Sorry this took so long, life got in the way.
Spencersmuse, cuteandevil2, mygnomefriend, jlcummins, itsi3, yazzy x, bspooky3, DevilWithAnAngelHeart, hillaryn, RhiannonMuir, Jasmin Jade xx, LaurenEmilyxx - Thanks for the love.
I own nothing, except all the original stuff.
Chapter 21 - Carol
Hershel had already given me the o.k. to leave the bed, no heavy lifting or zombie killing but I was allowed to stir out of doors, so, when my sobs subsided Daryl asked if I wanted to go for a walk.
We very slowly and quietly made our way out the back door. I think Daryl knew that the last thing I wanted was to deal with people right now. This was not a happy event, I didn't want their obligatory glad-you're-out-of-the-woods smiles. I wasn't out of the woods, none of us were. They couldn't see the forest for the trees but I knew, we were in it for life. Me getting better, me getting out of bed, it was like breathing, you just keep doing it until you can't anymore. That's what surviving in the zombie apocalypse, means, I just had the wind knocked out of me for a moment there.
He looked at me, leaving the decision of where to go up to me. I headed to the woods, partially to avoid people, and their eyes. Their curious eyes and their questioning eyes. Their understanding eyes and compassionate eyes and their pitying eyes.
They could all go to hell.
I stepped over the threshold that separated Hershel's fields from the woods. The cool familiar darkness enveloped me and my heart.
I felt calm. The old animal instincts that I had cultivated with Daryl over many hours were taking over. This was the other reason I had craved the damp cover of the trees. It was much easier to be alive when you were an animal.
I made my way slowly, Daryl silently keeping pace. It was a companionable silence. Eventually, I realized that I was taking my usual path to Daryl's camp.
With my ribs on the mend I was slow. Very slow and easily out of breath. Hershel said it would be another month before I was 100%. Being on the mend in the zombie apocalypse could mean a death sentence.
Just then I tripped over a root but Daryl was there, his hand like a vice around my bicep before I could stumble and fall.
I looked up at him and gave him a little smile before nodding my head to let him know that I had steadied myself. He let go and I started forward again.
Strength in numbers.
My own words to Daryl when he wanted to split from the group.
Maybe I was right. Being with the others meant that broken ribs wouldn't necessarily get me killed. Not that I really trusted the others to have my back. But Daryl would. Andrea volunteered to go with Daryl when he came after me. Those two new people that Daryl told me about had helped us without even knowing us.
Of course, if I had listened to Daryl on the highway that day, I wouldn't have broken ribs, a traumatized sister and the weight of killing my own father on my conscience.
Maybe no one gets to be right in the zombie apocalypse. Perhaps cut and dry victories like that belong in a world that makes sense. I looked at the man beside me before he caught me looking and I snapped my eyes forward. He chuckled and pushed my shoulder playfully. I met his eyes again and gave him a real smile this time. Truth was neither of us had ever lived in a world that made sense.
He shot his arm out in front of me and I stopped. I looked around and listened. We were near Daryl's camp and someone was coming. The gait was heavy, tired sounding, maybe stressed. Daryl, who was so much better at this than I, probably knew who it was just by the sound of their footsteps.
Daryl put his index finger up to his lips and handed me his crossbow. He walked out to his camp to meet whoever was coming and I hung back hiding out of sight behind brush, but not before cocking the bow. I shouldn't have been surprised by how difficult it was, my ribs made their displeasure at the exertion known by sending out spasms of pain that started at my side but could be felt in my toes.
I had sweat coating my brow and I had to work to keep my breathing quiet when I looked back up to see Daryl making himself busy with some arrows.
I wondered absently if I could even lift the bow in my condition before I heard Daryl sigh audibly when the owner of the footsteps came into view. Dale.
"The whole point of me coming up here is to get away from you people," drawled Daryl.
"It's gonna take more than that," replied Dale, unfazed by Daryl's gruffness.
"Andrea send you?"
"Andrea's not the only one who's concerned about you and your new role in the group."
Andrea? I guess Daryl had started to feel a kinship with Andrea since she came with him to get me. Looks like it went both ways.
I tried not to feel jealous about that.
"I don't need my head shrunk. This group's broken. I'm better off fending for myself."
Was Daryl planning on us taking off on our own again? He wouldn't leave me and Sophie behind, right? Not after everything? Maybe he decided I was too much trouble.
"You act like you don't care?"
"'Cause I don't," said Daryl swinging his jacket around behind him so that he could get his arms in.
Now I knew that was just posturing. He was horrified with what he done to Randall and with what he never had a chance to do to my pops.
"So live or die you don't care what happens to Randall?"
"Nope."
"Then why not stand with me?" asked Dale. "Try to save the kid's life, if it really doesn't matter one way or the other."
"Didn't peg you for a desperate son-of-a-bitch," said Daryl, straightening his jacket so he didn't have to look Dale in the eye.
"Your opinion makes a difference."
"Man, ain't no body looking at me for nothing," growled Daryl while slinging a crossbow over his shoulder.
Wait what?
I looked down at the crossbow in my hands.
"Carol is, and I am, right now."
Me? What does he know about Daryl and me? Well, I guess as far as everyone knows, he saved me.
"And obviously you have Rick's ear."
"-Rick just looks to Shane," spat Daryl. "Let him."
"You cared about what happened to Carol and Sophia. Cared what it meant to the group."
Dale didn't know anything.
"Torturing people? That isn't you. You're a decent man. So is Rick. Shane, he's different."
"Why's that?" asked Daryl. "Because he killed Otis?"
"Did he tell you that?"
"He told some story, how Otis covered him, saved his ass, he showed up with the dead guy's gun," spat Daryl. "Rick ain't stupid, he didn't figure that out it's because he didn't wanna. It's like I said, this group's broken."
Daryl apparently was done with the conversation because he was stalking toward the woods, towards me.
He grabbed my hand and pulled me after him as he stalked silently into the depths of the woods. My side ached but I didn't make a sound.
He would never admit it, but he was torn up by this thing, having a person's life in our hands and choosing whether or not to take that life in cold blood.
I'd never asked and he's never said but I'm pretty sure that Daryl's never taken human life. Not like Rick or Shane... or me.
We didn't stop until we reached the field that Daryl had taken me to the day the geeks got let out of the barn, the day I joined the rapidly increasing club of people who've taken a life.
Daryl let go of my hand. He huffed, standing a pace ahead with his back to me.
He turned around with a grimace on his face.
He looked at the weapon in his hand and then he shoved it in my direction.
I looked at it blankly.
He looked annoyed.
"I got you a..."
He looked like he was internally warring with himself over the next word out of his mouth.
"... crossbow."
If I wasn't so blindly happy I might have wondered why it took him so long to come up with the word "crossbow," but I was in total shock.
Handing him his own crossbow back, I reverently took the shiny new one he was holding out to me with both hands.
I looked at the crossbow then back up at him.
He looked stressed and focused all his attention on the bow in my hands.
"It's a Barnett Vengence," he said. "It's one of the best bows on the market, or it was."
I just looked at him wide eyed.
He furrowed his brows but kept talking, pointing to this or that on the bow.
"I assembled it for you. Directions weren't worth the paper they was printed on but I figured it out. I already calibrated the scope for you too so you don't have to worry about this baby shootin' true. It will."
He sniffed when I still didn't say anything.
"It's a reverse limb bow, so it's not as wide as mine, more maneuverable in tight spaces. It can shoot a bolt up to 365 feet per second. One of the best balanced bows I've ever handled..."
He seemed to be struggling for more trivia on my new bow in the face of my silence.
"Plus it's lighter than my bow, only 8 lbs. and the draw weight is easier too, 140 lbs. So, all around, it will be easier for you to handle and you handle mine just fine so-"
He stopped abruptly when I hurled my self against him, wrapping my free arm around his neck while my new treasure hung by my side in a death grip. He hesitated then wrapped his free arm around my back.
There we were, two broken people trying their best to hold each other's fracturing pieces in place, scrambling to keep each other from falling apart.
Later that day, at the meeting Dale begged for, we all stood or sat intently inspecting our hands or the floor. Anywhere but Dale's pleading eyes.
This was the last place I wanted to be. I leaned against the back of the opened front door, grasping the handle as an anchor to stop myself from slipping out, taking that one step that separated me from the outside world. The irony was, I had chosen that spot because I needed to know escape was an option in order to bare being here at all.
I think Daryl wanted to be here even less than I did. You can't technically even consider him in the room, preferring to occupy the ambiguous space between the living room, where the meeting was taking place, and the dining room.
Rick and Skeletor were the last to arrive. Rick waded into the middle of all of us and looked around. Turning when he noticed everyone's eyes focusing on a point behind him he saw his boy lingering in the hallway, trying and get in on the meeting.
I reflected darkly on the irony that the only one who wanted to be here was one of the only people excluded from the talk. Even Dale was here out of conviction rather than a desire to make such a dire choice. Children...
"So, how do we do this? Just take a vote?" asked Glenn, jumping right into it as soon as Carl was gone.
"Does it have to be unanimous?" asked Andrea.
"How about majority rules?" suggested Lori.
Maybe it's easier to focus on procedure than the fact that we're here to decide whether or not to end a human being.
"Well, let's just see where everybody stands," interjected Rick. "Then we can talk through the options.
That's interesting. It's our lives at risk if we let him live and our souls at risk if we don't. As much as I don't want to make this decision, I don't see in what world a vote is not the way this ends.
Then again, I'd give anything not to have to make this call.
"Well, where I sit," drawled Shane as he leaned against the mantel, "there's only one way to move forward."
"Killing him. Right?" cried Dale. "I mean why bother taking a vote? It's clear which way the wind's blowing."
"Well, if people believe we should spare him I wanna know," insisted Rick.
He's taken human life, but not like this, not in cold blood. It's different when you're in the moment, when you're defending yourself, when there's no choice, when the other person forces your hand.
This was as hard for him as it was for me because he knew, he'd learned, that when you kill, you pay for it.
"Well, I can tell you it's a small group - maybe just me and Glenn."
Glenn lifted his eyes slowly, reluctantly to meet Dale's.
When Dale saw the look Glenn wore, even before the boy opened his mouth, the realization of what Glenn was about to say was written all over Dale's face and it looked painfully akin to heartbreak.
"Look, I - I think you're right about pretty much everything, all the time, but this -"
"They've got you scared."
"He's not one of us," shot back Glenn, and then in a small voice he said, "and we - we've lost too many people already."
Dale twisted his hat around in agitation.
"How about you," he said gesturing toward Maggie. "Do you agree with this?"
"Couldn't we continue keeping him prisoner?" she asked, turning to Rick.
"It's just another mouth to feed," said Daryl softly.
"It could be a lean winter," added Herschel.
Trust the farmer and the hunter consider the availability of food when weighing a man's life.
"We could ration better," said Skeletor.
"Or he could be an asset. Give him a chance to prove himself," said Dale.
"Put him to work?" Glenn asked.
"We're not letting him walk around," snapped Rick.
"We could put an escort on him," Maggie suggested.
"And who wants to volunteer for that duty?" Shane drawled.
"I will," said Dale with fever.
"I don't think any of us should be walking around with this guy," said Rick, reminding me greatly of a judge calling a court room to order.
"He's right, I wouldn't feel safe unless he was tied up," said Skeletor meeting her husband's eyes, some silent communication passing between them.
"We can't exactly put chains around his ankles, sentence him to hard labor," said Andrea, and not with a small amount of attitude.
"Look," said Shane, "say we let him join us, maybe he's helpful, maybe he's nice, we let our guard down and maybe he brings back his thirty men."
"So the answer is to kill him to prevent a crime that he may never even attempt?" cried Dale. "If we do this, we're saying there's no hope, rule of law is dead, there is no civilization."
"Oh my god," muttered Shane with an eye roll.
But Andrea, the look on her face, it looked like Dale hit his mark with Andrea.
"Could you drive him further out, leave him like you planned?" asked Herschel.
"You barely made it back this time, there are walkers, you could break down, y - you could get lost," warned Skeletor.
"You could get ambushed," muttered Daryl for a record breaking second opinion shared in a group meeting.
By now I had my head buried in my hand. I couldn't take this.
They were all right and that was the problem. We couldn't keep him that much was obvious. We couldn't set him free, not without putting ourselves at risk. But worst of all was the knowledge that he didn't deserve to die. His only sin was that he was taken in by the wrong group of people, but he didn't deserve to die.
"They're right, we should not put our own people at risk," said Glenn.
Absently I wondered when Glenn became so insular. When did we start dividing the world into us and them? Used to be we were just a group of strangers camping at a quarry waiting for Red Cross or the National Guard to come find us and tell us it was over and we could go home. Even after the CDC, when we knew for sure that the world had ended, we've assimilated new people into the group, Herschel and his family are clearly part of Glenn's "us" and Amelia and Daniel were even invited to this meeting, even though they don't seem to have much to say. So why not this kid? Why can't he become one of us. Are we going to treat everyone we meet from here on out like the enemy? It's not as though everyone here has clean hands, I thought, my eyes falling on Shane.
"If you go through with it, how would you do it?" asked Patricia. "Would he suffer?"
Wait, woa, how did we go from if to how? I thought in a panic. We never even voted.
"We could hang him, right?" suggest Shane with a casual shrug. "Just snap his neck.
"I thought about that," sighed Rick. "Shooting may be more humane."
Daryl took a subconscious step back and a look of stalwart determination came over him.
"And what about the body? asked T-Dog. "Do we bury it?"
Oh my god. The body. An image of my father flashed in my vision. It had never occurred to me, what happened to his body? Had it gotten up and wandered off? I looked around as though I expected him to stumble, moaning into the room.
"Hold on, hold on, you're talking about this like it's already decided," said Dale, holding his hands up.
"You've been talking all day," growled Daryl, taking a step forward, "going around in circles. You just wanna go around in circles again."
Daryl wants this done.
"This is a young man's life," shouted Dale. "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 him?
"You saved him," said Dale, speaking directly to Rick. "And now look at us. He's been tortured. He's gonna be executed. How are we any better than those people we're so afraid of?"
Everyone turned there heads as if slapped.
"We all know what needs to be done," said Shane into the gaping silence that lingered after Dale's speech.
"No. Dale is right," said Rick, "we can't leave any stone unturned here. We have a responsibility to -"
"So what's the other solution?" interrupted Andrea.
"Let Rick finish," snapped Skeletor.
"We haven't come up with a single viable option yet," continued Andrea totally unintimidated by her royal highness. "I wish we could."
"So lets work on it," burst Dale.
"We are." said Rick.
"Stop it. Just stop it." I was surprised as anyone to hear the words come out of my mouth. "I'm sick of everybody arguing and fighting."
I spared a look at Daryl begging him to understand that after my father I just couldn't. I prayed he didn't think less of me. Think I was weak.
"I didn't ask for this," I said my eyes back on Dale. "You can't ask us to decide something like this.
"Please decide," I said looking at Shane and then Rick. "Either of you, both of you, but leave me out."
Dale took a shuddering breath.
"Not speaking out," he said pointing his finger at me, "or killing him yourself, there's no difference."
"Alright, that's enough," snapped Rick, but I was done, I wouldn't be protected, I swallowed back my tears and took a step from the door.
"Have you ever killed a man, Dale?" I asked. "Watched his eyes stop seeing and know it was because of you?"
Everyone's eyes were on me and for the first time in my life I was too angry to care. I was shaking but I didn't let it stop me.
"Because unless you have, I don't see how you're even qualified to be a part of making this call. You don't know the cost. Rick does. Rick knows the burden he'll have to carry for the rest of his life, however long that may be, and he's willing to do that because he believes it's not only the right choice, but his only choice, the only choice he can live with. Can you imagine the magnitude of that? Of him knowing what he'll lose in taking Randall's life and it still being the only choice he can live with?"
Silence was my only answer.
"I vote with Rick. Whatever he decides, I trust him to make the right call," I turned to go but I stopped and looked over my shoulder. "And I don't know what civilized world it is that you think you're losin', but I ain't never lived in a world like that."
With that I swept out the room to go find my sister.
I found myself with Sophie on Herschel's roof. She was doodling in a sketchbook with her crayons and I was pulling at a fraying string on the seam of my sweatshirt.
I never liked heights, I was scared of them actually, but the fear reminded me that I was alive, and I still seemed to need reminding of that.
I was trying hard not to let my mind stray from the confines of that one black string and the two fingers gently sliding over it, easing it out millimeter by millimeter, but images of my father kept crashing through like a stumbling drunk that didn't know it was time to go home.
The image of him roaring up in pain the first time I slipped my knife in his side...
The feel of his fluids pouring out over my stomach...
My hand sticky with his blood...
The overwhelming smell of copper...
The weight of his dead body pinning me down...
The man was a monster, but I still couldn't get out from under the weight of his death. I took his life. It's a choice. Now, they expected me to make that same choice again.
My hand jerked into a fist and my little string broke. I held it up inspecting it before letting it go, a gentle breeze carrying it silently away until there was no evidence that it was ever there.
Irrational tears started streaming from my eyes and I brought my hands up to cover my face. I was a little surprised I had any tears left.
"Hey," said a voice.
I looked up, my tears drying up instantly. A life time of conditioning myself not to let others see me be anything but composed was paying off better up here than it had at the meeting.
It was one of the new people, Amelia.
"Mind if I sit here?" she asked before sitting down next to me, just out of arm's reach. I wasn't sure if she did that for my sake or hers, but I appreciated it none the less.
I looked at her as she took in the view.
On a superficial level we seemed a lot alike. We both had short hair, mine grey from stress, hers silver from chemicals. We had big black boots and wore a lot of spikes on our accessories. She was older though, her mid to late twenties, probably closer to Daryl's age than mine. Unlike me though, she seemed to have a bold and brash confidence that radiated off of her even when she wasn't saying a word. I envied her that.
"I'm always that person at meetings. The person who always has something to say," she said in the huskiest voice I'd ever heard come from a woman, in person at least. It reminded me of a blues or jazz singer I might hear crooning from an old scratchy vinyl record.
I decided I liked it.
"You know when I first saw you I thought you were running away from Daryl because he was a bad man trying to hurt you," she said with a whimsical smile I didn't quite understand. "I put a gun right up to his head and said, "hand over the girl." You know what he said?" She paused, giving me a side ways glance.
When I realized it wasn't just a rhetorical question I shook my head.
"He said, "Over my dead body." Can you believe that?" she asked. This time it did appear to be a rhetorical question because she didn't wait to see that I couldn't in fact believe that. "Here he was, risking his neck to find you, fighting you to save your life that you seemed determined to end, surrounded by roamers, a gun to his head and he still wouldn't give up on you."
I bit my lip trying to process that.
"That's a hell-ova friend," she said, "that's a hell-ova man."
I pursed my lips. I already knew what kind of man Daryl was.
"I had my doubts about him at first," continued Amelia when I didn't say anything. "After all he doesn't exactly look the part of the hero. Maybe I've just seen too many horror movies where back woods red necks... go after little girls. Maybe the world has just become one big horror and I couldn't conceive a scenario where he was chasing you to save you."
I couldn't tell if she was joking or not about the horror movie bit but I could relate to the last part.
"Andrea's appearance helped me accept the possibility that his motivation wasn't... less than gentlemanly, lets say."
I wondered why she kept speaking in euphemisms, then I saw her eyeing Sophie behind me, totally absorbed in her doodling. It was a nice gesture, Amelia trying to protect Sophie's innocence. I found I didn't have the heart to tell her it was a useless gesture.
"When we got here Daryl gave a fine little speech about us sticking around for our own benefit, strength in numbers and all that."
I looked at her a little shocked to hear my words come out of her mouth via Daryl. It made me a little proud that he thought so highly of an idea I had suggested that he decided to try and convince strangers to stay.
"I agreed to a... trial run, let's say, with the group. See if you guys were our cup of tea. But really, the deciding factor was always going to be you."
I started in shock at that.
"Me?"
"Yes, you," she said, her eye brows pulling up along with the corner of her mouth. It was mesmerizing to watch the way that such tiny changes could alight her face in gentle amusement. "You're the whole reason Daniel and I are here. I refused to leave until I talked to you, made sure that you wanted to be here."
"I don't understand, you don't know me, I'm nothing to you, you don't owe me a thing. Why?"
"My mother," and she paused, her face was frozen in place but somehow it seems the light had shifted, casting sorrow rather than amusement across her face. Then it was gone, like a passing shadow and I was left to wonder if I'd imagined it. "My mother was a feminist. Not a fake man hating feminist the powers-that-be liked to point to so that they could discredit the cause, she was a real feminist. I grew up believing that women had to stick together if we were ever going to get a fair shake rather than see each other as competitors for limited resources like good jobs and viable life partners."
I just looked at her confused, no idea where this was going.
"Just before the world ended, women in this country had come as close as they'd ever been to equality, but we still made less money, had more difficulty accessing education and faced much more violence than our male counterparts. Now that the world's ended and there is no government, no infrastructure to go to for help women have to stick together more now than ever before. Things could get real ugly for women, real quick if we're not vigilant and ready to stand up and fight for ourselves and our sisters."
At first I was pissed at her, hoity toity yankee bitch preaching about shit she didn't know a good god damn bit about but the truth of her sitting next to me, having risked her life for me, for principles she believed in kept me silent. From somewhere out of that silence came a thought I hadn't expected.
I wish I'd met Amelia a long time ago.
Amelia mistook my silence for not understanding or not accepting her reasoning.
"Look," she said. "My basic guide for my own actions hasn't changed since I was 19 years old, apocalypse be dammed. Sure the types of choices I make have changed, but not the way I make them."
I looked at her, truly interested.
"My goal is that everyday, I want to wake up and look at myself in the mirror, figuratively speaking at this point, and like who I see, respect who I see. Ask myself if I'd want to be friends with the person I see? I know it sounds cheesy but don't forget, no matter how much time we have left, even if it's only a very short amount of time, we still have to be able to live with ourselves. Live with our choices. Live with what we choose to become to survive. I decided I couldn't live with myself if I ignored the fact that you clearly needed help."
She let that sink in for a moment.
"So," she said, in a matter of fact tone. "Do you need help?"
I looked at her a little shocked. People sometimes alluded to the fact that if I needed help I could ask for it, but no one had ever just definitively asked me.
I swallowed.
Amelia studied my face. "Perhaps that's the wrong question at this moment. I have a better one, the one I really need and have been waiting for. Do you want to stay here?"
I looked down at my hands, then at Sophie, then back to Amelia's green eyes.
"I..."
Night had fallen and I was sitting on the railing of the porch, leaning against a support beam, thinking about the questions Amelia asked me. The ones I didn't have answers to. The last one in particular seem at the forefront of my mind.
Rick, King Shane and Daryl had taken Randall to the barn. The others were at our camp, gathered around the fire, waiting for the gun shot that would tell them it was over.
A figure broke off from the rest and headed in my direction. In the moonlight I could see that it was Andrea.
"Hey," she said, settling next to me on the rail.
"Hey yourself," I said. I think I'd done more talking today than I had in... I don't know how long... ever.
"I've been meaning to talk to you," she said, "but you seemed to need your space and I wanted to respect that."
I peeked up at her and gave her a small smile before adverting my eyes.
"Besides," she said, "the last time I thought I should talk to a girl who was going through a ruff patch it got me in a whole mess of shit with Lori and Maggie."
When I didn't say anything, just kept looking off in the direction of the barn, she continued.
"When Beth tried to kill herself I could relate, I'd been there. We were grieving because of something we lost. You were lost because of something you had to take, a life."
My spine went stiff and I froze.
"Did Daryl...?" I asked in disbelief.
"Oh Daryl hasn't told me shit," she said by means of reassurance. "I put two and two together."
I tore my eyes away from the barn to study her face. When she caught my eye she smiled and with a wry grin she said, "I'm more than just a pretty face."
I was taken aback for a moment before I found myself laughing. She chuckled with me and when we had quieted again she said, "I just wanted to say that I'm glad you're back. This camp needs all the strong women it can get."
I looked at her shocked, I almost looked behind me to see if she was talking to someone else.
At a loss for anything else to say I whispered, "Thanks."
In the quiet moment that followed I realized to my own surprise that I had an answer to Amelia's question.
"It's not as if I could leave you alone with Lori and her McCarthy era ideal of a good woman," I said with a smile and then in all seriousness, "you'd bust a cap in her ass."
Andrea busted out laughing at the joke I never realized I was capable of, before the solemnity of our death watch settled over her again.
Movement caught my eye and I looked up to see two figures approaching the camp from the barn, one large and one small, the small figure wearing a sheriff's hat.
Carl? Why would he be coming from the barn?
I shared a look with Andrea and we both dismounted the rail, hurrying to the camp so that we could make it there in time to hear what the news was.
"We're keeping him in custody, for now," said Rick.
Maggie walked off for the house immediately.
Andrea smiled big, "I'm gonna find Dale."
I guess she switched sides after I stormed out of the meeting, had Dale's back, even if it was just so he wasn't alone. I was glad. It's always better not to be alone.
"Carl, go inside, now, please," said Skeletor without taking her eyes off her husband.
"He followed us," he said. It was clear he was explaining himself to his wife but he was also making no attempt to make the conversation private. "He wanted to watch. I couldn't-"
"It's o.k.," said Skeletor in a soft voice, touching his cheek gently. "That's o.k."
He had a lost look on his face and they embraced before I turned away back to the farm house and the bed that was waiting for me. It had been a long day and I found myself suddenly exhausted.
I only made it to the porch before I heard the screaming. Suddenly Sophie was out the front door and holding my hand. I looked in the direction of the screams.
Turning back to Sophie I said, "you go back into our room and shut the door and you don't come out until Daryl or I come find you, ya'hear?"
She nodded panic in her eyes but I turned back to the screams and hurried as fast as my injured body could carry me. Pulling my buck knife out of my pocket I flipped it open and held it poised to strike.
"Help, over here, help, run." It was Daryl, his voice frantic and screaming in a way I'd never heard before.
I pushed my body harder but was still the last to arrive on the scene. Everyone looked down in horror at the ground and the sounds of sobs permeated the air. Rick was shouting for Herschel. The world was in slow motion as I approached the prone figure on the ground.
I'm ashamed to admit that I was relieved when it was Dale there on the ground, his abdomen torn open and not Daryl. I scanned the group and found Daryl, he was looking at me. I looked behind him to see a dead geek. Daryl must have gotten there first, but just a moment too late and screamed for help. Help for Dale.
Herschel arrived and basically announced that there was no hope. I saw Rick unravel for the first time.
"He's suffering," cried Andrea, kneeling beside the gasping Dale. "Do something."
I saw Rick trying desperately to pull himself together, to point his gun at Dale's head and pull the trigger.
I met Daryl's eyes, tears welling in mine and he nodded imperceptibly. He stepped forward, gently taking the gun from Rick's hand.
He took a knee and put the gun to Dale's head. As ravaged by pain as he was, Dale lifted his forehead to the barrel of the revolver and held Daryl's eye. Dale was a real man, he faced his death with eye's wide open and communicated in the only way left to him that he wanted this. A small parting gift to alleviate the guilt of whoever had to pull the trigger. I think the eloquence he'd always had with words made it that much more potent that his last communication, his last message to us had been given despite a death that robbed him of his speech.
Daryl's voice broke the silence, rumbling dangerously like thunder.
"I'm sorry brother."
The last sound Dale heard in this life was a gunshot.