[ ⁻⁻⁻ʳᵘᶰ ᵒᶰ ᵍᵃˢᵒᶫᶦᶰᵉ------- ]

         “OF COURSE it’s your gun.” Tara let out a laughing scoff. Never in a million years would she ask Carl what she just had seriously. “I’m just fuckin’ with ya, dude.”

“Is that a banana in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?”

          It was strange. The more time went on, the less people they seemed to run into out beyond the walls. He supposed it made sense. But back in the beginning, there had been so many people out there. Trying to SURVIVE. Just like they had been. But now, those people were few and far between. && the ones they HAPPENED to find were never friendly. To say there was little hope left out there in that dead world would have been a VAST understatement. 

          HOWEVER, there were still times when they would find people. GOOD people. Genuine people. But between all the bad, it had become  i m p o s s i b l e  to TRUST anyone. So when he saw her, his first instinct was to FIGHT. To  s u r v i v e.  Without a second thought, he pulled his gun, aiming it at the girl’s back, pulling back the hammer with a click. 

           Furious wasn’t the word to describe the EMOTIONS coursing through his body at that moment. How could she have been so  f o o l i s h ? She KNEW better. She was OLDER than him && yet, somehow, she seemed far more r e c k l e s s than he ever was. Perhaps it was simply the difference in how they were raised. Maybe they were just TOO different in personality. But after all this time, after all they’d been through, he would have THOUGHT she was wise enough to know better.

          The woods were quiet that day. Quieter than normal. Usually when Carl made it out over the wall and out into the trees, he could hear the distant MOANS of the dead. But today--- nothing. Just silence && the chattering of birds that seemed far too at PEACE in this dead world. && while the silence and RELIEF from those grotesque sounds was w e l c o m e d, it was also a sign of WORSE things. If there were no walkers, then there had to be people. Someone there to take them out. To SILENCE their sounds. Which had Carl on edge. 

           He knew he should have went back. He should have gotten someone to come along with him. But he didn’t. Instead he ventured out further in search of the SOURCE of his paranoia. && when he found the trail of dead walkers, THAT was when he knew. 

         The further out he went && the closer he got to the end of his trail, the more the silence began to b r e a k. He could hear them again. Wailing, screaming moans of the dead, clearly in pursuit of a prey. So he moved in, watching closely as the man fought the walker off, clearly having trouble. Carl took the opportunity to use his speed and size to his advantage, ducking out from behind the tree, landing a killing blow under the base of the walker’s skull. He let it fall before quickly drawing his gun to aim it at the stranger.