the walking dead: the wife

chapter xii: the widow

Sierra had never been a person who found it difficult to get used to different environments, but she knew that if it were not for the virus that slowly infected each of her cells, she would not have been able to sleep at all.
Sleeping in a tent was uncomfortable, not only because of the absence of a mattress but also because of the absence of security. There was no sense of safety inside of the small space, the thin fabric separating them from the apocalypse being too weak to protect them.

It could be worse, she told herself, although she really didn't know if she was trying to convince herself or if it was really a fact.
Could it be any worse? Maybe. Probably.
She could have been cold and vulnerable, shivering from the temperatures and the fever that was getting worse as the days passed, but that wasn't the case. Her husband was with her, holding her close to keep her warm and sleeping with one eye open to protect her from any threat of the night. He protected her during the day too, making sure she ate and drank enough, that she was weak from the illness and not from her basic needs. He even stopped going on runs as much as he used to, leaving his group on the side and focusing only on her — and when he did leave, he kissed her and told her he loved her.

This was one of those times.

Shane had seen himself forced to ride with Rick to go drop Randall off, and Sierra was feeling strong enough to wait for him outside of their shared tent.

"Hey there" Glenn smiled at her, holding back a chuckle at seeing the fearless woman covered with a blanket, almost like his own grandma "How are you feeling?"

"Slightly better than yesterday, surprisingly" she joked, also offering him a smile.

"That's nice" he nodded, although they both knew this was not a disease she would recover from. So the young man quickly changed the subject: "They're not back yet, but I wouldn't worry about it, they're both good at... You know"

"I know" she laughed at the man's awkwardness "I'm not worried, just wanted to surprise him"

But it was him that surprised her when he walked out of the car covered in blood, with an open cut on his hand and followed by... Rick and Randall. Her smile dropped and the good mood she was in faded quickly and was overtaken by the overwhelming feeling of worry and fear.

"Are you okay?" she placed a hand on his chest, analyzing the source of the blood that covered his face.

"He knew you, babe" he said with a shaky voice "He said your name, he knows you"

"What?"

"I think-" he interrupted himself to look around, making sure nobody was eavesdropping before whispering: "I think he's with the guys we killed, maybe they're out to get us"

"There's no reason for them to go after us" she grabbed his face, bringing it down to kiss his forehead "It's fine, worst case scenario we just... Get rid of him"

If only it was that easy...

Randall once again became a problem for the entire group of survivors, and Rick and Shane decided to ignore the high tensions between the two for the group's sake — but they had unintentionally transmitted these tensions to the group once they shared the young man's options: we kill him or we try to abandon him, again. Surprisingly, Rick openly supported the first option, and that made Dale furious.
The old man refused to let go of his morality, he refused to live with the fact that he had killed a human being. We don't kill the living, he repeated while he held his hat anxiously.

"You really want to debate about saving a guy who will lead his buddies right to our door?" Shane argued.

"This is a young man's life and it is worth more than a five-minute conversation!" Dale raised his voice, but it was met by silence and looks "Is this what it's come to? We kill someone because we can't decide what else to do with him? How are we any better than those people that we're so afraid of?"
His intentions were good, and they would have been reasonable too if the world had not ended. It was a difficult pill for man to swallow to know that you have to do what is necessary to survive, even if the decision seemed... Unethical. Dale continued to believe in civilization and the organized construction of society that existed before the dead started walking, as if anything would change if humans turned savages.