17 The First Cut is the Deepest

My heart pounded in my ears, I felt light-headed. What had I just done? My body shook uncontrollably, yet my hands remained steady. I was trusting my gut and my finger pulled the trigger within milliseconds from each other. The gunshots still echoed in my ears like it was pin-balling around against my eardrums. My gut instinct just took two lives in a matter of seconds.

"Scar, let's put down the gun," Rick spoke softly to me, placing his hands around mine and lowering my weapon. I watched as the blood pooled out of them like some had turned on a faucet, it surrounded their bodies.

"I had to, I had to, I had to. He was about to draw on you, they were gonna find the farm," I stuttered out. I had just killed two people, living people, without hesitation.

"I know, you made the right call," Rick said, "Herschel?" Rick now looked over to him asking him what the next move was. I still stared down at the men I just killed.

"Let's head back," Herschel spoke up.

Glenn knelt down and picked up their weapons before he pushed me along towards the front door. The feeling of guilt was short-lived when car headlights lit up the room, it was now well into the night so they were easy to spot. We all slid onto the ground, hiding just below the windows of the front of the bar. I could hear at least four or five guys get out of the car just in front of our building.

"Dave? Tony?" one of them called out for their friends.

"I'm telling you, man I heard shots," another one said.

They fought with each other as they called out for their friends, unsure if they were taking down walkers and there were more on the way. I could see their shadows in the window as they approached the doors. Just as they go to open the doors Glenn throws himself against them keeping them shut.

"Someone pushed that shut, there's someone in there," one of them said.

"Yo, is someone in there?" another asked. Rick looked flustered. "If someone's in there we don't want no trouble, we're just looking for our friends. If something happened, tell us, this place is crawling with roamers."

Rick rubbed his forehead, unsure if he should call out to them or not, "They drew on us!" he finally said. Herschel looked unhappy with Rick for giving away our cover.

"Dave and Tony in there? They alive?" a man called back.

"No!" Rick responded.

Half of the men sounded like they just wanted to get the hell out of here, but one of them disagreed and all it takes is one. "Listen I'm not going back to camp and telling them that Dave and Tony got shot by some asshole in a bar," the man fought.

"Your friends drew on us!" I yelled back, we were all pissed at the situation now. If these guys were anything like their friends we were in trouble. "They gave us no choice!"

"I'm sure we've all lost enough people, done things we wished we didn't have to, but it's like that now you know that," Rick attempted to reason with them, "so let's just chalk this up to what it was, wrong place, wrong-"

Before he could even finish his sentence they were firing rounds through the windows. I ducked my head under my arms as pieces of glass shattered around me. Rick immediately stood up and shot through the window.

"Get out of here!" he shouted at us, giving us an opportunity to run towards the back. The shots kept on coming. I ran across the room and dived behind the bar table, a bullet hitting the corner and only missing my head by a couple of inches. Alcohol bottles exploded around us and wood chips from the walls flew around the room. They let off a couple more rounds before it was finally silent, they had stopped. We still remained where we were hiding, not wanting to move and draw attention. I looked over at Glenn as he hid under a table, clutching his shotgun. We waited for Rick's signal telling us to move, he reloaded his pistol and finally nodded towards the left. I was the first to get up, running down to the back set of steps for the back door, they all followed close behind. We entered into the bottom storage compartment where the back door was located, I could see one of the men's shadows through the window of the door, trying to get in. Glenn immediately shot the window, completely shattering the glass. I don't think he hit the man on the other side but he definitely scared him away.

"Okay listen, Glenn, I want you to try for the car," Rick explained.

"Try?" Glenn immediately cut him off, he was scared. He was always the one that they ended up putting in the most danger.

"You'll try and succeed," Rick reassured him, "Scar and Herschel will cover you, I'll watch the front. From there bring it around back and we'll make a run of it. Got it."

We all agreed, it was our only option. I took a deep breath, this was not what I was thinking I signed up for when I agreed to help Rick, but I couldn't change anything now. It was either kill or be killed. I had my back against the side of the door, my gun held up to my chest trying to stay small, but I was ready. Glenn made his way outside slowly, walking down the alleyway as quietly as possible, we didn't want to draw attention to where we were. Herschel and I walked out with him, only far enough to take cover behind the open doors. I was holding my breath as I watched him walk further and further away. All of a sudden there was a shot let off from behind us, sending Glenn to the ground behind a dumpster. Herschel immediately reacted and shot the man directly in the chest.

"Glenn!" I called out to him. Without thinking I ran out to see if he had been shot. As soon as I rounded the dumpster I was grabbed by the shoulders and thrown against the brick wall. It had to have been the guy on the other side of the door, he waited for us to come out. The wind was completely knocked out of me as a man twice my size continued to bang my body against the wall. He gripped both his hands around my neck, lifting me from the ground and smashing me into the wall once more.

"You're a pretty one aren't you," he laughed, he didn't even look like a person to me. His eyes were dark and his face looked worn out like he had his own fair share of demons. His grip squeezed my esophagus tighter as I tried to claw at his face. There was no way I could fight him off, he overpowered anything I could do. I could feel the air leaving my body by the second, he squeezed so tight I couldn't take a breath. I was losing consciousness when his grip finally became loose and I dropped to the floor coughing and wheezing for air. I watched as Glenn wrestled him on the ground, rolling around on top of each other as they fought to get to his gun. My head spun and my eyesight was blurred, but my flight or flight response seemed to kick in. I felt around on the ground for my gun before I finally found it. I waited until the man had Glenn pinned on the ground before I shot him in the back of the head. He dropped down on top of Glenn.

"What happened?" Rick came running up behind us. I could barely speak at this point.

"Glenn," I pointed towards the man on the ground. My voice was hoarse and it stung as I tried to get out the words. Rick ran over and rolled the man off of Glenn's body allowing him to get up.

"It's alright, the car is right there, we're almost home," Rick said. Glenn was shaking and I was still struggling to find air. "You good?" He asked. I nodded my head regardless, I wanted to get the hell out of here.

We were about to make a run for it from behind the dumpster when more shots were fired at us. We could see a younger boy up on a rooftop across the alleyway.

"Let's get out of here!" a man yelled to the boy as he sped up beside him in their car. "There's roamers all over the place! Hurry up we gotta get outta here!"

"What about Shawn?"

"They shot him, we gotta go! Jump!" they screamed at him.

We watched from where we were, hoping that they would leave. The boy jumped down from the roof landing awkwardly on one of the ledges and then rolling. What we heard next were screams of bloody murder, he had done something when he fell.

"Dude didn't make it," Glenn whispered.

"I gotta go, I'm sorry!" his friend yelled before speeding off without him. His screams for help were echoing through the town, drawing walkers from every angle. Rick got up and ran to him, we made sure to follow close behind. Walking out into the street we could now see just how many walkers there were. Herschel covered us, taking down the few that were in close range. Luckily, most of them were drawn to the man that Herschel had shot down earlier.

"Rick, we have to go now," Herschel demanded.

I looked at the boy who had impaled his left leg on one of the fence pools that surrounded the lower roof. The sight was gruesome, it shot upright in the middle of his thigh.

"No, no, don't leave me!" he screamed, crying.

"You have to be quiet!" Rick whispered. The boy was drawing too many walkers towards us. "We can't just leave him!" Rick stood his ground.

"He was just shooting at us!" Glenn retaliated.

"He's just a kid!"

"This place is crawling with walkers!" I yelled.

"We can't leave him!"

"The fence went clean through, there's no way we can get the leg off," Herschel examined it quickly. The kids screamed some more.

"Shut up or I will shoot you!" Rick shouted at him.

"That may be the answer," Herschel explained, "we're not gonna get that leg off without tearing the muscle to shreds, he certainly can't run, he may bleed out."

"Can't we just take the leg off?" I asked.

"N-no, don't cut my leg off please," the boy pleaded with us.

"Guys, walkers!" Glenn called to us, finally taking in our surroundings. We turned to see a herd of twenty plus walkers limping towards the screams. "Hurry up!" Glenn yelled as he began to shoot down as many as he could.

"Oh God, they're everywhere," I said as I could see ten more coming from the other direction.

"Come on we gotta go!" Glenn screamed. The walkers were closing in on us and we didn't have enough ammo left to take out this herd. We were going to die too if we stayed any longer.

"Please don't leave me, please!" the boy yelled for us to help.

"Oh, to hell with this," Rick said before grabbing the end of the boy's leg, ripping it up and off the fence post as hard as he could.