Crossing The Line Chapter One

Trial Run

Carol Peletier was gathering berries and mushrooms into a pail when it happened.

She’d gone off from the group, just a little ways, looking for anything that would make their dinner of squirrel, rabbit, fish, or whatever meat Daryl Dixon brought back to the group taste better, when a hand wrapped around her mouth. Another powerful arm encircled her as she dropped the pail and struggled to loosen the hands that gripped her and forced her silence, but it was pointless. The arms were slabs of muscle and she could do nothing to loosen them.

She couldn’t begin to imagine who had hold of her. It wasn’t her husband, Ed. He’d died in the attack that had claimed the lives of Lori Grimes, Amy Harrison, and Maria Pineda the year before. It was that same attack that had forced them out of their first camp, which had been closer to the city, and pushed them back into the hills around the quarry.

“Shhhh…”

Someone whispered in her ear, as he continued taking her deeper into the woods. Carol could only think of four men in the camp who possessed the body type and strength to manhandle her. Rick Grimes, Daryl Dixon, Jim Lasky, and Shane Walsh. The only one of those four men she could picture doing something to frighten her this badly…was Shane.

“Quiet,” her captor said softly.

It was Shane.

“You gonna be quiet?”

She nodded and felt tears spill from her eyes.  

Sophia. Think about Sophia. Don’t do anything that will keep you from getting back to her.

“I’m going to let go. If you scream, so help me God, I will snap your neck like a dry little twig, Carol. Understand me?”

She nodded again, with more vigor, and he let go of her mouth. She kept her word and kept quiet. He turned her to face him and he took either side of her head. She feared he was going to twist and put an end to her life anyway.

“I’ll be good. I won’t scream,” she said in a shaky voice, still with tears spilling down her face. 

Shane nodded encouragingly. “Good. Good. Come with me.”

He took her hand and began leading her deeper into the trees. They were so far gone from camp now she knew that she could scream bloody murder and unless someone was down by the water they wouldn’t hear her. They also wouldn’t be able to pinpoint her location, not the way sound echoed up there.

“Are you going to kill me?” she asked, crying, trying to keep her voice steady. Weakness could sometimes stoke the fires of cruelty in a monster. She’d learned that the hard way at Ed’s fists.

“Not if you do what I say and don’t give me a reason,” Shane said.

He stopped and looked around. The ground was relatively flat. Decades of fallen leaves had made the ground spongy and soft. Shane’s eyes went to Carol. She didn’t have a bad body. She was older than him by at least ten years, maybe more. She had iron gray hair that she kept cut in a pixie cut. If she hadn’t been married with a daughter he would have thought she was a dyke. Hell, for all he knew, she could still be a dyke. Either way, he didn’t give a shit. He wasn’t here for her beauty and he didn't give two flying fucks about her sexuality. He was here to test himself and he told her that.

“I’m here, Carol, to test myself. I need to test my resolve. I need to know what kind of a man I am.”

She looked around, wondering if she could outrun Shane. She couldn’t. She knew it. There was no one around to help her. She was with a man who’d gone mad. She could see that in his eyes. He was insane, and he was going to hurt her, and there was no avoiding it. This wasn’t her first time being hurt by a man. Her stepfather had molested her. Every single time she’d submitted to Ed sexually it had felt like rape to her. This was just one more time. She could survive it. She’d have to, for Sophia.

“I just want to see my little girl again. Please, I’m all she’s got left, Shane.”

“I understand that, Carol,” he said, shaking his head. “I promise, you do right, you’ll get back to her.”

It was a lie. Carol knew a lie when she heard it and Shane Walsh was lying to her now. He was going to rape her and then he was going to kill her to ensure she couldn’t tell on him. She was a dead woman if she didn’t think of something soon. Her eyes searched the wood. There was nothing around to use as a weapon except the small knife she kept tucked in her boot.

“Rick has something I want: Michonne. She’s made it clear she’s not going to choose me over him, so I’m going to have to take what I want from her. Do you understand, Carol? I need to know if I can rape a woman. I need to know if I can do that terrible thing. I figure if I can do it to a friend I can do it to her. Do you understand?”

She nodded, pretending that what he said was the most reasonable, logical thing in the world and that she could sympathize with him. In truth she didn’t understand, at all, but that was beside the point. Keep the monster happy. That’s all that mattered now.

Shane looked around again, to make sure they were alone, and when he did Carol decided she had one shot to get away. She threw the hardest punch she could at his left ear. He cried out in pain and staggered away. Wasting no time, Carol made a run for it. She put every ounce of strength she had into running away, striving to get back to the camp, to the people who would protect her. Heavy weight slammed into her and she screamed as she went down. She screamed and screamed as hard as she could and prayed that if God was there, if He was listening, he would save her.

“Please, don’t!” she shouted. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry, I’ll be good.”

“Yeah, that’s right bitch, you fight,” Shane said, pushing her hands away as she struggled to keep him away from her. “You put up a fight. Let’s see if I got it in me to do this.”

He forced a knee between her legs and shoved her shirt up. Carol looked into his eyes. They were bright with malice and bestial lust. Whatever kind of man he may have been before the Turn, that man was long gone, replaced by a dark creature that was insane and cruel.

He pulled at her pants. Carol struggled to keep her legs closed. Seeing that wasn’t going to work, she brought her left foot up and tried kicking Shane across the side of his head. He shoved her leg away, painfully hard, and slapped her. The hit was so hard stars exploded in front of her eyes and she felt the ground tilt beneath her, making her feel as though she was on some carnival ride or a merry-go-round. Maybe God was answering her prayer in some form or another. Maybe she would black out, Shane would kill her, and she would never regain consciousness to suffer what was to come.

That wasn’t to be her fate, however. Shane flipped her over and she sluggishly tried to lift her heavy limbs. They didn’t want to cooperate. She heard the jingle of his belt, the short sound of his zipper, and then felt his hands finish pulling her trousers down. Her head cleared from a shot of adrenaline at what she knew was coming next. Carol tried to claw at the ground so she could crawl away from Shane but his hold on her was too strong.

The feel of him at her entrance told Carol the fight was useless. Still, she continued to struggle. She continued to plead for him to stop. It seemed that both of those things only excited the animal in Shane. He thrust into her, setting her vagina on fire as he entered her. She was dry with fear and the pain was excruciating.

“Please, Shane, you’re hurting me! Stop, please!”

No amount of begging inspired a feeling of mercy in him, however. He continued thrusting, violently, erratically, and when he came it was harder than he ever had in his life. He found himself almost crying from the pleasure and the power rush he felt as he held Carol down beneath him, overpowering her, forcing her to give him what he wanted.

“Oh, God,” he moaned, and began to laugh. He leaned in and whispered in her ear. “I’ve never come so hard in my life.”

His hands stroked the back of her head. He softly kissed her neck as he deflated inside of her. When he withdrew, he saw blood coated his cock and spilled from her bruised womanhood. She wept quietly in the dirt and waited for whatever would come next. Shane stood and zipped up. He looked around, checking that they were still alone, and then he looked back down at Carol.

“I wish you hadn’t lied to me, Carol,” he said. “See, now I can’t trust you to keep our little secret. You said you wouldn’t run and then you--”

She rolled over and spit at him. “You were going to kill me anyway, you sick fuck.”

She was right. He saw no sense in denying it. He couldn’t trust her to keep her mouth shut. Women couldn’t be trusted, period. He watched her pulling her pants up and zipping them. She knelt on the ground, her head bent.

“I’m sorry, Carol. I’ll make this quick and painless as possible.”

He reached out, intending to snap her neck, but she brought the knife she kept tucked in her boot up and jabbed it right through his left hand. Shane screamed and fell back, and Carol made another run for it. She had her daughter to live for. She had to try.

Carol dodged between the trees, feeling burning pain so intense between her legs that she found it was a wonder she could actually keep moving. Her vision was graying at the edges. She dared one look back, afraid Shane would be there, his gun leveled at her. He was in pursuit, but the pain in his hand distracted him and he couldn’t get a clean shot at her as she continued dodging through the trees.

“Help! Help me!” Carol screamed. She realized she was getting closer to the camp. Surely someone heard her.

“Carol?”

She stopped as she nearly ran Carl Grimes over. She looked back. Shane wasn’t in sight. He must have spotted Carol and hung back, hiding in the trees. Carl took in the blood staining her trousers, between her legs, looked at her swollen face and busted lip, and called for help.

She saw Shane then, a dark, shadowy figure, moving through the trees. Her daughter, Sophia, was not far off, looking at her mother in fear and confusion, unaware that Shane had a gun leveled on her. The message was clear.

Tell, I’ll kill your daughter.

She knew he would do it. There was even the possibility he was ruthless enough to kill Rick, Daryl, Jim, or any other man in the camp before he finished her daughter off, and then her, if she told. She’d long ago learned, the hard way, that threats from men like Shane were rarely empty.

“Carol?”

Rick had arrived. Shane disappeared behind a tree, leaving Carol trembling in doubt and fear.

“Carol?” Rick asked, reaching out to her.

Carol backed away from him. The feelings of shame and violation from what Shane had done to her were fresh and intense, and the thought of another man touching her made her sick to her stomach and made her skin crawl. 

“What happened to you? You’re covered in dirt and mud. You’re bleeding--”

“I fell,” she said, using an old lie that had always worked in the past to keep people, who really didn't want to get involved in her troubles anyway but asked out of politeness and phony concern, at bay. “I took a terrible fall. I almost rolled off the edge of the rocks into the quarry. I would have missed the water and hit the shore,” she said. “I could have died.”

The look of concern in Rick’s eyes was genuine. “My God. What were you doing all the way out there?”

“I was going to look for berries and mushrooms.”

Rick looked her over. “We found your pail. Why didn’t you take--”

“For God sake, Rick! I’ve had a bad fall and I’m still shook. Please, enough with the questions!”

She’d learned one good way to deflect was to guilt trip. It worked on Rick now.

“I’m sorry, of course,” he said. “Let’s get you back to camp, get you cleaned up.”

“I don’t need help, I’m fine. Sophia!”

“You have blood between your legs, Carol,” Rick said suspiciously, perhaps not as easy to deflect as Carol had hoped. He was tenacious and he wasn't convinced that a fall was all that had happened to her. Of course all he had was her word and no proof to the contrary.

“I started my period, is all. Didn’t expect it. I’ll get something when I get back to camp.”

Sophia came to Carol and she wrapped her arms around her daughter. Shane still lurked behind the tree. He pointed to Sophia, then put the nozzle of his gun to the side of his head. Then he mouthed words that struck terror into her heart.

I’ll rape her too.

“Let’s go.”

She started back with her daughter, to the camp, and felt Rick shadowing her the entire way. Carol had a gun in her tent. She was, from that moment on, going to carry it everywhere she went. If opportunity struck, she was going to take Shane out. She would die and take him with her before she let him touch her baby girl.

“Carol, is there something you want to tell me?” Rick said, when they reached her tent.

She urged Sophia inside and then turned to face Rick. She wanted to tell him. She did, but she didn’t know for sure if Rick had what it took to protect her and her daughter. He was a good man, but he was weak. He lived by rules that didn’t fit in with this new world. She didn't believe he was prepared to deal with a man like Shane. She didn't think he could kill a man he’d once called a friend.

“No,” she finally said, seeing Shane walk into camp, his eyes glued to her. “Nothing to tell. I just took a tumble.”

Carol stepped into her tent and zipped it closed behind her.

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