Chapter 18.
What We Become.
Negan.
Negan braced himself on the wall, watching thick, blackish blood ooze from her broken head onto the nice, floral-patterned carpet. He felt sick, but he held firm, forcing himself to live in this moment. He had never liked Dr. Todd and she thought he was a piece of shit, but it still felt like murder when he smashed her face in with a bat.
The evidence was all there.
Negan stepped around a pile of vomit, a handwritten note, an empty pill bottle, and rummaged through the drawers for anything Lucille might be able to use. Snapshots of Dr. Todd's life kept popping out at him – pictures of her kids, degrees and commendations, research grants and academic papers. None of that meant anything anymore. Although all of their encounters had been hostile, her death hit him hard. It was the first person lost that he knew.
"I'm sorry," he said, as he dragged the body out of the way to get to the bottom drawer of the file cabinet. "Lucille liked you. Don't know why." His eyes were drawn to her again. "Sorry. I know you're not supposed to talk ill of the dead – but seriously, fuck you. You can take that into the afterlife." He decided not to tell Lucille about this.
His search came up with a lot of sample boxes, a few pills prescribed to Dr. Todd, and some books on dealing with breast cancer. He also found some crackers in her desk and a pocketknife in her jacket pocket. It would have to be enough.
He strode outside, hefting his bag over his shoulder. He had gotten an early start that morning, going mostly unnoticed by the dead in the twilight.
The sun was only just rising.
And the street was not empty.
Four men stood on the yellow line in the road. They all stopped to stare at him. Negan froze, his neck hair standing up. He knew immediately that he was in danger from the way they were looking at him – hostile, hungry, like a pack of wild dogs. In the past twenty or so days, the world had become so different, so empty, so harsh, that the first place he went was terror.
"Whatcha got there, friend?" One of them said. He was a husky guy with a rifle in one hand and a pistol strapped to his side.
Negan regarded them wearily, picking his words, careful of his tone, "Nothing much."
"It looks like something," another guy said, "Looks heavy."
He was heavily outnumbered. He didn't dare reach for the gun on his side. He let his pack down gently and opened it wide, "It's just medicine, see? It's for my wife."
One of them came forward, and the rest trailed behind, fanning out. He was being surrounded, but he had nowhere to go.
The husky one, the leader, said, "Looks like food to me."
Negan suddenly regretted scavenging that morning. He had canned food and crackers in his bag, nestled among the sample boxes. "You can have it," he offered. "I just need the medicine."
All four of them were closing in. Negan kept the others in the corner of his eye, focusing on the leader, who was suddenly the furthest away.
"How about this?" the man said, "You walk away and leave the bag here. We call it a day."
Negan tried to hide his desperation, but it was clear in his voice. "I can't."
He knew what was going to happen next.
One of the men lunched suddenly, and Negan turned on him, delivering a solid right hook. He felt his knuckles giving way at impact. Another tackled him, dragging him to the ground. He went down fighting, punching and kicking in a desperate bid for freedom.
But there were too many of them. He took a blow to the face, to the ribs. He curled into a ball, trying to protect his face, leaving his body exposed.
It seemed that it would never stop. It went on and on, until his chest began to numb.
And then they stopped. He watched through swollen eyes as they took his bag and headed down the road, not even glancing back at him.
He lay there for hours, still curled up, wiping trembling hands over his eyes to see through the blood. Slowly, tenderly, he stretched out, and rolled over to his back. He stared up at the sky, watching the sun slowly sink toward the tree line. How long had he been lying here?
His terror from before had shifted to anger, to fury, only growing each time his ribs throbbed.
Around dusk, he heard the shuffle of feet on concrete.
Negan dragged himself up into a sitting position, pressing his hand hard to his abdomen to dim the pain in his ribs. He felt like shit, probably looked like shit. A dead guy was coming toward him, and there were more in the distance.
He staggered to his feet, limping in the direction the men had gone. His bat lay on the ground where he had dropped it – worthless to people who had guns.
But it was all he had left.
As he moved, he straightened out, forcing himself to work through the pain. It was either this, or death. There were only two choices. And he had to get back to Lucille.
He limped along, his shuffle and the blood on his face making him look just like one of the dead. His head was spinning at first, his right leg aching like one of them had nailed him right in the thigh, and every now and then he had to stop and wipe a line of blood away from his eye – but he was otherwise intact. If they were trying to kill him, they were shit at it.
It was fully nighttime when he heard their voices. He had been walking for over an hour down the main road, having lost hope of finding them. He was just going home to Lucille. But there was no mistaking the signs of life inside a little shopping center.
Negan stepped up to the window, peeking carefully inside. They were sitting around a lantern on the floor, their faces glowing. They were smiling, chatting, eating.
He slid down, sitting just below the window, and waited.
When the voices stopped, and they were lying on sleeping bags, and they stopped tossing and turning and all lay still and tranquil, Negan grabbed his bat and let himself in.
His bag was propped up against a central beam, far enough away that he could avoid going near the group. He went straight for it, checking that everything was still there, and carried it carefully toward the door. He picked up one of the guns, lying carelessly by the lantern, as he passed.
He was nearly clear when someone stirred behind him.
Negan whipped around, dropped the bag and the gun, and held his bat with two hands. One of the men was waking up, looking up at him groggily.
He swung straight downward, making brutal contact with the top of the man's head. His skull split with a solid crack and he slumped to the ground. A second one stirred at the noise and Negan swung again, hitting the side of his head first, dazing him, and then striking true the second time.
A third was getting to his feet, reaching for his gun, but Negan had already picked his stolen gun up to fire. He shot the guy three times before the fourth man hit him like a brick wall.
Negan hit the ground and the gun flew out of his hand. The guy got on top of him and started throwing punches, and for a moment, Negan could only put his hands up to protect himself. He gave in, taking a dizzying punch to the jaw, get a hand on the ground and throw himself upward. Negan got on top, and then struggled at the bottom, and then got the upper hand again. All the while, fists and legs were flying – the guy tried to bite him and Negan elbowed him in the teeth.
It was life or death. He only had one way out.
The man made the mistake of trying to break away to get the gun.
Negan got on his back, got his arms around his neck, and held on with all his strength.
He thrashed around, but Negan held on. He pushed through an elbow to the ribs, hands clawing at his face, legs kicking his shins. And then the man shifted his efforts, pulling at his arms, trying to free his throat. His mouth gaped.
Negan held on for a while.
It was like driving a familiar route and shifting into autopilot.
When he finally let the guy go, he had lost more time than he expected. His arms ached from holding on. He was exhausted. He lay there under the body, too tired to even push it away.
He breathed in, breathed out.
It was done. It was over.
Negan got to his feet and nearly collapsed. He leaned on the beam for support. Bodies lay all around him and blood covered the floor – his and theirs. Four men, as still as stone. He had done this. His bat was painted red. His shirt was stained, his shoes soaked.
But he had won. He was the victor. He was the survivor.
Negan packed up his stuff, rummaged through theirs, and limped to the doorway, looking back to see them one last time. "Asshole," he muttered as he left.
It was over and hour before he made it home.
It was quiet and dark inside. He figured Lucille had gone to sleep. He had left a few candles burning for her, but half of them had gone out.
He set his bag down and slipped into the bathroom, staring at himself in the mirror. His face was turning all kinds of colors, like a melted box of crayons. His lip was split. His chest and back were bruised. One of his cheeks was starting to swell up and the inside of his mouth was cut from impact with his teeth. He looked like hell. But he was strangely energized. His eyes were bright. He even smiled at himself.
"I got you some stuff," Negan announced as he came out, "It's not much, but-"
He stopped talking, stopped thinking, when he saw what was waiting for him in the living room.
Lucille was hobbling out of their bedroom, the cold haze of death in her eyes. She almost appeared alive, if not for the groaning, the gnashing teeth.
His first instinct, his strongest instinct, was to run.
He turned, grabbed his bat, and ran through the front door, slamming it shut behind him. But his legs could take him no further. He leaned against it, slid down it, and sat there while she clawed at the wood. And suddenly he was crying, sobbing, his thoughts all jumbled up.
He sat there until dawn.
It came into the sky first, a pale light, showing their overgrown front lawn. She used to sunbathe out there, before they ever thought about cancer. The light touched him, showed him how gnarly his knuckles looked. He stared at them, trying to block out the clawing hands on the other side of the door. Her attempts to get to him were halfhearted now, like she was losing interest.
A lot could change in a day.
When he woke up, he was married.
And just one sunrise later, he was alone.