Who We Are | TWD

.047

    Rick stands below me holding out a hand to help me down the ladder. When I don't accept it, he drops his arm dejectedly to his side. I descend the rest of the ladder by myself, jumping to the ground by the last rung and letting my feet hit the soft grass beneath me.

    "We're gonna talk," Rick said as we started slowly in the general direction of our house.

    "Talk? About what? You didn't believe what I had to say a minute ago and I know that's the whole reason we're going to the house right now."

    Rick shakes his head. "I never said I don't believe you. I don't believe him," Rick says quietly, pointing towards the watch tower. I furrow my eyebrows. "You've never given me a reason to not believe you. He has. I can't trust him anymore." He pauses, turning to look at me. "Now, I want to hear what happened." This is my chance.

    "When Carl and I had gone to the wall to see what was going on, we didn't see Enid or Ron around. We hadn't see Ron since . . ."

    "Since what?" Rick asks.

    "Since Carl and I had to save him. When the people came into the community, he was outside. One of them found him. He was being chased in front of our house. Carl and I had gotten the guns, so we decided to take our chances and go outside to save him. Carl shot the man running after him in the leg. When he went down to the road to tell Ron to come inside, the man started trying to plead with Carl. Then, all of a sudden, the man grabbed his leg. Carl lost the grip he had on his gun. He was going to kill him if I hadn't . . ."

    "Hadn't what?" I'm guessing Rick can easily fill in those blanks himself, but wants me to actually say it.

    "I killed him. Shot him in the head. Watched him die." I turn to look up at Rick. "I would do it again. I know I would. I don't know if that thought is scaring me or comforting me."

    "Em, he was coming after you, Carl, and the people in this community to hurt you. You did the right thing. You aren't shooting innocent men. You're shooting killers."

    "Does being a killer make someone deserve to die?"

    "It's just how it has to go, now." We reach the house and Rick motions for us to sit on the porch stairs. I sit down beside him, staring onto the street. "Now, tell me the rest. Tell me about what's going on with Enid." I nod.

    "Well, Carl and I hadn't seen either of them since Ron had left us. After we saved him, Enid, Carl, and I tried to tell him to come inside with us, but he ignored us and ran away. We didn't know if he had gotten in danger after that and something happened. Enid had left right when Carol came by, but she never said anything to us. She wouldn't speak as she went out the door. That's why we were questioning where Ron and Enid were."

    "You thought Ron might be hurt and maybe Enid was hiding," Rick states.

    "Yeah. Enid hides a lot. She's good at it. That's the first thing I thought of when we had decided to look for them, but Carl wondered if she had gone past the walls. She does that sometimes. She's good at it and knows what she's doing, so it isn't as dangerous as it might sound, but with the herd outside, it wouldn't be very good for her to be out there. She wouldn't be able to get back in."

    "So she definitely goes out there?"

    "Yeah," I reply, deciding to exempt the part about Carl and I having sneaked out before, too. "When we were looking for them, we found Ron first. We tried to talk to him, ask him where Enid was. We thought he'd be the first to know. He didn't, but he guessed we were right. I thought that meant that he would help us, but I was wrong. Ron was angry, jealous, and I'm also thinking that he was pretty embarrassed that we had to save him earlier. He wanted nothing to do with it."