CHAPTER ELEVEN xi. IMPRISONED WILD WOLVES MAKE FOR WEAK AND ANGRY BEASTS
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RUTH
IT IS WONDROUS what woes embody life itself. From the words that hurt a lover's heart, to a plague that eventually turns everyone still. Death was the name of this plague. It was inescapable. Each rhythm of the heart beating within a person's chest meant life, but what did it mean if there was no life in the person itself? The heart still beat, but they felt dead. The plague attacking their mind with its little parasites etching into each suture of the skull. Ruth felt the heavy thump in her chest that signaled she was living, but her thoughts provoked ideas that she truly wasn't.
It was all too loud.She couldn't tear her eyes away from the bloody massacre in front of her. The rain poured in showers of crimson and umber, dripping onto the cold metal under their feet. Maggie's sobs rang in her ears, haunting her thoughts with a fear that Ruth could not describe. Rick shouted orders to the others, but his demands sounded underwater. It was muffled to her, feeling nothing but a solemn pit in her chest. Tears ran down her face, for fear that Hershel was dead on arrival.
Fear was just an emotion. It held thoughts like all of its companions, but it ruined the mind. Even people as brave as Rick felt fear. The lurch of their stomachs as it's pulled taut and squeezed by the hands of nerves. Tugging and pulling like the monsters outside her home, tearing into the organs of her lifeless body. Breathing was hard enough just looking at the chaos surrounding her. A hysteria lingered in the air. It suffocated the group like poison, but somehow Ruth was living. Ruth's head started to pound, the adrenaline rushing into her veins. Her ears rang, but she could hear nothing.
The crazy-eyed leader mouthed words to her, but she knew they were shouts of pleading. His hands shook, the crimson paint coating the dips in the skin's fragile structure. One of the limbs reached towards her face, a crazed look in Rick's eyes.
"Ruth." Rick said, the blues looking directly into her face. They burned her. His hand limply shook her shoulder, and that seemed to make her emerge to the surface. "Hey."
"Is he alive?" She whispered, a hint of apprehension lingering in her voice. It cracked and burned on her lips with the chapped and peeling skin that lined her mouth. Her tongue ran across them, and one brow rose slightly in question. Shouts resounded from the group as Hershel was carried swiftly to his cell.
Rick's breaths rattled in his throat, a shaky reply leaving his lips. "Barely."
Ruth nodded, feeling the weight of the situation bear on her shoulders once more. She remembered faint conversations with Jack in college. His dream to become a doctor made him riddle their talks with medical terms and phrases that just barely scraped the edge of her mind. He mentioned proper first aid to her once or twice, and that seemed to be enough to help her in the slightest.
