Daryl POV

Salvation. No one anticipated it, and not exactly a direct response from the man upstairs to Maggie's prayer, but it happened.

While the trio of soldiers were approaching us, one of them was walking at a slower pace than the other two, for reasons unknown to us. Then, out of the blue, one of the other two soldiers fell to his knees, clutching what appeared to be a wound in his neck. As soon as his friend went to his side to investigate, he too was shot in the neck. Then the soldier that had shot both of them went to each of them and delivered a walker-preventing headshot.

Everyone was stunned, but not stunned enough to follow the soldier's orders to "Get on the ground now!" when he barked it to us.

We did, fearing the worse. We could be killed by this guy or those walkers, getting closer and closer, could eat us. But before they could, bullets began flying. Walker bits and heads went flying everywhere, torn to shreds by the man's machine gun. The walkers kept coming, but they just kept getting mowed down by the most impressive display of firepower I've ever seen in my life. After maybe two minutes of this, all the walkers were dead. No one else was around. The six of us looked at our unknown savior.

He looked at us for a second, and then, from a voice distorted by the gas mask: "What are y'all doing? More are bound to come. Follow me if you want to live."

With little choice on our parts, we ran to follow him out of here and towards our vehicles. As we went along, Rick asked the unknown man, "Who are you and why do you think we can trust you?"

From behind that mask, a familiar pair of eyes looked back at him, then at me. Then he casually removed the mask to reveal the face of a twenty-five year old maybe, but one that had been in our presence before. At the prison.

"Well, you kept me alive when others would've killed me," responded Jay the medic. "And besides, I never really liked those folks in Benning anyways. Now if y'all excuse me, I'm going to try and get a Humvee for myself. The rest of y'all better get your vehicles. I'll be following."

Rick and I were even more surprised. We didn't know whether he had somehow escaped from the vehicle himself or some soldiers had raided our vehicles and helped him out of here, but either way Jay was putting his balls and life on a very fine line to ally with us and help us escape. I had my doubts, and started to ask Rick if he could possibly be a spy of some sorts, by Rick dismissed it.

"The man went through our tortures, yet still decided to rescue us when the obvious option would to do the opposite: not save us. He's coming for now, and his medical skills will be badly needed. Maybe Hershel could us his help. Tell him to come last with his Humvee; we don't want to attract anymore attention than we just did for the last twenty minutes."

I did, and even though if took all of us five minutes to get our vehicles started and ready to leave together, no complications were encounter by either us or Jay. The kid had managed to let an officer let him borrow a Humvee, supposedly for the purpose of chasing us in the forests. As I started the engine on Merle's moterbike, a nagging thought came through my head. I didn't want to believe it, but it came again and again that I was convinced that it was true. Now was not the time to discuss with anyone, though. Our asses had just been save from a fire, and me, more than anyone in the group, had no intention of starting another one for a stupid, crazy proposition that would get me kicked out.


Eventually we reached the same Shell station that we had stopped by on the way there. Decided this was good place to restore ourselves and talk this shit over.

The other five were standing with me in sullen silence, no one really wanting to talk or really do anything. Jay was keeping watch, as part of Rick's deal with him: pull your weight around for a week, and we'll take you in as one of our own. Glenn's arm was now bandaged up, a nifty piece of field dressing Jay had managed to apply to him, and he'd also gotten a bunch of pain killers from our new friend. Whiz had suffered some kind of concussion from hitting his head too hard when we had to get down to allow Jay to gun down those walkers, but in every other aspect he seemed alright, and he even joked that it was only his brain that suffered and no major organs. I checked myself for scratches from that close encounter with those walkers in the pit but found none. We all just stood there and avoided each other's gazes. Each one of us had a face like a slapped cock.

Someone had to get this little discussion started. Guess I was to be that person. "Well", I said, "that went swimmingly, didn't it?" Which won a couple of weak smiles and nothing else.

Then Rick took charge. "Alright, let's get this over with. Who fired first? Why? Someone must have seen something." He got shrugs and silence.

"Come on, what happened?! Anyone, give me something!"

"It was Karen, I think," said Trapdoor. "Not 100% sure, of course, but she was behind me and that was where the shooting started."

"Weren't you taking the rear?" I asked the Whiz. It was notable how neither him or anyone else laughed or giggled at the phrase taking the rear. We all might have had a laugh if this had been four hours earlier, but not now. Nothing was very funny right now. He nodded solemnly.

"So you would've been following Karen. Was it her? Did she shoot for some reason?"

"I don't know, Rick, I honestly don't know. I wasn't looking her way when it all happened. First thing I saw about it was a couple of soldiers had fallen, and so had Karen. If I had to take a stab at it, one of the soldiers made a move on Karen and she struck back the only way she could: with a gun."

"Why the hell would they do that, bro?" I asked Whiz. "Major Hanson himself had given them orders not to hurt us in anyway or they would have to answer to him."

"Yeah, but you have to remember the way they were treating us as they brought us in," Trapdoor chipped in. "Maybe one of them had forgotten what Hanson had said about treating us, got a bit too far on the bullying, and like Whiz said, she had to strike back. I mean, seriously: Hanson had been talking about executing us not ten minutes earlier. Plus, I spotted guards sizing up both Karen and Maggie lie they hadn't seen a woman in years, so one of them making a move on Karen makes sense."

The others echoed this with another round of disgruntled grunts and "Yea, maybe." Only Rick seemed unsatisfied. The trip to Fort Benning had been his idea, and his smooth talking had not earned us any brownie points in the long run. We'd managed to get out alive, but no one was happy that our lives had been endangered in the first place.

"I'm taking responsibility for this mess," said Rick with a heavy heart. "My plan, my fuck-up. I need to know what went wrong so that we don't suffer from the same experience in the future. Karen was one our better fighters, and I feel responsible for her death-"

"It ain't yer fault, Rick," I told him. "It was mine. I tried to get to her side but that cocksucker Vatz was too close."

"No it's mine. I suggested that Karen come along, and the same with the rest of you. If any more of you had died, your blood would have been on my hands, and my hands alone-"

"Rick, don't talk like that." Maggie was clearly upset by Rick's negativity.

"I have to. Now, is there anything else that could have been seen that caused this disaster?"

A couple moments of silence.

"Maybe Karen got a little careless," said Glenn. It had been the first time he had spoken since his arm had gotten that nasty cut, and he looked distraught. "Maybe she had her finger in the trigger guard and she let it go by accident."

Trapdoor and I both shot him a look of Are you fucking kidding me? but Rick stepped in and took over, obviously to prevent any fights. We didn't need them now.

Rick shook his head. "I don't think that was the case. She had been a part of the Woodbury Army when it still existed, and was pretty good during her time at the prison, keeping watch duty. And she knew better than to do something as stupid as that."

"Still, accidents happen."

"And when those type of accidents happen, they happen to be tragic school shootings or bank shootouts," said Rick. "Somehow, I just can't wrap my head around your idea, Glenn. It just doesn't make sense to me."

"Maybe," said Maggie in a conciliatory tone, "maybe we should just chalk this up to experience and move on. Rehashing everything to us isn't going to change anything and it won't bring back Karen. I'll miss her because she and I were starting to get close, almost as close as some of the friends I had before the apocalypse, and she was helping me one day during my guard duties and she turned out to be an even better shot than I was. But she's gone. I don't like it any more than anyone else, but we're just going to have to come to terms with her death. Like daddy did at the farm."

Rick, on the other hand, did not seem ready to come to any terms.

"We lost someone and screwed up the mission," snapped Rick, clearly pissed off. "Our chances of bringing that Army base on our side have been utterly destroyed, so forgive me if I'm not going to put any of this behind me, Maggie."

"All I'm saying is, we're alive at least, even if it was a fight to stay alive for a while. Remember it wasn't a total disaster."

Rick looked like he wanted to kill something, and he go his wish when a lone walker showed up. Rick grabbed a fireaxe, stabbed the thing in the head, and then proceeded to utterly destroy the walker's head.

That was the last thing we did at the Shell station, and when we finally got back to the prison at around evening, our little convoy carried some very surly and irritable passengers.

Folks at the prison looked optimistic and cheerful, though. That changed when we had to the bearers of bad news.


The funeral for Karen, if you could call it that, took place first thing the next morning.

All of us, from the Atlanta survivors, to the Greene family, and the Woodbury people and hitchhikers, had gathered outside for a couple of speeches that were made by Hershel, Glenn, and Rick in that order.

Hershel, who in his time at the prison had taken the role of spiritual leader and the closest thing to a priest, began with words of comfort and support to Karen's son Noah. It broke my heart and it broke everyone else's to see him in such pain. As far as we knew Karen had been the last relative he had in the world, and her death came as a very heavy blow to him.

"Now son, I know you are in great pain, and i understand," said Hershel. "But look around you. There is not one of us who did not have a loved one lost, whether it be to the walkers or the intentions of evil men. We are here for you and can help."

Glenn's speech was more of a lookback on Karen's life and time at both Woodbury and the prison. Using information he had collected from both the Woodbury people and Maggie's talks with the late woman, he'd put together a brief description of her life and the amazing person she was, etc. And then Rick... Rick just stood there, at the wooden cross that had been placed in our little cemetery. in the time here we'd gone ahead and placed crosses for everyone we cared about that had died along the way. Everyone from Amy, Jim and even that Doctor named Jenner all the way to the massacred Woodbury army and Karen. He proceeded to talk about it was his fault that Karen had died, how he wasn't going to lose anyone else to the soldiers, and how everyone had to be on alert in case Hanson and his boys decided to launch a counterattack.

But none of this really was processed in my head. The only thing I could think of was that damned thought I had when riding the motorbike the way back to the prison. Like a moth, it kept fluttering, unable to get out of my head, and making me a lot unsure about a lot of people living under the same roof as I did.

Sabotage.

AN:

Chapter 9 is here and completed. Cookies to anyone who gets the comic book reference in regards to the chapter title. Next chapter we'll see Daryl battle his inner demons and some Daryl/Beth as well.

Please continue to review/favorite/follow. Don't be afraid to offer suggestions and criticism as well. I'm only an amateur author and could gladly use your advice.

-Jokerang