Chapter 2
The farm was still crawling with walkers, the same as when they'd left it. The barn door was wide open, the fence toppled in places. The whole dairy reeked of spilled gasoline and dead flesh.
Lilly kicked open the gate, carrying Carley across the barren property. She avoided looking at the barn, remembering what was in there. Or what was left. She focused her attention on dragging Carley up the hilly makeshift steps and into the relative safety of closed doors. Lee had mentioned that the St. Johns had been hoarding a shit-load of medical supplies for their sick surgeries. Provided it hadn't been looted in the week since he'd been there, they probably had enough stocked in there to treat even a nasty bullet wound like Carley's.
Walkers roaming the fields began to take notice of the two humans in their vicinity. Several of the beasts pursued her, lumbering through the overrun fields. Lilly bounded up the front steps, throwing open the front door of the house. Slamming it shut behind her, she paused to catch her breath before continuing her desperate attempt to save both herself and the friend she had just tried to murder.
Wandering the lower floor, she passed the dining room where they had all convened that night. She tried not to think about it, about that entire experience. About how much she had...enjoyed...eating that.
Maybe if Carley doesn't make it, you can have another barbecue.
She squeezed her eyes shut, drowning out the compulsive thought. They weren't her thoughts. She wasn't thinking them. They just materialized there, in her head, and made her think and do these terrible things. For the umpteenth time in the past few months, she considered the possibility that she may actually be losing her mind.
A guttural snarl snapped her back to reality. She forced herself to look into the dining room, and discovered exactly what she had been afraid of. Amidst a tapestry of blood stains smearing the wooden floor, a legless walker was dragging itself toward her.
Oh, god, no. Lilly backed away from the remains of their fallen comrade. Mark...
Carley choked up more bloody saliva. Lilly grimaced as it dripped down the sleeve of her jacket. She needs medical attention, now.
The walker lifted its head, snarling again. Lilly dashed up the stairs, Carley in tow, searching for something to use as a weapon. The walker chased after her, as fast as it could go without legs. As she looked down from the top of the staircase at the pathetic, amputated thing, she realized it couldn't pull itself up very well. She had time.
The closest bedroom sat, wide open, two doors down. The first door was opened slightly, but Lilly passed it and carried Carley straight into the bedroom instead. As she laid her gently down on the sheets, she noticed a trail of dried blood on the floor that led into a blood-soaked bathroom. The sight of it, combined with the sight of Mark just moments before, was enough to turn her already-weak stomach. She struggled not to vomit as she thought of all the horrors that had befallen them on this farm.
Carley shifted slightly, still visibly in pain. I've got to take care of her first. The walker situation could wait.
Lilly knelt by Carley's side, carefully unwrapping the makeshift bandage that dressed her wound. Beneath it, the gaping hole in Carley's face appeared to be hemorrhaging blood. Shit, I've got to get this fixed up quick.
She knew the house had held medical supplies, but she had no idea where. So she resigned to pulling open every door in the upstairs hallway, hoping that one of them would provide a clue. Eventually she spotted the partially-open door at the foot of the stairs, and examined it briefly before yanking it open. To her relief, it was a closet filled with shelves of surgical necessities and medicine. If the place had been looted, they'd missed all of this. Jesus Christ. She grabbed an armful of bottles and tubes, carrying them back into the bedroom.
Carley groaned, a horrible, garbled sound, as Lilly propped her up on some pillows and tried to figure out just what to do with her. She wasn't a medic. She didn't have any experience healing people. All her time in the military had taught her was how to kill people.
She found herself wishing her mother could have been there. She'd worked as a military nurse, and would definitely have been able to treat an injury like Carley's. "Sorry you're stuck with me." she muttered, opening a bottle of antiseptic.
The strong scent of it choked her. She held it away from herself to avoid the awful smell. Setting it down on the nightstand, she next shook a cotton ball out of a half-empty bag and dabbed it into the potent liquid. I hope this is what I'm supposed to do for a wound like this.
With trembling fingers, she wiped down the wounded area. Even in her comatose state, Carley apparently felt the sting of the antiseptic. She twisted away, making another horrific gurgling noise. "Come on." Lilly re-adjusted her on the bed. "Hold still."
After disinfecting the wound as best she could, Lilly considered the major question – take the bullet out, or leave it in? It could do more damage coming out. It seemed to be resting in a place that wasn't fatal to Carley. Leaving it in would probably be the safest option.
But then again, she would never heal properly with it stuck in there. And once it healed over as much as it could, who knew what kind of diseases she could get from having a foreign object trapped under the skin.
Lilly massaged her temples in frustration. Downstairs, she could hear Mark clawing at the wooden floor. Fuck, I'm not qualified to do this.
She picked up what she assumed were some sort of medical pliers. She had experience fixing cars. She knew how to fix a plane engine. But fixing a human – it was on a completely different level.
Okay, just gotta... She hovered near the entrance of the bullet wound. Just gotta what? Not touch the sides? This wasn't a fucking board game. Carley's situation was life-or-death – and after what Lilly had done to her back on the roadside, this shoddy surgery was the least she deserved.
The cold steel tongs pushed their way into Carley's gaping jaw hole. Carley jerked, sputtering and attempting to cry out. "Damn it, hold still!" A free hand kept the injured woman held down while Lilly fished around inside her for the bullet. Christ, this is so awful.
Eventually the tongs closed on the rounded chunk of metal. Got it. Lilly cautiously retrieved the bullet, drawing her hand back until it was out. Such a tiny little thing, and yet it had managed to cause so much pain and damage. She thought she knew all about guns and weaponry, but it wasn't until she could see the aftermath of them that she realized just how terrifyingly powerful they really were. The way they could take such delicate, fragile flesh and cleave it open just like that.
Newly-disturbed, the wound began to ooze fresh blood. Oh god. Oh fuck. Backing away, Lilly made a mad dash for the medicine closet. She grabbed a roll of gauze and some medical tape. As she was closing the door, she noticed walker Mark working its way up the stairs. It had made a surprising amount of progress in the few minutes she'd been gone. There was no way she could leave it unattended again.
She set the gauze down at the her feet, digging through the closet for something sharp. She managed to find a scalpel.
The legless walker clambered its way up to the second floor, reaching desperately for her. Clutching the scalpel, Lilly knelt down to its level. The walker still had Mark's glasses on, she noticed. It still looked like him.
It's not him.
"I'm sorry." She wasn't used to killing walkers. Especially not walkers she'd known in life. With a single thrust, the scalpel pierced his rotted skull, splattering blackened brain fluid on her leather boots. The walker stopped moving, collapsing to the floor. Lilly kicked it down the stairs.
After Mark was dealt with, she hurried back into the bedroom, tearing off a strip of medical tape with her teeth. Dropping her armful of supplies onto the bedside table, she set to work bandaging the wound. On the bed sheet lay the blood-soaked bullet, the cause of both women's current problems.
Once the bandages were applied and the bleeding abated, Lilly found herself staring down at the unconscious woman before her. Her jaw was completely wrecked. Lilly wondered if she would ever be able to talk again. She was always speaking her mind and voicing her opinions – it would be strange to see her exist in silence.
Half of the skin on the left side of her face was torn clean off, revealing bare bone and muscle tissue. Lilly didn't know how – or if – she'd ever manage to fix that. God, why did I do this? All because of an argument they'd gotten into? Carley had just been defending herself against Lilly's accusations. She wasn't the one who'd started it.
But she was the one who almost died because of it.
"You didn't deserve this, Carley." That voice, the dark corner of her mind that formed her most primal and terrifying impulses, had driven her to it. She was weak. She'd given in. "No one deserves this."
She's slowing you down. Risking your life.
Without conscious awareness, her hand drifted to a pair of surgical scissors on the bedspread. She wrapped her fingers around the cold steel, lifting the instrument off the bed.
With her head leaned back and propped up on a pillow, Carley's delicate neck was completely exposed. One slice. That's all it would take to end both her suffering and yours.
Realizing what she was doing, Lilly jerked back. "No! This isn't what I want to do!" The pervasive ticker-tape of paranoid impulse began streaming through her mind again. Leave her for the walkers. Take the medical supplies and go. Don't waste them on her.
The more she tried to shut them out, the more the obsessive thoughts echoed.
She's of no use to you. Kill her.
Her shaking hand clutched the scissors. Carley twisted weakly on the bed, still groaning. The pulse in her throat thumped irregularly, working hard to try to keep her alive. I...I can put her out of this misery.
Her shattered mind too weak to resist, Lilly lifted Carley's chin with two fingers. "Maybe this is the best option." There was no way she could save Carley. She couldn't protect the last person she had left. What kind of a leader was she, anyway? A terrible one.
A beam of moonlight arced through the bedroom window, illuminating the face of a woman she'd come to know and care about. She wasn't just another mouth to feed or victim to nurse back to health. She was Carley. She had a name, and a story, and a voice that she always made use of. Sometimes even to defend Lilly from Kenny. Killing her would be ending the saga of one of the last few people to have known her before she'd been reduced to this mentally-unstable shadow of her former self. Carley had known her. Carley had known her father. How could she take out the last companion she had?
"...No." She turned and threw the scissors against the wall. They banged off the tattered wallpaper, hitting the floor with a clang. "I won't do it."
The voice in her head reprimanded her, cursing her for being too emotionally invested. This was about survival, it screamed.
There's no point in surviving if I have to become a fucking monster in the process. She knelt back down beside Carley, gingerly wiping the streaks of blood off her chin with a gauze pad. I've fucked up enough already. I won't be adding to that.
Despite her confidence that she had done the right thing, all she could feel was a gut-wrenching sense of wrongness. She tried to ignore it, to reassure herself that trying to save her wounded friend wasn't wrong. But that violent inner voice wouldn't let her feel good about it. It just made her feel stupid and weak.
She remained by Carley's side for hours, tending to her, until finally her tired body gave out. She fell asleep still kneeling at the side of the bed, her arms folded beneath her chin on the edge of the blanket. The last thing she saw before she closed her eyes was Carley's gruesome wound. It haunted her fitful sleep all night.
