Caterina pushed away from the ledge and followed Rick and Morales back over to the group. Glenn had taken up a perch on the stairs next to Caterina's crossbow while T-Dog had been propped against the ledge, next to Andrea and the other woman, the two of which were staring down at the streets.

"How's that signal?" Morales questioned.

"Like Dixon's brain—weak," T-Dog quipped as he was messing with the station dial. This earned him a rather rude gesture from Merle, which T-Dog just sneered at.

"Keep trying," Morales encouraged him.

"Why?" Andrea asked, staring pointedly at Rick and Caterina. "There's nothing they can do. Not a damn thing."

As Andrea moved away from the ledge, Caterina and Rick turned a questioning gaze on Morales, who gave them an apologetic smile in return. "We've got some people outside the city is all," he explained—though it was more on the question of who they were trying to get in touch with rather than what was wrong with Andrea. The woman obviously had some problems. "There's no refugee center. That's a pipe dream."

"Then she's right," Rick said. "We're on our own. It's up to us to find a way out."

"Good luck with that," Merle sneered. "These streets ain't safe in this part of town from what I hear." He leered at Andrea, who was riffling through one of their backpacks. "Ain't that right, sugar tits?"

Caterina rolled her eyes. It figured he'd be the "charming" type. She had met plenty of guys like Merle in the past. She grew up in a low-rate community; you could say it was similar to living in the slums. It had been a common thing for her to receive catcalls from the less-than appealing men who lived in her town. It was one of the reasons why she tended to be antisocial. Still, thanks to her experiences with those guys, she knew how to deal with them whenever she ran into others like that.

"Hey, honeybunch," Merle tried again. "What say you get me outta these cuffs, we go off somewhere, bump some uglies? Gonna die anyway."

"I'd rather," Andrea scoffed.

"Rug muncher," he muttered in disappointment. "Figured as much."

"'These streets ain't safe,'" Morales chaffed. "Now there's an understatement."

"What about under the streets?" Rick asked. "The sewers?"

Morales' eyes lit up at that. "Oh man…" He turned. "Hey, Glenn, check the alley. You see any manhole covers?"

Glenn got up and ran over to the other side of the roof. He glanced down at the alley where they had come into the building from. After a quick glance over the street, he turned and jogged back over to the others. "No. Must be all out on the street where the Geeks are."

"Maybe not," the black woman spoke up, turning everyone's attention to her. "Old building like this, built in the twenties—big structures often had drainage tunnels into the sewers in case of flooding. They're all down in the subbasements."

"How do you know that?" Glenn wondered.

"It's my job—was. I worked in the city zoning office."

"Let's go to the subbasements then"" Rick said.

Everyone but T-Dog and Merle nodded and followed him towards the door.

"Wait a second!" Merle called after them "Hold on!"

Caterina paused on the way to the doors to stoop down and grab her crossbow.

"Hey, girlie!" Merle shouted out to her. "Hold on a second, honey buns. How about you get me outta these so's we can go off, have some fun?"

Caterina grinned as she strapped her crossbow to her back. "Oh, sweetheart," she cooed. "You wouldn't be able to handle me."

Merle blinked at her, obviously not having expected that.

Satisfied that she had left Merle speechless, Caterina winked over at T-Dog—who was looking at her with a mixture of surprise and absolute glee—and walked off after the others.

Once they were in the basements, everyone gathered around the drainage tunnels. Caterina had only been in one building that had these tunnels, and that was during an espionage mission. She'd been sent out with two other men from her squad to scope an area that was rumored to be the meeting place for a known terrorist group. They had to travel through the sewers to get there undetected. It wasn't exactly her favorite memory either, but her comrades had made it a bit more appealing with their constant quips.

"This is it?" Morales asked. "You sure?"

"I really scoped this place out the other times I was here," Glenn answered. "It's the only thing in the building that goes down. But I've never gone down it. Who'd want to, right?"

Everyone looked at Glenn expectantly.

"Oh…" Glenn muttered as he realized what everyone was thinking. "Great."

"We'll be right behind you," Andrea tried to soothe him.

"No, you won't," Glenn said. "Not you."

Andrea instantly became defensive—Caterina had a feeling that she got that way quite often. "Why not me?" she demanded. "You think I can't?"

"I wasn't…" he mumbled, but he trailed off before he could defend himself properly.

"Speak your mind," Rick urged him.

Glenn looked at him hesitantly before taking his advice. "Look, until now, I always came here by myself—in and out, grab a few things—no problem. First time I bring a group, everything goes to hell. No offense," he added quickly, before anyone could get defense. "If you want me to go down this gnarly hole, fine. But only if we do it my way.

"It's tight down there. If I run into something and have to get out quick, I don't want you jammed up behind me, get me killed. I'll take one person. Not you either," he said as Rick started to ready himself to go down. "You've got Merle's gun and I've seen you shoot. I'd feel better if you were in that store watching those doors, covering our ass. Cat, you go with Rick."

Caterina nodded in understanding.

Glenn pointed at Andrea. "You've got the other gun, so you should go with them." He motioned to Morales. "You be my wing man. Jacqui stays here. Something happens, yell down to us. Get us back up in a hurry."

Jacqui nodded. "Okay."

"Okay," Rick said, patting Glenn on the shoulder. "Everybody knows their jobs."

Glenn nodded satisfactorily before putting the end of his flashlight in his mouth and starting down the short ladder into the tunnel, Morales right behind him. Caterina exchanged a quick look with Rick before the two turned away from the tunnels and started back up to the store with Andrea close behind.

Caterina entered the store first, holding her crossbow expectantly as she crept through the maze of clothes racks. She wanted to be sure that no walkers had gotten through before she let herself relax. She stepped out of the racks once she was closer to the door and lowered her crossbow slightly when she saw that the walkers hadn't broken through the first pair of doors just yet. That meant they had a little more time before things got really dicey.

"I'm sorry for the gun in your faces," Andrea spoke up after a moment of silence.

Caterina glanced back over her shoulder at her in acknowledgement of her comment, but she didn't accept the apology or respond to it. Instead, she decided to leave that to Rick.

"People do things when they're afraid," Rick said in Andrea's defense.

"Not that it was entirely unjustified. You did get us into this."

Caterina had to resist the urge to roll her eyes. It didn't surprise her that Andrea would choose to stick that on at the end, to justify her reaction. As if Rick hadn't done so already.

"If we get us out, would that make up for it?" Rick asked.

"No," Andrea replied honestly. "But it'd be a start."

Caterina took one last look at the doors before turning her gaze on Andrea. "Next time though, you might want to take the safety off," she pointed out. "It won't shoot otherwise."

Andrea looked down her handgun. "Oh…"

"Is that your gun?" she asked.

"It was a gift. Why?"

Caterina lowered her crossbow to her side and stepped forward, holding out her hand. "May I?"

Andrea hesitated before handing it over.

Caterina slid the strap to her crossbow over her shoulder and took the handgun. She turned it onto its side in her palm and pushed the safety button before giving it back to Andrea. "The red dot means it's ready to fire. You may have occasion to use it."

"Good to know."

She slid her crossbow from her shoulder and returned to the front of the counter so that she was facing the door.

They all lapsed into a long silence, which thankfully wasn't so uncomfortable now that they'd made appeasement with Andrea. Still, Caterina would be lying if she said that she didn't still hold a bit of dislike towards her. Andrea was the type of girl that annoyed Caterina to no end. But there weren't many girls that didn't annoy Caterina. She tended to lean more towards guys in respect to friendship. All of the crazy emotions and sense of insecurity most girls had drove Caterina almost crazy. It was fine on some girls, but others took it to the extreme.

Caterina glanced back over her shoulder as Andrea gave a small throaty noise.

"See something you like?" Rick asked.

"Not me, but I know someone who would," Andrea replied. "My sister. She's still such a kid in some ways. Unicorns, dragons—she's into all that stuff. But mermaids, they rule. She loves mermaids."

"Why not take it?"

"There's a cop staring at me," she pointed out dryly.

Rick smiled slightly.

Andrea looked thoughtfully at the necklace. "Would it be considered looting?"

"I don't think those rules apply anymore, do you?"

Andrea didn't get a chance to answer as the sound of glass shattering rang through the store.

Caterina hurried through the clothes rack closer to the entrance. The walkers had broken through the first pair of doors and were now working on breaking through the second pair. "That's one down," she announced, mostly just for the sake of saying something.

Almost as if on cue, Glenn, Morales, and Jacqui ran into the room.

"What'd you find down there?" Rick asked as soon as he saw them.

"Not a way out," Morales relayed unhappily.

"We need to find a way," Andrea said. "Soon."

Caterina nodded. "We should get back to the roof for now," she suggested.

Everyone nodded in agreement, and they hurried off to the stairs.

Back on the roof, everyone had gathered around the ledge again, looking out at the city below. They were searching for another way to escape, now that the sewers had been ruled out. Luckily, the others had brought binoculars, so it was easy for Rick to scout out the area for anything that they could use.

"There," Rick said, pointing out into the city. "That construction site. Those trucks—they always keep keys on hand."

Caterina followed Rick's hand to a construction site at the end of the street directly below them. It was about half a mile from the store, and there were about a hundred walkers covering that whole length. It would be impossible to get through them without taking a few bites, at least not without finding some way to distract them first.

"You'll never make it past the walkers," Morales said, voicing Caterina's thoughts.

Rick turned to Glenn. "You got us out of that tank."

"Yeah, but they were feeding," Glenn reminded him. "They were distracted."

"Can we distract 'em again?"

"Right, listen to him," Merle spoke up for the first time since they had joined him and T-Dog back up on the roof. "He's on to sumthin'. A diversion, like on 'Hogan's Heroes.'"

"God, give it a rest," Jacqui said, exasperated.

"They're drawn by sound, right?" Rick asked, ignoring Merle. It was pretty obvious that he was used to guys like Merle, what with how he had taken care of him when he was bullying the others. But that was to be suspected since Rick was once a Sheriff's Deputy. He probably dealt with a lot of bullies.

"Right," Glenn nodded. "Like dogs. They hear a sound, they come."

"What else?"

"Aside from they hear you?" Morales jumped in. "They see you, smell you, and, if they catch you, they eat you."

"They can tell us by smell?" Rick questioned in surprise. He obviously hadn't thought about that.

"Can't you?" Glenn asked.

"They smell dead, and we don't," Caterina added. "We're fresh."

Rick adopted a thoughtful look, and Caterina was pretty sure she knew where his mind was going. If they couldn't get through the walkers by distracting them, what better way than to walk into the dragon's nest disguised as dragons themselves?

It took a bit of convincing to get the others on board with Rick's plan, but eventually everyone agreed that it was the best plan they had. Not to mention that they didn't have much time to think up something else. The walkers had already broken through one set of doors. It was only a matter of time before they broke through the second set, and then they would all be screwed.

While Rick and Morales went out to grab one of the corpses in the alley, Caterina and the others slipped into some gray coats they'd stolen from the departments along with some blue latex gloves. Caterina was the only one who'd been given a visor face shield, since she'd decided to take up the task of "gutting" the walker. She was pretty sure none of the others had the stomach for it, and she could tell that Rick wasn't up for it. Though she didn't know how, she knew that he'd gotten injured sometime in the past. He seemed perfectly fine a majority of the time but, whenever he exerted himself physically, he was always clutching at his side. If they wanted to get out of this, then he would need to be on top of his game.

Caterina grabbed the tire iron they'd found and walked over to the glass case at the front of the storage room. Inside of it was a fire axe. Since no one had any sharp weapons on them, they would need the axe to gut the walker. So Caterina swung the tire iron into the glass, shattering it. She grabbed the axe from its casing and went around to the other side of the group, handing the tire iron to Glenn for him to hold.

She stood over the rotting corpse and gripped the axe in both hands, readying herself to take the first swing.

"Are you sure you don't want me to do this?" Rick asked. He'd tried to fight her over who would be the one to deal with the walker, but Caterina had managed to convince him to let her do it so he could have a bit of a rest. But that didn't stop him from asking if she was sure every few seconds.

Caterina sent Rick an exasperated look. "Do you really want to argue about who gets to cut up the walker?"

Rick opened his mouth to answer, but decided against it and instead lowered his head submissively.

Caterina had to resist the urge to roll her eyes as she turned her attention back on the cadaver. "You might want to step back," she warned the others. She paused for a moment as everyone took a single step back and then raised the axe over her head. She had started to bring it down when Rick spoke up again.

"Wait!"

She quickly flexed the muscles in her arms to absorb the axe's momentum, stopping it just inches from cutting into the corpse's abdomen. She looked up at Rick in slight irritation. "What?" she almost snapped at him. It wasn't like they had all the time in the world here.

Rick motioned for her to step back, and Caterina did so obediently, despite her irritation. Rick moved to the walker's side and knelt down, removing his gloves. He glanced up at Caterina before rummaging through the walker's pant pocket. He pulled out a wallet and opened it. "Wayne Dunlap," he said, reading off the name on the driver's license. "Georgia license. Born in 1979." He took out the license and handed it to Glenn, who took it almost hesitantly. Rick continued to roam through the wallet. "He had twenty-eight dollars inside his pocket when he died." He pulled a small picture from one of the folds. "And a picture of a pretty girl." He flipped it over and read off the back. "'With love, from Rachel.'" He looked up at everyone. "He used to be like us—worrying about bills or the rent or the super bowl. If I ever find my family, I'm gonna tell 'em about Wayne."

Rick stayed knelt at the walker's side for a moment before he stuffed the wallet back in the man's pocket. He stood up and nodded for Caterina to continue.

She hesitated. What Rick had just done hadn't made it any easier to cut up the walker. Before, since she hadn't had a name or anything to associate with it, she could have just thought of it as an enemy and it would've been easy not to care that she was cutting up someone's corpse. But now that she did have a name, it made it a bit harder.

She did understand why Rick had done what he did—to give everyone a bit of perspective on what was really going on, and to commemorate the person that this walker had once been. She thought it was an honorable thing to do.

Still, it did make it harder.

Caterina steeled herself and raised the axe once more. She was made to pause again, however, as Glenn spoke.

"One more thing," Glenn said, staring down at the license in his hands. He looked up at the others. "He's an organ donor."

Caterina almost smiled at the irony in that. She exchanged a quick look with Rick and turned back to the corpse at her feet. She raised the axe higher and held it there for a moment before bringing it down into the walker's abdomen. Everyone exclaimed in disgust and turned their noses away at the horrible smell that drifted up to them as Caterina continued chopping without so much as batting an eyelash.

"How is this not making you sick?" Andrea asked in disbelief.

"I'm used to it," Caterina grunted as she continued to bring the axe down on the walker's midsection.

"I am so gonna hurl," Glenn gagged.

"Later," Rick replied offhandedly, his eyes never leaving the walker. Apart from Caterina, he was the only one who had managed to maintain his composure. He had turned away from the smell at first, but he regained himself fairly quickly.

Caterina continued cutting away at the body until most of its organs were exposed. She stopped once she decided that she'd made a big enough mess and took a step back, as if to admire her work. "I think that should do," she said, looking up at Rick for confirmation.

Rick nodded. "All right, everybody got gloves?"

Everyone held out their hands, similar to how a doctor would just before surgery. Caterina removed the shield mask and tossed it aside along with the axe (although she made a mental note of where they landed). She knelt down with the others and dipped her gloved hands into the corpses' open abdomen. She was tempted to gag at the squelching sound that it made as she dug her hands under the organs, but she managed to resist. While it was true that she was indeed used to all the gore and carnage, she'd never actually touched very many bodies—and the ones that she had touched had still been warm.

Caterina shook off those memories and set to work lathering herself in blood and organs.

Rick remained just as composed as he smeared the blood over his own coat, but Glenn was having a much harder time with it. He gagged and groaned, muttering to himself about how much he hated Rick and how bad the situation was. No one faulted him for his reaction.

But they probably thought Rick and Caterina were crazy because they weren't reacting the same way.

"Think about sumthin' else," Rick suggested. "Puppies and kittens."

"Dead puppies and kittens," T-Dog added.

That seemed to be the last straw for Glenn, because he turned around and threw up.

"That is just evil," Andrea bit at Rick. "What is wrong with you?"

"Next time, let the cracker beat his ass," Jacqui said in agreement with Andrea. The odd thing was that she had the most composed expression on her face compared to the others, though there was a bit more disgust there than there was on Rick's or Caterina's faces.

"I'm sorry, yo," Morales apologized as he helped to cover Glenn in the walkers' innards.

"Do we smell like them?" Rick asked.

"Oh yeah," Andrea coughed. She pulled off on her gloves and pulled her handgun from its place tucked in the back of her jeans. "Glenn," she said, holding it out in front of him. "Just in case." Glenn nodded, and Andrea tucked the gun down the front of Glenn's jeans, since she couldn't reach anywhere else and Glenn couldn't take it himself since he still had his gloves on.

"If we make it back, be ready," Rick instructed the others.

"What about Merle Dixon?" T-Dog asked.

Rick removed one of his gloves and reached into his pant pocket. He pulled out the key to the handguns and tossed it to T-Dog, who took with a serious look on his face. It was almost as if Rick had just entrusted him with the most important mission with how solemn T-Dog looked.

"Cat?" Rick said. "We need more guts."

Caterina nodded. "Right." She took the axe from Morales and set back to work.

Finally, Caterina stepped out of the door with Glenn and Rick, entrails hanging from around her neck. Her coat was drenched in the walker's black blood, making it so that all too familiar stench of death was constant beneath her nose. Caterina felt extremely dirty and wanted so badly to take a shower, even though they had been sure not to get any on their skin or their clothes underneath.

She exchanged uncertain looks with the two men before they started stumbling up the alley towards the bus. Rick had armed himself with the fire axe while Glenn had the tire iron, the both of which the men kept hanging at their sides loosely. Caterina had left her crossbow with T-Dog, who had assured her that he would keep it safe. Instead, she was holding her Buck 119 Special Fixed Blade Hunt Knife at her side loosely. It had belonged to her brother. He'd given it to her before she'd been deployed to Iraq, as a reminder of him while she was gone. She'd decided to take it with her when this apocalypse thing started, not only for when she was in a situation where she didn't have any ammunition but also to remind her that her family was somewhere out there.

That was what she'd been doing before Rick found her—looking for her family. She knew that it was very unlikely that she would actually find them, but it wasn't like she had anything better to do.

Caterina kept her gaze forward as she staggered past the walkers in the alley. One of them stepped up to her and sort of sniffed at her, and she worried for a moment that the stench of death wasn't strong enough. She had to hold back a sigh of relief when the walker turned away from her in disinterest.

Once she and her two companions had reached the bus, they slowly got down onto their stomachs and crawled to the other side. She had to pause just before she crawled out from under the bus as she saw all the feet shuffling past. No matter how many times she was around so many walkers, it always made her heart beat a little faster. It was just one of those things that you never got used to.

Caterina clambered back onto her feet and glanced over at the others before she started stumbling off towards the construction site, Glenn and Rick right beside her. Her whole body was tense as she walked through the mob. She was just waiting for one of them to smell the fresh meat underneath the stench of rotting blood and attack them. But, as they moved, it became clear that the odor was too strong.

As they went on, Caterina continually glanced over at Rick and Glenn to see how they were fairing. If either one of them started to panic—she mostly just suspected it from Glenn, since Rick seemed capable of keeping a cool head in tense situations—then she would need to try and calm them down before they alarmed the walkers.

"It's gonna work," Glenn muttered from the corner of his mouth. "I cannot believe it."

"Don't draw attention," Caterina warned him, sure to limit how much her mouth moved. She almost smiled at the over exaggerated groaning that Glenn started to make. She wasn't sure if he was doing it to be funny or if his fear made him do it. Either way, it was hilarious.

A loud rumbling sounded from above them, and all traces of humor were washed away. Caterina glanced up at the sky, and her heart skipped a beat in her chest when she saw that there were rain clouds accumulating over the city. She hoped for a moment that they would pass over before unleashing their water, but it was snuffed when she felt a raindrop on her cheek. She prayed that this would just be a cloudburst. The rain would pass quickly that way, but it could still wash away the smell from that walker they had bathed in.

God seemed to seriously hate them right now.

Caterina's hand tightened around the handle of her Buck knife. The walkers were starting to get rowdy, a sign that the smell was washing off.

"The smell is washing off, isn't it?" Glenn asked fearfully.

"Unfortunately, yes," Caterina replied. She stepped around a walker standing in front of her, this time making eye contact with it. Once it had passed, she glanced over at her comrades. "Upon my signal, make a run for it."

"What?"

Caterina didn't bother to answer as she heard one of the walkers give a hungry roar. She spun around and grabbed the corpse by its hair, in the same motion stabbing her knife up into its jaw. She wrenched the blade out quickly, allowing the body to fall to the ground.

"Run!" she shouted.

All three of them took off running towards the construction site. Caterina decked an oncoming walker in the face as she ran past, knocking it into the ground. She then had to slam her palm upwards on the nose of another, sending the bone into its brain.

As they neared the fence surrounding the site, Caterina put the handle of her knife in her mouth. She launched herself onto the fence and scurried over, all the while silently thanking her wall-climbing training back in the military.

Once over the fence, she shed her coat and tucked her knife back into its holster on her thigh. She followed Glenn and Rick around the building to where the lock box was.

Rick threw open the door to the lock box and grabbed a pair of keys. "There!" he cried as he tossed the keys over to Glenn, who then threw them to Caterina. She caught them and motioned for Rick to follow her as she hurried over to one of the cube vans. She wrenched open the driver's door and allowed Rick to jump in first. She waited until he had climbed into the back before she positioned herself in the driver's seat.

As soon as Glenn slid into the passenger seat, she jammed the key in the ignition. She turned it, giving a sigh of relief when the engine turned over. She almost jumped as a walker slammed into the passenger door. She looked over to see it pressing its face against the glass, gnashing its jaw as if it thought it could somehow bite Glenn through the glass.

Glenn shouted in surprise. "Go, go, go, go!" he howled.

Caterina obediently threw the car into reverse and slammed down on the gas pedal. She heard a few dull thumps as the van backed into what she guessed were construction barrels, though they also could have been walkers if they'd found a way into the construction site through the back.

She shifted into drive and tore out of the construction site.

"Oh my God, oh my God!" Glenn continued to shout. "They're all over that place!"

"Glenn, calm down," Rick tried to soothe him.

"You need to draw them away," Caterina started to explain. Somehow, she already knew what Rick had planned out without him having to tell her. "We need the area in front of the roll-up doors at the front of the store cleared."

"Raise your friends," Rick added. "Tell them to get down there and be ready."

"And I'm driving the Geeks away how?" Glenn asked. "I-I missed that part."

"Noise."

Caterina drove out to an area where there were very few walkers and threw the cub van in park. As she stepped out of the van, she grabbed her knife from its temporary holding place. She held it loosely as she watched Rick use the tire iron that Glenn had been using as a weapon to break into a red sports car. It was a good pick on his part. Sports cars usually had really good alarm systems.

She flinched as the car alarm started blaring loudly, and Glenn cupped his hands around his ears.

"Now, drive this to the front of the store and clear it out so we can get through," Rick instructed, trying to speak over the sound of the alarm.

"All right," Glenn nodded.

Caterina noticed that he was a bit nervous, so she took advantage of the time it took for Rick to hotwire the car to try and make him relax.

She stepped forward and placed a comforting hand on Glenn's shoulder. "It's all right, Glenn," she encouraged him. "This will be easy. All you have to is drive." Glenn looked up at her, and she smiled at the spark of confidence in his eyes. She patted his shoulder before stepping away to let him slid into the car.

Caterina and Rick returned to the cub van and started for the store where the others were.

Caterina sped out onto the street where the department store was and gave a sigh of relief when she saw that Glenn had already cleared the area. It left her able to spin the van freely and back it up to the roll-up doors. Once the van was in place, she turned in her seat and watched as Rick threw up the roll-up doors of the van so he could bang on the door to the department store.

"Get ready to move!" Rick called out.

As soon as he spoke, the doors rose and the others started to through themselves into the back of the van. She was quick to notice their harried expressions and guessed that the walkers had just broken through the last set of doors. She also noticed that Merle wasn't with them.

"I'm in!" Morales shouted once he was in the van.

"Go!" Rick cried.

Caterina turned back around and threw the van into drive. She slammed down on the gas pedal, and they tore out of the loading area. She heard the doors sliding shut as she took a sharp turn onto the street leading to the highway. She didn't slow down until they were well out of the highly infected areas. Once they were, she threw a quick look over at Rick, who'd taken up his spot in the passenger seat. He'd apparently noticed that Merle was missing as well.

The air was heavy as they wondered what had happened to Merle.

"I dropped the damn key," T-Dog said, finally breaking the silence and answering everyone's question.

There was another moment of silence before Andrea seemed to realize that they were missing one more member of their group. "Where's Glenn?" she asked.

Caterina exchanged another look with Rick, smiling slightly.