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Chapter 17 - Escape (Joe)

Joe stepped quickly through the trees. He was somewhere between fuming and resigned...and determined, but he was determined by default.

A dead woman lurched and reached for him. Out of bullets, Joe slammed the butt of his rifle into her skull and kept moving.

Well, this plan went to hell in a hand basket in record time. It'd been about fifteen minutes since the 50 cal. had gone silent and Joe picked himself up off the forest floor. Now he was running this way and that, dodging trees and corpses alike. He had yet to see any of those other punks who were supposed to have his back.

Joe kept going, slung his useless rifle over his shoulder, held his pistol at the ready, kept moving.

He stopped.

"Lou?" he called, "Lou, man, what are you-"

Lou turned at the sound of his name and walked towards Joe, but there was something wrong with the way he was walking. He was moving his legs and arms in an odd manner. No, it wasn't odd really. Joe had seen that same motion a thousand times.

Lou was dead.

Joe raised his pistol, pointed it at the thing that used to be Lou.

"Sorry, friend," he said and pulled the trigger.

The bullet flung the dead man's head back. He fell to the ground with a thud.

"What the hell happened to you?" Joe asked aloud, looking him over. No bite marks, no scratches.

Lou was missing his jacket and his Uzi. That had been his favorite gun. Looking closer, Joe saw discoloration, deep bruises setting in around Lou's neck. Somebody strangled him to death.

Joe's eyes narrowed. He got up and moved through the forest again, this time walking slower and quieter.

Soon enough he found what he was looking for.

"Carl!" a man's voice called, low but urgent, "Michonne! Carl!"

The man paused to catch his breath, looked around, looked at the ground and rubbed a hand over his face.

Joe came around behind him, held his gun at the side of the man's head. The man froze at the telltale click of the gun.

"Oh deary me. You screwed up, asshole!" Joe said, "You hear me? You screwed up!"

He pressed the muzzle of his gun against the man's temple.

"Today's the day of reckoning, sir. Restitution," Joe declared, "A balancing of the whole damn universe."

"You killed Lou," he informed the man, his voice harsh, "strangled him in cold blood."

"No," the man said, tense.

"Where did you get that jacket, you dirty liar? You find it on the ground? No. You killed my friend. Now I'm going to shoot you in the head. I'm going to find your Carl and your Michonne and I'm going to shoot them too. Then we'll be square."

"Is that them over there? By those trees?" Joe spotted two people moving through the woods a little distance away. They hadn't seen him yet and they might not unless he called out.

"Oh, she's pretty, that one. And a kid. He yours? A cute little family, huh."

"You leave them out of it," the man growled, "It was me, not them. Leave them out."

"No," Joe decided, tightening his finger on the trigger incrementally, "You don't get to choose that."

The man slammed his head back into Joe's face, startling him. The gun went off inches from the man's face, loud.

Joe staggered back in shock, wiped a drop of blood from his nose. The man swung at him but it was a glancing blow. Joe countered with a punch of his own, knocked the man over, kicked him in the side.

"Oh, it's gonna be so much worse now," Joe said angrily.

"Come on, get up!" he commanded, "Let's see what you got."

The other two people had surely heard the gunshot but Joe was going to finish this before they got there.

The man staggered to his feet and lurched towards Joe, hate and desperation in his eyes. Joe caught him in a tight grip.

"What the hell are you going to do now, sport?" Joe had the man trapped. He was out of moves.

The man reared back and then lunged. He sunk his teeth into Joe's neck. Joe felt something ripping, then warmth, spreading warmth. The world seemed to spin slowly as he fell, then everything was very still and dark.




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