If It Feels Right
Disclaimer: I do NOT own The Walking Dead in any form and am not affiliated with an aspect of it. I'm just a college student who loves her zombie genre.
He was afraid.
His mother had always seemed so strong to him. She was always his hand to hold and his shelter to hide behind, even after the dead had started to rise. And even when his father had told him, achingly, that one day it would come to this, he had never believed him.
And now, with her spread out before him, bleeding and growing pale and weak, he wondered if her dying was just the end of his childhood fantasies, the final blow to temper him to manhood.
"Carl has a knife."
The words hurt so badly; had he killed her by taking it with him?
He saw the dawning horror on Maggie's face, but what scared him more was the steel behind her tear-bright eyes.
He opened his mouth to say something when suddenly his mother's gaze met his. She looked so small but so brave...
"So if it doesn't feel right, don't do it!"
He leaned down, took her hand, and wondered for a long moment how anything could ever feel right again. The world around them was so wrong...the dead walked and the living rotted around them. He saw the nightmare flashes of his world collapsing down around him again...
"...The best thing I ever did!"
He wanted to scream at her that he wasn't. That he was a selfish little boy who desperately needed his mother. He wanted to sob and beg for forgiveness, to have her smooth away the ache that came from knowing he had once hated her. He wanted her to tuck him in that night, just so he could sigh that he wasn't a kid one more time...
Her scream pierced his thoughts, blood spraying out of Maggie's strained face and soaking the knees of his torn pants. He felt her hand go lax in his, and watched with relief and terror as the pain on her face suddenly ebbed back and her eyes closed.
"Carl, can you give me your hand?"
He responded automatically, almost grateful to drop the limp fingers that a moment ago had clutched so tightly to his. The guilt, he thought, would come later, maybe...when he would look down at his red washed hands and know that they were dipped in his mother's blood.
He heard Maggie talk, and wondered if she did it just to fill the achingly empty space around them, and saw her lift a still, bloody thing from the mass of ripped flesh.
It was so quiet, and he thought to himself that maybe it was best this tiny little life would see the suffering they had.
He was silent as Maggie ran her fingers over it's chest, it's back, and Carl wanted to slap her for taking that protective, beautiful role so easily. And when it's wail cut through the air he had a vicious flash of anger so powerful he could imagine strangling them both and ending the torture before it began.
"It's a girl." Maggie said, smiling faintly.
Carl felt the anger melt away as those tiny fists clenched and a thin wail broke from her small, pink mouth.
Without thinking, he pulled off his jacket and gave it to her, to keep her warm...and wondered faintly what his mother might be thinking when a new horror settled like a fist in his stomach.
"We can't leave her like this..." He said, "She'll turn..."
Maggie said nothing as she shifted the baby over and with a benevolence that made his eyes tear, reached for the gun at her side.
"No," He said suddenly, holding out his hand, "She's my mother."
Maggie stared at him for a long moment and he saw her eyes flash with so many things. He saw a woman who wanted desperately to protect the boy that he was and a woman who saw the man that he would have to become.
And then she handed him the gun, and crept back up the stairs.
Wrapped in the privacy of the dark damp, Carl allowed himself a few tears as he knelt beside her. He took her hand, and watched for a pulse in the thin skin of her neck.
"I'm sorry, mom."
He bit back the sob that tried to claw its way out of his throat. She had told him that if something didn't feel right, that he shouldn't do it...
But what could be more wrong then what he was about to do?
Another tear fell onto his cheek as he watched the beat of her heart slow, and finally stop.
He waited, felt the twitch of her hand and wondered for one horrible moment if she would look up at him and smile and tell him that it would all be okay...
And then her eyes fluttered open and he saw the yawning abyss of insatiable hunger in her eyes...
And suddenly lifting that gun felt very, very right.