The Walking Dead: Season Two

Episode Three: Behind Closed Doors

Chapter Three: The Sheriff in Town

Previously on The Walking Dead: After leaving Savannah behind them, Lilly led the group of survivors to a new location where she believed they would be safe from the threat of the walkers. This was the Robins Air Force Base, where she had worked with her father before the walker outbreak. But as the group explore the Base and make it safe for them to settle down and make their new home, little do they know that Jerry and his men are on their way back there after an encounter with Jason Quesada and his group of bandits, and they are in no mood to deal with trespassers.

"Me and Donald are gonna go for a little walk," Alice told Johnny and Tom as her husband got a head start on his crutches, straggling away from the RV. Alice waddled slowly beside her husband as the two began to circle the RV, allowing Donald to get a better handle of his crutches. They walked a few metres away from the RV, following their own footprints until they were practically strolling the route. They were out of earshot of Tom and Johnny, giving the two some privacy, and a chance to talk.

The silence hit Johnny suddenly. He wasn't sure whether he felt discomfort, fear, or an awkward mixture of both. Ideas filled his brain as to how he could break the ice. Jokes, banter and simple pleasantries that could potentially end this unbearable silence. But how could he possibly expect to make small talk with the man whose wife and daughter he'd gotten killed? A man who'd almost killed his boyfriend, and who Johnny knew wanted him dead just as badly. "So, I guess we better get these supplies unpacked, huh?" Johnny resorted to stating the obvious and clapping his hands together, as though the idea of spending the next hour unpacking with a man who detested him sounded like a good time.

Tom replied with a grunt and a nod and headed into the RV to grab the first case. Johnny stood outside the doorway until Tom returned with a hefty, black trunk that was almost as big as he was. Amazingly, Tom held the ginormous trunk himself, but by his red, puffed cheeks Johnny could tell that the man needed help. He grabbed the other end of the trunk as Tom fed it through the doorway, taking each step one at a time as he exited the RV. But Johnny's arms began to sink under the trunk's extraordinary weight, and he felt himself pull back out of fear that the truck would fall and crush his feet. The trunk hit the floor with a loud THUD and blew a curtain of dust through the air where it landed hard on the ground. Having fallen on its side, the trunk spilled open, revealing the treasures within.

"Look what you did you fucking moron!" Tom shouted at Johnny before seeing the trunk's contents. When he saw what sat inside that man-sized trunk, words finally failed Tom. "Holy…"

The second hangar was locked too. This padlock was the same make as the one used on the first hangar, and had been locked up just as tightly. Lilly sighed when she saw it. She gave the door to the hangar a swift kick with her boot. She knew it would be no good even before she lifted her foot off the ground, but it was worth a try. Sure enough, the steel door didn't even budge. The steel door rattled. When she pressed her ear against the cold steel of the door, Clementine heard the noise echo through the enormous walls of the hangar. She wondered all the more what was on the other side of that door.

"We're not getting in there," Lilly decided. "Come on," she told Coach and Clementine, ignoring how undeniably strange and suspicious it was that both these hangars had been locked up so securely. Clementine couldn't help but wonder if there was someone who didn't want them getting inside - if they owned the Air Force Base and maybe just wasn't home. Then Clementine wondered what would happen if and when they finally came home.

"So, what do you make of all that?" Coach asked as the three of them began to circle the hangar, staying close to the giant building's walls as they walked. Clementine spotted maybe half a dozen walkers, if that in the distance. They were far away enough from them for the group to walk on by safely. But all the same, Clementine found herself constantly looking over her shoulder.

"All what?" Lilly asked, knowing the answer full well. Even Clementine could see that Lilly was trying to ignore the very clear signs. They were not alone. But it seemed that Lilly had stored so much hope in this place that she looked past the problems the group now faced. Even if those problems could potentially get them all killed.

"You know," Coach told her firmly. Clementine saw that the giant of a man had stopped in his tracks. It appeared he wasn't going to move until Lilly acknowledged this problem, but instead, Lilly looked at Coach as though he had completely lost her. "You mean to tell me that you don't find it the least bit odd that these hangars are locked up tighter than an Amish chastity belt?"

Lilly didn't laugh at Coach's attempt to lighten the mood, and Clementine simply didn't fully understand the big man's joke. "Not at all," Lilly finally said. "Whoever was here obviously didn't want anyone taking anything they held dear, and understandably so. They were probably military. They could even have had vehicles, tank and who knows what else inside there. But they're gone now," she told Coach bluntly before she pushed onwards.

But Coach still didn't budge. "So what happens when they come back?"

Lilly span around on her heel and marched back towards Coach, surprised by his sudden antagonism. "They're not," she assured him. "I promise you that." Coach remained unconvinced. She could tell he was about to ask her how she could be so sure, so she answered his question ahead of time. "If you were these people, and you had all this," she said indicating at the safe haven around her, "would you really just throw it away?" She stepped up to Coach's toes now, dwarfed by the giant's size. "If you had all this, you'd never choose to leave." Something caught Lilly's gaze from beyond the end of the hangar. "You want a word with the owners of this place? There you go," she told Coach pointing to the end of the hangar where a walker emerged from around the corner. "This place belongs to them now," Lilly remarked as she pulled her rifle from her shoulders.

Clementine gasped at the sight of the walker slowly staggering in their direction. This must have been heard by Lilly, who turned to look at Clementine. She thought carefully about something, and put her rifle away. She pulled a pistol from the back of her trousers and approached Clementine as she checked how many bullets remained inside. Clementine couldn't help but step back when Lilly offered the pistol to her.

"Go ahead, Clementine," Lilly assured her. "Take it," she told her as she placed the heavy metal pistol firmly in Clem's hands. Clementine fumbled with the weapon before getting a proper grip on the pistol. She felt the weight of the gun in her hands drag her down.

"I don't know," Clementine said timidly. "I don't think I'm ready," she admitted, remembering the walker in The Marsh House, the way the gunshot had rung through her ears and rattled her skull, and the walker's face that haunted her sleep.

"You can," Lilly encouraged her, "I know you can." Clementine heard Lilly step behind her and keel down to her size. "I'll cover your ears. Just take a deep breath, and squeeze the trigger whenever you're ready," she told Clem as she put her hands over her tiny ears.

Clementine raised the gun in her hands slowly as she took a deep breath. She held the weapon in both hands, the steel of the pistol was a cold bite on her hands. With one eye, she aimed down the barrel of the pistol. She breathed out, and pulled the trigger. The gun crackled and an explosion occurred before her very eyes as the bullet zipped through one of the walker's kneecaps in a small burst of red that sent the walker tumbling to the ground.

"You know," Tom said in a hoarse, drunk sounding voice before taking yet another swig from the, now half-empty, bottle of gin, "I don't know who put that bitch in charge. What makes her think she can just boss us around like that?" Tom asked before burping comically.

"C'mon, man," Johnny replied in a laidback tone, his eyes bouncing from side to side clumsily, "she's alright." He grabbed another bottle, this one being a small bottle of whiskey, and puled the cap off before taking a good, long swig from the bottle, leaving a bitter aftertaste in Johnny's mouth as the alcohol slowly burned his taste buds. "Besides, I don't see anybody else steeping up to lead this nightmare of a group. And, she did find this place. I'm happy to have her," Johnny decided there and then before taking another long gulp.

"Oh yeah?" Tom asked him, grinning. "If I didn't know any better, I'd say you have a thing for her," Tom remarked in between gulps of gin.

"Well, you do know better," Johnny told him, confused that Tom would even think that, knowing what he knew. "I mean, I would say we're just friends, but I'm not sure I could even say that. She thinks I'm a liability." This made Tom chuckle aloud.

"No shit," Tom said, still laughing. "And she may be right."

"Whatever," Johnny replied tiredly. "Anyway, she's not exactly my type, if you know what I'm talking about," Johnny told him. "And even if she was, Alex hasn't even been out of my life for two whole days yet. I still think about him all the time." There was a long pause.

Johnny bowed his head. "Yeah," Tom finally said, breaking the silence despite having very little to say. "I'm sorry about Alex, by the way. I should have said so much sooner."

"Yeah, you should have," Johnny replied bluntly, though he could scarcely believe that he was hearing this from Tom. "You also shouldn't have tried to kill him either."

"I'm sorry Johnny," Tom said with genuine remorse, his voice breaking up with actual emotion. "About Alex… About everything," he told Johnny sincerely, his head buried in his hands in shame.

Johnny set the bottle of whiskey aside. He couldn't believe what he was hearing. Was this actually an apology from Tom; the man who had tried to kill him and his boyfriend on several occasions and had in general hated both their guts? Did he really look and sound like he was about to cry? Johnny pinched himself when he saw Tom wipe tears from his eyes. The man must have been blind drunk. But something in his voice made Tom sound as though his words were genuine. That he'd been keeping these feelings bottled up for the longest time, and was finally letting the chips fall where they may by admitting to Johnny that he really did care, and that the macho, bully he appeared to be was all simply an act.

"Hey," Johnny muttered, putting a hand on Tom's shoulder as the man sniffled and wiped fresh tears from his cheeks, a sight that was still alien to Johnny. "It's okay. What happened wasn't your fault," Johnny assured him, thinking carefully as he did so. "It was my fault," Johnny decided, provoking a confused reaction from Tom. "I couldn't protect him," he admitted as he broke into tears too. "Donna, Lisa, Alex; they all died because of me."

"No… it wasn't," Tom told him, though Johnny assumed he was just trying to be polite – although even that would have been a first for Tom, who had been quick to blame Johnny and Alex for their deaths before. He'd almost beaten Alex senseless for what they did.

"What are you talking about? Of course it was," Johnny told him with certainty. "We – no – I got them both killed. I never should have involved Alex. Not ever. It was selfish of me," Johnny confessed, tears now running down both his cheeks helplessly. "And now… Alex is dead, and I'm alone. I'm surprised Lilly let me stay after all the shit I've pulled. I mean, Jesus, Tom, I can't even begin to imagine how much you must want me dead," Johnny told him. It was the drink talking, but everything he said was true, and Johnny didn't fight it. "You should just kill me - get it over with," he said coldly. "I've got nothing left to lose, after all."

"Shut the fuck up, Johnny," Tom said. "Just shut the fuck up." He took another long gulp.

"What?" Johnny asked him, confused and surprised by the sudden shift in Tom's emotions. "Fuck you, man!" Johnny cried. He pulled a pistol from his trousers and checked its bullet count. After seeing that the pistol still held five bullets, Johnny placed the gun firmly in Tom's hand. When Tom's grip tightened around the pistol. Johnny grabbed his arm and placed the barrel of the gun hard against his forehead. The gun was pressed right between his eyes, but Tom's grip on the pistol was loose. Johnny saw that his head was still bowed, and the man was still fighting back tears. Johnny clicked the gun, waiting for Tom to pull the trigger. But he never did. "C'mon," Johnny provoked him. "I know you want to. You wanted to leave me to die back in Savannah. If you want me dead, at least kill me yourself." But Tom was silent. "C'mon! Don't you want to kill the man who murdered your wife and daughter?"

"But you didn't kill them," Tom said. He took a long pause before finally lifting his head and looking Johnny in the eye. "I did."

A loud CRUNCH echoed through Clementine's ears, making her squirm, as the walker's skull collapsed under the weight of Lilly's steel toes as she crushed the walker's head with her boots. She noticed Coach cringe as the walker's head exploded in a bloody mess of flesh and bones. Lilly shook the blood from her foot, and signalled for them to keep moving. She had already taken her pistol back from Clem, whom she told had done well in taking the walker down.

"You did good, Clem," Lilly told Clementine. "That's what I like to see," she praised Clementine enthusiastically as she kicked the walker in the leg, indicating where Clementine had shot the walker right in the kneecap, sending it to the ground. "If you can't get a lock on their head, aim for places like the kneecaps and you'll knock the fuckers right off their feet."

Clementine's head was still bowed. "Swear," she muttered under her breath. Lee would have been angry if I'd have let that one go, she thought.

"Lee must have taught you well," Lilly said kindly. Clementine finally looked up at her and smiled upon hearing Lee's name. She began to wonder how things would have turned out if he were still alive. Would all those people still have died? Would they still be at the hilltop?

"Yeah," Clementine agreed, remembering the day on the train when Lee had first trained her to use a gun safely. Not a day went past when Clementine didn't think about Lee. Everyone she'd ever cared about – Lee, Mark, Carley and Doug, Duck, Katjaa, Kenny and Ben, her parents – all had lost their lives in their struggle against the walking dead. Clementine wondered who would be next. Johnny? Donald? Lilly? She had survived out on her own for months, but that never seemed to stop the walkers before. "I miss him."

"Me too, Clem," Lilly said, to her surprise. Lee had never forgiven Lilly for what she'd done, and she knew it. And yet, for some reason, Lilly still wished he was here.

"I know he hurt some people," Clementine said as the group continued to circle around the hangar. "But they were bad people. And he did it to protect me, and everyone he knew!" Clementine then remembered the terrible crime Lee had admitted to committing. He had murdered another man. It hadn't been a walker, or someone he's killed in self-defence. Lee had murdered this man in cold blood. But not a single member of the group could have hated Lee for his crime as much as Lee could hate himself. He couldn't have regretted it any more than he already did, and Clementine knew that. But, if Lee hadn't have been in the back of that police car when the outbreak began, he may never have met Clementine. If he knew that, would he have regretted it so much after all? The question was still on Clementine's mind when she said: "He did kill one innocent man." Lilly had known from the start, but she'd always kept her mouth shut, and Lee had always respected her for it. The man Lee had killed was innocent, although she used that term loosely, but Lee had hated himself for what he'd done. "But he wouldn't do it again!" She thought long and hard about the words she said next. "Sometimes… People get mad when they're scared."

"Sometimes," Lilly said, "yeah they do." She knew so all too well. She remembered that night on the road like it was yesterday; when Lee and the group had been forced out of the Motor Inn on account of the nearby bandits. She hadn't spoken to anyone about that night. Clementine was, in fact, the only living person who knew. Even Christa and Omid were ignorant to her crime, and she could only hope things would stay that way. Noticing Coach had fallen behind them both, Lilly was about to finally speak of the events that transpired that night on the road, seconds after Kenny had pulled the walker from the tires of the RV. Uncertain of where to start, Lilly decided that she couldn't go too wrong by simply apologising to Clem. No child her age should had to have seen something like that, even if the world had ended out there. "Clementine, I-"

The words were hanging on her tongue, waiting to be said. Lilly was about to finally spit them out when she saw Johnny and Tom in the distance. Seeing Johnny and Tom in each other's faces like that, she assumed the two must have been fighting again, and her heart began to race as she choked on her words. Then, she saw that Tom in fact had a gun pointed at Johnny's head, and her heart stopped.

Even as it rattled in Tom's shaking hands as the man blubbered uncontrollably, Johnny held the pistol firmly to his head. He wanted so much for Tom to just pull the trigger, but he couldn't help but wonder what Tom's words had meant. "But you didn't kill them. I did," Tom had said instead of grabbing the opportunity and putting a bullet between Johnny's eyes there and then. Johnny had so many questions - he didn't know where to begin.

"What?" Johnny asked. It was a simple question, and about time for Tom to explain himself.

A long pause followed. Tom lowered the gun that Johnny had pressed against his head, his fingers slipping off the metal one by one. Johnny stood over Tom as the man struggled to find a place to to start. There was so much that needed to be said. Tom took a deep breath before finally delving into the story. "She was bitten. Lisa," he admitted. He sighed deeply and rubbed his nose with his fingers as he fought off an oncoming migraine. "I took her out in the woods one day. It was the day before Omid and Christa returned with Clementine. I was hunting when… I never saw the walker," Tom began to choke on his own words. He took another deep breath before continuing. "When we got back, I showed the bite to Donna, but nobody else. She damned me to hell for putting her in danger like that. I didn't tell anybody else, was too damn ashamed," he shook his head in grief and cursed himself as he recalled all the mistake he'd made. "I should have realised how many people I was putting in danger just by having her there. I didn't realised until it was too late – until Donna was bitten too," he bowed his head again as he prayed silently. He missed his wife and daughter so much it would have pained Johnny just to see, but he couldn't stop himself from hating Tom as much as he did right now. "I let you and your boyfriend think you got them both killed, because I couldn't bear to face what I'd done. And for that, I'm sorry."

Johnny snatched the pistol out of Tom's hands and pressed it against his skull in one quick effort, but Tom didn't even flinch. He must have known this was coming. What other kind of outcome could he have possible expected? Johnny wasn't sure whether the alcohol had made Tom accidentally come clean, or whether the guilt had been crushing him so much that he was finally driven to confess. Either way, the truth was out. This wasn't going to have a happy ending.

"You're sorry?" Johnny said back to him, wondering if Tom had expected all to be well with a simple apology. He pressed the gun stronger against Tom's forehead, his finger tight on the trigger. "Alex died thinking he'd gotten your entire family killed," he screamed at Tom, "and all you have to say is "I'm sorry"?" He smashed the butt of the gun against Tom's nose and sent him tumbling to the ground. Blood squirted from Tom's face as he fell into the dirt.

"Johnny!" Lilly shouted from one of the hangars where her, Clementine and Coach had been investigating. "What the fuck are you doing?" She marched towards the two of them.

"This fucker," Johnny said. Tom sat up, wiping his bloody nose with his sleeve. He spat out a mouthful of blood when Johnny pressed the gun back against his head. "This fucker blamed me for everything! But it was all his fault!" He spat the words out as he stared coldly into Tom's eyes. "All of it!" He turned to see a terrified Clementine and an unsettled Coach.

"What are you talking about?" Lilly asked, holding her pistol with both hands but keeping it low as not to panic Johnny and cause him to do something she thought he'd regret. "Put the gun down, Johnny," she told him calmly. But it was useless.

"No," Johnny told her firmly. "Not until this fucker's paid for what he did!"

"What did he do, Johnny?" Lilly asked him. The entire group was here now. Molly and Todd had returned from the barracks, as had Omid and Christa. All of them had had their hearts in their throats since they'd first seen Johnny with his gun to Tom's head. "Tell us."

Johnny lowered the pistol and took a deep breath as he gathered his thoughts. "Back at the Hilltop, me and Alex came up with a plan to kill Tom. We tried to feed him some meat we thought was infected – a walker had dug its fangs into it, so we thought it would do the trick." Johnny rubbed his forehead as the story reached its toughest part. "But, there was a mix up. Lisa ended up eating the meat," Johnny explained. Although the group had known about this incident since Tom had blurted out everything on the way to Savannah, they had never heard the story from Johnny's perspective, and it was about time they did. "When she got ill, we assumed it was our fault. And when Lisa died, we blamed ourselves," Johnny bowed his head. He hoped the words he was about to say would change everything. "But it wasn't our fault. Why don't you tell them Tom?"

Tom looked at Johnny, then to the crowd that had gathered, and then back at Johnny. He was putting on quite the show. But it was about time the group heard this. Tom wouldn't be able to ever live with himself otherwise. That was, if Johnny even let him live after this. "Lisa was bitten," he admitted after a long sigh. "She got bit, and I didn't tell anyone. What Johnny and Alex did, I used it to cover up what really happened. What really killed her. My stupidity," he explained. He couldn't look a single one of them in the eye. But when Johnny looked around him, he saw Todd and Molly looking at Tom with disgust as they held each other's hands. Christa had turned away, she began to cry when she remembered little Lisa and the way she'd ran around the camp so happy before what happened happened, but Omid never took his hateful eyes off Tom. Lilly simply looked disappointed in Tom, and so did Coach. Both had trusted Tom at one point, and now they felt like fools for ever doing so. "I should never have taken her back to camp. I put you all in danger by doing that."

"This son of a bitch let Alex die thinking that he'd gotten an entire family torn apart," Johnny explained. To the group before turning back to Tom. He stared deep into Tom's eyes with hate. "So' I'm gonna make sure you die knowing how much I hate you for that," he told him.

"No!" Clementine screamed from behind the crowd. They shuffled aside, allowing Johnny to see the little girl who'd interrupted him, and for Tom to see the person who'd just saved his life. Everyone's eyes were on her now. "I thought Tom was our friend?" She asked, confused. They weren't supposed to do this to friends, or anyone for that matter. Guns were for walkers, not human beings, surely? Everyone in the crowd bowed their heads. Tom had once been their friend, but here they were about to let him die.

"She right," Omid said from beside her. "Don't do this, Johnny," he encouraged him.

"Don't make this worse," Lilly said in agreement, her hands still tight around her gun.

Johnny looked around him at the faces that encouraged him to drop his weapon and walk away. He turned to see Clementine. At first, she had been afraid. But now she gave him a look that begged him to stop. Not because of how wrong this was, but because Clementine knew that, if this happened, nothing would be the same again. Not for Johnny. Not for anyone. Clementine had come to love Johnny like a brother, and here he was about to make the biggest mistake of his life. "I'm sorry," Johnny said. No one, not even him, could have been sure whether his apology had been aimed at Clementine, Omid, Lilly, Tom, Alex or everybody there. In the end, it hadn't really mattered. He aimed the pistol before Tom's chest.

"Johnny…" Tom began to say as he watched Johnny's grip tighten on the 9mm pistol. He was about to tell him how sorry he was, for everything. How sorry he was that things had turned out this way. How sorry he was that he hadn't told him and Alex the truth before it had been too late. He had said it before, but he knew he wouldn't be able to say it enough in one lifetime for it to even matter. He opened his mouth to speak when Johnny's finger squeezed the trigger, and Tom's thoughts faded into nothingness.

Clementine watched Tom's body fall limp and lifeless to the ground, blowing a curtain of dust through the air as Johnny lowered the smoking gun. He dropped the pistol and took a few steps back. His hands were shaking and he was sweating furiously. He looked at the shocked and distraught faces around him. He saw Christa, who had buried her face in Omid arms as she wept. Omid gave him a look of anger as he shook his head disappointedly. The others gave him similar looks, except for Clementine, who couldn't even bear to make eye contact with him. He disappeared inside the RV when he saw Donald and Alice approaching the crowd slowly. Johnny slammed the door to the RV behind him.

"What the hell happened?" Donald asked when he saw Tom's body. His first thought had been that Tom had suffered another heart attack, only this one had been fatal. But then Donald saw the bloody hole in Tom's chest where Johnny's bullet had burst through, leaving behind a dilapidated mess of a corpse covered in blood and flesh.

"Get inside, Donald," Alice told her husband, tired out from testing out his new crutches profusely. "'I'll tell them." The group waited until Donald had joined Johnny inside the RV before asking Alice what had happened, even though Alice still had plenty of questions to ask the group herself. The mere sight of Tom's blood-spattered corpse gave her chills.

"Tell us what?" Omid finally asked when Donald had shut the RV door behind him.

"We saw a car," Alice explained, trying to remain as calm as she could. "Someone's coming."

The words alone made Lilly heart race. She was about to bark orders to the group when she saw something past Alice, outside the tall gates of the Air Force Base. "Oh shit," she uttered. Coach had been right all along, she decided when she saw the first jeep slowly approaching the gates of the base.

Next time on The Walking Dead: When Jerry and his men return to the Air Force Base, they are most displeased to find Clementine and her group trespassing on their turf. With his patience already long run out from his encounter with Jason Quesada and his bandits, Jerry takes extreme actions when dealing with Lilly and the group, whilst Omid does his best to help Clementine escape the Base and Jerry's men safely, but at a cost. As the group come face-to-face with Jerry, a.k.a. The Sheriff, and his group of bandits, they witness for the first time the extraordinary lengths he will go to carry on living in this world ruled by the dead.

Scratch another survivor! I have a feeling that a lot of people will be happy to see Tom go, but I had fun writing the character. So, Alex, Tom, who's next? Some crazy stuff is coming in the next couple of chapters as the survivors come face to face with Jerry and his men! We're almost halfway through the story! So, please leave me you're thoughts on the story so far. When I get some MORE REVIEWS, Chapter Four will be published! I can't wait for you guys to see it! So please, leave some more feedback! I would really love to hear what you guys think!

-George