Where Your Loyalties Lie: Book One

The Line Up

Overview: You sit amongst your family in the clearing. Herded by none other than The Saviours, you wait to see what fate has in store for you... but fate has an interesting way of showing itself.

You remembered everything.

The car lights shining like death's beacons; the saviours circled around you with their guns half cocked. The chill exiting your lungs and the haunting brisk of the cold, air floating by you, as if it were nothing but an observer of the events to come.

Truth be told, it was. It was just that. Nothing but an observer. The wind had no need of dreading the situation anymore than you did.

But the only problem was at that point, with your knees digging in the dirt... the dread you were feeling was real. Very real.

You scanned around you. To your left and right sat the people you'd come to know as your own. Your family. Rosita, Maggie, Eugene. But around you? All those men with an evil look in their smiles turned your stomach.

Rick was sweating beyond measure as he knelt but a few bodies down from where you sat. Carl's breath seeped out from between his lips next to you. It was then that the caravan's door opened and from the dark doorway emerged a tall figure. Resting languidly against his shoulder was a baseball bat. From far away, it looked... distorted, somehow.

"Pissing our pants yet?" the man called out.

When he began to amble across the clearing closer to where you all sat, your breathing quickened. Every crunch his boots made against the ground sent shivers down your whole body.

His face became clearer as he approached your group and you began to notice the detailing of his appearance. That crimson scarf around his neck was a near shade of blood and the leather jacket he donned was remarkably well kept. His hair, despite being dark, was slowly going grey near his temples, and his untrimmed stubble stretched across the whole lower half of his face.

He was smiling, too, as if he was enjoying the moment.

He was smiling even when Abraham lay dead in the dirt. He was smiling above Glenn's lifeless body, as well. All the time, he was smiling. And it terrified you.

No sooner than when you'd first been pushed down to the ground had the sun come up. Dawn grew up slowly over the tree's canopies while you all remained sitting in the clearing. Daryl was gone. They'd taken him back to wherever it was they came from. You all sat there, wondering what it was you would do. All the men moved their asses and fled in their trucks, leaving nothing but trails of dust behind them.

That and your broken group.

After what felt like hours, you all eventually made your way back to Alexandria, tired and exhausted. The Saviours had taken what they were owed and Rick seemed to have lost himself completely. What they did, what Negan did. Those images kept flashing in your mind. The bat coming down... over and over... until it didn't.

What sick manner of man could do such a thing?

You kept repeating the same question as you sat on the bed in your house. You were still shaking from the experience, something which you'd never had happen, even after everything you'd already seen since being accepted into the group. Nothing, not even the dead corpses walking the earth, could have prepared you for seeing such gruesome deaths up close.

Negan was in there, too. Your mind kept seeing images of him. If not for the malicious and childish behaviour he emanated, he would have been too attractive to focus on anything else.

You shook your head and slapped your cheek. There was no way in hell you just thought of that. After a moment, you ran your trembling hands through your knotted hair and your eyes began to well. You didn't know what tomorrow would bring.

More death... or an answer to this sudden reign of terror.