Chasing Amy (Daryl Dixon/The Walking Dead)

Chapter 2 - Shootout

After losing the entire world, I had thought that the pain would not have been so intense, so devastating.

The hope of my brother being found alive was snatched from me, leaving me feeling hopeless and empty.

The sudden hollowing sadness washed over me as I crumbled to the ground on my knees, holding myself up with flat palms on the pavement. I quickly covered my mouth with my hand as an unexpected cry escaped my lips.

Randall turned to us, a questioning look on his face.

Tears spilled down my cheeks as I sobbed silently into my hand. My throat was clenched and dry, making it almost impossible for me to make a noise.

"They killed Dave and Tony," Lewis clarified, looking tired. Dave was the stand-in leader for our group, after our previous one, Samuel, got bit.

He was charismatic enough to manipulate people into helping us, instead of killing them like Samuel had. He always had the good of the group in mind, the good of his family. Me. "C'mon, let's go."

"No!" I cried, shrugging his hand away when he began to pull at my arm. "I'm not... I'm not telling Jane."

Jane was Dave's wife, my sister-in-law. She loved him, and he loved her, even through all this mess. She was going to be crushed by this news. Crushed. There would be nobody to protect us from the ... monsters.

Not the monsters wandering the forests.

No, the monsters in our group, the monsters sleeping in the tents beside me, drinking until early in the morning, shooting off firearms and putting everyone in danger.

The men who would fight each other for the most worthless of reasons, who would treat their innocent partners like doormats, slaves. Who would protect us from them?

"She's right," Sean insisted. "We're not gonna go back and tell them that Dave and Tony got shot by some assholes in a bar."

"Your friends drew on us!" The voice shouted back through the door. I slammed my fist on the rough wooden panel, silencing him.

My knuckles almost instantly began to bleed lightly from the sharp impact, only adding to the pain washing through my body. I quickly wiped my knuckles on the front pocket of my grey hooded jumper.

"They gave us no choice," The man added.

I took in deep breaths and listened to what he had to say.

I knew that Tony was a disgusting creep, and I wouldn't trust him with my shoelaces. Maybe he drew on the man behind the door, and Dave was shot too. Maybe...

"I'm sure we've all lost enough people, done things we wish we didn't have to, bu-but it's like that now, you know that." Sean kicked the hard bitumen with his shoe, gripping his gun tightly in his hands. "So let's just chalk this up to what it was, wrong place, wrong--"

His little speech was disrupted by Sean, who shot a bullet through the glass pane of the door in frustration.

Then another, and another.

The tears were still rolling down my cheeks when Randall pulled me up and led me to the pharmacy across the road.

"Follow me." He panted, anger radiating off of him. I was shaking as I climbed the fence, onto a plastic green dumpster. He helped me climb the roof, pushing my feet up the brick wall. "We're going to kill these bastards for what they've done."

I didn't answer, as I was still pulling myself onto the roof. It was high, and I could see the alleyway where Lewis and Sean were still firing into the room.