Young and Young at Heart (The Rewrite of The Walking Dead Game: S2) [TWDG/TWD]

47. Whispers in the Dark

Clem felt a strong hand grasping her mouth. Before she could react she heard a familiar voice in her ear.

"It's me." Clem slowly sat up to find Christa standing near her bed.

"What's going on?" Clem saw it was still dark out, but there was enough moonlight shining through the fence to look around.

"Carlos wants to talk," whispered Christa.

"To me?" asked Clem.

"Yeah, and Nick." Clem looked over at a still sleeping Sarah. "Carlos said just let her sleep." Clem carefully got out of bed and walked with Christa across the pen. Clem saw Matt and Mick were still sleeping as well, and near the bathroom she spotted Nick and Carlos sitting on the floor.

"Okay, she's up," whispered Christa as she sat down. "Now what did you want to talk about?"

"We need to get out of this place," said Carlos. "And soon."

"Ya think?" retorted a sarcastic Christa.

"I might know a way," said Carlos. "But, it involves her."

"Her?" asked Nick.

"No way," insisted Christa. "She's gone through enough because of you people."

"Christa," scolded Clem.

"She'll go through worse yet if she doesn't get out of here," assured Carlos. "You saw what happened tonight, you can't possibly want to stay here."

"Of course not," said Christa. "I've only been here a few days and I hate this place."

"Then what choice do we have?" asked Carlos.

"You mean what choice do you have?" retorted Christa.

"Christa, stop it," insisted Clem. "Fighting isn't going to help."

"I'm not fighting Clem. And this isn't about what happened before," spoke Christa in a calm voice.

"Then what?" asked Carlos.

"The way I see it, you two have a history will this Bill guy, we don't," said Christa. "We don't have anything he wants, we haven't done anything to him. Why should I risk Clem's life when it's possible he may just let us go?"

"He won't let you go," stated Carlos in a certain voice. "We tried to leave, and look at what happened to us."

"That's another thing I'm wondering about. You people didn't live in this pen place before you left, right?" Carlos didn't answer. "So why did you escape then? And don't tell me it was because you were outraged at how they treat people in here, because I'm not buying that."

"Fuck you," said Nick in a hushed voice. "You don't know how we feel, what it was like watching—" Carlos gestured for Nick to stop.

"Pete and I decided to leave when we did because Carver had become tired of feeding people he considered drains on Shaffer's."

"Wasn't he already doing that?" asked Christa. "Listening to people talk around here, it sounds like it's been that way for a while."

"No, not like this. Now they feed you if you can keep working. But Carver wanted to phase out the pen. There'd be no prisoners to care for anymore. Nor family members of residents. Either you work for the crew, you had some other useful skill, or you're dead. Gene devised the school to help transition the children into the crew. Once their classes are done, they'll graduate to doing supply runs.

"They're not teaching them how to survive, they're training child soldiers to fight for Carver. And the ones who aren't capable will simply die, which knowing Carver, he'll champion as brave heroes who gave everything because they believed in Shaffer's future."