Chapter Twenty-Four

Summer's POV

I woke up the next morning to Harry crying. I rolled over and rubbed my eyes and noticed the tent was open and Daryl wasn't lying next to me. I went to grab Harry from his makeshift crib and he wasn't there. I began to panic and ran out the front of the tent. I was relieved when I saw Rick and Daryl sitting in the chairs out front of the tent and Rick feeding Harry.

"You ok?" Rick asked me.

"I heard Harry cry and looked in his crib and he wasn't there," I said, "It scared me. One of you two idiots should have woken me up to tell me you had him."

"Sorry, didn't mean to scare you," Rick said.

"That's the second time you've scared me Grimes, the first being when you found me, don't make this a habit," I said with a laugh and went back into the tent to get dressed.

After getting dressed I went back out to see what Rick and Daryl were talking about.

"We are going to have a group discussion to decide Randall's fate," Rick said handing Harry over to me, "I realized yesterday that it's not my place to just make decisions that affect everyone. So we will all be meeting in the house in an hour or so to talk everything out."

"I think that's a good idea," I said, "he is still a person after all. We should talk about it."

"I'm going to check on Carl, I'll see you both in the house in an hour?" he asked.

"Absolutely," I said and Rick nodded at us and walked away.

Daryl and I spent the better part of the next hour trying to fit Harry into some clothes because everything we had he was quickly growing out of. When we finally got him in to something we made our way over to the house to start this discussion. I wasn't sure how I felt about deciding someone's fate but the world was different now. There was no right way to do anything anymore. We had to find a new way to live in this world and I guess this was just one of those things that we needed to do. When we walked into the house everyone was already there standing or seated around the room. I sat down in a chair next to the door and Daryl stood behind me.

"I don't think we should kill him, it's inhumane. He's a living being. Have you all lost your humanity?" Dale said.

There was murmuring amongst the group trying to decipher if maybe Dale was right.

"Couldn't we just keep him prisoner?" Maggie asked.

"It's just another mouth to feed," Daryl said.

"What if we take him out again and try to leave him somewhere else," Hershel suggested.

"What if they get swarmed? What if they're ambushed by his people?" Lori said, "We can't risk losing more people."

"They could also ambush us here if we keep him," Daryl said, "there's dangers no matter what."

Then the topic turned to everyone discussing what to do with the body if we did decide to kill Randall.

"It's not like this really matters, his fate has clearly already been decided," Dale said.

"There's no use talking about this anymore we're just going round in circles about it," Daryl said.

"I don't want anything to do with this," Carol said and walked out.

"Please just hear me out. He is an innocent man, why punish him for crimes he hasn't committed? We should just let him live!" Dale said.

"Maybe we should let him live," Andrea said.

Everyone just stayed silent.

"You were right," Dale said putting his hand on Daryl's shoulder, "this group is broken."

Dale walked out of the house and we all realized that Randall's fate was sealed. He was going to be put to death and that was going to be the end of it. The rest of us left the house and went all of our separate ways.

Daryl's POV

A few hours after the group discussion Rick came over to me at our tent.

"I need you to help me and Shane move Randall for his execution," he said.

I nodded and followed him over to the barn. We unlocked the door and went to unchain him. I pushed him to his knees and Rick asked him if he had any last words. Randall started pleading for his life like he had been doing for the past few days.

"Do it dad," we heard Carl say from behind us.

We all turned around to see him standing in the doorway of the barn.

"Chain him back up," Rick told us and walked over to Carl.

Shane and I locked him in his chains again and exited the barn and padlocked it shut and went to our tents. A few hours later Rick called us all to a meeting and told us that we were going to keep Randall prisoner. We all looked around to find Dale and noticed he was missing. Summer suggested we go find him to tell him what he would consider good news when we heard screaming. We all took off at a run toward the sound and saw Dale down on the ground. There was a walker on top of him ripping him apart. I ran forward and tackled the walker off of Dale and killed it. I called for the others.

"It's Dale!" I shouted and everyone was closing in and I turned to Dale, "hang on, man."

"HERSHEL! WE NEED HERSHEL!" Rick screamed as he approached us.

Hershel came up not long after.

"We can't move him," Hershel said, "he's ripped wide open, we will do more harm than good."

"We need to do something! He's suffering!" Andrea shouted.

We all looked at each other and realized what had to be done. Rick picked up his gun and pointed it at Dale. I could see the look on Rick's face and I knew he couldn't do it. I looked at Summer, who had tears in her eyes, and she nodded. I took the gun from Rick and held it to Dales head.

"Sorry brother," I said and pulled the trigger.