"Wake up," says Darryl shaking Beth slightly. Darryl puts a finger to his mouth, shh, he whispers and points for her to look at what's behind the boulder. She glances around and sees hundreds of walkers not ten feet from them.
He waves his hand to signal for her to get closer, than puts his mouth close to her ear and whispers, "Wait 'till they pass."
She nods. They watch the walkers stumble by, for some reason Beth pays attention to how each one is dressed. One was a doctor, another a policeman, but most are dressed in normal clothes. She looks down at her own clothes; nothing that stands out. She wonders if one day she will be amongst those walkers and people will look at her and think the same thing. Eventually the herd dwindles until they are alone.
"Com'n," says Darryl. Cautiously he stands up, the bulk of the heard is far enough away, but if they're too loud they could easily turn back around. They head in the direction that Michonne went.
The groans from walkers start to get closer. Darryl puts a hand out to stop Beth; he looks around and sees four walkers headed towards them. Arrows fly into their skulls, he pushes their heads on to the ground with his boot to pull out the arrows.
Beth opens her mouths to speak, but a scream rushes it out when she feels her arm pulled. She turns around and sees the walker with its mouth open trying to bite her forearm. Screaming she tugs her arm to keep it from biting her, but like a game of tug-of-war it pulls her back. Her flesh inches away from its mouth a knife slams into the walker's skull. Darryl pulls his knife from its head and the walker slumps onto the ground. Beth pulls her arm back, shaking from the adrenaline; she checks her arm for bites or scratches.
"Shit," says Darryl. The heard had turned around and is headed for them, their groans are even louder and their pace faster now that they can see a meal in front of them. "We gotta go."
They run from the walkers, although they're much faster than the walkers they're also more tired. Sweat runs down their faces; the wind from yesterday is gone and replaced by a blistering heat as the sun is able to work alone.
Darryl turns his head around while running and watches the walkers try to keep up with them. He grabs the back of Beth's elbow and tows her with him, making a bunch of turns. When He sees a large tree to his right, he pulls Beth with him behind it. The herd catches up only moments later; the heard continues to head straight thinking that's where the food went. Beth tries to breathe through her nose to not make so much noise, but it's still loud. Once they hear the stragglers of the herd continue past, they get out from behind the tree and head back to track Michonne's path.
A loud snap from a twig behind them alerts them. Darryl whips around with the crossbow aimed at whoever is behind them.
"Tyreese."
Michonne strides across the living room towards Carl and wraps her arms around him. "What's wrong?" The relief of finding Carl and Rick ebbs away as she realizes there's something wrong with Rick.
"I don't know. He won't wake up, and I can't hear a pulse."
As she listens she checks for his pulse and feels a light thud. "He's alive. What medicine do you have?" A spurt of panic rises inside of her, she can handle fighting and the walkers, but she never deals with trying to heal people. I'm anything but a doctor, she thinks.
Carl pulls out whatever medicine he could find around the house, as Michonne pulls off her pack of supplies and dumps it on the floor. She sorts through the medicine and pulls out whatever could help. "Tell me exactly what happened."
Carl tells her about Rick's strange behavior, throwing up, and falling asleep as soon as he got on the couch. Michonne opens one of Rick's eyelids to look at his eye. "His pupils are dilated. I think he has a concussion. I don't think it's anything serious, he'll wake up."
"Are you sure," asks Carl?
"Yeah," she looks around remembering something. Already knowing the answer she asks in a somber voice, "Judith?"
Carl shakes his head. He tries to shrug of the pain he feels and blink back the tears in his eyes, but they fall over anyway. Michonne wraps her arms around him and he hugs her back. It had been a long time since someone had held him, it makes him feel safe like from when he was a little kid and his mom would hold him when he was scared or sad. He thinks of how harsh he was with his mom before she died pulling away when she ever tried to give a caressing hand or brush back his hair, spitting harsh words at her, and doing whatever she told him not to do. She holds him until he stops crying, slightly embarrassed he pulls back.
"I think we should take care of that bullet wound," he says in a throaty voice.
Michonne and Carl carry an unconscious Rick up the stairs, the bullet out of his leg, sterilized and bandaged to the best of their ability.
"When he wakes up, we need to convince him to lose weight," says Michonne with a tight smile as they struggle with Rick's weight up the stairs. Carl chuckles through gritted teeth. They get him into the bedroom closest to him and dump him on the bed. Just to make sure, Michonne checks Rick's pulse again, but sure enough there's still a beat.
"I'm gonna check out the houses around here. You stay here," Michonne says to Carl.
"I can help you," Carl disputes.
"No, you stay. Rick might need you."
After leaving the fifth house empty handed, annoyance rises in Michonne. Each house was bone dry of any food or supplies. Clearly other people had been through these houses many times. A walker stumbles out of a backyard and heads for Michonne. She pulls out her katana and hacks it twice in an X like motion.
As soon as she enters the next house, she immediately feels something is wrong. The room is eerily dark from all of the windows being covered and her eyes haven't quite adjusted to the light yet and the strong stench of vomit and liqueur reaches her nose nearly choking her. She reaches for her katana.
"Ah, ah, I wouldn't do that if I were you," says a male voice from the corner of the room. A man steps into a spot that isn't as dark, Michonne spots the pistol aimed at her.
The wooden church doors snap the silence with a loud creek as Tyreese struggles to open it. A flood of solace floods into Beth, They're alive!, Beth thinks in her mind. For inside the church Lizzie paces back and forth at alter flustered and Mica sits in the cross legged with a small Judith in her arms.
"When we left the prison Janie and Trevor was with us, but they didn't make it," Tyreese says looking down at the crowbar in his hand as he slightly turns it round and round in his hand. Guilt builds up in Tyreese, as he remembers the two children that were torn from them as they tried to make it out. Daryl sets his hand on Tyreese's shoulder for a brief second, "Sorry, man."
Beth holds Judith in her arms and consoles the 2 girls, "I can't believe Judith made it out."
"Her name's Asskicker for a reason," pipes up Daryl, happy to see the baby is alive.
"Did you see who else made it out? Sasha?" Asks Tyreese concern creeping into his voice, she had just started to get better from whatever flu hit the prison how would she be on the run, he thinks to himself.
"Nah, the only thing that got close to finding anyone was some footprints that may have been Michonne's. We were follow'n her tracks when a damn herd chased us off," says Daryl.
"Do you think she could be with anyone else," asks Tyreese.
"There's only one set of footprints, but she's bound to come across someone."
"Are you girls good with leaving," Daryl asks Lizzie and Mika. They both nod their head in response.
Michonne slowly drops her hand to rest at her sides. Her stomach tightens, her veins feel empty, and without thought her hands form into a tight fist the way it always does when her body prepares for a fight. She could detect the vice in his voice as he said each word slowly craving the gratification of being in control.
"Well what are you up to?" says the man taunting her. She notices three other men also in the room, but clearly this guy is the one in charge.
"Just taking a look around, but I see this place is already taken," she says coolly although there's a tightness in her voice that goes undetected. She backs away and heads for the front door, hoping to avoid a confrontation. A figure steps in front of the door blocking her.
"I don't think you ought to be leavin' so soon," he says, "I mean you just got here." With that he gives her a look up and down with a wicked grin.
"So that's how it's gonna be," she says nonchalantly.
"Yeah, that's how it's gonna be. Kyle, get the bitch," he orders. A man comes up behind her and puts their arm around her in a chokehold without the force behind it. She acts immediately grabbing the forearm that's in front of her and pulls him along the side and in front of her in a matter of seconds. In a delayed reaction, they shoot, but dumbly just kill the guy "Kyle" who had grabbed her. Blood spills from his mouth, as Michonne uses the opportunity to pull out her katana and slice the head off another man. Without being seen she runs to a corner that the light doesn't touch and slowly she steps into the space below the stairs, hidden.
"WHAT THE HELL," The man who was in charge growls. "Where the hell did she go!"
One of them walks past the staircase and Michonne leaps out and cuts him in two. When she turns to face the other man his gun is cocked and pointed straight at her. They both lock eyes and a gunshot is fired into the air.
The man only stands for a half second after the bullet punctures the middle of his forehead. Michonne turns around shocked to find Carl with his gun still poised in the middle of the door way. She slides the Katana back into its sheath and walks over to him, "I told you to stay with your father."
"It's a good thing I didn't," he retorts.
"They were just some hicks, I could handle them."
"Didn't say you couldn't."
She turns around walking past the dead bodies and starts digging through the packs, "Wanna help?"
Carl places his berretta in the holster and walks inside, "eck," he says in response to the smell. "That's saying a lot considering I'm used to the smell or pigs and rotting corpses."
Darryl holds his hand out signaling for everyone to stop. "Do you hear that?"
They all listen and hear a hum, but it sounds a bit more like a rumble. In fact it sounds a lot like a…car. "The bus, I saw it drive away," says Tyreese. He's filled with hope that maybe Sasha is in there.
They all start running in that direction, Beth does her best to not rustle Judith, but still Judith starts to cry out. The baby screech is so high pitched, that several walkers that hadn't noticed them turn around. Beth does her best to soothe the screaming child, but her efforts are futile. Daryl and Tyreese turn back around to kill the walkers but with Judith still crying more and more walkers come out.
Lizzie turns to Mika, "We have to kill her. Judith will end up getting us all killed." Beth's jaw drops speechless, although the look of horror on her face says it all.
"What's wrong with you," Mika says to her.
"It's either all of us or just her," Lizzie says defensively. Why can't they see it has to be done? She thinks to herself.
"There's too many of them," says Daryl taking Judith from Beth's arms. They run for the sound of the bus with the growing number of walkers behind them as Judith continues to cry
"Stop!" Glenn runs to the front of the bus. "Stop the bus. I think I saw something." He had his eyes out looking for Maggie or anyone else from the prison and had several times pulled the bus over only to find the movement was just some walkers.
"It's probably some walkers. It's not worth anyone getting killed," says Jake. He was one of the people who had come from Woodberry and had been sick, but pulled through like many of them. He had the knack of annoying Glenn, for some reason this guy had the presumption that he would be in control, which wasn't exactly sliding well with Glenn. He also didn't trust him as Jake doesn't have any need to find the rest of the group, because he hadn't held any close ties to anyone.
Glenn knocks Jake's foot off the gas pedal and slams his foot on the break. Everyone slams to the front and shouts of complaint rain from the bus as Glenn jumps out and goes to check out the movement he had seen from the bus.
"Maggie!" He shouts out.
In response a person calls out his name, "Glenn!" His heart drops to his stomach, the voice was male and unless Maggie has some serious throat problems that was definitely not her.
Glen waves back to the bus, "We found someone!"
After a few minutes he sees Daryl, Judith, Tyreese, Lizzie, Mika, and Beth emerge from the trees.
"Maggie," Beth asks Glenn.
"I don't know," he replies grimly.
Rick opens his eyes and looks around the dusty, but unruffled room. His head his fuzzy and blocks any thought of how he got their or even his last memory. He sits up and rests his head in his hands, as his head aches in complaint to the movement.
But something else catches his attention from his movement; the bathroom that's connected to the room shows a reflection. He stares at the reflection, that creature looking back at him, couldn't possibly be himself. The reflection shows a bruised, broken man with a glaze stare.
He stands up leaving the warmth of the bed behind; ignoring the sharp searing pains that run through his body he limps over to the mirror. This man in the mirror has lost the fire, the will. "No, this isn't me." Rick says to himself.
Rick feels a pang of guilt as he thinks of everyone he's failed. Everyone at the prison, everyone who passed, everyone he failed. I thought I was doing the right thing. The council, we made decisions equally. Trying to make sure Carl could grow half decently away from the chaos the world had turned to. I just wanted to shut out the world and I wanted for Carl to do the same.
He takes off the torn shirt and limps towards the closet in his boxers hoping that a man about his size had lived in the house. The closet if full of mostly women clothing and a smaller pile of men clothing. He feels a little pain thinking of the couple who were now probably dead. In his old home Lori had taken most of the closet with her own clothing and a much smaller pile were his clothes. He pulls out some cloths that are about his size and dresses quickly in a black button up and jeans, noticing the clean bandages around his gunshot as he slides on the pants. As he rolls up the sleeves to his elbows, several loud booms go off a close distance away. The noise was undeniably gunshots. A shiver of fear runs up his spine.
"Carl?" Rick says in a gruff voice. He limps down the stairs as quickly as he can. "Carl?" Downstairs he straps his gun belt around his waist and checks the rest of the house. "Carl!" In the kitchen, he hears the front door squeak open; he pulls the Python out of the holster and turns the corner to face the door. Rick points the gun down when he sees Carl in the doorway. He's about to ask him why he left when Michonne enters the house behind Carl.
"The gunshots," Rick asks.
Michonne and Carl look up surprised to see him awake.
"You look like crap," says Michonne smiling. He smiles, but still waits for the answer. "There were a couple of guys looking for trouble. Lucky for us they had a lot of food." She holds up the bulging back of canned food as evidence.
Carl sets down the food next to the other supplies and opens a can of canned fruit, dividing the food into separate bowls. Rick feels a tinge of pity, he could practically hear Carl's stomach growl from where he stands, but still Carl restrains from diving into the food and slowly eats. Michonne picks up a bowl and hands it over to Rick, then picks up one for herself, sitting with Carl on the couch.
"How's your head," she asks him while she eats.
He thinks about the question. Any coherent thoughts were a struggle and even then it was muddled and fuzzy.
"I've had worse," which was an understatement.
"Think you can travel?"
He stares at her, "Planning on going somewhere?"