Deb could hear them up ahead, the fuckers must have encountered another group of people on the road. For a moment she hesitated, it might be a bit messy to engage them while they were already handling something else. She moved into the ditch and down the road a ways trying to get a better view of what was going on. Her heart was racing at the possibility of this being over, both excited and terrified. She got a good view. The biggest man was holding down a woman with a gun to her head, the leader was grappling with a bearded stranger, her gut twisted at the sight of one of them standing over a young boy while unbuckling his belt. She was done with hesitation, she stood up on the bank with arrow at the ready and released, the rapist fell backwards with an arrow lodged in his brain.
For a moment the fighting strangers stood still for a moment looking into the darkness but it stopped. The boy screamed out, "Help us!". Ever weary she stood firm but he screamed again with tears in his throat and she couldn't help it she knocked another. The man holding the woman turned to where her arrow had come from using the woman as a shield. It was a difficult shot but she was confident, more confident than she had ever been before, she loosed. The man was dead before he hit the ground.
The woman leapt up and went to help the other man, Deb moved forward into the moonlight and saw that the others from the group were beating on the man with the crossbow. It didn't matter, her revenge was at hand. The leader had the bearded man in his hands backed up against a tree, Deb knocked her arrow ready to release but before she could the bearded man did the unthinkable. He bit into the leaders neck and ripped out the artery in the man's neck, he bled out in seconds and her revenge disappeared from reach. She was angry and she turned on the last of the people from the group and put an arrow in each of their backs.
The other two saw that they had lost turned to run, calmly she stepped over the unconscious body of the beaten man and put an arrow in each of their retreating backs. She saw them go down and turned, slinging her bow over her shoulder and pulling her knife from its sheath. She went to drive her knife into the temple of the unconscious man but a tidal impact of force slammed into her and her vision blacked out for a second when her head hit the ground. Opening her eyes she saw the bearded mans face above her own and felt his hand holding down her wrists.
"He's one of them!" she yelled in his face.
Impressively calmly for a man with blood dripping from his mouth he answered her. "He's one of us. Who are you?"
A gravelly voice answered for me. "She's been following that group since I joined 'em."
Her pride winced knowing that he knew that she had been tracking them but she let it go looking at the man she asked. "If you knew why didn't you tell the rest of them?"
"Rick, get up." he said before answering me. The man called Rick released her and she sat up rubbing her wrists from the pressure. She was greeted by looking at the barrel of a gun pointed straight at her face. "You seemed harmless enough. Glad I didn't now. Ask her the question."
Rick kept the gun trained straight between her eyes. "How many walkers have you killed?"
"Do you keep count?" she responded rudely.
He nodded and went on. "How many people have you killed?"
She stopped for a moment but answered him nonetheless. "Including those four. Five."
"Why?" He asked again.
"They were trying to kill you, is that not enough?" she demanded.
"No," he told her simply.
"You were following them." the woman added.
"They took turns holding me down and raping me." she answered again. The man's face twitched but he did not break his eye contact. "Then they beat me unconscious and left me to die but not before the leader picked up my baby and took a knife to his throat."
He fought to keep his face impassive and asked again. "You said five."
Tears were making there way out of her eyes but her voice was steady. "My sister was bit. I put her down."
There was a moment, just a moment of silence before Rick lowered his gun and stood offering the newcomer his hand. She took it and stood up. He nodded to her and took his son by the arm and went into the burnt out truck without a word.
She looked at the others. "My name is Deborah, normally just Deb."
The crossbowman looked unsteady on his feet with blood pouring from his nose but he nodded to her. "Daryl."
"Michonne." Said the black woman with the katana.
Daryl went to tend to his wounds by the trunk and Deb turned pulling her knife back out for use driving it into the skull of the leader and dragging his body over into the ditch. Michonne went to help her with the others but she shook her head. "Let me. Please."
The imposing woman seemed to understand because she nodded and didn't make another move towards the rest of the bodies. It was therapeutic. Driving her knife into the skulls of the men who assaulted her, greeting the flashbacks with open arms her face was soaked with tears when she was done and she let them fall. As she collected her arrows, she was upset to see that two of them had met spine and rib and shattered from the impact.
When her grisly work was finished she went over, Michonne had a small campfire going roasting a squirrel on a handmade spit. Daryl was wincing as he tried to make his way down to lay back.
"Take off your shirt." Deb ordered him.
"What?" he asked looking up at her.
"I was trained as a nurse." she answered. "You could have broken ribs, fractures or internal bleeding. Let me take a look. Take off your shirt."
He glared up at her but removed his vest and his shirt and permitted her to poke and prod as she needed to. One of his lower ribs was flexible to the touch, she bound his torso up tight as best she could and ordered his to keep it as still as possible knowing that he wouldn't.
"You could puncture your lung and there won't be shit I can do for it." she explained continuing her exam.
"Ow!" he bellowed grabbing her wrist drawing blood with his nails.
"Let go." she told him and he did. "You're spleen is bleeding. You're belly isn't distended so it's not too bad, more than likely it'll clear up on its own but keep a sharp eye on it and tell me if it hurts without touching it or you stomach looks like it sticking out more than normal."
He grunted at her before lying back which she took as a thank you. "The bruised and the scraps you'll just have to deal with." He made another noise but otherwise did not respond.
She sat back on her haunches and looked at Michonne, "You're heading to Terminus right?"
"Yes." Michonne said. "Rick's opted to trust you so I'd imagine you could come with us if you want. More people who can shoot and live out here are an asset to us."
"Not to be rude." Deb asked. "But you people are looking pretty steady on your feet. The few people I've seen have been a hell of a lot worse off than you folks. Skinnier, hungrier, most desperate. Do you have a safe place?"
"We did." She told her. "We were holed up in a prison. Had most of it in use.. Had to clear walkers off the fences every day but we had food growing and were raising pigs. We were gathering new people to, finding them, bringing them in."
"What happened?" Deb asked her.
Michonne's face darkened but she told her. "A man. Called himself the Governor showed up on our gates and blasted it all to hell. Told the people he was with that it was to take it from us but he was there to destroy us. We lost a lot of people that day. We hope that if anyone lived they saw the signs and we'll see them when we get there."
"I'm sorry." Deb told her.
"Can't say any of it was any worse than what you went through, or what anyone else went through that's still living." Michonne said, no longer looking her in the face.
"The shit that happened to you is always the most painful." Deb told her. "Humans are capable of empathy. At least they used to be. But I daresay we can only truly feel the pain that we are in."
Michonne nodded at her. Daryl spoke from his place on the ground "That's some higher level shit. You educated?"
"I have a lot of fancy pieces of paper at home, yeah." she answered him with the ghost of a smile. "But since the world ended the only education I've been able to use is from the summer I spent at a girl guide camp and the archery lessons that I quit after two months."
Michonne returned my small grin before pulling herself up and getting onto the roof of the truck that her friends were sleeping in. "Fair to assume you won't be trusting me to keep watch quite yet?"
"You're a smart girl." Michonne said looking down at the newcomer.
Deb took that as a yes, put her pack on the ground and sat to rest. Purple bruises were blossoming on her wrists and she could feel welts on her back starting to appear. The back of her head had been bleeding from the fall but it had stopped leaving the blood to dry in her hair. She pulled the worst of it off of the strands on her long blond hair before pulling it back into her customary braid down her back.
Deb instincts told her to trust these people but she wasn't stupid, she tucked all her things beneath her head and kept her pistol loaded and in hand as she lay back to fall asleep. She woke up when Michonne changed watches with Daryl and again when he switched with Rick but other than that she slept through the night waking in the morning with dew on her face before the others.