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“God, Violet, just get off my fucking case, would you?!” Mitch’s voice could be heard from the office and down the halls.
Clementine was leaving her dorm when she heard the outburst, AJ looking up at her with confusion and curiosity on his face. The two approached the double doors only for the ill-tempered young man to rip them open and nearly bump into them.
“Mitch, get your ass back here! We have important things that we need to discuss!” Violet called back to him, the bite in her voice as clear as day. She watched him push his way past Clementine and AJ then started to chase after him. “Stop acting like a goddamn baby! Fix the bomb and make sure it works!”
Mitch turned around, stomping back up to her. Clementine dismissed AJ, ushering him to the other side of the hall so she could try and break up the argument. From where she stood, it seemed as if that they were agitated that the first couple test trials of the explosive had ended in failure one way or another, and with the days of the attack counting down, everyone was on edge. Violet wanted the bomb to be ready for use as soon as possible while Mitch was trying as hard as he could to create the perfect formula to maximize the blast. It didn’t help that most everyone treated him like an idiot when he at least had theoretical combustion stoichiometry memorized. The only thing impeding him really was the potential of the propane they had found to have expired. He had checked the cannister over and over, finding no punctures or dents and no problems with the valve. And if that wasn’t causing the problem, he assumed that it was his parts.
“I don’t see you trying to fucking help with anything,” he accused Violet. “All you do is just walk around like you’re Marlon, but guess what? You’re not him, and you will never be him!”
“Come the fuck on, Mitch,” Violet retaliated. “I’m making sure everyone is preparing right. We don’t know when the raiders are going to attack, so we need to be ready.”
“Are you shitting me? And how do you know if my bomb is right? How do you know how to get the elements to react just right to get the explosion we need to carry this plan out? That’s right, you don’t. So quit nagging me!”
“Guys, let’s all try to calm down,” Clementine tried to mediate.
“Don’t, Clem, just don’t,” Mitch snarled.
“Stay out of it,” Violet added.
Mitch shook his finger at Violet. “I’ve been wracking my brain with theories since we got the stuff trying to make sure I don’t waste what we have—I have skipped on meals just to think how to help everyone. One tank is all we have. If I fuck up, we all fuck up. No do-overs.”
“Then don’t waste the fucking gas.”
“Ha-ha, easier said than done, bitch. Do you want to try?”
Clementine forced her way between them, pushing Violet back from Mitch since she was of a smaller build. She pleaded with both of them to stop the fighting, but it only got worse. The meals that Mitch had skipped meant more could be rationed out according to Violet. It was a slip of the tongue that wasn’t a genuine sentiment in the heat of the argument, but it struck Mitch like a hard slap across his face.
“I am so sick of being treated like this!” he raged.
“Mitch—” Clementine tried to get a word in.
“If it means you guys will be better off, then fine. I’ll see myself out. Fuck staying here; I can live on my own.”
The brunet left the altercation with a bleeding ego. Fights always eventually simmered down at Ericson, though. The kids there had no one else to turn to except for each other, which prompted Violet to believe that Mitch would come out of his room later into the night to eat. He was already hungry, and his bouts of aggression were exacerbated by an empty stomach and frustrations with his plans. But Clementine wasn’t so sure.
Hours passed, and no one had seen Mitch since that afternoon. The next day came, and still no Mitch. Clementine had spent time with Ruby and Aasim to help them with their preparations, but she couldn’t help but worry about him. Had he really left the school?
Clementine went to Violet’s office, hoping for the best and fearing the worst. If they lost Mitch, they wouldn’t stand a chance against the raiders. They needed everyone to work together, not tearing themselves and each other apart.
She knocked on the door. Violet welcomed her in. “Hi, Clem,” Violet greeted her that night. “I take it you’re worried about Mitch.”
“Yeah, I am,” Clementine said.
“Willy and Tenn are upset about him, too. God, if I’ve never fucked up before, I’ve fucked up big time now.”
“What you said to him was really bad, Violet, but both of you were angry.”
“I was hoping he’d come back so we could make up together, but…everyone’s all said they hadn’t seen him all day. Willy said he wasn’t in the dorms, either. The bomb supplies are still here. He didn’t take anything—like he really did just walk out.”
Clementine let out a sigh. Waiting for him to come back wouldn’t do them any good. If he went out by himself with no weapons other than his shiv, there was a good chance that he was in danger or had already been killed. Mitch was a nice guy under all that anger, she knew it. She had seen it herself, and she admired him for it.
She steeled herself, her resolve unbending. “Violet, let me go out and look for him,” she said. “I can talk to him, get him to calm down.”
“Clem, no, you can’t,” Violet quickly denied. “What if Abel or Lilly are out there?”
“And if they are? Mitch is out there alone. They’ll kidnap him, and without him, we can’t fight back. Besides, I don’t think he really meant to leave. He cares about Willy and Tennessee too much to do that.”
Violet sulked, knowing that she was right. She didn’t want her to go out in the dark, though. It was much more dangerous without the light, but she didn’t want her to go alone either. Clementine insisted that she did. They couldn’t endanger any more of their people.
The next morning, Clementine notified the other kids that she was heading out to find Mitch. AJ begged to come, but she wouldn’t let him. She thought that having him along would make him feel uncomfortable, and it was a rather personal matter.
“I’m sorry, AJ, but I really need to speak to Mitch alone, okay? He’s really mad,” she softly explained. “If you were mad, would you want other people to listen to our talk?”
“No, but they do anyway,” AJ replied.
“And how does that make you feel?”
“Stupid.”
Clementine nodded, allowing such a response to pass. Mitch was probably going to feel that way, too, and if AJ was there to give his two cents, it would probably make matters worse. She stood up from where she was kneeling to look the boy in the eye. “I’ll try to come back as soon as possible,” she reassured them.
“Just make sure you come back,” Louis told her. “We need both of you to get through this fight.”
“If you run into walkers—” Violet started.
“I’ll take care of them,” Clementine said, a determined smile on her lips.
She turned, walking to the school gate trying to figure out just where Mitch would run off to. He most likely wouldn’t still be in the safe zone. The old shack by the river was part of that, and if someone were to go fishing, they’d run into him. He didn’t want to be found, at least not that easily. So, she wondered if he had gone past that.
She walked a bit into the woods. Every once in a while, there was a walker standing around listening to her every footstep. She took care not to make too much noise. And eventually, she came to the road leading away from the school. It was overgrown with shrubbery and fallen trees covered it, so any chances of stragglers finding the school were low unless it was Lilly’s gang.
Walking farther and farther out, she tensed. Another storm was coming soon; she could feel it. It was an unshakeable cold that settled on her skin, and things were quiet. She came to the edge of the woods, and she saw the dark clouds rolling in above the train station where the burnt remains of her wrecked car still sat. She looked at the station.
“What?” she mumbled to herself. “There’s a trail of dead walkers…Mitch?”
She cocked her head to side, suspicious of the piles of walkers. With no other lead to find him, she snuck over to the building. It was true that the number of walkers that had been there had been thinned, and the ones she got a chance to look at all had small stab wounds in the head. There were maybe only six or seven of them by the door—which was a lot when she was by herself. They were trying to get inside. The windows were blocked, so there was little chance of knowing whether or not Mitch was really in there.
She stepped towards a cylinder of some sort for cover, scanning the ground for something like a rock or stick that she could throw to distract the walkers. She found a fist-sized rock. She came from her hiding spot to a corner of one of the detached train cars. Getting into position and as best as she could, she threw the rock at the car farthest from the building and from her.
The metal clang echoed, and the distraction worked like a charm. The walkers shuffled and plodded to where the sound came from, and once they were all away from the door, she carefully and quietly tiptoed to it. The door could no longer be locked after she pried it open; it had been blocked by something. A storm was coming.
“Mitch, I really hope it’s you in there,” she said with anticipation.
She held her body up to the door. Without making any sound, she used the weight of herself to push the blockade out. Whatever was situated in front of the door, it screeched against the floorboards, forcing her to stop abruptly. Only a crack had opened up in the door, just barely big enough to see past the walker couple to the ticket booth.
“I still can’t see anything,” she whispered.
She tried to shove it some more, this time managing to make enough space for her arm to reach in. The walkers still hadn’t heard her, thankfully. Now she had to feel around to see what was blocking her way.
It was one of the dining table chairs propped under the doorknob that prevented her from getting inside. She couldn’t pull back on the door without digging into her arm. She had to take the chance to push it from under the knob. She grabbed it by the top of the back, and with as much force as she could, she shoved it forward. It made a horrendous screech across the floor that did alert the walkers. She hurried inside. The walkers, attempting to overrun the station, tried to push their way in.
“Fuck,” she said through clenched teeth while trying to shut the door. Once she managed it, she quickly pushed it back under the knob. “That’s not going to hold for long…probably.” She looked around the station where she had first crashed and where she had first met Abel. “Guess I’m stuck here for a while.”
She quietly walked around the station. The boards on the windows were still holding up, which granted her some sort of relief, but the walker couple that she had left alive was dead now. Like the ones outside, they had two small stab wounds on their heads.
“Mitch, are you here?” she half-whispered, as if conscious that the walkers would grow more feral if they heard her speak.
Clementine came to the ticket booth door that was wide open with the key still in the keyhole. She held onto her knife. She spotted a body on the dingy mattress partially covering the floor door. Greasy dark brown hair and a worn-out jean jacket. Dirty grey pants and brown boots. The person was curled up on the mattress, unmoving but breathing.
“Mitch? Mitch!” Clementine gasped when she fully registered the frame. Approaching him, she rolled him over. “You haven’t been bit, have you? Last thing I want to do is put you down.”
“Clem…?” he mumbled. “What are you doing here…?”
“I could ask you the same thing.” She helped him to sit up, but once he did, he gripped his stomach. “You haven’t eaten.”
Mitch shook his head.
“There should still be food under the floorboards!”
Mitch shook his head again. “Those fuckers…the raiders…probably came back and stole the rest of it…” he panted. “And not eating those couple days…heh, maybe I am as stupid as they think.”
Clementine frowned before she tried to look for anything that could give him some energy. He assured her that he would be okay. People could last a while without food, but that was the least of her worries. He looked pale.
“When was the last time you had anything to drink?” she asked him.
“I don’t remember…”
“Yeah, that’s the problem. Just hang on, maybe I can find something.”
She left the ticket booth, scouring the entire of the building for even a cup of water that had been left out. When she couldn’t find anything, she looked for something that could contain it. The storm was almost here. She just needed to put something out to catch the rain. She returned to the ticket booth in search of that container.
“Clem, you’re just wasting your energy…” Mitch weakly said. “I’ll be okay.”
“Bullshit,” she said. “We can’t have you dying on us. We need you, Mitch.” She found in one of the cabinets a newly packaged baby’s bottle. She remembered that the couple had been trying to have a baby, and as morbid as it was, she was glad they didn’t. “Now to find a place I can catch the rain.”
“Rain…?”
“A storm is coming this way. If I can catch some of it in this, you can drink it.”
Clementine knew it was suicide to crack a window or the door. Then she thought that maybe there was an opening under the floor. Mitch was laying on the mattress covering the door, though, and she felt guilty for even thinking of asking him to move aside. Regardless, it had to be done.
Mitch’s stomach pains forced him to lie back down just when she approached him. She knew he was feeling terrible, but they didn’t have time to wait for him to feel well enough to move. She pulled him off the mattress then moved it out of the way. She remembered that when AJ and she had first found the stock, they had moved it aside. The idea that he was probably planning to stay in the ticket booth and subsequently tried to hide the door broke her heart. Now wasn’t the time to get sentimental or anything of the sort.
“Okay, there’s got to be a way to get outside from under here,” she puffed. “Mitch, are you doing okay?”
“Yeah…probably…”
“As long as you’re still talking to me.”
She opened the door, wary of any traps again like the first time. There wasn’t any, and Mitch had been right that there was no food left that she could see just from opening it.
“I’ll be right back,” she notified Mitch. “I’m just going to set this out to catch some of the water.”
“Mkay…” Mitch responded.
Clementine jumped down into the crawlspace, following what little light from outside was left. She found a decent-sized hole that she could fit the bottle through, and after unwrapping it from the package, she set it just outside of the building. She just hoped that it wouldn’t blow away.
As she turned around to crawl back to the ticket booth, her foot hit something which hit something else. She hadn’t packed a flashlight, so she felt around the ground. Her hands happened upon a larger plastic container as well as a small can. Frantically, she grabbed them and brought them to the surface.
“Oh my God,” she breathlessly said. “Mitch, I found something to eat!”
“Yay…” he moaned. He swung his fist into the air only to have it flop back down.
She placed them on the floorboards before climbing out and closing the door. She had found a container full of cheeseballs as well as a can of beans. The cheeseballs would definitely make them thirstier, but the beans were a godsend.
She cut open the top of the can with her knife, being careful not to punch through the entire thing. Once she got it open, she crawled over to Mitch, who seemed disinterested only because he was so drained. They didn’t have any utensils or bowls to use other than the dirty ones on the table left behind by the walker couple probably some months or years ago. Whatever grime was on her hands was most likely on his in addition to fertilizer and propane.
“Look, Mitch! You can eat!” she urged him. He simply whined, his belly growling at the smell and paining him at the same time. “Come on!”
The brunet looked for the strength to push himself up, every move he made eliciting some sort of aching and stiffness. He leaned on his arm.
“You really found something…Cool…” he smiled.
“Yep, so here, eat.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll be fine. I took care of AJ, so I’m used to not eating for some time. You, on the other hand, look like you’ll die soon if you don’t get something in you.”
Mitch looked guiltily at the can. Clementine put it beside him. She heard the sudden downpour begin, and she was eager to know if the bottle was catching rain. She left him to eat the beans to check on the bottle, and after a few minutes, she came back to find that he hadn’t touched it. This struck her as strange.
“Mitch, come on, you have to,” she urged him again.
“Only after you take some.” He looked outside through the slits made by the wood on the windows. “We’re going to be here a while. If I can’t shrivel up and die, then you can’t either.”
At first, Clementine thought it was his stubborn attitude getting in the way again—which it was, but he respected and cared for her, supporting that he simply wanted her to take a bite first. She was close to him like Willy and Tenn, and he was ready to put himself in harm’s way to help her just like he always helped them. She honored his request, taking a tiny scoop of the sustenance to feed herself. She handed him the can, and only when he saw her toss the beans and sauce into her mouth did he finally accept it.
The can of beans wasn’t going to fill him up, but at least it was something to cut the stomach pains. Clementine stared at the container of cheeseballs. They looked good, but they were salty. Mitch watched her then the cheeseballs then her again.
“You’re not going to open them?” he asked, some life returning to his words now that he had eaten.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” she answered him. “Not until you’ve had something to drink, too.”
Mitch raised an eyebrow at her. He wanted to ask her something, looking at the now empty can, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. She was only trying to help him so that they could make the bomb and be prepared for Lilly and the raiders.
The rain was coming down even harder, and Clementine again went to check on the bottle. While she was gone, he contemplated. Did Violet send her to get him, or did she volunteer? It wouldn’t be out of character of her, though even AJ wasn’t with her. Since they had worked together in the greenhouse to make it accessible again as well as gather materials, he had a fluttering in the pit of his stomach whenever he saw her. Sure, he had no problems with silly banter, but he was alone with her in a place far from everyone else. And Clementine didn’t tell secrets. If she had noticed anything, she wouldn’t tell anyone about it.
He looked unsurely at the can and the cheeseballs and the open door in the floor. He felt uncomfortable being with her by himself in essentially a storm shelter surrounded by walkers. Far from romantic. He liked her, but he couldn’t possibly tell her that. He pelted the empty can at the wall, the frustration of how he felt commanding his arm.
“Mitch?” Clementine’s voice came from below. She emerged from the door. “What was that sound?”
“N-Nothing. It was nothing,” he sighed. “Clem, you ready to buckle down here for the night? Doesn’t sound like that storm is going to let up anytime soon.”
“You’re right,” Clementine agreed. “But on the bright side, I got you a little bit of water.” She held up the bottle, three-quarter full of rainwater.
“You sure that’s safe to drink? Didn’t roll off the roof or anything? Walker shit in it?” he asked her the same way they played around in the greenhouse.
“I don’t think walkers can shit.”
“You never know,” Mitch laughed. “With the amount of living people they eat, I wouldn’t be surprised.” His typically hidden smile was back. He looked at the mattress, the smile transforming into a look of disgust and unease.
“What’s wrong?” Clementine asked him. She stared at the mattress. “We can take shifts, if it makes you feel better.”
“We’re both going to need our strength to get out of here. I don’t think those assholes outside can get in. But if the raiders come snooping around—”
“I doubt Lilly and Abel will come back here. Other than the cheeseballs and the beans, I don’t think there was anything else left.”
“The others don’t know that. They might think we’re dumb enough to come back to scavenge. I mean, I was.” He averted his gaze, angered by how Violet and Ruby always treated him, in front of Clementine no less.
“Something on your mind?”
“None of your business.”
“If it’s about Violet and your fight with her, I promised AJ I would talk to you about it.” She glared at him before he could talk her down from the notion. “We’re all on edge, and if you really haven’t been eating, then it’s understandable if you’re angry.”
“It’s not just that!” Mitch suddenly burst. Clementine was startled, but she forced herself to remain calm. “I’m sorry, Clem. The formula for the bomb takes time. The equation isn’t working out as I’d expected. The propane’s degraded, but it’s not significant enough to trash the whole idea. Just means I need to use more than I was expecting. I just don’t want to use the propane to test each equation. And then if I put too much, we could wind up with half the school blown to hell.”
Clementine closed the door after pulling herself up again, this time with the baby bottle full of water. She sat on the mattress, patting beside her for him to sit with her. He crawled over, sitting so that there was still a little space between them. She handed him the bottle and ordered him to drink it before he started talking again.
“Anyway, she was like, telling me how to do it, but it’s not as simple as she’s making it. I can’t just mix them together and—poof—it works like a charm. And…treating me like some idiot? I don’t see anyone else trying to do chemistry. Fucking hell.” He gripped his knees. “And then she said what she said.”
“But she didn’t mean it,” Clementine rectified.
“Now you’re standing up for her? Clem!”
“I’m not standing up for her. Look, both of you are really stressed out. I already spoke to Violet about it, and besides that, I know you wouldn’t just abandon Willy and Tennessee.”
“Of course not! I…I was planning on coming back in a couple days after I calmed down, but that plan went to shit.” He looked up at her, meeting her eyes and immediately looked back down. “Willy and Tenn…they’re like brothers to me. I can’t leave them.”
“So then it’s settled? You’re not mad anymore? You’ll come back?”
“Yeah,” Mitch gently said after a moment’s pause. Clementine reflected the smile only for him to realize what he was doing. He turned away from her, forcing a frown to erase his smile. “But…if she’s going to get on my case again about the bomb.”
“We can all talk together.”
“Alright, I’ll trust you to mediate, but Clem, listen to me. Don’t get in the middle of us like that again.” He looked over his shoulder at her sternly. “We’re not exactly the safest people to be around. We’re not called ‘troubled youths’ for nothing.”
“None of you scare me,” Clementine told him. “Trust me, I’ve met worse people—Lilly being one of them.”
“Scary or not, any one of us can…we can hurt you if things get out of hand.”
“I don’t believe that, and I don’t think you should either. That kind of energy is good now.”
The two of them didn’t talk for a few minutes until sleep began to come over them. The rain was still going hard outside, and amidst the sound of it, the walkers were still at the door gurgling and randomly thumping against it.
“Think they can get in?” Mitch asked. The anxiousness in his voice was there if subtle. “That chair was a crapshoot.”
Clementine went to the ticket booth door, took the key, pulled it in, and locked it. It wouldn’t provide much protection, but it offered some peace of mind. “You sure you don’t want to take shifts?” she asked.
“If we sleep now, we can get up early and head back to the school,” Mitch said.
“How do we get past the walkers?”
“Pick them off?
“That’s a death wish.”
“Probably.”
Both of them giggled. Mitch looked behind him at the rest of the mattress. Clementine looked at it as well. Only one of them felt opposed to lying with the other on it. They looked at each other.
“What do we do?” Clementine asked.
“I don’t know,” Mitch said without much thought. Then he realized what he said. “Uh, you can take it, I can sleep…over by the door. If the walkers break the first door, then they can hit me with the door and I’ll wake up,” he said in an attempt to play off of his offhand response.
“Um, no. Let’s just share it.”
Mitch was astonished that she was willing to share the mattress, and while he really wanted to sleep on it, he was unsure if it was a good idea. What if the walkers ambush them? Not that they would…probably. But still. He watched Clementine even push the only pillow to him. He pushed it back. She pushed it to him, and he pushed it back. She wasn’t amused.
“Fine, we can share the pillow, too,” she huffed. She placed it between them, took off her hat, and the two lie back on it. “See? Not so bad.”
“To you,” he spat. Then he sighed. How was he supposed to sleep next to her at such a weird angle? Not only that, but he had been at that school for years. He kept his distance from the girls, but being so close to her was something new. “Clem?”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks for coming to find me. I figured that everyone wouldn’t care outside of the bomb.” He cleared his throat. “I, uh…appreciate it.”
“I’d rather everyone get along and be safe together,” Clementine told him, her voice softening with each word followed by a yawn. “It’s been so long since I’ve felt safe.”
Mitch’s heart skipped a beat at that, and he wanted to hold her hand as they went to sleep. He couldn’t do it. For as tough as he was, he never understood how tell a girl he liked her. So he just lie quietly next to her until sleep carried him from their reality.
At the crack of dawn, the storm had gone. The walkers were still at the door, and Clementine and Mitch were ready to start picking them off to thin down the group. Mitch stood by the door while Clementine stood opposite of him. He opened the door to let one slowly drag itself inside, and she stabbed it as fast as possible in the head. The first one was down. Then the second one. Then the third. Then the fourth. With only two walkers left, they threw the door open to let them in.
In no time, Clementine disarmed and killed the one that was closest to her. Mitch wrestled the last walker, punching it down and allowing Clementine to stab it. Both let out a sigh; their harebrained plan had paid off.
“No bites?” she asked him.
“No bites,” he replied. There was that rare smile again.
“Alright, let’s get going.”
Clementine scouted ahead to make sure there were no more walkers. It was somewhat sad to know that they were never be back to the train station, but she was glad that it was there. It had kept Mitch safe from the outside world. Now she had to protect him and herself on the way back. She kept her knife drawn. Mitch kept his shiv tucked in his pocket.
By the time they were back in the safe zone, Mitch had resolved himself. “Clem, can I ask you something?” he said nervously. Clementine approved. “Before we get back to Ericson, can we hold hands for just a sec?”
“You? Holding hands?” Clementine couldn’t help but let out a laugh. “You keep surprising me.”
“Ugh, forget I asked.”
“No, you can hold my hand. But let me guess—you don’t want anyone seeing us doing that.”
She held out her hand for him, and he snatched it up all while feeling embarrassed. He liked it, though. He wished he could hold onto her hand forever. But as they neared the school, and they were adamant about keeping it a secret, they gave each other’s hand a squeeze before letting go. Before they stepped through the gate, he asked if she would help mediate between himself and Violet. Clementine looked nonchalantly at him because his tough-guy act was practically nonexistent now. She wanted to make sure they were on the same page, and she was more than happy to do so if it meant that there would be peace. She accepted his request.