Forget The Horror Here (A The Walking Dead Fanfiction)

Forget The Horror Here: Chapter 14- Where Pessimism Gets People

Bang! A loud shot rung my ears and slapped me awake. It was morning already? I sat up and checked my surroundings.

            "DAD!" I heard Carl call. I grabbed my bag and jumped off the wall. Everyone was jolted awake.

            "Carl?!" Rick yelled back. There was a rustle in the bushes and out jumped Carl. He was trembling.

            "Dad! Hurry!" He grabbed his dad's hand and pulled him in the direction he had come. I grabbed my gun from its holster and followed, as did T-Dog, Shane, and Andrea. "He was trying to hurt me, dad. I didn't want to shoot him!"  Carl's mouth ran as we hurried through the trees. We finally got to where he was leading us.

            "Well, well, well..." A dingy looking man lay against a fallen tree, clutching a gunshot wound in his leg. "Looks like 'pair of steel balls' has himself a crew." His eyes lingered over Andrea and I. "And a couple of pretty girls." He winked in our direction. I heard Andrea gag behind me. I raised my gun at him.  "Whoa. You've got yourself a badass! What're you gonna do? Shoot me?" He laughed. I looked over at Rick and he shrugged. I took two steps closer and aimed right between his eyes.

            "What were you trying to do to my son?" Rick interrogated.

            "An innocent kid in the middle of the woods is easy prey. I haven't eaten in a long time and anything sounds good right about now." He licked his lips.

            "You sick freak." I spat.

            "Kill him, Sawyer." Carl told me. He stood beside me, his face hard and emotionless.

            "I'm gonna die soon anyway!" The man laughed.

            "Carl, come with me." Rick grabbed Carl's arm. He glanced at the man before saying to me, "Do what you need to." I nodded. I never lowered my gun.

            "Come on, sweetheart. DO IT!" the man yelled at me, still laughing. There was a silence. Andrea touched my arm, making me jump. My hand holding the gun clenched, pulling the trigger. The bullet didn't miss. There was a long silence before I put the gun back in its holster. I looked over at T-Dog, Shane, and Andrea.

            "You did the right thing." said T-Dog. I looked him in the eyes.

            "Killing a living person will never feel like the right thing, no matter how cruel or evil." Andrea nodded in agreement.

            "Let's take care of the body." Shane said. I watched as he flipped the body over to check for weapons. He stopped and starred at the man's back for several seconds. He looked over at me, then back at the body. "Sawyer." He waved me over. He pointed to where he was looking. I hadn't noticed it till now. The man had been wearing a leather vest with wings sewn on the back. I reached down and touched the fabric and instantly I realized...

***

"But how?" Lori asked. "Are you sure that's even his?"

"Positive!" I turned the vest over in my hands. "Look. A week after we teamed up, I accidently took a swing at him with my old knife. It left a mark on the front left side." I pointed to the line in the leather below the left pocket.

"How do you accidently cut someone with-?" Carl asked me.

"That's not important right now. Right now I'm worried about this." I shook the vest dramatically. "What if he's alive?"

"And what if he's dead? Why is he still important to you?" All heads turned towards Glenn. " I mean he abandoned us, for Christ's sake! It's about time you forgot about him!" We all stood silent in shock. "How can you be sure he's not dead?" His eyes stared me down.

"I'm not, Glenn, but believing he is is worth the damn effort!"

"I can't begin to see w-"

"Stop!" Sophia interrupted him. "Can we not fight about this? I mean, you'd think we'd have better reasons to fight! Sawyer finding Daryl's vest is a bump up in him being out there. There's no need for you to be a flipping pessimist about everything!" She yelled at him. Everyone was in shock. Sophia rubbed her forehead. "You guys give me a headache." Her face was frustrated as she stormed off towards the wall.

"I've got her." Carl told us as he followed her. After a good thirty seconds of silence, everyone agreed that being on the edge of a wooded area with no real shelter was unsafe, so we collected the little things we had left over the months, put them in the cars, and headed where ever the road would take us.