Including Benjamin, six people in total had been scratched or bitten by the walkers.
They were moved into a broken-down shack in a corner of the camp, far from everyone else.
Their wounds were worsening at a pace visible to the naked eye. One frail old man had already started running a fever and drifting in and out of consciousness.
Everyone knew what that meant.
No one said a word. A heavy, shared despair spread through the air.
Gwendolyn bit her lip, brought over some water and the old painkillers left in the first-aid kit, though no one knew if they still worked, and set them by the shack's entrance.
That was all they could do.
Benjamin sat propped up inside the shack, staring at his arm, now completely black and swollen. He gave Knox a strained smile when Knox came to see him. "Don't worry about me, Knox. Take everyone and find a way to survive…"
"If you hadn't saved me…" Knox looked at his old friend of decades, tears streaming down his face.
"Don't say that. In this apocalypse, this day was bound to come sooner or later. I've been ready for it for a long time."
Benjamin pulled at the corners of his mouth, trying to smile, but his eyes reddened and his lips trembled. In the end, he could not manage it.
Knox held Benjamin's good hand tightly, unable to say anything.
Both Benjamin and Knox knew the wounded had been given up on.
That was the rule of the apocalypse. Cruel, but impossible to defy.
Despair seeped into every survivor's bones like the bitter chill of a winter night.
"It was me! It was me! It was my fault!" The camp was sunk in grief-stricken silence when David suddenly shouted.
He looked at the torn web of skin between his thumb and forefinger, the wound Jenson had split open earlier. It had stopped bleeding.
"I overestimated myself. I damaged the fence when I went out, then bled all the way back to camp. It had to be my blood that drew the walkers here!"
He clawed wildly at his hair and dropped to his knees in the snow, snot and tears smeared across his face.
Everyone's feelings were complicated.
This was not the first time walkers had gotten into the camp.
This time, the old man standing watch at the water source had been careless, but he had also been the first to die.
They had spent days starving and freezing. Even with the emergency biscuits, the damage to their bodies could not be undone all at once. Many of them were so hungry they barely had the strength to fight back or run.
David was impulsive, but he was also brave. In the past, he had been one of the main people killing walkers and protecting the camp.
Faced with a disaster like this, their eyes were empty. They did not even know who to blame.
Only the child who had lost his mother broke down after hearing those words. He rushed over and tugged at David as he knelt on the ground. "Give me back my mom! Give me my mom back!"
David did not move away. He bit down hard on his lip, choking back his sobs.
Anna stood in the middle of the camp, looking at the blood-soaked devastation before her. Then she suddenly lifted her head, her voice trembling.
"Did you all see that?! This is what we get for trying to 'make our own decisions'! This is the price we paid for our so-called 'dignity' and 'freedom'!"
Tears finally spilled down her face, mixing with the bloodstains there. "We can't even protect ourselves! We can't even keep the children alive! We can't even save our wounded companions!"
Anna pointed toward the civil defense warehouse, though it was far beyond their line of sight. "Those people have the ability! They have weapons! They have food!
If we had been there, maybe none of these people would have had to die today! Benjamin and the others wouldn't have to sit here waiting to die! Jenny wouldn't have lost her mother!"
She shouted the last few words at the top of her lungs.
Clifford and Gwendolyn said nothing.
Knox slowly raised his head and looked at Anna, who was shaking with emotion, then at the companions around him whose will had been utterly crushed by the disaster.
He opened his mouth as if to say something, but in the end, all that came out was a remorseful sigh.
The "autonomy" he had upheld for half his life seemed so pale and ridiculous in the face of this bloody reality.
Knox lowered his head and stopped looking at anyone. He tightened his grip on Benjamin's hand, silently accepting Anna's words.
As he felt his old friend's temperature gradually rising, panic gripped him. It meant Benjamin had started running a fever.
...
Night was as black as ink, and the wind and snow had stopped for the time being.
In the center of the camp, a pitiful little bonfire flickered in the cold wind, barely pushing back the darkness around it.
Nearly all of the remaining fifty-nine survivors had gathered around the fire.
They huddled together like a flock of frightened lambs.
The firelight shone across one numb, exhausted face after another.
Aside from the crackle of burning wood, the only sounds in the air were suppressed sobs and the increasingly faint, pained groans coming from the isolated shack in the corner of the camp.
That was Benjamin and the others, moving toward an unavoidable end.
Knox sat on a fallen log, looking as though he had aged another ten years overnight.
His back was hunched, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his worn cotton coat, his hollow gaze fixed on the dancing flames.
The brutal image of Benjamin taking that swipe for him, along with the sound of his old friend's breathing growing weaker inside the shack, stabbed through his heart again and again.
Clifford looked around, stood up, and let out a heavy sigh. "Everyone's here. Whatever thoughts you have about what comes next, say them."
Gwendolyn spoke at once, finally saying what she had been holding in. "Everyone, we all know what we lost today. We lost family, we lost friends, and we lost the sense of safety we were so sure we had!"
She pointed at the broken fences around them. "Look around us! What are we supposed to use to fix these fences?
Do we still have the strength or the tools?
How much food do we have left to keep us going while we repair them?
Even if we do fix them, what about next time?
What if even more walkers come next time?
Or what if it isn't walkers, but living people, people like David was worried about before, coming after the pitiful supplies we have left?"
Gwendolyn's questions landed on everyone like hammer blows.
No one answered. The silence only grew heavier.
"We can't hold out anymore!" Gwendolyn's voice carried a sob, but even more than that, it carried resolve.
"If we rely only on ourselves, then before this winter ends, every one of us will either starve to death, freeze to death, or end up like... like Benjamin and the others!"
She did not dare look toward the shack. "The group that opened the warehouse is our only hope now! Our only one!"
Gwendolyn shouted the last few words, then stood there breathing hard, waiting for a response.
A suppressed stir ran through the crowd.
Many lowered their heads, while even more turned to look at Knox.
He was one of the most respected people in the community. In the camp's early days, he had taken in many people who had fled Knoxville, so his attitude mattered greatly.
Knox slowly raised his head. The firelight cast shadows across the deep lines of his face.
He spoke hoarsely. "Gwendolyn, you're right. We... we really may not be able to hold on."