Memories in italics
Present Day
Lori Grimes-Walsh was in a frenzy. She was in a rush wipe the blood off the floor before the kids woke up. With one hand she was using a towel to put pressure to her nose and eventually had to get a second hand towel from under the sink to clean up the remaining few drops.
Shane slammed the door when he left for his morning walk, so she knew the kids would be up soon. Her hands were shaking while she ran to the washing machine, throwing in three blood stained towels before quickly walking upstairs to take a quick shower. That was the only way to clean the blood off her face, hair, and the stubborn stream that seeped down her neck and landed on her chest.
As she was toweling off she had to think of another way to tell Pete how she broke her nose yet again. "Walking into a wall" had already been used, and so had "tripping and falling." She had it planned, that she would tell the good doctor she was playing with the twins and Michael, her four years old son, threw a toy at her.
The sun was barely rising when she tip toed past the rooms of her daughters. How they slept through the fight was something she couldn't comprehend.
She started to walk down the stairs, one hand on the railing and one hand holding her still bleeding upper lip. After dropping her bloody pajamas and the towels she just used into the washing machine she turned the corner and saw her thirteen year old son, Carl, cleaning up the blood drops she had missed.
Before the tears in her eyes started to fall, she said a simple "morning bud" to her son.
"You alright, mom?"
She had to swallow a sob, thinking of how much Carl had changed since the world ended, and how much he looks like his dad. She refused to let her mind revisit the pain of losing Rick. Shane told her he was dead, and she witnessed the city as the helicopters drop napalm in the streets. Her heart ached every day, but she dared said anything to Shane.
"Mom?" Carl repeated, as he stood and moved closer. She walked into his outstretched arms, cursing herself for letting the cycle continue. She's the parent. She should be taking care of her son, not the other way around.
"I'm alright." She whispered, her voice cracking as she willed the tears away.
xxxxx
She watched as Carl walked out the front door. She kept track of the time. Five years. It was five years since he forced her from the home she very happily shared with Rick. Five years since she looked at his frail body hooked up to the machines which monitored his vitals. Five years since that horrible morning that she would give anything to take back. She had his pictures, all the family photo albums, hidden in two backpacks deep in her closet. The times when Shane would leave the house, which became more frequent, she would look back to her former life.
She looked at how handsome he was, and wished she could reach into the photos and hold him just one more time. Everything he ever gave her, from the earrings on their wedding day to the necklace she wore on the day Carl was born, and both his and hers matching wedding rings, were hidden in the pocket of the knapsack.
The one mistake she made by the side of the road so long ago still haunted her to the present day. Part of her was jealous that Rick was at peace. He didn't have to run from the undead or worry about the safe have they found collapsing around them.
She adored all five of her children. Carl was thirteen, and had seen too much especially over the past half-decade. Michael, her son with Rick…a boy her husband never knew existed, looked more and more like his father every day. Her three daughters, three year old twins Katie and Kelly and two year old Shannon, were her world. She felt ashamed when she thought about manipulating Shane's food or do something to push him to his grave. The man who was best friends with her husband, and therefore best friends with her from the first year in high school until the age of thirty-two, when everything stopped. Everything changed. And she would do anything she could to go back to her former life.
xxxxxx
Lori opened the front door to welcome in Carl and Pete. The good doctor had her sit on one of the kitchen chairs as he reset her hose and, since there was no more lidocaine, she had a white knuckled grip onto the chair cushion as he stitched her lip.
"You gotta get away from him." Anderson said flatly.
"How? He's Deanna's right hand man. We have five little kids. Deanna would never believe that her top security guy would do this." Lori said, her voice cracking as she blinked back tears.
Both Pete and Lori knew about Shane and Jessie having an affair, but neither wanted to mention it to each other.
Lori was defeated. Trapped in an abusive relationship. Shane called it a marriage, yet she never exchanged vows. She still considered herself married to Rick. She knew it was pointless, and prayed everyday he was at peace. She knew it was ludicrous to cling to such an elusive memory. Whenever she would give Rick a kiss goodbye when he left for work she always expected him to come home that evening. She never thought that her visits to him in his coma would end and she would be near Washington, DC, almost six hundred miles away from everything she knew and loved.
Pete had to leave to back to his family, but before he did he gave his usual speech to Lori. Hold ice to her nose and the swelling should dissipate within a week. The days of prescribing medication were a thing of the past. No drug companies existed anymore, and any possible drugs they had to scavenge for at local hospitals and clinics were either expired or used years ago.
Carl helped bring his brother and three sisters downstairs and helped his mother prepare breakfast.
Present day
Rick lost track of the time and stopped counting the days years ago. His only picture of his family was the one he kept on his cruiser's sun visor. Back then it was a constant reminder for him to do whatever he could to get home to his family. Now, it was a wrinkled memory of his previous life. It took a year, maybe two, for him to realize Lori and Carl were gone.
He laid on the bottom bunk of the prison cell, staring up at the lone, worn picture. He wanted to reach into it and just touch his family one more time. He remembered so long ago, when he was in the coma, when he could hear Lori's voice begging him to wake up. If he tried hard enough he could smell the cherry blossom land lotion she would rub onto his skin. He could taste her strawberry lip balm as she kissed him on the mouth, and promised she'd come back the next day.
She never did, but that evening he heard screaming and gunshots from the hallway. The steady beeping of his heart monitor was shut off, and the hum of the building's air conditioning halted. The power cut out.
After he fled from the hospital he ran to his home, the relief he felt when he was within the familiar walls quickly spread to dread when he couldn't find his family. Part of him knew there was a chance…all the family photo albums were gone. He thought to himself that nobody would break into a house, not even when the world ended, and take family pictures. He went to all the places when he kept a weapon, but they were all taken. So were the boxes of ammo hidden in one of the kitchen canisters.
His neighbor, Morgan Jones, explained the situation about the dead coming back to life. The man gave him food and let him sleep in a real bed for the night. Early the next morning Rick went with Morgan and his son, Dwayne, to his former police station and cleaned out the cage of all of the guns and ammo.
"Higher ground." Those were the two words he remembered Morgan saying. Rick immediately thought about the Eagles Nest Quarry, the place where he and Lori would always spend the evening when they were dating and newlyweds.
With his heart in his throat he raced up the dirt roadway which took him to the familiar spot. He saw a dozen unfamiliar faces as he raced from one corner of the quarry to the other. No sign of Lori or Carl. Shane would have brought them here, hopefully, but there was no sign of anybody.
He was walking up the trail from the pond, which held dozens of memories of him skinny dipping with Lori with only the moonlight to guide them. His eyes scanned the still water, not seeing a trace of anything familiar. He slowly started to walk back to the RV he saw until he snapped out of his trance by a toddler running towards the water.
There was nobody around the boy, so Rick scooped him up and held him tightly. He returned to the tent area and saw a woman in a panic, screaming for her son.
She saw Rick in the distance and ran towards him, thanking him profusely and taking the child from him.
"Thank you. I'm Michonne. This is Andre."
"Rick. Nice to meet you." He said, and offered a small smile as they shook hands.
He met the other members of the camp; the RV's owner, Dale, his lady friend Andrea and her sister, Amy, brothers Merle and Daryl Dixon, both of whom Rick knew from their criminal history, T-Dogg, Glenn, Jacqui and a meek woman named Carol, who was sitting in the distance with her daughter, Sophia. The father and husband of the two wasn't interested in meeting anyone, and was sleeping in a booze induced haze in his tent.
Over dinner that evening, which consisted of fresh caught fish fried over a campfire, everyone talked about what they used to do in their past life and what brought them together. Dale was a retired engineer, Andrea and Michonne were both attorneys, Glenn delivered pizzas, Carol was a homemaker, and Jacqui was a doctor. Rick passed around the only picture he had of his family and asked if anyone had seen the woman or child. His heart broke each time someone said no.
At the camp everyone was given a job. Most of the men took turns sleeping inside the RV or standing guard.
The harvest moon illuminated the camp with a soft, natural glow. It was a nice change from the pitch blackness they had the previous nights. Rick was sitting by himself, on a rock near the tree line. He watched as the woman with dreadlocks crawled out of her tent and walked over to him.
"Hey." She said softly. "I'm sorry about your family."
Rick nodded in thanks.
Michonne sat close to the man she met just hours earlier. They minutes ticked by in silence, until Rick suddenly said "Lori was my lover, my best friend, the only person in the world I wanted to be with for the rest of my life. My son. I planned on coaching his little league team in the spring. Rick took a deep breath before he continued. "You would've loved Lori. She was so beautiful. Nice to everyone. Kind to a fault. She had a sense of humor that I've never met before. She accepted me, warts and all. She saw me for me, and didn't run away."
Michonne could feel the weight of his pain, even as she shuddered in fear over the mention of an emotion she would never understand. The mention of a loss so terrifying that fear threatened to choke her. She couldn't imagine anyone learning to live with that, although she was surrounded by everyone who lost someone.
She saw the raw anguish and half-shed tears on his face and moved closer to wrap her arms around him.
Rick sat stiffly for a moment before his entire body began to shake; her arms engulfed him, and she rocked him back and forth like a child. Her shirt was soaked with his tears. She crooned nonsense, stroked his back, whispered that she was there but never once told him it would be alright.
It felt like hours later, and for all Rick knew it could have been; when he became aware of where he was and who was hugging him. He drew a ragged breath in through his mouth; it only served to emphasize how raw his throat was, and leaned back.
He was shocked to see that Michonne's face was covered in tears too. As that thought registered he felt the damp cloth of his shirt clinging to his shoulder, and the nape of his neck. "I miss them. I miss them every fucking second of every fucking day." He was drained…so wrung out that his skin felt brittle.
"I know you do, but that doesn't mean you can't have a life or friends."
"Lori wouldn't want you to live this way."
"I know that too, but I can't breathe, sleep, I close my eyes and I see her smiling, laughing, her face flushed with love and passion. I hear my son's laugh. The morning…the last morning I saw them Lori and I had an argument. I'd do anything to have that time back."
Rick slept on the outside edge of the small mattress. He knew sleep that night wasn't an option. Years later, he still couldn't erase the memory of Lori and Carl. Michonne never complained that the photo of her husband's first wife was taped to the bunk above them. Over the years, she consoled him dozens of times, and once, after they found solace at the farm, she sat on an outside porch with him as he polished off a bottle of scotch. She removed the Colt from its holster and refused to give it back to him, keeping in mind the numerous times he mentioned suicide.
He swung his legs over and sat up, looking back at Michonne and her protruding belly. He replaced the covers over his new wife, making sure she was warm in the cold cellblock. He quietly looked over in the playpen and smiled over their daughter, two year old Julia. Before he left the cell he checked on Andre, his adopted son, in a heavy sleep.
He slid on his boots and quietly walked along the hall outside the cells, smiling to himself as he heard the soft moans and sound of skin slapping on skin as he passed the cell Beth and Daryl share. Same for Glenn and Maggie's cell and Sasha and Bob's
When he got to the bottom of the cellblock he checked the doors again, feeling reassured that they were safely locked inside. He didn't want to go to the kitchen, he didn't want to be away from anyone. He sat on the cold floor, resting his back against the wall. He loved Michonne, there was no doubt about that, but the not knowing about what happened to Lori and Carl was always gnawing at him.