**Abram - The House **

The man gazed out the window with a cautious eye, his hands steady on his legs. It was late and all the girls were asleep, so he was left to keep watch until 3:00am, when he would wake Sam for her turn to keep watch. Turisa and Jess had taken the two upstairs bedrooms, Jess being barely able to contain her excitement for the nursery. Leah and Samantha had taken to sleeping on the living room couches. 

Abram spent most of the night in the house's kitchen disassembling his rifle and giving it an extensive cleaning, keeping his pistol handy in case the need arose for him to use it. Before reassembling the weapon, the man stripped his jacket and heavy under armour shirt. He caught a glimpse of himself of the reflection of the window. He was taken aback to look at himself. He'd been loosing weight; but that was because they'd been at a shortage of food. What was worse; his muscles were slowly deteriorating. His chiseled physique of 2 months ago had been drastically affected by the change in lifestyle. He'd gone from eating well every day in his small, New Orleans apartment, watching over the undead below him. Since he and Jess had left Haywood, he hadn't gotten the change to shave but once, so his beard now appeared unkempt - As it was. 

The soldier sat down in at the kitchen table, his hand absently sliding to a Velcro pocket on his military jacket. He drew 4 chains of dog-tags, examining them nostalgically. Each of them held the name of a fallen member of his squad. Kurt, Mason, Davis, and Annie. The only set of tags he lacked were Daniel Crowe's... He was't petty enough to take them, rather he gave them to Emma.

It was a sobering fact - he was the only member of his team that still lived. For five straight years they'd been deployed many times, and they always joked about how they could die at any moment... Abram just never thought that he'd be the last one to survive. They had all thought it would be Daniel... he was the biggest, the strongest, the smartest... It only proved that - regardless if you were 6'5 and 220, a bullet could stop anyone... 

Abram had learned another thing: only cowards shot an unarmed man... But thats how all but one member of his team had gone. Kurt, Mason, and Davis had all taken a pistol round to the back almost 2 months after their discharge at the beginning of the outbreak. They knew that Daniel had connections and weaponry in New Orleans, so they'd headed to meet him. The boys had been jumped late one night by a group of local bandits. Abram and Annie had been off to search for a car, and were almost ten miles away when the attack happened. They'd been "lucky" enough to live past the night, though they'd returned to their temporary camp to find their three closest friends had been turned into walkers. Even too this day, Abram could see the look on Annie's face. 

She was young, almost 28, they often teased her by calling her the "baby" of the squad. Annie had always been so strong, so stolid. Nothing shook her, even staring death in the face she could look and spit. The look on her face when she saw her comrades as walkers was the quintessence of pure horror. It had happened quickly - Abram fired three shots, his eyes stinging with anger. Three precise shots had always haunted Abram. His boys had been permanently put to sleep by friendly fire. Annie collapsed and broke down. They'd left that morning, and Annie had still carried a face of horror. "Be Strong, Annie." He'd told her a thousand times. It didn't matter. She was completely in shock. She and Davis were in a strong relationship, one that Abram had come close to ordering be ended because it was unprofessional and didn't look good for the higher-ups. Once they'd been discharged, the two didn't mind Abram's disapproval (It quickly faded). Kurt and Mason were like her older brothers. The young woman died a few weeks later from a walker bite. Abram couldn't bring himself to pull the trigger, so Annie took the gun and did it herself.

Abram recalled that awful day in Haywood. O'Riley had pulled the trigger on Daniel because Abram, again, had been too weak. Instead, he'd taken his anger and found that pathetic excuse of a man that the people of Outpost called "Hex". The man had turned into a walker already and was walking towards him as he approached the building outside of haywood. With a long-bladed machete, Abram had destroyed the walker, continuing to berate him with blows from the axe blade even after he was permanently dead, ending up splintering the handle. 

He missed his squad... At times, Abram had joked by calling the whole squad his kids. Daniel had insisted that he change his codename to "Poppa Bear". 

It was when Abram felt a tear drip from his cheek to his hand that he was pulled back to the presence. He blinked them away and wiped his hand off. After he went back to patiently keeping watch, his alarm beeped quietly, signaling 3:00am. He stood and left the kitchen, quietly going over to the couch and shaking Samantha gently. "Samantha." When she was awake, he removed his watch. "It's your turn to take watch, kid." He handed her the watch.