Walker? or Zombies? (Walking Dead Game x Strong OC)

Chapter 40: Lost to the Ice

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The world, which had been a screaming cacophony of rage and recrimination, was suddenly plunged into a new kind of sound: the sharp, terrifying crack of breaking ice and the choked, desperate gasp of a man being swallowed by the freezing black.

"LEE!"

Carley's raw, piercing scream shattered the initial, stunned silence. The argument was forgotten, their petty squabbles instantly vaporized by the sheer, adrenaline-fueled horror of the moment. They all scrambled to the edge of the jagged, new hole in the ice, their faces masks of pale, disbelieving terror.

The scene was a nightmare. Lee was struggling in the lethally cold, dark water, his movements already becoming slow and sluggish as the shock of the temperature stole the strength from his limbs. The heavy winter coat he wore was now a waterlogged weight, pulling him down like an anchor.

The group was a mess of useless, frantic panic.

"Grab a rope! A branch! Anything!" Luke yelled, his face ashen as he dropped to his stomach, trying to distribute his weight to get closer to the edge.

Kenny was on his knees, his one good arm reaching out over the hole, his face a mask of pure, desperate agony. "Lee! Hold on! Just hold on, goddammit!"

But they were too far away. The ice around the hole was a fragile, spiderwebbed mess, and every move they made sent new cracks shooting across the surface. They were helpless.

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From the edge of the chaos, Zack watched. The world for him was a swimming, distorted, and feverish nightmare. The poison from the bite was a raging fire in his veins, and the faces of his friends were blurry, indistinct shapes.

But the sight of Lee drowning, and the sound of Clem's raw, terrified screams... they cut through the hazy fog of his sickness like a bolt of lightning.

In that moment, everything became terrifyingly, absolutely clear.

He saw it all. The path he was on. The monster he had become on the ice. The cold, empty future that awaited him in a few short hours or days—a future of succumbing to the fever, of turning into one of the very things he had spent his life fighting. A future where he would become a threat to the one person he had sworn to protect.

Flashes of memory, sharp and vivid, cut through the fever. Lee, at the drugstore, handed him a piece of candy with a tired smile. Kenny, on the train, clapping him on the back after a successful raid, a rare look of grudging respect in his eyes. And Clem... a dozen images of Clem. Clem is laughing on the swing set at the farm. Clem looked at him with absolute faith as he told her to jump across the sewer chasm. Clem, just two days ago, was pushing a piece of bread through a tiny slot in a metal door, her small, defiant act a beacon in his darkness.

This is it, a quiet, calm voice said in the back of his mind. This is the end. I'm a dead man.

He looked at Lee, the man who had tried to be his friend, his mentor, his father. He looked at Clem, who was screaming Lee's name, her small face a mask of pure, unadulterated terror.

He saw his one last, final, impossible choice laid out before him. An option to die in the shadows, a monster consumed by a secret sickness... or to die in the light, a hero giving his last breath to save a life. A choice to die as the monster they now feared, or to die as the brother she had always loved.

It was not a choice to die. It was a choice of how he died. It was his one final chance for redemption.

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