I sat on the front porch sharpening one of my knives. Otis had left in the morning to go hunting and I was waiting for him to come back. We all had hopes that he would come back with something more than a few rabbits, but our farm was doing more than well enough to support us all even if he came back empty handed.
My attention was drawn to the fields when I heard shouting. There was a man running towards the house with a small body in his arms.
I briefly poked my head inside the house and got my cousin's attention. "Hey, Maggie! Go get Uncle Hershel." I kept my eye on the man that was running towards the house, unsure of his intentions. Sure he had a body in his arms, but he could also be trigger happy when he's upset.
Uncle Hershel made it to the porch right as the man was running up to it. "Was he bit?" My uncle asked as he briefly inspected the boy. It's honestly a surprise he's not dead yet with how much he's bleeding.
"He was shot, by your man." The guy said. He was breathing heavily, tears pooling in his eyes. He was probably the boy's father.
Patricia's face paled. "Otis?"
"He said find Hershel. Is that you? Help me- Help my boy."
"Get him inside-" Uncle Hershel opened the door wider so that the man and the boy could get through. "Inside! Patricia, I need my full kit. Vesper, Maggie-"
"Yeah?" Maggie came from one of the rooms on the lower floor, probably getting it ready for the kid.
"Painkillers, coagulates- Grab everything. Clean towels, sheets, alcohol. In here." Uncle Hershel directed the man into the room that Maggie was just in. "Pillowcase."
Maggie and I rushed to gather everything like we were instructed to. It took us a few minutes since everything was placed throughout the two-story house. I helped Maggie take everything into the room, and as much as I wanted to stay and help - and not be left to console the distraught man - there were too many people in there. Uncle Hershel guided the man, Rick, out of the room with the promise that he'll do everything he can.
Minutes passed as I leaned my weight against the door frame to the dining room. My eyes stayed locked on Rick who was repeatedly running his hands over his face and through his hair. "He's gonna be okay." I said just loud enough for him to hear.
"What?" His head turned towards me, confusion written on his face.
"I said he's gonna be okay. If he survived this long after being shot, your boy's gonna make it through the whole thing."
Rick just nodded his head and turned to look back at the door his son was behind. He fidgeted more and more as the minutes went by, but stopped when the front door slammed open, and Otis and another man came through.
The man moved towards Rick and Otis made a beeline to me. "He's alive- He's still alive?" Otis's voice shook as he asked about the boy. Not saying anything, I just nodded.
Out of everyone in the house, Otis and I were the ones the hunted. And ever since The Fall, Otis became a whole hell of a lot more jumpy causing him to shoot at things that didn't deserve a bullet. I've talked to him about on multiple occasions, but the events of today just showed that it didn't sink in like I thought it did.
Seems like I'll be the one doing the hunting from now on...
Uncle Hershel came out of the room, wiping his bloody hands on a once white hand towel. "You know his blood type?" He asked Rick.
"A-positive, same as mine."
"That's fortunate. Don't wander far, I'm gonna need you." He then turned his attention to Otis and the other man. "What happened?"
Otis stepped forward to answer. "I was tracking a buck... Bullet went through it. Went clean through."
"The deer slowed the bullet down, which certainly saved his life, but it did not go through clean. It broke into pieces. If I can get the bullet fragments out... I'm countin' six."
"I never saw him. Not 'til he was on the ground."
I wasn't sure who I was more angry at - Otis for not checking his entire surroundings, or me for not going with him like I normally do. Uncle Hershel went back into the room to try to get some of the fragments out and I followed right behind him. I'm not the biggest fan of being in crowded rooms, but it certainly beats being in the main area observing the glares and thick tension.
"How's he doin'?" I asked as I took Patricia's spot next to my uncle. Her face had paled as she watched him dig around the boy's stomach.
"Not all that great. Maggie, go get Rick, we need to do the blood transfusion now."
Rick quickly came into the room and Patricia started prepping his arm for the transfusion. The man that was with Rick was instructed to hold the kid down by his shoulders while Maggie got his legs. The boy was starting to wake up and the last thing that was needed was for him to move around too much and cause another injury.
"Dad!" The boy yelled out.
Rick moved towards the bed. "Stop- You're killin' him!"
My head snapped up to look at him. "Rick, do you want him to live?" I continued talking when he nodded. "Then let my uncle do what he needs to do."
"He needs blood." Patricia told Rick but was cut off by the man. Damn, I really need to learn their names...
"Do it now! Wait- Wait, hey." The man's eyes held the same fear that Rick's held.
"He just passed out." Uncle Hershel reassured them both. "One down... Five to go. Pressure's stable."
Patricia finally got a needle in Rick's arm and connected it to the tube that was in the boy's arm. The blood slowly trickled through, but when the tube fully became red, the time crunch was eased a bit.
"Lori needs to be here. She doesn't even know what's goin' on. I got- I gotta go find her, bring her back." Rick muttered through his tears.
"You can't do that." Uncle Hershel warned him.
"She's his mother! She needs to know what's happened. Her son's lying here... Shit."
"And he's going to need more blood. You can't go more than fifty feet from this bed."
I watched as Uncle Hershel, Rick and the man go back and forth for a few minutes before I finally made up my mind. I motioned for Patricia to come over and take back her previous position. "Rick, where is she? Your wife?"
After Rick told me where his wife was (and the boy's name), I sped out the house and towards our horse stable. I may be able to stitch people up like my uncle, but when it comes to emotions - especially from adults - I'm just about as useless as a horse shoe on a taxidermy horse. The tears, the tension, the ridiculous arguing... Not exactly my thing.
I quickly saddled up my horse, Bear, and rode off in the direction I was pointed towards. I held the reigns in one hand and my machete in the other. All I could really do was hope that this group was still in the same general area, but when I heard a close by scream, I knew I was in the right place.
A walker had managed to knock down and climb on top of a blonde woman. She was trying to push it off, but she couldn't. I rode up by her and slashed out at the walker. Decaying blood sprayed across her face and she finally managed to push it off.
"Lori? Lori Grimes?" I looked around the group that was staring at me. The women were standing off to the side, with scared looks on their faces. One of the guys held up his crossbow, clearly ready to shoot me. And the other guy held up his machete, also ready to attack.
A brunette woman with a worried look on her face pushed her way to the front of the group. "I'm Lori."
"There's been an accident- Carl's been shot. He's still alive, but you've gotta come now. Rick needs you." When I saw a look of hesitancy cross her face, I sighed in agitation. "Just come!"
When I held out my hand to help Lori onto my horse, the guy with a crossbow pulled her back by her arm. "Whoa, whoa, whoa! We don't know this girl. You can't get on that horse." But Lori ignored him, pulling her arm away and climbed onto Bear.
As she wrapped her arms around my waist, I glanced at the others and ignored the glare crossbow guy was giving me. I can certainly deal with glares a whole hell of a lot better than tears. "Rick said you had others on the highway, that big traffic snarl?"
The Asian guy nodded. "Uh-huh."
"Backtrack to Fairburn Road. Two miles down is our farm. You'll see the mailbox - name's Greene." I steered Bear back towards the house and raced off, not caring to hear or see anybody's response. The ride back seemed faster than when I was trying to find the group, probably because I knew my way back.
When we made our way back onto the farm, I rode up to the house and helped Lori down. She ran into her husband's arm with tears in her eyes. I looked over at my uncle and nodded towards the house with a questioning look on my face, silently asking if he needed me in there. I let out a silent sigh of relief when he shook his head and I rode back over to the stables.
When his hooves hit the concrete flooring of the building, I hopped off Bear to lead him back to his stable to unsaddle him. As I was walking, my even littler cousin, Beth, ran up to me and gave me a hug. "Thank god you're back, Vesper." She mumbled into my shirt.
"I always come back. You should be used to this by now." I joked as I returned her hug. "Where's Jimmy?"
"He's still in the tack room."
"Still? He's been working in there all day." A blush started to work its way onto Beth's face and I instantly knew why he's been in there for so long. "Beth Greene!"
"Nothing happened, Ves!"
I scoffed, "Oh really? I'm pretty sure Maggie used that same excuse in high school when she was your age."
"And?" She pulled off the saddle and held it in both of her arms.
"And things happened, or at least was about to happen. She's lucky I was the one that accidently walked in on 'em and not Uncle Hershel, Aunt Annette, or Shawn." Beth rolled her eyes. "Same thing happened with me when I was making out with my boyfriend at the time. To my misfortune, it was my dad that walked in. And trust me when I say that having to hand a pregnancy test to your dad, even if it's negative, is not something you wanna go through."
"Oh my god."
"Oh my god, is correct."
That was the moment Jimmy decided to walk out of the tack room. "Vesper, hey! You're back."
"Yeah, I am. Whatever happened in that tack room better have stayed PG-thirteen. Teen pregnancy's weren't cool before and they sure as hell aren't cool now. Got it?" I looked between the two sixteen year old's, waiting for their response.
"Got it, Vesper." Beth agreed.
Jimmy nodded. "Yes ma'am"
"And for the love of god, do not call me ma'am."
"Yes ma'am. Uh, sir. Ve-Vesper. Yes, Vesper." Jimmy's words tumbled over each other and it was my turn to roll my eyes. If they ever decided to have any kids together, many, many years in the future, I really hope they don't get Jimmy's smarts 'cause he has none.
With one last warning to the both of them, I walked back to the house and sat down on the porch where I was earlier that day. I started to finish sharpening the knives I was working on earlier that day. Otis and Shane had gone off the college to get supplies for Carl's surgery, so all we could do was wait for them to show up again.