping for: a door. From what he could tell, the building they were on was a series of apartments built above a candy shop, if the large sign shaped like a lollipop above the doorframe was any indication, glass littered on the ground from where some looters with misguided priorities had broken into it. Eyebrows furrowing with thought, glancing over in the direction where the walkers remained crowded in, he whispered over his shoulder, "Hey," he kept looking down to the ground level, repeating himself when he heard no immediate answer, "Hey, there's a door down there."

He turned to find Jeanie directly behind him, looking over the roof, making him jump in surprise, hands flying to the backs of his legs when he bashed into the wall from fright, quietly groaning. Jeanie, realising she had frightened him with her surprising ability to remain inconspicuously quiet, bit her lip, eyebrows flying up and denting with concern as she moved forward immediately, breathing a soft apology, halting as her left arm flew up, clenching with pain. Both consumed with pain for a moment, they remained silent, until, finally, Glenn brought the strength to him to look up at her, gingerly picking at the edge of her bandage, nervously regarding the growing splatters of blood lightly staining the inner layers of gauze.

Seeing her her eyes growing hard, he took a gulp of air and gave her an awkwardly reassuring smile, inquiring gently, "Do you want to sit down again?"

She looked up, breathing a quiet sigh. Then, returning his smile, she nodded, eyes softening, "Yeah." There was a silence as they both walked back over to near the air vent, to a series of pipes presumably once filled with water if the rust stains were any indication – although, the mains had long since stopped running, with the government-run purification plants having been overrun, he presumed. Letting the backs of her legs hit the low wall adjoining the pipes, Jeanie slowly sank to the ground, Glenn joining her, grunting as his sore legs twinged in protest to the excess of movement.

They were quiet for a moment before she pointed to the vent, turning to him as she spoke, "The air vent goes down into a room," he looked to where her dusty finger was indicating, craning his head to get a better look as she continued, "a maintenance room, I think." She paused, hands absently swiping over her knees, "You said you saw a door out front?"

Glenn nodded, "Yeah, down on the bottom floor, out front. Looks like a candy store-front...smashed up pretty bad."

She bit the inside of her cheek, thinking for a moment before she spoke again, "If we can get into the maintenance room from the vent, we can get down to that door and out of here. Then-" Abruptly, she broke off. There was a pause, where Glenn regarded her confusedly, unsure about her sudden halt. He was about to ask her what was wrong when she spoke again, "Well, I – " she shut her mouth, quieting. When she continued, her words were beginning to turn to babbles, "I will –" She halted, "You can go back to your camp." She suddenly turned her head away, eyes boring intensely into the ground.

Glenn paused. Looking on as she remained silent, his eyebrows furrowed with confusion again. He was struck with the sensation of standing back and seeing something he hadn't before – experiencing a whiplash like realisation: she was a complete stranger that he knew nothing about. He didn't know where she had come from, what she used to do, what she had hoped to be, what her family and friends were like, her strengths or weaknesses, her hobbies, talents, dreams: he knew only her name, and distinctly nothing else. It didn't bother him – the people he was living with had all been strangers, after all – but this was different: he felt as though there was nothing he could say or do that would really ever stop her eyes looking like that, permanently affected and eternally pondering on something long past. There was nothing anybody could really do. The person who could have was probably dead.

He turned away. Neither of them said anything to the other. Without much thought, he reached into his bag and pulled out a bag of chips, handing them to her along with a quiet inference for her to take another of the pills he had given her. Accepting the chips silently, she popped the bag open and began to chew, silently throwing back a pill from the foil pack, gulping some water from a canteen in her pocket, passing it over to him to take a sip, only looking up from the ground to stare at a fly, bloated with rotting carrion, slowly dragging through the air with a quiet buzz.

From the corner of his eye, he saw a drop of blood pool on her new bandage and fall to the ground with a quiet plink, and he snapped.

Turning to her, ignoring the screech of his muscles as he moved closer, grabbing her startled attention as his baseball cap shifted with the sudden swivel, he whispered, "Come with me."

The potato chip in her hand, halfway to her lips, was suddenly forgotten, and the canteen held in her grasp fell to her side, dripping water onto the ground. She turned to look at him with a wide look reminiscent of a deer caught in the headlights. Pausing, her eyes darted up to his. Then, she turned away again, pushing the food into her mouth, mumbling, "You don't have to do that."

There was a silence before he replied, a bemused frown slumping his chapped lips, "Do what? Help you?"

She shoved another chip in, seeming to have lost any of the savouring pleasure she had derived before, "Take me along because you saved my life." She paused, barely chewing as she blandly consumed more sustenance, mechanical and stiff. "You don't have to do that. You've helped me so much already – too much for a normal person."

He shook his head, disbelieving, barely stopping a nervous laugh that threatened to bloom in his chest, totally out of nowhere, startling him with the bizarre randomness of the feeling, "What, you don't think it's normal to help people who are about to die?"

The chip in her hands snapped, and she stared after it, taking a moment before continuing to eat, only speaking after taking a brief pause to swallow it, voice firm with an unwanted certainty, "Not anymore." She finally glanced at him for a fleeting moment, shifting closer into herself, "I wish it still was, but people are different now. I don't-" She trailed off. When she spoke again, her voice was soft and barely audible, "I don't really think much of anybody anymore. You're the only person I've seen who even-" She stopped, his eyes boring into hers as a tense silence enveloped them. Shifting away, her voice dropped further, a mere whisper floating through the wind, "It's never going to be like it was, and I know it – I'm not stupid...but it's not that." She glanced up at him, her eyes seeming to try to convince him of something, before looking away again as she spoke, "It's not that - it's people. We – we're-" She trailed off.

Something really tore then. He sat, frozen, for a moment, unable to say anything, mouth hanging open as he took in her resigned stoop and grim face, then moved forward, his voice reaching out with a gentleness that surprised himself, "Hey," she didn't look at him, eyes fixed on her closed hands, the bag of chips laying forgotten in her lap, "Hey, come on, now." He lay his hand on her uninjured shoulder, and she turned to face him, "Jeanie?" She looked up. With her staring at him, he found himself stuck for a moment. It was only after a pause, filled with only the faint whistling of the wind and the ever present drone of dead surrounding them, punctuating every moment of their lives, that he found himself able to formulate words, "I don't know what happened out there." Her eyes bored into his, unflinching, "What happened to you, I don't know. But, I know that you have to-" He halted, suddenly unable to force himself to tell her so something so callous as 'move on'. Nor could he edge out 'leave it behind.' It seemed cruel, somehow, to just snap at her that she had to abandon any hellish memories or lingering guilt, whatever it was that darkened her gaze, because the situation demanded it – she shouldn't have to ignore it all. What right did he have to tell her to pay no heed to any of the horrors she had experienced, surviving alone in a world like theirs, when he had always had a substitute family to support and protect him?

So, instead of telling her that she had to ignore it, to move on, to do things that he didn't know he could do himself, he moved closer and told her, "You can't let it destroy you."

Firm, her eyes stared up at him. His hands remained where they were, on her shoulders, gently keeping a hold on her, thoroughly unimposing in comfort. After a long, silent pause, she looked away, her abruptly collapsing gaze falling away to her lap, her lips thinning as she bit the inside of her mouth, eyebrow twitching lightly as strands of tired looking hair dropped down to her face and over her face. She looked as though she wanted to speak, but couldn't find the right words.

He was about to provide her an out from the conversation, an exit to easily disconnect herself from him, when she spoke, eyes suddenly flashing up to his again, alight, "I won't." Shaking her head, stiff and slow, she continued, Glenn watching, "In this world, you stay focused - or you die; I know that's how it is." She looked away, "I don't want to die." Her eyes twitched down, "Not to them." They sat in silence, both wordless, as the meaning of her words needed no explanation – the groans that flooded the world below than their temporary island of safety, answered who 'they' were.

Hesitating, her gaze flitted between him and the ground when her hands suddenly reached up, taking a grasp of his, and, just when Glenn had thought she was going to push it away, she brought it closer, hooked it round her neck, and hugged him. Her head pressed into the side of his, her good arm encircling his back and reaching up to his shoulder blades as she mumbled, voice muffled against his t-shirt, "Thanks."

Stunned for a moment, his arm sitting complacently as his struck brain tried to work his limbs, it took him a pause to bring both of his arms round her, enveloping her in a better hug, avoiding her injury with a careful shift. Absently noting the warmth of her, he replied, voice low and comforting, "No problem."

They sat for – he didn't know how long. All he knew was that, by the time Jeanie gently pulled away, her reassuring hand falling to her lap as his arms released their soft hold, her eyes were drooping and tired, bags abruptly dragging down on her lids. From her concerned gaze, he supposed he looked much the same, having been out all day, scavenging supplies for the camp, before suddenly finding himself in the crossfire of a leap of faith. The darkened rooftop they were in was bathed with shadows swimming at the edges of his vision, a few insects joining the swollen fly and buzzing by in the gloom, interspersed within the perpetual drone in the background. Turning his head down to her, he gave her a tired smile, "I think we should get some rest before tomorrow," he paused, "you're going to come with me, right?"

Giving him an exhausted twitch of her lips, she laughed quietly, "Yeah. I'll come with you."

His grin widened, and he gave her a little shake of her shoulder before moving away, "Great! For a minute, there, I thought I was going to have to kidnap you to get you back to the camp."

Again, she laughed, her good-natured smile flicking upwards, "I wouldn't have let you."

He nodded, "I bet you could kick my ass in no time at all."

She hummed an affirmative, stretching her legs that still shivered lightly beneath her. They paused lightly, the air between them far less foreboding than before, as she turned her back to the wall, head falling back to lean on the brick, silently letting out a gulp of air.

Glenn, taking her example, shifted away and allowed himself to fall back, huffing a quiet grunt of exhaustion, one of his hands pulling his overflowing bag over to remove a blanket, watching as she hooked a foot in her bag strap and hiked it up to her awaiting hands, opening it and rummaging around within before extracting a similarly thin blanket, considerably dirtier and beaten than his own – his mind absently wondered on how long it had been since she had been safe enough to wash herself, noting her disheveled appearance and promising himself that he would ask Amy to give Jeanie some of her spare clothes, knowing the young, happy blonde would be eager to help another woman her age.

Throwing their raggedy covers over their shivering bodies, barely shielding them from a sudden onslaught of wind battering the sides of the high building, both were grateful that they had the sense to sit in a somewhat shielded enclave of brick. Lying down, they were silent, trying to ignore the monotonous drone that set their teeth on edge, gripping their blankets with a loosely exhausted hold, numb legs trapping them in any semblance of warmth.

Her voice, starting to drag down with a quiet yawn, extended out to him with a fatigued breath, "Night, Glenn."

Holding back a sleepy croak, he replied, face falling to crush the bag he was using as a pillow, "Don't let the walkers bite."

Her soft laugh fell at the end, draining to a gentle whoosh of air as she finally fell asleep.

Turning his head with a weary shift, Glenn glanced over at her, her relaxed face turned up to the stars, injured arm held aloft on her chest as it lifted slowly up and down with soft breaths, steady and calm. Eyes falling to her shoulder, his gaze darkened upon seeing the spattering of blood. Something, a dark thought on the edge of his mind, panicking him with its truth, told him that that injury had to be dealt with soon – very, very soon. It looked as though it had been bad for a long time before his sharp, rough grab on her to pull her onto the roof had torn it further. The paled skin surrounding the gauze was speckled with discolour, veins popping out and trailing along the hanging limb, up her neck and at the edge of her face. Despite having no medical experience whatsoever in all his life, he knew that it wasn't good. If he didn't get her back to camp soon, his niggling instinct, awoken the first time he was almost devoured alive by another human being, was telling him that things were not going to go well.

Hesitating, he gripped the bag beneath him tighter in his aching hands, a long pause dragging by before he willed himself to quietly move it over to his right, closer to her, his body trailing alongside it before he was a few mere inches away from her, his face still down turned on his bag, eyes worriedly dancing over her impressively calm features. His gaze abruptly snapped to a thin scar, sliced cleanly from the top of her right cheek to just above her brow, surprising him with the fact that he had not spotted it before. However, considering it for a moment, it was no mystery why he had not seen it before, really – it was not disfiguring or roughly hewn. In fact, there was a careful precision to it that chilled him - though, for what reason, he could not say. The only thing he could be certain of was that the scar held an air of carefulness to it, with a bizarre narrowness and accuracy that made no sense.

It took a long time, sitting there, turmoil over the origins of that mysterious scar, on what could possibly have befallen her, out, alone on her own in the hell that the walkers had forced upon them, and how to get the both of them out of the festering city alive and in one piece eating away at his thoughts before exhaustion finally set in, closing his eyes, turning his head away and letting him fall under the merciful blanket of sleep.

Description
Chapter 3 - Halt

Blinking up at the heavy clouds dragging by, diluting the intensity of the beam of light burning the ground beneath him, Glenn felt his leg quiver with a sudden shot of tenseness, a crick in his neck quickly forming as he grunted quietly, blood leaking lightly from a scratch on his arm, dripping onto his shirt. Beside him, absently trailing her wounded fingers over her bloodstained arm, Jeanie stayed quiet, her head leaning awkwardly against a stray brick, legs haphazardly folded over each other as they trembled minutely, supported by her bulging bag full of supplies.

For a while, they had been sitting there, falling back for a much needed rest after introducing themselves to one another, finding themselves suddenly drained of any strength to stand. They hadn't spoken at all since then, stuck in silent ponderings and subconsciously trying to avoid shafts of blinding light as they tried to relax somewhat ineffectually. Glenn didn't have the wits about him to suggest they eat or drink something in the down time they had been afforded, too caught up in his personal discomfort to have the thought of offering her something. Jeanie seemed out of it, herself, eyes glazed over slightly, tinged with a faint hint of the pain her injuries were inflicting upon her.

It seemed to Glenn that they had been there for hours – probably minutes, in all actuality, but his sense of time had become somewhat skewed as of late – when her soft voice abruptly croaked across to him, "Are you alright?"

Lifting his head slightly, eyebrow quirking before a surge of hurt brought it down again, he replied, voice equally rough after all the shouting he had suddenly forced himself to do, "Yeah, I'm in one piece," he glanced down to his seizing leg, raw hands rubbing the flinching muscle, "just about."

She shifted slightly, leg catching for an instant that set her teeth on edge and tinged her answer with some strain, "Good."

Catching himself, Glenn looked round at her, watching as her hand moved away from the drenched gauze tightly wound round her shoulder. Eyebrows furrowing, he fumbled for words, "Uh," he gestured to the blood leaking down her arm, "are you okay?"

Pausing, she turned to him, careful about her movements. After a moment, she admitted quietly, a wry, tired smile straining on her lips, "I've been better."

Eyes flicking down to her wound, he mumbled, "Yeah." Taking a moment of studying the bandage, grimacing at the stark contrast of an overpowering red and dirty white, he sat up, grunting lightly at the action, moving nearer with a painstaking slowness, "You know, we should probably do something with that."

Raising an eyebrow, glancing down at the gauze, she sat up as well, groaning and biting her lip as her legs groaned in protest, "Probably." Frowning, she looked down again, her eyes giving the wound an unconvinced one-over, "Really, though, not sure I can do much, apart from clean it up a little."

Nodding vaguely, already pulling his bag of supplies raided from the abandoned drugstore over, Glenn replied, "Well, let's do that, then – something." She paused for a moment before nodding, and he began to rummage through the supplies, upturning and removing a number of different bottles and foil wrappers before he finally found antiseptic wipes and clean medical gauze. While he had looked away, Jeanie had taken it upon herself to prepare something of a work station, shoving her bag up between her knees and holding it there as a stabiliser for her weak arm, ignoring the blood trickling down onto the thick, mud-covered plastic. Setting down the things he would need, haphazardly shoving everything else back into the bag, swiftly removing a bottle of rubbing alcohol before closing it up again, he spoke, gesturing to the wound, "I'm gonna have to take that off without scissors – I don't have anything like a knife," he thought about the wrench he sometimes took along with him for protection, having left it at camp, abruptly considering the fact that he should probably carry a weapon at all times, "It might hurt, with me pulling at it," she frowned, tensing, and he fumbled for words of comfort, blurting out a weak, "but try not to think about it."

"Wait," she stopped him, and he halted, allowing her to open the bag she was using as support and immediately extract something – a large knife, with a thin handle and long blade, a 'machete', he thought. Passing it over to him, she closed the bag back up again, as he inspected the new tool, "Use that."

Nodding, he shrugged, "Alright." Deciding to not delay the unpleasant business any further, taking a breath to stop himself from being visibly unnerved at the prospect of having to deal with a serious, gashing injury himself, he brought the machete up, carefully nicking the outermost layer of bandage, ripping upwards to the edge at her sunburnt collarbone. Looking up, searching her steady face for any sign that he had hurt her, finding none, he continued to tear the gauze away from her skin with the blade, wary of worsening the wound beneath.

As he advanced further into the thick layers of material, more blood poured out, unnervingly dense. The faint outline of the gash was beginning to form before him, alarmingly vast across her flesh, an intense dread starting to crawl through his mind as he began to realise the extent of the damage dealt. Still, despite it all, her face remained stone in its movement, eyes looking steadily over his shoulder, uttering no whimper or grunt of pain. It got to the point where he was afraid of using the machete any more, unable to trust that he wouldn't carve her skin inadvertently, dispensing of the weapon and instead slowly pulling apart the gauze with his hands, willing them to stay firm in the face of impending gore.

Finally, he had reached the last section to be taken off. Peeling the completely saturated material away, his eyes widened, and he subconsciously shifted away, hands dropping the gauze to the floor with a sickeningly wet slap.

A gash larger than his hand was split across the plane of her shoulder, at least a square-inch of flesh on the outer edges missing completely, dotted fragments of carnage swept across the area, blood festering and coagulating around the worst lesions. Pus was in the early stages of development, oozing from what looked like a section of exposed muscle. A stench of decay permeated the wound, alarmingly reminiscent of the putrid reek walkers secreted.

With a wound like that, she should be part of the crowd below.

It took a lot of his willpower to suck down an abrupt need to vomit, biting his tongue so hard that it bled, the sharp, metallic sting seeping down his gullet. Forcing himself to swallow the threat of bile, he slowly moved closer again, carefully picking up the bottle of rubbing alcohol, a vague thought at the back of his mind, ignoring the panicked bursts of horror, telling him that he would be just as well dumping the lot of it onto the gash, for all the good it would do. Knowing that they were coming upon the most painful part of the whole thing, he glanced up at her, realised from the sudden sharpening of her eyes that she already knew that, and unceremoniously tipped the entire contents of the bottle over the wound.

Jaw clenching, Jeanie tensed, hand jerking and eyes flickering for a few moments before slowly edging back to their spot above his head. Quickly looking away from her, finding himself too distracted, he quickly tore open the pack of antiseptic wipes, shaking one out and bringing it into his hand, grimacing in the faint moment before abruptly swiping across the edges of the lesions. This time, she positively jumped, a grunt escaping her bitten lips, shoulder recoiling from the agonising touch, held unwillingly in place by Glenn's guilty grip, a curse escaping him as he tried to hurry the process of cleaning the wound. Each hurried, clumsy stroke forced her legs further up to her chest, her face pressing harshly into her knees, biting the surface of her jeans.

Wasting no time, Glenn finished cleaning, dropped the wipe carelessly to the ground, and grabbed the clean roll of gauze, attempting to tear it open anxiously for a few seconds before a glance at the thin sheen of sweat beginning to form on her skin pushed him to rip it open with his teeth, the bundle tumbling out onto his lap, snatched swiftly up into his grasp, the plastic wrapper quickly abandoned to the wind. Having never taken a first-aid course, the extent of his medical experience being holding his friend's hair back as he vomited into a basin during a drunken bender, he ineptly wrapped her shoulder as tightly as he could, awkwardly spinning the roll of gauze around itself over and over in an imitation of what he had seen of medical practices on TV. Eventually, the swathe of material came to an end, and he clumsily cut the last remnants of it in two before tying it together in a serviceable knot.

Finally, he was finished.

Moving his hands away, he shifted back, allowing her room to breathe. After a moment of still silence, her head slowly pulled up from her knees, eyes painfully opening up and glancing immediately across to her newly dressed wound. Allowing her legs to sink back down, right arm falling to her side, she studied her left shoulder, elevated on her bag, closely. Pausing, absently accepting her machete back, placing it back in her bag, her eyes bored into the fresh bandage.

Eventually, blinking firmly, she looked up at his grim face and gave him a grateful smile, "Thank you."

Tearing his eyes away from the disheartening red spot already beginning to seep into the fabric, stopping his shoulders from slumping, he looked at her, grinning weakly, "Don't mention it."

For a while, they sat in silence, until she abruptly found the power in her legs to hike herself up, both alarming and impressing him with her audacity, wasting no time in walking to the edge of the roof once more, gently holding her left arm out from herself slightly, careful not to thump it against anything. Looking on in curiosity for a moment before realising that she was checking the state of the situation they were both in, Glenn followed, gritting his teeth and shoving himself off of the brick floor, limbs groaning with tiredness, and stumbled over next to her, leaning heavily against the low edge of the wall beside her.

They sat in silence for a few moments, staring at the mass of walkers below, who were still insistently clawing at the wall, having lost sight of them above but possessing enough remnants of instinct to know that if they wanted food, they had to get through the building. Pulling himself away from the gritty bricks to lean back on a rusty air vent, he spoke, quiet so as not to rouse the attention of the walkers, "I think we're stuck here for now."

Nodding distractedly, frowning lightly before turning back to him, she replied, soft, "I think you're right." Eyes back on him, she looked down from him to the large, standing vent, pausing for a moment before her eyes suddenly flashed with recognition, her voice raising slightly before she brought it down again, flinching and glancing below to see if she had been heard, "Hey - where's that go to?"

Confusedly looking to where she was for a moment before realising she meant the vent, Glenn stepped away from it, joining her at a couple of feet away, staring at it. Pausing, she moved forward, crouching next to it, not yet sticking her head in, obviously wary of falling into the large gap after her last battle with gravity. Allowing her a moment to study the thing herself, he went over to the edge of the roof again - this time to the front, to look out onto the main street.

Looking straight down, gripping the cement tightly so as not to fall over, quickly scanning down the length of the building, he spotted what he had been hoping for: a door. From what he could tell, the building they were on was a series of apartments built above a candy shop, if the large sign shaped like a lollipop above the doorframe was any indication, glass littered on the ground from where some looters with misguided priorities had broken into it. Eyebrows furrowing with thought, glancing over in the direction where the walkers remained crowded in, he whispered over his shoulder, "Hey," he kept looking down to the ground level, repeating himself when he heard no immediate answer, "Hey, there's a door down there."

He turned to find Jeanie directly behind him, looking over the roof, making him jump in surprise, hands flying to the backs of his legs when he bashed into the wall from fright, quietly groaning. Jeanie, realising she had frightened him with her surprising ability to remain inconspicuously quiet, bit her lip, eyebrows flying up and denting with concern as she moved forward immediately, breathing a soft apology, halting as her left arm flew up, clenching with pain. Both consumed with pain for a moment, they remained silent, until, finally, Glenn brought the strength to him to look up at her, gingerly picking at the edge of her bandage, nervously regarding the growing splatters of blood lightly staining the inner layers of gauze.

Seeing her her eyes growing hard, he took a gulp of air and gave her an awkwardly reassuring smile, inquiring gently, "Do you want to sit down again?"

She looked up, breathing a quiet sigh. Then, returning his smile, she nodded, eyes softening, "Yeah." There was a silence as they both walked back over to near the air vent, to a series of pipes presumably once filled with water if the rust stains were any indication – although, the mains had long since stopped running, with the government-run purification plants having been overrun, he presumed. Letting the backs of her legs hit the low wall adjoining the pipes, Jeanie slowly sank to the ground, Glenn joining her, grunting as his sore legs twinged in protest to the excess of movement.

They were quiet for a moment before she pointed to the vent, turning to him as she spoke, "The air vent goes down into a room," he looked to where her dusty finger was indicating, craning his head to get a better look as she continued, "a maintenance room, I think." She paused, hands absently swiping over her knees, "You said you saw a door out front?"

Glenn nodded, "Yeah, down on the bottom floor, out front. Looks like a candy store-front...smashed up pretty bad."

She bit the inside of her cheek, thinking for a moment before she spoke again, "If we can get into the maintenance room from the vent, we can get down to that door and out of here. Then-" Abruptly, she broke off. There was a pause, where Glenn regarded her confusedly, unsure about her sudden halt. He was about to ask her what was wrong when she spoke again, "Well, I – " she shut her mouth, quieting. When she continued, her words were beginning to turn to babbles, "I will –" She halted, "You can go back to your camp." She suddenly turned her head away, eyes boring intensely into the ground.

Glenn paused. Looking on as she remained silent, his eyebrows furrowed with confusion again. He was struck with the sensation of standing back and seeing something he hadn't before – experiencing a whiplash like realisation: she was a complete stranger that he knew nothing about. He didn't know where she had come from, what she used to do, what she had hoped to be, what her family and friends were like, her strengths or weaknesses, her hobbies, talents, dreams: he knew only her name, and distinctly nothing else. It didn't bother him – the people he was living with had all been strangers, after all – but this was different: he felt as though there was nothing he could say or do that would really ever stop her eyes looking like that, permanently affected and eternally pondering on something long past. There was nothing anybody could really do. The person who could have was probably dead.

He turned away. Neither of them said anything to the other. Without much thought, he reached into his bag and pulled out a bag of chips, handing them to her along with a quiet inference for her to take another of the pills he had given her. Accepting the chips silently, she popped the bag open and began to chew, silently throwing back a pill from the foil pack, gulping some water from a canteen in her pocket, passing it over to him to take a sip, only looking up from the ground to stare at a fly, bloated with rotting carrion, slowly dragging through the air with a quiet buzz.

From the corner of his eye, he saw a drop of blood pool on her new bandage and fall to the ground with a quiet plink, and he snapped.

Turning to her, ignoring the screech of his muscles as he moved closer, grabbing her startled attention as his baseball cap shifted with the sudden swivel, he whispered, "Come with me."

The potato chip in her hand, halfway to her lips, was suddenly forgotten, and the canteen held in her grasp fell to her side, dripping water onto the ground. She turned to look at him with a wide look reminiscent of a deer caught in the headlights. Pausing, her eyes darted up to his. Then, she turned away again, pushing the food into her mouth, mumbling, "You don't have to do that."

There was a silence before he replied, a bemused frown slumping his chapped lips, "Do what? Help you?"

She shoved another chip in, seeming to have lost any of the savouring pleasure she had derived before, "Take me along because you saved my life." She paused, barely chewing as she blandly consumed more sustenance, mechanical and stiff. "You don't have to do that. You've helped me so much already – too much for a normal person."

He shook his head, disbelieving, barely stopping a nervous laugh that threatened to bloom in his chest, totally out of nowhere, startling him with the bizarre randomness of the feeling, "What, you don't think it's normal to help people who are about to die?"

The chip in her hands snapped, and she stared after it, taking a moment before continuing to eat, only speaking after taking a brief pause to swallow it, voice firm with an unwanted certainty, "Not anymore." She finally glanced at him for a fleeting moment, shifting closer into herself, "I wish it still was, but people are different now. I don't-" She trailed off. When she spoke again, her voice was soft and barely audible, "I don't really think much of anybody anymore. You're the only person I've seen who even-" She stopped, his eyes boring into hers as a tense silence enveloped them. Shifting away, her voice dropped further, a mere whisper floating through the wind, "It's never going to be like it was, and I know it – I'm not stupid...but it's not that." She glanced up at him, her eyes seeming to try to convince him of something, before looking away again as she spoke, "It's not that - it's people. We – we're-" She trailed off.

Something really tore then. He sat, frozen, for a moment, unable to say anything, mouth hanging open as he took in her resigned stoop and grim face, then moved forward, his voice reaching out with a gentleness that surprised himself, "Hey," she didn't look at him, eyes fixed on her closed hands, the bag of chips laying forgotten in her lap, "Hey, come on, now." He lay his hand on her uninjured shoulder, and she turned to face him, "Jeanie?" She looked up. With her staring at him, he found himself stuck for a moment. It was only after a pause, filled with only the faint whistling of the wind and the ever present drone of dead surrounding them, punctuating every moment of their lives, that he found himself able to formulate words, "I don't know what happened out there." Her eyes bored into his, unflinching, "What happened to you, I don't know. But, I know that you have to-" He halted, suddenly unable to force himself to tell her so something so callous as 'move on'. Nor could he edge out 'leave it behind.' It seemed cruel, somehow, to just snap at her that she had to abandon any hellish memories or lingering guilt, whatever it was that darkened her gaze, because the situation demanded it – she shouldn't have to ignore it all. What right did he have to tell her to pay no heed to any of the horrors she had experienced, surviving alone in a world like theirs, when he had always had a substitute family to support and protect him?

So, instead of telling her that she had to ignore it, to move on, to do things that he didn't know he could do himself, he moved closer and told her, "You can't let it destroy you."

Firm, her eyes stared up at him. His hands remained where they were, on her shoulders, gently keeping a hold on her, thoroughly unimposing in comfort. After a long, silent pause, she looked away, her abruptly collapsing gaze falling away to her lap, her lips thinning as she bit the inside of her mouth, eyebrow twitching lightly as strands of tired looking hair dropped down to her face and over her face. She looked as though she wanted to speak, but couldn't find the right words.

He was about to provide her an out from the conversation, an exit to easily disconnect herself from him, when she spoke, eyes suddenly flashing up to his again, alight, "I won't." Shaking her head, stiff and slow, she continued, Glenn watching, "In this world, you stay focused - or you die; I know that's how it is." She looked away, "I don't want to die." Her eyes twitched down, "Not to them." They sat in silence, both wordless, as the meaning of her words needed no explanation – the groans that flooded the world below than their temporary island of safety, answered who 'they' were.

Hesitating, her gaze flitted between him and the ground when her hands suddenly reached up, taking a grasp of his, and, just when Glenn had thought she was going to push it away, she brought it closer, hooked it round her neck, and hugged him. Her head pressed into the side of his, her good arm encircling his back and reaching up to his shoulder blades as she mumbled, voice muffled against his t-shirt, "Thanks."

Stunned for a moment, his arm sitting complacently as his struck brain tried to work his limbs, it took him a pause to bring both of his arms round her, enveloping her in a better hug, avoiding her injury with a careful shift. Absently noting the warmth of her, he replied, voice low and comforting, "No problem."

They sat for – he didn't know how long. All he knew was that, by the time Jeanie gently pulled away, her reassuring hand falling to her lap as his arms released their soft hold, her eyes were drooping and tired, bags abruptly dragging down on her lids. From her concerned gaze, he supposed he looked much the same, having been out all day, scavenging supplies for the camp, before suddenly finding himself in the crossfire of a leap of faith. The darkened rooftop they were in was bathed with shadows swimming at the edges of his vision, a few insects joining the swollen fly and buzzing by in the gloom, interspersed within the perpetual drone in the background. Turning his head down to her, he gave her a tired smile, "I think we should get some rest before tomorrow," he paused, "you're going to come with me, right?"

Giving him an exhausted twitch of her lips, she laughed quietly, "Yeah. I'll come with you."

His grin widened, and he gave her a little shake of her shoulder before moving away, "Great! For a minute, there, I thought I was going to have to kidnap you to get you back to the camp."

Again, she laughed, her good-natured smile flicking upwards, "I wouldn't have let you."

He nodded, "I bet you could kick my ass in no time at all."

She hummed an affirmative, stretching her legs that still shivered lightly beneath her. They paused lightly, the air between them far less foreboding than before, as she turned her back to the wall, head falling back to lean on the brick, silently letting out a gulp of air.

Glenn, taking her example, shifted away and allowed himself to fall back, huffing a quiet grunt of exhaustion, one of his hands pulling his overflowing bag over to remove a blanket, watching as she hooked a foot in her bag strap and hiked it up to her awaiting hands, opening it and rummaging around within before extracting a similarly thin blanket, considerably dirtier and beaten than his own – his mind absently wondered on how long it had been since she had been safe enough to wash herself, noting her disheveled appearance and promising himself that he would ask Amy to give Jeanie some of her spare clothes, knowing the young, happy blonde would be eager to help another woman her age.

Throwing their raggedy covers over their shivering bodies, barely shielding them from a sudden onslaught of wind battering the sides of the high building, both were grateful that they had the sense to sit in a somewhat shielded enclave of brick. Lying down, they were silent, trying to ignore the monotonous drone that set their teeth on edge, gripping their blankets with a loosely exhausted hold, numb legs trapping them in any semblance of warmth.

Her voice, starting to drag down with a quiet yawn, extended out to him with a fatigued breath, "Night, Glenn."

Holding back a sleepy croak, he replied, face falling to crush the bag he was using as a pillow, "Don't let the walkers bite."

Her soft laugh fell at the end, draining to a gentle whoosh of air as she finally fell asleep.

Turning his head with a weary shift, Glenn glanced over at her, her relaxed face turned up to the stars, injured arm held aloft on her chest as it lifted slowly up and down with soft breaths, steady and calm. Eyes falling to her shoulder, his gaze darkened upon seeing the spattering of blood. Something, a dark thought on the edge of his mind, panicking him with its truth, told him that that injury had to be dealt with soon – very, very soon. It looked as though it had been bad for a long time before his sharp, rough grab on her to pull her onto the roof had torn it further. The paled skin surrounding the gauze was speckled with discolour, veins popping out and trailing along the hanging limb, up her neck and at the edge of her face. Despite having no medical experience whatsoever in all his life, he knew that it wasn't good. If he didn't get her back to camp soon, his niggling instinct, awoken the first time he was almost devoured alive by another human being, was telling him that things were not going to go well.

Hesitating, he gripped the bag beneath him tighter in his aching hands, a long pause dragging by before he willed himself to quietly move it over to his right, closer to her, his body trailing alongside it before he was a few mere inches away from her, his face still down turned on his bag, eyes worriedly dancing over her impressively calm features. His gaze abruptly snapped to a thin scar, sliced cleanly from the top of her right cheek to just above her brow, surprising him with the fact that he had not spotted it before. However, considering it for a moment, it was no mystery why he had not seen it before, really – it was not disfiguring or roughly hewn. In fact, there was a careful precision to it that chilled him - though, for what reason, he could not say. The only thing he could be certain of was that the scar held an air of carefulness to it, with a bizarre narrowness and accuracy that made no sense.

It took a long time, sitting there, turmoil over the origins of that mysterious scar, on what could possibly have befallen her, out, alone on her own in the hell that the walkers had forced upon them, and how to get the both of them out of the festering city alive and in one piece eating away at his thoughts before exhaustion finally set in, closing his eyes, turning his head away and letting him fall under the merciful blanket of sleep.