Hello all! Here we go with the tenth chapter of the story! This chapter was a difficult one to write for me; geographically, I actually had to map out where the main group was versus where my OC's were and I noticed a couple of geographical mix ups that I kinda accidentally threw into the story, so I'm hoping all of it ends up making sense one way or another. LOL I would also like to bless the human that created Google Maps while I'm at it.

I would also just like to note something about the Dixons' past while I'm explaining somethings. For the sake of this story-because of both the backstory that has been written and that I have planned to be revealed in later chapters-we're going to pretend that The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct doesn't exist. For those who are unaware of what that is, it is a video game which tells the story of Daryl's time before he and Merle discover the Atlanta camp that is outlined in the show. To be honest, I completely forgot it existed until I was looking up some geographical information and it suddenly popped up. So, thank you for reading these revelations of mine, and I promise things will be more clearly mapped out from now on.

Thank you to everyone who has left a review, followed or left a favorite for this story! I really like reading your comments to see how you all are continuing to feel about the story! Please, keep it up! Let me know what you think so far. :)

Thanks in advance for taking the time to read this chapter!

-D

Disclaimer: I do not, nor have, nor ever will own anything related to the label of The Walking Dead. That all belongs to the rightful owners!

Chapter Ten: White Flag

"How much farther are we going today?"

The sun was hanging deep in the sky, no clouds to obscure the honey light from casting shadows along the train tracks. Casey stopped in her footsteps for a moment, her long, dirty brown hair tucked into a braid, bobbing against her bag. She was shifting so she could look at her companion, who was slogging along behind her, over her shoulder. Ryan's inky hair had gotten long too, flopping into his dark eyes when he snapped his head up to look at her. His face was smothered with dirt and dried blood, debris crusting along his jawline and low set cheeks, but that didn't stop the youthful radiance from glowing. Even after it all, he still had the baby look to him, that pungent look of innocence and serenity. When she turned her head, he jogged up to her, long legs bringing him directly behind her.

She shifted, surveying the area before she twisted fully to meet him. "I want to try and at least go a few more miles. Today's been good; we haven't 'ad any walkers yet, and I wanna take advantage of that. Whatcha think? You got a few more in you?" She knew he had to be getting exhausted; even she was starting to feel the ache in her legs, the cramps of hunger in her stomach.

"I'm good," he responded instantly. Ryan huffed for a moment, shuddering his shoulders to adjust the bag that was strapped to his back before he continued, "What about you? You haven't taken a break since that cruddy town we hit like ... three days ago."

"I took a break in Lovejoy," she reminded him, cocking an eyebrow.

"Love-what?" was his dumb reply.

Casey sighed for a moment, annoyance flaring up in a flush along her neck. Sometimes she forgot that Ryan didn't have a sense of direction, nor did he have any clue how to tell which direction he was headed in. She quickly grasped his shoulder, pushing him so that he spun around, his backpack now facing her. The vented material was much lighter than it had been that winter, and her stomach grumbled in agreement with her hungry thoughts. Neither of them had eaten in almost a week and a half, and water was almost just a grim with the last good drink she got being two days ago. Casey was struggling to fight the fatigue that came with that.

She grumbled something unintelligible while she unzipped the front compartment, one of the smallest, and reached inside, fishing out a large, folded map in one hand, a black Sharpie marker in the other. She closed it back up before she knelt down, spreading the creased paper out with her dirty fingers. It was a huge map that spanned a good three feet, showing the entirety of Georgia on its inky surface. Casey knew it would just be easier to show him where they were than to try and explain.

"We started here," she began, jabbing a finger at the paper, pointing out a town by the name of Forsyth that had been squared off in black marker. "This is where we met. And this is Barnesville. That's where you got shot." The city she had just named was also squared off, but had an "x" through the name of it. "I tried to get all the supplies out of there I could. There was no sense in stayin' there. Especially with those walkers." She then drew a large circle with her finger around both squared out areas on the map, her oval shape extending out as far east as some place called Sparta. She took the marker, popped the cap off, and started drawing a large arrow, showing him exactly which way they had headed. Each town that the line went through, she drew another "x" through. "We got as far east as Sparta before we doubled back through Eatonton, Monticello an' Jackson. We steered clear of McDonough and anythin' north of that 'cause we'd be gettin' into Atlanta territory." Then, she jabbed the marker at an undisclosed spot slightly north of two question marks that she had drawn beside the names of Newnan and Peachtree City. "We're somewhere in here now. I want to hit Tyrone before we cross th' eighty-five north."

Ryan stared at her incredulously. "You kept track of that this whole time?"

"Not at the beginning. When we got th' map it was easy to remember what interstates we crossed and such. I mapped it out from that." Casey gave him a quick shrug of her shoulders.

"Remind me if I ever meet your brothers to thank them for teaching you how to save my sorry ass," Ryan murmured the first part lowly, then brought his voice back to regular volume. "I can barely read that damn thing. I'd be spinning in circles."

"Uh huh," she affirmed, not really paying attention now. The mention of her brothers made her heart pang with bittersweet agony, and she had a hard time swallowing down the hardness that formed in her throat. She started packing up the map again, refolding it and capping the marker before motioning for Ryan to turn around again. When she was busy stuffing the items back inside his bag, she began talking once more. "I'm gonna give you time to take a piss while I head up along the tracks a bit. See what I can find up there. Come find me when you're done."

Casey didn't wait for Ryan to nod or voice his agreement; the brush of their shoulders together was all she needed to know he had heard her. She started off along the train tracks once more, feet stomping down the underbrush that had spilled over the metal tracks, peaking up through the wooden boards that were hammered into the earth between the two metal rails. While she traveled, she kept her eyes surveying the area, the thick weedy plants to either side of her and the tree canopy above her rustling with a slight wind that blew through. Even though her eyes were constantly scanning, aware, her mind wandered freely, although not fully engulfed in her own thoughts.

The winter had been hard on both of them. After they had managed to escape the hoard of walkers that had followed them into the forest, she and Ryan kept close to the train tracks, hoping that they would be able to give them some sort of direction to travel in. They had stayed on the tracks, wandering really, only stopping to scavenge through disgusting cabins and rundown houses when they had run out of food and water a couple weeks in. With the cold weather still lingering for what felt like months, smaller game was continuously rare to find and bigger animals had disappeared completely. Most of the winter was spent trying to fight off starvation while trying to move eastward. More than once in their travels, they had discovered a sign-map combination that had been smacked up on a picket, dulled and curled with age, telling of a place called Terminus, claiming to have "sanctuary for all and community for all." More than once did Casey have to drag Ryan off in the other direction, spewing words of logic and most likely truth by saying the place was most likely overrun by now because there was no way a place like that would have survived this long. She would never voice her other thoughts on the subject, but she also wasn't willing to risk traveling all the way to Terminus only to be met by psychopaths that would kill them for their supplies. Even though both her and Ryan could easily defend themselves from walkers and even hide from the occasional partnering of people that would rip through a town the same time they were, she knew that they would never be able to fight well against a large group. Maybe it was the trauma from Ryan's accident that was still twitching in the back of her mind, but Casey had made sure to be extra careful that they didn't run across any more people. They were doing just fine on their own.

As the winter had finally melted away into spring, warming away the chilled rain and icy temperatures, both Casey and Ryan decided that west was probably the best option, since all of their options out east had yet to work to their advantage. With the lack of game still obvious to even Ryan's untrained eye, Casey had pushed them as fast as she possibly could to get as far west as Newnan, then go north to see if maybe the smaller towns hadn't been picked clean. They had veered away from the tracks, following roads and interstates and sticking to the trees until they had managed to hit another set of tracks in some little town Casey had identified as Woolsey. The tracks had led them to where they were now, somewhere between north of two large cites just inside Coweta County, meandering down the tracks trying to survive.

Casey couldn't suppress the sigh that escaped her lips. There wasn't anything she wouldn't do for the world to just go back to normal. She missed her home, she missed her brothers, especially Daryl, she missed everything ...

She snapped out of her musings when she noticed a drastic change in scenery out of the corner of her right eye. The long, willowy trees gave way to clear, open sky, the yearning evening sun basking everything in a golden haze. The unruly brush that had lined along the tracks was dropped away now, replaced with a small pond that had pooled at the base of the rails and marshy plant matter that replaced the overgrown weeds. It was a break in the forest that was sudden, almost unnatural, but when Casey glanced beyond the change in the nature around her, her sapphire eyes popped wide open.

Before her, probably only a good hundred feet away from the base of the tracks, were immensely tall fences, chain link sturdy, barbed wire twisted around the top poles in thick, webbing strands. One fence was right after the other, creating an outer perimeter that could allow travel between the two sections of chain fence. There was a part of the barrier that caught her vision for a slight amount of time longer; it was thicker than the others, like there were actually two panes of chain link on top of each other-a gate-that was blocked off with a large, overturned vehicle from the inside. On the other side, the outside, there were other vehicles that were clustered around it, a few trucks and some sort of SUV-looking vehicle too. The fences squared off feet away from the main gate, creating a box-like field that lay blocked off from the rest of the world with a thick gravel path leading to the next set of fences and gates across the space. Large, monstrous towers with boxy roofs were in two of the corners of the strange field, drawing her immediate attention away from the backdrop to the scene; huge, expansive buildings were settled farther in, rustic bricked and blocked, uniform in color and style. Casey wasn't stupid; she knew exactly what this was. It was a prison. She'd spent enough times going to visit Merle to know they all really started to look the same after awhile.

Her attention was snapped back to the field, which now that she realized it was a prison, she figured it was probably what once was the outdoor area for the deterrents. She noticed ... movement? Yes, those were bodies that she now made out in her vision. At first glance, she swiftly judged they were walkers, but after only a few seconds, she knew she was completely wrong. Those figures moved too fast to be zombies, moved with too much purpose. There were approximately ten of them, some huddled in the middle of the grassland, others occupying themselves around the fences that were the farthest away from her, probably looking for breaches or waiting for walkers to come by. When her body finally responded to the threat of other humans nearby, she found herself crouching in seconds, bringing her body as close to the ground as she could without actually laying down. If she could see them, she knew they could see her, and there was no way she wanted bullets to start being fired her way.

She needed to get back to Ryan. It was crucial he know about the prison. She was shuffling her way along the tracks back the way she came, careful not to pop her head up over the tumbling bushy plants as she did. Once she was back in the safety of the trees, she launched herself back to the general direction from which she had came. It didn't take her long to find him; he was a few seconds jaunt off of the tracks from where she had left him, his back to her. He obviously wasn't finished his bathroom break yet, but in the same breath, Casey didn't care. Touring around the apocalypse with him had led to a few awkward encounters with him, and although she tried her best and he tried his, there was sometimes no way around accidentally seeing the other's unmentionables. She needed him to know of what she had found, and she wasn't going to wait patiently. Patience was a trait none of the Dixon siblings had.

"Ryan. There's a prison. A group of people took the prison," she stated bluntly, not taking her eyes off the back of his inky-haired head.

"Holy-dammit, Case, you really scared me-wait, what?" His sentences ran over each other as his mouth motored. He threw his head over his shoulder to glance at her for only a second before his cheeks flashed a bright pink and he whipped his head back around. He was such an innocent idiot. "I-uh-listen, sorry, I-"

"Stop talkin'. Doesn't bother me." She ignored his embarrassed outburst, but she had enough decency to turn around and let him finish in peace. Nudity and all things related to bodily functions didn't bother her what-so-ever since she had grown up with two older brothers: Merle who absolutely didn't give a second thought of what she saw and what she didn't, and Daryl who, although tried his best to shelter her, was raising her and there were things she had accidentally seen that she probably shouldn't have. There wasn't much in the realm of male anatomy and such that made her blush or shy away anymore.

Ryan coughed anyways and mumbled something under his breath before he continued, "There's a prison?"

"Yeah. A group of ten took it for themselves. Must've cleared the walker's out and figured out how to fix all the fences. I can't imagine that it'd still be intact after this long. We're gonna have to find some way to sneak 'round. They're got people watchin' the perimeter already," Casey explained, a small shiver running down her spine at the thought of people on look out. It was going to be hard to sneak around them without deviating from the railway for awhile. She was hoping they would be able to follow it all the way to Newnan.

"Wait, wait. Sneak around?" Ryan's voice asked. She heard the sound of a zipper being yanked and she knew he must be done. She turned on her heel to look at his face the exact second he turned and started walking towards her. "You've got to be kidding me, Casey."

"I'm not," she replied, a twinge of uncertainty in her voice. What was he trying to say? "We'll probably have to go the long route. Break off from the tracks a few miles back and swing out. We'll-"

"Casey, we're starving." Her head jerked up to meet his eyes when he said that, the fathomless darkness twinkling with underlying hope. He kept speaking, his mouth flying almost faster than what she could keep up with. Ryan was getting excited now, and Casey mentally cursed how completely trusting he could be. "We haven't food in forever and we need to get fresh water. If those people have the prison, they've probably got supplies too! Food, water, y'know, maybe some weapons! We could go, see how they act, see if we could-"

"-get ourselves killed?" she finished for him, cutting off his sentence midway. Anger was flaring up in her chest now, causing her eyes to narrow into slits. "Ryan, people aren't just gonna hand over some food an' supplies and let us go sing carols with 'em. They'll fight for what they got. They won't give us a chance to even explain what we'd be askin' for!"

"You'd fight for what you had. I'd be trying to help people and give what I could away. Case, we're different people and I get that, but I'm not asking for a lot here. I'm asking you to give the prison a chance. Give it the benefit of the doubt. You wouldn't even give Terminus a second look because you thought it was going to be completely run down! Let's just go and test the waters. We'll go waving a white flag or something so they know we don't mean any harm. We'll see if we can talk to them, see if we can try and give them anything they'd want to trade."

Casey was practically seeing red. How set in stone was he? Was it gonna take someone killing him for him to finally get that there was no such thing as trusting strangers anymore? That all people were doing now was helping themselves to survive? Just because Bob hadn't hurt them months ago didn't mean other people would be the same way! It took every ounce of self control for her to keep her short temper from absolutely exploding. "We don't have anythin' to swap-"

"Numbers." When Casey continued to glare filthy daggers at him, he was speeding to explain. "We have numbers. More people against the walkers the better, and anyone who's smart knows that. They have ten now, but think of how much more they could protect themselves with twelve? We can't trade food or water or clothing or even guns, but we can trade ourselves. They feed us, give us a place to stay, and we help them kick walker ass. Now that I'm thinking about it, it's not much different than what Bob did for us. Except he had medical skills he could trade too. It's almost like a barter system."

Her rage was numbing. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she was cursing herself to the very core for even taking the time to reason with him. She knew, deep in her heart, he was right. People needed the numbers in order to survive, and she knew that her and Ryan no longer had the numbers. They were dwindling, and fast. The whole time she had been listening to his pleas and explanations, she had been looking right into his eyes, studying his face as she bared her teeth in an angry, silence snarl. Now the grimace was fading too as she watched his youthful features light up with hope, with a brightness and relief she had only seen a few times before. Ryan was practically beaming with courage, smiling ear-to-ear like a small child. It was that look again, that baby-faced look of someone who had never once been left behind, had never once been abandoned. It was the appearance of someone who trusted the entire world with everything. Casey was rattled for only a moment; she hadn't seen that gaze for a long time, and it truly unnerved her, still.

Ryan was still talking, even as her mental fiasco was still strong in her mind. With every word that tumbled out of his mouth, Casey found herself more and more compelled to want to go with his idea. If the prison would be able to protect him, to shelter him, maybe it was the best decision after all. "We'd be able to sleep somewhere, Case, not like on the ground or on a rock. We'd actually have a bed there, in the prison, with a room for each of us and pillows. We'd have more people to talk to, to be with. We'd be able to scavenge more, share more, we'd actually be able to have safety, to have fun! If they've taken out all the walkers already, they have to have ammo and guns and probably more weapons than you can imagine. We'd be able to protect ourselves there, protect each other better than we do now. We wouldn't have to do it by ourselves anymore. We could have friends, have an actual group. We wouldn't have to live constantly wondering if-"

"Ryan?"

He stopped, eyes wide. "Yeah?"

"I hate you, you know that? I really do." Despite her harsh words, her voice was soft. She dropped her gaze to the ground so she wouldn't have to feel guilty about looking at his acquitted face anymore.

Ryan grinned wildly. "You mean it? You really do?"

"Go make your white flag, dumb ass. But we're waitin' until nightfall to approach 'em."

He bounded forward, only a step, to completely cross the distance between them. She was in his gangling arms within seconds, pressed up against his body in a tight embrace. Her face was pressed into the fabric of his tee, just at the collar bone, and his arms were snaked completely around her body, even with her giant cargo bag on her back. She hadn't realized it until that moment, but he didn't smell as horrible as she thought he originally did. The scent of sweat and smoke and forest hung off him like a cloud, and to her, it was strangely comforting. The hug only lasted for a few moments before he stepped back again and with a twist of a blush in his cheeks, he bent forward to kiss the crown of her hair. That ease again, that ease of being with him. The kiss didn't bother her in the slightest way because of it.

"You're not gonna regret this, Case," Ryan enthused.

"You better hope I ain't gonna, because if I do, you're in for a hell of a time dealin' with me."

The second after she agreed, Ryan had set to literally making a white flag.

They were camped out on the side of the train tracks, watching and waiting as the sun slipped behind the horizon, the golden yellows of sunlight fading into pinks and reds and oranges against the clouds that were building in the west. She observed him from her perch on the tracks, shaded now from the heat of the sunset. Casey started stretching her legs out and sitting in the underbrush as Ryan went to work. She watched as he overturned his own backpack and hers, shuffling through their tiny amounts of ammo for the Beretta and her own gun, flipping through her knives, and finally watched as he searched through their small amount of clothes. When he finally found something that was white-well, white enough, considering the shirt had dirt and dried blood on it-Casey watched him set out to find the perfect sized stick, opting to rip one from a tree branch that hung not to far away from them. He then knotted two sides of the tee shirt to the stick, effectively making a makeshift white flag.

It wasn't until the sky morphed into navy blues and jet blacks that were sprinkled with white pinpricks that Casey decided that it was time to do it. Guided by the clear, bright light of the moon, she and Ryan gathered all of their belongings once more, took a deep breath, and headed back down the tracks. It would probably be the easiest to just head to the main gate, the one where she had seen the vehicles parked beside, and try and get the occupants attention that way. Any other way would be too sneaky; the prison people would be sure to blast a bullet through her brain before she had the chance to clarify what she and Ryan were trying to do.

She led Ryan through the overgrowth that was spilling on the sides of the railway, trudging along until she found a practical spot to descend down, off the safety of the railway. They continued through the grassy confines of the weedy grass, going down until they managed to hit the small pond-like basin once again, passing by it and hitting the grassland that separated them from the prison. Looking off into the distance, she could see the ember-colored flicker of what looked like a fire, with shadowed figures cuddled around it. As they got closer and closer, Casey could also see that there was someone on top of the toppled bus, the one that was blocking the main gate. It looked like the silhouette was pulling another blackened figured up with it. Were they switching off watch?

Casey took one last, grounding breath to try and calm her frazzled pulse.

But just as they got almost close enough to be spotted, Casey found herself staring harder at the vehicles that were parked around the outside edge. There was some sort of older, rusty looking truck, and an SUV of some sort of brand that Casey didn't recognize. But what made her really start paying attention was the motorcycle she could see tucked away in the corner; even from where she was, she could tell it was an older model, and although she didn't know much about motorcycles at all, she had a sneaking suspicion it looked almost identical to Merle's bike that he had bought a few years ago. Her breathing hitched irregularly and she felt the flush of nerves on her neck. There was no way Merle was here. Or was he? No, she couldn't get herself worked up over a motorcycle that was most likely not his.

Suddenly, Ryan came up beside her, his stick and tee shirt combination poking high into the air, and he gave it a little wave before he looked at her and offered her a reassuring grin. "It'll go great," he murmured.

And with that last statement, Ryan waved the stick, harder this time, obviously trying to get the attention of the people on the top of the bus. Her nerves hit an all time high as her hand slipped backward, grasping at the hilt of her hunting knife that lay dormant in the sheathe. Her throat felt dry with anxiety and she swallowed hard. Ryan's white flag obviously worked; there was bigger, more exaggerated movements, and she could see them shuffling, maybe talking among themselves, unsure of what to do. One was smaller than the other, half hidden behind the larger figure. It was hard to make out things, even though the moon was bright and high in the sky. It was impossible to see faces or anything detailed.

As they made it closer, Ryan stopped a few feet away from the perimeter fence, the one that kept the main gate protected. Unlike the rest of the compound, the main gate only had a single boundary fence, leaving the gate easy to open and close without having to jump over or go through many bordering fences. He held the makeshift flag higher, showing he meant no harm. He cleared his throat, tittering almost a slight tad, before he started speaking. "Hi! We-we don't mean any harm! We saw you setting up earlier today and came to see what was going on!"

Oh my god. Ryan sounded like a welcoming comity to a party or a neighborhood. Casey had to do everything in her power not to push him to the side, hopefully making him land in a ditch, and start doing the talking herself. Her nerves jolted even harder, her heart missing a few beats when she could hear the shifting of metal and the cocking of a weapon. Her free hand was reaching for the gun that was tucked into the waist of her pants, on the opposite side of her body from where her knife was located.

Casey almost jumped when a response actually came, breaking through the stillness of the night air. "Who are you?" It was a woman's voice, and Casey had to remind herself that she was, in fact, not the last woman on the planet.

"My name is Ryan Rhee, and this is Casey Dixon. We just wanted-" Ryan tried to get the words out, but was cut off almost instantly.

"Hold up. Dixon?"

The voice that had said that was not the woman's voice. It was a different voice, a voice that was husky and low and went with the smell of dirt and musk and protective hugs. A voice that made her heart pang with sweet agony and brought up memories of a life she thought she had forgotten. A voice that had cooed to her when she had stumbled out of bed with nightmares, that had rose when it chased away monsters. A voice that had fallen silent after the cracking whips of a belt buckle, all to keep her unharmed. It was a voice that struck her every nerve, sending bolts of lightning down her arms and legs, her mouth opening with a small squeak. Her hands were suddenly clutching at her shirt, at her chest and neck, and it felt like it was an effort to breathe in deeply. Her head was swimming in what felt like a black void. There was no way, no way it was actually him. It couldn't be possible.

When she didn't answer-Ryan was looking at her with the most peculiar expression-Ryan quickly elaborated for her. "Yeah, this is Casey Dixon, and I'm Ryan Rhee! We've been traveling together since-"

"Casey?!" The voice sounded off once more, this time louder, and the overwhelming emotions exploded into her eyes. Her mind was racing in circles as the larger figure moved back, probably glancing back at the fire that Casey had seen beforehand. "Rick! We're openin' th' gate! We got family here!"

The second the word "family" echoed through the air, Casey was crying. The initial burst of disbelief that had pumped through her body when she had first seen the bike was completely blown away now, replaced with unaltered, pure relief. Relief and thankfulness that the world hadn't taken him away from her yet. She wouldn't have been able to continue if she had found him, face down in the dirt, dead. It all continued to hit her, again and again, overpowering wave of emotion after the next. The voice, the cocking of the metal weapon that wasn't a gun, but that Casey now remembered was the sound of a crossbow being loaded with a bolt.

No, no, it definitely wasn't Merle.

It was better. It was the man who had raised her, who she had always admired and loved with her entire being.

Her older brother. Her protector.

"Daryl!"