Rhiannon's breathing was getting ragged and her legs were growing sore. Hadley, her yellow lab, was still ahead of her, weaving between the trees and the late afternoon sunbeams. A herd of Dead had overrun Rhiannon's last campsite and there were too many to fight, so they ran. Glancing behind her, she couldn't see them anymore and whistled for Hadley to stop. Digging a bowl and some water out of her pack, Rhiannon knelt down to offer it to her dog. Hadley had been her loyal companion since a year and a half before the world had ended, and had stayed faithfully by her side when everyone else abandoned her or died.

Hearing a crunch of leaves and twigs about twenty feet from them, both Rhiannon and Hadley froze and looked up. One of the Dead stumbled through a bush and fell against a tree, turning and bumping against another tree. Silently, Rhiannon stood up and pulled her favorite knife out of her belt. With a flick of her wrist it flew through the air and sunk into the Dead one's brain and it slumped to the forest floor with a thump.

"Come on, Had," she whispered, packing up the water and retrieving her knife. "Let's keep moving."

Dawn was creeping over the branches that Rhiannon and Hadley had settled in for the night. Rhiannon's back was sore since she gave Hadley the hammock they had salvaged from an abandoned warehouse a few weeks ago. The dog wasn't smart enough to hold on to a tree branch, so once Rhiannon hauled her up the tree, she tied her into the hammock to keep her safe through the night. Looking down, she saw the herd they had run from the day before. They were slow, marching and stumbling along under the two of them, unaware of the feast hiding twenty feet above their heads. Rhiannon held her breath and settled back against the tree she was sitting in, waiting to see how long until they were gone.

Once it had been an hour since she'd seen any of the Dead, she started the slow, arduous task of packing up their sleeping arrangement and lowering them to the ground.

"What's the plan, Hads?" Rhiannon had taken up talking to her dog. She hadn't seen another living human in about a year. At least she thought it was a year, she'd lost count and was mostly judging based on the seasons.

The herd was going North, so Rhiannon turned to the East and started walking. She was hoping to find a car or a store today, somewhere to store up on supplies and maybe camp out for a few days before trying again to make her way to New England, where her sister might be.

It was close to midday when she heard it, a rustling to the south. She'd been tracking the deer for only a short time and was feeling pleased with herself. Crouching, she saw Hadley in pointe position, her tail out straight, her front paw lifted up. Drawing a knife out of her boot, she moved to get a better view of the animal. When she could see it properly, she started to move towards it, hoping to sneak up on it. It'd been months since she'd had fresh meat and her mouth was already salivating thinking about how good the deer would taste.

Before she got close enough, the deer shot up, staring right at her when an arrow came from the East and shot straight through the deer's eye and into it's brain. The animal fell while Rhiannon stood up straight, looking to see where the arrow had come from. Hadley ran to sniff at the deer and Rhiannon saw a man, with long dark hair in khakis and a sleeveless vest, raise a cross bow and aim it at her dog.

"Hey!" she shouted out without thinking, sprinting to stand in front of her only friend. "Put that down!"

Lowering the crossbow, the man was staring at her in shock. "Who the hell'r you?!" he asked, walking towards her, his southern accent peaked with agitation.

"I can't believe you would shoot my DOG!" Rhiannon yelled at him, too mad to hear anything. She and Hadley had nearly died for each other before, but always when they were scrapping for their lives, clawing at survival, and every time, the thought of losing the last vestige of her life before the Dead Ones happened scared her terribly.

"How was I supposed to know she weren't some feral stray?" he snapped at her, only a few feet away now.

"She has! A COLLAR!"
"That don't mean nothin'! Plenty a people died 'fore they could take their dumb collars off a their dumb dogs," he said, gesturing toward Hadley, who was standing behind you, the fur raised on her back, her ears flattened and her teeth slightly bared.

"She's MY DOG! She's not stray! She's not feral! Just leave us alone!"

"FINE!" he snapped again. "Just let me get my deer and I'll be gone."

"Your deer?" Rhiannon replied. "No, I don't think so, you stole this animal, she was gonna be mine!"

"No way! That's my arrow in it's brain, in't it?" he walked around you and yanked the arrow out of the animals skull, wiping it clean on his pants before putting it back in his crossbow.

"I've been tracking her for a while, she's mine, that's not fair," she said, wincing internally at how whiny she knew she sounded.

"Life ain't fair, princess," he replied, lifting the deer over his shoulders and starting to walk back the way he had come from.

Weighing her options, Rhiannon felt defeated. She couldn't fight him, she wasn't going to try to tug the deer off his shoulders, and she knew she couldn't physically stand up to him. She was deflated at having lost such an opportunity, so she sank to her knees by Hadley and just started to cry. She didn't mean to, she hadn't cried in months, but she was so exhausted, and fried, and having hope snatched away from her fingertips like that was too much, so she buried her face in Hadley's fur and sobbed.

After a minute she heard the man's voice again, sounding irritated, "How many walkers you killed?"

Surprised, Rhiannon wiped her face and looked up at him. He was standing beside her, the deer still on his shoulders, and looking at her with an expression she couldn't read. "What?" she asked.

"Said how many walkers you killed, girl?"

Taking a breath and standing up to face him, she answered, "No idea. Too many to count. I lost count after the first few months."

He grunted a response and then asked, "How many people you killed."

Swallowing, Rhiannon thought back to the two worst nights of her life. "Four."

"Why?" he asked immediately, staring right into her eyes.

Rhiannon blanched, weighing whether or not she should admit to him the reason why she took the lives of the one man she loved and three men she hated, but after a minute she just sighed and said "Because I had to."

The man just grunted again and ran his eyes over her and glanced at Hadley again. Then he said "We got a safe zone. Yer by yerself right? Just you an yer mutt?"

"She's not a mutt!" Rhiannon barked, and then, softer "but yes, it's us. Just us. You have a safe zone? Who's we? Where is it? How many-"

He raised a hand to cut her off, shifting the weight of the deer across his shoulders. "Yer askin too many of the wrong questions. You wanna come wit me or naw? You can ask questions there."

Rhiannon looked at him and nodded. A safe zone sounded better than another night in the trees.

" 'M Daryl," he mumbled before turning and walking away again.

"Rhiannon," she replied, jogging slightly to catch up to him. "And this is Hadley. She's not a mutt."

The sun was setting by the time you reached the safe zone with Daryl. He had barely said a word the whole time and wouldn't answer any of the questions you asked him. Even when you offered to help carry the deer he just grunted at you and kept walking. Hadley had been sniffing at him and at the deer periodically and weaving in front of him. She seemed to like Daryl but he seemed to be annoyed by her, which only served to annoy Rhiannon. The only information she'd managed to pry out of him was that the place they were going was called Alexandria, and that she'd have to talk to a man named Rick when they got there.

As the large gate loomed in front of her, sliding open, Rhiannon suddenly felt nervous. This place looked very secure but also hard to escape if she wanted to leave. How would she get Hadley over the walls? What if these people weren't safe to be around? She hadn't encountered people in a long time, and the last time she did, it had gone horribly. She had believed there weren't any good people left, but something in her gut had told her to trust Daryl. Now she wasn't so sure her guy had made the right decision.

Inside the gate, a tall, burly man with bright red hair had pulled it shut and eyed her up and down. "Who's the dog?" he asked Daryl, who ignored him and just kept walking.

Making the decision to try to make friends, Rhiannon followed Daryl but called back to the man, "Her name's Hadley! I'm Rhiannon!"

"Abraham!" he yelled back at her before going back to his post watching over the gate.

Daryl kept walking until they got to a house with a front porch, where he set the deer down on the front lawn and motioned for Rhiannon to follow him up the stairs and inside. At the door he stopped and looked at Hadley, obviously questioning whether to let her in the house or not.

"If she stays out here, I stay out here," Rhiannon told him. He paused for a minute then said "wait 'ere, then," and disappeared inside. Standing on the porch with Hadley, Rhiannon looked around at the place they were in. An entire town surrounded by a tall fence, fortified against the Dead and any person they didn't want to come in. She squeezed her eyes shut and sent out a silent prayer that these would be good people, kind people, smart people, and also that they wouldn't be allergic to dogs.

A few minutes later Daryl came back outside, behind him was a tall, handsome man. His face was rugged and his dark hair was long. A scruffy beard was clinging to his chiseled jawline, and he looked at her with his thumbs hooked into his belt.

"Hello, Rhiannon," he said. "I'm Rick. I heard you were out in the woods by yourself?"

"Yeah," she replied. "It's just been me and Hadley for a while now," she gestured towards her dog who had settled down at her feet, glad for a rest.

"How long's a while?" Rick asked.

"Umm…. Well, basically since almost the beginning," Rhiannon said, hesitant to tell her whole story, but the way he was looking at her was kind, not malicious. "I think it's been a year though, since we saw anyone else but the Dead."

"A year?"

"Yeah, at least I think so." Her cheeks blushed as she admitted "I'm not really sure of the days or months anymore. I know it's near summer, and I know it was last spring when we were around people."

Rick and Daryl were both staring at her, causing her to feel even more embarrassed, so she looked down at the lab laying at her feet for comfort.

"Alright then," Rick said after a minute. "We can talk more in the morning but for now come in and eat, Maggie'll get you set up with somewhere to sleep and you can rest," he extended an arm towards the door, but before she went in Rhiannon said "I can help. With the deer, and I got my own food, I don't mean to come in and take your food, Rick. I ain't a mooch, I –" he cut her off before she could finish.

"We don't take no moochin' around here, don't worry, you'll get to help. But for now, come eat, get cleaned up, and rest. Your dog can come in too," he smiled at her. A real smile, the first smile she had seen in years. It was so kind tears sprang into Rhiannon's eyes and before she started crying for the second time in one day she told him "Her name's Hadley."