"Stop it! I went in there to talk to him, he didn't do anything." He scoffs, "are you crazy? He coulda hurt you."
"Well he didn't." He sighs, "you're too reckless, do you even care about yourself? he could've and then what?"
"Why do you care?" He scoffs, "I don't." I give him a hard look, "just learn to listen for once, do not go in there again." He says before walking away.
⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅
"So how do we do this? Just take a vote?" I don't want to be here, we were going to talk about what happened to Randall and I just knew that they would all give in to their fear.
"Does it have to be unanimous?"
"How about majority rules?"
"Well, let's... Let's just see where everybody stands, then we can talk through the options." Rick tells us all. "Well, the way I see it, there's only one way to move forward."
"Killing him, right? I mean, why even bother to take a vote? It's clear which way the wind's blowing." Dale interrupts Shane. "Well, if people believe we should spare him, I wanna know."
"Well, I can tell you it's a small group. Maybe just me and Glenn." Dale says making Glenn look up. "Look, I... I think you're pretty much right about everything, all the time, but this..."
"They've got you scared."
"He's not one of us. And we've... We've lost too many people already." I look up at the ceiling, was there even any point in speaking up when no one would be willing to listen.
"How about you? Do you agree with this?" Dale asks Maggie who looks uncomfortable. "Couldn't we continue keeping him prisoner?"
"Just another mouth to feed." Daryl answers making me sigh. "It may be a lean winter." Hershel adds. "We could ration better." Lori counters before Dale takes the opportunity to speak again.
"Or he could be an asset. Give him a chance to prove himself." I agreed, all he needed was one chance, we just had to be careful and if he wasn't right then I'd be all for killing him.
"Put him to work?"
"We're not letting him walk around."
"We could put an escort on him."
"Who wants to volunteer for that duty?"
"I will." I think I surprise everyone, myself the most when I speak up, "I don't think any of us should be walking around with this guy." Rick says shaking his head. "He's right. I wouldn't feel safe unless he was tied up."
"We can't exactly put chains around his ankles, sentence him to hard labour." This was all just going back and forth I couldn't be bothered going around in circles. "Look, say we let him join us, right? Maybe... Maybe he's helpful, maybe he's nice. We let our guard down and maybe he runs off, brings back his 30 men."
"We don't know that he would do that. All we have to do is have a lookout and if he even tried it then fair enough kill him. He's just a kid, he's injured, weak and heavily outnumbered, he's not that much of a threat to us." Shane glares at me as Dale looks glad that someone else is finally speaking with him.
"She's right the answer is not to kill him to prevent a crime that he may never even attempt. If we do this, we're saying there's no hope. Rule of law is dead. There is no civilisation."
"Oh, my God."
"Could you drive him further out? Leave him like you planned?"
"You barely came back this time. There are walkers. You could break down."
"You could get lost."
"Or get ambushed."
"They're right. We should not put our own people at risk."
"If you go through with it, how would you do it? Would he suffer?"
"We could hang him, right? Just snap his neck." Shane offers, hanging seems atrocious to me, if they do it they should just shoot him in the head.
"I thought about that.Shooting may be more humane."
"And what about the body? Do we bury him?"
"Hold on, hold on. You're talking about this like it's already decided." Dale interrupts again. You've been talking all day, going around in circles. You just wanna go around in circles again?" Whilst I agreed with Daryl that this seemed to be going nowhere, I admired how willing Dale was to fight for this.
"This is a young man's life, and it is worth more than
a five-minute conversation! Is this what it's come to? We kill someone because we can't decide what else to do with him? You saved him, and now look at us. He's been tortured. He's gonna be executed. How are we any better than those people that we're so afraid of?"
"We all know what needs to be done."
"No, Dale is right." I honestly don't think we'll ever get anywhere, no one was going to agree on anything and it'd just be this endless conversation going on and on.
"We can't leave any stone unturned here. We have a responsibility..."
"So what's the other solution?"
"Let Rick finish."
"We haven't come up with a single viable option yet."
"I wish we could."
"So let's work on it!"
The conversation continues in this argumentative style for a while before Rick stops everyone. "All right, that's enough. Anybody wants the floor before we make a final decision has the chance."
"I agree with Dale." I start, ignoring Shane's scoff I continue. "You made the decision to save him and bring him back here, but you've been punishing him for that when he hasn't even done anything to us. He hasn't tried anything and he won't because he's just a scared little boy. I just think he deserves a chance to prove himself, he's innocent as of now we don't know enough to just decide like this."
No one says anything so Dale speaks up again. "You once said that we don't kill the living."
"Well, that was before the living tried to kill us."
"But don't you see? If we do this, the people that we were, the world that we knew is dead. And this new world is ugly. It's harsh. It's survival of the fittest. And that's a world I don't wanna live in. And I don't believe that any of you do. I can't. Please. Let's just do what's right. Isn't there anybody else who's gonna stand with us?"
"He's right. We should try to find another way." Andrea says making Rick look around the room. "Anybody else?" Everyone looks away or down.
"Are y'all gonna watch, too? No, you'll go hide your heads in your tents and try to forget that we're
slaughtering a human being. Oh... I won't be a party to it." I feel bad like Dale but there's nothing we could do now, we'd been outvoted. "This group is broken." He says stopping at Daryl before he leaves.
The room is very awkward after he leaves, everyone just lingering not really sure what do. Slowly everyone starts to disperse, I see Rick's face and I knew that he didn't want to do this.
"Hey, you okay?" He looks at me and nods, "look I know that you don't want to do this. And I know that I don't agree with it but I respect that I've been outvoted. I get the fear and the uncertainty of the whole thing. In a way I think killing him is kinder than leaving him out there alone." He nods but he still has that guilty look in his eye, he's not sure about this.
"Rick, you don't have to be the one to do this, I know Shane would love to do it." He shakes his head, "even I don't mind doing it, you shouldn't have to do all the heavy stuff around here." I say having noticed how being the leader had been putting a heavy pressure on him.
"I have to be the one to do it."
Seventeen
Start from the beginning
