Part 2
The camp was quieter than usual. Even the ambient sounds of nature just outside their perimeter, insects buzzing, branches breaking, wind blowing, all of it seemed somehow diminished. The humid summer night was almost unbearable for Beth as she stood in the center of their small group of tents just off the highway with her rifle held low.
Their journey North had hit a snag. Small amounts of supplies were vanishing each night the further North they went until Roman had ordered them to stop near a small town just a mile down the road from their current camp until they found the culprit. Individually the thefts were beneath notice, but over the past couple of weeks the losses were beginning to mount.
They couldn’t last like this. It wasn’t the thefts, or the walkers, or anything that usually went wrong. It was Conner.
Whenever Conner had felt himself begin to lose control, Beth had taken him out of the camp and given him a knife after finding a group of walkers. The solution had been temporary at best, letting Conner indulge his addiction by ridding the area of the undead, but his “Episodes” had been growing in both frequency and intensity for several weeks.
He had tried to warn her that one day walkers wouldn’t be enough. One day it would be a person. She’d hoped that he’d be better by then. She tried everything she knew to somehow help him control himself, but she was so far out of her league that she couldn’t even remember what her league had been like.
Now the two of them had to leave. She wouldn’t give up on Conner, so the only alternative was to split from Roman and Clive. It was only a matter of time before Roman decided that enough was enough and shot Conner. She couldn’t deny that he had ample reason for wanting him dead, but she wouldn’t allow that to happen. Conner was her responsibility. She’d save him from himself or die.
“Hey, Beth,” Clive said, grabbing her attention away from her patrol. “You got a minute?”
No, I need to get Conner out of here before Roman kills him. “Sure,” she said, faking a casual mood.
Clive wiped at his forehead as he sat down, flinging drops of sweat off into the late evening darkness. “Hot out tonight, huh?”
“Yeah. This heat is killing me.” Both of them flinched at the word “Kill,” as the word brought up the disgusting image of Roman’s mutilated face.
Clive shifted, giving a clearly agitated and uncomfortable look over his shoulder to where Conner was tied up at the edge of camp. “Beth, he’s-”
“I don’t want to hear it,” she cut him off. “He’ll be fine.”
“You saw what he did to Roman. That look on his face when he got his hands around his throat? I was scared, Beth,” he admitted, looking away from Conner. “More scared than I’ve ever been before. More scared than when the herd hit Savannah, more scared than when Roman and I got run out of the Pitstop.”
“But if we put him down like an animal, how is that right?” she asked him. “He’s still a person, Clive.”
“It’s not about right or wrong anymore,” he told her dejectedly. “It’s about what keeps you alive and what doesn’t. And keeping him with us? We’ll be dead within the month at this rate. Beth, Roman and I have been in this situation before. It never ends well.”
“I’m not letting you two kill him,” she informed him with a steely voice. “I can help him.”
“I don’t like this,” he said defensively, rising from the ground. “But I just want to live. I want to get to Wellington and be
safe for once. I know that Conner isn’t a bad guy, but Roman isn’t either. He’s just doing what he thinks needs to be done for us to keep living.”
She didn’t bother to look at him as he made his way back to his tent. She focused her ears back into the camp until she heard the faint sound of Clive zipping the flaps to his tent closed.
Now’s the time, she thought, bracing herself and drawing her knife.
Conner was jolted out his slumber by an elbow hitting his face. “Who-”
“Quiet,” Beth shushed him. “Roman and Clive don’t know about this, and it needs to stay that way.”
“What are-”
“I said quiet,” the woman snapped, bringing her arms around Conner and to the rope that bound his hands behind him. “We’re leaving,” she whispered. “Stay still right here and pretend that you’re still tied up if either of them wake up.”
“Why do you keep doing this?” he questioned. He felt the ropes loosen around his raw wrists. “You’re not a stupid person, Beth. How can’t you see that sticking with me can only end one way?”
“Because I don’t believe that,” she countered. “I don’t believe in giving up. Especially on friends.” The ropes came undone at the behest of her knife, falling off his hands in a coiled pile behind him. “Now keep your hands like this until I get back.”
“I’m not going with you,” he maintained, planting his feet into the ground. “My… ‘urges’ are getting worse. I nearly killed Roman.”
“But you didn’t,” she reminded him. “You haven’t killed a single person since Lynch. I’m not letting you throw all of that progress away because you think you can’t do it. Right after we met Roman and Clive, you were getting better. Little by little you were inching back, you
still are coming back.”
“I would have, though,” he asserted with despair. “I wasn’t in control. Everything just went dark and the next thing I remember I was tied up, listening to you guys talk about me. All I get are flashes of what happened. I thought I was coming back after we met them, but I’m not. That sick part of me was just waiting for a better opportunity.”
“Doesn’t matter,” she told him, brushing it off. “It’s not who you are.”
“Beth, that’s what happened with Farley. That son of a bitch, he cut off three of my fingers and sold out our group to a bunch of bandits, but you know what? Even he couldn’t kill someone who used to be his friend,” Conner said, teary eyed and dismal. “I’m not like that. I’m… worse. So much worse. I see someone and my first instinct is ‘Which angle do I advance from?’ or ‘A knife would go through his ribs smooth.’ It doesn’t matter if I’ve known them for fifteen minutes or fifteen years, they’re just… victims. I want to stop myself more than anything, but I just can’t. Someone else has to stop me.”
“Which is what I am here for, Conner,” she insisted.
“No,” he told her drearily, “It’s what Roman is here for. And you know what? I’m fine with that.”
She gave him a light smack across the face. It didn’t sting for long, but it got his attention. “Don’t say that ever again,” she commanded him with a low, menacing tone. “Never think that. Ever. You are almost out of this, I can feel it. You just have to power through this and the hard part will be over. I’m here for you, every step of the way like I promised.”
“It’s the only way,” he hissed quietly. “I don’t care if he kills me, because then I won’t be able to hurt anyone ever again.” He looked away from her as a tear showed itself in his eye. “I can’t live like this. It’s… it’s what being a walker is. Worse, because some evil part of me likes doing it. I’m worse than a walker, Beth. I can already feel that urge coming back, taking control away from me bit by bit. This isn’t some step on the road to recovery, it’s me finally, really losing it. Pretty soon-”
“Pretty soon we’ll be gone,” she interrupted. “And we’ll deal with it then.”
“No, you’re not listening,” he shook his head. “The only cure for me is a bullet. If you don’t tie me back up or shoot me, then I… I might hurt you. Or worse.”
“You won’t,” she reassured him. “You won’t because you don’t want to hurt me.”
“I don’t want to hurt anyone!” he cried, bringing their conversation above a whisper for the first time. “I want someone to stop me before I lose it again. I’d sooner put a gun in my mouth than hurt you, or Clive, Roman, or anyone else who’s unlucky enough to be near me, so why won’t you just let me?!”
“I… uh…”
“Beth?”
“Just… I need… to get my things…”
“Don’t, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean-”
“Just stay here,” she tearfully ordered him. “I’ll be right back with my things, don’t go anywhere.” Before he could respond she was gone into her tent.
There he went again. Hurting the people around because he couldn’t get a grip. It was going beyond physical injuries now. He’d seen Beth’s heart shatter right before she turned from him. The best thing for him to do was walk up to Roman’s tent, wake him up, and wait for the end. That deadly itch was surfacing again from the darkest pits of his being, telling him it would be okay. Just one more, one last kill, one last fix. It had been so long since he’d killed. He felt okay for a week or two, foolishly thinking he was beating it, but then it was back. Small at first, then larger, and larger until he couldn’t control it and he’d attacked Roman. This was no way to live. It wasn’t living at all. It was something despicable.
How did everything go so wrong? All he wanted was to go back in time, before the walkers. Hell, even just before Lynch. When he wasn’t a bad person. Where he’d be at home, watching movies with Farley and Lucy, unaware that he was so screwed up. Or maybe even just sitting around the campfire with his old group, complaining about the shitty beans they were always eating and rolling his eyes whenever Farley and Jennifer started to go off on each other. At least then he wouldn’t be hurting anybody.
That was when he saw Beth’s knife.
She must have forgotten it when she’d run off. It was sitting there on the ground, singing to him.
“No,” he whispered to himself. “Not gonna… give in…”
The shakes came, racking his body. His temperature shot through the ceiling as the thought of letting himself go pushed itself to the forefront of his mind, drowning nearly everything else in darkness.
Then he saw it out of the corner of his eye. A shape flashed by the space between two of the tents at breakneck speed, quietly scrambling to get into the cover of the trees several feet beyond the camp’s perimeter. It was a human being.
The sight of a stranger was all it took. Breathlessly he scooped up the knife and was on his feet, creeping toward the figure as it vanished into the foliage, fighting against himself as each labored, uncontrolled step took him closer to the treeline while the dark part of him screamed its fury into every recess of his mind.
Just one more, the dark part assured him, as he struggled with everything he had to reject that notion.
What’s one more?
The rational part of him was still inside, beset on all sides by sickness and insanity, and managed to push a single realization through the murk of his broken psyche.
One more is your soul.
He didn’t even slow down as he shoved his way through the branches and gave silent chase through the muggy summer night, hot on the heels of his prey.
Beth returned with her things packed to find nothing but the cut rope waiting for her, heaped where it had been behind Conner when she freed him. But he was gone.
She dropped her belongings and, sinking to her knees, let out a tremendous scream. “FUCK!”
She ignored the bustling inside the tents as she sat there, without even the energy to cry. Conner was gone. He’d left them. He’d left her.
“Beth, what’s wrong?” Roman yelled, shuffling out of his tent, gun in hand. “Is someone…here?” His voice died as his eyes came to rest on the cut ropes and the absence of Conner from the camp. His veins bulged with fury as he stamped over to Beth, sitting there on her knees in defeat. “You let him go, didn’t you?”
She nodded. There was nothing to say.
“God DAMN,” he cursed, turning his mutilated face to Clive. “Get the guns,” he coughed with malice. “We’re going out there taking this fuck down before he hurts anyone else. Stick together, keep your eyes open, and shoot to kill.”