Hey, ya'll! As always, thank you for the reviews, I love hearing what you guys think! This title chapter is "Raise Your Weapon" by deadmau5. It may not be everyone's cuppa, but I think it's pretty cool. Anyway, hope you enjoy.
15. Raise Your Weapon
"You should finish your breakfast. You need to keep your strength up."
Mason made a face at her oatmeal. "Well bring me something more edible then. Eggs Benedict sounds nice."
Maggie smiled and pulled Mason's iPod from her pocket. "I figured you'd want this. But I told Beth not to visit until after you finish your food."
Mason groaned. "Goddammit, stop bribing me."
"I'm your sister now. I'm not gonna play fair."
She polished off her oatmeal, glaring the whole time, and then handed the bowl back to Maggie.
"How do you feel?"
"I'll keep it down, if that's what you're asking. I haven't felt nauseous since I woke up."
"Anythin' else?"
"Just tired." Mason smiled a little. "So about Beth…?"
Maggie ruffled her hair. "I'll get her."
While she waited, Mason laid back in her own bed. After Hershel had given her the green light to leave A block, she'd showered thoroughly and traded her clothes in for new ones. She wasn't taking the chance of bringing the virus back into C. Though she still felt groggy, she felt clean- as though she'd gone through the sickness and come out purer.
The blast, when it came, shook the prison hard enough that Mason's bones shuddered. She caught her iPod just before it clattered to the floor.
Panic sparked along her ribcage, jolting her heart and lungs. She jumped to her feet, swayed and nearly went down. The second time she was more successful, grabbing her fire poker and her gun. Her iPod she stuffed in her pocket. Her headphones hung around her neck. She didn't look back at the cell that had become her home. She didn't know she'd wish she had later.
Out in the courtyard, her group had gathered. Daryl and Beth, Maggie and Bob, Sasha and Tyreese, all gathered around Rick. Beyond them, through the gates and fences, a crowd of trucks gathered around a tank in much the same way.
The man poised on top of the tank was unmistakable.
Every vein in Mason's body turned to ice. She hurried over to Beth.
"What are you doin'?" she gasped, grabbing Mason's arms to steady her. "Go back inside."
"No-"
"Rick."
The Governor's voice carried confidently across the prison yard. Mason's knuckles turned white around the fire iron.
"Come down here. We need to talk."
"I don't make decisions anymore," Rick called. "There's a council now. They run this place."
"Is Hershel on the council?"
Mason stiffened as one of the Governor's men dragged Hershel out of a truck. Beth let out a strangled cry and leapt toward the gate, but Mason wrapped her arms around her and held her back.
"What about Michonne? She on the council, too?"
Horror made her hands go numb. Michonne and Hershel were led to the front of the tank and made to kneel. Michonne held her head high, even from a distance the picture of defiance. Hershel did not bow either, but he looked frail and drawn, still recovering from however many sleepless hours treating the sick.
"I don't make decisions anymore!" Rick repeated, but the fragile calm was slipping from his face.
"You're making the decisions today, Rick," the Governor hollered congenially. "Come down here and let's have that talk."
Rick exchanged a glance with Daryl, who dipped his head. Then he looked at Mason. She nodded grimly, wishing she could take his place, shoulder some of the weight.
Thrumming with tension, she watched as he opened the gate and strode down to the Governor and his men. The sight of him, alone and exposed, opened a pit in her stomach. She curbed the urge to run after him and buried her nose in Beth's hair, drawing comfort from her familiar warmth.
"We can't take 'em all on," Daryl murmured to the group. "Go through the admin building like we planned."
Right. Like they had planned months ago, nearly a year ago, when the Governor was still a threat, still a thought. Seeing him here, now, after he had become a shadow in their memory… It made her feel a little crazy.
"We ain't got the numbers no more," Daryl continued. "When's the last time someone checked the stash on the bus?"
"Day before we hit the Big Spot," Sasha replied. "We were running low then, we're even lower now."
"We'll manage. Thing's go south, everyone heads for that bus. Ty, let everyone know."
"What if everybody isn't on it when things go bad? How long do we wait?"
"As long as we can."
Daryl snuck over to the bin where the emergency guns were kept, checking to see that the Governor's men were distracted before wheeling it over. Mason kept an eye on Rick, but though she could tell he was talking she was too far away to hear him.
Covertly, Daryl began handing out guns. When he got to her, he paused to push a damp strand of hair from her eyes.
"You alright?"
She nodded, but she knew that he knew she was lying. His eyes darkened. He took up a position between her and Carl, pointing his gun through the chain link.
Inevitably, the walkers appeared. There were only a few of them, and the Governor himself dropped them with his handgun, but the sound would only draw more. Mason had no doubt that Michonne and Hershel would be the first sacrifices offered when the herds came.
Carl sighed roughly. "We have to do something."
"Your dad's got it," Daryl growled.
"They're talking. I could kill the Governor right now."
Part of her wished she could agree with him, but she knew it wasn't the right call. The Governor's men would fire back; there were more of them, with bigger weapons. Michonne and Hershel would be caught in the crossfire. The rest of the group would likely die. The Governor had them by the balls.
"From fifty yards?" Daryl challenged.
"I'm a good shot. I could end this right now."
"Yeah, or you could start somethin' else. You gotta trust him."
Beth pulled out of Mason's grip to aim her own gun through the fence. The fear had not left her face, but her eyes were blue flames. Mason took her place at her side.
Minutes passed. They felt like years. They felt like seconds. Mason trembled from exhaustion and frustration, wishing she was close enough to hear what Rick was saying. Her gun trained on the Governor's face. Her finger itched to pull the trigger but she held back.
Suddenly, the Governor jumped down from his perch, his face contorted from whatever Rick had said. Maggie and Beth gasped simultaneously as the Governor drew Michonne's sword and placed it on Hershel's throat. The whole group tensed like a flexing muscle. Mason gritted her teeth and laid a hand on Beth's shoulder, a warning to keep her from firing her gun.
Rick stepped back a pace before pointing to one of the Governor's soldiers, a girl who eyed him with bewilderment. Fear. She backed away, looking from side to side as though for help. The man in the tank said something instead. Mason ached to shoot a hole through his cocky smile.
But whatever Rick was saying, it was not falling on deaf ears. Others of the Governor's group were beginning to look uncertain. Mason saw their expressions through her rifle scope. The Governor himself stared at Rick in confusion. A shock of hope ran through her. He was lowering the sword, his one good eye flickering dazedly from Rick to the ground to gleam of his stolen weapon. She held her breath, her grip on her own weapon loosening.
Finally he looked up. Whispered something.
And cleaved the sword through Hershel's neck.
Mason heaved a shuddering breath, but she couldn't feel it. Something was screaming. It was so loud she thought the earth, the air, was wailing its grief. Then she blinked, and the tears cleared from her eyes, and she realized that the screaming was coming from Maggie, and Beth, and Rick down in the field. It was coming from Mason, herself. It carved her throat raw.
Hershel joking with Mason just days after losing his leg.
Hershel assuring her that Beth was lucky to have her.
Hershel running himself ragged to keep the others alive. To keep her alive.
"NO!" she screamed.
She was allowed only this second of grief, this cruel eternity, before the shooting started. The ice melted from her veins, eaten alive by a fury that threatened to consume her, too. She pulled the trigger, and didn't stop until she was forced to reload.
Everything blurred in her rage. She was aware of Beth and Maggie on either side of her, their wracking sobs drowning in gunfire. She was aware of several bullets missing her by inches, the heat of their passage. She was aware that in her vengeance she didn't care.
Her own death was secondary. She wanted blood.
It barely registered when the tank started moving, rolling over the fence like it was little more than paper. She kept shooting, robotic, felling several enemy soldiers before someone dragged her away.
"Mason, please! We gotta go!"
It was Beth, she realized, her voice distorted by tears. Mason looked at her, trying to decipher what she was saying.
"We gotta go!" she repeated. "We gotta get to the bus!"
The bus. Right. Escape.
Except Mason didn't want to escape. She yanked her arm out of Beth's grip and strode back the way they had come.
"Mason!"
"Get to the bus."
"Not without you!"
Mason whipped around. "Beth, you need to get everyone that you can on the bus. That's your job. We all have jobs to do."
She tossed Beth her gun and headed back into the fray.
It was a miracle that she made it back to the gun cart without getting hit. She grabbed a machine gun and hurried for cover, ducking as the tank fired a second time. Part of the wall collapsed, pelting her with debris. Dust choked her.
She ducked behind an upturned picnic table and unloaded on the invaders. Splinters of wood bit at her as they fired back but she never faltered.
Hershel was dead.
The man she could've called her father was dead.
Tears pricked her eyes but she wouldn't give in to them. She needed to see.
The tank rolled up past the final gate. It fired again, blowing out a window, showering her with glass. Mason kept pulling the trigger, neat and precise in spite of the whirlwind of agony.
A few yards away, Sasha, Bob and Maggie held their own behind one of the cars. Mason caught a glimpse of Tyreese fleeing from a volley of gunfire, ducking behind a row of potted plants. She couldn't see Rick. She couldn't see the Governor. She was about to go searching for them when the bus roared to life and drove away, sparking as gunshots pinged off its metal siding.
Mason sucked in a breath, but there was no time for the pain. Beth was safe. She would figure out the rest later.
The tank fired, destroying the catwalk in a burst of flame, and that's when she saw Daryl, fighting his way toward it. Grimly she leapt from her hiding place and maneuvered her way over, ducking from errant artillery, shooting back when she could see an enemy.
As she was reaching him, he pulled the pin from a grenade and tossed it down the muzzle of the tank gun. She ran into him, and he caught her by the arms and yanked her aside just as the grenade went off.
The guy who had been manning it watched it go up in flames. Mason pointed her gun at him. Whistled to get his attention.
He raised his arms in surrender, but there was no longer any room in her for pity.
She shot him in the mouth, just as she'd longed to only minutes before.
"Mason! Daryl!"
Mason turned, numb with shock, as that familiar voice punched a hole in her chest.
"Beth."
She held out her arms and Beth flew into them, wrapping her in a bruising embrace.
"What are you doing here?" Mason hissed. "I thought you were on the bus."
Beth assailed her with wild, teary eyes. "I got off to look for Judith, but I couldn't find her, and I didn't go back because I couldn't leave without you, Mason, I couldn't."
Mason let the tears come then. They made feverish tracks through the dust and blood that shadowed her face.
"Beth, Mason."
They looked up at Daryl, who was watching the walkers as they streamed through the broken fences. Then he looked at them.
"We gotta go."
Grabbing Beth's hand, Mason followed Daryl as he led them around the back of the prison. Away from blood and dust and shadow.
She looked back only once, as they fled into the woods.
Their home was a pyre. Their yard was a graveyard.
The dead reclaimed everything.