Ch 5

"We need to go." Sam broke the silence that had taken a hold of the bar since the shots had been fired. "Now."

He went to Tony's body and grabbed his shotgun. "Hershel you still know how to shoot?"

"I know how but I don't enjoy it."

"I'm not asking you to enjoy it, just to keep them away."

"Wait a minute, just hold on, we need to be smart about this. They probably have more people," Rick pointed to where Dave's corpse was, "He said as much."

As if on cue the four of them heard a car pull up and men begin talking.

"Shit, cover!" Sam whispered as everyone took cover near the front of the bar.

Several male voices began talking about the men that Rick and Sam had just killed.

"What do we do?" Glenn whispered.

"Rick how many of them can you see?" Sam asked the sheriff.

"Three, I think there's only three."

"Armed?"

"Shotguns and pistols," Rick said as he looked away from the curtain.

"Did you guys check the bar?" a voice asked from outside the bar.

"Uh no we didn't."

"What we're looking for Dave and Tony and no one checks the goddamn bar?" Multiple pairs of footsteps pounded on the ground as they neared the bar.

Sam felt his pulse quicken and he took aim at the door.

The door knob jiggled and opened an inch, but Glenn used his body to keep it shut.

"Whoa what was that?"

"Did someone push it shut?"

"Hello?" the first voice asked. "Hey we're not looking for trouble! We just want to find our friends!" Sam saw Rick's knuckles turn white. "W just-"

"They drew on us!" Rick shouted. Sam grimaced, he knew more people were about to die.

"What?"

"What'd he say?"

"They drew on us! We had no choice!"

The men outside began talking amongst themselves.

"What do we do?" Glenn asked once more.

Sam looked at Rick, "We should-"

"Take this asshole!" Gunshots sounded through the street and into the bar.

Sam docked and saw as wooden splinters went into the air wherever bullets hit.

"Get to the back!" Sam yelled as he fired at the front of the bar, bullets making holes in the dark wood of the door.

Glenn made it through the door first, then Hershel.

"Sam get in there!" Rick yelled as he fired at the front of the bar.

Sam ducked through and enter the store room behind Hershel.

The firing stopped and the four of them caught their breath as the adrenaline began to leave their systems.

Sam looked up and saw a shadow in the window of the door. Without thinking he raised his gun and fired, shattering the glass on the door and whoever was there running off.

"Glenn take point," Sam said as he slammed a new clip into his gun. "I'll cover you, Hershel you stay back."

"Wait they're probably waiting for us." Rick told Sam.

"That's why I'll cover him. Rick we'll do this, you and Hershel 'll cover the back in case they come in from the bar. If there's three of them then that's good, they don't know how many of us there are. We can use that. If they don't know how many there are of us, then they'll be cautious. They're scared right now. Let's use it."

Rick gave Sam a strange look. "How do you know this? How do you know what their thinking?"

Sam grimaced, as if he had said too much. "Later."

"No right now."

"Rick, there are men trying to kill us right now. If you want to talk later then fine, but let's just survive the night right now, yeah?"

Rick scowled but nodded. "As soon as this is over I want an explanation."

"Glenn, let's go!" Sam turned back to Rick. "We'll get the car Hershel and I came in and pull up back. We'll run for it, and get the hell out of here."

Glenn opened the door and slowly took a step out. He check both sides of the alley, carefully. He kept his shotgun up and took a step out.

Sam's body was practically hugging the door, his feet crushing the shards of broken glass. He kept his eye and gun leveled in the opposite direction of where Glenn was aiming. He saw the tiniest of twitches of movement in his peripheral. A man. But more importantly, a man with a gun.

The man managed to fire his gun twice before Sam turned and sent a round into his gut and chest. But he wasn't dead, Sam could see his writhing on the floor in pain, and groaning loudly as he clutched his wounds.

Sam looked to where Glenn had been but only saw his shoes sticking out from behind the dumpster. Then he heard snarling.

"Shit," he said, "Walkers! We got a lot of 'em coming!"

One by one they began coming out of the darkness. The screams belonging to the man that Sam had shot drew more in. The began to close in on him, making his screams go from pain, to terror.

"Glenn! You good?" Sam didn't get an answer.

"Sam what's going on?" Rick questioned him.

"He shot at me. Glenn's behind the dumpster. I don't think he's hit, just scared." Sam said, there was no judgement in his voice though. He had been there himself once, not anymore.

Rick slowly stepped into the alley, a gun raised in either direction. "You hit?" He asked as he approached the dumpster. "Are you hit?"

Sam looked away from the man he had shot toward the dumpster.

"No. No." Sam sighed with relief when he heard Glenn's voice.

Sam got out of cover and made his way to Glenn. "Glenn, don't worry, you still in control of your bowels?" Glenn gave Sam a look but nodded. "That's good. Me , the first time I got under fire, I shit myself so bad I smelled for a week. If you didn't shit yourself then your already loads better at keeping your cool then me."

Glenn cracked a smile despite himself.

"Ok, the cars right there," Rick said, "We're almost home. You two good?"

"I'm good," Glenn said.

"Aye I'm good. Let's go."

"Ok, let's go." Rick popped out of cover with Glenn trailing him. As soon as they were a few inches from the dumpster however, gunshots began to pepper the area forcing them back into cover.

"Back, get back!" Rick ordered Glenn as a shot pinged the dumpster.

"I see him!" Sam said as he lifted his head out of cover. "On the roof of the Pharmacy. Out of range for our guns."

An SUV pulled up and stopped in front of the pharmacy just then.

"Come on we gotta get out of here! Roamers all over the place!" the diver shouted at the man on the roof.

"What about Sean?" Sam looked toward the man he had shot who was still rolling on the floor in pain. Not an ounce of guilt in him.

"They shot him! We gotta go! Roamers are everywhere!" The driver shouted. "Jump!"

The boy on the roof tried to hop down, but failed in such a spectacular fashion that had money been worth anything other than wiping your ass, Sam would have felt like he owed the boy some.

He began to scream and begged the driver for help, but the driver shouted that he had to go. He said that he was sorry, but that didn't slow the car down as he drove away.

"Sam with me, Glenn get Hershel." Rick ordered as he got out of cover and made his way to the boy who was screaming for help.

Sam and Rick sprinted across the street and found that the dumbass that had jumped off the roof had impaled his leg onto a fence.

"Help me! Please help me!" He kept begging.

Sam examined the wound as Rick shoved his gun in the mans face, yelling for him to shut up.

Hershel and Glenn came forward just a few seconds later.

"Sam! Rick! We have to go now." Hershel informed the two.

"NO!" the boy sobbed.

Rick shushed him

"I'm sorry son," Hershel told the boy. "We have to go."

The boy sprang up. "No don't leave me Please!"

"We have to go Rick, now!" Sam told him.

"We can't!" Rick told them.

"He was just shooting at us!" Glenn bellowed.

Sam heard more Walkers and saw that they were beginning to fill the streets.

"He's a kid!"

"This place is crawling with Walkers!" Sam told the sheriff.

"We can't leave him!"

"The fence went clean through, there's no way we can get the leg off in one piece." Hershel said as he examined the wound.

"Then fucking chop it off or put a bullet in him, either way we gotta go!" Sam shouted as he fired at the incoming Walkers, Glenn taking up position beside him.

The boy began to scream again.

"Shut up! Shut up or I will shoot you!" Rick threatened.

"Do it!" Sam shouted. "He won't make it! That legs gone, and he'll lose to much blood! We need to go!"

"Why don't we just cut off his leg?" Glenn asked as he stopped shooting.

"Will this cut through bone?" Sam tuned them out and began focusing on the Walkers. He saw Glenn beside him again.

They began shooting them as quickly as possible but there were simply to many of them.

"We need to go now!" Sam shouted at the others. "I'm almost out of ammo!"

"Do it now Hershel!"

"There's no time!" Hershel abandoned the preparations to amputate the boys leg and climbed down from the fence. The walkers were beginning to close in on them and the boy would not shut up.

Then Rick tore the kids leg off of the fence, and he screamed louder than a banshee.

The ride back was a long one.

No radio was one of the things that Sam missed the most, since it would help with the terrible awkward silences that were his family's car drives.

But the silence that occupied the car now, was worse than that to him. It was more… deathly quiet than awkwardly quiet. And with good reason, because Sam never remembered having a boy with a hole the size of a golf ball in his leg tied up in the back of his family's car. And if there was one then his dad was worse than he originally thought.

"We're coming up on the farm," Rick told everyone.

"I need a nap." Sam said.

"Well you can get one. After our talk. Yeah I didn't forget about that."

"Fine, talk first, nap later."

When the car Stopped Rick climbed out first and hugged Carl and Lori, while Glenn received a hug from Maggie, and Hershel and Sam were standing there feeling just a tab bit left out.

"Patricia, prepare the shed for surgery." Hershel said as he stormed into his house.

"Who the hell is that?!" T-Dog asked, pointing to the boy named Randall we had duct taped in the back seat of the car.

"His names Randall." Sam told them. "He tried to kill us."

Rick explained to the group his reasoning for bringing the boy back but, like Sam expected, not many liked the idea of having him there.

Shane was the most… vocal about his displeasure.

"Look at this folks , we back in Fantasyland!" He shouted as he attempted to leave the dining room.

"You know we haven't even dealt with what you did at my barn yet!" Hershel yelled. "Let me make this perfectly clear once and for all, this is my farm. Now I wanted you gone, Rick talked me out of it-"

"Bad move Rick," Sam muttered under his breathe.

"- but that doesn't mean I have to like it! So do us both a favor- keep your mouth shut."

Shane walked away without saying a word.

Everyone else began leaving as well. Glenn got dragged to the kitchen to talk with Maggie, Carol went after Daryl. And everyone else just scattered.

"Sam," he turned and saw Rick, "how about that talk now."

"Of course."

"Not here. Come with me."

Rick led Sam away from the house and to a secluded spot of the farm. From what Sam had gathered, they had killed a Walker that was stuck in a well near the place they were at.

"So Sam, how did you know so much about those guys?"

"I wasn't with them if that's what you're asking. As to how I know about how they think. That's a complicated story."

"We got nothing but time."

"Rick, before I tell you this, let me just tell you one thing. What I told Dave and Tony, you don't survive the Apocalypse with cleave hands, that's true for everyone."

Rick stepped closer. "So what, you've killed people?"

"Robbed and killed," Sam admitted. "We were hungry, and desperate. It was an accident the first time. And then easier the second. We did it for a month-"

Ricks fist connected with Sam's jaw and he went sprawling in the floor.

"Ah, fuck!"

"What else have you done?"

"That's it! What you think I've done worse? You think I've raped people?! I was hungry Rick, not looking for a fuck! I was focused on surviving!"

"So that makes you better?"

"Fuck no! It just means that I didn't cross a line that most do. Am I better than most people? Fuck no! But I still have standards!"

Rick was silent and Sam saw his hand twitch for his gun, but the sheriff never drew.

"If I ever think, that you're a threat to this group… I'll kill you."

Sam scoffed. "I could have lied Rick. I could've told you I just fought raiders."

"Yeah, you could've."

"Just remember that Rick," Sam turned to walk away.

"Sam," he turned and looked back at Rick. "Your gun. Leave it."

Sam hesitated, but he unbuckled his gun belt and dropped it to the floor. He got a certain satisfaction knowing Rick had to bend down and pick it up.