The Dead Always Win

Harsh Decisions

"They have to go," Tina yelled, her eyes fixed on Beth's upset face. "We can't just let these people stay! Those assholes will be back and ask for them anyway!"

Beth shook her head in anger. "We're not giving them up! They're going to attack us anyway." She responded, slamming her fist onto the table.

"Leon? What do you think about this?" Tina turned to him.

He cleared his throat before speaking, pushing his hand through his spiky black hair. "We have to cut them lose, Beth. They're putting the group in danger."

"This is not what our group is! We save people!" Beth was on the verge of tears at this point.

Leon shook his head, frustrated at Beth's incompetence. "Making decisions like that are gonna get us ALL killed."

"And if we just let them go? And then they are working for those people? We won't be able to win the next fight if they have more soldiers." Darla added, her ginger hair flailing around as she aggressively spoke. Darla was around Mary's age, she hadn't seen anyone her own age in such a long time that it would be awful to see her go.

Tina shook her head. "Max and Alice are what? Sixteen? Seventeen? I'm sure we can take on a couple of kids."

"I can't believe you're talking about this right now!" Beth cried. "The only reason we'd throw people out is that we don't have enough supplies! And that's not gonna happen for a long time."

After another hour or so, the group exited the languages block. Tina and Leon went to the tech block while Beth and Darla returned to the English block.

Max, Joel, Alice and James were all sat on tables in the corner with Woody upstairs.

Beth entered the room with Darla who went over to sit with Mary. The two began nattering away as soon as they were in the same room, picking up where they left off.

"Guys, those people are gonna be back soon. We're gonna try to make peace with them." Beth started, a plan growing in her mind.

Max gave her an unconvinced look.

"Look, it may seem impossible-" She started.

"It IS impossible. I'm sorry, Beth. But the Warlords are right, we can't win this one by playing nice." James spoke up.

Beth was surprised at the response, taking a moment to take in what had been said. "What? This isn't what we do! We fix things, not kill people!"

James frowned at her. "What? And let them come back a week later to ask for more supplies? We're running low as it is. Cory has barely enough food left to make all of us a meal for the next week."

Just then, a man with brown curly hair and a soft face walked into the classroom, a worried look present on his face. "Guys... we have a problem."

"Cory?" Beth started. "What's wrong?"

Max, Alice and Joel looked at the greenhouse food in horror. All of it was spoiled. "Shit, shit, shit!" Alice panicked at the lack of food.

"I know, I know. This is a huge setback. We're not gonna have real meals for a while I'm afraid. We have to resort to the emergency rations." Cory sighed.

Max shook his head, wandering around the greenhouse, inspecting the different deceased plants.

"The heck?" His face screwed up into confusion as he picked up an empty bag of salt from under a wooden table.

Max turned around and held it up, showing Cory and the others. Cory walked over and snatched it in anger, turning it over as a few bits of salt fell out.