A/N: Cleaned up and re-posted from elsewhere. Just a short character piece, because I loved the wordplay.

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Southwest, past...past Gardenview. God, it'd been awhile since she'd done this sort of thing, and she hadn't ever done it while working off the last of a concussion, in...fucking hostile territory.

Hostile territory. Jesus, what an understatement.

Southwest, not far off the bank...the spot was circled on the map, and there was a road that cut across the way, so all she had to do was walk in the right direction and then follow that. Easy enough. Just a simple...simple thing.

Complicated slightly by the fact that open ground and roadways meant potential death by way of sharpshooter or random patrol. So she'd hook...east, just a little, it looked like there was some wooded areas in that direction. Easy enough.

She folded the map up, tight as possible around her compass, tucking it away in the pocket of her borrowed jeans. Radio, binoculars, spare ammunition...with everything accounted for, she scooped up her liberated AR-C and hopped out of the raft. Solid ground.

East. Then south.

She started walking.

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Five. She was pretty sure it was five. Two inside, two outside, one roaming. Only one of them had body armor, that she could see. But she couldn't discount the ones she didn't have a good sight on being better equipped. So…

So.

Forty rounds for the rifle, twenty-eight for her pistol. Two more miles of cultist infested territory to cross after this. Was there a reason not to just go around? Give Dutch the bad news, keep moving, resupply once she found the potential 'resistance leaders'?

Blood. Limp bodies piled up like garbage.

...fuck yeah, there was a reason.

Semi-auto. Safety off. She knelt behind a stretch of corrugated steel that served as part of a fence, rested her rifle on top, and sighted in on the furthest target.

One-two. Still up. Three. Down. Her ears rang, fuckers were startled, trying to spot her. One-two. Another down, she ducked down and crept to the very edge. Shouting, glass breaking, a door slamming open. A quick check, and it...looked like two of them were rushing in her direction. That left one unaccounted for, which wasn't great but-

Footsteps. One man hopped the fence, got three bullets in his back. The second cursed, skidded to a stop, but couldn't bring his gun to bear in time to stop her.

Four down.

And then bullets were sparking off the metal in front of her and she was throwing herself down, frantically belly-crawling from behind it and hoping above hope that the tiny field of pumpkins between her and the shooter would be enough concealment. Considering she managed to make it more than two feet without getting perforated, it was.

The gunfire stopped, and she scrambled up over the fence. Caught movement in the open door of a shed, and turned to put as much of that building between them as possible while she sprinted closer. A baseball slide ended with a painful impact with painted siding-

There was a curse. The crunch of glass under boots, and a gun poking around the corner.

She didn't bother to right herself. Just fired the moment she saw that dirty-white.

And then the only sound was her own breathing, pounding heart, ringing ears. A dog barking incessantly nearby.

No time to waste. She pulled herself up and starts for the house. Check it...clear it. She'd only counted five, but better safe than sorry, right?

Right.

The house was empty. Family photos. One with Dutch. The rest are the bodies outside. Most of them, anyway. There's a kid...Jesus, there's a kid, but he's not one of the corpses.

She freed the dog. It spent a few minutes whining and nosing at the bodies...she'd moved on to searching the outbuildings for anything useful by the time it finds his way back to her. He settled down beside her when she slumped down against a pile of tires in the shed, and she absently scratched at his ears as she examined the note she'd found.

It's for the kid. Telling him to take 'the supplies' and head for the woods, and to go south if they don't meet up in time. Reminding him to 'switch the safety on the gun to OFF'.

She'd checked the pistol sitting beside the note. Morbid curiosity. Safety was still on.

The dog whined. She sighed, sets the note aside, and went for her radio. A couple of sharp taps on the receiver…

"Kid?" Dutch. Had he just been waiting by the radio? "Did you make it to the farm?" Two, sharp taps for 'yes'. "Rae-Rae…?"

She took a deep breath, let it out through her nose...lifted the radio. "Dead."

Even that much was painful, and it took an effort not to reach for the bandages still wrapped around her neck. But she couldn't...she didn't want to have to leave him guessing. As it was-

"Shit...shit!" She let her head drop back, waited through the moment of silence as the man put himself together. "This fuckin' Seed family...you get the bastards that did it?" That was another 'yes'. "Good. Good...thanks, kid. For checking, for me." She didn't have anything to say to that. "...I'll be in touch. Until then...you give these sons of bitches what's coming to 'em."

That was the plan.

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Oh, there were a lot of them down there. Fall's End wasn't a very big town, but apparently the Peggies really wanted to keep a hold of it. She counted a least half a dozen on the street, probably more indoors. A couple of trucks, a fuel tanker…

Fuel tanker.

It wasn't hard to get in closer. And wouldn't you know it, some enterprising soul had not only mounted a ladder to the side of a building, but set up a machine-gun on the corner of the roof overlooking main-street. She wasn't sure whether it had been the cultists or the 'resistance', but either way it was going to be useful.

Her borrowed lighter sparked to life. The fire danced, sputtered…but the fuse on her homemade dynamite caught immediately, and she wasted no time throwing it.

'I saw, and behold it was Whitehorse.' Fevered eyes turning to her. 'And Hell followed with him.'

The tanker went up in a fireball that would have knocked her off her feet, if she hadn't been holding onto the mounted gun. And the heat of it was like a sunburn on every bit of exposed skin. But the discomfort was pushed aside in favor of pulling back the bolt and opening fire on the men closest to the hostages.

'You want Hell, Joseph Seed?'

'I'll bring you Hell.'