Hi Everyone, I hope you are liking this story. For now it's going to be NCIS characters taking the lead but there will be other POVS. There may even be a hint of Bethyl in later chapters. For now it's about Kelly's rise to power within the TWD group and the team finding a safe (ish) place. Eventually it will all come together. The chapters will go back and forth between POVS. Please let me know what you think. I am hoping this story works well. It's kinda fun seeing what other characters would do in the ZA.

Enjoy

"Who are you?" A man with a slight scruff on his face asked me. A man with short light brown hair and a crossbow stood beside him, ready to fire.

"Please don't shoot. My mom and I were told there was a group up here?"

"Name?" The crossbow guy said.

"Kelly. Kelly DiNozzo. This is my mom Shannon." I said. We were on top of a mountain outside of Atlanta. The greenery around us a beautiful contrast to the city. "We were in the city, a man named Glenn said to come this way."

"Why were you in the city?" a woman who had appeared behind the men said.

"We were on our way to Savannah when the outbreak happened. We were told Atlanta had a refugee camp, we tried to find it and got pinned in a building by the walkers. The people we were with they didn't make it."

"People?"

"Yeah it was all of us from the bus we had been on." My mother spoke up. "Please we can help, my husband was a marine we are both very handy with tools and cooking."

"Speak for yourself about the cooking mom."

"You don't want me cooking." I said. The men chuckled at that. "I used to build boats with my father and other little projects. My husband and I took self defense classes together after we were married, I have pretty good aim and I took Karate as a kid for a while."

"You don't have to keep telling us stuff. I have three questions for you."

"Shoot." I said. "I mean don't shoot shoot, go ahead. What are your questions?" This earned another chuckle as more people appeared behind them, some of them kids some elderly people.

"How many Walkers you killed?"

"More then we can count."

"How many people you killed?"

"One." My mother said.

"Before or after the turn?"

"Either?"

"None." I replied. He looked back to my mom.

"Why?"

"He tried to kill my daughter." They looked back at me. The crossbow guy gave me a look that said he thought I was lying about being skilled if some guy had tried to kill me.

"Okay so my mother is exaggerating a bit. He did try to kill us, but it is not because I am weak." I gave him a look of my own. "We were in Atlanta and fighting off a pack of the biters when this group of men arrived, they wanted our weapons and our food. They killed most of the people in our group. My mom shot the leader between the eyes as a warning and the rest took off."

"Everything we have done has been to survive, I'm sure you can relate." She said to the group.

"Rick we are already too big, we can't take more people in." A man wearing a police T-shirt said from the other side.

"We can't just leave them Shane." Rick said.

"They seem capable enough." Crossbow said.

"I think they should join us, you can never have to many strong people." The woman said.

"Lori do you hear yourself."

"Yes I do Shane. Rick you decide."

"Welcome to the group."

Glenn the man we met in the city arrived back at camp that night. We had already set up our tent and made a log of the items we had with us. Rick introduced us to everyone else. My mom helped make dinner with Carol and a few of the other women while I sat with Daryl or as I like to call him, crossbow, sharpening my knives and polishing my guns. I could sense him watching me, probably wondering if I was good news or bad.

"So let me get this straight you are gonna let her keep watch and carry a gun everywhere." Andrea said from near the RV.

"Andrea just let it go." Her sister Amy said back. Dale, the RV owner looked at her, his face hard.

"She is trained with them Andrea, talk to me when your trained." She turned on her heel and took off to her tent with her sister trailing behind.

"Kelly?" Rick said coming up to me, a flashlight illuminating his features.

"Hi." I replied.

"Let's walk." I followed him in silence. "Don't pay any attention to Andrea, she used to be a lawyer."

I smirked in the darkness before responding. "I was a school teacher. My mother and I were placed into witness protection back when I was 8. I got married young because I was afraid I never would. Having to move and change all the time is hard. My mom never really got over having to leave her husband behind, and then the time came when I had to leave mine. I couldn't ruin his career to change everything about him. So I left him thinking I was dead."

"You don't gotta tell me."

"I want to. Nobody knows this. My secret has been weighing me down almost my entire life." We circled back and I stopped at my tent. "Thanks for the talk Rick."

The next night everything changed. The camp was over run and we lost people. Good people. Now it was time to move on. The road we chose to take to get us to Fort Benign was overrun by cars, a graveyard if you will. It was there that we lost Sophia, she took off running into the woods as walkers chased her, Carol who had just lost her husband broke down as Rick ran off trying to find the little girl. We waited on the road for a few days, hoping for good news. None came.

Suddenly Glenn, Andrea and Daryl who had been out with Rick, Shane, Lori and Carl came back saying a woman on a horse took Lori stating that Carl had been shot. We turned around and made our way to the farm.

"Hi I'm Maggie." We said our hellos and then came the awful screaming.