Andrea doesn't have to ask to know.
She doesn't even have to turn around to see.
By the way Michonne suddenly stills, the muscles in her arms tensing and releasing, Andrea can tell she has seen something that's got her on guard. They're rummaging through a car boot, arms full of blankets and clothes, when Michonne stands bolt upright and uses the rear-view mirror to get a glimpse of what's happening behind them. With full trust in Michonne's instincts, Andrea slowly moves her hand to the tyre jack that lays at the back of the boot and begins to pull it towards her. Seconds after she has it in her grasp, Michonne spins around and pulls her katana from her side in one quick, cat-like motion.
Andrea turns as well, feet wide, back strong, bearing the tyre jack in front of her as both a shield and a weapon. The walker that crawled out of the old, overturned bus is big and bulky - it probably would have been a very muscular man in a past life. But now, it's just an assortment of puffy, rotten flesh and black blood that oozes from a wound to its gut.
Michonne laughs; a hollow, mirthless laugh. She steps forward and Andrea moves with her, only a few steps behind. Michonne lifts her katana high and aims for the walker's neck, planning to behead it in one fell swoop, but the walker is unexpectedly quick - it lunges for Andrea and its arms fly up, effectively blocking Michonne's blade. She lands the katana in its arm and swiftly pulls it back out, swinging it again at the same time as Andrea lifts her arms to ram the tyre jack in to the walker's fleshy skull.
Andrea realises, a few seconds beforehand, what's about to happen and she cries out; but the katana is already in motion. She watches the sun glint off the silver blade as it slices in to the skin of her upper arm, clipping her as Michonne drives it through the walker's neck. Andrea drops the jack and grabs her bicep, gasping with pain, as the walker falls to the ground. Its head rolls to a stop some metres away, still hacking and gibbering.
Stumbling backwards, Andrea doubles over in pain, breathing hard through her teeth.
"Fuck," she gasps. She gingerly pulls her hand away from the wound and blood begins to ooze down her arm. She moves quickly, pulling off her tank top and pressing it to the wound, then tying it in a makeshift torniquet as tight as she can. She looks up for Michonne, wondering why the other woman hasn't come to her aid yet, and when their eyes meet, they both freeze.
Michonne is standing watching Andrea, eyes wide, mouth slightly open as though she's about to speak but isn't sure what to say. Her knuckles are white on the handle of her sword, which is thoroughly coated in layers of congealed walker blood. Andrea gulps.
"No," she whispers, softly.
"Honey...I'm so sorry..." Michonne swallows thickly.
"The blade was clean," Andrea says, voice thin.
"We don't know the risk of contamination yet...if the blood got in to the wound..."
"The tip was clean," Andrea says, voice thin. "The tip was clean when it cut me, I saw it."
"Andrea..."
"It was clean!" Andrea snaps. She winces as she presses her handful of cotton down on her arm, and Michonne visibly softens.
"Here," the other woman says, and she lays her sword down and steps in to Andrea. She sits Andrea down on the bonnet of a burnt-out Sedan nearby and rummages through her bag for a half-full bottle of water. Andrea hisses as Michonne empties the water out on the cut, but stays still and compliant as her makeshift tank-top bandage is replaced with a torn strip from the bottom of Michonne's pants.
Andrea looks down at her arm. Aside from the cloth tied around her bicep, and some dried blood that has run down on the back of her hand, it's impossible to tell that she was ever wounded. She eyes off Michonne's sword again, warily, and tries to convince herself that the tip of the weapon was indeed clean when it cut her. It doesn't work. Her stomach clenches, sick and nervous.
"I'm sorry," Michonne whispers, softly, her hand cupping the side of Andrea's face. "You know it was an accident."
"I know," Andrea nods.
"You'll be fine," Michonne says, helping Andrea up. But when Andrea looks up to meet her eyes, Michonne looks away.
The next day, Andrea wakes with a fever.
At first she's ready to blame it on the weather but despite the fact that it's early morning, the air around them in the woods is humid and warm. Andrea's teeth chatter as she grabs a light sweater from her bag and pulls it on, only falling behind briefly as Michonne stalks ahead with her walkers in tow.
"You see something?" Michonne calls back to her, and Andrea shakes her head.
"No," she says, slinging the bag over her shoulder. "Just a bit cold."
Michonne, clad in a tank top and loose pants, looks her over quizzically.
"There's so much tree cover," Andrea says, forging ahead. "Can't wait to get out in to the sun. Come on."
Michonne shrugs and follows her companion, and Andrea doesn't turn back to look at her. It is just the tree cover, she tells herself. The air is always cooler around the trees than it is out in the sun. But as she walks on, she looks down at her hand, gripping the bag strap. The blood that flows under her skin, so close to the surface, has now become the enemy. She coughs once against her other hand, masking the sound lest Michonne overhear; then takes a deep breath and keeps walking.
Andrea falls asleep that night stretched across the lower branches of a tree; completely exhausted. She thinks of Jim, and how sick he was, sweating and convulsing in the back of the RV as they tried in vain to keep him comfortable. It got to the point where few people would go near him, afraid that he would transform in to something monstrous before their very eyes - his final days were spent alone and in pain, isolated from most of the group; before he finally begged to be left at the side of the road. Like a dying animal, Andrea thinks. She wonders on his final moments - what he thought about, what he felt. Whether he felt as alone and terrified as she does now, or whether he'd resigned himself to his fate and was happy to see the end of the dismal, miserable place that the world had become.
She shuts her eyes and wills herself not to cry. Who'd have predicted that after so long slow-dancing with the idea of death, she'd be so terrified to face it?
As they cross a corn field later the next day, Andrea can't stop herself from shivering. She takes a deep breath to steady herself but feels her head spin as she shuts her eyes - then, as soon as she opens her eyes again, the feeling is gone. She's still cold, but she has her balance back.
"Let's stop and eat," Andrea calls, short of breath from the walk.
"Edge of the field," Michonne responds, and Andrea nods.
They sit down on the edge as planned, the chained walkers left tied to a fence post. Like dogs, Andrea thinks. Like they've never been anything more than animals. She watches them wearily as she eats, stale Weetabix sticking to the roof of her mouth.
"How long did it take?" she says, suddenly.
Michonne frowns.
"For them to change," Andrea says, nodding at the walkers. "How long did it take for them to change?"
Michonne stiffens and takes another bite of Weetabix. "Not long," she says, softly. "Mike was the one who saved me, you know. I was chased and he - he fought the walker off. Neither of us knew what it meant when he got bitten. Thought he'd be fine."
Andrea's blood runs cold. Her fingers shake as she paws at her food, suddenly not hungry. "Do you think I'll really be okay?"
Michonne turns to her. "Honey...I honestly don't know."
The breeze stirs softly around them, the leaves of the woods whispering lightly in the wind. It would almost be a postcard-perfect Georgia day - golden ears of corn waving, birds chirping in the woods...Andrea squints in to the sunlight then looks away. Everything seems too bright, too saturated with colour. Her eyes hurt. She's about to suggest that they keep moving and find somewhere to spend the night, but as she opens her mouth, she freezes.
Coming from somewhere overhead, she can hear the unmistakable sound of a helicopter.
She looks to Michonne and Michonne looks back, eyes wide.
"What the...?" Andrea begins, and Michonne shakes her head. They jump in to standing, Andrea dizzily grabbing a fencepost as the mechanic whirring grows louder and louder. Their hair is whipped back from their faces as the chopper suddenly appears in the air above the cornfield, sending stalks of corn flying as it hovers.
"Hey," Michonne yells, suddenly stirred in to action. She runs forward in to the flattened corn, waving her arms. "HEY! Down here!"
Andrea joins her, frantically waving and yelling. From their proximity to the chopper, they can see the faces of the two men in the front seats. One of the men is jabbing frantically at the control panel, and the other is barking orders to him. It takes Andrea a while to realise that the whirring has gone from rhythmic to erratic.
"Wait," she says, grabbing Michonne's arm and pulling her back. The chopper hovers unevenly in the air for a minute, dipping down on the left side. Andrea watches as the men yell in to their headsets, looks of panic on their faces. "Get back."
They stumble back to the edge of the cornfield, watching in horror as the chopper suddenly dives in to a tailspin.
"Run!" Michonne grabs Andrea's arm and they head for the forest, instinctively covering their heads as they hear a bang and a deafening metal crunch from behind them.
With tree branches whipping across her face, Andrea gasps for breath as she lets Michonne drag her through the woods. She stumbles once, on a low tree root; then again on a rock, before finally falling to the ground in a heap when Michonne stops to sag against a tree.
"Jesus Christ," Michonne pants. "What the hell was that?"
Andrea's lungs burn from running, her breathy gasps turning in to a hacking cough as she gulps for oxygen. She puts a hand over her mouth out of habit, and feels a sticky liquid against her palm.
"Hey," Michonne says, righting herself and stepping over. "You okay?"
Andrea doesn't respond. She feels her gag reflex kick in and crawls to her hands and knees, hacking and spluttering, until an odd-looking bright yellow liquid drips from her lips. Michonne's hand lightly rubs her back, and she's vaguely aware of the other woman whispering comforting words, but she can't make them out.
"Oh God," Andrea moans, pitching forward to rest her head on the ground. She shuts her eyes and tries to catch her breath, wheezing against the leaves and dirt.
"Andrea? Are you alright?"
"I can't..."
"Andrea," Michonne's voice says, a thousand miles away. "Can you hear me?"
"Mmm," Andrea mumbles, falling to her side. "Let me breathe..."
"I need you to talk to me, tell me what's going on," Michonne says. "Can you do that? Andrea?"
"I don't want to be like them," Andrea begs, suddenly. "Please - I don't want to be like them. If I die, don't let me change. Please."
Michonne suddenly stands, eyes wide. "Andrea -" she barks, suddenly. "Get up. Get up."
"I can't," Andrea pants; and when Michonne's hands come down to lift her up, she pushes them away. "Leave me."
"Get up," Michonne says, pulling her to her feet. She loops one of Andrea's arms around her shoulder and begins to move again through the forest, back towards the cornfield. "I heard a car."
Andrea's dimly aware of her feet moving over the ground beneath them, but her head lolls to one side and she loses her balance, falling from Michonne's side against her tree.
"Please go," she says, blinking up towards Michonne's blurry form above her. She sees the woman's outline against the sun, doubling and tripling before her eyes. "Just leave me, don't cut me up like you did with them. Please just go."
Michonne sighs, angrily, and runs a hand through her hair. She takes off again towards the cornfield, sprinting, and Andrea lies down on the cool forest floor. The sunlight, even through the trees, is far too bright, so she shuts her eyes and breathes in to the blackness. Her lungs wheeze and rattle in her chest - this is what it must be like to die, she thinks. This is what happened to Jim. This is what the end feels like. She relaxes, suddenly, against the soft leaves. If there was any way to go, surely this is it? She avoided getting bitten. She avoided putting a gun to her head. She's just going to go to sleep, as though she was at home in her apartment, or in Daryl's tent with him; except this time she won't wake up.
She'll see Amy again. She'll see her parents. She'll be able to hold her mother again, and feel her father's lips on her forehead. She'll wrap her arms around her sister, bury her nose in that soft blonde hair, and never let go. She'll see Dale. She'll be able to thank him for everything he did for her. No more pain. No more trying to survive. It's all over.
She's not sure how long she lies there for, eyes shut, grey and white sparks exploding on the back of her eyelids, but she slowly becomes aware of a crunching noise headed towards her. Footsteps, on the leaves. She can hear Michonne's voice somewhere, frantic and yelling, and another's man's voice, yelling right back. They sound miles away; the footsteps sound much closer. But whoever it is walking in her direction is too late, she decides - she's already dead.
The crunching stops, right nearby her head, and she feels a boot nudge against her arm.
"Well, blow me down," says a man, and the voice sounds familiar to her. Her eyelids float open. "It's End O'The World Barbie."
"Daryl?" she whispers, voice hoarse.
The man laughs. Her eyes cross and un-cross, trying to focus on him, and she becomes dimly aware of a knife blade somewhere in her line of vision. "Try again, darlin'," the man says, and leans down closer, his features slowly coming in to focus. "Now. How about a big hug for your old pal Merle?"