The Walking Dead: S.O.S.. Chapter Four: The Truth is Out.

Sorry for the long wait; had some difficulty writing this chapter. Lot's of dialogue, needed to find the right words. The next chapter will surprise all of you, I'm sure. I can't wait to post that one.
Chapter Three: The Truth is Told
Rick and Shane walked back their camp in silence, preparing themselves for what they were going to tell the group. The arrived at their camp, finding Daryll had returned with a couple of dead squirrels. Everyone looked at them when they arrived.
"We need to talk you all about something." Rick announced. "Something important."
"What is it now?" Asked T-Dog. He was cleaning his gun, like a nervous child playing with his toys; he was trying to keep his mind off the farm, the home that they had all lost in a mere hour. "If it's more bad news, please, keep it to yourself."
"It's about Randall." Shane told them.
"Don't worry about him." Glenn said. "Daryll and found him in the woods before the Walkers came; one of them got him."
"Wait, what?" Rick said.
"Yeah." Daryll said. "But I didn't see any bites on 'em, which was weird."
Rick looked at Shane with fear in his eyes. Shane wondered how Randall could have turned if he wasn't bitten; he had killed Randall himself, he knew he wasn't never bitten.
"We probably just didn't find the bite." Glenn said. "Not like we much time to inspect him."
"He wasn't bit." Shane said, thinking of how Randall could have reanimated. He was fearing the only theory he could of.
"And how do you know that?" Asked Daryll. Everyone looked at him; the way he had said it seemed to imply he knew what had happened to Daryll.
"Because I'm the one who killed him." Shane said. "I broke his neck. He was never bitten, never scratched." Shane looked at the group. "There wasn't even a Walker nearby."
"So you did kill 'em." Daryll said. "Thought so."
Nobody shed a tear for Randall's death; they all knew he was a bad person, a threat to the group. They also knew that they would have done it eventually.
"Then how did he come back." Carl asked. "Dad, if he wasn't bitten then how did he come back?" Rick had a look on his face that alerted the others; there was something he wasn't telling them.
"Rick?" Carol asked. "Do you know something about this?"
Rick took a deep breath; he was hoping that Jenner was mistaken, but it was obvious now that he wasn't. Jenners' words echoed in his head, 'It's not the bite. It's us. We're all infected.' He feared it was the case when he and Shane killed those two Walkers in that town, but didn't want to face it.
"It's us." Rick told them. "We're all infected." Everyone looked at him with shock.
"What?" T-Dog asked, standing straight up. "What did you just say?"
Everyone looked at Rick, wanting an explanation. "Jenner told me before we left the CDC; he whispered it to me."
"Why didn't you tell us?" Carol asked. "Don't you think that's something we should all know?"
"I didn't want to cause a panic, alright!" Rick told them. "I didn't even know if it was true or not. For all I knew he was wrong, or insane."
"We're really all infected Rick?" Shane asked. "You mean no matter how we die, we come back?"
"Yes. If you don't destroy the brain, that's just what happens." The group sat in silence, processing the information they had all just received. No one wanted to come back as one of those things; they all thought that if they could just avoid the Walkers, then they would eventually outlive them. But now that hope was dashed away.
"There's something else." Shane said. He didn't want to confess to Otis' murder, but he knew that if he didn't do it now, then he probably never would.
"Can't you guys keep the bad news to yourself?" T-Dog asked, sitting back down, his words half joke, half serious. "Let me guess; the Walkers know how to use guns now, right?"
"No." Shane told him. "It's about what happened to Otis."
"Otis?" Maggie said. "What about him?"
"I-" Shane felt his voice crack; he still couldn't think of what he did without feeling sick to his stomach. Shane breathed a large breath, steeling himself for what he was about to say. "I killed Otis."
Everyone looked at him silence, some with frightened looks, others with knowing looks. "What?!" Maggie nearly yelled, standing up. "What do you mean? You said he was killed by Walkers!"
"I lied." Shane looked at her. "I shot him in the leg so the Walkers would be too busy with him to get to me."
"What?" Carl began to cry. "Why would you do that Shane?" Tears fell down his cheeks as he spoke. He couldn't believe that Shane, the man who was like a second father to him, had killed someone, someone who had tried to help them.
"I didn't want to do it!" Shane said, his voice cracking once again. " I told him to go on ahead, I told him to go! But he didn't!" Shane began to cry; it was the first time he had shed tears for killing Otis, and he was happy that he could finally do so. He looked at Carl. "He wouldn't leave me! He said he could never forgive himself if he did! I wouldn't have done it, but Carl, you needed the supplies!"
Carl buried his face in his mother's arms, unable to look at Shane. "Carl."
"Don't talk to him!" Lori told Shane. She turned her attention to her son. "Don't cry baby." She consoled him, rubbing his head, unable to say anything to Shane.
"Shane did what he had to do." Rick defended him. "He did it to survive. I believe him when says he had no other choice."
"No other choice?" Maggie asked. "Why not sacrifice yourself? You could've done that!" Glenn got to his feet and put his hands on her shoulders, trying to calm her down. "Did you think of that?"
"That's enough!" Rick said. "We thought we should tell you, to clear the air. This matters over with. It's done."
Rick sat down next to Lori and Carl, the latter of whom was still crying. Shane walked off to be alone. Maggie left the camp in anger, and was followed by her family and Glenn. Carol walked off in distress, with Daryll following her, making sure she was safe. T-Dog and The Grimes Family stayed at the camp site.
Carol walked away from the group to be alone; she wasn't feeling safe with Rick and Shane anymore. She wanted to leave, go somewhere else. "Carol." She heard someone say. "Wait up!" It was Daryll. He caught up to her, bow in his hands, a dead squirrel tied to his belt.
"We can't trust those two." Carol immediately told him. "I mean, look what they've done! Rick kept us in the dark about the infection. Shane murdered Otis, he killed Randall."
"We can trust them." Daryll grabbed her shoulders and looked her in the eyes. "They did those things to protect us. You know that."
Carol didn't see it that way. The only person she fully trusted was Daryll, the man who took a bullet in the head, an arrow in the side, to find her daughter. She didn't want to say it aloud, for fear of being pushed away by the others, but she thought that Daryll would be a better leader than Rick or Shane. "Let's just leave." She said. "Me and you."
"Are you kiddin' me?" He asked. "Carol, think of what you're saying; we can't survive by ourselves."
"We can't survive with them!" She argued. "Not without losing our humanity."
"They've done right by me." Daryll told her. "Right by both of us. I know Shane ain't the best of guys, but he's better than most we'd meet out there."
Carol looked at him, and relented. She didn't really want to leave, but she didn't want to stay. She just wanted to be with Daryll. If he wanted to stay, then she would too. Wherever he went, she would go as well. "Okay." She hugged him. "I'm sorry." She began to cry. Daryll led the crying, childless mother back to the camp.
Glenn followed Maggie with her father and sister; he wasn't exactly happy with what Rick and Shane told them, but he wasn't exactly upset. "Maggie, wait!" Glenn yelled. "We can't go too far off!" His words stopped her; she wasn't mad enough to get herself killed.
"What are we supposed to do?" She asked. Her father, sister, and boyfriend caught up to her. "You wanna stay with them? A liar and a murderer?"
"Maggie, you have to calm down." Her father said. "We can't dwell on what they told us."
"Rick knew that we were all infected. That we ARE INFECTED!" She yelled. "And Shane, he .. he .. he murdered Otis! You really want to trust those two?"
"Yes, I do." Hershel said. "What happened with Otis is horrible, but you saw Shane back there; he was a wreck. Otis was a good man, Maggie, and I believe Shane when he says that Otis wouldn't leave him."
"So he kills him?" Beth said, finally speaking up. "He should've killed himself instead."
"I'm not saying what he did was right." Hershel told his daughters. "But nothing he could have done would've been right. There was only wrong in that situation."
"Maggie," Glenn said, "listen to your father. Shane may not be a saint, but he's no devil."
"So what do we do?" Beth asked. She didn't like Shane to begin with, and knowing of his killing Otis wasn't winning any points for him.
"We forgive." Hershel told them. "There's nothing else we can do."
They all stood in silence, in the dark. Glenn broke the silence. "We should go back to the camp. Get some sleep." He looked to the far away glow of the fire; he hadn't realized how far they had gone. "C'mon." They all headed back in silence.
The Grimes Family sat at their camp, gathering the warmth from the fire. T-Dog sat across from them. "Is there anything else we should know?" He asked. He then looked around, remembering that he was the only one there. "Well, that I should know."
"No." Rick told him. "Nothing else."
"You sure?" He asked again. "Maybe something about God coming to you in a dream? Anything?" He laughed. He wanted to lighten the mood, but he didn't think it was working.
"You forgive us?" Rick asked him. "Me? Shane?"
T-Dog looked at him. He didn't care about Randall's death; he was scum, and he knew it. He could tell. As for Otis; well, he understood what Shane did, and would've done the same thing in his position. "Yeah, you're forgiven. To be honest, I would've done the same thing in your positions."
"Thank you." Rick said. He wondered how the others were handling the information; he wasn't gonna allow the group to split up, not after all they went through together.
"Dad?" Rick looked at his son. He had since stopped crying, though his cheeks were still red and wet. "Did Otis die because of me?"
"What?" His mother asked. "No Carl. Why would you say that?"
"Shane said he did it because I needed the supplies. If I didn't need them, then Otis wouldn't be dead."
"That doesn't matter Carl." Rick told his son. "What happened happened. It can't be undone. It wasn't your fault."
"Alright." Carl said. "I know it wasn't my fault, but I can't help but feel guilty."
"That's a good thing little man." T-Dog told him. "Means you're a good person. If you didn't care at all, then you should be worried."
Lori looked at T-Dog. "Thank you Theodore." She said, using his real name.
"No problem."
Shane walked around, pacing from one place to the next. Confessing to two murders was more stressful than he thought it would be. He wondered if the others could forgive his killing Otis. The way Daryll looked at him told him that the bow wielding hunter probably pitied him, and understood what he did. What he really worried about was Carl and The Greene Family; Carl looked up to him, and Otis was a family friend of Hershel's.
He was scared as well; what if the others thought he was too dangerous to be around? What if they killed him? He didn't mind dying, but he wasn't about to let himself die, at least not without a reason. And it's not like he could leave now; Lori was pregnant, and he didn't want to leave the baby. His baby.
Though Rick told him that it was his baby, Shane still believed that Lori was pregnant with his child, not Rick's. But he would worry about that later. Deciding enough time passed for the others to cool off, Shane walked back to the camp in a hurry.
Everyone had returned when Shane came back. "So, how are we?" He asked. Everyone looked at him, some with anger, some with pity.
"We're good." Rick said. "They understand what you did."
"That's ... good." Shane said. He still felt like the odd man out, and for good reason. "So what now?"
"We get some sleep." Rick told him. He then spoke to everyone. "Get some sleep; I'll keep watch." No one said anything, deciding to do what Rick said. They all lied down, all except for Rick and Shane. Shane sat next to Rick as he was checking his gun. They sat in silence.
"Thank you." Shane said, breaking the silence. "You don't know how good it feels to have everything off my chest."
"I can't imagine what you went through." Rick said. "Killing is never easy, you and I both know that."
"Yeah, we do."
"But only you know what it's like to kill a good man. I've killed bad people before. It's not easy. It's a difficult thing to do, one that gets easier the more you do it. But I can't imagine how hard it must feel to kill a good person. But I almost killed a good person just a few hours ago." He looked at Shane. "I almost felt what you felt."
"I'm sorry." Shane wanted to make Rick stronger by killing him, but he didn't want him feel the pain of killing a good person. "I'm so sorry. I'm just glad you don't know what it feels like." He put his head in his hands and looked at the ground. "It's the worse thing I've ever felt in my entire life Rick. It's just .. sick."