The Shepherd screamed as the blade fell. His left leg separated cleanly just below the knee. The sound was worse than he'd expected.
Blood sprayed across the wall behind him.
He collapsed backward as the axe slipped from his numb fingers. Pain exploded through his body. Cold sweat soaked what remained of his shirt.
For a moment he could only lie there, gasping, unable to comprehend what he had just done to himself.
Then survival instinct took over.
His hands shook so violently he could barely grip the whiskey bottle, but he managed to tilt it over the stump. The alcohol struck raw flesh and exposed bone. The pain was so overwhelming that his back arched off the floor.
He forced himself to keep pouring. If he failed to disinfect the wound, infection would kill him just as surely as the bite.
When the bottle ran dry, he dropped it and grabbed his shirt. With trembling hands he tore the expensive fabric into strips. The bandaging was clumsy and hurried, but it was all he could manage.
His vision kept dimming at the edges. He couldn't pass out. Not until the bleeding stopped.
By the time he finished, he lay in a spreading pool of his own blood.
"Who are you? What are you?"
Silence.
That silence was somehow worse than any answer could have been.
In all his years, he'd never known fear like this. Not even when the dead first began to rise.
The factory had become hell the moment that garbled radio transmission came through from his scout. One by one, his followers had died in increasingly impossible "accidents."
Then the blood writing appeared.
When the guard described it over the radio, an old memory surfaced. One of his earliest converts had screamed the words during a trial.
"You were born from the God's mercy, and you'll die by His wrath!"
At the time, he'd laughed. He fed the woman to the walkers and forgot about her.
He wasn't laughing now.
Could there really be a God? In a world like this?
The thought was almost more terrifying than the alternative.
He'd tried to run. Of course he had. But the door was locked, communications cut, and that... thing... that invisible presence had begun its judgment.
He leaned his head back against the wall, fighting waves of dizziness from blood loss.
"Why? Why have You unleashed such wrath?"
He forced himself to take slow breaths.
"I don't know who You are." He wiped at his face with a hand, smearing blood and sweat together. "But I think... even the lowest prisoner deserves a chance to defend himself before the final verdict. Maybe You think we had no right to judge others? Is that it? Or maybe You think we defiled Your name? Maybe You think we're executioners. But You don't know what it was like at the beginning. You don't know what I saw."
The pain in his leg was making it hard to think, but he pushed through.
"There was a supermarket. It was early in the outbreak, maybe a week after the dead started rising. A group of soldiers came through. They were half-crazed with fear. They wanted supplies. The owner tried to help them. He gave them food, medicine, whatever they asked for."
His breath hitched.
"They killed him anyway. They shot him right there in front of everyone. Then they turned their guns on the rest of us. They meant to kill every witness."
He closed his eyes.
"I gave them a reason not to pull the trigger. I told them the owner was guilty. He had been hoarding supplies while people starved. What they did was the right thing. It was a lie. But it kept everyone else alive."
He looked down at his severed leg.
"After that, the soldiers kept following my lead. They believed what I told them. They used it to justify other things. I took in refugees and gave them faith."
The bandage around his stump was already soaking through. He'd need to change it soon or risk bleeding out.
"Maybe we weren't perfect, but this is the apocalypse! No one's following the old rules anymore. How could they? I'm willing to accept the Corpse's Kiss You've given me." He forced something resembling a smile onto his pale face. "I think... I've been judged. I've paid for my sins with this leg. According to our doctrine... I'm innocent now. Please, forgive me."
The pain and blood loss finally won. His head tilted sideways, and darkness swallowed him whole.
---
Time passed. How much, he couldn't say.
Pain dragged him back to consciousness. The Shepherd's eyes snapped open. He was still in the blood pool. The stump of his left leg throbbed with each heartbeat.
But that wasn't the pain that had woken him.
His gaze moved downward, past the bandaged stump, until it reached his right foot.
Fresh bite marks covered it.
Across the room lay another walker head. It had been freshly severed and still twitched weakly on the floor.
His breathing stopped.
While he had been unconscious, it had returned. That presence had somehow brought another walker into the room. It had allowed the creature to bite him, and then it had removed it.
Whatever this thing was, it didn't care about his excuses or his doctrine.
It was playing with him.
Rage flashed through his mind before he crushed it down with every ounce of will he possessed. He couldn't afford anger.
He just crawled across the floor, retrieved the knife from the first walker's skull, and drove it through the second one's eye socket. The twitching stopped immediately.
Then he crawled back to the wall, picked up the axe, and positioned it over his right leg.
"AHHHHH!"
The second amputation was worse than the first.
His body was already in shock from the blood loss and trauma. Every nerve was screaming. The axe had dulled slightly from the first cut, making him have to chop twice before the bone finally gave way.
He nearly passed out from the pain alone. Only sheer willpower kept him conscious as he went through the routine again.
By the time he finished, he was shaking so hard his teeth chattered.
He leaned against the wall, both legs now ending in crude stumps, and forced himself to think past the agony.
His first confession hadn't been enough.
He closed his eyes and buried the rage deeper.
"If this is Your judgment, I accept it. I'm willing to repent. Yes. I admit it. I wasn't completely honest before. The soldiers did kill that man. But I didn't just tell them he was guilty to save the others. I told them because I was scared. And I thought if I gave them someone to blame, they'd leave the rest of us alone."
He sucked in a sharp breath as fresh pain lanced through both stumps.
"And it worked. They believed me. And when they started using that same excuse to justify raiding other places, killing other people... what was I supposed to do? Tell them I'd lied? They would have killed me!"
His fingers spasmed as he adjusted the bandage on his right leg.
"So I kept going. I took in refugees to make up for it. I gave them faith because... because they needed something to believe in. The belief got too deep and infected them. I couldn't control it anymore. They didn't worship me. They worshiped what I'd created. Maybe it started with me! Maybe I'm the one who planted that seed! But what came after... that wasn't me! That was them! The evil was already in their hearts! Why are You punishing me for what they became?! I'm guilty! I know I'm guilty! But not like this!"
The dizziness was getting worse. Cold was seeping into his bones. His vision kept graying at the edges.
He couldn't pass out. If he passed out again...
He tried to speak, but something heavy flew across the room.
The brass ornament hit him in the forehead, and darkness took him again.
---
When the Shepherd woke for the third time, it felt as if he were drowning in ice water.
The cold had seeped into every part of his body. The only warmth came from the stumps where his legs had been, and that warmth was nothing but the burning agony of exposed nerves.
He opened his eyes slowly. His vision blurred and swirled before gradually settling.
His left wrist itched. He raised his hand and looked at it.
There was a bite mark.
Understanding came slowly.
Something had bitten his wrist while he had been unconscious.
A small piece of paper lay beside his hand. His fingers trembled as he picked it up. The words swam before his eyes at first, but eventually they became clear.
Your story was very touching. I also believe you were forced into it. So actually, the first two times, you weren't really bitten by walkers. Only this time, it's real. :)