"Ahri saved me when I was being attacked by the dead. She came out of nowhere and took for dead ones out. I was just awestruck as I watched this little girl save my life."

I listen intently as the man tells his story. We'd huddled around a small fire in the center of a campsite these people had set up.

"I brought her back here and when she told us her people were stuck in Deluca, well I owed her for saving me. I'm sorry we couldn't get everyone but we know what shifts they work... hopefully, we can get them out soon."

"Thank you, Mike. If something had happened to her I don't know what I'd have done." I thank him.

He shrugs it off. "I'm just some guy..."

"Well, you're some guy who saved my little girl." I ruffle my hand through her hair and she shoos it away.

"I'm not little." She insists. 

I sigh as she points to a woman. "That's Denise, she's the one who cut my hair like this. It's much better than the lopsided look James Delucan gave me." She says his name like it puts a bad taste in her mouth.

I chuckle and smile at the woman as she gently waves. Ahri's hair had all been chopped off and she was left with a bright orange pixie cut. It was strange seeing her without all of her hair. It'd just kept growing since the dead started walking so for it to all be gone now, well it was weird. But she looked so much older without it. 

We were at a small campsite with several tents and about a dozen or so people. They had a perimeter of empty cans and hub caps set up to make noise if the dead walked into it. The campfire sat in the middle of the site and a handful of us had been sitting around it.

"Mike, we've got dead ones coming in on the east side." A woman said as she came up to the fire.

"How many, Laney?" Mike asked, getting up.

"Scott counted eight." Laney answered.

I stood up and offered to help. "Give me a weapon and I'm there."

Mike nodded. "You heard the woman, get her a weapon."

"You have any preferences?" Laney asked. "We don't have the best selection but you're more than welcome to take a look." She pointed over to a blanket on the ground with a handful of melee weapons laid across it. 

I walked over and surveyed my options. My eyes landed on a modified baseball bat, unlike my old one with simple nails in it, this one had two six-inch saw blades on either side of the end.

I picked up the bat and let it float between my hands. The handle felt nice against my palms as I rolled it across them. It felt smooth and natural like it belonged there. I tightened my grip on the handle and turned to Mike.

"Let's go take out some dead ones."

I'd been like a caged animal for too long now. While I couldn't deny that the safety of Deluca had been nice, I didn't much like being treated like an animal and that's exactly what James had done to me. 

I was ready to fight anyone or anything I had to.

I followed Mike towards the dead with Ahri beside me. Frankie came in tow with a bowie knife in her hand.

We stepped outside of the campsite and walked shortly into the woods. Mike spotted the first dead one and pulled his knife. I looked around for more and saw a handful a few trees away from us.

"Over there," I pointed out and the others followed.

I gripped the handle and swung the new bat at a dead one. The blade cut into the dead one's rotting skull and sliced it clean in half, blood splattered onto me as the dead one fell to the ground.

I smiled as I looked at the bat in my hands. Now, this was my kind of weapon.

Another dead one came towards me and I brought the bat back over my shoulder. I swung straight down onto its skull. The blade pierced into the dead one and its body went limp, I kicked its chest and the blade slid right out of its skull as the dead one went flying onto the ground. 

I turned to see Ahri swinging her hatchet at a dead one and Frankie driving her knife into one's skull. Mike was to my left taking one out as well.

I saw two more heading our way and I went ahead to kill them.

The two dead ones were walking side by side as I approached them with my bat at the ready. I brought it up and steadily swung straight across, slicing both of their skulls cleanly in half.

Mike came up beside me and patted my shoulder. "I think you oughta keep that bat."

I smiled and rolled it between my hands again. I was finally starting to feel like I'd gotten some of my power back after everything I'd lost lately.

We went back to camp and Mike set me up in a tent with Frankie, he'd given Ahri her own tent when he'd first brought her back and she was happy to stay there.

She'd gained so much independence and it made me realize how maybe I'd been holding her back all this time. She went into her tent alone for the night and I met Frankie in ours.

There were two sleeping bags and a lamp inside the tent but that was it. I'd set my bat outside the zipper door so it was underneath the rain flap and Frankie had safely stowed her knife in its sheath beside her sleeping bag.

"We'll get Ahren out soon." I told her as I crawled into my sleeping bag. 

"I'm worried about him." She said as she turned to face me.

She looked exhausted. "Try to get some rest. Tomorrow I'm going to talk with Mike about getting the others out." 

She nodded and turned the lamp off as she crawled into her sleeping bag. 

As I rolled over and faced the tent wall I couldn't help but feel chilled as I laid by myself in my sleeping bag. I tried to brush the feeling away and tightened the sleeping bag around me but it just got colder.

A distant memory flashed through my mind as I laid in my sleeping bag. 

I could see myself laying on the cabin floor in a sleeping bag, pulling a bottle of whiskey from my bag, and popping the cap off. I downed half the bottle until I felt buzzed and then I prayed.

I remembered those prayers I'd whisper to myself as I felt the nightmares closing in on me. I'd pray to keep the nightmares away, I'd pray to wake up in the morning, I'd pray there was a god that made my prayers worth anything.

But I only prayed when I was at least a half in the bottle. 

As I lay clear-headed as can be, thinking about downing a bottle of whiskey to fall asleep, I try to find peace by myself. But I couldn't, I never could. I'd only ever been able to find peace when I was downing a bottle of Jack or when I was with Jasper. He'd saved me from me and from my whiskey. 

But I didn't have a bottle of whiskey. 

And I didn't have Jasper.

All I had was me.