<•>Expired<•>

<•>Chapter Three<•>

"Anybody moves, anybody says anything, cut the boys other eye out and feed it to his father and then we'll start.  You can breath, you can blink, you can cry.  Hell, you're all gonna be doing that."

He lifts the bat above his head and brings it down hard.  There are no tears but they will come.  That first blow wasn't enough to kill. 

"Suck. My. Nuts!"

"Look at that, taking it like a champ!" He brings the bat down again.  Again.  Again.  Again.  It won't stop.  I'm covered in the blood of a fellow member of my group.  I never talked to him but he was appreciated and loved. 

Carl and I look up at each other in unison, the same wide eyed expression on our faces.  He shakes his head and I see a single tear slip that he wipes away quickly and obliterates the rest before they even have a chance to slide down his cheeks. 

"You killed Abraham," I half whisper. He snickers, ignores me and heads straight for Rick.

"What? was the joke that bad?"

Rick looks up. "I'm gonna kill you."

"What?" Negan brings the bloody bat up to his face. "I didn't quite catch that, you're gonna have to speak up."

Rick glances down and looks back up at what hovers before him. "Not today. Not tomorrow, but I'm gonna kill you."

Negan sits there for a few minutes staring right at Rick and sucks his teeth.

"Simon, what'd he have? A knife?"

"He had a hatchet," Simon says.

"A hatchet?" Negan gives Simon an amused look.

"And an axe."

"Simon's my right hand man. Having one of those is important, I mean what do you have left without them? A whole lot of work. You have one? Maybe one of these fine people still breathing? Oh, or did I?" He lightly swings his bat and clicks his teeth to show murder. 

Rick stares right back into Negan's soul for a few seconds before Negan speaks again.

"Sure. Yeah. Give me his axe."

Simon walks over and hands the axe to Negan, who holds it up to the side of Rick's face for almost a minute before lowering it and standing back up. He grabs Rick by the shoulders and starts dragging him towards the RV.

"Be right back. Maybe Rick'll be with me, if not? Hell, we'll just turn these people inside out. Won't we? I mean, the ones that are left."

I look over at the remnants of Abraham's body and I have to try my hardest not to vomit. I just sit there. We all just sit there, waiting to know if Rick will come back and if it will be alive. 

<•><•><•><•><•><•><•><•><•><•><•>

Rick still isn't back and I can see the sun start coming up behind the trees. I get a flashback of Abraham, a man I'd hardly spoken to but also, a man that I cared about. It still stings like a son of a bitch.