Lots of background in this first chapter but I felt like I needed to develop these characters a little bit before I got into the action too much!

Takes place immediately following the season three finale.

please please please review!

Chapter 1

-Martinez-

He didn't know how much time had passed, only that the roaring flames had begun to die down into glowing embers. All he wanted to do was stare into the flames until time ended. Everything else, anything else, was too much for him to process.

He'd known the Governor was not a good man. Didn't matter. This wasn't a time for good men. Good men think about others, good men don't ruthlessly eliminate any and all potential threats.

He'd been a good man once. But he learned just how much a world like this could punish you for a good deed, and somewhere between sticking a flathead through his four-year old daughter's skull, and hunting down the 'good-natured' family that snuck their turned son into the safezone he lost the ability to call himself good. He had no use for it now.

But what the Governor had been was safe for those on the in. Woodberry was ordered and safe, which was more than most of those fucks deserved, and for that reason he had no problem with the Gov's less than savory demands. Even with all the fucked up things he'd been required to do, life in Woodberry still gave him a place to escape the things that had taken everything from him.

That all ended this afternoon. After the fucking pacifists they'd brought with them fled at the first sign of trouble he knew the Gov was going to lose his cool. He'd expected him to pick the loudest of the bunch, maybe that whiny Karen bitch and execute her for insubordination to get the rest of the sheep back in line. It's what he would've done.

But instead of controlling them he'd massacred them. Besides bitching out, they hadn't even all been up for an argument. In one blind rage the psychopath sitting across from him now had destroyed everything they had worked to build, and prevented them from ever being able to take out the real threat again.

By the time they'd gotten back to Woodberry the damage was done. The few families that remained were hastily packing everything they could into cars and getting ready to leave. Most everyone had left with the prison crew. He couldn't blame them, even as the rage built in his chest. These people were used to being taken care of. Not only was the prison offering that, but the Gov's stunt that morning had all but insured that the only people left in Woodberry able to fend for themselves were Tyrese and his sister- already half traitors to begin with.

In his anger, he hadn't even thought through what it all meant until Shup came back from the infirmary looking drawn. Of all the people in Woodberry, Shumpert was the one he actually gave a fuck about. They'd known each other Before, just in passing, until the quiet giant had saved his life.

Martinez had been a gym teacher, taught general Phys Ed and coached baseball and wrestling. It wasn't his thing, but every once and a while he'd be put on duty manning the weight room in his free periods. Shup had come in like clockwork everyday during the staff period. He never said much, still didn't, just signed in, nodded hello, and got to his circuit training. It wasn't much interaction, but it was enough for Martinez to know the quiet man's biggest secret. Back in those days, there had been no need to hide it.

When they turned the school into a safezone Shup had been there like most of the rest of the staff. His Liana had seen Shup on rounds and recognized his symptoms at once, slyly passing him off some of Carina's M&Ms. Shumpert worked as a security guard originally, and that ended up saving their lives since he had been given access to the cache of weapons they'd brought into the school 'just in case'. It's hard to make sense of it now, but back in the first days of the panic, people were still concerned with politics, still listening to rules. How else would you have had any debate about whether they should make a 'special exception' to allow guns in the school?

They'd all been in there, all waiting in the gym and different classrooms when all hell broke loose. The VanWicks- fucking vice principal and his cookie cutter family- had smuggled their youngest into the building with a small bite.

"It only got his shoe!" Martinez remembered the mother saying before he bashed her skull in, "barely broke the skin!"

If they'd all been armed and taking care of their shit maybe someone would've just killed the kid and his turned father. But instead they fled, panicked, started screaming loud enough for all the walkers for miles to hear, and opening the doors. That's what did the real damage.

It had been chaos and somehow through the confusion, Martinez had made eye contact with the hulking security guard.

"This way," he'd said, motioning them through the cafeteria kitchens and out to the loading dock. Martinez didn't hesitate. Grabbing Liana and Carina by the wrists, he pulled them through the confusion towards the kitchen.

"Papi that hurts!" he remembered his daughter whining in protest.

"Rina baby, we gotta hurry now come on," he'd responded.

Shup had smoothly taken two rifles out of a cupboard as they passed through the kitchen and had come to a stop by the door to the loading dock.

"Gonna have to be quick," he'd muttered to the Martinez family, "just gotta get in the truck and go.

"Rina baby stay with mami ok?" he'd said gently to his daughter. To this day he still can't figure out why he didn't just tell Liana to pick her up. He must have been too focused on the baseball bat in his hand, on the prospect of what lay outside the door.

The walker had barely closed its teeth around her tiny little ankle before he brought the bat down on its head but it was enough. Four days later his Carina, his heart, had died. Liana's sobs were echoing in his ears when he picked up the screw driver and drove it through his baby girl's eye.

So much of him had died that night, but whatever life Martinez had left he owed to Shup. Now, though the quiet, bearded black man next to him seemed to be his normal, self-contained self, Martinez could see the telltale tremor beginning in his friends hands.

After Carina had died, Liana had stayed alive only to tend to Shup's condition. A nurse till the end, she had a knack for finding what he needed when they went foraging, not just in pharmacies but in houses as well. The day they arrived in Woodberry, with its well stocked infirmary, she'd let go, knowing her family's savior and her husband would be safe. Within two hours of their arrival, she'd put a gun in her mouth and joined her daughter.

Since that day Martinez and Shup had picked through every house, pharmacy, and hospital in the area until they'd secured enough to last Shup and the other Woodberry residents for years. But now it was all gone, all taken to the prison probably by people who didn't realize it'd be needed by anyone but the elderly.

Mentally cursing, he flipped open his bag and handed Shup the last of his candy bars. Shup took it, warily glancing at the Governor, hoping the reminder of his weakness wouldn't stir the pyshopath into any more action.

This method might hold him through the night, maybe the next as well, but Martinez knew, as the last of the embers died away, what needed to be done. He had to break into the prison, and he had to get Shup's insulin back before his only friend left in the world died.