Crossbow Hearts

We rolled into Perry at dusk. We’d had very little problems with roamers as we headed there. I was constantly looking out for the Governor and his people. Well groups in general, right now the only groups I was trusting was my own and the Raiders. Merle had complained the whole way. You drive too slow, you drive too fast, can’t you be more careful. Constantly nagging like an old woman. So pulling in to Perry was like paradise. Except when we heard the screaming. We both hopped off the bike as it would attract walkers like no bodies business. I had a gun in one hand and my trusty bat in the other. And as I had done back with the army I ran to screams and trouble. I rounded the corner ahead of Merle to see the Raiders struggling with a small herd of Walkers I could only assume they’d somehow become overwhelmed with Walkers. The screaming was Thorn as she struggled violently against several Walkers. I waded in bat swinging, heart pounding and adrenaline pumping. When we finally cleared away the herd I collapsed on the floor panting.
“Jamie! You ok?!” Merle shouted over.
“I’m alright, don’t you worry about me, how you holding up Buttercup?!” I shouted back.
“Bite me Sugar tits!” I laughed, feeling shaky as the adrenaline started to wear off.
“You are crazy Jamie, you know that?” Thorn said holding her hand out to pull me to my feet.
“Daryl tells me that on a regular basis.” I smirked. I felt like I could run a marathon and still be hyped up.
“So what are you two doing here? What about Daryl? You were pretty damn determined to get to him, but know you’re back.” I sighed.
“You might want to get Spark.” We sat in an old diner, Merle, Spark, Thorn and me. I was feeling pretty hungry, my stomach was hurting and I was caked in blood and bits of brain matter. I wanted nothing more than to be back at the prison and taking a shower.
“So what brings you both all the way out here to us?” Spark asked arms crossed as caked in as much gore as I was.
“We have a slight problem,”
“Fucking understatement Jamie. Those folk from Woodbury have a hard on for us and they want blood. They already raped and beat the crap outta one of our women and hacked the hand off of officer friendly.” Merle cut across anger etched all over his face.
“We have a lot of kids with us. And very few people with the capabilities to defend themselves. The Governor if he’s alive will come for us; he’ll kill all of us and take what little we have. We need your help.” I pleaded with my eyes and waited. Thorn and Spark were both quiet. They didn’t know the town those wack jobs were from and they didn’t know who led them until now. Coming with us would veer them off whatever plan they had. But I felt our survival depended on them.
“Can you give us a few minutes?” Spark didn’t wait for our reply just got up with Thorn and walked out to the others.
“Do you think they’re going to turn us down?” I asked Merle.
“I don’t know, but they’re good people. So probably not.” I sighed crossing my arms and resting my head on them on the table. Leaning forward I felt that pain again in my stomach. I must have pulled a damn muscle.
“We’ll come. We can’t not go, knowing what could happen to all of you.” Spark said.
“We’ll kick this guy and his people straight to hell.” Thorn smiled. “But for now we’ll sleep here.”
“There’s a bathroom with some soap you can clean up some in the sink if you want.” Spark added.
“Thank you so much. You have no idea what a relief that is to hear you say that. To know you guys are going to help us.” Spark simply waved me off with the first smile I’d seen on her face. “I’ll take up that offer of washing up cos I am covered in gore.” I smiled walking to where Spark pointed.
I looked at myself in the mirror I was a sight to behold. I pulled off my shirt and then my vest top and gasped. Running my hand down my right side gingerly touching the bite mark. I couldn’t have, it wasn’t possible. How had I been bitten? My first urge was to smash up everything in sight, but my next was to cry, crying wouldn’t solve it, but neither would anything else. I was going to die. I pulled up my gun and opened my mouth the only real sure fire way to kill myself and make sure I didn’t come back. Caleb would be distraught when Merle told him. Or perhaps Merle would tell Daryl and he would tell Caleb. I felt guilty doing it this way, but if I went back, Daryl would want to do it. Not out of enjoyment, but because he would feel he had to. And I didn’t want that on his conscience. So I breathed in deeply and hoped that the scum from Woodbury either never came or that they killed them so no more of ours died. Then I pulled the trigger.
Nothing happened. The gun jammed. I realised that it wasn’t my gun, but a gun from the prison armoury. And something just made me think it was fate. That I shouldn’t kill myself. At least not yet. I could go back I had time to subtly say good bye to Daryl, Caleb and Merle. Then I would do it. I pulled out some gauze, antiseptic spray and bandages, cleaned myself up as best I could and then wrapped myself up as tight as possible.
“What the fuck took you so long?” Merle asked. As I walked out and joined him back at the table.
“I had bits of brain fucking everywhere thank you very much.” I shoved him as I rolled my eyes. I slept up right in one of the booths. I woke before everyone else, not really having much sleep. I stepped carefully through the sleeping bodies and out into the early morning air. If I ignored the Walkers strewn about it could be like any other early morning. Nobody was up this early. It was peaceful. From the few I had seen turn, most were already showing signs by now. It had been seven hours since I realised I was bit. But I felt alert and healthy. There were no sweats, blurred vision, dizziness or anything. My side just hurt like any other injury, like any knife wound.
“You ok there Jamie?” I turned seeing Thorn and smiled.
“Yeah, just want to get back to Daryl and Caleb. And I worried about the Governor, they still have more people than we do, even with you, but I don’t think as many are as trained as me, Daryl, Merle and you guys. “
“Don’t worry about it, you guys are going to be fine.” She patted my shoulder. I nodded thinking how wrong could she be.
We took a different route back as Spark new of a national guard station near Woodbury, which would be were the Governor and his men got their weapons. But as we got closer we saw that the place had gone up in smoke. We drove by and I saw a tank, I was half tempted to pull the bike up and take it. It was a beautiful M1A1 Abrams and it would blow that ass straight to hell. But if I wasn’t here to operate it, then it would be useless to us.
“There’s a Walmart up ahead we wanna see if we can get any supplies from it!” Spark yelled as she pulled back to us. When we all exited or got off our vehicles we saw what appeared to be a Mexican standoff taking place.
“You’re fucked lady, so don’t tell us to drop our guns, back up is here.” I saw at the same time Merle did that the lady this guy was talking to was Andrea and that Glenn was out cold on the floor.
“Do it Jamie, Thorn go with her take’em down.” At Merle’s prodding Thorn took out a six inch hunting knife and we both crept along behind the guys threatening my friends. Glenn was down, Andrea had her rifle aimed at the other three men and had taken one down and Tyreese was holding onto Maggie so she wouldn’t run to Glenn. Tyreese and Andrea were the only ones that could really do anything. Why they didn’t have more bodies for protection was beyond me. Or just not gone at all. Thorn and I got up behind a guy a piece. Andrea saw us and shifted her aim. Then in one fluid motion Thorn and I stood our free hands pushing the guy’s head down as we brought the knives round pushing in and in one quick movement we brought the knives round to the other side of their necks and let them drop to the floor. The only guy standing turned slowly his gun coming up to us, but Michonne was there shoving her katana through his chest just as Andrea shot him in the head. I smiled over at Michonne and then remembered Glenn on the floor as I heard Maggie drop beside him. I turned and moved seeing Maggie cradle him in her arms saying no over and over. Then he moved only slightly.
“I can’t…..I can’t breathe.” Then Maggie giggled.
“Of course you can’t silly, you’re dead remember? Oh Glenn I can’t,” But he cut her off.
“No….I really can’t breathe, chest hurts.”
“You’re all a bunch of idiots get the damn suit off him.” Merle growled. I moved and with Tyreese’s help removed the suit from Glenn, to see a huge bruise on his chest.
“It’s hard to breath, but I, ouch, I think I’m fine.”
“No, you’re probably not. You’ve got to at least have a couple of cracked ribs, you could have a punctured lung…I don’t know. You need to stop moving. Get you secured in the prison van and get you back to the prison so Alice can have a look at you. This is serious.” Tyreese said looking Glenn over.
“He’s right Glenn. And what were you guys thinking doing out here?” I asked.
“We were raiding the national guard station. And decided to blow up what we couldn’t take so they couldn’t get anything more.” Andrea stated moving up to us. “But right now we need to get the supplies loaded up and go. I’ll drive the truck for Glenn. There’s more people in this town, we need to make ourselves scarce right now.” There was no point in arguing about them being out here as Andrea was right we needed to move now.
“What’s going on? I heard gun shots. Is everyone ok?” Axel asked coming out of Walmart. I shook my head at his stupidity as Tyreese glared at him.
“Fine, we’re fine mostly. Help us start loading the trucks. We’re out of here.”
We kept the introductions till we all got back to the prison. But as we pulled up in the darkness the lights from Andrea’s truck illuminated T-Dog sprawled out on the floor.
“T-dog? What are you doing out here?” I climbed off the bike and jogged forward. I hoped that Walkers hadn’t got in.
“I needed to get gas from the cars and I fucked up.”
“It’s okay, we brought gas back with us. We’ve got plenty. It’s going to be okay. We just need to get you inside before you get yourself killed.” Andrea said reaching out to pull T-Dog up.
“T, man no need to freak out so bad. What,” I went to ask what he needed the gas so badly for.
“No! You don’t understand. I fucked up. Dale he,” But he cut himself off screaming so loud he was bound to attract any Walkers nearby to us. Everyone pulled out a gun and pointed it to the body on the floor. What we saw shocked us.
“Get me inside. I’m dying here.” Dale gasped and Andrea freaked dropping beside him tears over flowing.
“Dale, god…what happened? “
“Woke up, one of them was gnawing on my leg.”
“Ok move, let’s get him up and inside now!” I commanded. With the Raiders in tow we raced into the Prison. I blew past Daryl as me Tyreese, Spark and Thorn carried Dale down to the infirmary with Andrea leading the way. We blasted into the infirmary seeing Alice cleaning up from delivering Rick and Lori’s baby. But there was no time to gush over the new born.
“Help! I Need Help!” Andrea screamed.