The Walking Dead: Insanity (A TWD Story) EP 1 Chp 1, 2

Warning: Dark Theme Shouts out to JonGon, for the amazing artwork, and everyone that participated in the "Create your Own TWD Story or Fanfic" thread for all their support. Any constructive criticism will be much appreciated.

Episode 1, Memories

Chapter 1

“We were hungry! It was an act of desperation! Please, you have to believe me!”

“Shut the fuck up!” Asim yelled as he hit the man’s face with the blunt edge of his crowbar. “An act of desperation?! Raping two teenagers is an act of desperation!? Tying men to a tree and leaving them for the freaks is an act of desperation!? You and your friends are monsters!”

The bandit coughed up blood from where he sat, tied to a lawn chair, and it slowly poured from his mouth and onto his dark blue jacket. Asim waited for him to be finished, then aggressively took off his black, fingerless military gloves and started punching the bandit in the face, slowly. Asim knew why he took off his gloves, when he starts bleeding from his knuckles, it’s meant for him to stop, but he didn’t. He couldn’t. Finally, Asim stopped to take a breath, and sat down. When he did, all he could see was the members of his group, the ones he tried so hard to protect. Asim then came to the conclusion; he failed them.

The anger had left, now sadness and regret had taken over. Asim looked into the camp’s dying fire and started to cry silently. “Why?” Asim asked, “Why?”

The bandit had spent the break from his beating by coughing up blood, which came up in large clumps that tried to clog his throat and unlike most people when they coughed up blood, instead of spraying out, this blood trickled down from his mouth and down his neck, giving the bandit a sinister look. But in his hazel eyes, anyone could see that they were full of regret, “We…we were hungry…and we got carried away.”

Asim looked at him and said, “Not a good enough explanation.” Asim stood up and side kicked him in the chest, making the blue and white striped lawn chair that the bandit was tied to, fall backwards. Asim walked over to where the bandit had fallen and kneeled, looking at his hurt enemy. The bandit then coughed up blood, but this time it sprayed, landing on the black bandanna that covered Asim’s face, Asim’s eyes, his black patrol cap, and his upper nose and cheek. Asim then wiped away the blood that went into his eyes, but didn’t care for wiping away the blood that had ended up on his upper cheek and nose, as long as it didn't go into his vision.

Asim stood up, still covered in the blood of the man and his comrades, and looked upon the destroyed bandit camp. Asim saw the carved open tents, the splattered blood and the ten dead bodies, some with blunt trauma to back of the head, some with bullet wounds in the head, and on others; roamer bites.

He still remembered the fight. Asim had used his own blood to draw large groups of roamers silently to the bandit’s camp, and when the freaks got close to the camp, they cared more about the sound of moving and talking meals more than the smell of his blood. The roamer herd that Asim had created surprised them, already killing two bandits before the undead came within view. Asim from that point on stayed back and watched the clash, gradually picking off bandits as they started to gain the upper hand in the battle. Sometimes, he would shoot the leading bandit, making the bandits think it was an accidental friendly fire, other times he would run up and kill a bandit cowering towards the back of the group with his crowbar, by the end, there were two bandits left and his roamer herd had been destroyed. Asim dispatched the first one with ease, when the second noticed, he bolted, and as he ran Asim shot him in the back of the knee. Asim had his revenge, for Stephen, for Aaron, for John, for Dante’, for Alissa, for Derrick, for all twenty members of his group. But it wasn’t good enough. Kim, Alissa and her younger sister had been raped and shot, Derrick was set on fire, and John and Anthony were tied to trees and left as live roamer bait, and everyone else was gunned down. All Asim could think of is, “What kind of person does this?” He looked directly in the eyes of the bandit and answered his own question out loud, “The kind that isn’t human anymore.”

Asim walked back to where the bandit sat, in an awkward position, on his back with his legs in the air. He then grabbed the end of the lawn chair and jerked it up. Asim had lost track of time, twenty minutes had passed since he had kicked him over, and the bandit’s legs were fast asleep. Asim then looked around for a knife, due to Winston, Victor and Ralph stealing his knife along with what was left of their supplies when they abandoned his group. He then found one, a small pocket knife, it wasn’t the sharpest of blades, but it’d do. Asim walked over to the tied bandit and held his knife to the man’s arm, and was about to begin sawing, he wanted to make the bandit feel every bit of pain his friends had felt before they died.

The man let out a near silent squeal as the cold, dull blade touched his skin. “Is this me?” Asim thought to himself, “Is this really me? What have I become? He deserves death, but what I’m doing, it’s not death, it’s something worse. I can’t let this world get to me.”

Asim then felt another side of himself wanting to cut into the bandit’s arm and pull at his very nerves, inside of him a war of influence had erupted. “He killed everyone!” He thought, “He probably raped Alessa and her sister, or set Derrick on fire, or let people get fed to those…those things! He does not deserve a quick death.”

Asim heard many voices inside of his head, but the one thought that came above all others was, “If I do this, what separates me from him? Or, what separates me from those things eating people?”

When his mind started quieting down, he noticed that tears started pouring down from the bandit’s eyes. Seeing this made Asim realize that he wasn’t the good guy he hoped he was, he was the man out for revenge. Asim told himself that he came out here to kill these people, not for revenge, but to stop them from ever doing this to anyone ever again, but this, what he was doing now, torture, this was not what he came here for. This was not him. He steadily took the pocket knife away from the bandit’s arm and cut the ropes binding him to the lawn chair and started walking away.

“Wait!” The bandit called to Asim, “Can I have a gun?”

There were two reasons the bandit would want the gun, to opt out, or to shoot him in the back as he walked away. Personally, Asim didn’t care what he did with the gun, he felt as if he had lost everything. “Here.” He handed the bandit one of the scavenged hand guns that Asim had picked up after the fight.

Asim continued walking away when suddenly he heard the bandit say, “We’re all monsters now, aren’t we?” He turned just to see that the bandit was staring at all of the dead bodies created by Asim. Asim’s gray eyes and the bandit’s hazel eyes met for the last time, the bandit put the gun in his own mouth and pulled the trigger.

“Holy shit!” Asim nearly yelled as he woke up from his nightmare. He nervously looked around, hoping to see someone, but knew that he wasn’t going to. He stared at the bell he slept under, and then out the no walled steeple. He finally sat up from his dark green sleeping bag and looked out at the town, anxiously peering at the few streets in this town. He saw just about what he expected, burned down building, mounds of burnt roamers, and not a single moving creature. Just him, alone, again.

It had been five months after the outbreak, four months since the loss of his group, and two months since the last time Asim saw a live human being. He had found this small town about a month and a half ago, right about when he lost track of the group of people he was trying to join. Not knowing what to do, Asim settled into the tallest building he could see, which was the church steeple that wasn’t directly connected to its chapel. He then burned downed the rest of the town, including the chapel, which was relatively easy, because it seemed like most of the freaks cleared out a when their food started to disappear, and the roamers that didn’t leave, he killed and burned. Burning down the buildings was a very strategic move, it helped him make sure that the area was truly clear, and to make sure that it stayed that way, he called the freaks roamers because they roamed and there was always a possibility of one coming to the town and hiding in a house. He could also spot an incoming herd or survivors (though he hadn’t seen either since he got there) from miles away, since the town was built on an open field, surrounded by some woodland. So, he scavenged as much supplies as he could from them (which wasn’t much) and burned them down.

Alone. Asim looked for a roamer wandering about, or a deer just coming out of the surrounding woodland, maybe, just maybe with a couple fawns. But, still, not a single thing was moving. “Hello! Hello, can anyone hear me!?” He called out, hoping for some sign of acknowledgement, like someone answering him, or someone waving to him in the distance. Nothing.

Asim looked away from burned down town and grabbed his bag. He unzipped it and pulled out his video camera, the same one he used for reconnaissance. He started looking at saved videos, slowly clicking on the right button, changing the saved video data each time, until he finally came to the latest video recorded. He then selected it and waited patiently for it to start. Asim remembered when he recorded this video, he was lying in a ditch outside of a motel with the only thing poking out being this camera. Whenever he made these tapes, he would watch them when he got back to his camp. Each time, he looked and listened for children, elderly or pregnant women, something to prove to him that these guys weren’t like the bandits that killed off his group, and this very tape, proved that he could’ve joined them. And now, this tape was all he had left of people.

Through the camera’s screen he could make out a makeshift wall, behind it was an RV and a motel. On top of the RV, keeping watch was a depressed looking white woman wearing a black jacket with a gray under shirt, and on her lap was a rifle. For about twenty minutes, nothing happens, the woman sometimes moves around but nothing major happens. Asim normally skipped the first twenty minutes, and then would pause, make sure everything around him was absolutely quiet, and then he would let the video play. The two dumpsters that acted as doors for the motel’s walls opened up and two men step out, one white male, with a mullet and what looked like to be a truckers hat; the other was a black male, wearing a blue buttoned up shirt and carrying a rifle. As they are about to close the dumpster gate, a small girl wearing a blue and white baseball cap comes out and says something to the second man, that Asim can only listen through the camera if he fully turns up the volume and stays completely quiet.

“Stay lucky, Lee.”

“You know I will.” Lee answered, in a soft and caring voice.

He had always wondered about that, ever since he watched it back at his camp, he wasn’t her father, mainly because the two looked nothing alike and she called him “Lee” and not dad.

“You know, you should stop watching that. It’s fucking with your head.” Asim looked to see who interrupted his thinking, and out of the corner of his eye he saw John, a tall Hispanic man wearing a brown coat and blue jeans.

“Probably not as much as having conversations with you, John.” Asim said in retaliation, while he paused the camera.

“Oh, shit! Watch out, the dog’s got bite!” John mocked, then in less than a second, his voice completely changed from mocking Asim, to being dead serious, “Maybe it’s time for you to get off your ass and start looking for some people.”

“I burned down this damn town, I send radio broadcasts out every night, and I set up signs and maps everywhere within seven kilometers. Has it ever occurred to you that I’m the last one? Because it sure as hell occurred to me.”

John looked at him with a fierce fire in his eyes, “Get your ass up and go look for some people, now!” Asim looked back at his backpack and started looking for food or something to take his mind off John’s apparition. “There’s people out there and you know it, now are you going to look for them or contemplate blowing your brains out tonight!? What happened to the man who wanted to help people?! What about back in Atlanta, when you saved my ass?!”

Asim laughed while digging through his black backpack, “What about back in Atlanta? I pulled you out of that shithole just for you to die somewhere else. Now let me smoke in peace.” As he said that last word he looked up to see that he had disappeared. “Thank you.”

The tired, hungry man brought out blunt paper and marijuana, and started to wrap a cigar. Asim knew it wasn’t the best thing to do, especially in a time like this, but it seemed like all drinking did was relive the pain of his failures, while weed seemed to make him forget about it, for at least as long as his high lasted. The smell was relieving for him, as he opened the bag and took a strong whiff of the weed he had recovered from a drawer before burning the house down, allowing him to forget what happened in his haunted past, from his failures to protect his group, to the group of bandits he slaughtered. Asim just finished wrapping his blunt when he stopped and pulled out his lighter, it was a zippo lighter with a purple butterfly on it. The memories of the day when he retrieved it from Alessa were still very vivid in Asim’s mind. Before Asim had been exiled, she gave it to him, and after what happened to his group, he never parted with it.

He flicked the lighter and a small, bright fire appeared out of the nozzle, he then picked up his tightly wrapped blunt, stuck it in his mouth and lit it. He inhaled and exhaled the thick smoke from the weed, losing care for what was happening, forgetting what has happened.

He started to taste ash when he inhaled, which meant that this blunt was just about done. He threw it on the wooden steeple floor, stepped on it (to make sure the sparks wouldn’t start a fire below) and kicked it down. The cigarette slowly dropped, and Asim watched it as it fell…when he saw a figure standing in the fields below. It wasn’t a very large figure, it must have only been a child, Asim noticed this and called out to the child, “Hey! Do you need help?!” Then he noticed, it was a little girl, but she seemed to be ignoring him. He grabbed his bag and his axe (just in case if it was a roamer) and quickly climbed down the steeple’s outside ladder, yelling out questions to her as did so, “Do you need food?! Are you hurt?! Where is your group?!” Each time, no response.

He finally touched the ground, and when he did, he ran towards her, calmly. But in reality he wanted to sprint towards her, he knew with the way he looked, with blood and mud stained across his face, anyone would run away in terror if they saw him sprinting crazily towards them, and Asim knew that being alone for this long, he was slowly going crazy. He needed people. He then stopped four meters away and asked, “Little girl, are you okay? Where is your group?”

Still no response.

“Please, answer me.” He said nearly crying, “Please, say anything.”

Then he recognized the little girl. It was the one from his camera, the little girl at the motel. The group he wanted to join, but as he came to the motel, he had found it under attack from bandits and roamers. Right when Asim entered the motel’s walls, their RV drove off and he never saw them again. He remembered the anger and the sadness that festered in him that day. He remembered walking for days and nights just looking for them, and then he was forced to abandon the search when the largest herd of roamers he had ever seen blocked off his road to Savannah. Instead, Asim went North, towards the Augusta area, hoping to find someone, anyone.

“I’m screwed, aren’t I?” He asked the little girl, “I have fully lost my fucking mind.”

The girl, said nothing, and simply faded away. Asim took a good look around one last time and said, “I need to get out of here.”

Chapter 2

After a little applied pressure, the door swung open, and hit against the wall. Asim brought his crowbar back to a defensive position, ready to swing at any walking corpses that dared to go near him, but just as he expected: nothing inside. He let out a sigh and scanned the room. It was a small motel room, a white tiled bathroom in the back, covered in pieces of trash from the nearby tipped over trashcan, and a bed. Asim got down in a prone position and checked under the bed, nothing but a towel. “Maybe there’s a mini-fridge, somewhere.” He said to himself as he started to lose faith that this room contained any useful supplies. He looked over his shoulder at a wooden paneled closet, and slowly brought his firefighter ax out, without moving his vision away from the closet. Asim gently touched the small plastic handle and jerked it open. Just like when he opened the motel’s front door, nothing was inside the meter and a half closet, not even clothing hangers.

“Are you serious?” He said in distaste, “Not a damn thing in here.” Asim slammed the closet door. He looked around; to make sure he hadn’t missed anything and walked out the door. When Asim exited the motel he saw a familiar face, barely ten meters away. It was Alessa, standing out between the brink of the dark woodland path back to Asim’s tower and the street to Augusta. Holding her hand was her younger sister, Jo. Both stood, still as statues, as if waiting for at a bus stop for something that would never come. Asim caught himself raising his hand to wave to them, he knew they were dead, he had saw their bodies, but there they stood, as if they had never died. Asim’s legs wanted to sprint out to them, his arms wanted to wave at Alessa and Jo; he wanted to call out in joyous excitement to them, but each time he stopped himself. He knew that they were just a memory.

“I gotta get this door open.” Asim said out loud, trying to ignore the apparitions that were sending chills down his spine. After several moments of the feeling, he turned around and stared straight at them, “You’re not real. You’re not real. Not anymore. You’re…” His voice started to break and tears started slowly coming down his face, “You’re…you’re…not real.” She slowly walked towards him, while his voice started to get louder and louder, “No, you’re not real! You stay away from me!”

Now Alessa and Jo were only standing about a meter away from him, and Asim started to yell at them, “It’s my fault! Is that what you wanted to hear?! I wasn’t there, and I lost every single one of you! I failed! I’m…I’m sorry.” Asim now fell to the ground and covered his crying eyes, waiting for the two of them to disappear, just like John, or the little girl from the video camera hours before. But they didn’t, they stood silently, just watching him.

“No, no, no, no, no, hell no!” Asim yelled while uncovering his eyes, now he was standing up and walking towards them. “You’re not going to get in my head!” Rapidly tapping the temple of his head with his index finger, and now he was talking to them with an elevated, angered tone. “I may be crazy, but you stay the hell out of my head!”

Alessa stood there, alone, Asim didn’t recall Jo’s disappearance when he was yelling at them, but now it was only him and her. Alessa exceeded his age by four years, but unlike him, her skin wasn’t covered in blood, she wore clean clothing, her hair and body was clean, and Asim swore that he smelled strawberries, oranges, or cherries, one of those three, he hadn’t smelled any of those in months, so he couldn’t tell the difference (and him being covered in roamer blood from a week ago took its toll on his smelling, didn’t help). Her tan skin looked nearly angelic to him, and her black hair came down to her mid-back, she seemed to be radiant. She sported a purple t-shirt, even though it was freezing cold, and a pair of black jeans.

Asim never really was attracted to her, they were decent friends after he had gotten their group out of Atlanta, but he had not thought of her, romantically, at the time he was focused on survival and helping the people of his group. The reason for him being angry, or even fearful when seeing Alessa and Jo’s apparition because it reminded him, directly, of his failures. He remembered seeing their violated, rotting corpses lying face down in the dirt of their camp in the forest on the outskirts of Macon.

He started hyperventilating, each time his breath was faster than the last one, until he dropped to his knees. “You know I tried, right?” Asim asked, while wiping away a tear falling down from his right eye.

Alessa leaned towards him and said in a haunting voice, “You tried, and you failed.” She then disappeared, leaving Asim kneeling on the street, all alone.

Asim sat there, motionless, eyeing the tree line on the other side of the road. “I need to do what I came for.” He said, to himself, quietly. He had gotten into the last can of beans and his water was nearly depleted, if he wanted to go anywhere, he was going to need supplies.

He stood up from his position and walked over to the next motel door, grabbing his crowbar and his firefighters ax as he did so. As Asim came close to the door, he heard moaning from the inside. “Got a freak.” He said in soliloquy, and slid one strap off of his shoulder so he could reach the things he needed. His backpack was stored with a few memos, a CD; Tupac Shakur’s “Greatest Hits”, then he had the video camera, a small multi-tool knife hybrid, The Art of War by Sun Tzu (he read it over and over again, just to pass the time) and, finally his lock pick set. Even though he had his crowbar, he knew this lock pick set was just as useful, mainly because the only reasons he has survived this long was through intelligence and stealth, and the crowbar made a lot of noise when gaining access to buildings, while the lock picks were near silent, which were exceedingly helpful on his night runs for supplies.

Asim got down on one knee and attempted to pick the lock. It took him a little bit, but after a half of a minute of positioning and repositioning, he heard the click, meaning that the door was now unlocked. He slowly opened the door, half expecting a roamer to jump out, but of course, all that happened was the door slowly creaked open, making an irritating sound before hitting the wall and halting. The motel room was small, only containing one bed, queen sized, a single night stand on the right side of the bed and a picture of a sailboat hanging above the bed. On the left side of the bed there was a toolbox on the ground, with a few miscellaneous tools, such as a hammer and screwdriver lying on the ground, and standing over it, was a roamer.

The roamer eyed Asim before raising its leg up clumsily and started walking towards him, like a man that had too much to drink. Asim’s hands wrapped tightly around his ax as he raised it over his left shoulder and waited for the corpse to take one more step forward. It did, and Asim swung with gravity aiding him and hit the roamer in the temple, cutting more than half way through its head. No reaction at all, it just came tumbling down on the floor, making a noise similar to dropping text books on a wooden table. Asim never got used to that sound, the sound of lifeless bodies dropping to the floor, and he didn’t think he ever would.

Asim glanced down at the floor, observing the tools, when suddenly he felt his leg get jerked, causing him to fall over. “Oh, shit!” He yelled as he came tumbling down to the ground. It was a roamer, hiding underneath the bed, with much of its legs chewed off, most likely done by the other corpse. Holding onto Asim’s legs, the roamer pulled itself out from under the bed and started trying to take a bite out of him. Asim elbowed it in the face, causing the roamer to recoil, giving Asim enough time to reach for anything that could help him defeat the hostile. His hands went as fast as possible to grab anything out of the toolbox next to him, while he propped up both legs to keep the corpse at bay. As his hand came a cold, metal hammer he roundhouse kicked the roamer in the face, and then stood up quickly. Before it could even turn around to face Asim, he hit it in the back of the head with the hammer. But he could still hear it moaning, so he hit it again, and again, until on his fourth swing, the hammer became lodged deep within the roamers cranium. Asim exclaimed, “Little bastard, caught me off guard.” And stood up, pushing himself up with his palms.

He looked at the hammer that was now tainted with the blood and brains of the now put down roamer, and nodded, almost as if giving respect to it, before setting it back in its toolbox.

Again, nothing in this motel room either. “Damn it!” He yelled to himself as he walked out the motel room door and headed to the next and final one, “I need some supplies or my little trip is fucked.” As he got out his picklock set and was about to start to unlock the door, he noticed it was open, just slightly. Just like last time, he gave the door a gentle push, and it made a loud creaking noise all the way until it hit the door stop and halted it. He gazed at the room in horror. It was a family, a mother, son and daughter were laying on the bed and the father was sitting on the arm chair, just right of the queen sized mattress, all with crude bullet holes going through their skulls. It was a family suicide. The father’s blood stained, lifeless hands still held on tight to his hunting shotgun, as his blood and the blood of his family stained the ground, the walls and the ceiling. Asim felt in the pit of his stomach, like he wanted to throw up, but he couldn’t. Their blood was everywhere, on everything. He saw the bullet holes in the faces of the children and the mother, which looked like to be done in their sleep, or they took it willingly. He saw the bullet holes coming out through the roof of the father’s mouth and out through the top of his bald head.

Asim ran out of there slamming the door as he exited. He may have been hungry, but he was not going to loot that room with the bodies in it. He deeply inhaled and then fell backwards, sitting up against the door. Thoughts and memories came into his head rapidly, his failures. He thought of the bodies of his friends, piled one on top of the other. He thought of the blood dripping down his face during the attack on the bandit camp. He thought of the argument that he had with his group, allowing a man and his family to stay at their camp, just for that same man to betray him. He thought of the farm house he had retrieved his ax from, and the monstrous slaughter house the cannibals had in their barn. He thought of the people that he was so closed to being with, that just left him, surrounded by those monsters, all alone.

“No!” He shouted as he hit himself against the side of the head. “No…stay out of my head. Stay out of my head.” He repeated.

Asim sat there with his back against the door for two hours, doing nothing but looking at the floor and listening to the annoying buzz of insects coming from the tree line. Then he heard a noise, it sounded like a shuffle, or more like a dragging noise. Asim looked up to see a lone roamer, about one hundred meters away, walking slowly towards his position. He grabbed his ax and crowbar and stood up, just to notice that the roamer wasn’t alone. Behind it, he could see hundreds following it. Asim knew exactly what it was, and where it was coming from.

After Asim was left behind by the motel group in Macon, he didn’t stop. Asim sprinted after them, day and night, nonstop. He had hope, and he wasn’t about to let it die by a recreational vehicle driving off. Asim tracked them as far as he possibly could and eventually, using his map, he was able to estimate where they were heading, Savannah. So, he took a short cut, he ran through the woods cutting off a lot of time he would have wasted, running on the road. He eventually came to a railroad, and noticed on his map that it went directly to Savannah. A hope filled him at that moment, one like he had never seen, that he may actually meet up with people. He emptied a car, and leaned back the driver’s seat, and slept.

A few hours later, a booming noise woke him up, and he felt the ground start to shake, slightly. He knew that sound, he had heard it many times before the world went to shit, it was a train. The door of his vehicle swung open at the might of his leg kicking it, and he stepped out. The train had just passed him. He took a deep breath and threw his backpack over his shoulder, and got ready to start following the train, when he saw roamers, hundreds of them, pouring out of the forest. In front of him, and behind him, the freaks followed the noise like dogs. The people in that train had just created a herd of them, and Asim knew for sure that following the train, would kill him. Instead, he ran North, abandoning his search for the group.

Now looking back on it, Asim believed he would have followed them towards Savannah, even if that meant he died in the process, because what he was doing now, was no life at all. It was getting drunk or high just to try to block out the memories of the past. He stared directly into the crowd of roamers, he at least counted three hundred, and there was probably thousands more trailing behind them (if this truly was the Savannah herd he escaped from several months ago). He turned around and darted for the tree line, knowing exactly what he was going to do when he got back to his steeple. Pack up, and get the hell out of here.