Chapter Text
Carl Grimes was twelve when the dead started eating the living. Nobody told him this, but he figured it out pretty quick.
Carl Grimes was twelve when he realized he’d been left for dead. Nobody told him this either, obviously, but he figured this out pretty quick, too.
It wasn’t like Mom or Shane had meant to leave him, he reasoned, climbing further up the gum tree. There was just so much chaos after Atlanta got bombed, all those people on the highway running, screaming, trampling anything and anyone in their way. Brawls broke out real quick, people realizing that without the safety promised in Atlanta, there probably was no safety. Nothing was safe anymore, not even within the branches of the gum tree. Carl pulled his ankles up further despite knowing he’d have to go back down there eventually. With them.
The Peletiers were nice enough for Mom, nice enough to let them watch him when she went after Shane, but they weren’t nice enough when it really mattered. Carl shouldn’t have been surprised that Ed wouldn’t move a muscle to help him, then, when the infection found the traffic jam.
“There’s one of ‘em here!” A man’s shrill cry pierced through the street fighting. “Someone’s gone and turned!”
Carl whipped his head towards the screeching, eyes blowing wide watching one of the tussling men from earlier —who had been knocked out and left bleeding out on the pavement— gnaw on some poor man’s leg. Gnaw wasn’t a good word. Devour might’ve been better, but that didn’t quite explain the way the sick man crunched through bone and kept digging his fingers into the man’s thighs. A woman tried beating the sick man back, stomping on his hands, wrangling his head, crying, panicking, but then the sick man only started devouring her instead. The screams were louder than the bombs whistling above them. The man she’d been trying to save had been quiet for a long while.
“Fuck this shit, we’re outta here!” Ed spat, shoving Sophia back into the car and spilling checkers pieces in the air. Sophia yelped but complied as he manhandled her deeper into the car. Carl wasn’t quite so compliant when Ed tugged him by the back of his shirt and yanked him out of the car. Carl whimpered as his back struck the asphalt.
“Ed, Ed, he’s just a boy, his folks will be back soon—” Carol pleaded, her pleads cut short with a smack across her cheek.
“We just seen hell rain on Atlanta and people turnin’ into monsters, tearin’ each other ‘part but just ten feet away, and you want’a stay an’ play house with some strangers’ boy?” Ed growled. “Have you lost yer damn mind woman! We’re leavin’ this shit show!”
“Wait–! Wait–!” Carl sobbed, feet scrambling for purchase against the asphalt as he pulled himself upright. Gunshots burst in the crisp night, echoing between the cars as though funneling the sound into Carl. His trembling worsened as he realized not all those barrels were aimed at the dead. “Shane’s a sheriff, he’s got guns! He got experience in camping and stuff and– and he can keep y’all safe!”
Ed scoffed. He made no move to throw Carl again when he scrambled back up, but stood tall, shoulders stiff and stance wide enough to block Carl from reaching Carol again. “Listen now, boy, ‘cause I ‘on’t want’a waste no more time,” Ed said, eyes flickering between scowling at Carl and the chaos in the road. “Ain’t nothin’ safe no more. Don’t mean shit yer old man’s a cop, and don’t mean shit yer a kid. Nobody’s goin’ta care no more, an’ I sure as hell don’t. Is end of days now, boy, and ‘less you can fend fer yerself or you got somethin’ I want, yer goin’ta be dead meat pretty soon. An’ tha’s jus’ not my problem.” He finished his speech by spitting on the ground. Carl choked on a sob.
“Ed, the boy’s right that his Dad’ll have guns. He’ll know how to keep Sophia safe better than I ever could.” Ed at least paused, gaze finally flickering away from the road to stare at the woman with a scowl. “At least keep him in the car ‘till his folks can come—” Ed didn’t even have to smack her around to shut her up this time. A woman with an oozing bullethole above her heart with glazed white eyes and gray skin snarled, scrambling onto the hood of Shane’s car and reaching for Carl. Carol screamed and Ed shouted, “Jesus Christ!” as the monster skidded on the metal, crashing into the small patch of road between Carl and the Peletiers.
Carl’s heart stopped beating. The monster’s mouth was open and its gums were tainted black and teeth were snarling and gnashing together and it was looking straight at him. Then, it stepped towards him.
Carl ran. He didn’t stop when Carol begged him to stop, to come back, didn’t look as she was shoved into the car and Sophia sobbed and pounded on the Station Wagon’s glass. Ed didn’t say nothing, just slammed the car door shut and spared a glance in the rearview mirror as the creature chased Carl. It didn’t matter what they did or didn’t do, though. Carl was running all alone with a monster on his tail.
Carl was running and knew he was dead if he stopped.
Carl ran through cars and around people scrapping in the street, then jumped over the median fence, running through wild grass and weeds and sparing a look back only when he heard the snarling and screams and gunshots. It was just a quick glance over his shoulder, just one moment, but Carl somehow saw everything. The sick woman latched onto one man’s arm, sinking her teeth in and guzzling on his muscle, not caring about the other man stabbing her over and over in her back nor the way her victim was on his knees sobbing. He held a gun in his one trembling arm and fired. It went right through her neck and into his friend's chest and his friend fell and died and the monster kept eating him.
Carl stumbled and looked away and ignored the clamminess of his hands or the ache between his ribs or the dryness of his throat and even forgot about the hunger cramps in his stomach as a second shot went off. He didn’t look back. Carl ran into the treeline and scrambled in the darkness of the forest, led only by the moonlight and warm glow of the Atlanta bombings that filtered through the underbrush. Carl ran and pretty quickly even the plumes of fire couldn’t burn through the growth. He tripped on catbriar. Carl sobbed and pushed himself back to his feet with his prickled palms. He was getting clumsy. He was getting too scared to run straight.
With the gunshots and screams and fires raging behind him and the forest’s formidable shadows in front of him, Carl stopped running. Carl stopped running and froze, panting and wiping away the tears gathering in his eyes before looking up at the waning moon’s pathetic glow. There was faint rustling around him, the sounds of the woods menacing as he stood in the heart of it, alone. Shaking, he backed away from the darkness, whimpering as his back smacked into something hard and cold.
Carl whipped around with a strangled cry, only to find the trunk of a sturdy gum tree. With trembling hands, he clutched onto its lowest branch and hauled himself up. It wasn’t enough. He grabbed onto the next and climbed, climbed until the leaves of the lower branches covered him from view of the forest floor, and he climbed until he felt safe enough that nothing could reach his dangling ankles then climbed another branch just to be sure.
Then Carl sobbed.
“M-mom—” he hiccuped, plastering his hand over his mouth to keep his sobs from spilling below. “D-Dad– Dad please– Come back– I n-need you—” Another sob. Carl cried himself to sleep, nestled between where a branch split into two, the shoot-offs growing in the same direction, yet never quite meeting again. It was cold and it was rough and it was awkward sleeping with his ankles tucked beneath him and his hands hurt and his stomach hurt and his soul hurt but he slept, at least.
Carl didn’t dream of his father waking up and rescuing him, but he did dream of a sick monster chasing him and the faces of those men he’d accidentally gotten killed right before they died and of Ed Peletier.
“ Is end of days now, boy, and ‘less you can fend fer yerself or you got somethin’ I want, yer goin’ta be dead meat pretty soon. ”
Carl Grimes was twelve years old when he woke up to the end of the world alone.