Fourteen walkers. Not nearly enough.
Fourteen and counting. Hack and slash, slash and hack. His mind seemed to drift away and the muscles in his arms worked on memory alone. He took down three of them at once hardly giving the action any thought. Blind and oblivious he stepped over the crumpled bodies, ignoring the hand that blindly groped from him. Desperate in it's need for food. He continued repeating the action over and over until he managed to find where he needed to be. With each uneven step he went deeper and deeper into the tombs. He wanted to be where she was, he needed to be with her.
Most of his upper body had gone numb by this point, his hands, arms, and shoulders were covered in gore. Black blood and pulpy blood vessels dangled off of his clothes, he paid them no mind. Rick was a machine now, he felt nothing except the desire to find his wife. They deep need was all consuming at this point. The thought that at any moment he could lose grip on his ax's handle, rarely crossed his mind. If anything he would just beat the walkers to death with his bare hands if need be.
A part of him already knew that he would be searching for a corpse. Seeing that baby along with Maggie and Carl... he just knew. But he needed to see it with his own eyes, to feel it with his own hands. He owed his wife that much if not so much more. Somehow he had managed to contain the grief in front of the group, well as much as he could considering the circumstances. It had taken every ounce of will power to not collapse out in the prison yard. His chest heaved as he walked, a scream trying to worm its way out of his sore throat.. with a sob he shoved it back down.
Not yet. Not yet.
Rick blinked slowly unsure as to how long he had been staring off into the blackness of the prison. How long had it been? Shaking his head slightly he glanced around in the darkness for once hearing only silence. The lack of noise was disturbing on a whole different level, at least with walkers around he had to keep himself aware. Now that he was alone, the grief began biting at his throat vicious in it's intensity.
His brain had begun imagining all of the horrible things that had probably happened to his angel. His wife.. his soul mate. The agony of her impending death and the knowledge that he was not there in her time of need. Even if he somehow managed to gouge his own eyes out, the image of her horror stricken face as she finally realized she was dying would never truly go away. Rick would never forget that image. She hadn't deserved that sort of death.. She hadn't deserved any of this.
Rick knew he should have killed those prisoners..every last one of them. If he had followed his instinct then this wouldn't have happened to his wife.
Shivering violently, he extended his right hand to brace against the prison wall. Rick moved to turn around to look down the corridor, his body reacting on pure instinct as a hand brushed his side. His own hand reacted to the motion, dragging the body close by its throat. His blue eyes didn't seem to register Glenn's own black.. Instead he started to bring the axe down to chop the Korean's head off. At the very last second he seemed to recognize that it was a friend and not a walker. Rick shoved him away without a word and stumbled off into the darkness.
Maggie and Glenn? They were a couple now, weren't they scared of the end? Of when one of them was brutally taken from the world with no rhyme or reason?
Rick had once known what it was like to feel love and joy with another human being. Lori had been that for him for years. He had greeted every single day with the knowledge that he could die. Being a officer made that a grim reality they had dealt with since they were just dating. Now he understood why she had always been so emotional all those times he had almost been killed. All those moments.. were it had been a almost. Now it was a reality and he was living it.
After leaving the farm house he had distanced himself from Lori. The revelation that she had a relationship with his best friend. That perhaps the baby she had been carrying was his friends? It had been incapacitating to say the very least. Rick had shut off from her on instinct, more or less to keep the group alive and safe. There had always been the idea in the back of his mind that he would work it out with her. He could forgive her... even if it would be one of the hardest things he had ever done.
There had been a part of him that had begun detaching himself from her when she revealed she was pregnant. Rick had known she would have to have a c-section, she had needed one of the first time around. This had been no different, and for that reason he had been preparing himself for her death. He had to survive somehow to keep Carl and their unborn child alive.. He had sensed that she had understood this as well, or perhaps the guilt of her actions had made her silent.
But it hadn't worked, he still experienced every emotion. Distancing himself hadn't worked at all, even with his new attitude he failed her. He hadn't been able to keep Lori safe from harm. And it had even been more foolish to pretend that he had felt nothing for her, to pretend that he didn't care. There was no escaping his grief, this silent tomb and the walkers within made sure of that.
He found himself outside of the boiler room door, a walker laying against the door quietly protesting. It's clawed hand desperately grabbing at his pants, with a slight shift of hand the axe ended the walkers meek attempts.
Rick walked down the boiler room steps quietly, dispatching every walker that was in his path. The actions still mostly instinct as his eyes roamed the corners of the dark room. He wouldn't leave until he found her body, he had to see it.
He rounded a corner and stopped dead in his tracks, inhaling the scent of fresh blood. Illuminated by a ray of light from one of the small windows, was a spatter of gore. He nearly dropped his axe, his mind reeling at the sight of it. This was it, this was where she had spent her her last moments. Rick stumbled for a moment thinking he was going to be sick, a gore splattered hand rose to come up to his mouth. Somehow he kept the bile down, the waves of nausea subsiding for a moment.
Silently he observed the large intact leg bones and hips of his deceased wife. Scattered this way and that, ignored by the walkers. Those bones were to hard for their rotten teeth to rip into, but the question remained. Where was the rest of her? He wondered silently, Where is my wife's body?
Looking around the room, he saw a walker slouched against a door, unable to move from it's reclining position. His eyes roamed it quietly, and the realization dawned on him. The horror of his realization almost to much for his brain to comprehend. It's belly was swollen, a massive mound of gray flesh pushing out of it's abdomen, which prevented it from rushing Rick. Instead it reached for him, half heartedly and gnashed it's teeth. The clicking seemed very loud in the darkness. It didn't take Rick very long to comprehend what had happened here, and a helpless rage simmered in his belly. It ate her, all of her.. I don't even have a body to bury.
He felt empty, feeling nothing even as he screamed when he pulled the trigger, and feeling even less when the walkers movements abruptly stopped. The kill was far from satisfying, the death was far too quick. It wasn't enough. Killing this walker a million times would barely scratch the surface, and would not bring Lori back to him. Lori was still dead.
A moaning sound reached his ears and it took Rick a moment to realize the sound was coming from him. He choked back a sob, trying to maintain some sort of control over the situation. There was no body to hold, no wounds to kiss, or hair to stroke away from her eyes - no hope of any sort of real closure. He had no corpse to whisper apologies to, instead of was left with this aching loneliness. I was gonna, after all of this was over, I was going to fix us. I was..
His fingers flexed on the knife that was in his hand.
She was in there, if he could just get her out..
Gently, he crawled over the walkers bloated corpse, staring down at it's bulging stomach. With a soft sigh, he slid his knife into the stinking flesh. It took a few expert strokes to deliver him his prize. Rick eyed the stomach weirdly enough almost feeling giddy.. she was so close now. Ever so gently he cut the soft flesh of the stomach open to expose the contents inside. He cupped the offending organ as though it were a newborn child. The organ was not a nice shade of pink as it should have been, instead it was gray and black. Vile.
He took his knife's edge to the sack and it split readily against the sharp edge, revealing the half liquefied remains of his wife.
Why hadn't he loved her more? Why hadn't he cared more? Why had he held onto that grudge? All the while knowing that time could be cut short. With a shaking hand, he touched the slippery pieces and then drew it back again to messily wipe the tears from his face. All he wanted was to hold her again, to kiss her again.. to taste her again.
He needed to bury her somehow, without frightening or disgusting the other members of the group.. Or scaring Carl he didn't want to traumatize him anymore then he was already. It just wouldn't do to carry her back like this, in some sort of organ baggy and leg bones. Toss her remains in a unmarked grave like sort mound of garbage. Their was a calm reasoning to his madness, and he reached his hand into the stomach again, this time with purpose.
Slowly, he scooped out a dripping lump of flesh and hair, staring at it intently, before putting it into his mouth. He reflexively gagged, he held a hand to his mouth, willing himself to keep it down. Rick forced himself to swallow it, working the muscles of his throat over and over again. The flesh dropped into his very empty stomach and a weird euphoria settled over him.
Juice rolled down his chin and into the fine hairs of his beard, as he pressed another chunk of meat into his mouth. He searched and ate until the stomach was picked clean. Rick wiped a bloody hand across his mouth his head rolling forward. It had been so very long since he had felt full like this. It almost reminded him of Thanksgiving dinner, and at least for now he and Lori were in a way one being.
He knew that he had to keep this all a secret from everyone, they wouldn't understand why he had done it. Why he needed to do it, how much Lori had meant to him. Carl flashed in his mind for a moment, he should have included him in this moment. Though a part of him knew his son would have refused to do something like this.
Falling to his knees, Rick curled himself up on the drying blood spot. For now, he wanted to be where she had been just a few hours ago. Placing a hand over his stomach, he felt a pleasant shiver run down his spine. Perhaps, just maybe, he and Lori were now closer then they had ever been before.