Hi, kittens! Long time, no see!

Thanks go out to Fairies Masquerade and meeshie for their help in making this better. I would have given up in frustration without them.

What started as a little story has gotten a bit big for its britches, so it's become multi-chaptered. I don't know where it will end up – it'll depend on where the season goes. The first two chapters are my take on Carol's experience during episodes 5 x 01 (No Sanctuary) and 5 x 02 (Strangers). Then we'll check in with Daryl. All action and dialogue from these episodes belong to their respective copyright holders. No infringement is intended – The Walking Dead does not belong to me, and I do not profit from it other than enjoying the hell out of it.


I'm gonna kill people.

Carol's words to Tyreese tiptoed in whispers through her head as she joined the steady flow of walkers moving toward Terminus. Michonne and Carl were in there, and maybe others, too. She would kill people. She'd kill as many as it took to get them out again.

As she neared the fence surrounding the place, she heard an echoing bang. The little bastard they'd caught at the cabin said they were setting off charges in the area to distract the walkers, but this came from within the train yard itself. When she finally got close enough to see, her stomach dropped. Men were pulling Rick up from the ground, bound and battered, and dragging him away. There were others there, too, face down and restrained – Glenn for sure, and was that Daryl? Shit. She tried to see where they were being taken, but the men disappeared around the corner of one of the buildings.

She had to get them out of there, but how? Sure, she had surprise going for her, but she was just one person against all of them. This was suicide.

So what? You got nothing left to lose.

One thing at a time. She needed a distraction. Heart hammering, she crept along the fence, looking for her way in. She stopped when she saw the big white tanks. Unslinging the rifle from her shoulder, she peered through the scope for a better look. It was unsettling to see the beautiful, lush garden beds and the people lined up at the fence killing the clustering walkers. It looked too much like home.

Shaking off the eerie resemblance, she moved the scope over to the biggest tank. Propane. Perfect.

A shout caught her attention, and she saw the fence crew sounding a warning. They'd seen the incoming herd at last. The timing couldn't be better – now to add to the chaos.

Let's light this bitch up!

After firing a few rounds, she finally punctured the side of the tank. With shaking hands, she lit the fuse of the bottle rocket aimed at the tank and shielded herself behind the guard rail. Despite covering her ears, the explosion was deafening, and she felt the concussion through her whole body. The resulting fiery rain of debris and walker parts made the crazy little voice in the back of her head shriek in glee and whoop war cries over the destruction. But now came the hard part – to get in there and bring her people out.

Carol tucked her gear under the bloody burlap she wore and slowly made her way down to rejoin the herd descending on Terminus. As she stumbled along doing her best to look dead, she squinted through the smoke and tried not to cough – burning walkers smelled even worse than regular ones. There were screams and gunshots all around, but it was difficult to tell from which direction they came or from how far away.

The smoke cleared a bit off to her right. A woman was thrashing and screaming in agony as walkers literally ate her alive. She was beyond the point of words, but her eyes caught Carol's, desperately begging for help – to end her suffering. Carol looked away, feeling queasy as memories of T-Dog's death and the recurring nightmares it had spawned bombarded her. There was nothing she could do without giving herself away, so she shuffled past without stopping.

More gunshots rang out. She tensed as one of the walkers ahead of her fell with a fresh hole in its head. Shit! Trying not to move too abruptly, she pulled out her rifle and ducked into an open doorway. The smoke cleared enough she was able to get a bead on the shooter and take him down, followed by a second man sniping from the roof. Her shots drew the attention of the surrounding walkers, so she slipped inside the building and shut the door. What the hell – this was as good a place to start searching as any.

Carol moved quickly and quietly, alert for any sign of people, but the place echoed its emptiness with every step. All the inhabitants must be outside dealing with the fire and the invading herd – a satisfied smile crept out at the thought, but she squelched it. She checked each doorway she passed, but saw nothing helpful. There had to be something! They took the prisoners somewhere, but where?

Finally, she stepped into a storage room of sorts, with everything arranged in neat rows on the tables. Weapons, clothing, tools...toys. An uneasy feeling settled in her gut. These things weren't taken on supply runs. All of this stuff was what you might find on a body – or take from prisoners. Whatever was happening here at Terminus, it was all kinds of screwed up.

Her eyes swept the tables and zeroed in on a watch. She took it and turned to examine it in better light. Rick's watch. The one he'd given to that boy in the cul-de-sac. Is that why Sam never came back? He was taken by the people who lived here? A flicker of guilt made her look away and pocket the watch safely out of sight.

When she looked up, a shock of recognition arced through her. Daryl's crossbow was on a nearby table piled high with weapons. She picked it up with shaking hands, imagining what it must have taken to separate Daryl from his bow. What kind of people were these, that they thought they could just take whatever they wanted? Hurt people? Kill them for no more reason than to steal the clothes off their backs? Or was it just because they could? An old fury flared up deep in her belly, burning hotter than she ever remembered.

She'd spent so much of her life taking Ed's shit. He did as he pleased, taking whatever he wanted from her, whenever he wanted it, and she'd been helpless to stop it. For years, she cowered in his shadow, bullied and beaten by the man who loved nothing more than to exploit his power over her. That same fury had burned throughout those long years, but it was only an ember then, muted and suffocated by her own fear and the belief that she deserved his abuse. But she wasn't afraid anymore, and the fire caught and began to spread.

The heat of it crept up her neck as she looked again at the table full of dolls and stuffed animals.

I'm going to kill people, all right. I'm gonna kill every one of these heartless bastards.

Slinging the crossbow over her shoulder, Carol stalked from the room, still shaking. The rest of the building offered no further clues, but as she stepped into the last room, the back of her neck prickled. It was dim, with most of the light coming from dozens of candles all around. There were names scrawled on the floor with more candles and little tokens by each one. The place was creepy as all hell.

The far door led outside, so she hustled across the disturbing room. Before she got there, she heard a tell-tale click.

"Drop your weapons and turn around. I wanna see your face." The harsh voice belonged to a woman, but that was all Carol could tell.

She glanced again at the door across the room. There were walkers just outside, if only she could reach it to let them in.

"NOW!" the woman screamed.

Carol gave up on the door – it was too far. She dropped the crossbow from her shoulder and lowered it to the floor. From the sound of it, this woman was panicked, desperate, and maybe a little unhinged, and she knew without a doubt she was about to die. So in her own desperate move, Carol pulled her rifle from her shoulder and swung around in a wide arc, sending a spray of bullets behind her.

The other woman dropped to the ground at the first shot, her pistol sliding across the floor between them. They both rushed for it, but Carol got there first, kicking it out of reach. Then the breath was knocked from her lungs as the woman tackled her with a shriek and tried to pin her to the ground. Carol grunted as a fiery pain sizzled along her ribs. The woman snarled like an animal as they fought for control of the rifle.

As they tumbled, the other woman's grip on the weapon slipped, and Carol took the opening. She scrambled to her feet, finger solid on the trigger. The other woman howled and lunged again, but when she saw the rifle's muzzle in her face, her shoulders slumped, and she lowered her weapon. Somewhere in the back of Carol's mind, the crazy little voice was laughing hysterically – this woman was trying to kill her with a candlestick. Mrs. Peacock in the freaky-ass altar room with the fucking candlestick.

Mrs. Peacock spoke. "The signs? They were real. It was a sanctuary. People came and took this place-"

"Just tell me where they-"

"-They raped and they killed. And they laughed. Over weeks! But we got out, and we fought it. We got it back, and we heard the message! You're the butcher, or you're the cattle." She talked over Carol as though she hadn't spoken. If what she said was true, the people here had truly suffered horrors. After all that, maybe this woman had a little crazy voice, too. Maybe it was the only voice she had left.

Shoving those thoughts aside, Carol demanded again, "The men they pulled from that train car – where are they?"

The other woman didn't reply, lost as she was in self-justification. So with cool clarity, Carol shot the bitch in the leg.

"Where are they?" she shouted over the screams.

Gritting her teeth, the woman choked out, "Now...point it at my head." And she laughed. The sound made Carol's skin crawl. "You could have been one of us," she continued from where she lay on the floor in a spreading pool of blood. "You could have listened to what the world is telling you!"

One of them? Bullshit. She could never be so cruel and callous as them.

Are you sure? Never ever?

It was true Carol had killed, but only to protect herself and her family. She wasn't like this woman – this...insane woman. The only thing the world was telling Carol was that you have to fight like hell to keep what you love.

"You lead people here, and you take what they have, and you kill them? Is that what this place is?"

"No. Not at first. It's what it had to be. And we're still here."

Carol lowered her weapon as the fury flared hot again. "You're not here. Neither am I."

She gathered her rifle and Daryl's crossbow and stepped across to the door, pushing it open to allow the walkers clawing at it to enter. They glanced at her briefly but her gory walker disguise meant they ignored her in favor of the fresh meat on the floor.

Carol stepped outside and let the door close behind her, muffling the screams of the woman. For a sickening instant, she was horrified by what she'd just done. Did anyone deserve to be eaten alive? If Mrs. Peacock could be believed, these people had been like her once. They only started killing to protect themselves.

Isn't that what you're doing right now? Hypocrite.

No! She immediately steeled herself against the whispers, quashing the guilt. These animals lured innocent people here and murdered them. They deserved what they got. And to save her family, she would do it again.

Keeping eyes out for the living, she crossed to the next building, moving gingerly at the pain along her ribs. The walkers were getting thick on the ground – they'd been drawn to the sound of the explosion, and with the added noise of gunfire, more were coming all the time. She needed to find her people quickly, or they'd never get out alive.

Spotting a gunman picking off walkers from the roof of the main building, Carol ducked behind one of the train cars. Wiping her sweaty palms one at a time on her pant legs, she adjusted her grip on the rifle. Peering around the corner, she waited for her moment, then took him out with a single shot to the head. The little voice crowed in satisfaction before she crushed it into silence again. Slipping quickly along the side of the structure, she checked each door she found, hoping to find one open – hoping to find the door that would lead to her family.

When she reached the far edge of the building, she could see across most of the train yard. Squinting through the smoke, she spotted a group of people – living people – making a break for the opposite fence. Was it them? She scrambled partway up the ladder on the side of a boxcar, desperate for a better angle. As the last of the people climbed up and over the chain link, her heart skipped a beat in her chest. She definitely saw Rick go over. And if Rick was there, anyone from their family that was still alive would be with him.

But what if it was just Rick? A nervous twinge in her stomach reminded her that he could be the only one of her family left alive.

He won't have you there.

It didn't matter. One thing at a time. Smiling tightly, she dropped back down to the ground and headed for the fences on her own side of the yard. It was a long way around, but she knew where they'd gone over – she could find them. She would.