AN: Here we are, another chapter here.
Not much to go now.
I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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Carol was cursing Lori under her breath by the time she made it around to the back of the farmhouse. She'd been following the sound of the woman's voice, but Lori seemed to be moving away from Carol at twice the speed with which Carol was moving toward Lori. By the time she made it to the back of the farmhouse, Carol had lost the sound of Lori's voice in the confusion of the other noises that surrounded her, and Lori was nowhere in sight. What was in sight, though, were more Walkers than Carol was sure she could make her way through with the few bullets that remained for her.
Carol stayed close to the house and worked her way around it, hoping to run into Lori or at least to someone who was living and might be able to help her muck her way through the Walkers. She could hear Hershel's gun still firing, so he hadn't run out of ammunition just yet, but she knew that he wouldn't hear her if she were to call out to him.
Nobody would hear her. Nobody even knew she was there. They probably thought she'd left with T-Dog or had been swallowed up by the herd already.
So when she felt someone grab her, she knew it was one of the creatures and she reared back, desperately slamming the heavy gun into the head of the Walker. She didn't know if she had the strength to kill it through blunt force, but she was willing to try. She had to try. She didn't have the small gun out of her pocket and the Walker had her other arm.
The noise that the Walker let out in response to the gun, though, immediately let Carol know that a Walker hadn't grabbed her and it sent a chill through her body.
"Fuckin' bitch!" Ed spat.
Before Carol could react, Ed had the gun and he wrenched it out of her hand. He tried to fire it at a nearby Walker and, finding it was empty, he threw it into the darkness somewhere. Carol tried to fight against him, but his strength was too much for her—it had always been too much. She couldn't physically fight back. Even if she got in a good hit or two, he always seemed to bounce back and overpower her before she could get the upper hand.
Carol screamed as Ed dragged her away from the house and toward the burning barn. He made his way around the Walkers even though Carol's voice drew the creatures toward them. She finally stopped screaming, though, when she realized that nobody was going to hear her and the only thing that the noise would accomplish was drawing more of the Walkers to them.
Carol dragged her feet, trying to sit more than once to make it difficult on Ed to move her, but he continued on and simply pulled her along. He must have been running on something like adrenaline because he didn't seem to notice that his nose was pouring blood where Carol had made contact with the gun.
They were on the other side of the barn, nearing a vehicle that Carol assumed was one that Ed thought might get them off the farm, when Ed finally loosened his grip on Carol's arms long enough to wrap his hand around her throat. Choking off her air, he trusted that his hold there would control her enough that he no longer had to put the effort into holding both her arms.
Carol thought about fighting against him, but that would only cost her air.
"Fuckin' bitch," Ed spat. "The hell were you thinking? You fucking bitch—but your redneck boyfriend didn't stick around when shit hit the fan, did he? Did he?"
Carol tried to swallow against the tight hold that Ed had around her throat. It was better not to fight. Fighting would simply make it worse.
"We're getting off this farm," Ed said. "And the hell away from all these assholes. You let them put thoughts in your head, didn't you? Let them start making you think you were better than me. You're no better than me. You're lucky I've put up with your ass this long. You're lucky I stayed—didn't leave you here to die. Where the hell is Sophia?"
Carol choked against Ed's hold and he loosened his grip. He still kept his fingers around her throat to remind her that he could choke her out, but he let her have air so that she could answer him.
"Gone, Ed," Carol said. "Sophia's gone."
The fire from the barn provided Carol more than enough light to see Ed's expression. The expression made her chest ache. He thought she meant Sophia was dead, and Carol didn't correct him. Not right away. His expression at the thought sickened Carol. He actually looked pleased at the prospect that their daughter might've been torn apart by one of the Walkers.
"Get in the damn truck," Ed said. "We're better off without her any way. She weren't never worth much."
Carol pulled away in the direction of the truck and Ed let go of her throat, satisfied to see that she was going to do what he wanted. She was back under his control when she had no other prospects for safety or survival. It was exactly what Ed wanted. Carol stumbled toward the truck, still struggling to fully get her air back, and she slipped her hand as carefully as she could into the pocket of her pants.
When Ed spit something at her about hurrying up, she called his name. He came, from the front of the truck he hoped to steal, to probably force her into the cab with another few cuss words and, perhaps, a slap across the cheek to remind her that he didn't appreciate her stalling.
He never said anything to her, though. Carol pulled the gun out of her pocket and cocked it as she moved it upward. She might've thought that she could never shoot a human being, but at that moment she was almost certain that Ed Peletier hadn't been a human being for a very long time.
Carol fired the first bullet into his chest. It didn't go deep enough to kill him, but it did stop him and even made him back up a step as he seemed to struggle to realize what had happened.
"You fuckin' shot me!" He spat, staggering toward the truck with a hand out. "You could've killed me."
Carol wondered if the smaller bullets didn't do much damage or if Ed was simply not registering yet that he'd been shot in the chest and probably would die, even if it wasn't immediate.
"I'm going to kill you," Carol said, her voice shaking more than she wanted.
"Everything I've done for you, you crazy bitch," Ed spat with some amusement.
Carol nodded her head at him, still holding the gun.
"Everything you've done to me, Ed," Carol said. "You killed me a long time ago. The person I used to be. You killed her. You killed yourself. The man that I loved. But—not anymore. You don't touch me again, Ed. You don't touch me and you don't touch Sophia."
Ed might have been prepared to respond. Maybe he was just going to comment that he was realizing that the bullet might kill him. But Carol didn't allow him the chance to say anything. She fired a second bullet into his brain and barely allowed his body time to drop to the ground before she took off running around the truck and tried desperately to crank it. Even though the key was in it, though, the truck was dead and had probably been dead for years. Carol left the vehicle and ran toward the road. There was a large bunch of Walkers between her and the house, so she'd never make it back to Otis's truck, but there was still a chance that she could make it to the road.
People were leaving. They'd left, actually. And they'd left Carol behind. They had no reason to know she was there and they had no reason to suspect that she was simply running around the Walker-infested farm instead of being eaten already by one of the Dead.
The only hope she had, at this point, was to run for the road and hope to catch up with someone or get their attention.
The only hope she had was to run for her life.
Carol fired the small gun at Walkers that got too close to her, but she finally dropped the weapon when the bullets ran out. She was running as fast as she could, but her legs were burning and her lungs were burning and everywhere she turned there were more Walkers that seemed more interested in her than they had been before. With everyone else gone, the Walkers had nothing to distract them. Carol was the only thing that they could smell, it seemed, and they all wanted her.
She was sure that they were bound to catch her.
And if they didn't catch her, Carol was pretty sure that she was simply going to pass out and collapse. They'd eat her when she was down. It was a pathetic way to die, but Carol was almost positive it was the fate that awaited her.
Until she heard the sound of the engine.
It wasn't the sound of a truck. It wasn't one of the SUVs that they'd taken. It was the sound of a motorcycle and Carol only knew one motorcycle that had been around the farm.
Carol almost cried when she heard the welcomed sound. She didn't dare to, though, for the fact that crying might lessen the amount of air she could draw in and get her that much closer to collapsing from exhaustion. As she reached the road, she saw the bike rolling up with its one light guiding it in the darkness.
"Come on! Hurry up! Get on!" Daryl yelled. "They right behind you!"
Carol didn't need him to tell her that they were right behind her, but she understood why he did it. He didn't want her to look back. Looking back to see where they were would only slow her down. She didn't have even a second to waste with something like that.
When Carol reached the bike, her legs were shaking. Daryl stood up, holding the bike in place, and she threw her leg over while he urged her to hurry but said little else. As soon as she was on, Carol barked at him to go and she wrapped her arms around him as he pulled off and started down the road.
Carol could barely breathe. Her mind was racing. The blood pumping through her veins sounded like loud waves crashing inside her head. She closed her eyes and leaned her head against Daryl's back as she clung to him.
It was out of her hands now. She was nothing but a passenger on Daryl's bike. It was her job to move with him when he moved, and she knew that, to keep the bike balanced, but otherwise there was nothing she could do to help him. It would be Daryl that got them away from the farm and out of the herd of Walkers that seemed to go on forever.
When Carol finally felt strong enough to lift her head and look at where they were going, she could see that Walkers still stumbled here and there across the road. They were coming out of the woods on both sides of the road and they seemed to never stop. Daryl kept a decent speed, but he didn't dare to go too fast. If he went too fast, he ran the risk of hitting one of the Walkers and throwing them both to the ground.
If he went too slowly, one of the Walkers had a good chance of grabbing them.
Carol knew that if she was driving, she would've crashed the bike. But Daryl handled it like a pro. He'd clearly spent a good deal of his life handling that very bike or one like it. Rather than watch everything unfold around her, Carol closed her eyes again, leaned her head against Daryl's back, and held tight to him.
She'd done all she could do. She trusted Daryl, entirely, to get them off the farm and clear of the herd.