You're Hoping For A Taste

It only takes one second of heated silence before Kellin is on his feet, striding from the room. I try and grab him, try and tell him to wait, but it's like I'm no longer here. The others don't try to stop him. Instead, they follow him.

And I'm forced to do the same.

Jared is silhouetted from behind, the light streaming in through the windows, but it barely brushes the darkness of the shop. The rest of him is in shadow.

Kellin heads straight for him, and Jared makes no move to react. It's only when Kellin grabs him and shoves him toward the door, saying “Outside. Now,” that Jared laughs. The sound of it is high, spiteful, a hyena kind of laugh. I had wanted to avoid confrontation, but that sound sets my blood boiling.

Outside, Kellin and Jared come to a stop just before the petrol pumps, clouds of dirt scuffed up by their shoes. Kellin's face is set like stone, cold and hard and ruthless. Jared is grinning, and I want to slap the smile from his face.

Jesse, Justin and Jack rally behind Kellin while I stand on the edge, like a referee. And I realise why I look like some kind of referee. It's because with every passing second this is looking more and more like a fight. The notion of it bubbles beneath the surface, beneath our feet like magma in its chamber. The eruption is coming.

Jared looks at each of us in turn, still smiling. “Only five of you? What happened to the other one?”

He knows for a fact he's hit a nerve; that was his aim. And as if to prove that point, he chuckles to himself. He looks unhinged. A different kind of unhinged to Kellin, who stands seething in his anger, hands curled into fists at his sides. His posture is rigid, taut. He looks like an animal about to pounce.

“He's dead,” Kellin spits, “and it's your fault.”

“Me?” Jared says. His actions, his tone of voice, are all over-the-top, theatrical. This is the Jared that was lurking beneath everything he did back at the commune. He kept this side of him in check while he was Isaac's right-hand man. But now he has nothing to lose. “I wasn't the one who burned down the commune.”

With those words he fixes his eyes on me. His stare is unnerving, and I can't help but squirm. How did he even know I started that fire? Yet it's not like I was the one who let the Walkers in.

“Gabe died because of you,” Kellin says, grabbing Jared's attention back. “If you hadn't forced us into that fucking commune then he'd be alive right now.”

Jared shrugs. “Not my problem your friend was too stupid to keep away from Walkers.”

Kellin lunges forward, his fist connecting with Jared's nose in a sickening crunch.

“Kellin!” I shout, but he doesn't listen to me, and the others don't stop him. They want this. They want revenge. And I do too. No matter what anyone tells me, I will always carry some of the blame for Gabe's death. But this isn't the way to avenge him, five against one.

Jared laughs, wiping at the blood streaming from his nose, but it just keeps on coming, so he ignores it, red spots spattering his filthy t-shirt. As he speaks, his smile fades, the laugh seeps from his eyes, and a feral look takes over, gaining control. “I've spent days following you,” he says. “Thought I'd lost you a couple of times, but you weren't that hard to find again. Your friend died? Well boo-fucking-hoo. I just lost my home. I just lost everything I cared about.”

It's Jesse's turn to laugh now, the sound of it echoing off the metal around us. “You call that place a 'home'? It wasn't a home, it was a fucking prison. An asylum. I'd never seen a place so fucked up.”

Jared's makes a move now, but instead of throwing a punch he rips a gun from his waistband, concealed beneath his t-shirt, and aims it right at Jesse. The others retaliate almost immediately. All four of them flinch away, taking a few steps backward, their rifles left behind in the store room. And I realise I'm the only other one with a weapon. There had been only five guns in the car when we took it. Four rifles and one handgun. Gabe had taken the handgun; the guys had joked they didn't trust him with a rifle. I had gone without. But when Gabe died, his handgun passed to me.

And as I stand here, I think how fitting it would be to kill Jared with Gabe's gun.

“Put the gun down Jared.” My voice comes out calmer and more controlled than I had expected it to, all despite the fact my heart is floundering like a fish out of water.

He turns his head to look at me and smirks. “Or what? Are you gonna burn me alive too?”

I shake my head. I know he's probably beyond reasoning with, but I have to try.

“Don't, Alexa,” Kellin says, he's looking at me, his gaze so intense it could burn holes through me.

But I ignore him. “So I might have started the fire accidentally,” I say to Jared, “but those Walkers didn't get into the commune because of us. That's not our fault. If you have a problem with anyone, it's me. But I'm sorry about the fire. I'd just been trying to save Gabe.”

“Do you think I care about any of that now?” Jared asks, his voice sharp, spit flying from his lips. “I couldn't give a shit. None of that matters.”

“Then why are you doing this?” I reply, exasperated.

Kellin moves, just a fraction, but instead of aiming the gun at him, Jared swings it to point at me. Just like the others, I flinch. It's amazing how much power a little thing like a gun can hold.

“Leave her,” Kellin says. His anger is morphing into desperation, I can see it in the way his eyes flick from me to Jared, me to Jared.

Jared doesn't answer, just keeps the gun trained on me.

I can feel my heart in my chest, my throat, my fingertips. So many hearts. But it only takes that one in my chest to stop to take me down.

Yet Jared doesn't have it in him to kill me just yet. His hands tremble ever so slightly.

“Do you think another person dying is gonna solve this?” It's Kellin's job to try and reason with Jared now. Suddenly this has become less about revenge and more about survival. “Just put the gun down. Point it at me, if you want, I don't care. Just leave her out of it.”

I fix Kellin with a glare. He is not putting his own life in front of mine again. I'm not going to let him. I can't have someone else's death on my hands.

I could reach for my gun, but I bet Jared would shoot me before I even had it drawn. He's not listening to anything we're saying either. I can't think. I can't think of what to do. My brain has been sucked dry by fear.

That's when Kellin makes his move.

Jared is still looking at me, his eyes searing mine, when Kellin rushes towards him. Crouched, like a bull charging, he tackles Jared.

And the gun goes off.

Pain flowers. White hot. Drilling into my arm. My legs go from under me all of their own accord. I hit the ground, reach for the place where the pain flourishes like I can grab it and pull it out. My hand grows warm. Warm and wet. I look at my arm, my upper right arm. Vivid rivulets of blood seep between my fingers. It almost doesn't seem like mine.

Justin is at my side, his hands hovering just above my wound.

All I can frantically ask is, “Did the bullet go in? Did it go in?”

“I don't-” Justin starts. “I'd have to see it. You have to pull your hand away. We need to wrap it up. Alexa. Alexa, look at me.”

But I can't. Not while Kellin's fist is striking Jared's face over and over and over again.

“Kellin stop!” I yell, but my voice is hoarse, raspy with pain.

Oh God it's burning.

He won't listen to me. It takes Jesse and Jack to drag him off Jared, who lies there bloody and dazed, his gun skittered just out of reach. The two of them push Kellin away, and when he tries to shove past them they have to restrain him. He struggles and shouts while they hold him and speak urgent, calming words. And that's when his legs just go out from under him too, and just before he buries his head in his hands I see his face crumple.

“Alexa,” Justin pleads, “we need to sort this out. Just move your hand.”

It takes me a moment to turn away from Kellin, sat on the ground in silence, but I know he's crying by the way his back shakes. Tears slide down Jesse's face too, and he angrily wipes them away.

I pull my hand away from my throbbing wound. I can't stop myself from staring at my palm. It looks like I've slathered it in red paint, ready for finger painting.

An inadvertent grin breaks out on Justin's face. “The bullet only grazed your arm. Shit, it only grazed it.”

He's right. The wound is an oval, like the very top layer of skin and muscle has just been grated off. Instinctively, I raise my arm to try and slow the blood flow.

“Alexa,” Kellin's voice cuts in.

Suddenly he's falling to his knees in front of me, his movements sharp and ungainly there's so much adrenaline in him.

“It's fine,” I tell him. “Just a graze.”

Every breath brings a new flourish of pain.

“No, it's not,” he says, shaking his head fiercely. “It's really not.”

And before any of us know what he's doing, he reaches for Jared's gun where it lies on the ground, raises it, and shoots.