I screamed in pain and tried to staunch the blood which poured from my collarbone. "RORA!" Victor yelped as if he were the one the walker had attacked, he was too far away so it was Daryl who finished off my monster.
My red-headed angel looked over at me with concern as serious as agony without noticing the walker stumbling towards him. Even with all the pain radiating through me, I forced my face as hard as stone and shouted at him, "FOCUS DAMMIT!" and he did, saw the walker and finished it off.
"RORA," I saw Robin running towards me and I let go of my poker face and clenched my teeth in torture. I finally let the realisation hit me.
I'd been bitten; there was no place for life in me anymore.
Before my sister could get to me and cry over me and ask if I was okay, I rose my pistol to my head shakily and my twitching finger began to squeeze the trigger-
A tennis-shoed foot drop-kicked my hand, the gun flying through the air and shooting from the impact and Victor stood above me with an expression unreadable: anywhere from anguish to fury. "What the hell is wrong with you?" he breathed weakly, grabbed me by the shoulders and heaved me up.
But I didn't want to move! I wanted to lie down and die.
He peeled my hand away from my shoulder and collarbone and saw the deep teeth marks that that little walker-fuck left in my flesh. Vic's whole face went whiter than normal and his eyes watered but this was no time for me to comfort him.
I was done being strong.
I was done being me.
I sobbed and tears waterfalled down my face. "Kill me! Just kill me, please." I cried and I opened my eyes to see almost the whole group outside with me. Daryl was standing a few yards back, his mouth in a firm line, trying to be strong for me, Robin sobbed into Carl's shoulder and he rocked her, his own tears falling into her hair. Glenn, Maggie and Demitri cried together and Rick was holding Judith in his arms. Hershel, Michonne, Merle, Sasha, Carol, Lee and Clementine all stood, white faced in an arc around us.
Nobody knew what to say.
"P-please," I sputtered, "I'm a danger to all o' y'all!" My accent came across thick as I ripped away from Vic and stumbled a few steps back from them. "I-it hurts," I choked before collapsing to my knees, I turned from my lying position on the road to see Daryl holding back Victor.
I blinked sluggishly and I could only vaguely hear the conversation around me.
"Leave her be, she's gonna be just fine." Daryl growled.
"No, get away from me, man." Victor replied angrily and I heard a sound like a fist connecting with flesh and people fussing over the wounded and nobody came towards me, whether it was fear of what I'd become or because, like Daryl said, they thought I'd be just fine.
I wouldn't be alive to see Robin's baby; was my last thought before I close my eyes and-
____________________________
Hershel pulled the chord on the chainsaw and it roared to life. "YOU CAN'T DO THIS!" Victor screamed from somewhere off in a corner of the dark, stone room we were in.
"It's the only way she'll live." Rick spoke in a cold, heartless voice, He grabbed me by the shoulders and strapped me on a cold, metal table with a chain. The rest of the group -minus Victor, Daryl, Robin and Carl- held a part of me down while my friends and sister stood in a different corner of the room, chained to the walls in heavy duty handcuffs while they screamed protests.
"THERE'S GOT TO BE ANOTHER WAY!" Carl shouted.
"PLEASE, STOP!" Robin cried.
"YOU'LL KILL 'ER!" Daryl roared.
But it wasn't enough.
The roaring scream of the chainsaw shot through my skull and Hershel pushed the spinning blade across my body, from the right side of my neck to my right armpit. I heard a scream of absolute terror and excruciating agony. I looked around curiously to find who it was.
It was me.
____________________________
"We can't keep 'er 'ere! She'll just die and-"
"We're not just gonna kill her, Merle!"
"Maybe we could leave her like we did with Jim-"
"We are not just gonna abandon her like trash on the side o' the road!"
"Well we have to do something."
I groaned as I sat up and immediately fell back down at the excruciating pain in my right shoulder. I gasped and my eyes peeled open to see the whole group staring at me. I was now on the lounge inside the house and judging by the distance between my makeshift bed and everybody else; they were still afraid of me.
Robin rushed to my side with red-rimmed eyes. "Rora, yer gonna be okay." She whispered shakily and stroked my hair comfortingly. "Ya won't turn. Ya can't."
Hershel pushed through the crowd and nudged my sister out of the way. Without saying a word, he held a hand to my head and looked surprised. "You aren't running a fever." He said incredulously.
"So," Sasha spoke up from somewhere near the back of the crowd. "That doesn't mean anything. Sometimes the symptoms start later on."
"It's been four hours, they should've started." Rick contradicted.
"The survival time is different for each person," Michonne said darkly, "it could be anywhere from a few minutes to a few days."
"But the symptoms always start within a few hours," Hershel put in. "It's been four; she should be running a fever."
"Can I say something?" I asked, slowly sitting up. Everyone looked at as if I'd appeared from thin air and I grimaced. "Ya gotta do something. Ya can't just wait for me to turn. What if someone isn't by me when it happens, I could run a rampage: kill everybody-"
"I'll be with ya the whole time." Vic interrupted me.
"So will I," Robin whispered.
"And me," Daryl and Carl said at the same time and I resisted the urge to smile.
"Well that's all set and good, ain't it?" I growled. "But what happens when I wake up? Will you just shoot me? Knife me through the head? Bash my face in? What?"
My friends stared at me with equal looks of horror. Maggie broke down, grabbed Demitri and fled from the room.
"Looks to me like ya have three choices," I continued, "ya can give me a slice o' bread, set me out onto the road. Ya can kill me here, get blood and brain all over the house and scar the kids for life. Or, the far more desirable option; ya can gimme a gun, let me go outside and let me walk so far away that you won't even hear the bullet when I shoot it."
There was a deep silence.
I broke it.
"I choose option three."
