THE INFECTED PART FIVE

   THE INFECTED PART FIVE

"This! This is what you have made me do! This is what it's come to! All because you wouldn't just surrender yourself to me!" The mystery man shouts. He cocks a gun and places the barrel on the back of Rebecca's head.

"Daddy...please. I don't want to die..." Rebecca says as tears begin to roll down her face.

"Beccs...it's okay, you're not going to die, I'll handle this." Michael says.

"Come on, we don't even know what it is that you want, I don't even know your name." I say to the man.

"My apologies, how rude of me." He says as he brushes his hair out of his face. "My name is Victor and you killed my man Drew in the bunker and took all of my stuff from said bunker where you left the body of my man. I thought I made that abundantly clear, Sarah."

"Right, but, your man, Drew, he was going to kill me. We needed stuff, we scouted that bunker for weeks before we decided to search it, I had no choice but to kill him, if I didn't, I would have ended up dead. You would have done the same thing in my situation."

"Oh, so you do know me after all, Sarah? That's not entirely true, I would have given you a chance to come with me to my community, where you would have thrived, oh wait, I did. Remember? When I first showed up here and you SHOT. AT. ME!" Victor pushes the barrel into Rebecca's head more and she winches. "Isn't it funny how everything seems to happen for a reason? Look, I'm not a complete monster, unless I'm pushed into a corner and I very much dislike being pushed into a corner. I'm like a god damn cat, I fight back. Especially when someone kills my people and takes all of my shit and doesn't even leave me a thank you note. You thought you could walk into my bunker and do whatever the hell you wanted and get away with it? That's just completely irresponsible and frankly, quite stupid."

"You want your stuff? Take it. Take everything. We don't need to fight, you've killed way more of our people than the one of yours we killed-"

Victor looks around, he gestures towards his soldiers' bodies and ours.

"I think we're way passed that, Sarah. The fight is here, plus, I think I need to add a few more bodies to my list if we're going to be even."

A lurker stumbles up to Victor, one of his lackeys grabs the lurker by it's shoulder and drives a stake through its head.

"Looks like the infected are here, our party is going to end soon, Sarah. I'll tell you what. You've got balls, kid. I'll offer you one more chance. Come with me, I can't promise that I won't kill you, well, immediately that is." Victor smirks.

"I can't do that, Victor. My people need me. You of all people should know that."

"What? All ten of them that's left. Including this one here, you can save her, you know?"

Rebecca stands there shivering, sobbing, and just staring at Michael.

"What if you just hand my daughter back, and leave? We all just walk away and we never have to see each other again? Can we just do that, please?" Michael asks.

Victor looks over at Michael.

"This is your daughter? Oh. She's really pretty, she didn't get that from you, cause I mean, ugh. I mean, she's really, really pretty." Victor stands up against Rebecca and sniffs her hair. "She must have got that from her mom. Which she might be on the ground here somewhere. Huh?" He steps back, still pushing the barrel against Rebecca's head.

"Rebecca, sweety, I promise-"

"Promise, what? That I won't do this?"

Victor pulls the trigger, blood splatters my face and Rebecca falls.

"NO!" Michael shouts and starts firing a pistol towards Victor who turns and jumps into a truck.

Victor and what's left of his army flee in their vehicles. Victor hangs out of a window shouting.

"I'll be back for you Sarah! Trust me, I'll be seeing you real soon! Go ahead and clean all of this up for me!" He shouts. Lurkers begin to flood into our community.

Michael throws his gun down, drops down to his knees and grabs Rebecca's body and just holds her. Antonio and a few others are clearing the lurkers that are showing up. I'm left in shock. The amount of bloodshed that just happened because of a choice I made. I just woke up to all of this after almost dying and I've lost more than half of my people, my hand is gone, my community is in ruin, the gate has fallen. We have nothing to rebuild with. What do I even do in this situation? I'm not a good enough leader to fix this. I should just find Victor and turn myself over, I could save the rest of my community by doing just that. I would most likely die, and it would save all my people.

"There's too many of them!" I hear Antonio yell faintly.

I stand there and watch Michael sob and hold his daughters lifeless body as her blood runs down my face. I made this happen, all because I made a decision to kill a man that I didn't even know. I led this tyrant to our doorstep and allowed him to kill our people and destroy our home. Rebecca was fifteen years old, she was learning from Harvey and Jackie to become a Doctor. She had a whole life ahead of her that would help so many people in this world, I robbed this world of that, of her.

"SARAH!" Antonio yells. "What do we do!?" He plunges a knife into a lurkers head.

"We need to leave! Round up everyone that's alive and let's go. We can't stay here." I rush over to Michael. "Michael, we need to go. We have to leave her. The lurkers are coming in waves, and we need to find somewhere else to go. Come on." I offer Michael my hand and he takes it after kissing Rebecca's cheek.

Everyone that's alive is now standing behind Michael, Antonio, and me as we clear a path through the lurkers, pushing them out of the way as we all move together in unison.