Lucille (The Walking Dead)

Repayment

The sound of the whistles from the men who followed us was still ringing in my ears. In a sea of what seemed like a hundred men that surrounded us stood a few women. My mouth was dry from the running and my mind was lost within frantic thoughts of what the hell was going on. The leader was telling us to get down on our knees. I looked at Rick for some kind of instructions on what to do. I followed, as so did the others when Rick slowly went down to his knees. My mind was at a blank at what they could do to us, or better yet what they couldn't do to us. I felt the sharp sting of panic rising in my blood. I was on my knees next to Carl and Eugene, I glanced between everyone's faces unsure of what else to do.  I eyed some of the men standing around us but none were looking at me, all eyes were fixed at the same point. I looked over to see what it was they were staring at. There parked next to RV was a beat-up van with bullet holes in the back doors. 

"Dwight!" The leader demanded.

"Yeah." Emerged a man with red hair and a scorched face that made me cringe at the thought of how he must have come to get that.

"Chop. Chop." The leader said. The scarred face man took a quick look at all of us before turning to open the doors to the van. My heart stopped in fear of what was obvious.

"Come on. You got people to meet." A scream caught in my throat when I saw Daryl get pulled out of the van and then Michonne, Rosita, and then I watched as Glenn was thrown to the ground. He looked up and saw Maggie who was in obvious pain and discomfort. I could tell the shock and pain he had when he saw her stuck in the same awful situation.

"Maggie." He tried to crawl closer to her but was forced to stay by the men guarding us.

"On your knees!" Dwight demanded. There was a moment of silence. Just long enough to let it sink in that this was it. My family was sitting in front of me and we were helpless and overpowered. Daryl and I looked at each other frightened that this might be the last few moments we had. He only gave me a slight nod of assurance before the leader started to talk again.

"All right!" The leader said backing up to the RV. "We've got a full boat. Let's meet the man." He banged on the RV door as I looked around in a confused daze. Who was this? What was going to happen? I looked at Carl who was showing nothing. No fear, no madness, nothing. I put my gaze back to the RV door and waited for whatever was to come. The door opened and in the doorway there he was. The true leader of these men. You could tell by the manner in which he stood; cool, calm, and collected like he was a king. In the corner of my eye, I could see Eugene wince when he saw him. He stood with a smile on his face as a baseball bat wrapped in barbwire laid upon his shoulder.

"Pissing our pants yet?" He stepped down from the RV and started walking. "Boy, do I have a feeling that we're getting close." He walked over toward where I was sitting. He was older than me. In the shadows, he looked like he was in his early 40's to late 30's with his salt and pepper stubble. "Yep," he said looking directly back at me. I kept my eyes on him to try to put up a facade that I wasn't afraid of him. His smile stayed on his face while he moved on to look at the others.

"It's going to be pee-pee center here real soon." He said jokingly while he walked down the line looking at us. "Which one of you pricks is the leader?" he said scanning us again.

"This one." Said the guy I thought was the leader. "This one right here." He pointed down to Rick who I couldn't analyze on what he was feeling. The real leader looked down at Rick and let out a sigh and gave a good look at him. He walked up and continued to smile down at Rick.

"Hi." He said. "You're Rick, right? Well, I'm Negan." He motioned to himself. "I don't appreciate you killing my men. Also, when I sent my people to kill your people for killing my people, you killed more of my people." His smile faded just slightly and he shook his head. "Not cool. You have no idea how not cool that shit is." I could see Rick who was starting to understand exactly how much shit we were in. "But I think you're going to be up to speed shortly. Yeah." He looked off to one side and then down again. He half-smiled to himself and looked at Rick out of the corner of his eye. "You are so gonna regret crossing me in a few minutes." He gave him a sick smile. "Yes, you are." He half chuckled to himself. "No matter what you do, no matter what, you do not mess with the new world order," He said shifting to walk in the other direction. I stole a quick glance at Daryl but his eyes were fixed on Negan and they were full of hatred. We were here. With this unstoppable pressure of the situation that we were in.

"Ready?" Negan said after I came back to reality. "Here it goes. Pay attention." I could feel my heart leaping out of my chest as he slowly swung his bat toward Ricks' head. He smiled and lean slightly forward. "Give me your shit, or I will kill you." A heatwave ran through me of hatred. We worked hard collecting and farming all that we had and we couldn't just give it away. Negan paced in front of us but by this point, I could no longer comprehend what he was saying. I couldn't even stand to look at him. The only thing I could make out of his words was 'safe'. Nothing is safe not like we thought it was. What did we think that we could build lives in Alexandria without some force going against us? It was always going against us. Everything we did was half his as he so gladly proclaimed. We barely had enough to carry our people through, let alone give half away.

"You don't think you were really gonna get through this without being punished, now, did you?" he said swinging his arms around. I glanced between Daryl and Rick wondering how we were going to get out of this. "I don't want to kill you people." Bullshit. I couldn't help but think. "I just want to make that clear from the get-go. I want you to work for me." A slight smile returned to his lips as he walked back down the line. "And you can't do that if you're dead, now, can you?" His smile got wider and he turned toward our side of the line. I could no longer look at him but I could feel his eyes all over my body like a rash I couldn't get rid of. Itching at every corner. "I'm not growing a garden. But you killed my people, a whole damn lot of them. More than I'm comfortable with." He said putting his hand to his chest. "And for that, for that, you're gonna pay." He said looking down the line. I looked around at everyone. I want it to be me. Don't make anyone else pay but me. I know I'm the weakest out of the group. I'm just a pianist with no other skill. I help with little things. Everyone else is important.

"So now," He said with a slight coolness of tone. "I'm going to beat the holy hell outta of one of you." I looked up and Negan was staring right at me. But swiftly picked up his bat a looked the other way. "This," he said looking down at the bat. "this is Lucille." That bastard. Naming his own weapon. What made it worse was that it was also my name. I felt eyes glance at me when he said the bat's name. "And she is awesome." He let a pause to let everyone realize that this was it. The punishment. Someone was going to get their head bashed in. "All this, all this," he said motioning to all the men and the lights. "is just so we can pick out which one of you gets the honor." My blood ran cold and I swear I saw his eyes land on Daryl. He inhaled deeply and stopped in front of Abraham. I looked at Abraham and he had no fear in his eyes while he straightened his back and looked directly at Negan. "Huh. I gotta shave this shit." He said casually feeling his own black and white stubble on his own face. As he turned I watched him. He flickered his eyes toward me and looked away to Carl. He strode his way over to where we were sitting.