'there is no peace, i'm sorry to say. we find it. we lose it. we find it again. we lose it again' unknown.

season 2, episode 7

pretty much dead already

Day 71

The day started like any other. Soft 'good mornings' were passed along as everyone woke up at their own sluggish paces. Breaking their fast with fruits from yesterday was served silently as Carol cooked-as she claimed-a real meal. It consisted of stew and instant rice. More of a dinner, but who was to complain?

According to the silence, no one.

It was odd. Truly odd.

Irritatingly odd if you will. Sickeningly, tauntingly, hauntingly odd. So very odd.

Isaac had found a distaste for silence after the dinner. His skin crawled as the scrapping of silverware against metal dishes filled the air. The morning air didn't even caress his amber skin. Stale and still. Noticeably, unnoticeable.

Isaac wanted to scream. It scratched at his esophagus. Itching upward like a sickness-no amount of coughing could cure the discomfort. One would need to force the problem out. To vomit, to hack, to scream, to tear.

But of course, he hadn't. He did nothing of the sort. That would've been too much. Too loud for who he was and needed to be.

He kept his mouth shut and allowed his eyes to wonder and observe. Bouncing off of each survivor, guessing the seconds before they would explode. Who would scream first? What would the reason be? How long would they scream? Physical or emotional pain? Would the dead come in response? Would they be quicker than Hershel's forgiveness? His leg bounced, adding a quick-paced rhythm of grass moving. He really wanted to scream.

Maybe he would be the first. No. He couldn't. He wouldn't.

The night hadn't been nice to him-not that it was most of the time. His dreams were plagued with fantasies of his old life. Only less...true to what he remembered. He would dream of being happy. To be in a family filled with love. He dreamed of knowing his sister, Layla, not just being told about her; oh, how he wished to be the big brother he dreamed of being. To defend her against anyone who dare to harm her, to ensure her first love wouldn't leave her scarred, to give her annoy her without her feeling disdain.

He dreamed of everything he wanted, which is why every time he felt himself leaving it he wished to never wake up.

The night may have been haunting, but the day was just as worse.

Each day it worsened. With each rotation of the Earth, the sun would shine upon new blood shed. Something went wrong, or a domino was put into place for the inevitable decimation. And you could feel it. Every second of every minute of every hour of each day. You could feel the inevitable drop, shift in the air, the fluidity turning stiff. You could feel it.

And you will know when the pin drops, ricocheting against the floorboards, sending sound waves to the dominos. You will watch as the white plastic wobble and wiggle, attempting to stay straight, but it is just an object. And an object is only a pawn to nature. It will fall, and you have to watch. You will always be too slow to catch it. Your attempts only worsen the impact. All you can do is watch and wait to fix it all once it is over.

Isaac was sick of watching and waiting. How much longer? Time's ticking. Every second of every minute of every hour of every day-

"Um, Guys. So, barn's full of walkers."

A collision. Clatter. Disruption.

Chaos.

Yet everything was silent. Pure silence. No silverware scraping on metal dishes. Andrea halted her knife sharpening. No mouths moved to chew. No one moved. Not even air.

They just stared at Glenn before their gazes collectively moved to the wooden barn, a few meters away from where they slept, where they ate, where they were.

None of them believed it.

"That's a sick joke, Glenn," Alyson muttered, focusing back onto her unsavory food.

Silence followed. It was no joke.

Shane marched down the barn without hesitation. Everyone trailed behind with no choice, leaving their food as it no longer appealed to them with the thought of the dead so close to where they slept.

It appeared to be quiet as they neared, but the smell of rot told them that something was decaying, unable to return back to the Earth or find peace in whatever afterlife they believed in. Shane peered inside the cracks. The smell could have been anything. Farm animals die everyday, crops go bad; there could be a million reasons why it reeked.

But there was only one that caused Shane Walsh to flinch, moving back from the doors.

"You cannot tell me you're alright with this," Shane swiftly accused Rick.

Isaac jerked at the accusation. The rapid remark and anger that fueled Shane-more than usual-was more targeted and came from something other than the problem in front of them.

"No, I'm not," Rick deflected. "But we're guests here. This isn't our land."

"For God's sak-this is our lives!"

The creeps groaned louder in response to the sound. The creaking of rotting wood was muffled by arguments of moral and immoral courses of action. Rick was right, this wasn't their land. But so was Shane, it was their lives. The walker in the well was one thing, an accident perhaps, a mistake forgotten by grief or negligence. But this? This was intentional.

"Keep your voices down," Sadie murmured with urgency, watching as the barn doors shifted.

She brushed aside just like the dead.

"We can't just sweep this under the rug," Andrea stated, siding with Shane-unsurprisingly.

Shane paced around, constructing a plan that would inevitably end in the last string of trust being destroyed with nuclear missiles. "Okay, we've either gotta go in there, we've gotta make things right or we've just gotta go. Now we've been talkin' about Fort Benning for a long time."

"We cannot go!"

"Why, Rick, why?"

"Because my daughter is still out there," Carol reminded, stepping up to Shane.

Isaac's shoulders dropped. He hadn't forgotten about the young blonde girl. Everytime Carl came into view, he thought of Sophia. Everytime Carol came into view, he thought of Sophia. Everytime Isaac saw Alyson or Sadie, he thought of Sophia. And for some odd reason, whenever he thought of Sophia, he thought of his sister.

Layla would be a few years younger than Sophia. Scared of the dark but loved to hide. She was all legs and arms, much like he was in his youth. Quick on her feet but was too scared to run. Just like him.

Isaac didn't know why Shane pissed him off but knew that his lack of care for Lay-Sophia switched something in his head.

Shane scoffed, "Okay." He pulled himself together, biting his tongue from the harsh words he wanted to say. "Okay, I think it's time that we all start to just consider the other possibility."

Death.

Before that possibly could resonate any further, Rick cut him off. "Shane! We're not leaving Sophia behind."

"I'm close to finding this girl. I just found her damn doll two days ago."

Mockingly, Shane chuckled. Isaac narrowed his eyes on him. "You found her doll, Daryl. That's what you did. You found a doll."

"That's more than you've done," Isaac snapped, crossing his arms. Shane tilted his head, almost asking Isaac to keep talking to see what would happen. "What have you done besides bully a teenage girl and a grieving mom? Huh?"

He stepped forward, daring Isaac to speak again. "You watch what you say, boy."

"You don't know what the hell you're talking about," Daryl shouted, forcing Shane to focus on him rather than the teenager. He pushed Isaac behind him to continue his uproar.

As the arguing intensified, Isaac put his attention on his people. Alyson glared at Shane, staying beside Carol as if she were her own daughter. In another life, she could have been. She basically was, only her Carol had survived to see the end. She refused to let a man who was drowning in his own selfish desires, destroy others. Not again. A result of her loss.

Sadie, on the other hand, wasn't focused on the chaos that ensued right next to her. Her eyes observed the old wood, hearing it creak as bags of decay bumped against it in search of food. Scattered as if she hadn't been sleeping; she heard every sound, felt every roar of anger. She hadn't flinched. Their groans of hunger sounded like farm animals, yet they went unheard by the adults. They fixated on their selfish wants rather than the needs of the group as a whole-of Hershel's needs.

"I'm just saying what needs to be said here. You get a good lead, it's in the first 48 hours." Rick's attempts to stop the man were treated like the walkers, like Sadie. "Let me tell you something else, man. If she was alive out there and saw you coming all methed out with your buck knife and geek ears around your neck, she would run in the other direction."

Sadie glanced at Isaac. Her brown eyes begged him to do something in the sliver of a second that she switched her gaze back to her encased fears. Unlike Shane, who only had eyes on his own wants, or Rick, who had to prioritize everyone before deciding, Isaac didn't have the overbearing pressure they gave each other. Their argument sparked elsewhere and this only fed the forest fire.

"Hey!" Isaac shoved Shane away as he aimed to attack Daryl, who lunged at him for good reason. Shane looked almost offended. Almost. His mouth tweaked, growing upward. For a brief second, Isaac understood why Daryl went to attack him. And for another, he wanted to do the same. For all that he has done.

Isaac got into his face. "You've done enough. You aren't in charge here, no matter how much you try to act like you are, you aren't. So back the fuck off and let Rick handle it. Before you ruin this for everyone."

Shane's hands snatched the collar of Isaac's shirt, shaking him as if he was a doll. Everything moved too fast. Shane was pulled off the boy, but it did not stop his blind rage from targeting Isaac. Isaac was ready to fight back. He was willing to ruin their chances with Rick and his group, and Hershel just to let his anger out on Shane.

He deserved it. He deserved it for the way he treated Sadie. He deserved it for the way he toyed with their safety. He deserved it simply because Isaac wanted to see his knuckles enveloped with Shane Walsh's blood for the simple fact that his eyes reminded him of the dark that he once feared-

But Lori stepped in between, pushing Shane away. "Back off!"

"Keep your hands off me."

"Now just let me talk to Hershel," Rick offered, being the mediator. "Let me figure it out."

Shane turned on his heels. "What are you gonna figure out?!"

"If we're gonna stay, if we're gonna clear this barn, I have to talk him into it. This is his land," Rick reminded for the umpteeth time. Much like Shane, Rick didn't get it into his head that Shane never respected Hershel's authority. He lacked respect, among other things.

"Hershel sees those things in there as people-sick people-his wife, his stepson," Dale informed, changing everything. Hershel would never understand where they were coming from. Even the slightest suggestion of getting rid of the dead inside the barn, they were sure to be kicked out before dusk.

Rick tilted his head. "You knew?"

"Yesterday, I talked to Hershel."

"And you waited the night?" Shane grunted, stepping an inch too close to Dale.

"I thought we could survive one more night. We did." Dale shifted his gaze back to Rick to explain himself. "I was waiting till this morning to say something. But Glenn wanted to be the one."

"The man is crazy, Rick," Shane interjected, refusing to let Rick get swayed by any ideas that weren't his. "If Hershel thinks those things are alive or-no!"

He cut himself off just as Rick attempted to calm him down. But there was no calming Shane. He was a ticking time bomb, seconds from exploding. He would destroy everything in his vicinity just to be right. He had nothing to lose and everything to gain.

The arguing attracted the dead. Their growls of hunger slipped through the cracks as they pressed against the barn doors. Fingers reached out for flesh. For them.

"We cannot stay here," Alyson urged, gathering her belongings into her bag. She piled Sadie's things together, motioning to her to pack. "We can't."

Sadie held herself tightly, shuffling away from her things. Not to gather to up and leave as they had done before. She put them back to where they belonged. Not a single sound escaped from her since they left the barn. If she hadn't been glued to Isaac's shadow, he would have thought she was never there.

"We can't leave either," he argued, causing Alyson to stand and glare at him. "You said it yourself, we're helping them find Sophia, and Sophia is still out there."

Voluntarily, or probably involuntarily, Alyson scoffed. A wince followed but her stance didn't change. "We...we need to be realistic."

This time, Isaac scoffed, voluntarily. She sounded like Shane, less impulse but still like him. No, she sounded like her brother. Not Nathan, but the other one. The Goddamn pain-in-the-neck shadow of daddy. Belief and hope meant nothing to them if it conflicted with their survival, with what they wanted.

Isaac knew Alyson was no one's shadow. She was no spokesman either.

"Realistic? Okay, let's be realistic: we go back out there, just the three of us, we will die."

As harsh as it came out, Isaac needed her to get it into her head. Alyson was never one to fully think things through; and to be fair, neither was Isaac, but at least he tried. "How much longer do you think is in us to live like that again? With what we have? What if we come across people like them in Atlanta? 'Cause realistically, Alyson, if we leave right now, without trying, everything we went through to fucking leave would be for nothing."

It was the truth he believed wholeheartedly. He had been tiptoeing around the topic for months to keep Alyson and Sadie safe, but he needed to be realistic. Isaac didn't know how much longer he could protect them by himself.

Alyson said nothing.

He hated when they argued, hated it even more when she wouldn't say anything. It never meant he was right or wrong, it meant that she was done. She was tired of it.

"It was all for nothing regardless." She never stayed quiet for long. "If Rick can't convince Hershel to get rid of those creeps, I can't stay here. I won't."

Not an inch of regret could be detected on Alyson. She meant it.

"You'd leave us?"

Isaac's eyes migrated to Sadie. She unraveled herself slightly, keeping her nails near her cracked lips. "Really?"

Regret was finally found, but Alyson wasn't one to back down too quickly. She was her father's daughter. She moved past her friends and towards the van. The others were spread across the property, mostly in the house or guarding the barn. That meant they didn't need to worry about what they said."Why should we stay? Sophia is gone, this place isn't safe anymore, he is going to get us killed."

"Shane isn't in charge. And-and there's walkers all over, Aly," Isaac stated again, slowly this time, "she's probably hiding and moving whenever she can. It's possible she's alive."

Alyson scoffed, "Walkers?"

"Really? That's all you got from that?"

She spun around, turning red in the face. "We aren't with them!"

"But maybe we want to be!" Isaac spoke for Sadie and himself. Sadie hadn't disagreed, so he continued as he always did. "...they're good people, probably the best people in the world right now, and I'm not about to lose that because you are scared."

Sadie shook her head, forcing her hands down towards her sides. "Let's just wait a day-half a day. Let Rick talk to him before...before we choose what to do. Please." Her pleads were targeted towards Alyson, but she looked at Isaac when she said it. She faced Alyson. "They have to know where Sophia is. Whether she's alive...or she's not. We have to know too."

Heavy breaths kept the silence from suffocating them, but the air was still thick. Isaac waited for Alyson to agree, she wanted her to agree. There was no way in hell that he would let her go on her own, even if he didn't want to leave the farm or Rick's people. She was his family, and his family came first.

"Fine. One day, after that, we decide."