My first crack at a TWD fiction. Any helpful tips to make it better are very welcome! Thanks for reading.
Carol felt her legs give way and found herself laying face down in a pile of decaying leaves on the ground deep in the woods. She couldn't do it. She couldn't go on. She just wanted to rest, just for an hour or two.
"Come on." Daryl said as he hoisted her up onto her feet again. "We gotta keep movin'."
"Where?" she said, nearly in tears. "Where are we going?"
"We're bound to find some place safe." Rick sighed as he stopped and looked at the woman, dead leaves hanging from the front of her clothes, dirt smudges all over her face and arms. She was getting weak, he knew that. They all were, but this was not the time to stop and begin whining. They needed cover.
"We thought that church back there was safe, but it wasn't." Carol made her way to a fallen tree and sat down.
"We do need to stop for some rest soon." Lori said quietly to Rick. "We can't keep pushing ourselves like this."
"And if we stop we're sittin' ducks and those damn walkers can come and get us." Daryl argued.
"We can try to rest for a bit." Rick gave in reluctantly.
"You sure that's a good idea?" Hershel asked. "They could be hiding anywhere."
"I would prefer to just keep moving." Glenn added, even as he watched Maggie sit down on the ground where she had been standing just seconds before.
"Just a few minutes." Maggie sighed as she took a small drink of water. She wanted to drain the bottle of its contents, but they didn't have much water left and had to make it last. She handed the bottle to Beth who took a seat next to her.
Lori took a seat next to Carol on the fallen tree, Carl climbing into her lap. Rick took a deep breath and hoped they could afford this break and that they wouldn't find themselves overrun by walkers. He could tell that Daryl didn't agree, but he knew that if people were collapsing from exhaustion they would have no chance if they did in fact encounter a walker.
"Half an hour." he said as he looked at his watch. "Half an hour and then we've gotta get moving again."
The man and the young woman sat watching the group from their spot in a tree. They'd only seen a few walkers so far in the six hours they'd been on watch. He was eager for this group to just hurry up and move on, but he knew the girl next to him was more inclined to help.
"I know what you're thinking." he whispered. "There are ten of them down there."
"I know, but we know what it's like to be in exactly that position." she replied.
"If you decide to take in the strays, you know what that means." he reminded her.
"They'll have to be approved, and anything they do will come back on me." she nodded as she looked over at the older man. "I know all of this." she smiled.
"They'll have to surrender those weapons." he gestured to the group, their weapons on display, and reasonably so. You never knew when one of those damn things was going to come out of nowhere.
"They look desperate enough." she watched them. "They look like they're on their last leg and there's no other place for them to go."
"Go down and introduce yourself, I'll keep watch while you do that." he moved so she could climb down the large tree.
They sat and let their bodies rest. It had been a long day. Rick thought the church they'd found would be safe, for a day or two at least, but he was proven wrong when around the crack of dawn the walkers had shown up. They had no chance to get to their cars and the remainder of their supplies. The group had been on the move for about four hours and were exhausted. Rick handed a bottle of water to Lori who took a sip before handing it to Carl who nearly downed the whole bottle.
"We've gotta make it last." Rick said as he took the bottle before his son could empty it.
"I'm thirsty." Carl sighed. "And hungry."
"Well all are, kid." Daryl said as he paced around, his crossbow drawn and at the ready.
"Don't get snappy with him." Lori glared at the man.
"I'm sorry, after a while a kid whining all the time gets on your nerves a bit." he replied. It was clear that he wasn't sorry at all. "Listening to anyone, adult or kid, whine all the damn time gets real old, real fast."
"Did you hear something?" T-Dog asked, holding up his hand.
"What did you hear?" Rick asked as he got to his feet, pulling his gun.
"I thought I heard something moving." he whispered, pointing in the direction he'd heard the noise come from.
The group stood in silence, listening. For a while they heard nothing but the gentle rustling of leaves, which for all they knew could be from the breeze. Then they heard the distinct sound of a twig snapping.
"A walker?" Carol asked, not ready to run again yet.
Daryl shrugged and held his crossbow up, ready to fire if needed.
"Lower your weapons." a woman's voice called out, and soon a young woman emerged from the trees.
The weapons remained raised and everyone tensed. "Who are you?" Rick asked as he stepped forward a step.
"Christie." she replied, holding her own weapon up. "Put your weapons down." she repeated.
"Put yours down." Daryl replied.
"I'll put mine down, but you don't really think that I'm the only one out here, do you?" she said as she set her gun down. "Only an idiot would wander out on their own."
"There are more?" T-Dog asked, looking around, listening as intently as he could for any sounds.
"Like I said, you'd have to be an idiot to wander out on your own." she stood, holding her hands up. "I can help you."
"How so?" Lori asked, keeping Carl behind her.
"Put down your weapons and we can talk." Christie answered. "We don't have time to be screwing around like this."
"We haven't seen any walkers in a few hours." Carol informed her.
"You may not have, but we've seen a few. Not that far behind you." Christie lowered her hands. "We've been keeping an eye on you lot for about half an hour now."
"We've only been stopped for about ten minutes." Glenn pointed out.
"You can get a great view of the area from the trees." Christie crossed her arms over her chest. "Will you please put down your weapons?"
"How can you help?" Hershel asked as he put his weapon away. He didn't feel threatened by the girl. "Lower the weapons, Rick." he insisted.
"We don't know her." Rick hesitated.
"If she meant us any harm, she and her friends could have picked us off while they were hiding." he pointed out.
"The old man has a very good point there." Christie agreed.
"Lower your weapons." Rick instructed.
Reluctantly the group set their weapons down. They stared at the girl expectantly, waiting for her to explain what kind of help she might be able to offer them.
"We have a little settlement not far from here." Christie went on as soon as the last weapon was put away. "If you agree to surrender your weapons, I can take you to the colony and help you out."
"The colony?" Maggie asked.
"There's a small town and a housing development not too far from here." Christie explained. "I can tell you more about once we're safely inside the walls."
"Walls?" Carol asked. "To keep the walkers out?"
"What else would they be for?" Christie asked, her tone indicating that she thought it was an incredibly stupid question.
"How do we know you're going to help?" Daryl asked, not quite as eager to trust her as Hershel seemed to be.
"Well, I suppose you don't know whether or not we'll help, or if we're going to chop you and bake you into pies." she nodded. "But, your other option is to stay out here, exhausted and low on supplies while walkers surround you."
"We can leave if we want?" Rick asked.
"I don't see why you would want to, but, yeah." she nodded. "You can decide to head out and fend for yourself if you so choose."
Rick turned and called the group in for a quick huddle. "I think we should take her up on her offer."
"We don't know her." Daryl argued. "She could be serious about the pie thing."
"Yeah, but she's definitely right about the exhaustion and lack of supplies." T-Dog pointed out. "I say we go with her."
"So do I." Carol agreed emphatically. "I don't want to be out here anymore."
"I can't believe you people." Daryl groaned.
"She and her people could have picked us off one by one, and with good enough cover, we would never have been able to find them." Hershel pointed out again. "If they meant us harm, that would have been a hell of a lot easier for them."
"I just want to get out of these woods." Maggie said as she put her arm around Beth. "We need to get out of here."
"Okay then." Rick said. "Sorry, Daryl, majority rules."
"Yeah, yeah, whatever." Daryl glanced back over to the woman who stood staring up at one of the trees.
"Have you made your decision?" Christie asked as the group turned back to her.
"As long as we can have our weapons back and can leave when we want." Rick nodded.
"If you decide to leave, then they're yours." she agreed. "But as long as you're inside the colony walls, the weapons will be locked up until you're given clearance to handle them."
"Okay." Hershel took his gun from the waistband of his pants and tossed it on the ground between his group and the young woman. Reluctantly, the others followed suit. Christie stepped forward and stood over the pile of weapons and nodded. She then raised her hands and gave a thumbs-up. Suddenly, they were surrounded by people rappelling from the trees. About fifteen in all.
"Toss me a bag." she said, holding out her hand. One of the men who had just appeared tossed a small duffel to her and she she knelt, gathering the weapons.
"I hope you know what you're doing." Daryl said to Rick as he watched his crossbow disappear into the bag.
"We need to pat you down." Christie said as she handed the bag to the man who had tossed it to her.
"Why?" Daryl asked, not liking the situation one bit. He didn't trust these people.
"To make sure you're not hiding anything." an older man, tall with graying hair and matching goatee said as he stepped forward. "You're Christie's strays, if any of you do anything, it looks bad on her." he started patting Rick down.
"This is Mitchell." Christie said as she started patting Lori down.
"When will we get our stuff back?" Daryl asked as the knife he had tucked into his boot was taken away and tossed into the bag.
"When Reichert says you can have them." Mitchell replied as he moved onto T-Dog.
"After you've been with us for a bit, he'll test you." Christie explained as she finished searching Carol. "Is this your whole group?" she asked.
"We've lost a couple of people recently." Hershel replied.
"When you say 'lost', do you mean they were taken down, or you can't find them?" Christie tossed a small pocket knife Carl was hiding into the bag.
"A couple went down, one we're not sure what happened to her." Rick felt uneasy as he watched one of the men hoist the bag full of their weapons onto his shoulder.
"Give a description of her to Reichert and he can have the militia keep an eye out." Mitchell said. "Come on, let's get moving." he said as he motioned for the group to follow.
"I don't like this." Daryl repeated again and again to his group as they walked along.
"It's better than being out here with no supplies." Carol argued.
"We don't know that for sure." he replied as they made their way along as quietly as possible.