Fear The Living/Issue 89

This is Issue 89 of Fear The Living, titled Betrayal. This is the third issue of Arc #12.



Issue 88
Evan Baranski's POV “Guys stop I need to catch my breath.” I say, putting my hands on my knees.

“Fine, but for just a bit, we need to hurry up if we don’t want any bandits or biters to get us. Right James?” Dan says.

“Yeah, the bandits are probably scouring every corner of the woods to find us. Let Evan catch his breath and then we get the hell out of here.” James says.

“I don’t think so.” I say, while they were talking I was slowly reaching for the knife hidden in my boot.

I quickly lunge at Dan and swing the knife, creating a gash across his chest, and he falls. I turn to James and do the same, but he dodges it, and quickly punches me in the face. I stumble back a bit, and James punches me again, this time knocking me to the ground. He brings his foot down on my hand, making me drop the knife.

“What the fuck man.” James says.

“Haven’t you ever considered how the bandits always seem to find us? How they always seem to be there and fuck us over? I TELL THEM. I WAS THEIR SPY, ALL ALONG I WAS JUST HERE TO FUCK YOU ALL OVER!” I yell at him.

“Why man?” James says, and he picks up the knife.

“They had my sister, the only family I had left, and they were going to kill her. They eventually did, but I was so deep in this shit that they would kill me if I left them.” I say.

James looks at Dan, who already passed away, and quickly stabs him in the head, making sure he wouldn’t turn. “He didn’t deserve to die like this.” James says, and he turns around towards me.

Too bad he doesn’t realize an intelligent person always has a backup plan, and I had already taken out my second knife.

“One of us is going to die right now, and it sure as hell won’t be me.” I say, and I lunge at him with the knife.

He quickly dodges it and punches me across the face. He swings the knife at me, cutting me across the shoulder. While he goes back into his offensive stance I take my chance and swing the knife at his hand. I miss by a little, but instead I cut him all along his forearm.

He drops the knife, and I quickly do the same cut to his other hand. Then I kick him in the chest, and he falls onto the ground. “I told you I wasn’t going to die. Those bandits trained me to the best of their abilities. How were you, a former porn star, going to kill me? Please I want to hear how you expected to kill me.” I tell him.

“Why did you act so nice, make so many friends. And don’t tell me that Ken wasn’t your friend, he was probably your best friend.” James says.

“The more I blend in, the less anyone will expect that I’m the cause of all of this.” I say, and before James can say anything more I quickly put the knife into his head, and twist it.

I pull the knife out, grab the one on the ground, and I put them in my pocket. I grab the pistol that Dan had, and I take out the walkie talkie in my other pocket.

“It’s done, James and Dan have both been eliminated, and I’m now making my way towards the town, that’s where the backup plan was.” I say.

“Good job kid.” Wolf responds.

Ken Myers Jr.'s POV “Wesley?” I say, surprised to see Wesley. Last time I saw him I thought I was going to die, and he probably thought I was dead.

I slowly pull myself up, all of my body parts hurting. Lasky slowly helps me up. I limp towards Wesley, and I hug him.

“Don’t worry man, Rose and Logan are with me,” Wesley says and he ends the hug. “I’ll go tell the news bro. By the way, are you feeling good? Because you’re limping.”

“I’m as good as you can expect bro. Got pain in just about everywhere in my body.” I respond.

“I’ll go get Rose and Logan.” Wesley says, and he walks outside.

“You never told me who is this Logan?” Lasky says.

“He’s one of the few people who I care about more than me in this world. I met him a few months after the apocalypse started. His family had died, and I made him a promise that I would protect him as long as I lived.” I say, and then I see Logan walk through the door.

His eyes light up the moment he sees me, and how wounded I am. He walks up to me and gives me a hug. “Thought I was dead huh?” I ask.

“That’s what Wesley told us.” Logan says, and then Rose walks through the door and rushes up to me and gives me a hug too.

“Group hug huh? Don’t hold it on Wesley that he said I was dead, I surely would have died if it weren’t for Lasky here and his friend Ives. I told Wesley to leave me, and to let me die there, he gave me a pistol in case I wanted to take the quick way out. I was going to, but I fainted before I could. Guess the universe was telling me to live.” I say, and I feel a tear come out of my eye. “Or maybe I couldn’t die without seeing you two one last time.”

The hug ends, and I give Rose a quick kiss. “What about you guys, what happened to you guys?” I ask.

“Dwight happened, he held both of them hostage, I had to kill him, in front of them.” Wesley says.

“Sit down both of you, I’m going to have a little talk with Wesley.” I say, and I slowly limp towards Wesley.

Ives walks into the room and greets Rose and Logan, and explains to them how they found me. I look at Wesley and say “You killed Dwight, in front of Logan?”.

“I had to Ken, if I let him live he would eventually find us again, if I would have taken him with us he would have just been a burden, and leaving him for the biters was worse than just shooting him. I promised you that I would protect them when I thought you died, so I did what I had to do to protect them Ken.” Wesley says.

“Well I can’t blame you for trying to protect them, thanks Wesley.” I say, and I turn around towards Ives and limp to his side.

“You tell them how you found me Ives?” I ask him.

“Yeah I told them how me and Lasky were avoiding a herd of walkers, and we stumbled upon the tree you were sitting against. Me and Lasky quickly decided we couldn’t leave you behind. I haven’t asked you people, where were you planning on going?” Ives says.

“The Fort, it’s some place over in Florida.” Wesley says.

“Well you four are in luck, me and Lasky are from The Fort, and I’m the military leader.” Ives says, and he smiles to us.

D.L.'s POV “You find anything Ashley?” I ask her from the other room, so far all we have found in this house is a couple of cans of beans, a water bottle, and a flashlight.

“Apart from what we’ve already found, nothing else.” Ashley responds.

“Hope the others are having better luck than we are.” I say, and I open another cabinet, but this time I found dozens of canned foods, two packs of water, 3 bottles of whiskey, and a knife.

“Ashley, I think you might want to see this jackpot I found.” I yell at her, staring wide eyed at all of this.

I look back and see her walk into the door, and see the look of surprise she gets when she sees the supplies. “Jackpot indeed.” She says, and kisses me.

At that moment I hear the door slam open, and I quickly point my pistol towards it, but all I see is Evan. “Kid, I thought you died back in the Lab, where are Dan and James?” I say to him as I quickly rush to him. “You’re covered in blood Evan, you alright?”

“Yeah, yeah I’m alright. James and Dan, they didn’t make it out of the lab, they were overpowered by biters, told me to get the hell out of there. I didn’t have a choice, I, I couldn’t save them.” Evan says, looking down at the ground.

“It’s alright kid,” I say, I remember when my daughter would talk like this, maybe this will come in handy about now. “Just uh, sit down over there, let’s talk this through.”. I look at Ashley and motion for her to keep on searching the house.

“I’ll tell the rest of the group the news, but first um, let’s talk this through. How do you feel Evan?” I ask. “It’s not how I feel that matters, it’s how you feel.” Evan says, and I’m quickly confused, so he lunges at me, knocking me over off of the chair I’m on.

Evan takes out a knife and quickly swings it at my throat, so I push him off of me. I grab the knife from his hand, and I quickly punch him across the face, knocking him out.

“D.L.?” I hear Ashley say, in a scared voice, and I turn around to see Wolf standing there, with a pistol held right at her head.

“Let the kid go, and I’ll let your bitch here go. You thought I was dead didn’t you? You actually thought I would die? Now let him go.” He says.

I quickly toss Evan towards Wolf, and he lets go of Ashley and tosses her to me. “There is no need for bloodshed now. At least not right now, all in due time my boy.” Wolf says, as he picks up Evan and tosses him over his shoulder. “And as you’ve already seen, I’m a man of my word, right?”.