cycle 44. memory fragments.
1.) SOPHIA
Rick, it ain't like it was before!
Shane is charged up, his voice a roar, his gaze a challenge as it cuts right to you, and for a moment, it's just you and Shane. But just for a moment. You got a walker on the end of the pole in your hands, leashed at the neck, and you are paralysed when Shane yells something barely comprehensible about how you got to fight for it -- it being survival, it always being survival -- before he makes for the barn. (The barn, the farm; it's late in the afternoon, there is sweat under your shirt, there are too many people around.)
He is breaking down the door and no one is stopping him, and you know someone should, that you should, but you're still wrangling the damn walker on the leash, and Hershel has collapsed to his knees, letting this happen, no matter how much you beg.
(Daryl out the corner of your eye, already readying his shotgun, aiming. Waiting and keen. Lori's voice, which can often sink into the noise, pierces through everyone else's when she demands: Rick!)
The barn doors open, and they start coming out.
Dead men, dead women, their faces grey, skin hanging off the bone, their clothes dirty. They open their mouths like they have something to say, but it's always the same animal gurgling snarl, betraying them for the brain-dead freaks they are. They come shambling forward at a trickle, and Shane is shooting. Your friends form a line, and they start shooting too, and Shane takes one look back at you and caps the walker you were wrangling, but you don't join them, heavy hearted. You're responsible for these people, and this feels like mutiny. You know Hershel and his family see these things as people. You know how it must look.
And it does look. Dead bodies collapse when bullet slam clean through their skulls, and it's relentless. You hang back and can't help but watch, until they're all dead, and silence is heavy in the air.
Silent enough that the soft scrape of little shoes on the dusty ground is audible.
The little girl emerges last, her feet clumsy and numb in slightly oversized trainers, a faded rainbow printed on her grimy shirt. Her little hands raise to shield her face, and lower, only to show the way death has cleaved her countenance down to the bone. The way death has blinded her eyes white, and made her mouth into a grey snarl. Unaware and unconcerned of the danger, Sophia -- you know her name -- shambles towards the firing line. And none of them fire, silent in horror.
Silent save for Carol, who comes running, howling her daughter's name so its elongated and stumbling out her mouth, drifting away into a softer keen. Someone catches her before she gets closer. It's to that sound that you are the one to step forward, and take your gun out your holster.
You step forward until they're all behind you and it's just you and Sophia, now, and she stares unseeing down the barrel of the revolver you aim. You wait until she's close enough, so you know for sure you only have to do this once. You fire.
She falls, tumbling to her side without ceremony -- suddenly human in that moment, and properly dead like a human ought to be.
And that's the end of it.
Rick, it ain't like it was before!
Shane is charged up, his voice a roar, his gaze a challenge as it cuts right to you, and for a moment, it's just you and Shane. But just for a moment. You got a walker on the end of the pole in your hands, leashed at the neck, and you are paralysed when Shane yells something barely comprehensible about how you got to fight for it -- it being survival, it always being survival -- before he makes for the barn. (The barn, the farm; it's late in the afternoon, there is sweat under your shirt, there are too many people around.)
He is breaking down the door and no one is stopping him, and you know someone should, that you should, but you're still wrangling the damn walker on the leash, and Hershel has collapsed to his knees, letting this happen, no matter how much you beg.
(Daryl out the corner of your eye, already readying his shotgun, aiming. Waiting and keen. Lori's voice, which can often sink into the noise, pierces through everyone else's when she demands: Rick!)
The barn doors open, and they start coming out.
Dead men, dead women, their faces grey, skin hanging off the bone, their clothes dirty. They open their mouths like they have something to say, but it's always the same animal gurgling snarl, betraying them for the brain-dead freaks they are. They come shambling forward at a trickle, and Shane is shooting. Your friends form a line, and they start shooting too, and Shane takes one look back at you and caps the walker you were wrangling, but you don't join them, heavy hearted. You're responsible for these people, and this feels like mutiny. You know Hershel and his family see these things as people. You know how it must look.
And it does look. Dead bodies collapse when bullet slam clean through their skulls, and it's relentless. You hang back and can't help but watch, until they're all dead, and silence is heavy in the air.
Silent enough that the soft scrape of little shoes on the dusty ground is audible.
The little girl emerges last, her feet clumsy and numb in slightly oversized trainers, a faded rainbow printed on her grimy shirt. Her little hands raise to shield her face, and lower, only to show the way death has cleaved her countenance down to the bone. The way death has blinded her eyes white, and made her mouth into a grey snarl. Unaware and unconcerned of the danger, Sophia -- you know her name -- shambles towards the firing line. And none of them fire, silent in horror.
Silent save for Carol, who comes running, howling her daughter's name so its elongated and stumbling out her mouth, drifting away into a softer keen. Someone catches her before she gets closer. It's to that sound that you are the one to step forward, and take your gun out your holster.
You step forward until they're all behind you and it's just you and Sophia, now, and she stares unseeing down the barrel of the revolver you aim. You wait until she's close enough, so you know for sure you only have to do this once. You fire.
She falls, tumbling to her side without ceremony -- suddenly human in that moment, and properly dead like a human ought to be.
And that's the end of it.