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

73. Nobler to Suffer the Slings and Arrows

Clementine eyed everything she and Sarah had collected. They had two rain coats, four bowls, two canteens, a machete, a small axe, a knife, scissors, tin snips, a fire starting tool, the radio, the gun's magazine, and the rope still tied to the overhang. Clem kept looking for something that could be the answer, but she couldn't think of anything. Looking at Sarah, she saw the older girl seemed no closer to a solution.

"If only it hadn't rained," lamented Sarah. "Then we'd still smell like the lurkers and could just climb down."

"Or if I had just found another one to use before we got stuck up here," said Clem.

"Well, it's not like we can get one now."

Clementine looked over at the rope tied to the overhang. "Maybe we can." Clem moved to the edge of the overhang. She pulled up the length of the rope, laid it out, then used the tin snips to cut off a large section of it.

"What are you doing?" asked Sarah.

"It'll be like fishing," explained Clem as she tied the end of the shortened rope into a loop. "Christa showed me how to make a lasso. You pull on the rope, and it'll tighten around whatever's inside the loop."

"You're going to try to lasso a lurker?"

"Sorta. If I can just get one to grab it, maybe we can pull it up and use it to smell like them again," reasoned Clem as she dropped the lasso off the ledge. It hung at about chest height for most of the walkers. Clem tugged on the rope, swinging it towards a few clueless corpses. "Come on, grab it."

The lasso bumped off one walker and into another, neither of which seemed to notice. They kept stumbling about, waiting for something that interested them. Clem tried guiding the loop onto one of the walkers, but it was hard to see them well with just the lantern lighting the area.

"They're not going for it," realized an annoyed Clem.

"It's not alive, or making any noise," observed Sarah. "So they don't care about it."

"We need some kind of bait."

"What could we use for bait?"

"Well, I'm alive. Maybe I could climb down and—"

"That's crazy."

"We gotta do something."

"But not that, we want to bring one up so we don't have to go down there yet."

"Well how else are we going to get them to go for it?"

Sarah thought about Clem's question, then looked at the knife on Clem's hip. "Maybe we could just give them a little bit of us."

"Oh." Clem unsheathed her knife and moved it to her wrist.

"Not there." Sarah grabbed Clem's wrist. "There's a lot of veins there."

"Where then?"

"Well, I don't think there's anything important in your fingers or toes. And if you do your toe, the shoe could cover up the cut."

"That's a good idea." Clem set the knife down and moved to untie her shoe, but Sarah put her hand over the laces.

"Um, why don't you use my toe?" suggested a nervous Sarah.

"I can do it," insisted Clem.

"You're already sick," said Sarah. "And you seem a lot more tired than me too." Clem looked at Sarah, unable to ignore the concern in her eyes.

"You're sure you want to do it?" Sarah nodded. She untied her shoe and slipped her sock off while Clem pulled the rope up. Clem set the rope aside and picked up the knife. She moved towards Sarah's barefoot, noticing the nervous look on the older girl's face.