Tonight the World Dies

A group of men surround us, and instantly I know they’re the group from the ravine. They’re just as filthy, just as rough. A couple of them are missing teeth. Their clothes are in tatters, and they’re leering at us like they’re the sharks and we are the chum. Aaron, Daryl, and I are spaced a few apart, leaving us vulnerable.

One man steps forward. “Well, looky here. We caught some live ones.” He is missing an entire row of front teeth and has a lisp. He wears an intimidating buck knife on his hip that’s as long as my forearm. His eyes rake over all of us hungrily, until they settle on me. A spark lights up in his eyes, though it foretells of something dark swirling in his mind. He grins, showing off his pallid gums.

“Well, what do we have here?” he saunters over to me, and with a quick look over my shoulder, my arms are suddenly jerked behind me roughly. Daryl and Aaron both move but are quickly felled with rough hits to their backs. They are shoved to their knees as a hand curls in my hair and jerks my head backwards, baring my neck to the slime ball in front of me.

He set his hands on my waist and moves them, feeling my flesh beneath my clothing. He smirks at me as he pulls my hatchet from the holster on my hip and tosses the weapon away. He reeks of body odor, sweat, alcohol, and overall death, and it takes all I have to keep from puking. Then he leans his head into my neck and inhales deeply. His tongue snakes out under those grimy gums and licks a foul trail up to my ear. Fear runs rampant through me, but a raging fire has also begun to burn. These are not the first men like to this to cross my path, the kind who take what they want from whomever they want—the kind of people places like Alexandria can’t save.

Daryl is struggling against his captors. Both he and Aaron are on their stomachs, their arms behind their backs. Two of the men are sitting on them, keeping them pinned. The remaining men standing have their guns pointed at their heads. The slime ball in front of me pulls his tongue away, breathing in my face. I fail at hiding my grimace as the rage begins to take hold. I glare fiercely at him as he grins.

“We’re gonna have fun with you,” he taunts, dragging a dirty finger down the side of my face. I jerk my head away from him. He chuckles, a dark, whistling sound that whooshes through the gap in his mouth. “Yer a feisty one. I like a fight. Strip her boys.”

One man is suddenly on me, and Daryl rages beneath his hold as my shirt is ripped roughly from my body, leaving me clad in a dirty bra. My blood is hot with ire, fueling my determination to not fall victim to these people again. As one of the men stoops to unbutton my jeans I take my shot. I bring my knee up hard into his chin, snapping his jaws together painfully. He cries out, and my booted foot breaks his nose, sending him careening backwards. The force knocks me and the man restraining my arms backwards, and the commotion has distracted the men sitting on Aaron and Daryl. The latter wastes no time as he propels his body upwards from his knees, and the man on top of him topples off.

I land roughly on the man behind me and drive my elbow into his chest, knocking the wind from him. He gasps for air beneath me, and I hardly think about it as I scramble to my feet and bring my boot down hard on his head. He’s unconscious, and I turn my attention to my hatchet that’s been thrown away. I see it lying beneath a thorn bush and dive for it the same time the leader charges me with an animalistic snarl. My fingers brush the handle, but I’m knocked from behind. I manage to avoid the thorn bush, but the hatchet is now out of my reach. The leader has landed atop me, attempting to grab at my throat. I bring my knee up between us as we grapple and hold him off. Wedging my foot against him, I kick out and throw him off balance, giving me time to scramble to my feet.

I can hear a scuffle going on further away, but I’ve got tunnel vision on my hatchet and on the rat behind me. The hatchet is in my hands and I turn, slowly. The leader has gotten to his feet, a steely glare on his face but it changes so fast to a look of fear and surrender. I take a step towards him to a soundtrack of a fist meeting a face, but I don’t turn to look. Instead, I jerk forward and grab the man by the torn collar of his shirt and pull him closer to me, wielding the hatchet at eye level.

“So, you like taking things that don’t belong to you?” I ask him coldly. His eyes are wide and sweat has broken out on his forehead. Without another word, I tighten my grip on my hatchet and lift it high, bringing it down on the joint between his neck and shoulder.

His cries are loud in my face and blood sprays from the wound, coating me and the forest floor. He sinks to his knees, trying to bring his hands up to staunch the wound, but I knock his hand away with my free one. I yank the hatchet free from his body, and the blood comes faster. My face is cold steel as I bring the hatchet up and across his body, slicing his thin chest open from his wound to his opposite nipple. What’s left of his shirt is suddenly drowned in a river of blood.

My head is rushing, I can feel the blood in my ears, feel my heartbeat against my ribcage. It’s slow and steady and my thoughts are blank as I slowly drive my hatchet into the man’s body over and over again. He’s long stopped screaming, but I’m hitting him so quickly that his body doesn’t have the chance to fall. Only when I can’t see through the blood in my eyes anymore do I stop. My breathing surprisingly even, despite how heavy my arm feels. The body thuds to the ground, a shredded mess of blood, flesh, and muscle.

I drop the hatchet into the dirt, pulling my eyes from the body at my feet. I step away, blood dripping from my eyebrows. I glance up, and for a moment I feel ashamed as I take in the petrified stare of Aaron and the eerily stoic one of Daryl. He watches me like one would a strange snake, not sure if I’m venomous or benign. My skin breaks out in goosebumps and I remember I’m topless save for my bra, which is now spattered with blood. Red stains my hands, but I lift them anyways to wipe at the blood dripping in my face. A rag appears under my nose, courtesy of Daryl, and I hastily try and clean myself up. Daryl makes a gesture when I try and hand his rag back to him, so I stuff it in my back pocket.

The bodies of the other men litter the ground, and I wonder how the two of them managed to take on the rest of them.

“One of ‘em got away,” says Daryl beside me. He doesn’t look at me as I glance at him. Aaron is pointedly keeping away from me. Regret replaces the numbness I’m feeling.

“We need to go before their buddies come find us.” He nods, chewing on his lip, and we make our way back to the car.

Silence engulfs the car on the ride back to Alexandria. Aaron shoots me wary looks in the mirror, and every time we lock eyes a sharp pain shoots through my chest. Guilty comes nowhere close to describing the way I’m feeling. It settles over me like a big, black cloud, refusing to drift away. When we pull through the gates, I’m out of the car before it comes to a complete stop. I wince when I hear the gasps, the murmurs, but I keep my head down and keep walking.

I walk past my house; I don’t want to be there, where someone can find me and try and ask me what happened. I keep going until I’ve hit the very back end of Alexandria. There are only empty houses back here, and it’s darker where the trees extend over the wall and throw the entire block into shadow. It’s fitting. I choose a house and enter it. There is no furniture, and the door echoes as it closes. I choose a dark corner of the living room and kitty-corner myself against the wall. My hands are then fisted in my hair as I open my mind, let it take me through the events of the day so I can figure out just where I’d shut down.

I’m surprised to learn everything is fuzzy and my memory isn’t so clear on what happened. I remember the ravine, the men, being cornered, but everything after that drifts in and out. Is this what a psychotic break feels like? Without me realizing it, I’ve started crying and hyperventilating. My chest is tight, like it’s bound in a brace, cutting off my airways. My knees are soaked from the tears that stream in rivulets down my face. They’re tinted pink. I remember I never really cleaned myself up, so I know I must’ve looked a state to the Alexandrians.

I stay there until it gets dark, and though I didn’t expect anyone to, I’m glad no one came looking for me. I’m not sure I even know how I would respond. No doubt Daryl has told Rick of the events of the day, though whether he’s told him about my episode, I’m clueless. The streets are quiet as I walk back, my arms crossed over my chest as I attempt to keep myself warm. It isn’t all that cool, but my body is in some kind of state, and goosebumps rise on my bare skin.

The light is on in the living room when I walk in. Out of my peripheral, I can see Glenn, Maggie, Rick, Daryl, Carol, Aaron, Abraham, and Rosita sitting or standing. Like a flock of flamingos their heads whip around to look at me, but I purposely keep my eyes trained downward and head upstairs. I don’t want to see the looks of fear on their faces—fear of me. I shut myself in the bathroom and stare, expressionless, at my reflection. My skin is coated in blood. All that is visible are my eyes, which blink blankly. I turn away, disgusted with myself, and turn the shower on, running the water as hot as I can stand it.

My face is the first thing I scrub. The water runs pink as the blood is washed away, but I can still see it, feel it on my hands no matter how hard I try and scrub it away. When I’m as clean as I’ll get, I merely sit down against the tiled wall of the shower, my arms around my knees and a far-off expression on my face.