┌───────────────────┐

└───────────────────┘

A L I C E

ALICE DUNLAP ALWAYS WONDERED what death would be like. The concept was always in the back of everyone's mind, as they had to maneuver their way through a deathly world. Luckily, for the girl, she was still on earth, left with the ability to wonder about something that hadn't yet consumed her.

She was fine. Alice didn't know how, but her symptoms vanished. The girl was still sickly, though, and was resting on the bottom bunk, having somehow made her way up there from the cold floor.

Having no context about her own safety, the girl assumed that Carl was the one to put her there, as he'd been keeping her company during her everlasting bedrest. She had no idea how long she'd been sick or even how long she'd been sitting there with Carl by her bedside.

Their time spent together was no longer saddening. It was as if Elliot and Patrick didn't just die—as if chaos wasn't tearing apart everything that the group worked so hard to establish, at the prison. Grief was no longer in the air, although the girl was well aware that Elliot and Patrick were no longer around. The feeling—or lack thereof—held a resemblance to the effect of drugs, which might've been given to the sick girl. It was odd, but Alice wasn't going to question it.

"Your face is finally getting some of its color back." The boy raised the back of his de-gloved hand, pressing it all over the girl's face. First it went to her cheek, then her forehead, before over-turning cradling the other side of her face. "And your fever isn't as bad."

The girl, however, did not feel the fever that Carl Grimes was talking about. She felt nothing but an immense comfort from the soft, fresh sheets she was entangled in and the warming touch from the boy's soft hand. The ever-so-innocently intimate contact was nothing like anything Alice and the boy had ever experienced with one another.

They'd previously held hands in a moment of desperation, but that was out of fear—the thought that the two might never see each other again. This time, it was different. It was welcoming and subtle, as if the two had become so familiar that they depended on one another.

Alice never thought that Carl Grimes would show such concern over her lowering fever, but she also never thought that the boy would cast a blush upon the tops of her cheeks. That of which burned with an obviousness, but the girl wasn't embarrassed. She wanted to speak, but her eyes carefully studied the boy as he pulled his hand away.

"You seem tired." Carl offered the girl a soft smirk, looking down at her as he continued to kneel next to her bed.

He was hatless, letting his hair dangle forward as he watched the girl with intent. After a few moments, the boy grabbed two fistfuls of the warm sheets that were on top of the girl, pulling them away from her body. Alice still felt warmth surrounding her legs, as though the sheets were still tucked firmly around her.

The girl did not plan on responding to Carl. She just continued to watch him as though he was a movie—her eager eyes peering up at him like his bed-side attentiveness was a dream come true. And the boy seemingly had no problem with being a source of entertainment for the groggy girl.

Amidst Carl's fumbling with the bedsheets, he began to lean forward. Alice's eyebrows furrowed as she suddenly stared up at the bottom of the top bunk, feeling the warmth of his breath brush against her face. The boy placed his lips right next to her ear, as she eagerly awaited the words that he would say next.

"Wake up."

☆

The girl blinked a few times from beneath her furrowed eyebrows, before her confusion finally allowed her to gather the words needed to respond to him. "Wh—What are you talking ab—"

When she turned to face the boy, he was no longer there. Her body ached as a result of the simple turning of her head. Her dry throat burned with the air of her fragmented words. Something was not right.

The girl scrambled to sit upon the springy mattress of the bottom bunk. Once she gathered her surroundings with widening eyes and used her hands to feel around, it wasn't hard for Alice Dunlap to piece together what was happening.

None of it was real. That version of Carl, for now, wasn't real, no matter how badly the girl wanted it to be.

The only thing that was real to the girl was the pile of sheets pulled just below her knees. They no longer smelt fresh nor provided the warmth that she remembered. Scuffs of blood, presumably from the girl's own throat, battered the sheets that no longer covered her.

A gasp emitted from Alice's throat as she pulled her eyes away from the blood—the sudden gust of air sending scratchy coughs shooting out of her mouth. Her body was no longer heaving with the same hindrance of mucus. She was dried out.

As if instinctual, her eyes landed upon a full bottle of water sitting on the floor of her cell. Somehow, the girl found the strength to stand from the bunk. Her muscles strained, but with a healing soreness rather than the familiar feeling of the fever-aches. She clambered to her knees, grabbing the bottle and tearing off the cap. The girl squeezed every last drop from the crinkling bottle, titling her head back and letting them drip into her open mouth.

Alice took a few labored breaths, wiping a few rogue drops of water from her chin, before throwing the crushed plastic bottle to the ground. Once she pulled herself off the ground, she ran to the entrance of her cell, aiming to find someone—preferably Carl Grimes.

Instead of being granted entrance to the corridor of cell block D, the girl was met with the thick metal bars to the door of the cell. Her fists immediately clenched around them, shaking the door that was undeniably locked.

"Hey!"

The girl was answered by nothing but her own voice echoing throughout the empty corridor. She moved from side to side, trying to see as much of the cell block as possible, but all that she noticed was overwhelming sunlight that poured in from the hole in the crumbled ceiling.

Her eyes widened at the sight. "Is anyone out there?"

Alice was left trapped in a cell block that'd clearly met its end. She backed away from the door, letting her fingers unravel themselves from around the metal bars. The girl's bare foot stepped on something sharp—a set of keys. Next to the ring of keys was her gun, that of which she had no idea had been there the whole time.

With wide eyes and sudden intakes of breath, the girl lifted the keys and gun from the floor, before placing them on the side table and beginning to dress herself. She started by changing her shirt that'd been matted with blood. Then she found a pair of socks before fastening the laces of her boots around her ankles. The final touch was the buckling of her thigh holster around her pant leg, that of which she slipped her knife into.

As if nothing had ever changed, Alice picked up her gun and checked its cylinder. Upon seeing that only one bullet had been used, the girl furrowed her eyebrows, shook her head and shoved the gun into the back of the waistband of her pants.

She fumbled with the ring of keys in her hands as her feet skidded towards the door. One by one, the girl tested nearly all of the keys by blindly sticking them in the direction of the keyhole that she couldn't quite spot from her side of the bars. Alice let out a breath of relief when one key finally slid all the way in, emitting a small clicking sound.

Leaving the keys dangling out of the hole, the girl only slightly opened the creaky, metal door before slipping out into the cell block. It was only then that she caught a glimpse of whatever had happened to the place that was supposed to have been her home.

Rubble from the gaping hole in the ceiling was everywhere. Right outside of the girl's cell was one of the dead that'd already been put down by a bullet to the head. Everything that once had an organized place in the corridor only seemed to have been scattered around by the elements of the earth.

Although Alice Dunlap didn't know what'd happened to the prison, she knew that she was better off not sticking around to suffer its same fate.

☆

Upon using all of her energy to simply get herself out of her overrun home, the girl felt exhausted by even the thought of having to do this all on her own. She'd survived these conditions before, but that was several months ago when she still had a father and a brother.

Now, she had no one. She'd lost so much more than she could've ever imagined. Getting used to the resemblance of a protected life behind those fences took away more than she bargained for. Now she lacked her sharpened instincts, leaving her to feel as though her own shadow was stalking her.

In a way, Alice was glad that Elliot and Patrick were not around to experience the end of the prison and all of the loss that came with it. Although the way that the two had met their fate was brutal in itself, it couldn't have been worse than whatever caused the main yard to be sprinkled with bodies—some familiar and some not.

The only thing keeping the girl going was the lack of bodies of the people she knew. She didn't know whether or not they were alive, but she knew that they made it out—that they were away somewhere. And although there was a chance that she could find them, she'd never let herself become too hopeful. Alice knew firsthand what separating for a few minutes could mean in this world, and she had a missing father as evidence.

Noises coming from a clearing interrupted the girl's sluggish walking, as she quickly began lurking behind a tree. It was a small cluster of the dead. They were dispersed as they moved alongside one another, in whatever aimless direction they pleased. She rolled her eyes in remembrance of what it used to be like having to constantly wait for the dead to pass, and reluctantly pressed her back against the tree.

But a thudding sound pulled her focus once more, as a walker in the middle of the horde dropped to the ground. The girl squinted her eyes, trying to catch a glance at what all of the dead had just been alerted to. She watched as they all began to swarm around the individual who'd killed the first walker.

Alice couldn't believe her eyes when she finally heard the voice of the individual as she let out a grunt, slashing her katana through the air. The girl slowly stepped out from behind the tree, watching as the dead met their end one at a time. She watched in awe as the bodies accumulated around the person dropping them: Michonne.

Alice Dunlap knew that finding the rest of the group—that finding Carl—would be like finding a needle in a haystack. But thankfully, somewhere in this deadly haystack, she'd somehow stumbled upon a human metal detector.

───── ⋆✩⋆ ─────
1965 words
March 7, 2023
9:33 PM

A/N

guys I'm not even kidding when I say the original author's note was a 1000+ word rant (with citations and images) about my investigation into the girl that has dedicated her life to copying me on tiktok

but I'm biting my tongue because nobody cares. (I have it copied and pasted in my notes app in case it happens again and I need to do a speedy takesdown)

also I'm sorry for the HORRENDOUSLY short chapter but in my experience, people don't really have a long attention span for chapters where the OC is separated from Carl and tend to skim through it, so I just did shortened scenes to show the sequences of events !!

can we talk about that dream??? the subconscious mind might be what makes Alice realize she LIKE likes him ehehehehee

I'm SO excited for you guys to see everything that I have planned for these next few chapters :p and I hope you guys are excited too AAAHHHH

☆vote b/c next chapter is Carl's pov☆