Everywhere, they were everywhere. Rotting corpses, animated and hungry. Walking. Spilling from the woods in hordes, stumbling across the open fields, tripping over the bodies of the fallen. Still more, ever coming. Their inhuman groans and growls filling the once peaceful atmosphere of the farm with the clamor of impending death. Shots rang out as the living attempted to take out as many dead as possible before they reached the house, but it was not enough. It would never be enough. The weak cried and cowered while the strong shouted and rushed about the house, grabbing anything that could help build blockades. But it would be futile, and they all knew it. They were going to die. Some looked at their dwindling ammunition and considered aiming for their own skulls instead of those of the encroaching walkers. Would it not be better than being eaten alive by the corpses of those who were once neighbors and friends? Watching as one by one their comrades fell until the inevitable came, the agony of bite after bite, tear after tear, screams filling the air until all were silenced. Some began to pray, calling upon a deity they were not even sure they believed in, begging for mercy. For a miracle.
And as if the heavens were opened by their desperate cries, fresh sounds of gunfire coming from the woods split the night air, cracking and booming. Walkers began to fall, starting at the back and working towards those slamming their ravenous bodies against the house. Wide eyes brimming with tears looked to Rick and Hershel and Daryl and Andrea, whose guns had run empty. All desperate visages fixated on the scene outside the windows, the grounds covered in bodies of fallen walkers and even those pressing for entry into the house beginning to fall upon the porch, their brains splattering over the pristinely painted wood. Flashes in the darkness eventually gave sight of figures emerging from the woods in wake of the walkers, five forms cloaked in dark fabrics wielding semi-automatic weapons as they stalked through the fields, picking off walker after walker with careless ease. A miracle?
A snarling and the mindless banging of a gaunt form against the screen door mingled with the sound of breath being regained among the group and hesitant footsteps as the leaders headed for the front door. The rest of the group spread to the windows to watch their saviors approach. Rick grabbed a slab of wood, ready to take out the last walker as its head finally broke through the screen and gnarled fingers clawed at the door frame, but he froze with the plank ready to strike as the first of the dark figures stepped up to the porch, weapon aimed squarely at the crazed creature's skull. The man's finger squeezed the trigger. Click. His ammunition had run out as well. As if annoyed by an inconvenience, the man merely sighed before shifting the gun in his hands and bashing the walker's skull into the door frame, painting the outside walls and the floor of the foyer with its brains. Rick stared, plank of wood slowly lowering, as the man flicked at bits of gore staining his dark jacket while the stilled corpse dropped to the porch. The stunned group watched from their positions within the house as the others approached to join the first man. Three dark-haired men and a blonde woman who looked as though she had stepped off the cover of a magazine rather than fought her way through scores and scores of walkers, let alone survived an apocalypse for months. Rick watched them and could not help but note the way they seemed to stalk as they slowly made their way to join the man upon the porch. His gaze fixated upon the first, and as the man's eyes met his a slight smile touched the stranger's rugged features. But there was something unsettling about the eyes. Direct and friendly though they seemed, Rick could sense other things that he encountered every day when he looked into the eyes of the members of their little band of survivors. When he looked at his own face in the mirror.
Hunger and desperation.
Throat hoarse and voice shaking, Rick finally spoke as he warily eyed the newcomers.
"Who are you people?"
The man on the other side of the door glanced behind him before returning his gaze squarely to Rick, his smile widening as a smooth voice bearing an accent which did not belong in Georgia answered.
"Ah, where are my manners? Forgive me. My name is Klaus, and it seems my siblings and I have saved your lives, mate. May we come in?"