This is my first WD fanfic. I wanted to weave in a new character (and possibly some romance) while staying as close as I could to the dialogue, action, and pace of the show as possible. In this version, however, I had Carol get lost in the woods at the end of Season 2 instead of Andrea. I've never been much of a fan of Carol. Sorry if this annoys you.

This is my take on Season 3. Some of the events follow the comics (though pretty loosely).

Let me know what you think.

By the way, I don't own any of this.

It was almost funny - I used to love the night. Night meant being out of work. It meant clubs, and friends, and dancing, and drinks. It meant sex with my boyfriend. I loved the night sky - how it made a great bowl over the city, though the stars were were dim over Washington, D.C., to be there were always more to be discovered, over the horizon... The sky just went on, full of possibility.

Now the night just meant death. It shrank my life and sanity to the point of a flashlight or headlights, and that tiny illumination of my minuscule world only served to draw death toward me in an unknown quantity. One walker? Three? Twelve? Fifty?

That was why I was I was almost alarmed when I saw the firelight leaping around a tiny campsite several yards off the highway where the old Mazda 626 I'd stolen had broken down. I'd been on my way to Atlanta. Kevin had been dead almost a month now, and then Amanda, and even Sarah just four days earlier at a gas station. I'd thought about ending it after that. Thought long and hard. I had watched everyone I loved die in front of me; I had even killed one of them myself. I had watched the whole world burn down around me. And I knew I couldn't get very far on my own, not when even sleeping put my life at risk. We just aren't wired to endure that kind of stress.

But I had promised her. Promised that I would make it to the CDC. How could I break that kind of promise? And if there were an answer anywhere for what was happening, it would be there.

Only it wasn't.

As I approached the firelight I heard a chorus of guns cocking. I threw my hands up in the air.

"I'm not armed! I'm alive! I'm alone!"

"Come into the light. Slowly," a male voice commanded.

I edged forward through dead leaves, making as much noise as I could.

"I'm alone, I swear." I moved forward into the firelight, stunned at seeing so many women, and even a child. They had made camp in the ruin of an old stone building, semi-enclosing the fire on three sides. "There's so many of you." I breathed.

"Less now than there were," said the man with the beretta aimed at me. He looked as tired as I felt, and needed a shave.

"I'm sorry, it's just - I haven't seen so many people in months." Not counting the guys in South Carolina, of course. But then, I didn't count them. And neither would anyone else, anymore.

"Are you really alone?" asked the white-haired man with a shotgun. I noted his suspenders and his age, and wondered how the hell he'd lasted this long.

"Yeah." My hands fell down to my sides. "My sister and I... we were headed to Atlanta. To the CDC. I'm- I'm Hannah," I finished lamely.

They all seemed to trade looks. "The CDC is gone," the man with the beretta said. He lowered his gun.

For a moment I wondered if I'd heard him right, looking around at the other faces glowing in the firelight, the ends of their guns guns also dropping toward the ground. Grim looks confirmed the statement. I sank down into the wet leaves, my mother's .38 falling out of the back of my jeans. What now? Was there any point? Any point at all in going on?

"Thought you said you wasn't armed," a narrow-eyed man with a thick country accent said from the far side of the fire, wielding a crossbow. He looked like something out of Deliverance. His weapon was the only one still trained on me, right at my forehead.

"I'm not. Used the last of my ammo four days ago." My hands clenched at the memory. "Wanna check?"

"Just great. Another mouth t'feed," snarled the redneck, jerking his chin toward me.

I gave a dry laugh. "That's one thing I'm not. My parents' neighbors were mormons -had two years' worth of food in the basement. They had the right idea, you know? I still have a ton of it in my trunk."

They just stared at me.

"Wanna check?" I repeated.