Fighting for our Future {TWD Daryl Dixon}

40: Extermination

Nora's POV:

As I slowly woke up, I groaned from the pain in my head. I could hear the crackling of a fire, along with a bunch of mumbled voices. "Hey Firefly. You waking up?" I blinked a few times to re-adjust my vision, so that it wasn't so blurry. When my vision finally became clear I saw Gareth sitting right in front of me, his face right in mine. I tried to get up, so that I could attack him and run away, but he tied my hands and legs together. "Yeah, you're awake. I'm glad. I was afraid I hit you too hard."

I turned my head so that I was looking at anything else but him. I saw the fire, and noticed that they were cooking something. I squinted my eyes to see what it was, and then gasped at the realization. They were cooking a leg. I still have both of mine though. So who are they cooking?"

I then turned my head to the left where I got my answer. Bob was laying on the ground with one of his legs missing. "Bob.." I then turned back to Gareth. "You're a monster."

"I'm sorry you feel that way." He shrugged. "I told you. I'd become the bad guy to get what I want. To get what we need. What I want is you. What we need is to eat." His dead eyes scanned my face. "Don't worry, we're not going to eat you. Even though they want to. I won't let them."

"You'll never have me." I growled. "I'm not yours. Daryl will find me. He'll kill you."

"Sure he will." He laughed. "Until then, you're mine." He then placed a hand on my leg. "And so is your baby." My eyes widened. Of course he knows I'm pregnant. He's been following us for a while.

I was about to argue when I noticed Bob moving. Gareth noticed too. He left his place next to me, and went up to Bob. Gary got close to my friends face and started speaking. "You waking up?" I noticed Bob become lucid as he finally saw Gareth. I watched the fear spread across his face as he looked at me. "Ah, you're back with us, huh? Good news is, you're not dead yet. That's a relief, right?" I watched as Gareth smirked at his victim. "Try not to read too much into the word yet there. It'll just drive you crazy Bob."

"Leave him alone!" I yelled at my ex. "Haven't you done enough!?"

Gary turned around to glare at me before facing Bob again. "I want to explain myself a little." Gareth crouched down more as he was speaking to my now one legged friend. "You see, we didn't want to hurt you.... Before. We didn't want to pull you away from your group or scare you. These aren't things we want to do. They're things we got to do." Gary slightly shook his head. "You and your people took away our home. That's fair play. Now we're out here like everybody else, trying to survive. And in order to do that, we have to hunt." Gareth then shrugged. "It didn't start that way, eating people. It evolved into that. We evolved. We had to. And now we've devolved, into hunters." The way he is talking, is as if all this is normal. Like he's sane for eating people. He's not. "I told you. I said it. Can't go back, Bob. I just hope you understand that nothing happening to you right now is personal. Yes you put us in this situation and it is almost kind of a cosmic justice for it to be you, but we would've done this to anybody. We will. But at the end of the day, no matter how much we hate this ugly business...." Bob finally looked down to see his leg was missing. "A man's got to eat."

Bob started sobbing at the loss of his leg, and most likely his possible death. "You're fucking sick!" I yelled

Gareth shook his head at me before raising his hand up to his mouth. There was meat in his hand. Meat from Bob's leg. Gary faced Bob again. "If it makes you feel any better. You taste much better than we thought you would."

After Garreth was done eating a piece of Bob's leg right in front of him. He got up and walked over to the windows directly behind us, where a bunch of geeks were threatening to break through. "It's probably pretty stupid to be here. Dangerous. I don't know, maybe not. You can see the threat. That's something. Looking at them makes me feel better about things. My mom used to say every day above ground was a win. Doesn't really apply anymore, but you can still get some perspective." Gary then placed his hand up against the glass as he stared at the geeks. "The glass is gonna break sooner or later. Nothing lasts too long anymore." He let go of the glass and turned back around while speaking to both Bob and I now. "You know, we marked our way here so that we could find our way back after." He then spoke directly to me. "Like you did, the morning before you arrived at Terminus." He shook his head before speaking to both of us again. "So stupid right? I mean..... Back to what?"