"Two shorten the road."

- Irish Proverb

"On one hand, we know that everything happens for a reason, and there are no mistakes or coincidences. On the other hand, we learn that we can never give up, knowing that with the right tools and energy, we can reverse any decree or karma. So, which is it? Let the Light decide, or never give up? The answer is: both."

-Berg

Mary Peters decided that Karma was, in fact, a huge bitch. That was the only explanation for events that made sense to her, as the groans of the biters (her name for the dead) surrounded her in the grocery store she had been checking for supplies. Considering the fact all she found was one spool of yarn and a baseball bat with a side of biters, this conclusion seemed reasonable.

Not that Mary was going to let Karma WIN of course. She'd rather go down fighting, thank you very much, and thank goodness she found a bat. Maybe Karma only hated her a little bit or maybe it was giving her a sense of false hope before killing her in a far worse way than being eaten alive. Maybe Karma wasn't even real. Who knew, who cared, there were biters to kill and life to be lived for maybe another day. If Mary was lucky. And she was not.

The nearest walker, a decomposing clerk, lunged for her and was rewarded with a bat to his head. Or her. Kinda hard to tell.

As Mary went through, killing biters and trying not to get bitten she noticed a young girl in the horde. At first, Mara thought it was a child biter, which was another thing she attributed to Karma. Fuck you Peters, you get to watch the helpless suffer and become monsters!

Which is why she nearly dropped her bat mid swing from shock when she noticed the girl had LIVING eyes, not the milk white of the walkers. The girl was young, maybe around eleven years old and was covered in biter guts. Mary was impressed the girl had figured out a way to walk safely among biters but she'd almost clocked her and the biters were still bitey so there was that.

Mary struck one down that was next to the child and whispered to her, "Follow me and I'll get you out." In reality, this was highly unlikely. Mary was more likely to become a biter herself than this kid, who was clearly better at surviving than she was (in spite of the fact they both walked into one of the biggest department stores in the area), but Mary was not evil and didn't want this girl to get bitten. She also didn't want to give karma anther reason to kill her. There was enough stacked against her already.

After what seemed to be an eternity, the pair both exited the store. Then Mary turned around, picked up the girl, and burst into a run towards her truck. She quickly opened the door and tossed the kid into the passenger seat before running to the other side and leaping into the driver side.

Soon (after Mary backed over a persistent biter) the two were on the road and they sat in awkward silence. Mary had not planned beyond 'get the kid out' and had no idea what to say.

"So...I'm Mary."

The child gave her a cautious look, probably trying to decide whether or not the woman was insane. Which, ya know, fair.

Finally, after about five minutes, the girl answered "Clementine."

"That's a lovely name."

More silence. Mary didn't do well with silence, in spite of being an only child she'd grown up on the same street with all her cousins. Even when she'd worked mostly solo in her lab, there was always some kind of noise, whether it was music or her holding one sided conversations with corpses. She cleared her throat, "If you tell me where your parents or any family are at, I'll drive you to them, no problem. Do you have a group?"

Clementine replied quietly, "My parents are dead" she took a deep shuddering breath and let it out "and I lost Christa and the others. Have you seen Christa?"

Mary's chest tightened "Honey, I haven't seen anyone for days. You're the first living person I've seen" She took a breath "You know, there's a place called Wellington that Christa might have ended up. Maybe she's there and even if she isn't, you're better off there than out here by yourself.."

Clementine looked at Mary curiously, "How far away is it?"

"Nineteen miles. It's a drive but people've made it on foot before, I did before I found this truck."

"Why aren't you there?"

"They weren't accepting adults anymore and Karma's a bitch" Mary added quickly "But Christa could have gotten there before they closed it off."

The girl gave Mary a strange look, "Okay I guess I can try that...What's Karma?"

"Its a force that is effected by the good or bad things you do. Do good things, you get good results, do bad things, you get bad results. I've got pretty bad karma."

"Bullshit."

The woman blinked at the girl, "Excuse me?"

Clementine exploded, "I said BULLSHIT! I've tried to do everything right and bad things still happen to me! I lost my parents and Duck and Lee and Kenny and Jane and Luke and poor Sarah and EVERYBODY! That's not how the world works, bad things just happen sometimes!"

Mary argued back "Look Clem, I'm not saying YOU have bad Karma, okay? You're a kid."

"So Lee and all the others they had bad Karma?!"

"No! I have bad karma, specifically me!"

Clementine let out an incredulous laugh, "What makes you so special? Why would the universe want to target YOU specifically?"

Mary snapped, "Because I did some real bad shit, okay? I hurt a lot of people, I fucked everything right up, me and a bunch of other people! And they're all dead and I'm alive and because of that the blame falls on ME because there is no one else! Why am I even arguing this? You're ten!"

"I'm eleven, actually."

Mary took a deep breath and glanced at Clementine. She felt immediately guilty when she noticed the girl was close to tears and decided to apologize. Considering what the poor girl had probably been through, it was only right, "Look, Clementine, I'm sorry. Your folks, they never did anything wrong enough to warrant this" she gestured around with her hand "and neither did you. There's a reason I say its karma for myself but truthfully I don't know you and I can't be sharing that with everybody. A lot of people would want me dead if I did."

Clementine rolled her eyes, "Why, did you kill somebody?"

The woman drove in silence but gave Clementine a look.

"You didn't...did you?"

"Let's get you to Wellington."