CHAPTER ELEVEN
xi. IMPRISONED WILD WOLVES MAKE FOR WEAK AND ANGRY BEASTS

RUTH

IT IS WONDROUS what woes embody life itself. From the words that hurt a lover's heart, to a plague that eventually turns everyone still. Death was the name of this plague. It was inescapable. Each rhythm of the heart beating within a person's chest meant life, but what did it mean if there was no life in the person itself? The heart still beat, but they felt dead. The plague attacking their mind with its little parasites etching into each suture of the skull. Ruth felt the heavy thump in her chest that signaled she was living, but her thoughts provoked ideas that she truly wasn't.

It was all too loud. She couldn't tear her eyes away from the bloody massacre in front of her. The rain poured in showers of crimson and umber, dripping onto the cold metal under their feet. Maggie's sobs rang in her ears, haunting her thoughts with a fear that Ruth could not describe. Rick shouted orders to the others, but his demands sounded underwater. It was muffled to her, feeling nothing but a solemn pit in her chest. Tears ran down her face, for fear that Hershel was dead on arrival.

Fear was just an emotion. It held thoughts like all of its companions, but it ruined the mind. Even people as brave as Rick felt fear. The lurch of their stomachs as it's pulled taut and squeezed by the hands of nerves. Tugging and pulling like the monsters outside her home, tearing into the organs of her lifeless body. Breathing was hard enough just looking at the chaos surrounding her. A hysteria lingered in the air. It suffocated the group like poison, but somehow Ruth was living. Ruth's head started to pound, the adrenaline rushing into her veins. Her ears rang, but she could hear nothing.

The crazy-eyed leader mouthed words to her, but she knew they were shouts of pleading. His hands shook, the crimson paint coating the dips in the skin's fragile structure. One of the limbs reached towards her face, a crazed look in Rick's eyes.

"Ruth." Rick said, the blues looking directly into her face. They burned her. His hand limply shook her shoulder, and that seemed to make her emerge to the surface. "Hey."

"Is he alive?" She whispered, a hint of apprehension lingering in her voice. It cracked and burned on her lips with the chapped and peeling skin that lined her mouth. Her tongue ran across them, and one brow rose slightly in question. Shouts resounded from the group as Hershel was carried swiftly to his cell.

Rick's breaths rattled in his throat, a shaky reply leaving his lips. "Barely."

Ruth nodded, feeling the weight of the situation bear on her shoulders once more. She remembered faint conversations with Jack in college. His dream to become a doctor made him riddle their talks with medical terms and phrases that just barely scraped the edge of her mind. He mentioned proper first aid to her once or twice, and that seemed to be enough to help her in the slightest.

"I-I can help." She replied. "J-Jack taught me some stuff." Rick quickly ushered her forwards after the words left her lips.

Her feet quickly carried her after the group of panicking prisoners. Their speeches remained rushed as the aging man was laid on his cot. The bloody stump remain exposed, with the flesh mauled and torn haphazardly like it was eaten by wolves.

"Did you cut it off?" Carol asked Rick. His eyes wandered all over the place, refusing to focus on one single object at a time.

"Yeah."

"Maybe you got it in time." The woman replied. Lori remained close to Ruth's side, feeling the comfort of her friend beside her. Ruth took long breaths of air to keep herself functioning. Her hands and shoulders shook violently as the sight made her body refuse to move normally.

Blood was still pouring from the man's leg. Ruth quickly reached for some towels at the end of his bed and placed them onto the open wound. Direct pressure, she could hear Jack saying.

"We need bandages." Carol announced to the crowd gathering around the cell.

"We used everything we had."

Carol breathed out a sigh, her hands fumbling with the towels around Hershel's leg as well. Her fingers lay on top of Ruth's holding the pressure as tight as they possibly could. "Well find some more."

Ruth moved her fingers out from underneath Carol's, silently grabbing a pillow from the bunk above. She lifted the stump as gently as possible and placed it underneath. "It needs to stay elevated. We need blankets too."

"What for?" Lori questioned.

Ruth could hear Jack's words coming back to her, placing small facts that once seemed insignificant into her head. "To keep him from going into.. something-shock. Don't remember the name, but we have to keep him warm."

Lori nodded. "Carl go get the towels in the back, right beside my bed." She watched as Ruth quickly ripped the sheets from the top bed, laying them gently over the man who was getting paler by the minute.

Elevate above his heart. The man she hated to remember haunted Ruth's mind. She didn't want to hear his words echo in her thoughts, but she had no choice but to listen. She couldn't let the man who first helped her die right in front of her without a fight. Hershel was the one who took concern. He was the man who ignored where she came from and instead helped her. She wouldn't let a man morally sound as he become a monster in front of his children.

"Get some pillows!" Carol shouted.

Maggie covered her mouth to hush her cries. "He's already bleeding through the sheets."

"Is he gonna die?" Beth whispered behind Ruth. She could feel her breath hitch in her throat. Ruth didn't want Beth to think that, so she replied with the best answer she could muster.

"No. No," Ruth replied. "he's gonna be okay."

"We can burn the wound to clot the blood. I can start a fire." Glenn spoke up. Ruth's breathing stopped for a minute. No fire.

Ruth didn't have to reply, because Carol did almost immediately. "No, the shock could kill him." Carol rushed out. "It's not gonna stop the arteries from bleeding. We need to just keep it dressed and let it heal on its own."

"Oh, god." Maggie mumbled from beside Ruth.

The two sisters tried their best to quiet their tears, but it haunted Ruth's ears once more. It was becoming too much to handle. "Carol, you got this?" 

"Yea. If I need you I'll call."

Ruth wiped her hands on the dirty sheet beside her, finding no other place to discard the crimson coating her hands. She rushed out of Hershel's cell, finding peace in a place that she had only just found. Her cell was empty, the only thing making it her own was the small bag placed in the corner. The backpack was worn and weathered from constantly undergoing the harsh environment. The canvas was once a dark blue, but now it was grey and brown in certain places.

Her hands shook, trying to calm down from the adrenaline that coursed through her system. It almost was too much to bear watching as the man slowly died in Carol and Ruth's hands. The blood dripped in her mind all over the place like an endless downpour.

She could hear voices shouting outside her cell. Some sounded familiar, but others didn't not. They were deeper and sounded masculine. She chose to ignore it and instead pick the drying blood out from under her nails. They were split on the ends from lack of care. On the edges were rough bite marks from where she chewed off rough ends in an attempt to keep them short. Her fingers were rough and calloused, the skin dry and pale from the winter's wrath.

It seemed that the group was once whole and compact, like a pack of wolves. The wilderness was their home for months, and with the need to survive being their only motivation to keep moving. Now that the prison was their home, it seemed that they became weak with the safety that surrounded them. The wildest of wolves make up the weak and angriest beasts when imprisoned, it seemed.

Living was not this. Living was sitting at home and eating a well prepared dinner. Living was being able to wrap your arms around a person and tell them that you love them. Living was laughter and joy. Living was a world with no restless nights, where staring at the walls of a room that wasn't yours seemed a rarity. Living was breathing fresh air and embracing the outside. This was not living.

"If we see you out here anywhere near our people, if I so much as even catch a whiff of your scent, I will kill you." Ruth could hear Rick demand to the men outside. She didn't want to involve herself in their conversation, because she knew she was not one to threaten men who were placed in such a prison for horrible things. Ruth was anything but intimidating, with her height being around five feet and six inches the last time she could remember. She was only scary with a knife in her hand, but even then it seemed she wouldn't scare many.

What she needed was gun training. The only weapon she could use was a knife due to her inadequate skills at shooting a gun. Without being able to shoot, she could easily die. She noted to remind herself later on to ask Rick about it, when the chaotic waters would finally settle.

Her breathing seemed to calm down after a few minutes of sitting in the silence of her cell, and she stood back up once again. Ruth reached down to the bag by her bed and pulled out the jacket she clung to during the winter. It--like everything else the group carried-- was filled with tears and holes in it, but it did its job just fine. She shrugged it onto her shoulders and moved back across the empty cellblock to Hershel's crowded cell.

"If we can get him through this-" Carol started, but was soon interrupted by Lori.

"-when we get him through this."

"We'll need crutches."

"Right now we could use some antibiotics and painkillers, some sterile gauze. There's got to be an infirmary here." Lori said quietly as she wrung out a blood coated towel. The coppery smell clouded the room, and Ruth was surprised how none of the people inside had moved in the slightest.

Ruth crossed her arms over her chest, trying to avoid rubbing her hands together as much as possible. The feeling of the blood on her skin was enough to make her cringe. "If there is, we'll find it." She muttered.

Carol glanced over at Lori before looking back to the bleeding stump in front of her. "You've gotta be worried sick about delivering the baby."

Lori smirked slightly and turned her head to Carol. "Do I look worried?"

"You look disgusting." Ruth cut in, having to hold back a laugh as Lori rolled her eyes with a smile.

"So do you." Lori sighed, holding a hand against Hershel's forehead. "We'll get through this."

And if Lori's statement was supposed to reassure the group, or just herself, it did its job.

••

The group sat in silence around the eldest Greene. Ruth picked at her nails once more, trying to ignore the crimson that coated the entirety of her hands.

"Take my cuffs, put them on him." She could hear Rick say outside of the cell to Glenn. "I'm not taking any chances." Lori stood up and followed her husband out of the cell, leaving the group to their own thoughts once more.

Ruth could hear the discussion between the husband and wife down the hall, mostly due to the echoic acoustics that the prison created. "So what about those prisoners?" Lori asked.

Ruth glanced down to Hershel, her hands weaving the towel just a little bit tighter than before. Jack's voice seemed to quiet in her head for once, and she was finally at peace with her own mind. She didn't want to hear him in her head because Jack was one of the last people she wanted to remember. She wanted to remember the way Erin sounded, but for some reason her voice slipped her mind. She couldn't remember her sister as much as she wanted to. She could just barely remember her face, with the small nose that was similar to her own.

Erin was fading faster than Ruth wanted her to. She didn't want to forget her laugh, or the color of her hair. Ruth wanted to hold the memory of her sister alive. Erin was the only way Ruth would know what she did was wrong. Erin was her moral compass, and it seemed a magnet was placed right beside her to screw it all up.

"We're gonna help them clear out their own cell block, and then they'll be there... and we'll be here." There was a silence after Rick's words, but it was soon cut short. "I'm not giving up this prison."

Their conversation seemed to quiet, and Ruth could no longer decipher their words. Her hands readjusted the pressure on Hershel's leg, hoping to seal the wounds as soon as possible. The towels were wet in her grip, the once bright white was now a sinister vermilion. Glenn slowly walked behind her, reaching over her arms to grasp Hershel's hand. He slowly rose it up to the bed post and locked Rick's cuffs around his wrist.

"What's going on?" Maggie questioned softly. Ruth looked back to her broken friend, her eyes softening. Maggie's shoulders slumped forwards, a dull gaze lingering in her eyes without a hint of faith in the fate of her father.

"We had to." Glenn said.

"It's just a precaution." Carol added.

Maggie looked around the room, her bottom lip tucked beneath her teeth as she tried to hold back tears. "You think maybe I could have a minute alone here?"

Ruth nodded, her hands gently releasing Hershel's leg as not to disrupt the slowing of the bleeding. Glenn looked to Maggie, his eyes holding a need to comfort her but he didn't know how. "Yeah, you want me to-?"

"No, just by myself." The three others exited the cell, leaving Maggie in silence. Ruth stood outside with Glenn, hoping to stay close in case of an emergency. It was silent for a few moments before the broken daughter spoke from inside. "Dad, you don't have to fight anymore. If you're worried about me and Beth, don't."

Ruth could hear the quiet cries of the girl, and it tugged at her heartstrings as she tried to stay out of the conversation. "We'll take care of each other. We'll look out. Me, Beth, and Glenn will look out. Go ahead, dad. It's okay."

Ruth drowned out Maggie as best as she could, feeling the need to express her own thoughts to Erin, the sister who wasn't as lucky as Ruth. She moved across the way back to her cell, finding comfort in the isolation for once. She sat back down on her bed and felt the rough sheets beneath her fingers. Some of the dried blood rubbed off into the linen, but the girl didn't mind.

"I wanted to turn back, Erin." Ruth muttered quietly. "I heard your screams, and I wanted to stay with you." Her hand raised up to her face, feeling the water that fell on her cheeks. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.

"It shouldn't have ended like this." She sniffled. "It should have been me, Erin. The one who got shot worse." Her hands silently ran through the sheets once more. "I-I'm living because you didn't, I keep saying to myself. I'm living for you, making sure that our family isn't gone forever."

Tears fell from her eyes, dripping like a silent rain onto her jeans. Her breath rattled in her chest and the room seemed to be even more lonely the longer she remained in it. "I miss you so goddamn much, Erin. I miss your hands wrapping around my shoulders when I cried. I miss your laugh and your corny jokes. I hope-"

A sob came from her lips, interrupting her speech. "I hope you're okay up there. I wish you were with me sometimes, but other times I'm glad you aren't. It's hell down here." She laughed with a pitiful mirth, wiping tears from her eyes. "I'm sorry, Erin."

"I'm sorry, because you deserved so much better."

••

Well that happened. So sorry that it's been awhile since the last update. Just a LOT of stuff going on with finals and I was actually having writing withdrawals because I missed writing this so much. Thanks for waiting so long bc you know.. im the worst.

I'm out of school June 2nd so I'm super excited to work on this a lot more soon.

love you guys, and hopefully you liked it.

cass xx