Survive ( twd carlgrimes)

Chapter 17

CARL'S POV.

WHAT??
SHE KILLED SOMEONE?

"Well, say something." She orders me angrily, the small line between her brows appears again. There's no doubt about her fierceness and stubbornness, it's not that I think she couldn't kill someone, anyone could if they were driven to it but it's just shocked me that she has.

I try to control my expression, as if this was old news to me but the frown is still indented on her face and I realize my eyes are practically bulging at her. I shake my head and blink twice before responding.

"I just..."
"Wasn't expecting it." She finishes for me, quoting my words from earlier. Her frown disappears as she relaxes.
I nod. "I don't think anyone could survive this long without killing someone. Thats just the way it is now. It's either kill or be killed and dying isn't an option." I tell her.

"I don't regret killing him. If I had to, I'd kill him again with pleaure."
This shocks me more than hearing she killed someone. In someways, it disturbs me.
"What? Why? Who was it?" I stumble through my many questions.
She just sighs and the frown appears again. She chews the inside of her cheek before answering me.

"He was one of the men from the train-carts." She explains.
I don't move, I just listen, hoping my silence will encourage her to continue.
"Yeah, well, he.... Well he.......Follow me I have to show you something first." She stutters.

The abrupt turn in conversation throws me off guard and it takes me a second to force my feet forward to follow her.
She leads me down stairs and into the hall. She stands in front of a family picture.

In the picture, her mom and dad stand together at the back, smiling and proud. And three children, I recognize Madison immediately. It's strange to see her so young, with a giddy grin and a innocent sparkle in her eye. Her baby teeth are exposed and I spot one of them missing. Her mother is pregnant and cradles her bloated stomach with her arms.

The picture throws me off just as much as it did the first time I seen it when we walked through the door. I also recognized Nick in the picture but the older boy was unrecognizable.

Madison points to him now, her finger tapping the glass of the frame. The boy she points out looks a few years older than us. He looks very much like Madison.
"Do you see him?" Madison says, still pointing to the boy.
I nod.

"He's my brother Ben."
I take a second to wrap my head around this news. I look over to her only to find her no longer staring at the picture but looking down at the ground. She look deep in concentration as she blinks too quickly trying to get rid of the tears that pool her eyes.

I can tell that she's trying to ignore them, to pretend they're not there, so I will too, she seems like the kind of person who doesn't take sympathy well.
"He's dead?" I ask her, I have a horrible feeling that I know how this story ends.
"Yes." She whispers.

"How did he die?"
"He didn't just die, he was killed." She tells me, still whispering.
"That man you mentioned earlier, he was the one who killed him? So you killed him?" I ask her, positive of the answer.
"Yeah, thats why I'd do it again, and I wouldn't mind."

Suddenly, I'm not so disturbed by her answer anymore. It makes a lot more sense.
"I'd feel the same if it was Judith. But I don't understand why you have nightmares about it."
She turns and slides down the wall, under the family photo. She pats the ground beside her, inviting me to join her so I copy her, sitting so close to her that I can feel the heat over her body next to mine.

"I saw him kill Ben. They threw me in the cart and my family were trying ask me what happened, but I couldn't answer them. I didn't have to. They thought it would be funny to show us. So they dragged his body into our cart."

The tears she had been fighting off for so long now finally spill over her cheeks and run down her face. She swipes them away angrily, trying to hide them from me, I guess, but when she opens her mouth again, a sob breaks through her chest and she just lets her hands hang limply at her sides, giving up now. There was no hiding it anymore.

I can tell she has been holding all these feelings in for years. She wouldn't cry in front of anyone. I'm horrified at these men and I feel so angry for her, so angry that I wish it had been me to kill the man. I'm glad we got to at least kill his friends instead.

I put my arm around her shoulder. I'm kinda nervous because I think she will shrug or push me away. At first she does she shrugs my hand off of her ferociously and her face puckers with anger but then dissolved just as quickly as it came. She sighs and much to my surprise leans her head on my shoulder. Relief floods through me. She continues her story, wiping away her uninvited tears.

"I can still hear my mothers screams and Nick shouting, Abbie just bawling her eyes out ..... And me, I just sat there staring at his body like an idiot. The man was still standing in the doorway, with that sick fucking smile on his face. I don't remember even planning to attack him, i just did it. And I don't think he grasped what I was doing until it was too late. He was too slow." She tells me.

"I tackled him to the ground, hit him as much as I could, then I saw his knife in his pocket. I grabbed it and then... well you know... I couldn't stop stabbing. I just kept going. There was blood everywhere."

"My nightmares aren't scary because I killed him so viciously. My nightmares are scary because I liked it. I loved it. I see Ben too. I see him die in different ways and I always think about what I could do or what I should've done but I'm always too late. The night you found us, and we escaped, that was the first night I didn't dream about him." She states.

"Tell me about Ben?" I say, wanting it to sound like a question but it comes out like an order.
"Ben was the oldest. He was good to me, he wasn't the kind of brother who teased and fought with his younger sister. He stood up for me and cared for me. He taught me how to do math and spell before my class had even started to. He made sure I was always ahead." She whispers.

I look down at her and I see her last tear roll down her cheek. Without realising what I am doing, I reach out and stroke away the tear that has now stopped falling and sits beside her lips. I want to trace her lips with my finger, but she pulls back and takes her head off my shoulder to look at me.
I feel my cheeks go warm.

"Sorry, I don't know why I did that." I admit.
She just smiles reassuringly and then wipes her face with her hands.
She turns to face me.
"Do I look like I've been crying?"
I want to tell her no, but she'd kill me if someone pointed out under her eyes, which are now stained red.

"Well...." I trail off, not really sure what to say, but by my silence I think she took it as a yes.
"Ugghhhhhh!! It doesn't matter, i'll just go out the window instead of the door. Nobody will see us." She rants as she stands to her feet.

Us? Did she say us?
"Where are you going?" I ask
"To get what I came here for." She tells me.
"You comin' or not?" She asks and I stand up and follow her to the window.