A/N: This is a rough chapter, folks. All that righteous anger Hershel directed at Shane in the show about the barn?
It gets aimed at Maggie instead.
July 19, 2010
Shane's half under the cargo truck, helping Merle fix a brake line that must have caught on some sharper debris on the way here, when he hears Glenn's alarmed voice.
"Hey, Shane? Everybody? Something really weird is going on with one of the Greene girls."
He slides out from under the big vehicle, while Merle goes out the other side. He rubs his oily hands on his stained cargo pants, looking where Glenn is pointing from his spot on watch. Sweat from the July heat trickles down his spine under his old black T-shirt.
In the distance, halfway to a barn they've been asked to stay away from, Maggie Greene is holding a heated argument with Otis. She's holding a shotgun in one hand and has what looks like an ammo bag slung over her shoulder. Otis reaches out to put a hand as if he's going to take the gun, and Maggie nails him right in the nuts with the butt of the shotgun. Shane figures he isn't the only watcher who flinches from how hard the tall, out of shape man hits the ground in the fetal position.
The young woman stalks off, climbing a ladder to access the hayloft and disappearing inside the barn's upper level. It's hard to tell from here, but it looks like the barn's doors are chained shut.
Shane exchanges a puzzled look with Merle, who shrugs.
"Whatever the farm girl is up to, that shotgun ain't got the range to be dangerous to us. Hershel's man definitely didn't enjoy arguing with her about whatever it is."
Otis is just making it to his knees when the shotgun begins blasting away. Four shots ring out in succession before the noise fades. The overweight man stumbles as best he can toward the farmhouse, not toward the barn, so he's obviously given up on convincing Maggie and running for her father instead.
"Must hold four," Shane muses, wondering what on earth Maggie's shooting at inside the barn. It could be target practice, he supposes, but he isn't sure why anyone would do that inside an old barn.
Then the significance of the questions Maggie asked at breakfast hit him.
"Holy shit. There's walkers in the barn."
He watches as Merle takes an involuntary step toward where Shane knows he left his Browning. The former Marine's hands go to where the holster normally rests, fingers clenching when there's nothing there. "You sure about that?"
"Maggie asked Ellie about what her old colleagues knew of the virus and reanimation at breakfast. She and her father looked like they might come to blows over it. There's at least two family members missing, from what I saw of the family photos."
As the shotgun begins firing again, people burst out of the Greene farmhouse. Shane can spot Hershel's shock of white hair even from here, even though his form would be equally identifiable from a distance due to the starched white dress shirt and suspenders. Hershel pauses only to question Otis, looking toward where all the visitors are just watching. Otis, still unable to stand upright, motions toward the barn. Hershel makes it to the ladder as a third series of shots begins.
Shane starts forward when the two Greenes reappear on the platform near the ladder, screaming at each other. A fight that high up might be fatal for father and daughter, and he doesn't know them well enough to assume this won't escalate to a domestic if Maggie's just done what he thinks she has. He sets off at a run, with Merle hot on his heels.
From the Greene farmhouse, he sees Ellie and Rick emerge, although they don't pass where Patricia, Beth, and Otis are clustered near the gate into the field where the barn resides. Rick is questioning Patricia and Otis with the urgency he usually reserves for urgent police work.
"What's going on?" Shane barks out as he draws within range.
Rick looks stunned. "Hershel's keeping walkers in the barn. Family, friends, neighbors. Seems Maggie decided to euthanize them without telling him."
"Jesus Christ." As much as he already deduced that, the idea makes Shane's blood run cold. Most of their people spent the night within sight of that barn with only the protection of canvas tent walls. He puts on a burst of speed to reach the barn, where Maggie and Hershel are still screaming at each other.
As he climbs the ladder, he can hear how far the fight has devolved, and he reaches the top when the type of words that end family relationships are uttered.
"You aren't welcome here anymore, Maggie. Pack your things."
Getting to the top of the ladder means that Shane sees the devastation that wreaks on Hershel's daughter. All the angry defiance drains out of her, and her shoulders slump in defeat. The shotgun slips from her fingers, landing with a thud pointing inward to the hayloft.
"Dr. Greene, I'm not sure that's the sort of thing you want to decide when emotions are high," Shane ventures, defaulting into an attempt to defuse the situation like he would back home.
The veterinarian turns to see him. His mouth twists in distaste. "That goes for the rest of you, too. Putting murderous ideas into my daughter's head and turning her into a killer. You should be ashamed of yourself."
Maggie is sobbing, face buried in her hands. Shane sidesteps the old man and reaches her side. "C'mon, Maggie. Let's get you down that ladder and back to your family."
It surprises him that she just lets him lead her away. He expects Hershel to block his way, but the man goes inside the hayloft instead, stepping over the fallen shotgun. Shane glimpses him falling to his knees and looking down into the barn as he begins to sob.
Ellie and Merle are both at the bottom of the ladder. Merle climbs up halfway, taking Maggie from Shane as he kneels on the platform. The brunette is shaking uncontrollably and sobbing so hard that Shane's glad of the help, because he thinks she would fall otherwise. Merle gets her passed to Ellie's waiting arms, who leads her away to where Patricia's left the gate to run toward them.
Merle looks up the ladder. "You need any help with the old man?" he asks. Shane shakes his head, but he does back up and retrieve the shotgun. He passes it down to Merle, who takes it with a sigh.
Shane goes back to the hayloft opening and watches as Hershel Greene finally gives way to the terrible mourning he should have done whenever the virus actually took his loved ones. It's a painful scene to watch, especially knowing what awaits the man when he comes back to himself. If he holds any sort of affection for his daughter, the hurt dealt just now is going to take a long time to heal.
Below them in the barn itself, it's a scene of carnage, but Shane realizes Maggie's endeavor to lay the walkers to rest is incomplete. Either she didn't make headshots on all of them, or Hershel interrupted her. Three walkers are still moving, one trapped under others that are completely still.
None of the mobile ones look anything like the photos he saw in the living room, at least. To be honest, if he were in Maggie's shoes, he would have started with family himself, just in case he didn't manage them all. He can't imagine making the choice she did just now.
When faced with it himself, he didn't pull the trigger, although thank God he didn't since Rick wasn't dead. If Rick had been, though, his brother's body would be wandering that hospital room as a false image of himself, trapped by a gurney so that his unlife took place in the same room his last weeks did.
The veterinarian's heart wrenching sobs finally go quiet, and Shane wishes for a moment that he let someone else come up here, someone who knows the man. Rick was always the one with the comforting presence, not him.
"There is no hope."
Shane startles at the old man's unexpected words. "There's always hope, Dr. Greene. Long as we got breath in us, we got hope." It's something he holds onto, because he can't look at Carl or Merry or the other children without feeling that hope riding on his shoulders no matter how crazy the world is.
Hershel shakes his head. "There is no hope. I've been such a fool." He points to one of the still moving walkers, who looks like it's been hit twice in the chest. The walker was already rotten enough that the impact of 12-gauge slugs ripped away enough of the body that no human being could still be mobile or alive. "No human being survives that."
"No, sir, they do not." Shane walks over to the man, easing himself as close as he can be without being right on the edge. "But wanting to believe in a cure? Not a soul out there would begrudge you that."
"That's my Annette," Hershel says, raising a shaking arm to point out a still woman in a nightgown. "She died of the virus early on, back when they were still calling it a flu." He bites back a sob before pointing to another walker in a yellow button up. "And that's my son, Shawn. His mother bit him when he went to take her some lunch."
Imagining the horror of that moment, finding your dead wife attacked your son, is something that makes Shane shudder.
"They're at peace now, Hershel. I know you want us gone, but we can at least help you get them laid to rest first." As much as he doesn't like the idea of Carl on the road, he knows few of their group will be willing to rub salt in the wounds of the Greene family by staying. He imagines there's other abandoned farms around they can claim for a few days if need be.
Hershel rubs a trembling hand over his face and nods slowly. "Can you make sure they're all beyond suffering?"
"I can make sure of that." And it's much easier with the man's permission, to finish what Maggie started. "Let's get you back to your family, and then I'll make sure everything is taken care of."
The man is almost too pliant as Shane helps him to his feet. He considered the man old before this, a lot older than you usually saw a man with daughters as young as his. But now? It's like Hershel Greene just aged thirty years in the span of half an hour.
Merle's still waiting at the ladder, helping him get Hershel down the same way as he did Maggie.
"Take him to his people. He asked that we finish the job. I told him we would help lay his family to rest."
"I'll send Daryl on over," Merle acknowledges, leading Hershel away as Shane sits at the top of the ladder and tries to decide exactly how to start the task he's promised. Once Merle's near where Beth and Otis are gathered at the pasture gate, he calls out something Shane can't hear, but Daryl leaves from where he and Rick have been making sure no one followed them.
The former firefighter meets his gaze from the foot of the ladder. "How bad is it?"
Shane sighs. "At least three of more than a dozen still living. Not sure how safe it'll be for us to open the doors just yet."
"Guess we take care of those three first. Crossbow's quieter." He passes the weapon up to Shane, who moves out of the way of the ladder so Daryl can ascend. He follows the other man into the hayloft, watching as Daryl takes in the carnage.
"Christ Almighty, that girl had to really be hurting to do this all on her own." Daryl's affinity for being a protector of the females of his family has to really make him feel Maggie's pain more than most.
"Yeah. Wish she brought it to me. Would have helped, or done it for her."
"Hell yeah. We wouldn't have asked that girl to put down her own mama." Daryl sighs and aims the crossbow. With the resounding twang, he fires the weapon, ending the struggles of the one walker trapped under its fellow barn inmates.
"It got worse than that. Her old man told her she wasn't welcome here. He might come back from that now that he's calmed down, but…" Shane sighs.
"But you don't unhear that kind of thing, ever." Daryl fires again, and another walker goes down.
"No, you do not." It's like Lori accusing him of deliberately abandoning Rick to move in on her and Carl. They may be in some sort of truce now, but he doesn't think he'll ever not have that poison in the back of his mind when he speaks to her.
A third bolt jolts a walker to stillness, and Shane can't see any more movement below. Daryl kneels, tilting his head, and Shane does his best to be quiet for the hunter to listen.
"Think we got 'em all, but when we open the doors, we make double sure," the other man suggests at last. "No chances on one figuring out how to play possum."
"Alright." Shane offers Daryl a hand back to his feet. "Let's get started. We've got a lot of graves to dig."
The trip down the ladder is a silent one, and Shane looks toward where the only resident of the Green farm still visible is Otis, who shuffles forward when he sees them approach the barn door.
He just hopes that Ellie and Rick can solve the problem of the emotional damage to the family the same way he and Daryl are solving this one.
A/N: When I started thinking about the barn for this story, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out other ways clearing the barn could happen, especially since Shane is far more stable and less on a hair trigger. I like the barn scene and the sheer BOOM of emotion that Shane dishes out in trying to bring folks into the reality of the situation, but I also didn't want to imitate it.
Mixes events from the barn scene and the bar scene both, as far as Hershel's reactions, because I felt he would actually speak to someone sooner than he did on the show if he wasn't alienated from everyone due to the shootout. In the end, I've decided they will not encounter Randall's group, since it's already been covered in MtSF and RBM.
Pairings - Right now, outside of the established Shane/Ellie, my notes stand as Daryl/Glenn and Carol/Morgan. Still trying to sort it out, but I may snag one of the requests off my Ao3 Bunny Farm and go for Merle/Jacqui. I have no idea on Maggie or Beth so far (since I know folks will ask).
Side note: the reason characters in my stories refer to Hershel as Dr. Greene is that in the U.S., veterinarians use the title doctor, just like physicians (as do dentists).