Three Orphan Pilgrimage (The Alternative to TWDG's Final Season) [Walking Dead]

48. Little Helpers

Patty readied her shotgun and Clementine removed her tomahawk from her shoulder as the pair crept closer to the front of the church. Even from across the street, Clem could clearly see the half-dozen mangy corpses pounding fruitlessly on a pair of elegant white double doors. The walkers didn't seem to be making any progress getting inside, but Clem didn't want to even give them the chance.

"So now what?" whispered Patty. "Shooting them might just bring more walkers to this place, so what's the plan?"

"We make some noise, without guns, and then kill them when they come over this way."

"You make it sound so easy," quipped Patty.

"With the raincoats it is," said Clem. "You just aim for the ankle, back away, and keep doing it until they're all on the ground, then finish them off."

"All right, well let me find something to use as a club," said Patty as she looked around. "My bat's back on the bike."

"Here, use my tomahawk." Clem passed the weapon to the woman.

"What'll you use?" Clem drew her bayonet from its sheath. "That seems a little short for this." Patty looked at the tomahawk in her hands. "And this thing is actually kind of short for someone my size."

"As long as we have the raincoats on, you could bump into them and they wouldn't attack you."

"You're sure of that?"

"I've done it."

"You... ran into walkers... just to see if they'd attack you?"

"No, they ran into me," corrected Clem. "As long you smell like them, don't make any noise, and they don't smell any fresh blood, they'll just think you're one of them."

"It's scary how much you know about these things," said Patty. "Speaking of which, how do you want to distract them?"

Clem thought to herself for a moment, then took off her backpack. She removed her canteen and drank as much water as she could from it before stopping to take a deep breath. "Here, drink this."

"I've got my own you know," said Patty.

"Yeah, but we need to empty this one."

"I'm just gonna go along with this because I know you're about to do something really clever." Patty pulled her respirator down and chugged the remaining water. "Okay, empty; now what?"

"Now, we make some noise." Clementine pulled her pistol.

"I thought we agreed we wanted to do this without guns."

"It's not the gun I need." Clem removed the pistol's magazine and used her thumb to push bullets out of it and into her hand. "Here, give me the canteen." Patty handed the empty container back and Clem deposited the bullets inside. She then screwed the lid on tight and put her magazine back in the pistol.

"Still not quite sure where you're going with this," said Patty.

"It's called a noisemaker," said Clem as she approached the front of the church. "The place Sarah used to live taught us how to use these to draw walkers out of buildings. I haven't used them much lately since the raincoat makes it easy to get close and I can just knock on things with my tomahawk. But right now we can use it to get them away from the door." Clem held up her canteen. "You ready?"

"Yeah," said Patty as she removed the tomahawk's sheath. "I think so."

"All right, here we go." Clementine started shaking the canteen as hard as she could, causing the bullets to rattle around inside against the walls of the container and each other. The walkers initially didn't respond to the noise, so Clem moved up a few steps and started shaking the canteen harder, making an even louder racket. The walkers stopped banging on the door and slowly turned around, revealing their rotted faces to the pair.