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Survival Isn't An Option	By : Pilgrim Category: S through Z > The Walking Dead Views: 6774 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own The Walking Dead or any of the characters from the series. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
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*AUTHOR'S NOTE: Thank you for the lovely reviews :D I'm delighted that you are enjoying the story and I hope you continue to do so! :D
          The quiet that fell as they prepared their weapons splintered as they relayed each of their individual path’s to this conjoined end. Isabelle ignored it mostly until Daryl spoke of losing Beth. His haunted expression from when he had shot her and told her to run finally made sense. Her hand pressed to the wound, registering finally the ache from the pulled stitches. She’d not let the pain enter her conscious thought, too used to coping with a myriad of injuries throughout her dancing career it was a skill she now thoroughly appreciated and despaired of. At some point she would have to let it heal. When that time would be was an entirely different matter. Even if… when, she corrected herself by sheer willpower, they escaped this train carriage where could they go? What was left that was safe? Even this place, claiming sanctuary hadn’t been. The prison was gone so where could they go?
          Isabelle gently wrapped her fingers about the metal shard tighter, aware it would pierce her fingers if she wasn’t too careful with it. At the same time, this could be their last opportunity to escape whatever hell these people had set them up for. Torn fingers would be a small price to pay for escape and freedom again. That word freedom… what freedom was there left in this world? She glanced at Daryl, at Rick… the other group members, they all looked dubious as they made weapons out of belts and bent nails. Michonne stepped forwards with a tear of material.
“You should wrap your hand if you’re going to be using that,” She pointed out.
“Thanks,” Isabelle took it with a grateful smile, noting she’d torn it from her own shirt.
Slowly she wrapped it about her palm and fingers, keeping the bulk of the material where the edges would press. Michonne sank down next to her, tightening more material about her own makeshift weapon of a wooden spike. Silence fell as noise from outside the train carriage drew everyone’s attention. People were approaching, Michonne peered through the crack and whispered something to Rick. Isabelle glanced at Daryl who stepped towards the main door with a glance at her. Shouts for them to get to the back of the walls, hands aside, basically for them to be silent and to stay out of the way echoed out. Isabelle pushed herself onto her feet, raised her fists in time with the others and tightened her fingers about the shard. She moved to stand by Daryl, he looked as if he was going to say something, to make her step away from the front line but her glare was enough to silence him. She wasn’t going to be separated from him again, even if it meant she was in the heat of things more.
          Footsteps echoed above them, rumbling over the roof and Isabelle felt everyone’s despair. Was a sniper getting into position to shoot them as they ran? Was that the plan? Tension rose palatably in the carriage as the group shuffled nervously, doubting their plan in unison. The shard bit through the bandage slightly as her grasp tightened with nerves and she ignored the twinge of pain as a roof hatch rattled open. Shouts erupted and a can dropped through. Isabelle alongside everyone else stared at it dumbly. The man with the fiery orange hair, who had confessed to military training screamed for everyone to duck. No one needed telling twice as they dove away, limbs tangled and flailing as the canister exploded.
An arm smacked into her side and a body landed heavily on top of hers winding her for a moment. The shard fled from her hand, smacked loose by her heavy landing on the floor. Gas poured from the canister vas she struggled to turn around, she glanced up at Daryl. He wasn’t moving from her, keeping his body over hers protectively. He looked shocked, and she knew what was going to happen as gas began to pour from the canister. She knew he wouldn’t be there when she came around again, the gas surrounding them and pouring into her lungs. Her eyes flickered closed as she tightened her fingers into his shirt and felt his arm close more protectively about her.
          Stunned and disorientated Isabelle glanced about the train carriage groggily. She’d been moved and not gently, her back was now against the carriage wall as she struggled to sit up. Around her various people were shuffling uncomfortably back upright. It took a while but slowly she realised who was gone; Daryl, Rick, Glenn and Bob. The ones that stood a chance of keeping everyone together. She didn’t let her brain ponder what had happened to them, or what might be happening to them right now. How long had they been knocked out for? Unstable with the disorientation she stumbled to her feet and felt for her shard but it was long gone, along with all of their other makeshift weapons. Maggie was calling out for Glenn, barely holding it together in her worry. Slowly she fell into silence, turning her attention back to the internal of the train carriage. It was silent outside again, there was no one near the carriage. Did that mean they were being interrogated?
Isabelle stared as Maggie began to pull the remaining members together. Her calm voice instructing and soothing at the same time. When had she become so collected? Slowly the group began to reassemble any form of weapon. Maggie was right, somehow they needed to get free of this cage and find the men before any harm befell them. Watching the others work on their weapons Isabelle settled for determining any possible weakness with their container. She pressed her fingers into every hole, every possible weakness in the frame but there was nothing. She checked again until she had been around the entire outer wall five times. That only left the roof hatch untested but also out of her reach and nothing with which to reach it. Unless she got onto someone’s shoulders. Her attention turned to the ones left in the carriage.
“Abraham, can you lift me?” Isabelle questioned, pointing towards the hatch.
“Yeah,” He leant against the wall, letting her step into his hands before propelling her onto his shoulders.
Carefully, hands supporting her from various angles they manoeuvred her and Abraham towards the hatch. Isabelle stretched, her fingers just brushing the hatch. Realising she was going to have to stand she kicked off her boots and carefully raised herself up, hands grabbing her calves, ankles and feet to keep her stable on the narrow shelf of his shoulders. Palms against the metal she pushed hard against the weight and it started to lift. With no warning the trailer rocked precariously as an explosion ricocheted loudly.
Isabelle tumbled, trying to contain her fall as she slammed into the far wall and slid down it to the floor in a heap. The rest of the group tumbling in a tangle of bodies into the same wall. “It lifted,” Isabelle groaned, feeling where her stitch had burst. Her hand pressed to the wound, the stickiness of oozing blood registering against her palm. Not the best time for freshly torn skin. Isabelle glanced at Maggie, the one closest to her. They shared a look of concern as Isabelle lifted her hand away. She hadn’t told anyone about her wound or who had caused it or why. She hadn’t wanted to traumatise Daryl any more.
“You’re injured,” Maggie stated clearly, pulling aside Daryl’s winged jerkin to look at the stitched wound.
“Doesn’t matter, it’s just a twinge,” Isabelle muttered, covering it carefully again.
“It needs tending to,” Maggie calmly pointed out.
“We’re not exactly in a situation where tending it is appropriate,” Isabelle stumbled upright, offering a hand to Maggie and then Michonne as the others joined them on their feet. “It moved, the hatch.”
“It’s too dangerous and we don’t know what’s going on outside,” Maggie stated, looking around at the group. “They’ll come back, Rick and everyone. We need to be ready to fight, ready to help.”
          Isabelle tuned out of the rousing speech as the other man she didn’t recognise moved forwards to do something with the door. She doubted he would find anything she hadn’t but then again she knew nothing about him. Perhaps he was some form of carriage engineer, although she doubted it. The stench of smoke was starting to pour through the gaps in the carriage wall, acrid and stinging their eyes. The group fell into a quiet consensus, working on weapons and theories until fingers, dead and rotten clamped through the door.
For a moment they fell into silence, disbelief at the sight and smell. Echoes of death, growls, snarls… sickening crunches as one passed on a shattered ankle. Gunshots echoed more clearly, shouts and screams and Isabelle recognised the terror in the cries as walkers ripped through flesh and bone. She glanced at the group around her. They were in a tin can, she’d have been safer in Nathaniel’s bunker than this half rotten train car. For a moment she wondered where his body was, if the walkers were consuming him or if he’d joined their ranks. Instantly the group was in a frenzy searching for anything left that could be used as a weapon. If the men didn’t return they’d need to be able to defend themselves at a minimum.
          Quiet chatter held their focus away from the fingers scratching at the door until the man she didn’t recognise began to talk of a cure. Isabelle listened quietly, lowering her own spike of wood. He wasn’t going to give anything away that much was clear despite Sasha asking repeatedly and in a million different ways. She watched him carefully, watched his body language and analysed how he responded. It was dubious but if they got out of this she might be able to work something out of him. A cure… the end of this, the world could go back to how it was. If there was one thing she’d learned in this apocalypse it was that you didn’t put all of your eggs in one basket and this man had already admitted he was good at neither running or fighting. As great as this group was and as confident as they were… she didn’t hold the faith.
This man, Eugene, was not someone she was willing to risk the entirety of the world on even if everyone else was. She might not understand everything he would say but she could relay the message as many times as necessary. If they got out of here she would happily give up one or two nights to gain that confidence and that knowledge. Irrespective of the way others would see her, of how Daryl would see her. This was bigger than all of them and the knowledge was too valuable to stay with just one man. The sharp rattle of the door drew everyone’s attention as light and noise poured into the relative quiet of the train carriage. Eugene stumbling backwards and the others moving defensively to cover him. Isabelle stared as dumbly as everyone else at Rick, rifle in his hands, waving them through. How did he do this? Whenever the group got into trouble he found some way of getting through against all of the odds. Following the rest through she stared at the sheer mass of walkers, her fingers tightening around the spike as she dropped out of the carriage.
          There must be hundreds in the complex, wherever she looked there was a walker. Some were fresh, she recognised one of the women with her neck torn out as the one who had grabbed her arm and dragged her to the carriage. No pity went through her as she stared at the dead eyes. A hand clamped about her arm and dragged her forwards, she raised the spike before recognising Daryl. His lips quirked in amusement as they ran with the group towards the fence.
          Isabelle ducked as a walker lunged for her head and rolled to avoid its companions stumble. Struggling back onto her feet she pulled a knife from Daryl’s belt and slammed it into the walker’s skull to her right. Gunshot was rattling all about them, Rick nonchalantly spraying as many bullets into the crowd as possible. Isabelle dodged another walker and pushed it over, Daryl diving on it and smashing its head open with a pipe. She offered the dagger back to him but he shook his head and pushed her aside as a walker lunged past Michonne and almost clamped onto her throat. With a shriek Isabelle stumbled backwards and her balance faltered. Twisting around she landed on her hands and knees and flung her leg out to stumble a walker as hands clamped into the jerkin and yanked her upright and out of harm’s way.
          Twisting around Daryl she took out the walker that threatened his back. Feeling his back against hers as they moved towards the fence more quickly. Realising they were about to be overwhelmed Isabelle pushed Daryl towards the fence. He refused to go over first, in his usual annoying over protective way. Hands on her waist he was half throwing her over the fence as the walkers slammed into it. She let her legs drop over the other side and offered a hand to Daryl. Urgently he took it and scrambled up the fence, she released him at the last minute and threw the dagger into the skull of a walker grabbing his ankle and dragging him backwards. It ricocheted off the bone but startled it for long enough for Daryl to kick himself free and fall over the side with her.
          Extracting themselves from the tangle of their own limbs they stood on the other side of the gate for a moments breather before heading into the woods after the group. Isabelle grabbed Daryl’s arm and pulled him backwards. So relieved he was alive and they were free she couldn’t help herself as she pushed him backwards into a tree trunk. Her lips crushed into his, hands locked into his shirt as she kissed all the tension and the loss free. Fingers tangled into her hair and she half expected to be pulled back and reprimanded. Instead she was pulled closer, he was kissing her back and the thrill shot through her powerfully until she was completely lost in the sensation.
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Survival Isn't An Option