The first few weeks and months after Maggie's suicide were horrible. Painful. Glenn fell into a deep depression and didn't leave his cell for weeks.
During the following months, Michonne and Ty announced that they were expecting a baby, along with Sasha and Bob.
The stress of losing her father and sister within days caused Beth to miscarry, but months later she was pregnant again.
Andrea was living under the constant threat of being thrown to the walkers. She watched every word she said to Lori and Beth. Her constant attempts to seduce Abe, Merle, Rick and Daryl were unsuccessful. The contempt the men had towards the blonde was not missed by anyone. She was shunned by the women and ignored by the men. The lack of getting attention from anyone was physically painful for her.
On what was the two month anniversary, if anyone kept a calendar anymore, of Maggie's suicide. The survivors, Rick, Lori, Glenn, Daryl, Beth, Michonne, Ty, Sasha, Carol and Bob were sitting together, quietly mourning the three family members they lost.
Rick was sitting on his bunk one afternoon, thinking about his life, the way it used to be and the way it was now. It felt as though he was in a cheesy horror movie. The world had ended, his children were dead, and every day was a gamble. They were all living on borrowed time.
He didn't hear Lori enter the cell but she got his attention when she sat next to him. He felt her hand rest on his shoulder, and she gave him a warm, loving smile. She was much more relaxed since they had their conversation with Bob. The past was in the past, and there was nothing they could do to change it. He was acutely aware of the increasing closeness between them. Not just sexually and emotionally, but they had gotten to the point at which they had joined souls.
Over the winter months, when the harsh weather prevented anyone from going outside, some got some cabin fever over the daily monotony of breakfast, guard detail, lunch, detail, dinner, and the end of the day.
Lori became obsessive about cleaning. She cleaned her cell every day, having the sheets in perfect order. The words Andrea said months ago, about Carl lying alone, waiting for his mom and dad to visit, resonated in her mind. The months they spent on th road made it impossible to determine how far away the far was, and the thought of going on the road, an unplowed, unknown road, scared her too much to bring up the notion of going to visit her son. A horrible thought pushed its way into her mind…what if he wasn't put down correctly, and he was one of those things? Even the idea made her sick.
Carol and Glenn spent the days in their respective cells, still in mourning over Hershel and Maggie. Ty, Michonne and Beth would try to get them to get out of their cell, even to go to the watchtower and get fresh air. They'd refuse, and barely ate the food that was brought to them. Rick locked the weapons cell and along with Ty and Abe, they went through any area that could hide a weapon. The officer bore the emotional weight of the suicides, and would still be over emotional when he would think about how Lori was almost driven to take her life.
From the guard tower they could see the general area where the bodies were buried, but the snow obscured the markers.
When they started their third month with no way to go outside, Andrea snapped. One afternoon the cell block was freezing, which Andrea blamed on Rick. The small group sat around the table, and the blonde, furious after the officer turned down her sexual advances yet again, and mumbling "whore" as he walked away, she started yelling.
"We should have set extra plates." She looked at Rick, who was sitting with his arm wrapped around Lori, trying to keep her warm, and continued. "I'll bet any minute now T will walk through those doors. Jacqui too. And Amy, Jim, Otis, Carl, Maggie, Hershel, Patricia… Oh wait, they're all dead. Think about it, Grimes. You show up at the quarry and it falls. You take us to the CDC and that gets blown up. Then the farm burns down. Face it…you're bad luck. Little Judy should be taking her first steps right about now…right? Better keep an eye on her…she'll fall down the stairs."
Abe stood up, and using his Military skills, was able to restrain Andrea and pull her to the door. That didn't stop her from her tirade.
"You're fucking bad luck, Grimes. Everyone who died, their blood is on your hands. You may as well killed them yourself." Abe physically picked up the blonde and pushed her, face first, into the door. "Carl and Judy are your fault."
The last words hit Rick hard. In his mind the role of the father is to protect his family. He wasn't able to do it. He thought back to his own father, whom he always thought of as unbreakable. The senior Grimes was spent twenty years on the police force before that one horrible night, when Rick and his brother were teenagers, playing a Nintendo game after dinner. Lori helped his mother clean up the dishes before joining the brothers. The doorbell rang and when Mrs. Grimes looked through the peephole she saw the Captain, and immediately knew what it meant. She collapsed in grief in the threshold, and as Lori tried to comfort her future mother in law the brothers spoke to the Chief. Michael Grimes was taken down by a known crackhead.
"Baby?"
Lori's voice snapped him out of his trance, and at first Rick didn't feel the tears that were running down his face.
She walked him back to their cell and held him tightly as he cried. "It's not your fault when people die." She crooned as she rubbed his back.
"Not always, but sometimes…sometimes it is." He sobbed out.
He reached over and grabbed her hand, entwining their fingers and squeezing tightly. He had been trying hard to keep his anxiety and guilt in check, but he was struggling to deal with everything that was put on his shoulders. He had come to rely on Lori's reassuring presence more than she could ever know. She had become his rock in countless ways and the only person who helped him hold on to his sanity. He needed her, but she had no idea how much.
She sat with him for almost two hours, until he was exhausted from weeping. She pulled back the covers, took off his boots and tucked him in, just as she did with Carl. He fell asleep quickly, and she quietly left the cell.
xxxxx
Lori was soaking up the sunshine on a warm spring day. Sasha was beside her, both women talking and enjoying each other's company, comfortably gossiping about everything from how desperate Andrea has become for attention to the chicken dinner they ate the night before.
They laughed over how Andrea was placed in a cell in D block for three months. That area wasn't cleared, and although she had running water she was given only a bag of dried food to last the sentence Rick placed on her. She had walkers at her cell door twenty-four hours a day, and no electricity, which made the nights unbearable.
She tried to avoid looking at Sasha's prominent belly, Bob's baby safely inside. The good doctor told Lori that another pregnancy would be deadly for her and the baby, and almost impossible with the way Judith was delivered, she ached to hear someone call her "mom" one more time.
They started giggling when the told each other about the men in their lives. Sasha looked around to make sure they were alone, then the chat turned to bedtime activities.
"Like, he loves licking my toes, and I want to scream that there's something else I want him to lick." Sasha said, while laughing.
Lori chuckled and added, "I swear every time we try different positions he's done in two minutes. I wish we still had the internet so I could Google the karma sutra."
They almost didn't hear the motorcycles speed down the dirt road but their attention was immediately directed to the SUV which broke through the gates. They jumped out of their chairs and tried to see what was happening, their eyes taking time to adjust to the light.
"Well…lookey here. I claim the white bitch." One of the bikers said, as he parked the cycle and walked toward the two.
The loud noise caught the attention of those inside, and as Abe and Ty ran out to see what was going on they were immediately shot in the gut. Gunfire alerted the former sheriff, who started to run to save Lori.
Rick was able to fire off five rounds, taking down three of the men before he was shot in the shoulder. Lori screamed and dragged him inside and into the weapons cell.
Merle ran outside and looked at his friends. Abe was still moving but bleeding heavily. The ginger turned to his side and was reaching for help. Ty was lying still. He watched in horror as Sasha, holding her pregnant belly, was grabbed by the hair and her head bent backward before a hunting knife slid across her neck from ear to ear.
Before he could think of raising his gun, Joe stood two feet in front of him and shot him in the throat.
"You got a nice place set up here. I'm gonna go ahead and say this place is claimed."
xxxxx
The screaming never stopped. Rick was in Lori's arms, getting weaker by the minute. Lori heard Beth screaming for mercy, and didn't want to know what was happening. There must have been thirty men, all heavily armed.
She kept pressure on his wound, but the blood was seeping through her own shirt, which she ripped off to try to help.
"Stay with me, baby. You'll be fine." She begged, cradling his head in her arms.
She locked her eyes onto his, and the cold reality of the situation started to crush her soul. She was about to lose him. The only man she has ever loved. Even if Bob was still alive, the damage was too great.
The spark in his sky blue eyes was diminishing, and she could tell he was trying to tell her something. She bit her lip while bringing her ear close to his mouth, and heard him whisper "I love you."
Her lips brushed his, and she kissed him, a long, tender kiss, and when she raised her head she could tell he was gone.
Without a second thought she picked up his Colt Python. She checked the chamber, and saw there were two bullets left. She thought about Romeo and Juliet…star crossed lovers who met a horrible fate. Two bullets. She would be with Rick and their children. She would put down Rick, then take her own life.
The screaming had stopped, and she could hear heavy footsteps getting closer to her cell. Two bullets, but she was surrounded with other weapons. The man named Joe turned the corner and flashed an evil smile, until the split second he realized she had her finger on the trigger and fired.
Joe's head exploded, and she heard other men screaming and running to where she was. She hated the thought of leaving Rick as a walker until the end of time, but knew it was too late.
She put the end of the pistol in her mouth and pulled the trigger.
Then darkness.
xxxxx
The monitors started beeping wildly as she opened her eyes. She gasped for air, which got the attention of Carl. He looked at her and screamed for his father, who was in the bathroom.
The door flew open and Rick ran out and to his wife's side.
"Lori, baby…can you hear me? I'm right here, baby. I love you so much. Can you say something?"
She looked at him, trying to communicate the millions of questions that were in her head.
Carl looked so different. He was so tall.
Her face dropped when Doctors Edwin Jenner and Robert Stookey, along with nurses Beth Greene and Sasha Williams ran in and checked her vitals. Jenner pushed Rick aside and started giving her a neurological examination. When she was asked to follow his finger to the left, where Carl was standing, she saw the top of a stroller.
What's going on?
"Tell me your name." The taller doctor demanded.
She looked around wildly, and Carl was urging her to say something. She looked at her boy, very much alive and standing before her.
Tears were streaming down Rick's face, and as the doctors were working on her she overheard the word "coma."