Disclaimer: I don't own The Walking Dead or any of its characters. I don't even own Annie, she belongs to Sophie, who you can find on YouTube under xSoppySofax. Read on, darlings, and enjoy!

This chapter takes place during 2x08 "Nebraska"

Chapter 20

"Hershel?" Rick called out. The older man didn't bother to get up from his stool or even face them as he asked Rick who was him. "Annie and Glenn."

"Maggie send him?"

"He volunteered. He's good like that." Hershel briefly glanced at the trio as they approached before taking another drink.

"And Annie?"

"Volunteered, too." Rick motioned for the two of them to stay back as he walked over to the man. Glenn kept his tense hands tight on his gun but Annie stowed hers. If walkers were in the bar, they would've attacked by now. "How many you had?" About enough was his vague answer. "Let's finish this up back at home. Beth collapsed, is in some…sort of state," he explained and Hershel looked at him for the first time. "Must be in shock. I think…I think you are, too."

"Maggie's with her?" Rick told him she was but Beth needed him. "What could I do? She needs her mother. Or rather to mourn. Like she should have done weeks ago. I robbed her of that. I see that now." Hershel took another drink from his glass.

"Hershel you cannot blame yourself for this," Annie told him.

"You thought there was a cure. Can't blame yourself for holding out for hope," Rick assured him with a crooked smile.

""Hope"?" he echoed with disdain. "When I first saw you running across my field, with your boy in your arms…I had little hope he'd survive."

"But he did," Rick retorted firmly.

"He did. Even though we lost Otis," he replied. "Your man Shane made it back and we saved your boy. That was the miracle that proved to me that miracles do exist. Only it was a sham. A bait and switch. I was a fool, Rick. And you people saw that. My daughters deserve better than that." Hershel shot back the last bit of liquor in his glass and opened the bottle next to him, refilling it with a healthy dose. Annie patted Glenn's back and nodded for him to follow her, waving to Rick to join them at the door.

"We need to get him back to the farm, now," she whispered urgently.

"You don't think I know that? I'm trying here," Rick retorted.

"I didn't say you weren't but, short of knocking him out, we need to move this along." Nodding to the sky, she added, "It's getting dark and we all know what that means." Walkers would be out roaming soon. They all knew that.

"So what do we do? We just wait for him to pass out?" Glenn asked helplessly.

"Just go!" Hershel called to them. "Just go!"

"I promised Maggie I'd bring you home safe." Hershel chuckled to himself.

"Like you promised that little girl?" he asked. Frowning, Annie marched toward Hershel, ready to have a few choice words with the drunken fool, but Rick gently pushed her away. Incensed, Annie shrugged his arm off her and marched back over to the old man.

"Hershel, I—I'm really sorry. I truly am; we all are. I can't imagine what you've been going through. If I—we'd," she corrected, "lost Carl, I don't…I don't know what I..." Annie didn't know what she would have done. She honestly didn't think she could live without the little boy she'd grown so attached to, but she couldn't go confessing that. "But you've got to listen to me, Hershel," she continued, putting a comforting hand on his shoulder. "Those things in the barn, they weren't your son. They weren't your wife."

Hershel shook her away with a shout, "GET YOUR DAMN HAND OFF ME!" Rick and Glenn nearly rushed over, in case he tried to hurt Annie in his drunken state, but she just waved them off. She was fine; he hadn't hurt her and she didn't think he planned to either. He just needed to blow off a little steam. Stumbling to his feet, he glared at her. "Not my son?! Not my wife?! What made you such a goddamn expert?!" he demanded drunkenly. "I don't know about you but the walkers didn't come with a damn instruction manual! We don't know a goddamn thing about them! We don't know what they're thinking, what they're feeling. We don't know if it's a disease or side of effects of some kind of chemical warfare! We don't know anything! For all we know, these things could wake up tomorrow, heal up, and be complete normal again! We just don't know! You could've been murdering people all along!"

"They're dead," Annie insisted. "Before they get back up – before they try to eat you – they die. You put your wife and son in that barn? Then you must've seen them die," she told him. "And the two earlier today? You saw what happened when Shane shot them. They're dead, Hershel. Those things are rotting corpses with pieces missing. I know you want to think they're sick, but they're not. They're dead."

"Just go!" he pleaded, plopping back down onto his stool.

"So what's your plan?" Rick asked, storming back to him. "Finish that bottle, drink yourself to death, and leave your girls alone?"

"Stop telling me how to care for my family! My farm!" Hershel slurred, stumbling back to his feet to face his accuser. "You people are like a plague! I do the Christian thing, give you shelter, and you destroyed it all!"

"The world was already in bad shape when we met."

"And you take no responsibility! You're supposed to be their leader!"

"Well, I'm here now! Aren't I?" Rick shouted. The two men stared at one another before Hershel nodded drunkenly, turning away and ambling back to his drink. As he sat down and took another drink, Rick walked over and said, "Come on. Your girls need you now. More than ever." He tried to make him stand up but Hershel just pulled his arm away, spouting about how he didn't want to believe Rick when he'd told him that there wasn't a cure, that the walkers were dead and not sick. He chose not to believe that but when Shane shot Lou in the chest, and she just kept coming, that was the moment he knew what an ass he'd been. He knew in that moment that his wife, Annette, had been dead long ago and he'd been feeding her rotting corpse.

"That was when I knew there was no hope," he told them. "And when that…little girl came out of the barn, the look on your face…I knew you knew it, too. Right? There is no hope. And you know it now. Like I do. Don't you?" Rick looked back at Annie and Glenn, unwilling to answer. "There is no hope for any of us."

"I'm done," Rick remarked. "I'm not doing this anymore – cleaning up after you. You know what the truth is? Nothing has changed! Death is death; it's always been there, whether its from a heart attack, cancer, or a walker. What's the difference? You didn't think it was hopeless before, did you? And now there are people back at home, trying to hang on, and they need us. Even if it's just to give 'em a reason to go on, even if we don't believe it ourselves." Rick looked at Annie, who smiled a bit and nodded. He was on the right track for sure. "You know what? This, this isn't about what we believe anymore. It's about them." Hershel thought a moment before downing his drink, slamming the glass back onto the bar. Rick patted him on the back, glad he'd gotten through the man and they could go home.

But then two men walked into the bar.

"Son of a bitch. They're alive." Walking closer, the fat one sat at the bar near Hershel while the other sat at a table. He looked everyone over, stopping at Annie and smiling at her. She did nothing but move to stand behind the bar, Rick easing her along with a hand at her back. Glenn was already behind the bar, blocking the fat one's view of her, and he was definitely trying to catch a glimpse. He was disgusting, reminding her off those old movies that showed men flipping pizzas in parlors. "I'm Dave," he introduced as Rick poured him a drink. "That scrawny looking douche-bag there is Tony."

"Eat me, Dave," he laughed.

"Hey, maybe someday I will." Dave told them that he met his fat friend on the I-95 coming out of Philly. Glenn introduced himself, saying it was nice to meet some new people, followed by Rick. "And you are? If you don't mind me asking, sweetheart."

Arms crossed, she glared at the man and shortly answered, "Annie."

"Annie Oakley?" he asked with a nod, mistaking the shotgun on the bar for hers instead of Glenn's. Instead of answering, she just put her hand on the gun and glared at him. Rick stepped into her view and shook his head, a silent command to back off, and poured her a drink. "How 'bout you, pal? Have one?" Dave asked, nodding to Hershel, who replied that he'd just quit. "You have a unique sense of timing, my friend," he remarked with a smile.

"His name's Hershel. He lost people today. A lot of them," Rick explained. Dave had the decency to look ashamed of his earlier gaiety and raised his glass.

"I'm truly sorry to hear that," he told him. "To better days and new friends. And to our dead, may they be in a better place," he toasted and everyone nodded solemnly, drinking their shots. When Dave reached for the bottle, he exposed his back and Rick easily spotted the gun. "Not bad, huh?" he commented, pulling it out to show them. "I got it off a cop."

"I'm a cop," Rick told him and Dave chuckled.

"This one was already dead." Nodding, Rick curiously pointed out that they were a long way from Philadelphia. "Feels like we're a long way from anywhere!"

"Well, what drove you south?" Dave told him that it wasn't the weather, that he must've dropped thirty pounds in sweat alone. Tony offhandedly commenting that he wished he'd dropped twenty pounds.

"First it was DC. I heard there might be some kind of refugee camp but the roads were so jammed, we never even got close. We decided to get off the highways, into the sticks, keep hauling ass," he explained. "Every group we came across had a new rumor about a way out of this thing."

Tony jumped in, telling them, "One guy told us there was a Coast Guard sitting on the Gulf, sending ferries to the islands."

"The latest was a rail yard in Montgomery running trains to the middle of the country. Kansas, Nebraska…"

""Nebraska"?" Glen echoed in confusion.

"Low population, lots of guns," Tony explained. Glenn nodded, admitting that that kind of made sense.

"You ever been to Nebraska, kid?" Dave asked. "There's reason they call 'em 'fly over states'," he added with a laugh. "How 'bout you guys?"

"Fort Benning, eventually," Rick told him and Dave cringed.

"I hate to piss in your cornflakes, Officer, but um…we ran across a grunt who was stationed at Benning. Said the place was overrun by lamebrains."

"Wait, Fort Benning is gone? Are you for real?" Glenn asked and Annie wanted to smack her hand over his mouth. They really shouldn't be talking to these men, she could feel it in her gut.

"Sadly, I am. Ugly truth is: there is no way out of this mess," Dave told them sullenly. "Just keep going from one pipe dream to the next, praying one of these mindless freaks doesn't grab ahold of you when you sleep." Tony chimed in, if you sleep. "Yeah, doesn't look like you guys are hanging your hats here. You-You hold up somewhere else?" There it was, Annie thought miserably.

Rick shook his head, "Not really." Annie looked at the back of his head and inwardly sighed in relief. At least he sensed that these men weren't to be trusted either.

"Those your cars out front?" Glenn and Rick nodded, the former asking why. "Well, we're livin' out of ours. Those look, uh, kind of empty, clean. Where's all your gear?"

"We're with a larger group, out scouting," Annie told him shortly.

"Thought we could use a drink," Hershel added, nodding at her.

"A drink, Hershel? I thought you quit!" Dave joked. "Well, we're thinking of settin' up around here. Is it safe?"

"It can be," Glenn told him honestly and Annie kicked his foot. "Uh, but I've, uh, killed a couple walkers around here," he quickly added. Dave laughed at the name walkers, saying it was good and he liked that, that it was better than lamebrains. Tony said it was more succinct; Dave joking that he companion had gone to college, though he certainly didn't look it. Apparently, it had only been two years; two years wasted, if you asked Annie.

"So, what? You guys set up on the, uh, outskirts or something? That new development?"

"Trailer park or something? A farm?" Tony asked, rising from his seat and walking over to a far corner of the bar. Dave sang a verse of Old McDonald under his breath as Tony laughed, taking a piss in the corner. Annie grimaced, her face turned up in disgust. "You got a farm?"

"Is it safe? Gotta be."

"You got food? Water?"

"You got anymore cooze? I ain't had a piece of ass in weeks."

"Listen," Dave began with a wince, rubbing his forehead, "pardon my friend. City kids, they got no tact, no disrespect." He looked at Annie for an acceptance for his half-assed apology but she gave him nothing but a stony look. "So, listen, Glenn—"

"We've said enough," Rick interjected.

"Hang on a second. This farm, it sounds pretty sweet. Don't it sound sweet, Tony?" Tony just zipped up his fly and agreed. "How about a little southern hospitality? We got some bodies back at camp, been havin' a real hard time. I don't see why you can't make room for a few more? We could pool our resources, our manpower—"

"Look, I'm sorry. That's not an option." Tony looked at Dave who stared at Rick before shrugging, saying it didn't sound like it'd be a problem.

"I'm sorry, we can't," Hershel added, catching on to the grim situation.

"We can't take any more. We're full up," Annie added, backing up her group.

"You guys are something else. I thought we were friends," Dave said and Annie rolled her eyes slightly. They'd been talking for a grand total of five minutes, how exactly did that make them friends? "We got people we gotta look out for, too."

Reasonably, Rick remarked, "We don't know anything about you." Dave nodded and admitted that was true. He admitted that they didn't know anything about them, or what they'd had to go through, or the things they'd had to do. Annie's grip on the gun tightened considerably at his slightly menacing tone.

"I bet you've had to do some of those same things yourself, am I right? 'Cause ain't nobody's hands clean in what's left of this world. We're all the same. So, come on, let's take a nice friendly hayride to this farm and we'll get to know each other." Rick looked down at his glass and shook his head and shrugged.

"That's not gonna happen."

"This is bullshit!" Tony snapped impatiently, Rick telling him to calm down. "Don't tell me to calm down! Don't ever tell me to calm down! I'll shoot you three assholes in the head!" Rick was on his feet. "I'll take your girl here and get that piece of ass!" Rick's hand went to his gun, while Annie reached out to stop him. "And then I'll take your damn farm!"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! Relax!" Dave told him, rising to his feet with a smile. "Take it easy! Nobody's taking anybody. Nobody's killing anybody," he said, climbing over the other bar and searching around. "Nobody's shooting anybody, right, Rick?" Annie pulled her gun out and aimed it at Tony as he grasped his shoulder sawed off, Rick's back to him. Dave put up a hand and pulled out his gun, setting it on the bar. Rick looked at her and, subtly nodded, putting her hand on her Beretta tucked in the back of her pants. "We're just friends having a drink, that's all. Now, where's the good stuff? Huh? Good stuff, good stuff, good stuff!" As he bent over to look, Rick put his hand on his pistol but Dave reappeared with a bottle, unscrewing it with a smile. "You gotta understand. We can't stay out there. You know what it's like."

"Yeah, I do. But the farm is too crowded as is. I'm sorry. You'll have to keep looking."

""Keep looking". Where do you suggest we do that?"

"I don't know. I hear Nebraska's nice."

Dave chuckled, "Nebraska. This guy." Dave went for his gun but Rick shot him in the head and turned around, shooting Tony in the throat at the same time as Annie shot his chest. Tony's sawed off fired into the ceiling as he slid down the wall to the floor. Another shot went off as Rick shot him through the head. Annie didn't know why he'd done that but she certainly didn't judge him for it. The group wandered over to Tony's body and stared at it before sharing a look.

"Holy shit," Glenn muttered.

"You all right?" Rick asked him and Glenn nodded, gulping at the sight of the body. "Hershel?" The older man stood there a moment before nodding. Looking at Annie, he put a hand on her shoulder. "Annie?" She didn't even hesitate.

"Yeah, I'm good." It might not have been the right thing to do but that prick Tony had all but said he'd rape her. Think of it as self-defense, she told herself. "Let's go home." They had to hurry the hell up and get out of town, get back to their own people before walkers were drawn by the sound or people came looking for the douchebags. Rick and Annie checked the two guys over, taking any ammo and weapons they had on them. They'd been on their way to leave the bar when they saw the headlights of a car and had to hide.