Chapter Text
ulalume
The air felt different when he was alone.
It was thinner. Lighter. Cooler. To the point that the sheen of sweat on his skin felt like it’d dissipate, and he could breathe in without tasting the thick, balmy flavor of heat and death.
It wasn’t real. Not in the way that his old elementary science teacher would be able to rationally explain to him, but it didn’t need to be. It only needed to be felt. Non-interpreted. Unquestioned. Savored. Because it’d be gone the minute his spoon hit the bottom of the tin of chocolate pudding he’d smuggled on the roof of a stranger’s (mostly) vacant house, and the subsequent scraping, finger-licking, and stalling wouldn’t keep reality at bay for long.
Carl stared at the chocolate-smeared base of the tin, wondering how long he had before his father woke and realized he was gone. He considered that he was awake already, panicking, tearing that house apart looking for him, and the only feeling Carl could muster was smug satisfaction. The same satisfaction he felt at keeping that huge tin of pudding all for himself, as he licked the last dab of chocolate off the tip of his finger.
He considered not bringing any of the food back that he found. Let his dad keep playing farmer and grow some damn tomatoes for himself in a backyard. Carl would carry the guns, blast away the walkers, scavenge for his own supplies, and his dad would still be toiling away with a hoe and some stupid seeds while everything around him collapsed.
Carl’s fist clenched around the spoon.
It was getting late. Even the walker that’d been struggling with the windowsill behind him seemed to be growing impatient. Carl glanced back to see its wrist dragging loosely along the outer frame with limp fingers, reflecting on its attempt to feed on him and coming away with his shoe. It wasn’t even moaning anymore, like it was bored. Carl would’ve laughed at the sheer absurdity of it if he didn’t think it would excite the poor stupid thing back to life and have it try to reconfigure a way out that window and into Carl’s skin.
It’s time to go, his mind told him, sounding suspiciously like his mother as his humor faded. You know you can’t stay here.
Carl’s face fell. He looked back down into the bottom of his clean pudding tin, trying to make out his obscured reflection as the façade of independence started to choke under that putrefying, moist summer air. It was thick again. Carl frowned, and set the tin and spoon aside.
Before making his way back, Carl made the decision to slip back into the house through another window to snatch back his shoe. It was a clumsy process that nearly got him caught, again, but after managing to slip back into the bedroom and side-step the reenergized walker, he climbed back out the same window and slammed it behind him just as the creature’s fingers nearly hooked the hem of his shirt.
His subsequent escape route was a drain pipe to his left that made too much noise as he clamored his way down. The trembling copper summoned two walkers from a neighboring house, but Carl was gone by the time they reached the flattened patch of grass where he and his supplies fell.
No others followed his careful steps down the road as he made his way back to the white bungalow on the corner.
Dusk had started to break and the front of the house was already gathering shadows. Out of habit, to ensure he wasn’t being stalked, as he neared it Carl slowed his steps and made quick, sharp glances around the area, listening to the way the wind hit the trees and the hinges of the house creaked, trying to decipher all of it from the animation of the dead. The shadows on the porch, those cast by the pillars, the railing, the brush, either remained stagnant or fell back into place when the wind died down and the air silenced. All the shadows but one.
Carl stopped. He stared at the ground, where a cut of slightly swaying black shade peaked out from the shadow cast by the roof. His eyes followed it past the pillars, up the porch, and straight to the front door.
It was open.
The stifling heat on Carl’s skin suddenly went cold.
Carl could hear his father’s voice inside his head telling him to get out of the open and to try and find cover. Get behind a bush. A tree. Duck down. Listen. But he couldn’t move. His brows knit as he stared into the black space between the door and the frame, trying to rationalize why a door, that’d been tethered and secured, that had an entire couch pushed up against it, that had been closed when he left hours ago, was now open.
No… Not just open. There was a splintered dent in it. The upper-right hinges were bent.
Someone or something had forced that door open.
Carl was fighting the catatonic shock that kept his legs rooted to the ground when something slamming into an upstairs window snapped him out of his stupor. He dropped low to the ground and quickly slipped behind the shrubbery in front of the house, his heart pounding rapidly in his chest and his shaking hands reaching for the revolver in his waistband.
There were voices coming from inside the house. Loud. Deep. Carl could hear the low rumble of laughter and the screech of furniture legs on wood. He frowned, trying to listen for any indication that his dad, who’d been on the couch holding that door shut, was alive.
I left him alone, Carl thought, gripping tight on the handle of the gun in his waistband as his mind raced. He was hurt and I left him alone.
Another bang, alarmingly loud and close as the broken front door slammed open and almost fell off its hinges. Carl jumped, his hand jerked from the gun, and the tote bag on his shoulder dropped. Canned goods tumbled out onto the path.
Carl’s breath hitched.
There was a pause. Then a pair of heavy boots sauntered slowly over to the railing. Carl heard the creak of the wood as the stranger leaned against it, and felt eyes on the back of his neck. He froze. His spine prickled under the stranger’s gaze, and sweat slipped off his temples into the dirt.
“Well, well, well, looky here. I found me a little dog,” the stranger crooned with a smile in his voice. Carl’s hands trembled on the ground and his shoulders bowed. “A shaggy little bitch right outside my door.” A beat. An intensified creak as more weight pressed against the railing. “Hey. Hey. Look at me boy.”
Carl swallowed. He fought the chocolate pudding sliding its way back up his throat, and slowly lifted his eyes to the stranger peering through the shrubbery above him. The face that greeted him belonged to a man older than his father, with sweat-dampened gray-white hair curled over his right eye. The amused smirk on his lips broke only when Carl’s adrenaline suddenly kicked his reflexes in and his hand snapped back to reach for the revolver.
“I wouldn’t,” the stranger barked. Carl felt the aim of the pistol before he saw it propped against the railing. “I’ve put a lot of dogs down with this baby. It’s no hair off my ass if I gotta put down one mangy little bitch who thinks she can take a bite outta me. You hear me boy? Nod if you can hear me.”
Carl hesitated, then nodded slowly.
“Good. Get up.”
The man watched him as he unsteadily rose to his feet. He motioned for him to walk around the railing, to stand before the porch where the lack of cover instantly made him feel exposed and vulnerable. The cans of food he’d proudly gathered sat his feet.
“Anyone else with you?” the stranger asked. Carl shook his head. “You with the half-dead half-wit trespassing inside my place?” When Carl didn’t immediately answer him, the stranger strolled right up to him, and he tensed, almost taking a step back. “You as stupid as he is, boy? The man. The man who was sneaking around my fuckin’ house. You with him or not?”
Carl’s mouth open and closed. His lips trembled. The stranger was close enough that he could smell the campfire smoke on his clothes and pungent sweat on his skin. He felt like he was being towered over, eclipsed and consumed simultaneously as the stranger aggressively invaded his space. The cockiness he’d felt not even hours—minutes before, gave way to a cold hard truth as tears filled his eyes.
“Christ, you must be some kinda retard,” the stranger grumbled repulsively, reaching around Carl’s back to roughly snatch the revolver from his waistband, tucking it behind him, then slipping a hand down to pull the knife from the strap on his leg. Carl flinched each time, his heart racing as the stranger seemed to deliberately graze him with the pads of his fingers. “I’m claimin’ these. And you? You’re claimin’ the seconds it takes for you to march your little ass into that house before I stick this knife in your neck. I’m givin’ you three. Move.”
Carl balked at him, his eyes flickering between the stranger’s face, the knife in his hand, and the front door. He hesitated only long enough to hear the first word out of the stranger’s mouth—“Three.”—before he was hurrying for the entrance—“Two.”—and awkwardly shifting himself through the crooked door’s opening—“One.” And then he was inside.
The house was glowing with the yellow light of dusk. There were three more strangers spread out in the living room. Two were lounged back in the dusty sofa that’d been pulled to an angle near the hallway, and one was standing next to a familiar face unfamiliarized by blood and swelling.
“Dad!” Carl blurted in a low, wet voice, not waiting for the strangers’ permission to dive for him.
His father was on the floor, propped up on his elbows and visibly beaten. He took deep, ragged breaths that became rapid and panicked when Carl landed on the floor next to him and threw his arms around his shoulders.
Rick’s body was shaking. It trembled, harshly, under Carl’s weight, and the dawning realization that his fearless father was terrified and half-dead in a room full of strangers who might finish the job, broke Carl without warning. He suddenly began to cry. He closed his eyes as he felt his father’s arm slip around his back to hold him close, and a hoarse, damaged, blood-soaked whisper uttered in his ear, “It’s okay. Don’t cry. It’s okay.”
“Looky at what I found boys,” the familiar, sing-song voice of the gray-haired stranger announced from the doorway as he lumbered his way in. “Fate saw it fit that we get a nice little bag of supplies and delivery boy, all gift wrapped in one like a fuckin’ present from Santa. It’s Christmas in July boys! Now, hurry up and claim your shit!”
Carl jumped at the sound of cans colliding with the floor. He turned his head from the crook of his father’s warm damp neck to witness the chaos that ensued, with the three men in the living room rushing for the spilled goods, and three more storming down the stairs like dogs to a whistle. They bayed and hollered at each other over beans and corn. One punched another square in the jaw over a tin of tomato juice, and promptly yelled “Claimed!” when the man tried to snatch it back.
Claimed.
That word hit the air like the flurry of insect wings.
Claimed!
Claimed!
Claimed!
Each man took what scraps were left of the supplies Carl had worked so hard to gather. He could feel his face flush with anger and frustration as his tears receded, and he found himself beginning to glare at the white-haired man standing in the doorway, gripping the grass-stained tote bag—his bag—that had been abandoned outside. The man caught him staring, and an amused look broke across his face as he withdrew a can of peaches from it and slowly began to approach them.
“My boys are smart. They go for the salt and the fat like the cave-dwelling apes before us. It’s survival. It keeps the body goin’. But me?” he grinned, composed in his ambling stride and making direct eye-contact with Carl’s father. As he neared, Rick wheezed for Carl to get behind him, and managed to adjust himself so that Carl’s chest was pressing into his back. “Me, well, I prefer my daily bread soft and sweet. A little of nature’s sugar never hurt nobody.” The man squatted directly in front of them. Winked. “Especially the pink kind.”
Rick’s labored breathing accelerated in hot puffs through his bleeding nose. Carl didn’t know what the stranger was inferring, but he sensed the threat, felt his father try to tuck him further back. The stranger continued:
“Never mind that though—we got some business to go over, don’t we… Wait. What was your name? Prick? Dick? Damn, I’ll be donkey-licked if you don’t look like a Dick. Well, Dick, today is a day of judgment. Only there ain’t no God here to do it, so I’m gonna be steppin’ in here and showin’ you the way instead.” The stranger tucked away his peaches, placed the bag off to the side. He’d stopped smiling. “See, you might’ve planted your flag here first, but you almost lost right to your claim when you tried to choke out one of my boys. You definitely lost right to your claim when you lied about being alone. So now not only are you a trespassing piece of shit, but you’re also an untrustworthy, lying piece of shit.”
Carl could feel his father’s shoulders tense as he heard him rasp, “I get it. I get it. We’re gone. We’ll leave. We’ll leave right n—“
“That ain’t the point, Dick,” the stranger interjected sharply. “This here ain’t no negotiation. This ain’t no polite request for you to get the fuck off my property. This here is education. My boys kicked the shit out of you because you’re one life lesson short of a fucking diploma. And we ain’t done yet.”
A member of the stranger’s group approached, a man with a damp black bandana tied around his head and the butt of a rifle peeking over his shoulder. “Joe, it’s getting dark. We should board up the door and pull the lanterns before shit goes south.”
“Shit’s already south, Tony,” the stranger, Joe, replied without missing a beat. His eyes remained fixed on Rick, that smirk creeping back into his features. “Can’t get much more south than this. But!” He shot a glance up at the other man. “You gotta point. So, let’s make this simple. You and the boys finish cleaning the place out. Set up for the night. Harley and I already called two rooms, and Lou’s fuckass got choked out in the third—but I’m pretty sure he called claims before Dick tried to turn his neck into a fucking pretzel. If any shit comes of this, I don’t gotta remind you the way.”
Tony nodded, and the rest divided up, disappearing around corners and up the stairs. One man, thick and balding, could be heard in the kitchen, smashing a dining table and heaving the pieces into the foyer. The parts would be used to block the broken entryway door.
As the house rumbled and quaked under the weight of the strangers, and the purple light of dawn began to fade to black, Joe took his time in rising to his feet, a coy smile on his face. He nudged Rick’s ankle with his foot, and in a voice just loud enough for them to hear, said, “I suggest you take your time and reflect on the actions that brought you here. Look real hard into your boy’s pretty little eyes. Say some prayers. I’m gonna give you that much, ‘cause I’m a reasonable man. But mark my words, Dick: We’re gonna be square by sunrise. Just you wait.”
“I was wrong.”
The words felt loud in the quiet of the moonlit living room, where Carl was still sitting with his father propped against him, the back of Rick’s head nestled into his lap. From his angle, Carl could see that his father’s nose was broken, the skin of his cheekbone split, swollen, and yellow, and dark bruises mottled his throat. He couldn’t lift himself further than his elbows, and each breath was a hoarse struggle that sounded like it had to be punched from his chest. It was all so painfully pathetic, and so different from the man Carl knew.
When he spoke, each word syrupy with tears and mucus, Carl saw his father’s eyes flutter open and gaze up at him questioningly. Carl choked back a sob that risked waking one of the sleeping men nearby.
“Earlier… I said I didn’t need you anymore. I said that I could protect myself,” he said quietly. “I told you that you were nothing. I blamed you for everything. I was wrong. Nothing’s your fault. Mom and Judith aren’t your fault. You’re not nothing. I’m sorry…”
Carl closed his eyes when he felt his father’s hand reach up and gently touch his head, freed from the sheriff’s hat to allow the cool night air to dry the sweat from it. Carl leaned down, pressing forehead to his father’s and nearly abandoning what little composure he had left. He cried, as softly as he could manage, as he gripped his father’s face and melted under the warmth of his fingers.
“You… remember… mom’s poems?” Rick asked in a thin breathy voice. Carl paused, then nodded above him. “Good… You… remember… the cowboy one…? And the snow…?”
Carl almost smiled. “M-… Mom said he wasn’t cowboy. I just—I just thought he was because he had a horse.”
Rick did smile. “Yeah…You remember… what it was… about?”
Carl thought for a moment, reflecting on the warm summer evenings when his mother would take him outside to sip on pink lemonade and watch fireflies. She would cradle him in one arm, and with her other, she’d hold one of her many poetry books to her chest as she read quietly to him. Carl still remembered the gentleness in her voice, and the smell of her perfume—like grapefruit and baby powder—and closing his eyes as each story carried on the breeze. There’d been one in particular he’d loved.
“There was a cowboy—I mean, a man, who was on his way… somewhere,” Carl started carefully. “But… then he got distracted by watching the snow in the woods. And he didn’t want to leave.”
“So… then what… happened?”
“He remembered that he still had things to do, and that he couldn’t stay there.”
“Do you… remember… the lines…?”
Carl lifted his forehead, brows furrowed as he struggled to remember the words that had formed on his mother’s lips, wisps of her dark hair curling along her jaw and bouncing with each syllable. He managed to utter, “Miles to go. He said he couldn’t stay there because he had miles to go.”
Rick grimaced when a small, painful laugh nearly managed its way through his throat. “That’s right. ‘The woods are… lovely… dark and deep… But I… got promises t… to keep… And I got… miles to go… before I sleep…’ Those were the lines…”
Carl stared at Rick, realizing then that his eyes were glassy with tears. It struck him that his father had given up. That he knew, in some way, that Joe was not going to just let them go. He might try to bargain for Carl’s life, he might not make it easy on them when they came to put him down, he might do everything in his power to get Carl out of the situation, but his father was, in that moment, accepting his own ultimate fate.
Carl’s heart lurched in his chest. He leaned back, unable to look Rick in the eye much longer, and allowed the hopelessness and exhaustion to overtake him as he quietly sobbed into the darkness, “I can’t. I was wrong. I can’t do this on my own.”
“N… o… Carl… You… can… You’re strong…”
“I can’t.” Carl was fighting hysterics then, struggling to keep his voice down and sobs to a minimum as one of the men stirred nearby. “I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I need you. Don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me. I can’t do this without you. Please. I was wrong.”
“I know… it’ll be… hard… Carl… And I know… you’re… very tired…” Rick wheezed. Carl leaned back down, pressing their foreheads together once again, shaking his. Tears dripped off his face and patted against his father’s cheekbones. Rick continued, “You’ll… You’ll be very… very tired… And y… ou’ll wanna sleep… But you’re strong… a… nd you’ve got… miles… to go…”
“I can’t…”
“You can… You have to… J… Just say… the lines…”
Carl’s jaw clenched. He gripped his father’s face. “I’ve got miles to go.”
“Before what…?”
“Before I sleep. I’ve got miles to go before I sleep.”
“That’s… my boy,” Rick smiled, touching his son’s face and gently wiping his tears with the pad of his thumb. “Y… You’re gonna keep on goin’…. N-No matter what… No matter… how tired… Y… You gotta keep goin’.”
“‘Cause I’ve got promises to keep.”
Rick pulled Carl’s forehead down, and pressed his lips to it. They remained that way, each savoring each other’s presence, the smell of their skin and clothes, and the feeling of oneness that came with being father and son. Because that moment, a blip on the linear line of the eternity they resided in, would be their last. They would never have that moment again.
Carl woke to an explosion. He had only a moment to register that he was being flung back before his head cracked against the floor, and he was blinded by flashes of white light.
He heard voices in the distance. Saw amorphous black shapes that only dimly resembled people—moving, speaking, looking at him. Hands reached down and lifted him from the ground, an arm hooked around his waist, another around his chest. Something cold pressed itself to his throat. A hoarse voice screamed in the distance.
“You leave him be! You leave him be! Let him go!”
Carl swallowed down vomit, blinked back the spots flashing in front of eyes, and tried to remember where he was. The room smelled like dust, blood, and sweat. There was a body on his back, large and with a familiar scent of smoke and leather. He could feel the bristle of facial hair against his cheek, and the sharp point of a knife at his neck. His legs were unsteady but the arms held him up, crushed him, made it hard to breathe.
“It was just me! Let him go!”
His father. That was his father. Why was he screaming? Carl grimaced, struggling to recall the night before, when lips suddenly pressed to the helix of ear, and whispered,
“Sshhh, keep watching daddy. Look at him. Look at daddy.”
Carl blinked. He tried to focus his eyes forward and take in the room lit with the pink of sunrise.
The furniture had been pushed against its walls. Six men stood in a half-circle around it. His father was in the center, on his knees, hunched over, covered in dried blood and black bruises, and glaring up at the man holding Carl steady. Rick was wincing with each word screamed, heaving the last of his energy into his lungs to get Carl released, but the arms around his son’s waist maintained their hold. The blade at Carl’s neck flickered between his throat and his jugular.
Carl’s face contorted as the night before seeped back into his mind, and he cried out for his father.
“You leave him be! Leave him be! It was me—just me! Let him go!” Rick shouted, seeing the horror on his son’s face. “It was just me! I was the one who lied! I attacked your men! It was just me!”
“See, that ain’t do damn lie!” the man holding Carl barked out in laughter, making him cringe. “I’m proud of you, Dick! We made you an honest man overnight! But see, we still ain’t square, are we? I promised you we’d be square and damn it if I don’t hold to my word!” The man laughed again. “The boys and I, last night, we had a little get together and decided it ain’t right what you did to Lou. A lying sack of shit pussy like you who tries to strangle a man from behind got no morals—no place in this new world. Ain’t that right boys?”
The men shouted, clapped, whistled. Carl gasped out a sharp breath, tried to pull himself from the man’s arms. Rick tried to reach him, tried to get up off the floor, and promptly fell back down to his knees with a pained cry. One of the men came up behind him, and grabbed the scruff of his neck.
“Now, now, cut that shit out!” the man continued, pressing the blade into the skin of Carl’s throat, drawing blood. Carl went still, thinking back on the smell, the voice. It was Joe. “We might be a little rough ‘round the edges, but we’re still reasonable men, Dick! So here’s how this is gonna go down: We’re gonna show you the way. It’s not gonna be pretty and it’s not gonna be pleasant, but we gotta be made whole. You owe us that much. I mean—you tried to kill one of us. Poor Lou here woulda been dead if Harley hadn’t clocked your ass. You’re a fuckin’ killer Dick!” Joe snickered, nodded to the man holding Carl’s father. “But again, we’re reasonable men! We’re gonna make it fast. We’ll let you look into your little angel’s eyes while we do it. But if you move, if you so much as shift out of fuckin’ place, this here blade’s gonna slit your baby boy’s throat like butter. Then we’ll kill you. You hearing me?”
Rick’s red-rimmed eyes wavered between Joe and Carl. He swallowed down a lump in his throat, bit back on his jaw, tried to look brave as he forced himself to look directly into his son’s eyes.
“Carl. Say the lines.”
Carl’s heart fell into his stomach. He was confused only for a moment. Then his vision blurred with tears. “I…”
“Say the lines, Carl,” Rick urged, tensing when the man holding his neck closed in, withdrew a bowie knife from a sheath on his hip.
“I’ve… I’ve got…” Carl stumbled. His jaw trembled. His teeth chattered. Everything was going dark. “I’ve got…”
The men’s voices began to rise, calling for Lou, who held the knife to his father, to finish the job. Hurry up. Do it. Do it. Do it. Hurry. Get it over with. Do it. With each vowel the voices rose, louder and louder, until it felt like they’d filled the room like water in a tank, and Carl’s and Rick’s voices were drowned out. Desperation filled Rick’s eyes. He began to shout as Lou pressed his free hand to one side of his head, and the other brought the tip of the knife to his temple.
“Say the lines!” Tears filled his eyes, streamed down his face, cut through the dried blood. “Say the lines Carl! You have to say the lines!”
And with that, Carl snapped.
He dropped his weight to his legs and thrashed wildly in Joe’s arms, ignoring the bite of the blade to his throat as he screamed, madly, “Miles! I’ve got miles to go! Miles to go! Miles to go! Miles to go! Miles to go!”
He struggled to get out of Joe’s grip, to crawl to his father.
Someone, somewhere far away, shouted, “Shut him up!
Carl hit the floor, clawed at it, screamed his mantra, never took his eyes off his father. Joe scrambled to hold him back, snatched him by the waist and heaved him back up. He screeched, “Miles to go! I’ve got miles to go! Miles to go!” and continued to thrash, until finally the moment came.
Lou plunged the knife into his father’s head in one slick motion.
Everything went quiet.
Carl’s body went slack.
The world seemed to turn sideways as he watched Lou yank the blade back out, and a dark spurt of blood gushed from his father’s temple.
He saw a twitch of muscle in his father’s face. He saw his expression fall. He saw the light in his eyes fade.
Joe’s grip on him loosened.
Carl and his father hit the floor.