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Cold leather across her back and legs splayed out beneath her over soft carpet, Bell could almost pretend she were back home.
The ache of hunger in her belly would certainly add to the authenticity of her reminiscing, though there’s a lack of her mother’s voice in her ear scolding her for ‘wasting time’.
Lara sits across from her, lounging by the tv cabinet as she fixes her new boots. Stolen from closet upstairs without much wear and tear compared to the previous pair now sitting by the fireplace.
Old and worn, with more holes than Swiss cheese. Bell’s unsure how she could even stand to walk in them before, but it’s not like her runners are much better.
They could both do with a shopping spree, but it’s unlikely any mall would be scarce of walkers these days. Or anywhere, really.
“This place is so…” Lara begins, dark eyes tracing over the ornate picture frames on the walls and the fake plants on each end table. “Creepy.”
Bell nods, taking in the picture perfect life some family have left behind. A reminder of the time before, coated in dust and frozen in time. How many houses look like this? How many are relics of the past?
DVD’s scattered on the floor to be chosen for a family movie night that likely never came, knitting by the sofa unfinished and crayons on the coffee table barely used.
Save for the corpse in the corner with his brains splattered against the wall and the wailing of a hoard of walkers passing by the house, it’s almost idyllic in a way.
Creepy, yes. Haunting too. But things can be both yearned for and feared, especially after the past few years. The amount of times she’d wished for this, to be sitting in a room so like this, and yet now she is all she can feel is unsettled by it.
The corpse in the corner doesn’t help, her eyes skirting to the almost skeletal remains every so often just to remind herself this isn’t home.
There is no comfort, no settling in, no low fat yogurt breakfast waiting for when she wakes tomorrow. Only the dead and hoping she and Lara don’t starve before they can find a way through them.
Hordes can last for days depending on the size. Hopefully they’re not here that long, the chances of them being discovered increasing as the days go on.
All it takes is one stumbling through the backyard, or a window accidentally knocked out by the shuffling bodies, and more will be drawn to the sound. It’s unlikely, a paranoid idea, but the fear still sits in her belly.
In Lara’s too. The woman may not say it, but Bell sees it there. The fear burrowing under her skin, the way her eyes dart to the windows. There’s a reason they’re settled in the living room. Close to the stairs, close to the kitchen, far from the entrance.
If they’re quiet, if they don’t draw noise, they should be safe. This house has been scouted already, rooms cleared in search of any walkers. Corpses lay in two bedrooms but none move, cemented to pink spotted sheets and dinosaur pillowcases.
“I’m bored.” Bell mutters, picking at a loose thread on the sweater she’d stolen from the wardrobe upstairs.
“I’m hungry.” Lara replies.
Lara stretches her arms out, feeling a pop in her elbows as she does.
“Wanna search the cupboards?”
Brown eyes peer over at her. Large, dark. Bell has a feeling they were innocent once upon a time, soft and glowing, but maybe that’s just a bad guess. It’s hard to tell who someone was before this world.
Most are hardened into stone and steel, joy ripped away after so long surviving. God, why are her thoughts so dark today? Bell resigns herself to the fact their day had been awful and so awful thoughts will he sure to plague her until they’re back in Alexandria and safe from drama.
They find enough food in the cupboards for supper, settling tinned fruit and canned spaghetti tonight. The fridge isn’t attempted, both knowing the only things that lay in there are mold and a rancid smell.
“Still bored?” Lara asks, picking at the last of her peaches.
“A little,” Bell shrugs, handing over the rest of her tin, “doubt there’s much to do.”
Lara takes it gleefully and, for once, Bell has the smallest smile directed at her. While the older eats, the younger makes her way to the tv cabinet and begins carefully unplugging the dvd player.
“This will come in handy,” Bell pauses, brows furrowed. “Do you think we could take them all? Could the car handle it?”
“Don’t think Rick would like us only coming back with dvds. Should probably have some food.”
“Or at least the contents of that bathroom cabinet.”
Lara snorts.
“He could definitely use it.”
As Bell returns to sorting through the dvds, Lara adds.
“Could come back. Ransack all these houses at some point.”
Bell’s about to agree when she opens one of the cabinets and is immediately faced with an important decision.
Board games stacked atop each other, packs of cards secured with rubber bands in front, and random spare pieces littered about, she’s found a cure for their boredom.
It takes a lot of pleading to convince Lara to play, including promising to cover for her on patrol and babysitting Judith, but eventually the woman gives in with a groan and a playful eye roll.
So, there they are, sitting across from each other in some abandoned living room with cards scattered across the coffee table before them and a frown deeply settled onto Lara’s face.
Bell looks at her hand, mostly green with a few decent cards. The hand right now is yellow, the only colour she doesn’t have. Picking up, she trains her face to remain still.
Lara puts down another card, which would usually reverse their rotation in a normal game. Unfortunately, with just the two of them, it skips Bell. Another rotation card. Then a skip.
“Skip you, skip you, skip you.”
Lara grins, ridding herself of a few cards from her massive hand. The grin grows wider, more devious.
“Pick up four.”
Bell frowns.
“Seriously? I thought you said you’d go easy on me.”
“That was until you made me pick up six.”
“You’re the one who doubled the plus two!”
Lara’s frown settles, a challenge in her dark eyes.
“Are you going to pick up?”
A soft pout pulls at Bell’s lips, her dark brows furrowing. Relenting, four cards are placed into her stack. She looks over her cards, a devious idea in her mind.
“What colour is it?”
Lara shrugs. Puts a seven down.
“Red.”
Bell nods, putting a five down. Playing it safe while nefarious thoughts swarm her mind.
“How long have you known Rick?” She asks, sorting through her cards to colour code them.
“All my life,” Lara’s dark eyes move from searching her cards for the next attack to instead meeting Bell’s own. “Why?”
This time it’s Bell who shrugs, a soft rise and fall of her shoulders.
“Just curious. He seemed worried when you wanted to go with him to off those Saviours.”
Lara’s jaw twitches. She leans forward, brows knitting together as she focuses on her cards.
“Rick’s a little stuck in his ways. Known me since I was a kid. Refuses to realise I’m not one anymore.”
Bell finds herself leaning back from the table, back resting against the front of the sofa. It takes two hands to hold her cards now, but they’re not what Bell has her eyes fixed on.
“At least they’re gone, right? Now we can trade with Hilltop. Might even get some milk that isn’t powder.”
Red 2.
“Glenn found some long life stuff last week. You guys didn’t get any?”
Bell shakes her head, smile twisting at her lips.
“Abe drank a whole one to himself. Rosita told him off for it but let him finish the carton.” At Lara’s look of disgust, Bell adds. “It’s okay! I don’t even like milk. Has this weird aftertaste. I think it’s because my mom had me strictly on soy.”
Red 9.
At this Lara’s brows raise, disgusted look directed elsewhere.
“Soy?”
Bell nods, placing her own red card down.
“It’s better for you. Better than skim at least.”
“I don’t think that’s true.”
Red 5. Green 5.
“It’s what my mom said.”
Green 7.
“My mom said if I kissed a boy I’d get pregnant and die. Sometimes they lie.”
Bell laughs at that. Places down a Green 4.
“Pick up four again. Change the colour to yellow.” Lara says, smirking as she places the card down.
Bell meets her eyes, her grin turning to a devilish grin of her own. She can see the two cards left in Lara’s hand.
“Pick up eight,” Bell says, placing her own card down. “Change the colour back to green.”
Dark brows raise.
“You can’t do that!”
“You did it earlier.” Bell defends.
A noise from outside. The girls still, going quiet. Nothing happens past a small rattling against the mailbox. It’s a stupid thing, ugly too, with streamers and bells hanging from it and faded handprints painted on the side.
They should’ve destroyed it on their way in instead of making fun of it. Both of them more focused on getting inside, finding a door unlocked, hiding from the hoard approaching.
Maybe Rick was right to doubt them going off on this scavenging trip together. It does well to think ahead, to plan for your next move. Both she and Lara are impulsive, reckless, like to act first and think later.
Their mistake doesn’t cost their lives. The bells stop whistling, the groaning moves along, and Bell feels the weight in her chest lighten. Lara breathes a sigh of relief, shifting in her spot by the coffee table.
“Stop looking through the cards—“
“I’m not.” She defends.
“I saw you.” Bell gives her a pointed look.
To be fair, if she wasn’t distracted and Lara was, she’d have cheated too. Is fully planning to when they get back home and she convinces Abe and Rosita to play monopoly with her. Eugene won’t have to be convinced, always down for some game or another.
Lara places the card she’d taken back, flashing the reverse card to Bell as she does. An eye roll accompanies the action, any real irritation missing from it though.
“Don’t know why you panicked,” Lara says, picking up her eight cards. “We shoved that cabinet by the door. And the washer by the back.”
Bell shrugs. They’d taken safety measures for the doors and the windows are mostly boarded up already, but that doesn’t stop her heart from jumping into her throat every time a groan sounds too close or too loud.
“We’ll sleep upstairs,” Lara assures her. “Take some cans with us.”
Bell nods, placing down another green card.
Lara does as well, this time an 8. Bell bites her lip, placing down a red 8. Next is Lara’s red 2.
Bell places down her next few cards all in succession of each other.
“Skip you, skip you, reverse back to me, skip you again, and plus four.” She knocks on the table. “Uno.”
Lara grits her teeth, dark eyes hardening.
“The colour?”
“Blue.”
Shooting a glare her way, Lara picks up another card.
Bell places the last one down.
They have two more games that night, and manage to stretch the food through the next three days until the last of the hoard passes through. Lara tries to leave them behind but Bell makes sure to bring the uno cards with them.