Story Rated T for graphic violence, swearing and mild sexual situations.
CHAPTER 9
"You're going to look for her, aren't you? You won't find her. They'll make sure of it. Even if they weren't trying to stop you, there are nine million people in this city. You'll never find her. Forget about her. Move on with your life."
- The Adjustment Bureau (2011)
Rick stood, sweating over the slightly smoking engine of the van. He had one hand braced against the bonnet and was using the other to wipe an already soiled and dirty rag across his face. He didn't have a clue what he was doing.
Glenn, Dale - maybe even Daryl - were far better at this kind of thing. It was Dale's campervan, anyway; he'd offered to help but Rick had told him no. He wanted this time alone and maybe that was selfish but he wanted to be away from the accusatory stares – the pestering questions.
He didn't know the answers that they needed, and Rick could still see it in their eyes: they blamed him for the CDC.
The CDC had been about answers. Answers that he needed.
Answers that he hadn't gotten.
Answers that he had gotten.
You're all infected.
Rick slammed the bonnet of the van back down, perhaps a little harder than necessary.
It was his fault Jaqui was dead.
That was his wrong call. And it was strange that after a lifetime of priding himself on having good judgment, things could go so badly wrong. Maybe it hadn't been good judgment; maybe it had been luck – living on borrowed time.
Rick glanced up at the highway, littered with the carcasses of crashed cars and the occasional lone walker. If this was making up for twenty one years of good luck, he'd been pretty damn lucky.
The unfurled map, stuck to the windscreen by the wipers caught his eye. There were only a few towns from here on for the next fifty miles in all directions. Chances were they might have already been picked clean by other scavengers and it wasn't feasible – in terms of food, fuel or the amount of people in their group now – just moving from town to town gathering supplies.
It had been in the back of his mind now ever since their old camp had been attacked. They needed somewhere permanent. Somewhere safe. Maybe somewhere where they could start growing crops – build back up some kind of life…for the sake of his son.
Rick felt his hands curl into fists as his parting argument with Sarah reignited itself in his head. Somehow, she'd taken aim at his weaknesses and hit spot on target – showing an uncanny instinctiveness for what hurt, a talent he remembered her displaying even as a child.
"Coward!"
The old memory briefly replayed itself in Rick's head before he shook himself out of the past quickly. If he'd accused Sarah of seeing old ghosts now, then it was hypocritical. He was re-living everything, over and over again in his head. Every conversation, every moment – the period of time from which he'd started planning to tell the authorities about Mrs Hannigan to the conversation with his father.
He was going crazy. He needed to focus on the group but all he could think about was her, worrying about her – her survival, how she'd changed, how she felt now. It was like a tumor in his brain, eating up everything. In a time where he was most needed by the group, he couldn't feel more unfocused on them.
It didn't help that there was something so blatantly wrong with Lori. Or maybe not blatantly. She'd never been good at hiding her emotions, but suddenly, with out him even noticing, she'd learnt to.
There were these were brief bursts or flashes of uncharacteristic behavior; gone before he could fully recognize them. She'd go quiet. Challenge him on pointless things; agree with him on things he needed to be challenged on with out giving a fight. Lori had always been temperamental during their marriage, but this was strange even for her.
Rick wiped the rag over his face again, surprised that he didn't feel wrinkles across his brow indicating that he might have aged twenty years in the past day. He felt so old, so care-worn…
"Dad!" Carl ran up the grass verge towards him. "Dad!"
We're all infected.
The thought made Rick's knees want to give out. It changed everything but changed nothing at the same time. He could protect Carl from every walker, but a slip and a fatal hit on the head could still render all that effort pointless.
He could remember when Carl was first born, how Rick had been terrified to pick him up because he was so fragile, so tiny; so sure he'd break him…
"Dad!" Carl called again, out of breath. Cheeks pink.
Rick finally turned.
"I've been callin' you like five times, I –"
Rick dumped the rag on top of the greasy engine. "I know. I'm sorry. What is it?"
"Dale just wanted to know if you finally got the van working."
"Nah. It's going to need Glenn…maybe Daryl to get this thing going again." Rick caught the change in Carl's expression and grinned slightly, ruffling Carl's hair. "C'mon son, he ain't that scary."
"I didn't say he was," scowled Carl, hastily ducking out from Rick's hand. He looked over his shoulder to where Daryl was rested lazily against his bike, re-stringing his cross bow. "I think he's cool."
"You think he's cool?" Rick echoed, amused.
"Yeah." Carl paused for a moment, checking over his shoulder again as if Daryl – from all his distance away from them – might just be able to hear what he was going to say. As if he could sense the boy's gaze, Daryl looked up, squinting against the harsh sunlight at Rick and Carl. He chewed on his left thumbnail, surveying them for one, long moment before looking back down at his crossbow.
Rick cursed internally. He didn't want Daryl to think that they were talking about him. He already acted like an outsider to the group and Rick didn't want to make him feel like any more of one. Especially when he was such an asset to the group.
"Listen," he said, crouching down so that his eyes were at the same level as Carl's. They were the precise shade of cerulean blue Rick's were. In fact, if his hair hadn't been straight; if he hadn't had so many freckles, Rick would have said Carl was the spitting image of him at his age. "Listen," Rick said again, swallowing. "What happened this morning – Carl. I know I was hard on you, but your Mom's right –"
"- I know Dad you told me off already." His son's voice was abruptly surly, his gaze not meeting Rick's.
…"talk to your kid"…
Sarah was right. Sarah was probably usually right.
Rick was scrambling to cover this distance that had appeared between him and Carl out of nowhere. He was in denial: because how could this whole experience not be affecting Carl? What had everything he'd been through – loosing his Dad, running…Christ, the CDC – what had that all done to him? Rick didn't know – and it scared the hell out of him.
Rick reached out; a physical attempt to cross the space between them, and touched Carl's face, swinging his head gently back round to face him.
"Carl, if I lost you –" His voice broke slightly, conveying the emotion and fear that his son's infant mind could still not fully process.
"I'm sorry."
Carl looked so guilty and serious for a moment that Rick felt his heart pang. "C'mere," he said, finally, pulling Carl roughly and suddenly towards him in a crushing bear hug, Carl gave out a surprised yell, struggling and then laughing as he sent his father pitching backwards, sprawling back onto the dirt.
Rick felt Carl's skinny arm try to loop round his neck in a head-lock; felt the futile and desperate attempt at strength that could have easily been broken. "Argghhh!" Rick mocked yelled out.
"Dad!" Carl sniggered and then yelped out again as Rick shook his head like a bear, sending Carl flipping over his right shoulder. There was a scramble, in which Carl tried to climb onto his father's back and pull him back down when a yell cut the air around them.
"They're back!"
The voice – a woman's – processing it, it might have been Carol's – sounded from the other side of the gas station, where the rest of the group were. Rick got to his feet immediately, pulling Carl up with him. The oppressive Georgian heat stuck his shirt to his back with sweat; the air swam around them with the slight shimmer of a haze. He looked wildly to where the beat-up truck was rocking up the grass verge towards the gas station –
" – is that Shane and Sarah?"
The car pulled up just shy of the sweltering tarmac. The sun glinted off the windscreen; it was impossible to see inside.
"Dad?" Carl's questions pecked at Rick again insistently.
"Yeah, it's them" he replied, vaguely, but his brow was furrowing. Something wasn't right…
Out of reflex, Rick's hand drifted to rest on the gun strapped at his hip. He squinted, watching as Shane stumbled out of the van. Rick waited one second, then another. He waited long enough to realize that Sarah wasn't in the truck and then he started forwards, his heart starting to beat fast. "Carl c'mon," he muttered, his long legs covering the distance round the gas station easily.
There was only time to register some blind emotion running through his system; maybe panic, maybe disbelief – anger – fear - maybe all four – before Rick reached speaking distance of the rest of the group.
"Where is she?!" he yelled.
Andrea, Dale, T-Dog, Glenn and Lori, who were pressing up around Shane as he gestured wildly with his hands all turned to look at him. Rick rapidly strode past Carol and Sophia, who were hovering a little away from the group, his legs moving faster.
"Where is she?" he repeated.
"Shane's saying Dr Hannigan attacked him –" Glenn said, but Rick ignored him, his eyes on Shane.
"Where is she?" Rick repeated for a third time.
Shane's eyes met his. His lower lip was split, there was blood on his face and clothing; his jaw was swelling and bruising like he'd recently been punched. "Didn't I tell you," Shane snapped, breaking out of rank of the others and striding forwards to cover the last few centimeters of distance between himself and Rick. "Rick I fucking warned you this would happen!"
"Is she dead?"
"No! She god damn attacked me and then took off! She's completely -" but Rick was already moving again, shouldering past Shane and striding over towards the truck. The keys were still in the ignition. He jumped in and started the car.
"Rick, I swear to God. If you bring her back here, it's going to be Jenner all over again –" Shane said, grabbing the door to stop Rick from closing it.
Lori had appeared behind him, now, her face confused. "Rick? W –"
"I'm going back to get Sarah," Rick ground out, answering Lori's silent question. His eyes pierced Shane. "Where did you leave her Shane?"
"She left me!"
Rick's hand spasmed. For one, violent moment he imagined grabbing Shane's collar and shaking him. "I don't care, we don't do this to people. If we start going down this road how do we know when to draw the line? Huh? I told you she was staying. I told you."
For one moment, Rick thought that Shane was going to defy him again, but instead he backed up, shaking his head. "Just off the main street of town. She was heading west – looking for something." With that he slammed the car door shut, cutting Rick off. Lori hovered on the other side of the window still and Rick watched as Carl approached, ducking underneath his mother's arm. Rick leaned over and wound down the window.
"Rick, honey, why are you doing this?" Lori asked, her voice low and hurried as she leant forwards into the car slightly.
"Because it's wrong, Lori. Listen I'll be fine, I'll be back soon."
"That's not it- it's –"
Rick gunned up the engine impatiently, drowning her out.
"I'll explain everything when I get back," he yelled out to her over the noise. "I promise."
"Rick!"
He reversed the car abruptly, his ears ringing slightly with the way he'd treated Lori, and drove off.
Sarah froze for one, awful second. The walkers lumbered towards her – lurching, growling; faster than she'd led to believe they could move whilst studying the disease in her lab. This was real, Sarah thought with a horrifying kind of clarity.
The boy next to her was still rolling round on the floor clutching his head and screaming. Shane had really left her; or she had really left Shane. She was stranded in a town she didn't know with no weapon – no food – no….
But there wasn't panic. Only an adrenaline fueled anger and desperation. At some deep level, far below where her whirring and exhausted mind could reach, a switch was flipped. A decision was made through the experience of the quietly accepting eyes of Candice Jenner; the scalding hatred of Ed's; the failure in an attempt to find a cure; the sudden flesh and presence of Rick after all these years; the explosion at the CDC.
Far beyond conscious decision, with in reach of only distant perception, a resolution came to Sarah.
Electrical impulses scattered round in her body, down neurons and leaping across synapses. "Oh shit," Sarah was swearing, as she looked down at the boy and then at the walkers – her body already making the decision for her; survive-fight-run - she realized she wasn't going to allow herself to leave him. "Shit, shit, shit-shit-shit –"
She hastily bent down as the first walker barreled into the counter separating them - it's groping fingers missed her face by inches – and snatched the handgun up off of the floor. She stuffed it and the zyprexa into her back pocket to free her hands up and then bent back down to haul up the kid.
She was weak, but he was surprisingly light; like a small child. Up close she could smell something like decay and dust on him – like he'd been in the room behind the counter for longer than he should have been. She supported his weight onto her and then glanced wildly round for an exit.
A door. To her right.
She didn't have time to search round for a better option, or even to jam it shut behind them as they went through; the walkers were a hesitation, a stumble, a slip-up away.
In front of her was a staircase: narrow, carpeted and dingy. Sarah dragged the kid up it, breathing heavily. Georgia wasn't like Massachusetts. Even indoors she could feel the heat, like a thick blanket. Sweat stuck her hair to her face. Her heart pushed stewing blood through her veins.
The black-hoody kid was breathing harshly too. His head was bleeding out heavily onto her shirt, and Sarah could feel the slick warm viscosity of it on her shoulder and neck. She swallowed, remembering how hard she'd lashed out with the piece of broken piping.
"You need to tell me if you start having sensory problems," she panted at him. Almost at the top, she told herself, trying to ignore the groaning and growling of the walkers as they got closer. She didn't want to know how close. "If you feel like you're going to pass out –"
"What?" the kid wheezed. His weight was getting heavier and heavier. His movements more and more lethargic. "So you can ditch me?"
They reached the top: another door. Sarah kicked it but it didn't budge. Locked.
She let go of the kid, fished the handgun from her back pocket and shot at the lock – once. Twice.
Wood splintered, biting into her skin and face. On the second shot something cracked and Sarah tested the door again. It swung open at her touch and the boy wrestled himself through in front of her.
They were in an apartment. Slightly shadowed, because the windows faced south and were overlooked by a taller, grimier block of flats.
"What are you going?" the kid snapped weakly as Sarah grabbed his arm, dragging him into another room. "Block the door!" he commanded.
Sarah could only shake her head, frustrated. There wasn't time, she needed to say. Her mind was flying through each possibility and probability with dizzying speed. She'd shot the lock. There had been no time to block the door and she was too weak physically to move any heavy furniture in such a short space of time.
The apartment might not be empty – there might be walkers or other people.
Their only exit had most likely been the way they'd just come.
But there hadn't been time to tell him all this. Only time for Sarah to process it, understand that their chances of survival were slimming, and adapt accordingly.
She hesitated outside another door, nudging it with her foot so that it opened a crack. Back down the corridor, the walkers were entering the apartment, but she couldn't hear anything inside the room. She shoved the kid in first, hurrying after him with the gun still cocked, ready to shoot.
"Fuck!"
Sarah looked to where he was pointing, noting his long, pale, skinny arms, with track marks dotted up them.
Hanging from the light fix from a thick rope was a walker, gnashing and biting its teeth at them. The force of its struggle made it swing almost comically like a pendulum and Sarah shook her head, panting. "Help me with this," she said, already moving to the nearby bookcase. "We need to get it by the door."
"What about the –"
"Which one are you more worried about. The thing in here hanged by a rope or the four walking free outside?" she snapped at him.
Together, they shoved the bookcase the few meters it needed to go in front of the door and stood there, hearts beating erratically – waiting.
There was a sudden thud. Sarah took and automatic step back and the kid jumped, holding onto his head and swearing. The walkers on the other side of the door pushed again. The bookcase shook, unsteady, and Sarah moved to throw her weight in behind it.
"How many bullets has that thing got left?" the boy asked. He looked pale. His hood had been pulled down to reveal dark blonde hair completely matted red on the left side by blood.
Sarah looked down at the gun in her right hand. The grip was coated with sweat and there were a few flecks of blood on it and several scratches. "I don't know," she admitted. "I don't know how to check."
"Give it here."
She passed it over to him.
The door gave another jerk and Sarah yelled out as it almost flew open. Sweat dripped into her eyes from the exertion of having to hold the door shut. She watched carefully as the kid pressed a button on the side of the handgrip, ejecting the magazine.
"One round left," he said, balancing the small brass bullet in his hand for a second before inserting it back into the gun. His voice was shaking slightly.
The door gave another jerk. "Okay," Sarah said, glancing round hurriedly. "Okay. I'll hold the door. You – you go to the window and –"
But he'd already held the gun up to his temple and pulled the trigger.
"NO!" Sarah screamed. Blood sprayed up the walls and onto her face. He fell to the ground, most of the left side of his head blown off.
With out thinking she flew forwards, falling to the ground next to him. Above his body the walker was going bezerk over the smell of fresh blood, swinging increasingly violently on its rope. Sarah scrambled for the gun, checking desperately as she'd seen him do. There were no rounds left.
You selfish bastard.
She could feel the ache of panic beginning in her lungs as she threw the gun across the room in frustration. Another bead of sweat dropped down the side of her face.
The bookshelf was beginning to give. Sarah could see the hinges straining, hear the moans growing increasingly louder on the other side of the door; the wood spasming with the effort exerted on it – thud-thud-thud.
The noise was sure to draw more. Was it already her imagination or could she hear more walkers moving around in the flat above her?
Sarah straightened. The dead body next to her was unmoving. She estimated he'd destroyed the majority of the frontal and temporal lobea and the brainstem. There was little chance of him re-animating.
There was another thud. A knarled, decaying hand managed to fit through the crack in the door and Sarah decided it was now time to make her escape.
She stripped the bed, ignoring the bloody hand prints she left on it and knotted the bed sheets and blankets into a rope. It was the kind of thing that always worked on films; like the loose tile in the ceiling of the elevator.
She dragged a chair across the room, tied the linen to one of its legs and then climbed out of the window.
The moment her arms were forced to take her body weight, Sarah gave a wheezing kind of choke. Ow. Her muscles were already cramping badly, but still, after a calculating tug, she reassured herself the linen would hold.
Sarah was only two, maybe three stories up but her bloody, clammy hands kept on slipping. The moment she felt her body was close enough to the sidewalk, she let go.
Her legs failed to absorb the shock of the fall and she pitched forwards immediately. She lay, curled up on the sidewalk for a second; dazed.
Well, she asked herself, any more bright ideas?
Sarah lay on the sidewalk for another few seconds. She could feel the hot black tarmac slowly cooking the side of her face. Cuts stung on her palms.
The bright sunlight played tricks on her and for a second the black spots dancing in front of her eyes turned to a glittering silvery river from her childhood. A pebble gracefully broke the long blue wall of the sky. It skipped once, twice, three times trailing sparkling drops of water.
She blinked and the image was gone.
Her mouth was dry. The water had looked so good…so cool. Sarah licked dry lips. She sat up and put her head between her legs, trying to shake off dehydration.
There was no chance in hell she would make it back to the group. It was a drive of thirty minutes away and that meant maybe a day on foot in this heat and the hills. It was never going to happen. Never as in never. She would be dead before she made it there.
She sat listening. There were no walkers nearby. Just her, the sidewalk and a long empty road.
Sarah looked at the sky. The sun was already dropping. A few hours and it would be dark. A little after noon.
She squinted up at the sign hanging above the intersection, ignoring the pile up of cars underneath it that had been squashed like tin cans in an accident.
East Point. 10 MILES.
Atlanta. 21 MILES.
Monroe …
How motivated are you?
There was a heatshimmer on the road surface.
Very. Sarah answered her own question.
She looked back up the road. Nothing out there. Blankets tumbled down from the window above her like a white flag.
Atlanta was twenty one miles on the road. Maybe seventeen as the crow flew. That was four, maybe five hours walking distance.
Atlanta would have hospitals with labs underneath them. A university. Scientific institutions like the CDC. People took guns and food at the outbreak. Nobody took microscopes, Petri dishes or ultracentrifuges.
Her chest was hurting. She needed a drink.
Sarah got to her feet, stumbling back up the street. North.
The road fell away with each step.
Rick pulled up onto the main street of the town, parked and got out. He stood by the door of the truck for a second, observing.
Walkers slouched in the distance up the road to the left. They slouched around a little closer to the right. His hand drifted to the gun at his hip, but he didn't unholster it. They weren't close enough to be a threat.
What unsettled him most was the quiet: there was no noise. No car horns blaring, no people walking, no vacuums whirring in apartments or radio's playing. There was the wind, there was the groaning of the undead, there was the steady in and out of his breathing. That was it. That was all that was left in the world. He half expected to hear the grinding gears of his bones working deep inside of him as he moved forwards.
Up ahead a knotted bundle of white sheets hanging out of a window caught the breeze and flapped with a ghostly kind of lethargy.
Rick cupped his hands round his mouth. "SARAH!"
Her name echoed back to him mockingly off of silent walls. "SARAH!" he tried again.
The walkers up ahead turned at the noise and began to stumble towards him.
Feeling sick, Rick walked back over to the truck, got in and pulled away.
A quarter mile up the road Sarah stopped and shifted her sac a little higher up her shoulder. It contained all the things she'd managed to scavenge from the abandoned shops in a short space of time.
An old can of baked beans. A packet of chips. A blanket. A lighter. Another shirt. Her weapons of choice were a knife and a piece of wood that had obviously been whittled down into something resembling a stake.
These were her possessions now.
Sarah thought of all the furniture back in her apartment in Boston. She'd spent years building it up into a home. Buying the stylish, brown leather sofa. The shabby-shique wooden table. The perfect bed. The rugs. Hundreds of dollars. Thousands of dollars.
She'd locked up the apartment, gone from her home to the airport.
Boarded a plane. Boston to Atlanta. Just a two hour flight.
Everything she owned, still there, probably untouched.
She'd never see it again.
Sarah shifted the sac again. Everything she owned resting against her back. Crappy boy-scout survivor tools that weren't even hers; that she'd stolen only twenty minutes ago.
Suddenly, the bag felt a whole lot heavier.
Shit, she abruptly doubled forwards. Crouched so that her head was resting on her knees. Shit shit shit.
This must be what people called a panic attack.
The sac dropped with an audibly thump down onto the road next to her. Tears rolled down her face. She couldn't breath. Sensory shut down.
The kid lying on the floor with half his face blown off. Walker food.
"Why did you have to die, Ed?" Sarah moaned, rocking slightly. "I can't do this by myself. I really can't. I don't want to. I don't –"
Her throat swelled up. She couldn't speak, so she repeated the mantra over and over in her head.
You had something you stupid idiot -you had a group- you had something-now you've thrown it away because of your guilt and your-
Sound penetrated her. Sarah looked up and saw a truck approaching through the heat haze. Her heart froze.
There is no description, she thought, for the kind of idiot you are. You're going to die.
She scrambled to her feet and then backwards, into the protection of the long grass by the side of the road.
The truck screeched to a halt, skidding so that it covered both lanes. There was the sound of a door slamming.
Oh God, oh God, oh God.
Sarah broke into a sprint, parched winegrass whipping at her bare legs. Her breath came out in harsh pants as she navigated the uneven ground beneath her feet, hurtling down a bank towards a shallow, pebbled river.
There was indistinct yelling from behind her, and Sarah's heart, if possible beat faster.
She hit the river running. Water splashed up around her – she looked at her feet, trying to keep her balance against the slippery pebblestones and then looked up and saw the walker a few feet away from her, crouched in the river tearing into a fish.
Sarah lurched, attempting to stop and then fell into the water, onto her knees.
The walker growled, rising to its feet and –
A crack burst through the small valley. The bullet entered the walker's brain, dead-center in its forehead. Sarah saw the exit wound, watched the back of its head explode in red confetti as it slumped back onto the river bed.
The shock took her breath. She turned onto her back, dripping, elbows digging into the cutting stones, blowing water.
The figure standing at the top of the bank lowered their gun and Sarah fell back into the river. Laughing, almost hysteric with relief.
Cool water lapped at her heated skin.
"You," she said up to the sky, "are a very good shot."
Rick lowered his gun and ran over, crouching above Sarah.
"Are you okay – are you hurt -?" adrenaline pounded through his body as he helped her to sit up.
"I'm fine," she said, as he grabbed her face to assess if she was telling the truth. There were tiny cuts all over her skin, as if a window had exploded near her. Her hands clutched onto his arms and he noted that there was a ride, painful looking red strip across both of her palms that looked like rope burn. She looked like she'd been in a fight, too; there was a bruise blooming on her right cheek – ugly: black and purple and green. Shane. "Rick, I'm fine," she repeated. She grabbed his face, forcing him to look into her eyes. They were devastatingly penetrating, lucid, grey and clear.
He had to look away, shaking her hands from his face. He pretended to gaze over at the dead walker for a second, rubbing a hand across his jaw line. "What the hell happened, Sarah?" he asked after a second, very quietly. "Why didn't you come back with Shane? What were you doing walking up this road?!" Who are you almost slipped out, too, but he managed to bite down on his tongue before it came out.
"You don't have a right to be angry," she said, stiffly, and it wasn't until she said it that he realized he was.
"I'm the one that came damn looking for you. I saved your life."
"I wouldn't have needed saving if you hadn't run me off the road." She stood, and then rounded on him, hostile. Rick straightened. He was tall but so was she. They stood, toe-to-toe. Her hair was plastered to her face, she looked haggard, furious. Her eyes managed to burn. "I was going to Atlanta."
"Atlanta?" He grabbed her arms. "Sarah, there's nothing left there."
"There are labs. It's a place where I can re-start. Re-gather research –" her voice rose as he attempted to speak over her.
"That's exactly the kind of thing you'd think, isn't it?"
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Do everything yourself. Put all the responsibility on yourself. You're the one that takes the burden. Push everyone else out until you're the only one taking the weight and then it becomes crippling and then you crumble and you fall and you did it to yourself."
"You're walking on very dangerous ground Rick."
"No," he snapped, jerking her closer. She wasn't thinking straight, he had to make her see. "I saved you from that once. I can do it again, and again, and again. However many times it takes."
Color had fled from her face. She was as white as a sheet, leaving the cuts on her face in stark, brutal relief. With her light hair and eyes, she looked like a ghost. "I have to do this," Sarah whispered, her voice sounded like she was crying though there were no tears. "Rick people like me; we have a duty to do our job, whatever the cost. So do you. You need to protect your group. I need to find the cure."
"The world changed."
"That's not an excuse, and you know it, because you feel the same way I do. Why else would you be beating yourself up over the CDC? -" he took a step back. "- yeah," she added, "I can read you like a book, Rick. Because we're the same. You feel the same sense of duty I do. You're a hypocrite. You can't talk me out of this when you're doing the same thing as I am."
"The difference is, I'm not going to end up dead on some pointless suicide mission," he hissed.
Somehow, he'd prodded her frustration to new heights. Sarah splashed forwards in the water, her squelching boots pathetically marring the anger in her voice. "You coming out here by yourself to recover me looks an awful lot like a pointless suicide mission to me."
"Not pointless," he objected.
Her eyes widened and she threw her hands up in the air. "Oh my God you are so frustrating!" she screamed, turning her back on him.
Rick took his chance and dived forwards, grabbing her and throwing her over his shoulder. "What are you-"
"It's 21 miles between Atlanta and here, right?" he growled out, heading back for the truck. "That's, what, a population of almost a million if you factor in Atlanta between you and it. That's almost a million walkers. You'd never make it there alive."
There was a pain in his shoulder abruptly and he stumbled.
She'd bitten him.
Rick actually laughed. "Are you serious? –"
Sarah unleashed her full strength, struggling so hard that she sent them tumbling backwards onto the harsh, solid ground. She got to her hands and knees quicker than he thought she'd be able to, already off like a loaded sprinter.
Rick swore, scrambling up after her. Why was she so damn, stubborn?!
He was still stronger than she was; Sarah made it only a few meters away from the truck before Rick caught up with her again, tackling her to the ground.
"What are you, five?" he growled, pinning her hands down either side of her head.
She sneered and moved to knee him in the groin but Rick managed to grab her leg, his fingers digging into her thigh so tightly that she winced.
"What are you, a caveman?" she shot back. "You can't just throw me around like that."
"Because you're fragile? You hate being called weak, Sarah." He leaned in close, breathing, "And I don't like double standards."
He felt the shiver go down her spine and Rick drew back so fast that he thought he'd get whiplash, looking hard into her eyes.
Hers widened perceptibly at the same time his narrowed.
She swallowed hard.
A/N I sincerely apologize that it's been months since I last updated. To be fair, however, I'm thinking that interest might be waning for this fic. I received less hits and reviews for last chapter so I'm not entirely sure how many people are reading this currently – especially with my updates being so far apart.
But I digress.
To Lady Shagging Godiva yes this will deal with how the walker's were created and things like that (that is Sarah's sole purpose after all), it's just been very difficult to create a decent theory. The Walking Dead creators weren't 100% scientifically correct with a lot of their material, which makes it really hard for me to come up with anything plausible (just the brain stem allowing walkers' to function fully, anybody?) but I think I'm just about there.
It would be amazing if you could review – hopefully the next update might come a bit sooner.
Last Of The Lilac Wine
