Back to Life
Chapter 1: Gone
It had been days that he'd remained in that trance like position, sitting down, legs curved up, arms resting on his knees; his blue eyes staring out into nothing. He felt the ache and numbness on his thighs and back but he refused to get up. The cold dirt underneath him didn't even bother him. Rick's eyes continued looking straight ahead and even though one might think he was actually looking at the green scenery in front of him, it was the total opposite. He wasn't lost in his thoughts. It was more than that. He was lost, yes, but he was lost into an abyss that he couldn't get out of. He didn't fight it. All his fighting strength was gone; taken from him. The man tried hard not to think about it. He tried hard but trying was futile.
Rick had tried to keep them alive; to save them. He really had. But it hadn't been enough. They were dead. The only two people that Rick had left were gone. He tried not to think of their faces but they were engraved in his skull and the pain stabbed him like a knife. Rick had almost fallen to the ground upon discovering that his baby girl was alive. He thought he was hallucinating the same way he did when he would see Lori's ghost at the prison. Rick's legs were weak and he had to command them to run towards Carol, the woman who he had banished from the prison upon finding out what she had done, but who now stood there holding Judith in her arms. That was the last time Rick had felt a state of bliss in his rotten world. And there was his son, Carl; the boy that meant the world to him. The boy that had once looked up to him so much. The boy that he had fought so hard to protect. Rick blamed himself. If only he had been more ruthless, more heartless; less human; they would still be alive. They would all still be alive. I should have killed him. I should have killed him. None of this would have happened if I had just killed him. We would have never left the prison if it weren't for that monster.
Why had this happened? He wondered. Why? Did they deserve it? He didn't think they did. Yes they had killed people and he knew that it was what had to be done. Rick had tried to live by the old rules and like the rest of his group, was forced to adapt to the new ones. It was a new world after all. It was a fucked up world but it was new nonetheless and just like in the old one, they had had to learn how to survive in it. Why had the world gone to shit? Why now? How? Rick remembered asking himself these questions not too long ago and once had wondered if he would ever find an answer. Time gave him none. He'd wondered why the government, who he had once respected and saw as the ultimate source of power, could let this happen. He hated them for letting everything get so out of control. This isn't real, he thought. None of this is real. It can't be. He had been in that place before many times now and he had managed to pull himself out of it. This time that seemed unlikely.
He'll be fine. Just give him sum time, Daryl told himself. Daryl had spent his morning setting up multiple snares. It wasn't that he was less broken than Rick was; he just figured that one of them had to try a little harder than the other one to keep them both alive. Daryl knew Rick was a strong man. He had learned this back at the prison. He believed Rick could pull through; believed both of them would. Daryl tried not to think about the pain Rick must be feeling about losing his two children. He tried not thinking about any of them, and he succeeded in doing so. He knew that if he did, he would be just like Rick; weak and useless. It wasn't that Daryl was heartless for thinking that. It's just that he knew damn well that both wouldn't last long alive if they both remained in that state. Daryl had only grieved once in his life and that was when his mother died when he was a child. He did not grieve for his father's death and as to for his brother's death, he just never had the time to mourn him the way normal people mourn their loved ones. The sad truth was that it had always been dog eat dog for Daryl and here he was, alive; a survivor.
Why out of thousands of people that were dead, Daryl was not, he often wondered. Is it because I'm strong? No. That's not it. He pushed the thoughts aside and found that his snare had caught a mildly chubby rabbit. If this had happened another day, a day far from these days, when he would have happily announced to the group of his caught reward, he would have smiled. Daryl and Rick had always looked out for each other back at the prison despite their first unpleasant encounter with each other. That hadn't changed. The surviving redneck was determined to keep himself and Rick alive just like he did back at the prison. It had been a while since Daryl had caught such a meaty rabbit. He'd always prefer the taste of rabbit to the taste of deer. Once he finished checking on the last snare and found that no other animal had caught in them, he went to sit by the shack they had been staying at for the past few days. They were lucky to have found the place walker-free.
After skinning the rabbit, Daryl went to look for Rick. He already knew where he was. Rick had spent his days up on a small hill less than a mile from the shack.
The day Daryl and Rick found the shack, three days after leaving Terminus, they had been exhausted in every way. They hadn't slept or eaten and Daryl suggested they spent the night there. Rick did not object to that. He didn't say anything. He just nodded at his suggestion. Daryl was not a man of many words and silence did not bother him, but after spending days with Rick, a man of many words, he'd found it strange to only have gotten a couple of words out of him. He knew that was to be expected; he knew he was grieving, but Daryl couldn't help to wonder when Rick would speak to him again. As he walked down the trail, his crossbow in hand, (an old habit), he spotted Rick. He was standing.
Normally, Daryl would have called out his name instead of having to walk up to him until they were face to face, but he felt like he needed to be more formal, something he rarely was. "Rick," Daryl said. The man standing a few feet from him did not turn to meet his gaze. Rick had been covered in blood from head to toe the day it'd all happened and even though he had cleaned up, he still looked rugged. "Rick," Daryl repeated. "I caught a rabbit. If ya wanna eat".
"Thanks. Not hungry," Rick replied solemnly.
"You got to eat man", Daryl replied. Rick let out a small sigh. He wanted to just be alone out here. Being with Daryl reminded him of the people they'd lost. He wished Daryl would just walk back to the shack. He almost felt bad for thinking that.
"I'm not hungry Daryl. I'll eat later," he assured him. And with that said, Daryl knew it would be stupid to keep trying and walked back to the shack.
Just like the previous night, Rick awoke screaming from the horrible nightmare that tore up his insides. He panted hard trying to catch his breath, sweat dripping from his hair down his forehead and quickly tried to erase the picture from his mind. In the room next to Rick's was Daryl's, who laid there awake, wanting to go check on Rick, but didn't. That had been how their nights had been; Rick being awoken by the nightmares and Daryl being awoken by his screaming. It was something that couldn't be helped.
As the days went by, Rick did not get better. In the old world, people grieved a person's death in different ways. Some decided to keep themselves occupied; women would clean their homes for hours until they tired; some spent a lot of time with family and friends and avoided being at home by themselves; others found simple tasks to do as simple as reading or watching a lot of tv in their room. Rick did not do any of that. He couldn't do any of those things, like watch tv or read books, not just because there was no tv or books in the shack, but because he didn't have the desire to do anything. He spent his time sitting up on the small hill. There was a tree there so big one could climb it and be able to see miles of the vicinity.
Rick thought about Lori. He thought about when he first met her; the good days; the time he was so in love with her. She was his first and only love. He thought about the times they would go to the park and just walk around it in circles, talking, never getting tired of the routine. He really enjoyed doing that and he knew she did too. He remembers the first time he told her 'I love you' right there in the middle of the baseball field. It had been a cool summer night and they had danced in the field to each other's songs. He had loved her so much.
When Rick became a cop, while being married to Lori, their love suffered. Neither of them knew how to fix the issue and even though their arguing wasn't as bad as other couple's, they knew something was broken. What it was, they weren't sure. They never went to marriage counseling and after Carl was born, it only got worse. Rick had tried to be reasonable. He never yelled at Lori the way she yelled at him and that angered her. Sometimes Lori thought she didn't deserve him; he was simply too good of a man. Perhaps it was the way her father had treated her mother that had given her a sense that that was just the way husbands treated their wives, and when Rick acted otherwise, it shocked her.
Rick wished he could go back in time; he never really wished that, never really had regrets about his past, but he did with Lori; with his wife. He wished he could just go back and fix it. Maybe if he had done that, she would still be alive. They would still have each other, and maybe their love could be restored, with time. Maybe if Rick hadn't spent so much of his time at the police station, maybe if he had spent more time with her and Carl, maybe he would have been happier. He spent an amount of time thinking about that. It angered him. How could he be so blind? Rick had great policeman instincts which he applied to his everyday life and helped him catch bad guys and even helped him save his life on multiple occasions. If only he had used some of those instincts to see what was going on at his home.
Rick was not a religious man. He didn't believe God ever helped him with anything and so he wasn't going to curse at him for all of this, even if he wanted to. He knew he had survived hundreds of encounters with walkers and people, but he saw that as mere luck, not God's work. He then thought about Carl. He wished his son had gotten the chance to do all the things he was supposed to do in the old life; learn how to drive, date a girl, graduate from high school, go to college, get married. Carl was a good person and he deserved that and so much more. Judith deserved the same. She never got to meet her mother and Rick couldn't forgive himself for that, even after all this time. The little girl who might not have even been his biological daughter, but still loved her as if she was; who was never meant to grow up in this fucked up world but he hoped would still survive it as Rick and Carl had, was dead. Gone. Gone like everyone else.
I can't do this anymore. I just can't.
Rick had lost his will to live. He was gone as well. There was nothing he could do anymore. It was ok to let go now, he thought. This world was not for him. Not anymore. The decision was made and nothing could change his mind.