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"I love you, Bec."
Alvin had the strangest dream last night- he was being held at gunpoint in the ski lodge by that son of a bitch Carver. He woke up just as the trigger had been pulled, right before he presumably would have died in his dream.
"Bec?" Alvin called out quietly for his wife. When her reply didn't come, Alvin assumed she was somewhere safe, hopefully. Where was Rebecca?
The man pushed himself off of the floor where he slept in a sitting position, letting out a soft 'shit' as he struggled to do so. Eventually he stood up, turning behind him to look outside of the window above the bedside table he was sitting against. On top of the bedside sat a familiar hat, but Alvin didn't dwell long on it as he turned his attention to the window.
The sun sat high up in the sky, indicating to Alvin it was probably early afternoon. 2 o'clock-ish, he assumed. Wispy clouds of white hung in the sky, forming shapes that were unrecognizable to Alvin. A field of overgrown grass sat on the ground. Teenagers hung around outside, one especially small boy standing on a bell tower, keeping watch. Two girls were standing in front of a picnic table, one using crutches and the other blonde. A gate stood between the area he saw laid out in front of him and a forest of trees. All these people, but no Becs. Huh.
The man stared in wonder before it occured to him that the building he was in was not the cabin, nor was it Howe's Hardware, and definitely not the ski lodge, judging from the lack of snow. The place was completely devoid of snow- what, had Alvin been in a coma for the last five months? Where did the snow go?
"Where am I?" he whispered to himself, turning away from the window. On both sides of the man stood bunk beds, rumpled and used. A brown closet sat next to the door where Alvin could easily escape, assuming it wasn't locked. There was a drawing on the wall above a desk.
Curiously, Alvin observed the piece of paper, walking over to the desk. It depicted two figures, the smaller standing in front of the taller person, wo donned a hat. Both people were smiling wide, standing on green grass, a large forest behind them. This drawing was clearly made by a child. How long had it been since he last saw a drawing like this?
Writing was scrawled underneath the two smiling friends. Me protecting Clem, it said, written in black crayon.
From: AJ
To: Clem
Clem… Alvin swore he remembered someone being called Clem. Clem, Clem, Clem…entine? Clementine? Well, perhaps. Alvin didn't know many people named Clementine. Then who was AJ? A friend of Clementine's? Just how old was the artist? Questions flowed through his mind as he inpected the art piece. AJ must be the smaller figure, Alvin thought. Then Clementine is the hat-wearer… Come to think of it, the Clementine he knew of, the little girl, she wore a hat, too.
That had to have been Clementine, the 11 year old girl Alvin had travelled with for five days. But who was AJ? Another survivor, maybe. Alvin turned towards the door. Maybe Rebecca was waiting for him outside the door. Alvin had a weird gut feeling about this. He didn't know what it was that got him to feel this way.
The large man slowly opened the door just enough for him to be able to walk through, and then walked outside. The walls were covered in scribbles and profanities, all written in black marker. Other doors along the wall were opened, none of them containing his wife. Alvin meandered down the hallway, seeing nobody but the occasional framed pictures on the wall, drawn on with the same black marker used to write the writing on the wall.
Eventually, Alvin got to a double door, leading to the outside of the building. Maybe a school, based on the rooms he had seen. How on earth did he end up at a school? Whatever, maybe Becs was outside, although Alvin hadn't seen her through the window. He pushed the door open, wincing at the creak it made when he did so.
The light from the sun glared into the black man's glasses-covered eyes. As his eyes adjusted to the light, he saw everyone outside tense up, all of their faces a mask of shock and fear. He didn't see Rebecca. Where was she? Where was his wife?
The chatty schoolyard had now became a field of silence. Everyone was staring at him now. What was it about him that made him seem so scary…?
"Alvin?!" A voice squeaked out. The man in question scanned the area to find who said his name. No Rebecca, nobody he knew… eventually, his eyes landed on the girl he had seen earlier in the window, the one bearing crutches. She, too, had surprise etched onto her face, but no fear. Did he know this girl somewhere?
"Clem, you know this guy?" a boy with dreads spoke up, an unfamiliar expression on his face. Clementine? But wasn't she, like, 11? The girl in front of him looked around 17 years old, tops. "Should we kill him?"
"Yeah… I mean, no! Don't kill him!" she cried. "But… you're supposed to be dead! You died years ago! I saw Carver shoot you!" Her jaw hung wide open. "How…"
Alvin tensed up. Carver killed him…? But he was alive and functioning, right here! And… he was shot. That sounded eerily similar to the dream he had right before waking up.
Fuck, he was really dead, wasn't he? Oh, god- what if Bec and their baby got hurt?! Fuck, fuck, FUCK! He stood awkwardly in front of the door, taking in all this new information. Being dead… oh, it really didn't matter, as long as his wife and unborn child were safe.
But… if he was dead, how was he alive now? Alvin swept aside the question, focusing on his family instead.
Alvin took a step forward, standing directly in front of Clementine. "I'm… dead? What about Becs? And the baby?!" Oh, god, the baby. If Carver killed his two girls (he guessed the baby was going to be a girl), he would go and find that fucker and kill Carver himself.
"Where'd you come from…?" a different voice, coming from the boy with his bangs swept aside who was holding a knife. The boy from the bell tower was by his side, glaring directly at Alvin.
Clem glanced briefly at the boy with the knife, before answering his question in a low voice. "Rebecca… died after giving birth," she answered meekly. "She lost too much blood."
Alvin felt his world flip upside-down. Becs was dead. Dead. Gone. But she was the sole reason he kept living on during the lurker apocalypse. She couldn't die- right? Right?!
And yet she had, and unlike Alvin, she wasn't here with him. How was he the one who got to live again, and yet his wife didn't? The world was cruel. To him, and to everyone living.
"And our kid…?"
The tension in the air was so thick, Alvin could cut it with a knife. Or maybe he couldn't, because that's how thick it was.
Clementine searched the area for something… or someone, before beckoning somebody silently to come to her. Alvin watched as a young boy trudged over to Clementine, judging Alvin with sharp eyes that seemed both cute and cold at the same time.
Understanding dawned on Alvin's face. This little boy was his son. His and Rebecca's. Or maybe not, but that kid looked nothing like Carver.
"Clem, who's that?" the boy asked. Clem got a soft look in her eyes as she stared down at the child, before she looked up and stared directly into Alvin's eyes with an unreadable look on her face.
"Remember how I told you about how I'm not your real mom?"
"Uh-huh."
"Well…" Clementine bit her lip.
"This is your real dad."