I own nothing but my OCs.
Chapter 25: The Defense Rests
"Let's gather up." Rick said. Everyone was either hanging around the porch or already inside the house, waiting in the parlor, and the sun was setting. It was time.
"Come on, Carl." Lori said as the boy walked up to the house while Carol, T-Dog, Brandon, and Shane wen inside to join the others. "I want you to stay with Jimmy." Rick noticed his son was covered in mud. It looked like he had been playing down by the creek by himself. He'd have to have a talk with him about it later.
"But I-I wanna listen." Carl protested.
"Mm-mm. Not this time." Lori told their son as she led him up the porch. "Come on." The three of them entered the house together. Daryl and Sam glanced back at Carl when they noticed the boy had ducked through the other room and come up to stand off to the side behind them instead of continuing on back to wait in the kitchen with Jimmy and Beth while they discussed Randall's fate. Rick and Lori also realized something wasn't right and glanced at their son pointedly, staring at him expectantly. After a moment, Carl sighed and nodded, reluctantly retreating to the safety of the kitchen with everyone else who was still under voting age.
"So how do we do this?" Glenna asked from his seat on the piano bench, breaking the uneasy silence that had settled over the room. "Just take a vote?"
"Does it have to be unanimous?" Andrea asked.
"How about majority rules?" Lori suggested.
"Well, let's—let's just see where everybody stands." Rick said. "Then we can talk through the options."
"Well, where I sit, there's only one way to move forward." Shane said as he leaned against the mantle piece over the fireplace.
"Killing him," Dale said, "right?" He glanced around at everyone in the room. "I mean why even bother to take a vote? It's clear which way the wind's blowing." He said cynically. This whole thing was just a farce.
"Well, if people believe we should spare him, I wanna know." Rick said seriously.
"Well, I can tell you it's a small group." Dale replied. "Maybe just me, Glenn, and Brandon." He said, glancing at the two younger men. His expression fell when he saw the guilty look on Glenn's face.
"Look, I—I think you're pretty much right about everything," Glenn said, "all the time, but this—"
"They've got you scared." Dale told him, trying to reason with him. Glenn wasn't the kind of boy who could resign another to death so easily.
"He's not one of us." Glenn argued back. "And we—we've lost too many people already." He didn't like it, but he wasn't about to watch more people he cared about get killed for the sake of a stranger.
"How about you?" Dale asked, turning to Maggie. "Do you agree with this?"
"Couldn't we continue keeping him prisoner?" Maggie asked.
"Just another mouth to feed." Daryl said, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed.
"We'll have enough trouble just trying to keep ourselves fed." Sam added quietly. She wouldn't mind keeping Randall prisoner if the conditions were more ideal. She just didn't want him getting back to those dangerous homicidal rapist friends of his.
"It may be a lean winter." Hershel agreed.
"We could ration better." Lori said.
"With what? Do you even have any food stored up yet?" Sam asked. "There are sixteen of us not counting Randall, and there's only so many canned goods still left in the town stores. The more often we go back, the higher our risk of running into Randall's friends or another dangerous group becomes. You can't solely rely on hunting to get you by either. Pretty much anything worth eating will have either gone into hibernation or migrated to somewhere else before long. We have the livestock to think about, too."
"Well, maybe he could be an asset. Give him a chance to prove himself." Dale said, not ready to give up.
"Put him to work?" Glenn asked.
"We're not letting him walk around." Rick said firmly.
"We could put an escort on him." Maggie suggested.
"Who wants to volunteer for that duty?" Shane asked, scoffing.
"I will." Dale replied quickly.
"Me too." Brandon said.
"I don't think any of us should be walking around with this guy." Rick said, raising his hand.
"He's right." Lori agreed. "I wouldn't feel safe unless he was tied up."
"We can't exactly put chains around his ankles, sentence him to hard labor." Andrea added.
"Well, what about that thing where you keep someone captive long enough, they start to become attached to their captors?" Brandon asked, glancing at Sam.
"Stockholm syndrome?" She asked, furrowing her brow slightly. It wasn't entirely impossible for that to happen, but it would take a really long time to set in for Randall after what they had put him through…
"Yeah, that. What if we kept him tied up until that happened and then let him join us?" Brandon suggested.
"Look, say we let him join us, right? Maybe—Maybe he's helpful, maybe he's nice. We let our guard down, and maybe he runs off, brings back his thirty men." Shane countered sardonically.
"So the answer is to kill him to prevent a crime that he may never even attempt?" Dale demanded. "If we do this, we're saying there's no hope. Rule of law is dead. There is no civilization."
"Oh my God." Shane grumbled.
"The law enforcement system as we knew it has collapsed Dale. It's just us out here." Sam reminded him. "We're back in the Dark Ages again—worse, actually, because even they were still more organized back then than whatever's left of the population today despite all their superstition and illiteracy. We're more like a series of scattered tribes now. Our fate is in our own hands here. Whatever we decide, it's up to us to see it through."
"Could you drive him further out?" Hershel asked Rick. "Leave him like you planned?"
"You barely came back this time." Lori said, glancing at her husband. Daryl and Sam exchanged a knowing look. That had been more due to a poor choice of partner than anything. "There are walkers. You could break down. Y-You could get lost."
"Or get ambushed." Daryl added.
"They're right. We should not put our own people at risk." Glenn said.
"If you go through with it, how would you do it?" Patricia asked. "Would he suffer?"
"We could hang him, right?" Shane suggested. "Just snap his neck."
"I thought about that." Rick said, sighing. "Shooting may be more humane."
"And what about the body?" T-Dog asked. "Do we burry him?"
"Hold on, hold on." Dale said quickly, interrupting before they could get anymore carried away with the conversation. "You're talking about this like it's already decided."
"You've been talking all day, going around in circles." Daryl said, twirling his finger through the air. "You just wanna go around in circles again?"
"This is a young man's life!" Dale exclaimed passionately. "And it is worth more than a five-minute conversation! Is this what it's come to? We kill someone because we can't decide what else to do with them? You saved him," He said, turning to Rick, "and now look at us." Dale shook his head. "He's been tortured. He's gonna be executed. How are we any better than those people that we're so afraid of?"
"We all know what needs to be done." Shane said.
"No, Dale is right." Rick said. "We can't leave any stone unturned here. We have a responsibility—"
"So what's the other solution?" Andrea asked, cutting him off.
"Let Rick finish." Lori said, but Andrea wasn't done.
"We haven't come up with a single viable option yet." Andrea pointed out. "I wish we could—"
"So let's work on it!" Dale said.
"We are." Rick told him.
"Stop it." Carol said, finally speaking up. "Just stop it. I'm sick of everybody arguing and fighting. I didn't ask for this. You can't ask us to decide something like this." She told Dale before glancing at Shane and Rick. "Please decide—either of you, both of you—but leave me out."
"Not speaking out or killing him yourself—there's no difference." Dale told her.
"All right, that's enough." Rick told him, holding out a hand. "Anybody that wants the floor before we make a final decision has the chance." If anyone wanted to speak or make their own case, now was the time. Maggie and Patricia took a seat beside Hershel on the sofa. No one came forward. They all began casting glances around the room, waiting for someone to break the lengthening silence. Dale couldn't take it anymore.
"You once said that we don't kill the living." He reminded Rick, grasping at straws.
"Well, that was before the living tried to kill us." Rick retorted.
"But don't you see? If we do this, the people that we were—the world that we knew is dead." Dale exclaimed passionately with wet eyes. "And this new world is ugly. It's… harsh. It's survival of the fittest."
Sam bowed her head. She may be an optimist, but she was also a realist too. The world had always been about the survival of the fittest. It was like G said back in Atlanta—the weak get taken. The rules hadn't changed. It was just that the standards that determined who was 'strong' had changed from being about who was educated and skilled enough to earn an income to support themselves or their family the best to who could kill walkers and scavenge for food the best.
"And that's a world I don't want to live in." Dale continued. "And I don't believe that any of you do. I can't. Please, let's just do what's right." He pleaded, glancing around at them. "Isn't there anybody else who's gonna stand with me?"
"He's right." Andrea said after a pause, causing Dale to glance at her in surprise. "We should try to find another way."
"… If you can come up with another way to prevent Randall from ever contacting that group of men again… then I might be persuaded to change my position to support you." Sam said tentatively after thinking it over, causing Daryl to glance at her. No matter what she might've said, she really didn't want to have to become a murderer after all if it could be avoided, but she didn't feel like there was much of an alternative in this case. They already knew Randall's group was dangerous, and that made him a ticking time bomb.
"Anybody else?" Rick asked. So far it was three 'nays' and one 'maybe' with the majority favoring the execution. No one spoke up. They all had their heads bowed, trying not to look at each other, especially Dale, who looked like he was on the verge of tears because of how disappointed and frustrated he was with all of them and the situation he now found himself in. But Rick turned to face him, holding out his hands. The 'ayes' had it.
"Are y'all gonna watch too?" Dale asked cynically, scoffing, as he blinked back the tears. "No, you'll go hide your heads in your tents and try to forget that we're slaughtering a human being. Whoa…" He exhaled, shaking his head. "I won't be a party to it." He said, heading for the door. He stopped by Sam and Daryl on his way out, placing a hand on the other man's shoulder. "This group is broken." Dale told Daryl loud enough for at least Sam and Rick to hear.
…
"You don't have to do this." Rick told Sam as he, she, Daryl, and Shane walked up to the shed to retrieve Randall for his execution. Sam was carrying her crovel as her weapon of choice this evening.
"Yes, I do." Sam replied seriously. She wasn't going to 'hide in her tent' while Rick and Daryl did all the dirty work. It was serious business and heavy sin, murder. The shouldn't have to bear that cross alone. She wasn't going to let herself forget the consequences of that decision. "I chose this. Let me take some responsibility for it." Rick nodded in understanding as Daryl glanced at her, furrowing his brow slightly with concern. He'd rather she didn't have to see what was coming next, but he could tell by the determination and resolve quietly smoldering in her dark eyes that it was no use arguing with her. She'd made her decision, and she was going to see it through. She didn't need his permission.
"Who's she? What's going on?" Randall asked, confused, when they unchained him from the wall and started herding him out of the shed, out into the cold night air. He had never seen Sam before. She was a woman, maybe she might be more likely to have pity on him.
"Goin' for a walk." Daryl said gruffly, giving him a little shove forward as they started making their way toward the barn with the prisoner. He didn't want him talking to Sam or trying to make her feel sorry for him. Randall took the hint and decided to keep quiet for awhile since they were letting him stretch his legs after being cooped up in that shed for two days straight, though he was still in handcuffs. They walked along the dirt path in silence under the bright light of the moon. They barely even needed the lantern Rick was carrying.
"Hold on." Randall said when he saw where they were headed. He was starting to get a bad feeling about this 'walk'. "Hold on. Hold on." He pleaded nervously as Rick and Shane pulled open the doors. "Wait, wait." He said as Daryl and Sam maneuvered him into the barn behind them. "Wait."
"Put him there." Rick said, pointing to a spot further inside the barn before setting down the lantern.
"Ah." Randal gasped in pain when the cuffs dug into his wrists when he tried to resist but Daryl just continued to effortlessly push him forward. "Hey, hey." He said, startled, when Shane came up behind him with the blindfold.
"It's all gonna be over soon." Shane told him.
"What?" Randall asked, glancing back at him. Sam had to come over and hold his head straight for Shane while he placed the blindfold over Randall's eyes. "What's gonna be over soon?"
"Relax." Shane said, tying the knot in the back.
"Hey. Hey. No no no no." Randall whimpered, beginning to panic.
"Shh. Shh. Shh. Shh." Shane said, shushing the boy as he began to cry.
"Oh, no. no." Randall continued to whimper as Rick walked over with the Python in his hand, signaling that he was ready. Shane and Sam quietly slipped away from the prisoner and stepped clear, giving Rick space to shoot. Daryl placed a hand on Sam's shoulder when she came over to stand beside him.
"Would you like to stand or kneel?" Rick asked Randall calmly, keeping his voice even.
"Oh, no. Please." Randall began to beg as the full weight of the situation hit him like a ton of bricks. He looked like he was about to fall over. "Ple—Ah-ah! Ah." He groaned in pain when Daryl left Sam's side to force him into a kneeling position, keeping a grip on the kid's hair in case he tried to bolt. Once he was on his knees, Daryl released him and took several steps back. Randal began sobbing. Rick glanced at Shane. Shane nodded.
"Do you have any final words?" Rick asked the blubbering boy.
"No. Please." Randall cried. "Please, don't. Don't." He begged, crying so hard barely any sound was coming out of him at all. Rick steeled his nerves and hardened his heart. He raised his gun, aiming it between Randall's eyes, only a few inches away from his head as he cocked it. Randall let out another pathetic whimper when he heard the telltale click. Sam bit her lip, fighting the impulse to look away.
"Do it, Dad." Carl said suddenly, alerting them to his presence.
Sam whipped her head around and stared at the boy. She hadn't even heard him come in. Just how long had he been standing there? Wasn't Lori supposed to be watching him? Rick had frozen like a deer caught in the headlights upon realizing that his son was there.
"Do it." Carl said again, egging his dad on. Rick glanced at Shane. Shane sighed as he shook his head and stepped over to deal with Carl for him. Neither of them could believe this was happening.
"Are you kidding me? What did I say to you?" Shane asked the twelve-year-old boy as he grabbed him by the arm and started dragging him back out of the barn. Sam glanced between the father and son. She could see Rick's resolve wavering, and after what had just happened, she couldn't say she blamed him. Not only did his son nearly witness him killing another human being, but Carl had actually just encouraged Rick to do it.
"Take him." Rick said, lowering his gun. Shane glanced back at him, hoping he didn't really hear what he thought he just did. "Take him away." Rick repeated, referring to Randall, uncocking his gun. Daryl sighed and uncrossed his arms with a slight shake of his head as he moved to grab Randall and haul him back onto his feet.
"Get up." Daryl ordered the whimpering boy.
"Ah. Ah. Ah." Randall gasped in pain and confusion as Daryl proceeded to shove him towards the barn doors. Shane cursed under his breath and banged his fist on the door before shoving it open the rest of the way, heading off to take their prisoner back to the shed with Daryl and Sam.
"Sam." Rick said, taking a moment to swallow the lump in his throat as he stared at his son. Sam stopped in the doorway next to Carl while Daryl and Shane continued on ahead. Rick put the Python back in its holster. "I want you to come with us. Help me keep an eye on Carl."
"Yeah, sure." She agreed, nodding, as she glanced at the boy out the corner of her eye. She could understand why Rick looked so troubled. When did the kid get so cold? The three of them walked back to the camp in silence. When the others saw them, they all stood up, waiting to hear the news. Maggie was there, too. The others all stared at the three of them. Why was Carl with Rick and Sam? Where were Daryl and Shane?
"We're keeping him in custody for now." Rick announced, keeping his voice calm and even.
"I'm gonna go find Dale." Andrea said, smiling.
"Carl, go inside." Lori said, blinking, as she continued to stare at her husband. She clearly needed to have a word with him. "Now, please." She added sternly when he didn't move.
"Come on." Sam said, placing a hand on his back as she guided the younger boy into his family's tent, going with him to make sure he was going to stay put where he was supposed to be this time.
"Why did he stop?" Carl asked Sam once they were inside and he realized his parents were talking too low for him to eavesdrop.
"Because he was disappointed that you wanted to watch." She replied frankly. Carl blinked and furrowed his brow in confusion.
"But it was the right thing to do, wasn't it?" He asked. "Killing that guy?"
"We thought it was necessary, but that doesn't make it right. There can be a fine line between murder and self-defense." Sam stated calmly.
"But this was self-defense, right? Because he's dangerous. Shane said he was dangerous." Carl said, frowning slightly. Sam sighed. How was she going to explain such a murky grey area she was still struggling with herself.
"My grandpa used to say 'A kill is a kill.' Whether it's a squirrel or a human, a life is a life, and it should never be taken lightly. Whatever the reason or the circumstances behind it, it all boils down to one thing—that life was ended so that you could keep living, so whatever you believe about the after life or on the quality of the human soul versus an animal's, you have to remember one thing—Respect the kill. Respect the life that was sacrificed in order to sustain yours and live well enough to justify taking it." She explained patiently. "You didn't respect the life your father was about to take, and that worried him."
"So, you're saying that even if I have to take a life of something I don't really care about, I still have to respect it's 'value'?" Carl asked.
"Yes." Sam replied. "Never forget that value. The weight of a human life is the heaviest burden of all. It can break you if you take it too lightly and don't know how to carry it properly. Your father knows that. He's a good man. He knows taking another man's life isn't supposed to be easy. And I think he wants to make sure you know that too. True courage isn't about knowing when to take a life, but when to spare one." She said, looking the boy in the eye. "Okay?" Carl opened his mouth to reply when a scream sounded through the night. Sam was instantly at the tent door, unzipping it, so they could find out what was going on outside.
"Get Carl." Rick told Lori. "Sam!" He called out, waving for her to come with before hurriedly walking away to rally the others.
"Baby!" Lori called out to their son, who ran over to her, as Sam left with her husband to deal with their latest threat.
"T-Dog, get a shotgun now!" Rick shouted as Sam caught up to him.
"What happened?" She asked, tightening her grip on her crovel.
"I don't know yet." He replied as he kept walking towards the sound of the screams with her.
…
Daryl was staring down Randall, who once again found himself chained up in the shed, only this time Daryl had stuffed a rag in his mouth as a gag to silence him. Shane was gone. Daryl had drawn his knife and was debating whether or not he should just take care if Randall himself right there and then in order to protect Sam and everyone else, when the screams of agony reached his ears. Daryl cast on last glance at the terrified boy strung up before him before grabbing the lantern and running out the door to see what was wrong. It sounded like Dale. As luck would have it, he was the first to arrive, but he was too late to save Dale, whose cries of agony reached their height as walker he was struggling to hold back in order to prevent being bitten after it had pinned him to the ground tore through his shirt and ripped open his belly. Daryl sprinted as though his own life depended on it and tackled the walker, hitting it with enough force to knock it right off the older man. Daryl rolled over as he kept a grip on it, making sure he was the one who ended up on top, and grabbed the back of its neck, holding it in place as he slammed his knife down through the top of its skull.
"Ungh!" Daryl grunted as he quickly yanked his knife back out of the dead walker and dropped the limp corpse before hurrying back over to check on Dale. It was bad. The walker had pretty much disemboweled the old man. He was coughing up blood. "Help! Over here!" Daryl shouted, standing up and jumping as he waved his arms at the others in an attempt to make himself more visible in the dark when he saw all the flashlights coming from different directions.
"Daryl!?" Sam shouted in alarm, picking up speed, pulling away from Rick, who had been joined by Shane.
"Help! Run!" He shouted at her before kneeling down beside Dale again. "Hang in there, buddy." He told him. The old man had better not die on him.
"Oh God…" Sam breathed when she reached them and saw what had happened.
"Who is it?" Andrea called out as Shane, and Rick came over, right on her heels.
"Oh my God." Rick said as he rushed forward to kneel beside Dale while Shane covered his mouth and took a step back as Andrea and Brandon joined them next. Andrea froze, horrified, as she stared down at Dale. It was like having to watch Amy die all over again.
"Oh God. Oh God." Brandon gasped, trying not to be sick. He needed to keep it together. He needed to help.
"All right, just listen to my voice." Rick told Dale, placing his hands on the side of the older man's face. "Listen to me, all right? Just listen to me."
Dale moaned in pain in response. Sam's eyes began to water as she watched him choke on his own blood. Andrea couldn't take it, she fell to her knees.
"Okay, hold on now." Rick told him. "Get Hershel!" He shouted to the others.
"R-Right!" Brandon said, quickly turning on his heel and heading for the house with Daryl to get the doctor.
"He needs blood. What's his blood type? Who else is O-neg?" Sam said, stating the obvious given how much he must have lost after having his abdomen ripped open. She was pretty sure he had already lost more than she could give, so they needed to find a second donor fast. "He's dying. We've got to operate now."
"Hang on, Dale." Andrea said anxiously, leaning over to talk to him. Dale looked at her with wide eyes, breathing heavily and moaning in pain.
"Listen to me. Okay, listen to my voice." Rick told him, trying to keep him focused as Lori, Glenn, Maggie, and T-Dog came running up. "All right? Please. Hershel! We need Hershel!"
"Look at me." Andrea said.
"Dale, we're gonna help. We're here." Rick said earnestly.
"Just hold on." Sam urged Dale.
"What happened?" Hershel asked as he arrived with Daryl, Brandon, and Patricia. He quickly knelt beside the mortally wounded man, surveying the damage.
"What can we do?" Rick asked.
"Dale, it's gonna be okay." Glenn said.
"Can we move him?" Sam asked.
"He won't make the trip." Hershel replied regretfully, straightening up.
"You'll have to do the operation here." Rick told him. They needed Hershel's surgical tools and medicine. "Glenn, get back to the house—" He started to order, getting to his feet, when Hershel placed a hand on his shoulder.
"Rick." Hershel said, stopping him. He shook his head. There was nothing he could do. Dale was beyond his help. He was dying.
"No!" Rick shouted as everyone else started crying.
"Oh God." Andrea sobbed as she watched Dale continue to choke on his own blood. Carl came up behind his mother, having just arrived on the scene despite her orders to stay in the house. His eyes widened when he saw the body of the dead walker lying just a few feet away. He stumbled backwards and grabbed onto his mother, burying his face into her as he cried.
"He's suffering. Do something!" Andrea yelled.
There was nothing they could do to save Dale. The only way left for them to ease his suffering was to end it. They would have to kill him.
Rick drew his gun from its holster.
"Come on." Shane said softly, looking away, as Rick raised his gun, aiming for Dale's head. He wanted it to be quick and as painless as possible. It had to be the head, and instant kill.
"Oh God." Andrea sobbed, turning away. She couldn't bear to look.
Rick's hand was trembling as he held the gun. He was having trouble raising it the last couple of inches. Rick glanced up, surprised, when another hand, rough and bandaged, reached out and placed itself on top of his and the gun. He let Daryl take the gun from him, stepping aside to give him room. He just couldn't bring himself to do it, not to Dale—not while he was still human.
Daryl Knelt down beside Dale as he cocked the gun so that its muzzle was only an inch or two away from the middle of Dale's brow. Sam squeezed Dale's hand to let him know she was still there. Dale let out a whimper as he raised his head off the ground, lifting it to touch his forehead to the mouth of the gun. Despite his pain, he struggled to force the grim ghost of a smile onto his face to let them know that it was okay, that he wanted this. He wanted the immense pain and suffering to end.
"Sorry, brother." Daryl said solemnly.
He pulled the trigger.