Jim…what an underrated character portrayed by an amazing actor. Andrew Rothenberg's depiction of the mechanic was heart-wrenching in the small amount of screen time he had in the first season. He was killed off rather quickly, don't you think? There could have been so much MORE to his character but no, he had to get bitten. I think there's a lot of underlying story to what he told the other survivors and now I have the opportunity to delve deeper into it. Comments and feedback are appreciated and encouraged, but more so than anything, I just hope you enjoy reading!

He threw the contents of the coat closet aside, glad for once that his boys hadn't listened to him when he said that the closet was not to be used for their sport gear. He found their two wooden bats and sprinted back into the kitchen where his wife and two sons were waiting, peering through the blinds at the massacre on the street. He pulled them away and handed one bat to his oldest son Dylan before he stuffed a few more items into his backpack.

"You take this and use it however you can to keep those people back, hear me?"

"You aren't telling me that we're going out there?" asked Tara in horror. "Jim, those things are eating people alive! We wouldn't make it ten feet."

"It's gonna get a lot worse and then we'll have no way out at all. Y'wanna wait around for that? Wait 'til the streets are completely covered and then try to escape? Honey, if we don't make a run for it now, we ain't gonna ever get outta this house. We gotta go now."

"What if one of those people grab us, Dad?" asked his younger son Mark. Looking down, Jim saw his own reflection in the boy's wide brown eyes. Mark looked more like him, lanky with a pointed face, rather large ears, and a bit of a saddened expression carved into his features. But now he was absolutely terrified at the prospect of walking out the front door. For a boy of nine, he could sense that something greater was at stake than just losing his family. He felt the fear of dying and at such a young age, Jim could tell that his son's mind was shattering inside.

"Nobody's gonna hurt you, buddy, I promise," said Jim reassuringly, ruffling Mark's hair and zipping his backpack shut. "Nobody," he repeated as he looked at Tara and Dylan. "If we stick close together we should be fine, but we gotta leave now while there's still rescue teams patrolling the area."

"This is insane," said Tara, touching Jim's forearm to try and reason with him. She pleaded silently for him to reconsider, but he shook his head and handed her the butcher knife from the cutlery drawer. "Go for the heart, the lungs, or the head," he advised. "That should put 'em down."

Suddenly they heard a crash from the back yard and Dylan rushed to the sliding door, pulling the curtain back to get a good look. "Dad, there's two of them out there!"

"Come back over here!" shouted Jim, standing just behind the closed front door, sweating profusely as he listened to the moaning and screaming from out on the street. "Dylan, you protect your mom and brother at all costs and do exactly as I say once we're out there, do you understand?"

"Yes, Dad."

"Dad, why can't we just go in the car?" asked Mark, clinging to Jim's pant leg.

"'Cuz I left it at the garage so that I could get home faster," said Jim. It was difficult to explain to a nine-year-old how he had had to run for his life from the car garage ten blocks away when some of those rabid people broke in and started feasting on his boss. He hadn't had any time to grab keys to one of the cars, but once he started out for home, he was glad that he hadn't tried to drive back since the roads were clogged with crashed vehicles. Now, however, he was repenting his decision, wishing for something with four wheels to transport his family out of the hostile area as fast as he could.

"Jim, please, just listen to me…"

"No, you listen to me! We ain't gonna make it if we continue sittin' here on our asses and pretendin' like the world ain't going to shit around us! We won't survive, especially if those people are swarming around the house and breaking in like those two in the back are about to do. If we don't run, we don't live; it's as simple as that."

The sliding door broke open as the rabid people smashed through it. Jim flung the door open and pushed his family out in front of him to defend their escape. Taking Mark by the hand and stuffing him into Tara's arms, he broke right and started jogging up the street with his eyes set on the highway which looked blocked, but also deserted. If they could just make it to the turnpike…

"Jim!" Tara screamed and he turned around as he saw one man pursuing them, bits of flesh and droplets of blood clinging to his wide open mouth. Jim urged his family to keep going while he swung the bigger of the two bats into its face, knocking out several teeth. He didn't stop to do a double tap as he ran to catch up with Tara and the boys.

Mark was panicking in Tara's arms and Jim saw a teardrop or two clinging to his eyelashes. He knew in that moment that something inevitable had changed in his son. Mark never cried, not even when he had fallen down two flights of stairs and hit his forehead or when he had crashed into the neighbor's car on his bicycle and torn most of the skin off of his knee or even when Tara's father had died, but now, now he seemed to sense something irreversible was about to happen and he was reacting in the only humane way possible.

"Dad, there's more coming from up ahead!" Dylan yelled.

"Just keep going and head for the highway and don't you dare stop!" Jim responded, hurrying ahead to intercept the people before Tara and the boys were overwhelmed. He swung again and again almost as if he were back in baseball practice listening to the coach berate him for his lousy skills to get him riled up and improve his technique. His muscles bulged and his veins popped out as blood sprayed outwards from a woman's skull and doused his shirt.

"Dad!"

Whirling around Jim saw that his family were almost to the fence that cut the suburban area off from the highway, but several crazed people were closing in fast and he had to abandon his present position to rush to them and begin clubbing away. Dylan came at one girl about his size with a perfect golfer's stroke and smashed her nose in.

"Tara, get over the fence now!"

But Tara was screaming, clasping hands with Mark as she kissed his forehead and told him to run. The boy took off down the perimeter of the fence before Jim could call him back and a couple of the people from the main group broke off to chase after him.

"Mark, come back! Mark!" Jim cried.

He felt Tara grab onto him in horror as three madmen seized her hair and pulled her down with Jim underneath. Jim kicked out at one in the face and beat the bat against its skull. Beside him the other two men were—were, dear God, they were eating her. Tara's screams made his ribs vibrate, made his head want to break into a million pieces as she tried to stab at the men who held her down even as they tore into her neck. Jim crawled backwards, bat still in hands as he saw Dylan go down underneath another four mutated beings. His son's cries of agony tore at Jim's heart and made his blood run cold. For a moment he stopped breathing, stopped thinking so that all of his attention could be focused on watching his family being torn apart in front of him while he sat there and couldn't do a damn thing.

Then he realized that none of the people were paying him the slightest attention. He leapt to his feet, threw his bat over the fence, and then climbed after it. As he hit the ground he rolled and snatching up the bat, kept going, feeling the backpack thump against him with every beat of his heart. He found that tears were streaming down his grimy face as he ran for the turnpike.

He didn't know why he kept going. The guilt began to eat away at his soul, ripping him into pieces of human trash as he watched Tara and Dylan's last moments in his head over and over again. He tried to convince himself that Mark had made it out, but he knew he was only giving himself false hope. They were gone in every sense of the word and it was all his fucking fault. He had insisted, demanded that they leave to reach safety when their house was safer than any other place they could have gone. If they had barricaded themselves in the garage or basement, they would have survived, waited until the storm died down and then gone out looking for help, calling for assistance, but no, it hadn't turned out that way. He had led his family straight into the arms of the devil, right up to the gates of death and his sins should have cost him his life. He should have died right alongside them, but he had been given a chance to escape and he took that chance not because he wanted to, but because some faraway part of him told him to run.

In time he slowed down to a miserable trudge and when he finally found himself walking west on the overpass to I-90, he was about ready to give up. Of everything he had packed, he had forgotten food, water, and his anti-depressant medication. He wouldn't last long on clothes and memoirs, especially if half the clothes weren't even his. He fell to his knees, sobbing and pounding the blacktop with his fist until his bruised knuckles opened up and spilt blood and even then he used his other hand, punishing himself for what he had done. He didn't care if his shouts carried. At this point he would gladly welcome death…

A shadow blocked out the sun and heat as it passed over him and came to a stop. Dehydrated and utterly spent, he glanced up, squinting at what he saw: a creamy-yellow colored 1977 Winnebago. He saw movement in the driver's seat and a moment later an older man appeared, wearing a light tan fisherman's hat that almost blended in to the RV behind him. He had a powdery white beard streaked with bits of multicolor gray. Behind him there stood a woman with light blonde hair and a younger girl, perhaps a teenager or early adult with the same colored hair.

The man knelt down beside him and spoke, though at first Jim heard no words come out of the man's mouth.

"I said, are you alright, son?" asked the man. Turning his head over his shoulder, he called, "Andrea, get me a bottle of water out of the fridge back there. This guy's severely dehydrated." The older woman handed the man a sealed store-bought water bottle which was fogging up as it was exposed to the Georgian heat. The man uncapped the bottle for him and held it out, but Jim was too weary to even try and accept it.

"Have you been bitten?" asked the man, suddenly looking concerned.

Jim shook his head once, left, right, and center before he collapsed face first on the blacktop. He felt the man's aged but strong hands grab him by the arm and hoist him up. The two women rushed out to help him and together the three of them carried him inside where they placed him on the left of the two twin-sized beds after prying the bat from his hands and removing his backpack. The younger woman dabbed at his forehead with a damp cloth while the other one sponged his mouth with another to help him rehydrate.

"What's your name, son?" asked the man as he checked Jim's temperature and began to bandage his knuckles with toilet paper.

"Jim…" he managed to say.

"Well, I think you're lucky you didn't die out there in the heat. You're coming with us, though exactly where we're going I don't know. My name's Dale and this is Andrea and Amy. I picked them up about fifteen miles back."

Jim found that he didn't really care what Dale had to say. He saw the woman Andrea's face regarding him with concern and then passed out.

Jerking out of his nightmare, Jim sat up on the same bed to the sounds of screaming from outside the RV.