When he saw the walker, Hemingway got scared.
Of course he'd seen and killed plenty of them, but he took his body armour for granted. Now, dressed only in jeans and tee shirt, he thought about how it only took a small scratch to become infected.
The walker itself unsettled him as well. It was Flak.
Dried blood matted his golden hair to one side of his head. His ravenous eyes glimmered with what looked like tears. If there were such a thing as a soul, it still clung to him, mournful and furious.
"You can see his sadness, can't you," said Marco. "I tried hard to love this man." He gestured for Flak's handlers to position him into the fighting ring.
"He refused my love. But you, Hemingway, have not. I can see it."
Hemingway had considered trying to mimic the starry gaze that Marco's followers had. He decided that he'd be more believable if he maintained his stoic expression and simply nodded.
"And I have no doubt you could pass the love test," said Marco. "You're a big, powerful man, and I heard about your exploits outside of town."
There was a commotion in the crowd. Guards hustled Keats from the pews to the front of the pulpit. They stripped his shirt off. Underneath it was a boney chest and a nearly concave stomache.
"What the hell is this," said Hemingway.
"A love test should be just that," said Marco, "a test. You'd mince the former Mr. Flak here in a split second. But your leader here, why, he's not much more than a bag of bones. Skinny before the outbreak and positively skeletal since then, right? But love can provide all the strength he will need."
There was more shouting from the crowd. Marco's tone turned brittle as he continued speaking.
"For others among us, however, there need not be a test, but a pennance. It saddens and enrages me to report that we have a piece of filth traitor in our flock."
Two guards brought Bart foward and held her right outside the fighting pen. Flak was practically running in place against his constraints.
"She didn't do anything," said Keats.
A new voice from the crowd rose up. "You don't have to lie." It was Tommy.
"She planted that seed of doubt," he said. "Lied to us about Marco. Tried to use us so she could escape. To what? She's so blind by hatred that she doesn't even have a plan. Just keep running and running -"
"You rat piece of shit," said Hemingway as he lunged at Tommy. A guard hit him with a rifle butt and pionted it at him until he stood down.
"You're a good man but too weak to lead," Tommy said to Keats. "But Marco understands. He likes you. Loves you. You'll pass this love test and everything will be OK."
"And before the test," said Marco, "comes the pennance. Bart's last moments shall be spent being devoured by Flak here. We'll tie her up just in case she has more fight in her than it looks. After that, you should be able to pass the test with no problem. Walkers don't have the same, ah, bite to them when they've had a meal. Excuse the pun."
He signaled to the guards, who tried to tie Bart's hands together but were having problems. She headbutted one of them in the nose, sending a stream of blood shooting across the floor. Flak reached towards it in hunger.
Two more of Marco's men jumped in and grabbed Bart's legs. As she kicked and screamed, Pike maneuvered from the pews to the aisle where she had a clear shot. She took her spearhead and hurled it like a dagger into the neck of one of the guards.
Someone raised a rifle at her. "You - you're fucking dead!" he said, but he stood dumbfounded as Pike unveiled another dagger and flung it into his eye. Everyone else froze. Even Marco had no words.
Several other people raised their rifles and looked at their leader for answers. People in the back of the church ran towards the exits. Someone with a machete swung it at Hemingway, who grabbed his wrist and flung him like a sack into the fighting ring.
Flak's handlers couldn't hold him any longer. He broke free from his constraints and fell upon the machete-wielder, who shrieked in agony.
Chaos broke out. Keats grabbed Pike by the arm as she moved about the scrum, bashing Marco's men in their heads and dodging their counterattacks. "What the hell is this?" he said.
"No bullets," she said. "Their guns don't work."
Someone slashed Hemingway's arm with a bayonet. Hemingway lunged at him but missed. When he turned around, Cochise had shoved his finger so far up the man's nasal cavity that he pierced his brain.
"You gotta work on your quickness," said Cochise, smiling.
"What the fuck," said Hemingway.
Pike yelled out, "He's with us."
There were more screams from the back of the church as people surged back inside. They began to barricade the doors, even as more townspeople beat on them desperately to be let back in.
"Walkers!" said an older man with blood streaming down his face. "About twenty of them right outside the church!"
Marco's men stopped fighting and circled around their leader, who had retreated to the pulpit. Some of the townspeople ran towards the basement door for safety, but when they opened it, two walkers, both former residents who had failed the love test, burst out and attacked them.
Keats, Pike, Cochise, Hemingway and Jamie hastily gathered by a wall. "Who else is with us?" said Hemingway.
"Duck's outside," said Pike. "He's the one who cut the fence."
Keats stuttered in anger. "This wasn't how it was supposed to happen."
"Will you look at these people?" said Hemingway. Although many of the townspeople panicked, there were several, Katie among them, who kept a cool demeanor as they piled chairs on the doors and gathered weapons. Others, their faces glowing with religious exstacy, put down the walkers that were inside the church.
Keats looked towards the pulpit and caught Tommy's eye. Tommy raised a shaking finger at him and shouted, "You! You infected this church with hate!"
Marco emerged from behind him and lifted his revolver. The information Cochise gave to Pike wasn't entirely correct; there was still one gun left in the compound that was loaded.
Marco fired at Keats. Jamie pushed him out of the way and grunted as the bullet pierced the flesh between her neck and shoulder.
"Jesus!" said Pike as she grabbed the girl and pressed her hand on the wound. Marco aimed for a second shot but was pushed by his own men towards the basement, which had finally been cleared of walkers.
Hemingway gathered the unconscious Jamie in his arms. Pike climbed a pew and smashed a window. Jagged plates of stained glass crashed to the floor around them.
Cochise was the first over the wall. He helped everyone else down just as a group of five walkers noticed them.
Hemingway charged and clotheslined them into a pile, allowing Pike to guide the group down the street towards their escape. Before they could turn the corner, she heard a bullet rush by her head.
Marco had escaped through the outside basement door. He leveled his weapon to fire again but one of his lieutenants pulled him back before an unseen walker could seize him.
"God's vengeance is firm and cruel!" he yelled as he shook off his guard and fired again.
Keats and the others ran, crouching, down another street and through several yards to the place where Pike had arranged for Duck to cut a hole in the fence. It turned out to be the same hole where the walkers had entered.
Next to the hole was a pile of red bones and torn clothes. Keats recognized the shirt; it was Duck's.
"Goddammit," said Pike. "They surprised him. How did they know to enter here?"
"We'll have to worry about it later," said Hemingway.
He was right. A walker, moving with a speed they'd never before encountered, burst from the brush and nearly clawed into Keats. Pike went to grab a weapon from a bag stashed nearby but the walker was on the attack again.
As it struck towards Hemingway, who still had Jamie in his arms, the same rottweiler Keats encountered earlier sprung out and pulled the walker to the ground. Pike then drove a hammer into its brain.
Bart whistled and her dog bounded towards her, tongue wagging. "My ace in the hole," she said. "Don't worry, he's a sweetie."
On the other side of the fence, Pike binded the hole closed with wire.
"We don't have time for that," Hemingway said.
"There's innocent people here," she said.
"It's not a matter of -" Cochise cut him off by grabbing his shoulder. Hemingway almost headbutted him before he saw that he wanted him to lower Jamie to the ground.
Marco's former top lieutenant looked at Jamie's neck. "There's an exit wound," he said. "We'll need a way to disinfect it but she's ok for now."
"So you're a doctor now?" said Hemingway.
"Nurse, actually. Thanks for asking."
The group moved further from the fence. The sounds of people shouting and walkers snarling came from the town but no one ever appeared. "Well," Keats said, covered in a sheen of sweat, still shirtless from the battle at the church.
"We're headed east from here," said Pike. "There's a county road about half an hour away. We can start a fire there and cauterize Jamie's wound."
Keats stared at the ground and said, "Thanks."
Jamie groaned. Hemingway relaxed some of the pressure he'd applied to her neck.
"We better get moving," said Cochise.
Bart's dog pointed his ears back and growled. Pike grabbed her hammer and looked towards the fence, but the rottweiler faced the other direction.
"Cute dog," said a voice.
Before anyone in the group could do anything, three men with handguns were upon them. They didn't look like anyone Keats had seen in the compound.
The man in the middle lowered his weapon. He was handsome like a soap opera villain, with dark curly hair and an eyepatch.
"What do you think, Carl?" said one of the others.
"I think we flushed out some folks who doubt their faith," said Carl. "Apostates."
"Wait," said Pike. "You sent walkers in there?"
"Amazing what a few sharks can do in a pool full of minnows," said Carl.
"You got our friend killed."
"You're one to talk. Ask that sicko leader of yours what he's done with our people."
"He's not our leader," said Keats. "I am. We're trying to get the hell out of here. Please, do you have a camp? Do you have alcohol, anything for wounds? She's not bit."
Carl looked at Jamie, then moved his lone eye to each person in the group. "Let's go," he said. "And shut that dog up."
Within the compound, the sounds of chaos began to silence.