WALKING DEAD

"Damian, you should know that we do not fight violence with violence" "Whoever said that was a coward mother, I am a man, I'm not a goddamn coward" "This is not how I raised you, your father would not want you to go down this path" "My father, the man you claim you loved so much is dead, if ever you loved him, then you will join me to avenge him but-" "Shut up" Mrs. Campbell landed a slap on the cheek of her beloved son, hoping to cast out whatever demon that was speaking through him. Damian just stood there, even though it was dark, his pupils could be seen glowing "I'm sorry I said that" he apologized "I was just pissed off" he picked up his black leather jackets off the couch, bit hard on his lower teeth and "Those who killed my father must pay for their crime" he added "Damian! Please, no, you don't have to do this" his mother sobbed, she grabbed the traveling bag he was holding and held it with a firm grip on it was with no intention of letting go, "If I kill them now I will be imprisoned, but when I become the law, I won't have to answer for any bullet that goes missing in my barrel" he pulled her into a forced hug and kissed her forehead, the struggle for his travelling bag finally came to an end with him emerging victorious. He walked out into the cold and eventually disappeared into the dark walking as fast as he could to escape his mother's sight, "at least that might keep her from crying or worrying too much" he thought, but Sarah just kept on crying and screaming his name till he could be seen no more. How far must we go to prove to someone that we truly love them? Should we do everything we can to show how much we appreciate them even if it means sacrificing our dreams and our whole life to please them while they're dead?

On the first week of January 2010, while people were recovering from the crazy fun they had on Christmas and others were still writing down their resolutions, Damian's first resolution 'Join The Police Academy' was in motion. If you had gotten the chance to ask him what he would want to become in future, a million times would you hear him whisper in all his innocent "I'll be a doctor" and if you asked him why, he would say "I'll save a lot of lives and maybe yours too." He usually ended with that joke, but that was all what a four-year-old him would say.

They say that people forget a lot of things that happen in their childhood as they grow up, some say that you usually remember the things that happened around age seven or eight and that if you're fortunate enough, maybe a thing or two that happened around age eight. But this is not Damian's case. You see, at age five everything in this life took a turn around. At age five he shut himself from the outside world, he started studying harder than he ever did, he read everything he set eyes on in articles, story books, poetry books and everything that included numbers or alphabets. By now you might be wishing you or your child were like him, who wouldn't want to show up and give a speech that will make adults bite their nails just because they cannot digest how a seven-year-old could be this open-minded and brilliant.

At age seven he had so many prizes than he could count, awards for winning the bees consecutively, awards for being the best students over and over and over again, it was as if he got awards for everything he partook in. He wasn't just brilliant academically, but in the field of athletics too he was nicknamed 'Genius the Demigod' due to how good he was. All these however, were not what he wanted the most, these were just the smallest part of a greater plan. People who knew his father and his father's achievements always looked at Damian and concluded that, he was just like his father. That is where age five sets in, because everyone is wrong, anyone who ever said he was like his father was, is and will forever be wrong.

Up until a week before his sixth birthday, his father was his best friend, his mentor, and he would still choose the same man to be his mother if it were possible because his father was everything to him, until someone took his everything away from him, making him the only thing that you would kill for. During that week, his parents were secretly planning a birthday surprise, they had bought a ticket to go see the Eagles of the Mountainpeak collide with the Roaring Tigers. The Eagles of the mountain peak were Damian's favorite basketball team and in order to give him a funny heartbreak ahead of his birthday, they told him he couldn't go see them play.

On the night of his father's death, Damian and his father were playing hide-and-seek, a game in which one of them goes to hide, and the other has to find him. His mother was in the hall trying to sew a coat of different colors just like the one Joseph had as a gift from his father in a story she read from the Bible and told to Damian many times. She could have gotten a seamstress to do it for her son, but doing it by herself, to her was a way of showing her son how much she loved him. At one point she called out to Damian and asked him to go shower and get ready for bed because it was approaching his bedtime, the lad hopped on the couch next to his mother and replied saying, "Come on Ma, what's wrong with stinking like a fish for a little while" his father joined him in laughter and showed his support by adding, "You heard the man, let's have just one fish night in honor of the birthday boy shall we?" Sarah picked up a pillow next to her and threw it at her husband who intentionally allowed it to hit him in the face, then he fell on the couch and pretended to be crying, Sarah then looked at Damian and said with a silly smile on her face "Now that my boy, is how David knocked out Goliath, with a fluffy pillow" mimicking with her hands, a basketball player delivering an accurate shot into a net.

At this point it looked as if the laughter party was never going to end until they heard the sound of a gunshot, then immediately room went quiet. At first the man of the house thought that the gate man had slammed the metal gate again, for he had a habit of doing that. Usually when that happened, Mr. Campbell would shout and say, "Go to sleep already Benny, you're torturing the neighborhood", the latter would reply to that with "Aight Boss, I'ma go rest ma head". It was awkward that night, silence was the reply he gave, raising questions as to what that sound was. "Benny?" Mr. Campbell clamored. Another sound similar to that of a gunshot was heard again, this time the family began to hear footsteps approaching, Mr. Campbell whispered to his wife and child, asking them to go inside until he told them it was safe. Behind the flat screen television on the wall, there was an emergency call button which when pressed, within a fifteen minutes minimum, cops will be all over the house, but fifteen minutes was what they did not have that night. As the sound of the approaching steps slowly faded at a point perhaps because it came to a halt, a shadow formed of a man on the floor. For about a split-second everywhere was a cemetery, then there was a knock at the door which sent the heart's of the Campbell's pounding. Initially, Mr Campbell had told his wife and child to find a place to hide, but Sarah could not leave her husband behind, and Damian was still not fully aware of what was going on, he thought his father was still playing the hide-and-seek game, so he ran towards a couch and hid himself. "Sarah!" Mr Campbell whispered but with a frown on his face, "take the boy and get out of here now!". "Ouch, that hurts" an intruder's voice was heard, as a masked man holding a briefcase and a gun came in through the door "Am I no longer family?" the person continued "You a vermin" Mr Campbell accused, "I thought I told you to stay away from me and my family" even with his face covered, Mr. Campbell could tell that it was Jimmy, a close friend of his. Jimmy had entered the room alone, leaving two men surveying the place. As they entered to deliver their report that the Campbell's were alone at home, they noticed Mr. Campbell holding their Boss by the neck, one pointed his gun to the back of his head and ordered him to let go. He raised both hands to show his surrender but had different plans in mind. He quickly ducked around, twisted the gun to the right which caused it to fire in the process, injuring the other colleague of the gunman. Campbell, still on the attack used his right hand to stop the gunman wrist, and with his left he bent his wrist, grabbed the gun and pushed it down. By the time his act of heroism was over, he noticed two guns on the floor, but the third was in the hands of his would-be murderer with the muzzle to Damian's temple. " Please stop, keep the kid out of this" the Campbell family's hero surrendered, he and his wife both got down on their knees in obedience to Jimmy's instructions. The other two picked up their guns and stood one on each side of the couple, but Damian was asked to open the briefcase. There in the briefcase was a syringe prepared exclusively for Mr Campbell for being stubborn and not agreeing to an offer made by his longtime friend to join the selling of a liquid ecstasy and other drugs capable of turning that two into billionaires. Jimmy, the man in charge took the syringe out of its encasement and asked Damian to look into his father's eyes as his father was injected with all the contents of the syringe. Damian asked what would happen to his father after the injection but was informed that from that moment on, his father was going to be transformed into a real man, but eventually he was going to fly to the heavens and join the stars where he could protect Damian much better than he does in Earth. Knowing very well that people who become stars are never seen again in the flesh, Damian opposed the speech by saying "I don't want him up there, please leave him alone with me and my mother, we're happy here, don't take him away" Jimmy got fed up and held Damian by the ear "Enough with the childish nonsense" he said "your father thinks he is better than me, that he is so innocent, that he is a damn Saint; well let me tell you something Saint Campbell, do you know what happens to innocent people? Ask Jesus, darn it!" He launched a slap on the cheek of the already feeling dizzy Jonathan Campbell, causing him to fall back, but the two men held him in position for his death "You'll go to prison for this" Sarah threatened, "Since you believe in justice so much" Jimmy replied furiously as he squeezed Sarah's jaw and hit her temple with the hammer of his gun "Why not live long enough to tell your son that justice can be bought" Jimmy continued "You see, people like us, rich, famous, powerful, we own this town, we own the police, they work for me, don't waste your breath, you won't even have a cent after the investigation, and you know why? I'll tell you, your husband, after autopsy will be pronounced as a drug addict, and all his properties will be taken from him because I have built three rolling meth labs in his name which I have informed the police about, so immediately he tests positive for drugs, the government will become the new owner of his properties, so go ahead call them, I will be waiting". He then shifted his attention as well as his gun towards Jonathan, and asked the two men to let go of him. "Now" he said "look your son in the eye and tell him that everything will be alright cos he is terrified I can tell”. Campbell refused to say anything at first, but his stubbornness irritated Jimmy, he slapped him in the face and screamed saying "Tell him Saint Campbell." Jonathan lifted up his eyes at Damian with no sign of fear or regret in them and called him "Hey champ" "Hey Paps" the little boy responded, "everything is going to be fine" his father said "take care of your mother and listen to every word she says, be strong Damian, and be good, don't be like hi-" since it was obvious what he was going to say, two shots were fired to his chest, poking two holes from which streams of blood began to flow. Damian together with his mother screamed out loud with beating hearts, he held the man's rest and began punching and kicking him in all directions as hard as he could, but what could that do to a man who was a thousand times his size? However, as the man picked him up and was about to dump him somewhere on a couch, he saw a tattoo of a tarantula on the back of his hand which right after the incident he locked himself out to draw. After minutes of wailing over her husband's body, the policemen arrived to see what they could do to help the already dead Jonathan, but "You good-for-nothing" was the angry greetings they heard from an angry wife covered with the blood of her husband, seated on the floor with his head on her laps. They had to drag her away from the body with force before they could take it away to analyze it. As much as she believed in justice, the words "I run this town" kept echoing in her mind like a nightmare, there were cops alright, but who is the good cop, and who is the bad cop? "They all wear uniforms" she answered with watery eyes on one occasion when Damian asked her why they were not getting justice for his father's death.

Damian locked himself up from school for one week, and only got out a few times when he heard his mother crying. He would hug her and whisper "Daddy said to take care of you, don't cry Baby Bird, the sun will come out and present justice." With a quivering voice, she would reply to him holding his hands to his her chest while seated outside his room "Thank you, Lil Sparrow". It's funny how things can change impromptu, and situations can force a child to become the pillar of the family instead of having his parents chase after him for being naughty and living the childhood dream like mummy or Daddy teaching him how to ride a bike or holding a birthday party with friends coming over to his house or even having to walk around the park, he did that a few times but not birthdays, for he was afraid that his mother would be taken away from him as well. No child must be made to live this nightmare, but Damian for years, he was not just any child, oh no, he was the little boy under-estimated by his father's murderer, the little boy who planning his future carefully and was going to avenge each tear his mother ever shed, the little boy who had killed his father's murderer a billion times in his imagination and thought of this man as a walking dead man who was in need of a Damian's touch to lay him to rest in a casket, and as far as Damian Campbell was concerned, this man was going to get it at all cost.

After three minutes of admiring everything around him, especially the boldly written name "Guttenberg Police Academy," which he kept repeating to himself over and over just because it was a dream come true, a young man about his age wearing a white round-necked short-sleeved T-shirt, whose impenetrable countenance gave little chance to tell whether he was being friendly or mean, came up to Damian and picked up one of his bags, then without explanation he turned around and started walking away. "Uhm, excuse me," Damian called out to him as he reached to touch the young man's shoulder with a funny smile on his face. "I think that belongs to me." "Yes, it does," the young man replied with a frown on his face, "but I wouldn't have to be here if you weren't spinning around like a headless chicken." "Yo, what's your problem, mate?" Damian uttered with closed teeth, indicating how angry he was: "First you