The Walking Dead, Survival Rule Of The Week: The Monsters Within

3) There’s Some Horrors We Must Face.

Something else we learned from Negan’s past was the tragic story of his wife, Lucille. Just before the outbreak, she was diagnosed with cancer. While it was an operable form, the zombie outbreak made treating it far more difficult than it otherwise would have been, with her and Negan having to keep her treatments chilled in their refrigerator and Negan having to go further and further out to get gasoline for their generator, quietly reminding him of how limited his time with his wife was.

After a mishap resulted in the last of Lucille’s treatments being ruined, Negan had to search the Virginia countryside for a team of doctors who he believed had more chemotherapy treatments for Lucille.

The thing is, upon realizing that her treatment was gone, Lucille resigned herself to her fate and asked that Negan stay with her until the end, telling him that he’d done right by her in his attempts to keep her alive for nearly seven months in the apocalypse. Negan refused, insisting on trying to find the doctors and more chemo treatments, no matter what. While he certainly meant that, the sad fact is: Negan was too afraid to watch his wife turn into a walker. He went on that mission, to some degree, to avoid having to see it.

When he finally got free of the biker gang, after spending weeks trying to find the doctors, he managed to return, only to discover his worst fears had come true: Lucille, rather than let the cancer slowly kill her, chose instead to commit suicide, leaving a message for Negan not to leave her as a walker. Because he was afraid to see her turn, afraid of having to put her down, Negan wasn’t there for his wife when she needed him, and he never forgave himself for that.

As I’ve often said, there will be horrors in a zombie apocalypse, perhaps the most horrific being people we knew and loved becoming zombies. As bad as that will be to see, and deal with, if we don’t deal with our loved ones who’ve turned, if we leave them as zombies, it may be something that haunts us for the rest of our lives, knowing that we could have saved them the fate of becoming a walking corpse, but couldn’t because we were too afraid to. What that will cause us to do is anyone’s guess, but I’m inclined to think it won’t be very good.

Cowardice is just as much a monster within us as anything else, and it’s one we need to defeat, lest it defeats us.