Crossing The Line Chapter Eight

Don't Look Back

Six Months Later

Hershel sat on the front porch with his corn pipe and listened as Patricia played the guitar and Beth sang some of his favorite old spirituals. His belly was full from a delicious dinner of grilled trout that Andrea had fished from a nearby fishing hole, and that had been followed by a lemon birthday cake Beth had made for his birthday.

Life was good. Spring had come and they were planting crops that could be canned to last them throughout the winter and into the next year. They would have food. The only thing that would have made the evening better was if his wife, Annette, and his son Sean, were there to celebrate. Even after six months he, Beth, and Maggie were still trying to adjust to the knowledge there was no cure and their beloved family was gone from them forever. Hershel decided that later that night, before going to bed, he’d put some flowers on their graves.

Carl stood at the edge of the porch with Michonne and his father. They’d spoken to him the previous November about marriage and he hadn’t been entirely comfortable with it at first. Over time, however, he’d warmed quite nicely to the idea. As long as his father wasn’t trying to replace his mother in his heart completely, he was okay with having a stepmother. 

Now Michonne had a tape measure out and was measuring him for a suit that Patricia was going to help sew for the wedding. The gown was coming along nicely but Carl was hard to pin down. He’d hit a growth spurt and was shooting up like a weed, forcing the trousers to have to be restarted and lengthened again and again.

“Let’s just wait until he’s twenty-one and quits growing,” Michonne said, exasperated. “He’s quarter of an inch taller than last time we measured him.”

“It’s not like I can control it. I’m not growing taller on purpose,” Carl complained.

Rick snorted with amusement. “You’re voice is still trying to change. You keep squeaking.”

“Dad!” Carl said with a glare.

Hershel found himself smiling as he refilled his pipe and watched Maggie reclining against Daryl. He had a feeling they’d be making a wedding dress for her soon enough. The two were inseparable and Maggie spent more evenings on the farm with him than she did at home. Beth was also picking up that habit, and Hershel just decided it would be easier for everyone involved if he accepted his little girls were in love and he couldn’t make them stay ten years old forever.

“Hey! Hey!”

Beth stopped singing as Dale came running from the lookout post. He was waving his arms and Rick stood up with a sinking feeling. He rushed down the steps as Daryl stood with Maggie.

“Truck coming!” Dale said. “It’s Shane.”

“Oh, no,” Beth said fearfully.

“It’ll be okay,” Glenn said, from his place beside her. He took her face in his hands and kissed her. “We’ve planned for this. We’ll make it through. I’ll die before I let anybody hurt you.”

“Come on, Beth. Let’s get to our places,” Maggie said.

She, Patricia, and Andrea went inside. Andrea and Maggie had posts on the second floor, where the windows had been boarded up, and reinforced, with metal plates. Gun ports had been welded out of them, offering as much protection as possible. Beth and Patricia had the job of giving Andrea and Maggie ammo when needed, or to take over should one of them be shot. Rick and the others went into the house and took up places behind the reinforced windows with the ports, also ready to fight. The house and grounds were quiet when Shane’s truck rolled up.

He stood in the back of an armored truck with a gun mount on the back. A metal wedge that looked something like a snowplow was mounted on the front, which made it perfect for ramming. Two other men stood with him, and there were two more in the front. The men looked like stereotypical cutthroats. They were big, muscular, and bearded. They looked like they thrived on violence rather than shied away from it. There was an eagerness in their smiles as they prepared for the fight.

“Rick! I came to have a word with you. Michonne, too. Come on out. I promise I won’t fire a shot.”

Rick looked over at Michonne and nodded.

“You can’t be serious,” said Daryl, reading him. “You’re not gonna go out there.”

“I’ll go on the porch,” said Rick. “Cover me. Michonne, you st--”

“If you tell me to stay here I’m going to laugh in your face before going out first,” she said.

Rick sighed. He’d sooner move a mountain with his little finger than change her mind.

“Let’s go. Be ready to come back in if they start shooting.”

“Don’t you mean when they start?” said Glenn.  

*****

Shane took one look at Michonne and his resolve began to crumble. He’d come to wipe Rick and his people out. Seeing her, however, brought back old feelings he thought his rage had burned out.

He wasn’t completely without honor, however. He was willing to leave the women in peace, and even let the old man live, if Rick would give himself up.

“I can’t imagine we’ve got a whole lot left to say, Shane,” Rick said, standing on the porch with Michonne beside him.

“No, man, we don’t. We’re heavily armed. We’ve got ammo,” he said.

“Same here,” Michonne said. “You think we haven’t prepared for this?”

“We can have a battle. We can tear this house down with bullets, plow through it with the truck, and kill everyone inside, or, and this is the important part, you can give yourself up, Rick.”

Rick and Michonne exchanged glances. “I should trust your word why, exactly?”

Shane jumped down from the truck and came to stand in front of it. “We were friends once. I’m willing to spare the ones you love in memory of that friendship.”

“Hmmm…” Rick made a sarcastic show of thinking Shane’s offer over. He knew it was bullshit. Shane was nothing if he wasn’t a liar. “Considering all you did at the camp the night you left, I think I’ll pass. Our friendship is long over and I vowed that when I saw you again, I was gonna kill you, our history be damned.”

“What do you mean all I did that night?”

“Your gunshots drew walkers down on us. Carol lost Sophia. Jim and Jacqui were bitten. You shot Carl. You shot my son, Shane, and he damn near died.”

Shane took in a deep breath at this news. He’d never had anything against Carl. In fact, he’d seen so much of his mother in him that he’d always had a soft spot for the boy.

“He pulled through?”

“Yes, but barely.”

“None of that matters now, Rick. If you won’t give up, then we’ll just have to start shooting.”

“Or we could do this another way. You and I can have it out man to man. I win, you leave us in peace. You win, I come with you.”

“I win and you…” Shane’s voice trailed off. It took Rick a moment to realize Carol had emerged from the house and now stood by Rick’s side. “Fuck,” he whispered, when his eyes saw Carol’s swollen belly.

“Carol, get back inside,” Rick said.

“No. I’m staying for this. I want to face him. I’m never running from him again.”

*****

Shane felt as though the rug had been pulled out from under his feet when he saw Carol emerge from the house. She was pregnant. His baby was right there, less than forty feet away from him, growing inside her womb.

His baby.

His eyes went to Carol’s. There was so much hate there that it felt like a physical burn to his flesh. He couldn’t blame her. If he was a woman who’d been raped he’d be just as bitter. She would never love him, he knew that, but the baby she carried…that would be his. He could raise the child, using Carol to breastfeed it until it could eat solid foods. Then he could set Carol free with some supplies and give her a fighting chance on her own.

“Change of plans,” he told his men, and Rick. “I’ll make you a deal, Rick. You give me Carol and my baby, and I’ll leave, never to return.”

“What?” Rick said, a look of astonishment on his face.

“That’s my baby she’s carrying. Look, Rick, I know you were always into the women’s liberation bullshit, talking about equality and all that. That shit was fine before the world went to hell. There’s a reason why men were in charge from the dawn of time--we’re stronger. It’s on us to protect and provide for our women and children. Carol’s pregnant with my baby. As far as I’m concerned that makes her mine.”

Rick’s astonishment only continued. It would have been amusing were Shane not deathly serious.

“She’s not yours, Shane. You raped her,” Rick shouted. “You forced yourself--”

“I know what I did, Rick! I don’t need you to stand there and repeat it,” Shane said, annoyed. “It’s Carol and my baby or all-out war.”

“War,” Rick said, without hesitation.

“Really? You’re gonna risk your woman and your son to keep me from mine?” Shane said, shaking his head.

“I’m not yours,” Carol said. “This baby will never be yours.”

“We’ll see about that,” Shane said, going back to his men. “Don’t hit the pregnant woman. You do, I’ll personally end you. Fire!”

Carol jumped in front of Rick and Michonne, forcing Shane’s men to stand down. She backed into the house with them and slammed the door. From inside the house Andrea opened fire from upstairs, taking one of Shane’s men out. The remainder of them fired back on the house. The bullets from Rick’s people bounced uselessly off the truck. He ordered them to stop wasting ammo and wait for a clear shot.

The driver of the truck gunned the engine and sped toward the house. The truck busted up the porch and almost made it through the front door. The impact busted the front windows of the house out, causing glass to fall like knives onto the porch. Inside, Hershel got a clear shot at one of Shane’s men and managed to put a bullet through his shoulder. The man fired back, nearly taking Hershel’s head off.

“Carol!” Shane shouted. “I know you hear me! Come with me now. End all this! When the baby is weaned I’ll let you go. You probably don’t want any child of mine. I’ll raise it for you! Carol!”

Inside Carol hunched down on the floor, listening to Shane hollering and feeling the baby react to the noise and distress by kicking hard inside of her. For the first time since she realized she was pregnant she felt a rush of maternal protectiveness for the baby. She’d spent the entire pregnancy angry and unattached to it, dreading its birth, dreading having to look at it and be reminded of its horrible conception.

Now that bullets were flying and she realized the baby could die, now that she felt its distress in its frantic kicks, she felt the first stirrings of affection for it. Shane wanted the baby. She could very well birth it, feed it until it was weaned, and then die at Shane’s hand. She doubted he’d actually release her. He’d kill her out of spite.

Then she could go to be with Sophia. She loathed that she was too cowardly to take herself out. She could let Shane do it.

He’d just keep you, rape you again and again, force you to have another baby, she thought. After all, he now considers you to be his woman. It isn’t the baby’s fault. It didn’t ask to be created the way it was. She had told herself that same thing, it seemed, a million times, but this was the first time it meant something to her.

Carol pressed a hand to her belly and waited while everything fell silent. A standoff had been reached. For how long, she didn’t know.

*****

“How many women you say is in there?” Danny Posada said. He was, Shane had realized early on, a psychopath that made him look like a lovable puppy.

“I saw a couple with Andrea and Carol. There’s Michonne, then the woman Dave said he’d seen at the farm. Six at least.”

“Six women,” Posada whistled low. “I want the black woman. She looked hard as nails.”

“She’s mine,” Shane said.

“I thought you had the pregnant woman?”

“She’s mine too. The rest of them are good-looking women. I’ll let you have Andrea,” Shane promised, though he intended to do no such thing. Posada would torture her to death in a few hours. As soon as this was over, he planned to put a bullet in the man’s head. None of the others would miss him.

“Andrea…”

“Long legs, blonde, hot as hell,” Shane said.

Posada was mollified. “Sounds good.”

“The rest of them hot?” asked another man, Patrick Nichols. He was a twitchy ex-Marine but not a bad guy. Well, not by their group’s standards.

“I can’t vouch for the older woman Dave saw, but yeah, I saw the others. They’re young and pretty,” Shane said.

“How long will we wait?” Posada asked.

“As long as it takes. Don’t pester me with bullshit questions about time. We stay, in the trenches, until we get into the house. First man who thinks up a plan to get us inside gets two bottles out of that case of rum that I found last week.”

The men grinned and Shane could see the cogs turning. The only one not in high spirits was Harold Dalton. He’d taken a bullet to the shoulder and wasn’t too pleased about it. Charlie Adams started stitching him up from the first aid kit they’d brought with them. He’d been a field medic in the army and knew his shit, but there was nothing he could do to save Gayle Rollins, who had a bullet expertly placed right between his eyes.

“How’s Dalton?”

“He’ll live,” Charlie answered.

“I got an idea,” said Nichols. “Set the house on fire. They’ll have to come out. Then we can pick the men off and take the women.”

Shane clapped him on the shoulder. “That’s why you get paid the big bucks. If it works, those bottles of rum are yours.”

“Damn. Why didn’t I think of that?” Posada lamented.

“Drive to the side of the house. Light it up,” Shane ordered.

Shane and the others covered Posada while he jumped into the driver’s seat. He brought the heavy truck around the side of the house while Adams took one of their full fuel cans and began to splash gasoline on the side of the house and poured it around the base. He lit an entire book of paper matches and dropped it onto the gasoline-soaked grass at the base of the house. It lit up with a loud bang and flames began to shoot up the side of the house.

“Back us off!” Shane shouted. “Take us out a few feet from the house. “Nichols, you take up behind that tree in the back yard. If a man runs out, you gun him down.”

“Gotcha.”

Nichols jumped down from the truck and ran to the tree in the back while Posada backed the tuck nearly to the fence. They stopped and waited there, careful not to give the snipers in the second floor anything to aim at.

*****

“Daddy! The house is on fire!” Beth yelled, as she came running downstairs with Andrea, Maggie, and Patricia close behind.

“Fuck,” Rick swore. Tactically it was a solid move. He just didn’t know how to counter it.

“We go out there they’ll pick us off,” Daryl pointed out.

Rick’s mouth ran dry when he looked out at Shane, hoping to see a weakness in his defenses. That’s when he saw them--walkers. Dozens upon dozens of walkers.

“Where’s Dale?” Andrea asked.

Rick looked around. Dale was nowhere to be found. Rick could smell smoke, and he saw it curling into the room from the dining room window, gathering at the ceiling in a smoky haze. Shooters and walkers alike outside, the house burning…Rick had no idea what to do.

“I hear gunshots out back,” Patricia said.

“Be careful Patty,” Hershel warned, when Patricia went to investigate. She looked out back and saw Dale was held down by a man behind the tree in the back yard. She had just enough time to see the sniper take aim at her before a shot rang out. The kitchen window exploded inward and Patricia fell, her head a gory mess, her brains splattered across the kitchen and the refrigerator behind her.

*****

“No, damn it!” Shane shouted. The walkers were closing in, slowly but surely, and he knew there was no way they could handle that many walkers, even in an armored vehicle. They would be overwhelmed. The things may even manage to climb over one another to swarm the truck bed.

“Boss, we gotta fall back,” Adams said.

“My women…”

“We gotta go, man!” Dalton shouted. He was practically a neon sign flashing at the walkers to eat him with his shoulder covered in fresh blood.

“Posada, drive back after Nichols,” Shane ordered.

Once again the truck surged forward. Posada drove around to the side of the house where Shane found Nichols in a gunfight with Dale Horvath.

“I saw those walkers!” Dale shouted at Shane. “You brought them down on us with all this shooting and lighting the house on fire!”

Dale turned his gun on the tires of their truck. He took out the dual rear wheels in the back and the front tire, rendering the truck useless to drive.

“Dale, you son of a bitch!” Shane shouted. Dale had stranded him and his men on the farm, and walkers were coming down on them. Enraged, Shane unloaded a whole clip on Dale.

“We’re fucked,” said Dalton, hopelessness heavy in his voice.

“The barn. We’ll hide in there. If we’re quiet the herd will pass right by and never think to check the barn. Come on!”

He jumped down from the truck, unaware that Rick had heard every word he’d said.

*****

“Get the RV,” Rick said. “Daryl, get everyone inside and drive like a bat out of hell for our farm. I’ll get Hershel’s truck and follow you. Take the path through the trees like we practiced. Go!”

Rick made sure everyone had loaded safely into the RV, suppressing an urge to yell at Beth, who had paused to grab two photo albums from the living room table. He supposed he couldn’t blame her. The house was going to be a pile of ashes soon and the photos held all of her family memories.

Once the RV was loaded up Rick fired up the truck and followed behind them. He stopped at the barn and grabbed a chain and padlock. He rushed to the doors, locked them, and then returned to the truck bed. He grabbed a can of gasoline and splashed enough on the doors to set them ablaze, effectively trapping Shane and his men inside. If they fled through the loft window they would sprain ankles landing. Even if they didn’t, the fire would attract the walkers, who would swarm the barn and devour them as soon as they fled the fire.

Two can play at this game, Rick thought, striking a match and setting the barn afire. He tossed the remainder of the gasoline into the bed of the truck just as walkers began to close in on him. He slammed the door shut and took off, flooring the gas pedal and knocking aside walkers as he rushed to catch up with Daryl and the others in the RV.

*****

“Shit!” Daryl shouted. When he pulled onto their farm it was to find it swarmed with walkers as well. The smoke, the fire, the noise of the gunshots had drawn more walkers than they’d previously thought.

“Glenn, take the wheel. I gotta get my bike.”

“Leave it, Daryl,” Maggie said. The last thing she wanted was Daryl going out there to die for a bike.

“I can’t. It’s all I got left of my brother. I’ll be careful, Baby. I promise,” he said, and jumped out of the RV. He used his knife to kill the three walkers that stood between him and the bike. Glenn had no choice but to get behind the wheel. He was relieved, though, when Daryl managed to get the bike started and drive off from the grasping hands of another group of walkers.

“Follow me!” he shouted, before tearing off for the dirt drive that would lead to the road.

“Daddy…” Maggie said, as she looked out at the smoke rising from their farm. Their house, everything they owned, was going up in flames and they were helpless to stop it. Hershel pulled his girls close and held tightly to them.

“Don’t look, my sweet girls,” he said sadly. “Don’t look back.”



Epilogue