CHAPTER SIXTEEN
xvi. PLEASE DON'T HANG UP..

RUTH

IT HAD BEEN DAYS. Days since Rick had gone into his own world, trying to search for his wife's body. The man only occasionally returned, as Glenn told her in his daily visits up to her cell. The Korean man never got responses from her, the only sign that she was still breathing being the small rise and sink of her chest.

This silence hit her the minute she sat back in her bed that unfortunate day. Bags lined her eyes from a lack of sleep, but she couldn't find the energy to let her lids close shut. The woman learned sleeping was not restful anymore. It was haunted with nightmares of bewitching and malicious memories that Ruth could no longer bear to see. Each time she saw the dark of her lids, a flash of her face appeared. It smiled and laughed, an emotion she wished she could have. She kept hearing her voice. It echoed through the quiet cell block at night, leaving Ruth wide awake to hear Lori's faint whispers. Her ghost brushed against her arm as she lay in bed every night, staring wide awake at the wall that could have been a portal to a new dimension. It was starting all over again. The death, the grief, and most importantly, the suffering.

Ruth found herself staring at the same damn cracked wall of her cell once more. This time though, she didn't examine the lines in the foundation. Brown eyes burned and melted the concrete in front of them, the gaze blank and dull like a lifeless body. The strands of her dead locks covered her like matted cloak, the tips just reaching past her shoulders. A constant ringing hurt her hears, signaling a migraine was beating and hammering her skull like a child with a toy. She winced, letting the pain wash past her skull and down her neck.

"Hey," she heard Glenn sigh from her cell's entrance. "brought you some breakfast." She didn't budge, much less move her head, but was able to hear the faint whispers between him and Maggie. Ruth soon felt the dip of the bed beside her and the brush of Maggie's head against her shoulder.

A paper plate was placed in her lap. She didn't look down at it, but felt the warmth of the food sink through to her thighs. A sudden aroma of tomato hit her nose and her stomach grumbled. "I'm sorry this is happening." Ruth didn't respond, but she felt a hand intertwine with her own.

"Glenn and I are going on a run to get some more supplies for the baby. We'll be back in a few hours." Glenn appeared in front of her, his body breaking the staring contest Ruth was having with the wall.

He shook his head. "Whatever is going on in that head of yours... I-" he ran a head over his forehead, "I hope you come back soon. Carl needs someone. We all do."

Ruth's eyes glanced up to Glenn's, a concerned look upon his youthful features. He switched his gaze towards Maggie, who squeezed Ruth's hand once more. "Eat something, too. You're beginning to look like a walker."

And with that, the two left her once more. Ruth glanced down at the breakfast. Spaghetti. Her stomach howled inside, begging for food after being deprived for days. Just do it. Her hand reached towards the fork placed delicately into the noodles and grabbed the handle. She tried to ignore the bitter and sour taste as she placed the fork to her lips, chewing on the partially cooked noodles.

A few bites in, the taste blurred into a cacophony of expired foods which Ruth ignored as she downed it all. She set the plate on the ground beside her bed, glaring down at the torn boots upon her feet.

Ruth had to admit, she was selfish. She didn't think to care about how the others were doing, much less the deceased woman's family. She questioned if Carl was moving on, like she once heard him mumbling to himself as he walked by her door one afternoon.

Ruth also didn't acknowledge who else the group had lost that day. T-Dog was gone, as she heard whispers from downstairs in the quiet hours. She only interacted with him a few times, but she could remember the compassion similar to Glenn's that he displayed to her in the colder months. Ruth understood that she should force herself to work, maybe to take her mind off of her grief or just to do something productive. A soreness rested in her ankles as she stood from the bed. Ruth rolled out the tightness in her shoulders before grabbing her bag beside her.

The loud, thunderous echoes of her boots echoed as she went down the stairs. Each footstep was like a clap of thunder in a long and agonizing storm. She met Carl's eyes, the blues in his reflecting his surprise at her showing her face after so long. A smile managed to hint at her lips, but the impulse soon faded as she saw he was alone.

"Where's your dad?"

"Just left again." Carl murmured. Ruth sighed, letting the bag drop from her hands. She sat down beside him on the bench, placing her hands the cold metal.

"You doing okay?" she asked, her head tilting to the side as she looked at him.

"Better than you, I think." Carl replied, a small smile reaching his lips.

Ruth sighed, running a hand over her knotted hair. He was right. For some reason, she could not handle grief the same way he could. Maybe it was the fact that Carl grew up in a world surrounded by the loss of loved ones, and that made him immune to the inflictions of grief. Or maybe, her mind was just fully incapable of being passive when it came to loss, and leaving behind people she loved was harder than tearing a mother away from their child.

"You know," Ruth admitted, "I know what you're going through."

"Of course you do."

"It wasn't just your mom." she pressed, "I lost my sister about six months ago."

Carl's hands stiffened on the bench. "What was her name?"

"Erin."

"I'm sorry for your loss."

"No, I'm sorry for yours." Ruth whispered. "I like to think that your little sister is Erin's way of saying thank you." Ruth professed, "Like she's telling me to move on. A sister for a sister."

"Maybe."

"I... I want to be there for you. The both of you. Maybe the three of you if your dad doesn't come out of his... daydreams."

"I want to be there for you too, Ruth."

A silence encapsulated the both of them for a mere second before Carl spoke once more. "He's been gone since last night."

Ruth nodded, biting her lip. She stood from the bench, digging out the knife embedded in one of the pockets. "I'll go check on him. Stay here."

She gripped the familiar blade as she made her way through the exit, shutting the door behind her. The click of the lock rang through her ears like a gong, signaling that Carl had locked the entrance to the cell block. "Keep that thing locked until I get back." she asked while turning to see his face, "Promise me."

"Promise."Carl repeated. Ruth placed her pinky between the gaps of the bars, intertwining it with the boy's. A smile tugged at her lips as she let go and turned back to the looming black in front of her.

One step into the dark was like a step into the unknown. It was a void obscured by the winding halls that resembled a maze. Ruth assumed the only way to solve a labyrinth so puzzling was with a trail of breadcrumbs like Hansel and Gretel. The only problem with that was the fact that the two children easily got lost themselves, and Ruth felt the same.

The woman ran a hand over her forehead, wiping the sweat and dirt with even more sweat and dirt. She couldn't see in front of her so her fingers brushed the rusted walls, looking for the corners and turns of the halls.

Each turn was a risk in itself. She could not see what was lurking behind each corner, and the danger of being bitten became increasingly more worrisome in the night of the prison halls. The rust on her fingers felt even more disgusting than before. The eerily quiet of the corridor left her heart beating loudly in her ears, almost to where she could feel it behind her eyes. Suddenly, a loud bang made her jump. "Fuck," she hissed.

Her footsteps echoed in the silence until one of her boots kicked a hard object. Blindly, she reached down to the ground, her fingertips stretching downwards in hesitation. The feeling in her hands was a plastic cylinder of sorts, making one word click in her head. Flashlight.

Ruth quickly looked for the switch and flicked it on, trying to shake off the tension in her shoulders from the scare. The light beamed in front of her, and she almost dropped the torch after what she saw. At the end of the hall, walkers littered the corner from where they were coming from, their growls getting louder as they approached. Now that the light was upon them, they moved to the sight of new food.

Her breathing sped up as she turned around to run, only to find more approaching from the way she came. Fortunately to her left was a turn, and she sprinted down the hall, the light's beam bouncing on the walls. She tore her knife from her side and dug it into the skull of a straggler in the hallway, whose feet came closer as she tried to find an exit.

Ruth tugged on the door against the wall. Locked. She moved onto the next one. Locked.

Locked. Locked. LOCKED.

Curses rang from her lips as fear settled into her bones like a winter frost, stinging her limbs with adrenaline. Ruth stabbed three in the skull as they met her side, each one collapsing at her feet. She desperately grabbed another door, hoping it would open, and it finally did. She dragged herself inside and slammed the door shut, resting her body against it.

"She said it was safe." she heard a voice say as she struggled to recover her breathing. The walkers hit on the door outside, but the voice was deep and masculine and reminded her of someone she was looking for: Rick.

Ruth stood from the ground, placing the knife back in her pocket as she sneaked forwards. In the connecting room, Rick remained hunched over a desk, a wired phone placed against his ear. "Yes, we want to come where you are... yes, people who threatened me or threatened my group." It was strange that he was talking to someone, considering phone lines had been down for at least a year, if she was counting the days since the world ended. There was a breath of silence once more. Ruth glanced down to the wiring of the phone. It was torn apart and disconnected from the wall, which confused her even further. He must have been hallucinating.

"Four. Two outsiders who tried to draw on me. One threw me to walkers. The other one, he was one of our own. He lost it." Shane. The one who was so against keeping her alive on that one disastrous night? That's who Rick was describing. Her hand reached out to touch his shoulder, but it stopped when she heard his next few words.

"Who he was. He threatened me. He tried to kill me, so I killed him." he paused, as if waiting for someone on the other end to reply. Ruth figured as much, but it was still strange to hear the person who was like family discuss his victims. "How do you know I had a wife?"

"...I don't want to talk about that." Suddenly, his eyes widened to the size of saucers. His breath rattled and a panicked expression made his eyebrows raise from their normal scowl. "Hello? Hello? No!"

His feet collapsed underneath the tiresome weight of his chest. The phone dropped from his hand, the loud clatter of the plastic hitting the floor echoing in the silent stares between the two of them. Ruth could hear the shaking of his breathing and watched as he shook his head, mumbling words incoherently.

"Don't hang up. Please don't hang up." she heard out of the jumbles of words.

"Rick?" His eyes snapped to her at her voice, and Ruth saw only a man in the crumbled body shell he resided in. Those damn blue eyes stared up at her, watching as she stood over him like a predator to its prey. Her face was soft in compassion,though, hoping to help the man recover from his crazed state. "Look at me." she whispered as she sunk to the floor beside him.

His eyes glanced up at hers. "A new place," he mumbled.

"What?" Ruth questioned.

"There's somewhere else. They told me on the phone."

"Rick."

"Y-Yea?"

"The phone... it's disconnected, sweetheart." The man glanced back at the phone beside him, trailing his eyes to the wire on the floor. She watched the realization hit him like a semi, and he crumbled in tenfold like an avalanche. He placed his hands on the floor, his breathing louder in a panting sort of volume as he sobbed. Ruth gently placed her hand on his back, her teeth biting her lip as she tried to hold back tears of her own.

"I'm here, Rick. We...we can get through this." Ruth said, as if to reassure him.Maybe she was trying to convince herself.

**

it's been 1 year since I've written Wrath. can you believe it???!! what an absolute joy it's been to create and I'm so happy that it's gotten so popular in just a year!!

apologies for the BIGGEST delay in updates ever... ive just been so busy this month!! :((

anyways hope you enjoyed <3

cass xx

10.29.17