Doug shuddered as the cold steel of a blade pressed against the soft flesh of his throat. It was his fault; he should have been more aware of his surroundings, keeping an eye and ear out for both the dead and the living. But he was careless, and now he was paying the price: he’d been ambushed by a rogue bandit, snuck up on from behind and subdued embarrassingly quickly. One arm was bent and pinned almost painfully behind his back, the other desperately trying to tug his assailant’s knife away from his neck with little success. It was useless trying to hide the fact that he was completely panicked, his heart rate running a mile a minute and his frantic breaths coming out in short, shallow intervals. The man’s voice was low and gruff, as abrasive as sandpaper against Doug’s ear.
“I’m gonna ask you one more time, lardass: where’s yer fuckin’ group?”
“I’m alone,” Doug insisted breathlessly, without missing a beat. He was, of course, not telling the truth. He and Ben had been sent into one part of the dense woods while Lee and Kenny took off towards another, all four of them tasked with finding something to bring back to the Inn to eat. Doug had wandered off in pursuit of a rabbit he’d seen while Ben had veered off somewhere else, effectively separating the two - leaving Doug defenseless against the attack. Doug refused to give away his group members; he knew if he sold them out, they’d be put into danger as well by either this guy or whoever he was with.
“You’re full ‘a shit! You wanna die real bad, dontcha?”
Doug heard himself give a small cry as his arm was bent even further, the strain on his joints sending waves of pain rippling through him. His heart pounded furiously against his ribs, beads of sweat gathering at his brow. He cracked an eye open, desperately scanning the surrounding trees and praying to see the outline of someone he recognized, someone who could help him. He couldn’t die like this… The dead were walking around and eating people, and he was going to meet his end at the hands of some punk with a knife? His breath stopped short as the blade sunk further into his neck, threatening to break the skin. Doug’s efforts to calm himself were betrayed by a distressed whimper from within his throat, further exposing just how pathetically frightened he was in such malicious clutches. He squeezed his eyes shut once more, fully expecting one flick of the bandit’s wrist to bring a messy, painful end to his life.
“You’ve got three seconds to come clean, or I’ll–!”
Doug had no time to register what had happened, only feeling the warmth of something splattering against the back of his head when the pressure holding his arm in place was suddenly gone. The knife fell to the ground, followed shortly by the body of the bandit now sporting a sizable hole in the back of his head. Doug gasped for breath, panic leaving him now that the immediate danger was over but not yet relieving him of his quickened heart rate. The hand belonging to Doug’s sore arm gingerly rubbed at his neck as he stared down at the scene, processing what he was seeing, before the other hand reached up to feel what had sullied his sandy locks – when he pulled it back, it was coated in blood. Stunned, Doug looked up to see a rather shaken Ben emerging from the trees with a pistol held in both his hands. The two stared at each other for a minute before Doug finally spoke, his voice low and wavering.
“I-I had to,” Ben replied in a mumble, his own voice trembling just as much, “He was– you were– I…”
The two both looked down at the man’s corpse, silently letting the weight of what had happened sink in. Surely this guy wasn’t alone… and that could only mean that whoever found his body would be on a man hunt for whoever was responsible. But not only that - Ben now had that man’s blood on his hands. He’d killed a living person - something almost no one in the group had done before. And for what… for Doug? Why did Doug’s life continually come at the price of someone else’s? Doug deflated, leaning forward and resting his hands on his knees with a long, shaky sigh. Ben responded in a similar fashion, placing both hand on his forehead and leaning back as the tension of the situation lifted itself from his shoulders. Whatever was to come of this altercation, there was nothing they could do about it now… They’d just have to deal with it as it came. Maybe they’d get lucky and they wouldn’t be found out at all. Who knows? For right now, all they knew was that the threat had been dealt with and that Doug came out of it alive.
“Ben…” The teen looked back down at the sound of his name, furrowing his brows in curiosity as Doug finally lifted his head back up to look at him.
“…Nice shot.” Ben looked back down at the bullet wound, both he and Doug genuinely surprised at how perfect his aim had been. If he’d held his gun even inches off the mark, he would have likely missed or shot Doug instead. “How’d you do that?”
“I have no idea, I-I just… fired without thinking,” Ben said somewhat sheepishly, wishing he could have spun a tale about how he’d perfectly calculated the most impeccable shot, “I saw what was going on and I just, like, panicked, you know? I didn’t know what else to do, so I… I shot.”
Doug was quiet a moment, before finally standing up straight and rubbing his aching shoulder. “…I’m glad you did,” he murmured, usually against the idea of taking another person’s life but making an exception this time. After all, it’s different when it’s in defense of someone else, right? “You probably saved my life just then,” he continued, noting Ben’s somewhat taken aback reaction to such a heroic claim. Doug forced himself to give a weak smile, of only to convey the sincerity of his gratitude.
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