Remnants -- Remake (Carl Grimes Gay Fanfiction)

7: Broken

Breathe...

Just breathe...

I stumbled along, lost a dense, endless blur of greens and browns that composed the colossal woodland I found myself in.

Somehow, I had escaped the herd.

I'd been able to summon all the strength I had left - which certainly wasn't much - into pushing my way through the thinnest part of the herd. I had simply closed my eyes and charged at them, breath held and arms outstretched.

Somehow, I had escaped. But that hardly signified a success.

I collapsed to my knees, peering at my arm, which was now smeared with blood. It seeped slowly but surely from the bite and trickled down my forearm, before dripping from the tips of my fingers and pattering on the ground, merging with the rain and the leaves and the dirt.

I was still in sheer disbelief. It didn't seem real.

This sort of thing always happened to somebody else. You might have been sad or angry or guilty, but you never truly felt their pain or their fear. Their death might have torn you apart, but at least you could tell yourself, as selfish as it may have been, that it wasn't you.

Not this time.

I may have willingly done this - risked my life and ultimately sacrificed myself for Carl - but it wasn't like the movies; I wasn't going to die thinking that I did the right thing, I wasn't going to die in peace or with a smile on my face.

I was terrified.

I was going to die. But not just that; I was going to come back.

There was nothing I could use to stop it. My pistol was empty, so there was no hope of my ending my suffering and misery, and I'd lost my knife during the fight with the walkers, so amputation wasn't an option either.

Maybe I'd shamble back to Alexandria. Maybe Carl would be the one to see me - or Rick, or Daryl, or Carol, or Michonne, or any of them. Surely they'd put me out of my misery. Unless they didn't see me. What if it was me that found them? What if I attacked them while they were out on a supply run - or even out searching for me?

I might kill one of them. I might kill Tyreese - the only reason Sasha had left to live. Then she'd probably take her own life. Or I might kill Rick; Carl's only surviving relative, and then there's no telling what he would do.

Hell, I might even kill Carl himself...

I couldn't take that chance. I had to do it. I had to find a way to end it all.

However, the unmistakable sound of a pistol hammer being clicked into position caught my attention, and I froze in my tracks before turning reluctantly to face the source of the sound, hand clutching my bite wound.

A group of five armed gunmen were pointing their weapons at me, having managed to surround me whilst I was too preoccupied with my pathetic, suicidal thoughts.

Maybe I won't be killing myself after all.

I had been surrounded before, just a few minutes ago. I had escaped, but I was doomed to die. The men that surrounded me noticed that, too, as their eyes simultaneously fell upon the bloodied hand that clutched my wounded arm.

"Were you bitten?" one of the men stepped forward and asked in a gruff voice, raising his pistol so that it now aimed between my eyes rather than at my chest.

These people aren't messing around.

He wore a dark grey raincoat and his most prominent feature was a menacing black eye-patch that concealed his right eye.

I peered down at my bitten arm.  The blood that oozed between my fingers was certainly an indication that I had been injured, but I was gripping the wound as tightly as I could, so they had no idea what was underneath.

If I tell them that I'm bitten, I'm nothing more than a threat. They'll just kill me right here.

"No," I replied hastily, after a brief moment of contemplation, "no... It's a gunshot wound. Someone shot me."

The rest of his men now took their eyes off me, cautiously surveying the area to ensure that the 'shooter' wasn't still here. Even if they didn't believe me completely, I had at least fooled them for a moment.

The eye-patch-man, however, remained focused on me.

"Really..." he eyed me skeptically.

His expression was unmistakable; he could read me like a book.

"Move your arm," he instructed bluntly, motioning to the bloody wound.

I hesitated for a moment.

"Now," he instructed in a sneer, taking a step closer so I could practically see straight down the cold, steel barrel of his glistening handgun.

He's not screwing around. Hell, they'll kill me either way....

"I won't ask again," he insisted, and it was obvious from the way his men grimaced and looked away in anticipation - as though they had seen him do this sort of thing before - that it wasn't just an empty threat.

"Fine," I sighed, withdrawing my now sticky hand from my arm, and revealing the deep set of jaw-marks to the gunmen that surrounded me.

"You're a terrible liar," he sighed, lowering the pistol and taking a step back as his men now approached me with their weapons raised. It looked like some sort of military routine, as though they'd trained for these situations for years.

"You know, you look like a broken man," he regarded me with what I could only describe as a look of sympathy, before one of the soldier's rifle-butts thudded heavily against the side of my skull.

In an instant I had collapsed to the ground, vision swimming and sound distorted as I groaned in pain.

"But all broken things can be fixed soon enough."

Then, my vision faded to black.

-END OF ACT ONE-