Fight for Your Mind

I shut my eyes tight as we drove away from another gravesite. Three days and we lost three people. Everything that we did felt useless right now. What did we do to deserve this? What did Sasha do to deserve losing the two most important people in her life? All within forty-eight hours. It felt like the world was playing some sick joke on us in particular. I couldn't get the image of it out of my head. I shut my eyes tighter, pressing my forehead up against the dusty bus window. Tyreese's pale, lifeless face appeared in the back of my mind no matter how hard I squeezed my eyelids shut.

~ One Day Earlier ~

"It can work," Michonne insisted. We stood in the middle of the street, garbage bags in hand with any useful supplies we found leftover in the community. Michonne was currently fighting Rick on the possibility of staying here.

"This place is surrounded by forest," he shook his head, "there's no sight lines." Michonne sighed at his response as we continued walking. "Whoever, whatever would be on top of us without us even knowing it."

"That's what happened to us," Glenn agreed, referring back to the Governor.

Michonne threw her hands in the air, "We can start taking down the trees. We use them to build the walls up." Rick dropped his garbage bag in frustration. "Just look," Michonne instructed, leading us to the back wall.

We walked further down the street, now making it clear how the intruders got into town. The wall had a hole smashed straight through it, the bricks not standing very tall, to begin with. Just on the other side lay a thick layer of forest. We walked on through to a small clearing, Michonne led the way. We all stopped upon finding another massacre before us. My eyes widened and the pit of my stomach uneasily churned as I stared down at severed limbs scattered in the grass. Arms and legs from the waist down were cut up and thrown out the back entrance like trash.

Michonne sighed again, coming to the same realization as all of us. This town was destroyed, the people who invaded this place left nothing left to build it back up. I turned on my heel looking at the backside of the wall, the word 'Wolves' spray-painted across the brick. There was a silence among us as we all stood in shock.

"Washington," Michonne finally said, turning to look at us. "Eugene lied about a cure, but he thought of Washington for a reason."

"But he was lying," I reminded her.

"About the cure, but he did the math and realized that Washington was the place where there'd be a chance," she explained. She looked at Rick, her brows furrowing, "We're close." Rick sighed, thinking about it. "What if there are people there? Huh?" She asked. "What if it's someplace that we can be safe? We are 100 miles away. It's a possibility." she fought "It's a chance. Instead of just being out here," she began to raise her voice, trying her best to fight back tears. "Instead of just making it. Because right now, this is what making it looks like," she yelled, pointing down to the cut-up bodies that littered the ground.

Walkers began to emerge from the bush, drawn towards the sound of Michonne's voice.

"We should go," Rick finally said. Michonne turned away from him angrily, tears brimming in her eyes. "It's 100 miles away," Rick said, causing us all to turn back towards him, "We should go to Washington--"

"Rick!" The sound of Noah's faint voice screaming from down the street caused us all to snap our heads around. "Help! Glenn! Michonne! Scar! Rick!" My heart dropped as we all took off into a sprint towards him. We followed his shouts for help, running up to the porch of a house that had been torched in various spots. "Help!" Noah yelped from underneath a wooden panel he held over his body, shielding himself from a walker that tried to get to him.

I yanked out my knife, approaching the three other walkers that also followed the noise to him. I spun my knife in the base of my palm, coming down hard on the back of the first walker's skull. Rick went for the walker pinning Noah down as Glenn and Michonne took care of the other two.

"You okay?" Rick grunted, panting heavily from fighting with the walker.

Noah nodded his head, "It's Tyreese!" he exhaled.

"Where?" Rick asked.

"My house. He's been bit," Noah explained, leading us back down the street.

My feet hit the ground at a rapid pace, I was out of breath but refused to stop. We followed in suit behind Noah, running up his front yard and into the house. We passed by the body of a woman lying dead on the living room rug, what I assumed to be Noah's mother. Our feet carried us up the stairs to the second floor and into one of Noah's brother's rooms.

"Tyreese!" Rick called out, spotting him sitting up against the sidewall.

His eyes were open, but there was no response when calling his name. He looked completely out of it. His skin was covered in drops of sweat as all the blood drained out of it. He clutched onto his left arm, the blood pooling out from two bite wounds, staining the carpeting around him. A walker lay dead on the boy's desk chair, leaning over the side of it with its head bashed in at the side.

We dove down towards him, "Scar hold him!" Rick yelled at me. I knelt beside the wall, putting my hand on his shoulder as my other arm pressed down hard across his chest, keeping him still. His clothes soaked my body with sweat, the fever already coursing through his body. Rick still grabbed onto his left hand, tightening his grip hard around his wrist. His hands slipped on all the blood that coated his skin, pulling his arm out straight.

"I got it!" I yelled at Rick, using all my strength to hold Tyreese's body back.

"Michonne, one hit! Clean! Go!" Rick shouted, confirming that he had the grip.

Michonne threw back her sword, screaming as she sliced down on Tyreese's arm. In one blow the blade sliced straight through the bone, detaching it from his body from the bite marks down.

---------

We were too late. The fever had spread too far through the body before we could stop it. Between the spike in his temperature and the loss of blood from his arm, we were forced to pull over at the side of the road, putting a knife in Tyreese's brain before he turned. We tried to get him back to the group. We prayed that he would make it, or at the very least get to say his goodbyes. Instead, he died in that car with us.

My head shot up from its spot where it rested on the window when the bus' engine started to sputter. The vehicle came to a rolling halt. Abraham cursed under his breath as his fist punched the wheel. I knew what that meant, it was the moment we were all dreading. We were in the middle of nowhere, driving along a road surrounded by forest for miles and we were out of gas.

"We're out. Just like the other one," Abraham confirmed.

"So we walk," Rick responded, hopping off of the bus first.

My feet hit the pavement and the sun immediately beat down on my back, the touch of it alone made me instantly start to sweat. We had been travelling for a day and a half, stopping every once and a while to hunt for food and water. But there was nothing, we were in the middle of a drought. Every stream or pond we came across dried to the bone, only leaving behind the withered-up corpses of frogs and fish. Leaving most of the wildlife to disperse from this area, also in search of something to drink.

We were all drained, we were only forty miles into the trip to Washington and it felt like everyone had already given up. Staring up at the road ahead there was no end in sight. Only pavement and trees stood before us. My feet dragged on the ground, dehydration and hunger taking their toll on me. My bones ached, my head pounded, and my eyes stung from the sun. There wasn't a cloud in sight.

No one said a word as a small herd of walkers began to form behind us. No one had the strength to even acknowledge them. We could hear them though, their gurgles rolling over the hills of the road to remind us they were still there. I believe they were the only reason we kept pushing forward. Knowing that at this point even the sixteen of us didn't even have enough energy to take them on together.

"We need to find water, food," Daryl's voice caught me off guard as he walked beside me.

"We'll hit something in the road sooner or later," I answered, my voice meek.

"I'm gonna head out, see what I can find," he responded.

"I'll go with you," I offered.

"I got it," he shrugged me off. I knew something was up with him, he was quieter than usual. He had resorted back to his old ways, simply observant, disconnected.

"You think you can stop me?" I smiled. He simply looked back at me, not objecting, but not agreeing either.

"Don't be too long," Rick called out to us, his voice worried.

We walked into the bush in silence, I followed a few steps behind Daryl as he led us to a field. My body was tired, but I felt like my mind was running at a million miles per second. I wanted to talk to him, but he had become so shut down. It felt like the first time we had been separated from the group after the prison. He was letting the toll of losing Beth, Both, and Tyreese get the best of him. We all lost something back in Atlanta and again in Virginia, but it was like he was losing himself.

"Anything?" I asked, my voice low. He searched through the tall grass looking for track marks and hearing out for anything to go running through the weeds.

"No, it's too dry. There ain't nothing here," he responded.

I looked up at the sky, finally, the odd cloud appearing here and there. "It's gotta rain sometime," I said, but I don't know if I was trying to convince him or myself. The clouds were thin and dispersed, but at least it was something other than an open blue sky. He didn't answer me. "Maybe we should start back--"

"You go," he instantly answered.

His response struck a nerve in me, but it wasn't anger, I was scared. I blabbed out before I thought about what I was saying would make him feel. "You have to start letting yourself feel things." He stopped, turning towards me, not bringing his eyes up to mine. His face and arms were covered in dirt as he hid behind his long hair. "You are the toughest person I know. And for a very long time, I thought you weren't scared of a thing in this world," I pressed further, "But you are." He remained silent, just listening to me. "You're scared of losing people and feeling alone so you don't let yourself feel anything at all." I paused, stepping closer to him so he would look at me. His blue eyes finally peeked up at me through his wisps of hair. "You said there isn't anything that could kill you. You said that to me. But you are letting this kill you."

Tears brimmed in his eye line as he stared at me. He didn't say a word as I leaned in and placed a kiss on his cheek. I let him be after that, saying what I needed to say. I gave him a small smile as he stared down at me, watching me as I headed back to the group.