*WHOOOOOOOSH*

“Ugh. Fuck it’s getting cold…”

Maggie’s voice rings out as we walk outside the prison. Indeed, it’s been a long time coming. Autumn is on its way. The cool breezes and yellowing leaves prove it even further. Though, the chill only comes when the sun isn’t out. I nod my head and say,

“We’ll have to block off the windows with something when we get here. And find out how to turn the heaters on.”

Glenn speaks next,

“Yeah. We’ll also have to paint this place. Dunno about you guys, but I’d rather not live out the rest of my days inside of a concrete tuna can.”

Shane jokes,

“Well we got a good runner to go off to Home Depot to get us some paint.”

Glenn chuckles,

“Glenn Rhee, the paint runner. Coming to theaters this fall.”

I shake my head,

“I can smell a box office failure from a mile away. And boy, does that one stink.”

Glen feigns outrage and flights his arms up while saying,

“WHAT? Please! That’d be a cult classic! Maybe the next Pulp Fiction!”

I snort and retort,

“More like the Incredible Hulk…”

Glenn looks at me with actual hurt in his eyes and says,

“You take that back!”

Maggie ends up snorting, which causes the entire group to laugh. After a good ten seconds, we all start to go silent and look at eachother. Andrea is the one to break the silence,

“So… Shouldn’t Daryl and Rick be back by now?”

I shake my head,

“Nah. They’ll be going through physical papers, not a computer. It’ll take a while. Plus, if anything went wrong, we’d hear the gunshots.”

Another uncomfortable silence. Maggie is the one to break it this time,

“Are we really gonna kill these guys?”

I sit there for a second and look over to the bodies of Tomas and the other guy. I turn back to Maggie and say,

“Dunno about you, but I’d rather not live under the same roof as someone who killed before all this went down. At least not one that killed criminally.”

Maggie looks like she’s about to say something, but is interrupted by the slamming of the front door to the prison. Immediately, several of us go for our weapons as we see an orange jumpsuit come out of the front door. I draw my revolver and start aiming as I see Daryl and Rick come from the shadows behind one of the prisoners. Mister unknown. Thomas. Daryl shoves him forward as he looks at all of us before saying,

“Geez. You’d think you guys saw a ghost.”

Rick walks over to us with papers in his hands, holding them up by his face with a slightly angry look. He pauses for a second before saying,

“Well. We know what he was in for.”

He walks over to my and puts the paper in my hand, which I read aloud. I walk over towards Thomas, who Daryl has put on his knees, stepping slowly as the crunch of my boots rings out,

“Thomas Richards. Age forty eight. Arrested for thirteen homicides. Each victim, a young woman between the ages of fourteen and twenty eight. Killed each by method of slow, painful decapitations.”

I look down at him.

—-------------------------------

[Daryl POV]

This sick bastard! So that’s why Rick didn’t show me! He knew I’d kill this filth the second I saw him! I’m still kinda tempted to! I look up at Penny… Jesus. She looks down at the man as if she was staring at an ant. As if he was absolutely nothing. Her eyes seem to be devoid of any emotion, but seem to slightly glow red, highlighting the anger burning underneath.

Her bright red hair seems to almost turn a blood-stained red as she finally opens her mouth to speak to him,

“So. Was it fun? Was it fun torturing and killing those who couldn’t fight back? Was it fun watching the light fade from their eyes as you slowly cut off their heads?”

The fat fuck wiggles against my arms, and struggles to look up into her eyes. He does, however, speak back,

“Y-yeah. It was. Especially the begging. Knowing that I had someone's life clench in my palms, only requiring a small squeeze of my fingers to quench it. I remember the feeling… Especially from that little whore I-”

*CRUNCH!*

“GUH!”

Just before he can finish his sentence, Penny moves at a speed faster than even I would be able to react to. Her knee slams into his face, causing me to lose my grip on the cuff behind him. He falls down onto his back as a spray of blood leaves his nose. Penny speaks to him coldly,

“Oh I know the feeling. I know it all too well. That ‘I can do whatever I want’ feeling. The feeling of knowing that the person couldn’t fight back even if they tried. I know it.”

Penny kneels down next to the man, drawing one of the knives from her belt as she does. She holds it in her hand, playing with the tip with her other one. She continues speaking coldly, almost like she’s talking to herself,

“I changed very quickly when the world went to shit. I went from running away from any group of walkers that had more than three to splitting a girl’s skull with an axe. I didn’t need to kill her, necessarily. Sure, her and her group had drugged me and tied me up to get info on my group, but it’s not like they did anything too awful to me.”

*SHK!*

“GAAAAH!”

Thomas rolls onto his stomach, and again, almost faster than I could see, Penny takes her knife and stabs it into his back before rolling him back over to his side and grabbing his head by the last bit of hair he has,

“I could’ve escaped and not looked back. She was watching a movie. The light from the screen paired with the darkness of the room made it to where she couldn’t see anything behind it. I had almost all of my stuff they’d taken back. But something within me snapped. I couldn’t just let them go after all that. I couldn’t let her go.”

She lets him go, causing him to fall back down onto the concrete below. I look out over the group and see most of them looking with understanding, even a bit of pity. Not for Thomas, but for Penny. Maggie looks at her with an underlying fear. Penny’s voice brings me back into their conversation,

“So… I took an old, rusty axe. I walked up to her. I said a few words to her… Then I drove the axe halfway through her skull, nearly popping it off like a canopener.”

She stands up and starts walking around Thomas like a predator, circling its prey. The crunch of her boots breaking the silence between her words,

“I realized after that, it wasn’t because of what they’d done to me. No. Had they just targeted me, I’d’ve run away like a bitch with my tail between my legs. No. It was because they wanted to use me to get to my group. A group I had dedicated myself to protecting.”

A small hint of warmness comes to her voice as she finishes her sentence, but that soon reverts back to the coldness of before.

“I take any potential threat to the group very seriously. So, pray tell, what should I do when a particularly dangerous bug gets into my house and threatens the people I hold dear?”

Thomas shakes his head and looks at Penny’s legs with anger clear. Penny stops in front of the man as he lifts himself back up into a sitting position. She looks him in the eyes and says,

“Simple. Exterminate it.”

*SLCK!*

“KUG! GHUGH!”

Her hand moves faster than the eye can see, taking her knife and slashing it across the man's throat. A spray of blood leaves his neck in an arc, spraying across the concrete ground. Penny takes her knife and wipes the blood off on Thomas’ jumpsuit before slowly standing up. She looks down at the man who struggles against his cuffs to reach up and hold his bleeding neck. Her eyes seem to have calmed slightly as she leaves his with a few final words,

“Now you know how those women felt.”

---