The group finally high-tailed it out of the city and made it into the camp that was set up in the mountains.

Krystal was silent so far the whole way there, and for some strange reason, was immediately attached to Rick during the whole "escape the city full of walkers by using blood and guts, only to get it all washed off by the rain and nearly killed by the zombie swarm" incident.

The group in the van figured it was because he showed a lot of protection due to him being a police officer.

She stumbled out of the vehicle, quickly followed by Andrea, Jaqui, T-Dog and Moreles. The only one not in the van was Glenn; he pulled up behind them with loud blaring music, angering those in the camp.

A man with a fishing hat on came out, yelling at Glenn to shut it off.

"I can't!" Glenn laughed , stepping out into the open. "I don't know how!"

Rick ran towards his wife lori, and his son Carl. He picked her up slightly with a peck on the cheeks as Carl tackled into his sides, crying tears of joy.

"At least somebody's having a good day," Hummed Andrea standing beside another police guy. She had just finished telling him, and everybody else at the camp about what happened in the city. "nobody's gonna be pissed about Merle not being back 'cept Daryl."

"Daryl?" Rick's friend, Shane, asked.

"Merle's brother."

There was rattling in the background, three kids arguing over a toy:

"Give it back!"

"No!"

"I found it first! Give it back!"

"No!"

"Mom! She won't give me back the toy!"

"Both of you shut up," The mother barked at them, taking the toy out from their reach and holding them apart from each other by the scruff of their shirts, "You're loud enough to wake the dead! And I'm not joking on that one, either. Pipe down, I don't wanna hear another word out of you two, under stand?"

"Yes' ma'amn.." Both of the kids answered, disheartened.

"Give the toy back, Maria." The mother sighed, "You can play with it when he's done."

Meanwhile, another young boy tried to readjust himself on the stone rock his mother sat himself on. Of all things in the word to sit on, a rock was the best thing she could find? And on top of that, making him sit on it for almost all afternoon in the blaring sunlight? He knew he shouldn't be complaining too much, but it was taking his mother too long to finish the rest of his hair cut. There was also the fact that it was hot (he did mention that already, right?)

Krystal approached the group of kids, smiling as she sat down. She was a little quiet, and didn't join in their conversations. She poked at the ground with a stick as the kids beside her played tag near the campfire log.

He eyed her carefully, trying to get a good look at her. His mother yanked his head back, "ow! Hey! That hurt!"

"If you keep moving, it'll take longer, baby," His mother said softly, brushing more strands of chocolate hair down.

"Hurry up already," Her son scoffed, "I hate this!"

"If you think that's bad," One of the guys standing near the pond chuckled, "Just wait until you start shaving, then come back to your mother and start complaining. Shaving stings so bad that you' d be wishin' for one' o yer mother's hair cuts!"

"I'll believe it when I see it," The boy rolled his eyes.

"Tell ya what," The young man chuckled again, a bit louder, approaching him with his hands on his hips. "If you can get through the day with a lot more manly dignity than you're showin' right now, I'll show ya how to catch some frogs."

"I know how to catch frogs," The boy pouted.

"No, I'll teach you a technique," The man's chuckling turned into a wild laugh, "catching frogs is an art! Few people know about it, but I'm willing to share some secrets! "

"Really?" The boy piped up.

"I'm a girl here," Krystal chimed in, "So I guess I'm out of the deal , hunh?"

"Nah," The man waved her statement off, "n' body can join in! Ya sure you want to though? Most girls usually hate this sorta thing."

"Better than sitting around here doing nothing all day," Krystal nodded, standing up from the log to join Shane's side.

From afar, Rick watched Krystal interact with the group of campers, and he smiled. When he met her, she was very skeptical, very skiddish and shy of her surroundings. He heard her speak once, but she's very soft spoken. The fact that she was communicating with the group around her showed him that she wasn't afraid of socializing, she just doesn't say much when there isn't much needed to be said in the first place.

"I'm taking the kids out when your done, Lori," Shane said, giving her a wink. "What'cha think? That okay?"

"As long as you keep them away from the woods," Lori replied, pulling a final tug on Carl's hair, "I don't see why not."

"Ow!" Carl yipped, "Mom!"

The kids in the area laughed as his mother turned his head forcefully again, laughing harder as he started whining about the hair cut hurting.


[show opening / intro]


Down in the pond below the mountains, Lori watched as Shane, Carl and Krystal splattered around in the water. They were laughing as they played around. Lori shook her head at the gang as they fought in game of catching frogs, only to come out of it each and every time empty handed. She turned, heading back to camp, buckets of fresh water and clothing pins in her hands.

The group of frog catchers stopped to catch for breath, collapsing onto the sandy banks.

"Looks like the winner's Krystal," Shouted Amy, Andrea's sister, from her spot against the laundry area the women of camp set up.

"Here," Krystal was going to hand Carl her frog that she managed to get, "Want it?"

"No way," Carl shook his head, "You caught it, you should keep it."

Krystal shrugged. "If you're sure."

By the time Shane, Krystal and Carl finished collecting the nets and empty buckets, a obese man decided to show up, ruining the moment between the gang by the water with his asshole attitude. He called for the woman with curly hair, tapping the butt of his cigarette to get the dirt out.

"She doesn't have to go with you!" Andrea argued.

"And I don't hafta listen to you just because you're some little snot nosed bratty college know-it-all," The man huffed. "Carol, get over here. NOW!"

Carol stood, but was held back by Jaqui and Amy. The group of girls started arguing as the woman's husband grabbed her by the arm. From where the kids and Shane were sitting at, it was like watching a tug of war between victim, the group of women, and the victim's abusive husband.

Krystal and Carl watched in horror as the fight between the women and that brute of a man took place. They were going to high tail it back to camp, but Shane held his hand out in front of them to stop them. He told them to stay put and not to watch as he ran up towards the group.

The man shouted at him to back off; of course, Shane wasn't listening. He was beyond pissed. He grabbed the man and shoved him to the ground. Straddling himself on top of him, he proceeded to beat the asshole across the face several times. It was so bad that his face was barely recognizable by the time Shane stopped.

He yanked the guy by the collar when he was finished, "If I see you lay a hand on Carol or anybody else in the damn camp, I won't stop when I beat your face in, you hear me? I will not hesitate to KILL you if you endanger anybody in our group like this again!"

Carol ran towards her bruised and battered husband, crying loudly, sobbing about how sorry she was as she kneeled down beside him. Shane stood up, wiping the remaining sweat out of his forehead. He motioned for the kids to follow him back up to the camp. Nobody really understood why she wept for a man that abuses her. Krystal didn't get it either. It was a headache trying to figure it out!

As the old saying goes, to each their own.


Night time fell, everything going good even after Rick left to bring back Darl's dick of a brother and to get the bag of guns that he dropped on the road.

Lori didn't agree. In fact, she hated the idea of him going back for a man who wouldn't do shit for them in the first place. She finally gave in when he told her why it was his duty to go back, Carl didn't want him to go at all, and Krystal didn't blame him. She had been out there before, and it was crazy to go back for a guy who didn't give a rat's butt about either of them. Krystal figured it was just due to the cop that was in him.

Morality and all that good stuff still existed even in the middle of a zombie apocalypse.

Krystal kind of didn't understand why folks just called them "walkers" or "biters". They were zombies from every man's horror movie ("shawn of the dead", anyone?), plain as day, but this group seemed to either not know about that or just called them as they see them.

Krystal rolled her eyes as Dale, the man who introduced himself to her earlier that morning when she arrived at camp, began to explain why he always winded the watch every chance he got.

She was barely paying attention, nearly falling asleep as Amy announced that she was going to use the bathroom and go to bed.

"So you use the watch even though it's the end of the world?" Krystal asked, tilting an eyebrow at him.

Dale shook his head, "It's not the end, lass. It's the beginning of the change of the world. Think of it that way, eh? Then it wouldn't seem so depressing."

Everyone around the campfire nodded their heads. They would have continued with their laughing and camp fire songs, but it was interrupted when Amy came back out with a question about where are all the toilet paper, followed by a scream of painful horror and anguish. The group sitting around the camp fire immediately stood up, gathering closely together to keep the zombies from trying to bite or pull at them.

Thankfully around the same time, as if on que, Rick, Daryl, Glenn and T-dog arrived from their trip back into the city and began popping off rounds, blowing out zombie heads one by one.

The campers that weren't with the camp fire group scattered and screamed, all of them eaten alive (some painfully nibbled on). The whole camp was swarmed with zombies to the point where Krystal lost count of them all. She huddled against the RV next to Lori, Carol, Carl, Dale and Jim.

She tried not to look at their fallen comrade on the ground. She heard Andrea yelling and screaming for Amy. It was a heart wrenching, gutting sound that gave an sharp ache in the pit of your chest, a sound of anguish that she never wanted to hear again.

It took a while, but finally every last zombie was put down. There had to have been at least thirty of them. Krystal grimaced at the sight before her. The two kids that had been arguing the day before about the toy were eaten from the waist line down, guts and rotten blood splattered about across from where they lay.

Their mother was laying on top of them, ripped apart in the same manner. She lost her limbs. The family had unfortunately all been bitten in the head when the zombies started invading the camp from where they set up their tents. Krystal's heart clenched at more ripped apart bodies from even more campers that she met from the other day. Krystal couldn't take anymore. She shoved Carl and his mother out the way, and ran to hide inside the RV with a sob for her fallen campers.

The whole thing reminded her of when her parent's sacrificed themselves for her so that she could escape the zombie swarm in the hotel they were staying at. It was a memory that she thought she would be able to lock away and never look at ever again, but much to Krystal's disgust, things like this was probably going to keep bringing that horrific sight back over and over again.


Next morning, the horror fest calmed down a little.

Everyone stood by Andrea as she watched her dead sister on the ground. She finally bled out, even Andrea was covered in a large amount of blood. Her sister ran out of blood to bleed from.

"Shouldn't we stop her?" Asked Carol, blood on her from when she had finished hacking away at her dead husband with an ax.

"No," Lori replied, "Let her grieve."


An hour or so set in, the sun was blazing down onto the group's backs. Carl excused himself to go into the RV (he wanted to see if Krystal was okay). After he disappeared into the van, Shane approached to warn Andrea that her sister needed to be put down, but was met in the face with a clicked back, ready-to-be-fired-pistol.

"I know how the safety works," Andrea grouched at him.

Holding his hands up in defeat, Shane backed up, returning to the group at the RV.

Amy came back, she still looked like the same beautiful and intelligent young girl from the nights before this happened. Andrea held onto her head as she snarled and growled, weakly trying to claw at Andrea's face.

Andrea's face was caked with blood, but she didn't care. All she cared about was the young girl laying in her arms.

"I'm so sorry, Amy," Andrea wanted to hug her despite the risk. She held her hand behind her sister's head instead. "I'm sorry I wasn't there for you. I'm sorry I wasn't ever there for you, and the day I am there for you, this happens. It's all my fault! I'm really, really sorry, but I can't take it back! I can't go back through time! If I could, I'd do anything to prevent this from happening to you! I can't take it back."

Amy was about ready to take a chomp out of her sister's face. Removing her hands from around Amy's head, Andrea pulled back the trigger, brains from Amy splattered all over the ground.

"Amy," She breathed heavily after the shot, her face moist with tears and stained blood. "I love you."


They finished gathering all the bodies.

Daryl flipped his shit when he realized that Jim's been bit. It took Shane and Rick to keep Daryl and the group from trying to attack him.

"We don't kill the living!" Rick ordered.

"Tch," Daryl snorted, "That's funny, comin' from a guy with a gun pointing at my head. Fuckin' hypocrite. " He put up his cross bow.

"We need to burn the victims," Uttered Jaqui. "That way they won't be left looking like this."

"No!" Glenn emotionally yelled. "We don't burn our people! We bury them!"

The group were hesitant to go anywhere near the victims at first. It took some more encouragement from Glenn, Shane and Rick before they all finally agreed to bury the bodies.

"Need help?" Rick asked Andrea after planting a few bodies into the holes Jim made.

"I got it," Andrea sighed.

"You sure?" Shane piped in, this seemed to only anger her.

"I said I got it!" She barked, glaring at the two men in front of her.

They backed up, heading out to the road where their cars were waiting for them.


A/N: I know what you guys are thinking. This story is slow and boring!

Uh, duh. It's supposed to be at first, character relationship building takes a while in real life. I'm tired of all these OCs that already knows a member of the group, or are self inserted characters, or if they don't know a group they already make friends with just about everyone including the jerk Daryl Dixon.

Welp, I'm not gonna do that! It's gonna be a build up, zomg slow and boring character introduction from here on out. *salutes*

And as always, review! If you review, you get digital cookies and hugs!