Chapter 10.
Andrea didn't think, she just reacted, drawing her sidearm and putting a bullet square between the walker's glowing yellow eyes.
Judith, who had been too preoccupied with exploring her surroundings to notice that she was in danger, looked up at the sound of the gunshot, bursting into startled tears.
What had seemed like a good idea only moments before now felt like a gross miscalculation on Andrea's part; while there was every chance that the walker they had encountered was a lone roamer, Andrea had no intention of sticking around long enough to find out.
Throwing caution to the wind, she stumbled down the remainder of the slope, scooping the howling toddler up into her arms.
"It's okay, Judy," she whispered, holding her close, pressing a kiss into her hair. "We're all okay."
In the woods, Rick stopped when he heard a shot echo down the mountain.
"That sounded like it was coming from the lodge," Carl pointed out.
Everyone looked from him to Rick, grave-faced.
Rick thought of his friends, the group of strangers who had come to feel like his family. Then he thought of his actual family, of Andrea and Judith and the baby he still hadn't had a chance to fall in love with. He would never forgive himself if they were in trouble and he didn't at least try to help them.
"We have to go back," he told the others.
Before they could make their escape, a second walker had appeared, drawn to their location by the sound of the gunshot. Andrea couldn't hold Judith and climb at the same time so she pushed her up the slope ahead of her.
"Run back to the house!" she instructed the little girl once she was at the top. "I'll be right behind you." She risked a glance at the advancing walker, hoping that this wasn't a lie.
Judith started to do as she commanded, but after a few steps, she stopped, turning to look back at Andrea uncertainly to see if she was following.
"Go on! Go!" Andrea urged her. "Run!"
Judith disappeared from her line of sight, heading, Andrea hoped, in the direction of home.
Run, Judy, run, she thought, refusing to allow herself to consider to possibility that she might not make it.
She glanced back over her shoulder. There were three of them now. She couldn't remember how many rounds were left in her gun – she should have checked the chamber before they left, only she hadn't really expected to use it – but she did know that there wasn't enough to take on a herd if it came to that.
She fired two more shots, taking out the walkers closest to her, but when she tried to scramble up the slope herself, her hand slipped on the ice, coming away with nothing but a fistful of slush.
No, no, no, a voice in her head cried as she rolled back down.
She stuck her arm out to break her fall, dropping her gun in the process. Her palm hit the ground with a sickening crunch and white-hot pain shot from her wrist. An involuntary scream ripped from her throat and she prayed that Judith wouldn't hear it and turn around.
She managed to flip onto her back, cradling her ruined arm against her chest. The fourth walker was still coming. She spotted her gun, wedged at the base of a tree twenty or so feet down from where she lay now, but even if she could get to it, she couldn't bend her finger to pull the trigger. She could try to hold the walker off with her uninjured arm, but sooner or later she would get tired, and that's when it would make its move.
This is it, she thought. Game over.
Then: sorry, baby, I tried.
Her only consolation was that their deaths might serve as enough of a distraction for Judith to make it to safety.
She was bracing herself for the horror to come when she felt it: a soft thump just below her navel. Then another. Her baby, stretching its limbs as though awakening from a deep sleep, letting her know that it was still there, still alive, still counting on her for its continued existence. And despite the gravity of the situation, a laugh bubbled up from her chest.
What was I thinking? she chastised herself. I can't die. Not now. Not today.
She fumbled on the ground beside her until her hand closed over a large rock. Then, when the walker was almost upon her, poising itself to bite into her exposed throat, she swung her makeshift weapon as hard as she could. Her left-handed pitch wasn't as accurate as her right: she missed the temple, but succeeded in dislocating its jaw.
The blow knocked it sideways, giving her a chance to scramble up onto her knees. While it was still stunned, she brought the rock down on its head with a savage cry, again and again, smashing its skull open like a pumpkin.
Once it was well and truly dead, she tossed the rock aside and stood up, breathing heavily.
She must look a sight, she thought dryly as she dragged herself up the slope, dirty and dishevelled, her wrist – now tucked inside the zip of her jacket in lieu of a sling – swollen to an unnatural size, her face and clothes covered in blood like Carrie on prom night. She wouldn't blame Judith for being more afraid of her than she was of the creature that tried to eat her for lunch.
Fortunately, this wasn't the case. As soon as she saw Andrea coming towards her, the little girl threw herself at her, crying and hugging her legs.
"Come on, let's go find Uncle Hershel," Andrea said with a grimace, leading her back to the lodge.
Rick counted at least two more gunshots on the trek back to the car; he barely gave the others time to hop in before he was off, speeding up the mountain.
He didn't know what they were walking into, but he expected some kind of disturbance. Instead, the lodge was eerily silent, giving no indication of what might have occurred there.
He found his friends assembled in the common room, their faces drawn and worried for the first time in months. Only Judith seemed untroubled, sitting on the couch between Carol and Beth, contentedly eating goldfish crackers straight from the box.
It took him all of sixty seconds to notice that the only one missing was Andrea, the realisation hitting him like a sucker punch to the stomach. "What's going on?" he demanded, glancing wildly from one to the next. "Where is she?"
When no one seemed to know how to answer his question, Hershel stood up on his crutches, taking a step toward him. "There was an incident while you were gone," he began, but by then Rick was too agitated to wait for an explanation.
He ran down the hall to their suite, his legs turning to rubber at the sight of her, propped on a mound of pillows on the couch, her chest rising and falling steadily.
Whatever happened, she was alive, and that was all that mattered, he thought, but he couldn't take his eyes off her bandaged wrist, cradled gingerly in her other hand.
She was hurt. He knew he should let her rest, let her body heal, but he was suddenly overcome by the need to hear her voice. He wanted her to be the one to tell him that she was all right.
He knelt beside her, caressing her cheek with his palm. "Andrea," he whispered. "Baby, wake up."
She opened her eyes slowly. "Hey," she greeted him with a dopey smile.
Hershel must have given her something to help with the pain. Rick hoped that whatever it was, he made sure it was safe for the baby.
If there still was a baby, he thought with a depth of feeling that surprised him.
"What happened?"
"I fell," was all she said before her eyelids fluttered closed again, fighting sleep.
Rick's mouth went dry. "Is the baby…?" He trailed off, unsure of how to finish that sentence. After months of wishing that it didn't exist, he didn't know what to say now that it might not.
Her eyes snapped open again and she shook her head to clear it. "It's okay," she assured him. She grinned. "I felt it kick."
He wasn't prepared for the relief that flooded through him on hearing this. He realised then that some part of him did want it. He just didn't want to want it if it meant that some day he might have to choose.
"What about you?" he asked. He took her arm gently, turning it so that he could examine her wrist. The part of her hand he could see poking out of the bandage had ballooned to twice its normal thickness. "Your wrist?"
"Hershel says it's probably broken," she told him, wincing as he placed it back on her chest, "but without an x-ray there's no way to be sure. We just have to hope the bone resets itself properly or my sniping days are over." She tried to make it sound like a joke but her eyes shone with tears.
"It could have been a lot worse," he reminded her. He laid a hand over her belly. "A lot worse."
I never asked for this, he remembered complaining to her all those months ago. I'm not even sure I want it.
The thought of ever saying those words made him feel sick with remorse.
"I know," she agreed. "Judy was with me. We were walking out in the grounds and we got attacked."
"By a walker?" he asked, stunned. He remembered the gunshots. "You shot it, though, right?" Although he couldn't help wondering why she of all people would need three bullets to take down a single walker.
"It wasn't just one, Rick," she corrected him. "It was a whole group. Four, maybe more. I lost my gun, almost didn't make it back. I really thought I was going to die this time."
Rick struggled to make sense of this information. The lodge was a refuge, a little piece of heaven, free from the hell that their world had become. Things like that just didn't happen here.
At least they hadn't until today.
"It's starting again, isn't it?" she asked quietly. "They're coming out of hibernation, or whatever you want to call it, and we're the breakfast buffet."
Suddenly Rick was the one who felt like crying.