Chasing Amy (Daryl Dixon/The Walking Dead)

Chapter 3 - Captured and Saved

I turned around, watching as a corpse in a greyish pink nightdress stumbled towards us, curlers still tangled in her hair from the night she died. She growled like an animal, her upper lip fully torn from her face. The image of this woman in my head was too grotesque for me to look at for too long, and I quickly stared down at the floor as a shot rang out.

She was the closest by far, the rest of the roamers ambling through the field behind the traffic lights.

Rick, who wasn't preparing Randall for the amputation, was holding his hand over the boy's mouth.

"Shut up," He growled as Randall screamed into his hand.

I stood there, torn between helping Randall and running away. I knew I wouldn't make it ten minutes on my own, but I had to do something.

I picked up the rifle from behind the fence, turning it so it could for through the metal bars. It was even heavier than the one I had before, but with almost the same amount of triggers and pulley things.

I was in over my head as I stood beside the man around my age, pointing the rifle at a close-by roamer. This one was a man; the shirt had been ripped almost entirely from his back. I shakily aimed at him, before hesitating.

Just pull the trigger.

I'd seen this in movies. I could do this, I knew I could.

I took a short breath and pulled it, the trigger. Whichever trigger it was, something did happen. Before I could even react to pulling the correct one, the gun jerked back in my arms, butting me sharply in the side. I had almost dropped it, and not a single roamer was hit.

The man beside me looked bewildered at my inexperience.

There were more gunshots from behind me, I didn't have time to check, and I just hoped they hadn't killed Randall.

The man beside me continued to shoot them in the head perfectly, missing only two times, as my bullets went haywire.

I hadn't shot a single roamer.

To be honest with myself, I didn't know if I was ready to kill anything yet, let alone a corpse. I could barely even watch when the man beside me hit them with his shotgun, as the sight of the blood spattering almost made me want to faint with nausea.

"We gotta go! I'm almost out of ammo!" The young man shouted, turning to the men behind us. Before I even had time to rethink what I was about to do, I passed him Randall's rifle.

The roamers were closing in, stumbling hungrily towards us, with their arms outstretched.

"I can't hold them off! Hershel, do it now!" Rick shouted, firing bullets at the roamers with his revolver.

"Oh, God," I whimpered, as the roamers closed in on all sides, snapping their teeth and growling hungrily.

"Come on, Hershel!" The man repeated.

"There is no time!" The old man, Hershel, shouted back angrily, I knew he wanted to abandon us. It seemed like everyone did today. He dropped the knife, and took a step back.

"No, don't leave me!" Randall whined. I looked back and saw the sheer terror in his eyes. If I were in his position, I knew I'd be even more hysterical than he was. Rick grunted audibly, looking from one side of the fence to the other.

The dead were closing in.

With a sickening crunch, the man lifted Randall's leg from the spike, blood spurting from below the knee.

I began to gag, the sight of the decomposing bodies, the blood seeping from Randall's leg and the smell of death in the air were all tolling against me as I bent over, hauling up whatever contents were still left in my stomach.