A/N: Hope I managed to make this exciting enough for you guys. Thanks for reading! :-)
Disclaimer: I do not own The Walking Dead. Would I lie?
Duane and Carl chattered companionably as they trotted ahead of the group, carrying a half-filled basket between them. They and a handful of other youngsters were out gathering edible plants. All of them had clubs or some other weapon to defend themselves should they run into stray walkers. Dale, Morgan, and Carol were also with them, both for protection and to stretch their legs for a while. Carol and Morgan each had a bow, while Dale - who never really caught on to archery - had his trusty hunting rifle slung over his shoulder. The understanding was that the gun would only be used as a last resort, to avoid drawing attention with its noise.
"Don't get too far ahead, now," Morgan chided the boys, smiling at how carefree his son looked. Duane and Carl had become fast friends in the short time they'd gotten to know each other. It was good to see children who'd survived the plague of the dead act like kids again, even while doing tasks they never would've done before the world and its technology ended. Morgan was amazed by how well they'd adapted, and how quickly this place had become home to him and his son. Too bad they would all have to leave it soon, but with luck they would have a destination when the time came, instead of wandering from one dangerous unknown to the next.
Carol drifted to his side, her eyes watching the kids with the attentiveness of an experienced mother. "Dale mentioned it might rain later," she said conversationally, "Said he felt it in his knees."
Morgan smiled, creating deep grooves in his cheeks and wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. "That'd be a relief. We could all use a shower."
Carol chuckled. "That we could."
Such was the nature of their conversations. Harmless, impersonal topics. Morgan's wife used to do volunteer work at a battered women's shelter. He knew how to read the signs of abuse in Carol and her daughter, though they'd obviously come a long way since Ed died. Morgan liked Carol, felt more comfortable with her than he had with any woman since he lost his wife. He was fine with taking things slow, giving them all time to heal. He wanted them to feel safe with him, to understand that he would never harm them like the previous man in their life had.
"Daddy?" His son's voice drew his attention away from the woman beside him and towards the children ahead. They stood in a cluster around something that got their attention. Morgan and the other two adults quickened their pace to close the distance between them. The kids made room for them so they could see what had grabbed their curiosity. On a clear patch of ground were the faint yet unmistakable signs of paw prints.
"Are they wolves?" a nervous Sophia asked, wide-eyed as she reached for her mother's hand.
Dale answered with his usual calm demeanor, "More likely dogs. Big ones."
Several young faces lit up. "If we find 'em, can we keep 'em?" Carl asked, his question followed by eager nods and pleases.
Morgan shook his head, lips pursed in concern. "If they're still alive, they musta gone wild. They'd be just as dangerous as wolves and probably wouldn't have a problem attackin' people."
This sobered the youngsters. A few of them threw anxious glances at the surrounding woods, as if a slavering pack might ambush them at any moment.
"So one more thing to keep a lookout for," Carol sighed with a touch of weariness. Morgan lightly touched her shoulder. She smiled at the comforting gesture.
"I'm sure we'll be fine," Dale said, "Long as we stick to going out in groups like we've been doing."
"And watch the little ones like hawks," Carol added firmly. She shuddered at the idea of the large predators going after someone as small and vulnerable as Sally or Aidan.
Dale nodded. "Soon as we get back, we'll let everyone know about these tracks."
They continued their foraging, a little more wary than before.
Meanwhile, the twins, Casey and Cadence, walked through a different part of the woods, checking the snares that had been left out. Already the sack Cadence carried bulged with several small animals and even a couple of birds. A good haul. T-Dog trailed along behind them, absently swinging the aluminum baseball bat he carried as his weapon of choice. Every once in a while he saw the girls exchange a few odd hand signals with each other. The gestures were meaningless to him. Many identical twins developed their own private language, called twinspeak, as children, which they usually outgrew. The apocalypse had encouraged Casey and Cadence to revive the practice, only with hand signs instead of sounds. It helped them survive in the dead-infested city before Lia and Nana took them in, and they continued to use it whenever they were on their own - or almost on their own. T-Dog knew they resented having a grownup accompany them. A lot of the older kids felt they were more than capable of looking out for themselves. The adults disagreed, however, since Daryl pointed out there were more than slow-moving geeks out in the woods. So the buddy system was recently modified to include at least one adult with every group of kids who went out into the wilderness to hunt or forage. T-Dog sympathized with the kids, who he knew for a fact were way tougher than he was at their age, and if keeping him out of their conversation with funny hand signals soothed their bruised egos, he figured more power to them.
Casey froze when she found the next snare and saw what remained of the rabbit caught in it. Pretty much everything but the feet and head were gone, chewed up until only bloody bones and fur remained. She looked at her sister and signed, Walker?
Cadence frowned and pointed at the bloody paw prints on the ground. Not walker, she signed back.
T-Dog, wondering what had them so enthralled, opened his mouth to ask them what they'd found. Then he glimpsed something big and fast coming at them and his question turned into a shout of alarm.
Cadence felt something slam into her and found herself on the ground. It happened so fast all she could do was hold the gunnysack between her and whatever was on top of her. The sack jerked in her hands and there was a loud ripping sound and angry snarls. Cadence screamed in terror. She heard her sister yelling and saw Casey trying to beat her attacker away with her bow, but the thing just growled even louder. Then T-Dog was there, swinging his bat. There was a loud thud, a yelp, and Cadence could move again. She scrambled to her feet and backed away, heart racing.
T-Dog swung his bat at the hulking white pit bull again. This time the animal dodged out of the way. It snarled and barked, spittle flying from its jaws. The sight was so intimidating T-Dog didn't see the second dog coming at him until it was almost too late. He just barely managed to knock the animal aside. The large black doberman/lab mix landed with a grunt and quickly regained its feet. It bared its teeth and growled. T-Dog saw movement in the corners of his eyes and realized there were more than just two dogs. There was a whole pack of them.
"Run!" he shouted at the girls. They didn't hesitate, they sped off, T-Dog lumbering behind them. The barks of the pursuing dogs were close behind and getting nearer by the second. They couldn't hope to outrun them. T-Dog pointed at a sturdy tree and the three of them hurried to it. He practically flung the girls into the lowermost branches, then spun to face the oncoming pack. There was no time for him to climb to safety, assuming he could even haul his bulky self up that tree. He pressed his back against the tree's broad trunk and held the baseball bat at the ready.
The first to reach him was a German shepherd with a white front paw. It barely managed to swerve away in time to avoid the bat's swing. T-Dog's aggression made the pack think twice about rushing him. They hung back, barking and growling. Up in the tree, the twins readied their bows. Casey fired first, her arrow striking home in the side of the white pit bull that had attacked her sister. The dog yowled in pain and lurched away. But instead of deterring the others, its wounding prompted a massive russet-furred mutt to leap forward and sink its teeth into T-Dog's forearm. The man yelled and smacked his bat against the animal's back, but was unable to dislodge it. Another dog, the black mixed breed, took the opportunity to jump him from behind and bite down on his shoulder.
"Goddamn it, you motherfuckers!" T-Dog lunged backward, slamming the second dog's head against the tree trunk again and again until it finally let go. The black dog staggered away from him, shaking its head.
The German shepherd cried out as an arrow struck its hip. T-Dog finally managed to knock the mutt from his arm and held the snarling animal at bay with his bat and a lot of shouted abuse. Another arrow just missed a smaller brown pit bull, who darted away with its tail between its legs.
So caught up were they in their battle, none noticed the walker stumble out from the cover of the trees until the creature literally fell onto the injured white pit bull and tore a huge chunk from the back of the dog's neck. The pit bull screamed. T-Dog gaped at this. He didn't even know that dogs could scream.
More walkers staggered into view, drawn by the noise and the smell of blood. The rest of the dogs' barking became frantic, the sounds almost drowned out by the geeks' hungry moans. The white pit bull was quickly lost beneath a writhing pile of the dead.
The twins scrambled down from the tree and they and T-Dog made a run for it. The surviving pack ran off in the opposite direction, the injured German shepherd limping, but still able to keep up. Soon all that was left was a horde of walkers wandering aimlessly around a pile of gnawed bones that was once a dog.
If Daryl was unhappy with Hess tagging along, he really hated it once he got a load of the guy's woodland prowess - or lack thereof. Hess seemed to go out of his way to step on every dry twig and pile of dead, crunchy leaves. Daryl would've snapped and put an arrow in the dumb shit long ago, but he kept catching these looks from Lia. Those apologetic, please-put-up-with-him-for-my-sake looks. So all he could do was grind his teeth and scowl at the world in general and Hess in particular, the latter of which ignored his homicidal glares and continued tromping noisily without a care.
"What's that sound?" Lia murmured.
Daryl came to a halt, Lia beside him. Hess walked ahead a couple of paces before he noticed and stopped, earning him another dirty look from Daryl. They all kept quiet, straining their ears for whatever Lia might have heard. A few seconds later, it reached them.
Hess blinked in surprise. "Is that...a radio?"
It definitely sounded like music, though it was too far away for any of them to make out the song.
"Who the hell would have music going that loud?" Lia asked, "They've gotta be luring every walker in the area."
"Maybe that's th' idea," Daryl said, his expression thoughtful. He started walking in the direction the music came from, the others following his lead. The music gradually got louder the closer they got to the source. Soon they were able to make out the song. It was ZZ Top.
Give me all your loving
All your hugs and kisses, too
Give me all your loving
Don't let up until we're through...
Why the hell would anyone be playing music so loud? Didn't they realize it would bring every walker for miles?
They got their answer when they crawled up a small rise - careful to lay low so as not to be seen - and found themselves looking down on a stretch of unpaved road. There was a river of walkers shuffling along it, their moans overlapping the music that blared from the speakers of a large boombox strapped to the back of an all-terrain vehicle. The ATV driver was going just fast enough to keep a relatively safe distance between him (or her) and the shambling horde.
"That's one sick Pied Piper thing they got goin' on," Hess mused.
"Where d'you think they're leading them?" Lia asked.
Daryl knew the safest choice was to leave it a mystery and get as far away from the geeks and the person luring them as possible. But he couldn't deny that his curiosity was piqued. Why were they leading all those walkers along, and where the hell were they taking them? "Let's find out."
They were careful to keep themselves hidden as they followed the bizarre procession. It took quite a while, since walkers weren't exactly known for their speed. When they finally reached what appeared to be their final destination, the three onlookers' eyes widened in amazement. Stretching across the road and well past either side was a massive pit that looked deep enough to contain a herd of elephants. The rusting steel corpses of dozens of earth moving vehicles showed how it came into being. Spanning the trench was a makeshift bridge that the ATV wasted no time in crossing. There were maybe twenty people on the other side, most of them lined up along the far edge. As soon as the small vehicle was across, some of the people worked a series of pulleys that caused the bridge to rise, making it impossible for the walkers to follow. Not that they noticed, of course. Drawn on by the music that continued to play and the promise of fresh meat waiting on the other side, the horde pressed on and inevitably wound up tumbling into the pit like a herd of undead lemmings.
She's got legs
She knows how to use them...
Must be playing the band's greatest hits CD, Lia mused distractedly, watching the geeks continue to try walking on air. Had they possessed even a tiny bit of reasoning, it might've occurred to the walkers to detour around the pit. But that was obviously beyond their barely functional brains. Within minutes the last few stragglers fell in. Their sad groans could still be heard rising from the massive hole.
The people on the far side didn't leave it at that, though. They had with them a several jugs with hand pumps on the tops and long nozzles running from them. They proceeded to hose the trapped walkers down with some kind of liquid.
"What're they spraying them with?" Hess wondered.
Daryl shrugged. "Kerosene, maybe?"
"Are you serious?" Lia asked, incredulous.
"'S what I'd do."
He was soon proven right. There was a flash as someone lit up a road flare and then casually tossed it into the pit. There was a faint whoosh and tall flames warped the air above the trench. The fire's roar mingled with the doomed walkers' groans until the dead eventually fell silent forever.
"Holy shit!" Hess laughed in amazement.
"That's pretty ingenious," Lia declared, "Every time the walker population builds up they can just lure them out here and torch 'em before they overrun the place."
"Who are they, I wonder," Hess said.
"Don't matter who they are," Daryl responded, "We ain't lookin' fer more people, we're lookin' fer a safe place for our people." He scowled at the distant figures. "And this place ain't safe."
"We should move on before they know we're here," Lia agreed, though she seemed a tad disappointed. She hated always having to err on the side of mistrust when it came to strangers. But that was the world now.
They turned their backs on the scene of carnage and continued on their journey. The stink of charred, decayed flesh followed them for the rest of the day.