BRONTIDE, the walking dead

⁰ 𝗣𝗥𝗢𝗟𝗢𝗚𝗨𝗘

⁰⁰ THE DEATH OF RONNIE

❝ Gone from my sight,
but never from my heart. ❞

       THE OAK FOUGHT THE WIND AND WAS BROKEN. THE WILLOW BENT WHEN IT MUST AND SURVIVED. Ronald had been gone for weeks of three. His gracile legs no longer dragged a pouting face, cherub boy. He was not curled up in corners, doing whatever task had fallen. He couldn't smile at his sister lopsidedly when she poked his forehead and scolded his cancer sticks. Not anymore. That pack of cigarettes, in dried blood, and crumpled, was squeezed in her hands now.

The only remaining.

Rest of seventeen years, a memory...

Stupid boy, she had wept, embracing his devoured torso. His guts had spilled on the forest ground, limbs hanging limp from her desperate clutch. Stupid, stupid. She had kissed his cold cheeks and brushed her thumbs over his left open eyelids to have him rest. He slept somewhere more peaceful than their world had become, they hoped. Jacqui had prayed. But it had been long proven God had abandoned men.

He's gone, Landon, that idiotic boy. He used to chase butterflies in grams' yard and look at him now, smothered under all this earth.

       "Step by step, Dale says. Grief is never gone, but it becomes a part of you. You learn to accept it." She tugged at a peeling strand of skin around her thumb. Raw flesh beneath. Even in knowing so, Harlene pulled it, watching a rubescent strip bleed. "The days are beginning to pass. I've been sleeping in the RV to help the nights. Landon packed your belongings, but I still can't. I don't think he can, either. He looks worse than the prowlers. Staying awake for too long."

She did not cry anymore, sitting before a swell of toppled black soil just by the forest shore. Shane had tried his best to carve the name on the wooden plank. Ronald Wade Walker. It was barely readable. Still better than dust and grass swallowing his memory like millions of others. Beloved son & brother & friend. Only a boy.

Words meant little in a dying world. Guilt was heavier than grief. I told him not to wander off anymore. I knew he wouldn't listen, but I just told him. In their silence, it would have taken nothing to grip his wrists. Pull him back into the camp before he could stray into that curse of a forest and the claws of a monster.

"I was never told how to deal with the remorse, though." A lump sat in her throat, lazy and wide, clogging the airline. "You used to blame yourself for Mom. I don't know how you did it, but you overcame it. We didn't talk." The cigarette pack crunched in her shut fist. Kent. Shit taste as always, even in carcinogens. A huff left her amusedly as she gulped the lump. "Was this it? Your guilt-freedom?" She shuffled it before the grave. "You might just be winning our bet, Ronnie."

She was once determined never to corrupt her lungs. But the resolves of a dead boy succeeded better than alive. Half of them were dyed red, some of them broken. Harlene found one intact and tucked the filter tip between her teeth, feeling her dry lips stick to the paper. She searched the carton because she knew he had kept the cigar lighter inside. His pockets were too slippery. Hands too clammy. Boy, too clumsy.

I love you, Ronnie. Wake up, please.

Harlene knew him well. The cold reached her fingertips before she pulled it out and lit the cigarette after two attempts. The trick was to inhale as firing, that she knew. But she hadn't expected the burn to be that intense, the taste so foul it made her gag. She coughed violently. Her lungs pulsated at the alien smoke, trying to get rid of it. The scent was unbearable. She couldn't fathom why people loved the filth.

Ron could no longer defend nicotine for its stress-helping remedy. What stress, you tramp? All you do is play Nintendo and sleep. Harley brought it back to her mouth, taking a drag because he was gone, and this was her requiem. She gasped and wheezed, eyes blurring from the smoke. The choking and nausea felt punishing. Compensatory. Apologetic.

Until a voice said, "Stop. Just stop it. Jesus."

I'm sorry.

       Atheism was more than impiousness, but an attitude of a man with pained thoughts. Daryl did not believe — he never had. And yet, the name of the crucified had escaped him, because he pitied the girl bent double and sucking toxic fume. Harlene's head whirled at his abrupt presence as the cigarette was ripped from her fingers, finding a place between the younger Dixon's lips. He inhaled aggravatedly, exhaled, then flicked it on the ground and stomped on it. As if to say, this is how you smoke, dumbass.

"Get up." He always had the mouth of a sailor. As blunt as a ball, angry at everything and anyone. "You ain't doin' any good by catchin' cancer."

"What are you doing here?"

"What's it look like?"

He swung his crossbow. The catchall hanging from his shoulder bumped his hip, dead rabbits inside spurting out. He couldn't utter kind, but he cared with his spats. Hunt and cook for them. Kill the prowlers. Protect.

Heat entrapped, simmering a pale white into a tan. Slick with sweat and grime but somehow always so inviting. His skin was sun-kissed. It had been the first thing she had noticed about him. He would rip the sleeves of his shirts and reveal the tone difference between his thick arms and large shoulders. When he wasn't on his bike, he would swing an arm out of the window as he steered that pickup truck — the sun had to kiss his skin. As if craving for a warmth he couldn't know by any else.

"You must be real stupid comin' back out 'ere without anybody,"

Harlene smiled, shadowing her eyes from the sun's rays, "Well, you're here, aren't you?"

He scoffed through his nose softly.

Daryl was an attractive man in Harlene's eyes because he could protect. The one feat she so voraciously wished to be able to do. He had killed the beast disguised under Ronald's puerile face because her hands had trembled, and she hadn't let anyone else touch her brother.

Be gentle with him. I know you will.

"Just wanted to talk to him alone. Even though I know he won't hear."

He nibbled on his bottom lip, solemnly nodding. He was peevish and coarse but not thoughtless. He could respect; he could hurt. His irises were shaking, unable to bear the screams that still haunted the back of his mind. No matter how much he denied it, he had a heart.

"Get up." He repeated, gentler. "Ya ain't good to no one chewed up. Not to the old man. Not to that twink brother of yours. Go back to camp."

Harlene pushed herself up from the soil. She rubbed her tears away and began walking. She hadn't lost everything yet, far from it, not broken, but bent. "Daryl," She mumbled, looking back at him. "Thank you."

He gazed at her briefly in a stupefy, then nodded again.

       He looks as peaceful as when he sleeps, doesn't he, Landon? That younger Dixon dug him a nice cold grave. He'll be restful.