Don't Get Dead | TWD | Volume 1

[46] Help

The woman, covered in blood, just stood there. It was the only reason I didn't immediately mistake her as a walker. That and the sword. The dreads covered the side of her face as she stared at me, her face steady despite what I assumed to be an open wound on her thigh.

"You're hurt," I bit the inside of my cheek, glancing at her wound. "Do you need help?"

"No."

She was very certain about that, like she had any idea of how inept I would be in that sort of situation. It was very unsettling, that she had so little awareness of the fact that there was even an injury in her leg; her face didn't seem to get the memo. She just continued staring at me, but didn't move to pull a weapon. She didn't even have a gun from what I could see, just the sword.

"How did it happen?"

I didn't know why I was making small talk when I had a really big emergency on my hands. I needed to get back, find Glenn and Maggie, but here I was chatting away to a woman that was most likely involved in what just happened somehow. She seemed less than willing to talk to me also, so me hanging around was really benefiting no one.

"That man," she said, and I frowned. "The one that took your friends."

"Merle?" Merle shot her? He had a gun, because otherwise he never would have had the upper hand in his fight with Glenn and Maggie. But that didn't make any sense that he was after so many people in one day. "Why?"

"They sent him to kill me."

"Who did?"

"The Governor. He runs the place. A town called Woodbury."

A town name, one I was unfamiliar with, but it was important. That's where Merle came from, where my people are. There was a group there too, with more people than just Merle, Glenn and Maggie. More dangerous people, my brain reminded me. They aren't going to help when they're sending people out to kill.

"Is that where he's taking them?" I asked.

It seemed like there was only one possible answer, but you could never be sure. If this was a town they could have an area outside that they would take their prisoners to. But I don't know how often that happened for them, how often they took in prisoners. In my head, Merle taking Glenn and Maggie was a one time thing because he wanted to know where his brother was, but they had tried killing a woman on the same day.

Maybe it was a regular occurrence.

"Yeah."

I believed her, she seemed to have no reason to lie. Except that I had no idea what this group was like, and maybe she was just trying to build my trust in case something similar happened and I would be on her side. How did she even know where prisoners were taken anyways? That also seemed like something on a need-to-know basis, and maybe that fact that she knew was what led to her being hunted.

"Why did they send him to kill you?" I asked for confirmation.

"Because I left."

Because she left? Helpful.

There could be a few reasons that they would want someone dead for leaving a group. The first would be so they don't come back and kill anyone again, but this woman said that it was a town, and there wasn't much damage one woman could do to a whole town. Then again, I never expected one person to be behind the trauma at the prison.

The second reason would be so they don't have to compete for supplies, which actually worried me. If they were willing to kill so they wouldn't compete for anything, that put the prison right in that throw zone. They had to be somewhat close to us, because Merle had been hunting this woman today, and neither of them had vehicles. So they were in a few hours walking distance, which would be a much faster area to cover in the car. We were feasibly close enough that this Governor would want us dead if he found out that we existed, and I didn't know how much Glenn would tell them.