++++++ I do not own the Walking Dead or any affiliated characters apart from my OC's ++++++

Thirty-Six

Not wanting to be out on the road after dark, Ebony and I made our way back to the place that we both knew pretty well: The Farm.

Herschel's farmhouse was still standing albeit it looked a little worse for wear-just like some of the abandoned homes that Daryl and I had swept through on supply runs. There was several walkers mulling about the place, with the combination of my bow and Ebony's machete, we took them out silently. Once the place was clear of walkers, I gathered the bodies up and piled them on the porch as some kind of cover whilst Ebony moved the car close to the house. Before the sky turned dark, I set up a homemade trap to warn us of any walker intrusions than we settled down for the night in the upstairs bedroom.

I wasn't expecting to find any of our old things but sitting on the dresser, covered in a layer of dust was our bags of clothes. As I zipped them up and sat them by the window Ebony came in to tell me that there was still running water-cold-but running. That was good enough for me.

I tool first guard duty but as I sat against the door, I could see that Ebony was having trouble sleeping.

"PJ?" Ebony suddenly asked me as I ran a finger along the arrow shaft.

"Yeah babe?" I asked her.

"Do you think they're still alive?" she frowned. "My mum and dad?"

I shrugged. "I don't know babe, they could be. Australia is a pretty dry country, although with them living in Sydney I would say the fair bet is no."

She sighed. "I thought about them a lot in the past few months. John said that they could be alive-"

"That's why M16 borrowed him," I told her. "He's good at manipulating people. You've just got to be strong for Jade and be there always-that's all you need to worry about."

"Why won't you move in with Rick?" Ebony asked me again. "And don't give me that bullshit answer you gave me in the prison, tell me why."

"Lucas, Philomena, J, Corporal, 957289," I answered with a frown on my face.

Ebony sat up and in the darkness I could feel her eyes piercing into me. "I'm moving in with Daryl because I love him and he loves both me and Jade."

I rolled my eyes. "That's different, I've been with Rick two days and you've been doing the horizontal horror with Daryl longer than I have with Rick."

"Is this like that time your boyfriend, Nick, asked you to move in with him and you broke up with him?" Ebony frowned. "Even then you were dating him for two years. You can see it in the way that Rick looks at you that he's head over heels girl."

"You're not black," I reminded her.

"I like to think in my past life I was a sassy African American," she smiled.

"This is a discussion that I should be having with Rick, not you," I pointed out.

"You're afraid!" Ebony smirked. "The big bad soldier is afraid of moving in with a man!"

"Goodnight, Ebony," I spoke out, a little louder than I should have. "You've got guard duty in six hours, get some rest."

Ebony grumbled and lay back down on the bed.

It was midnight when I woke her up to take her turn at duty. She was silently watching the door when I went to bed and the next time I woke up, the sun was rising.

An hour after the sun rose, we were off with a couple bags of clothes and seed from Herschel's kitchen. It took us most of the day to navigate the highway, siphoning fuel as we could and as the sun fell, Ebony pointed out that there was a quarry that we could stay in for the night.

At the quarry we found a series of abandoned and ripped up tents, covered in old blood. There was a shell of an old red sports car that had been stripped of pretty much everything. A bit away from the remains of the main camp site there was a series of graves with crosses that had names carved into the wood.

"I don't know if I feel right here," Ebony pointed out. "People died here."

"People die everywhere," I replied.

We didn't set anything up instead we just sat on the hood of the car looking up at the sky as the day turned into night. "How long are we looking at spending in the city?" Ebony questioned me.

"No less than a day," I told her. "First thing we need to do is draw the walkers away from where we need to go and I think we should use the main roads."

"Why not back allies?" Ebony frowned.

"We'd be fucked if we get caught," I replied. "Main roads, lots of room." I sat up and sighed, "you're right…I am scared."

"Of Rick?" Ebony laughed.

I looked out over the abandoned quarry. "Stability."

Ebony looked over at me. "Stability?"

I nodded. "This world is so fucked, so upside down, so chaotic. I've always thrived on chaos which is why I'm such a good soldier. If the Governor doesn't take the prison from us we could be there for a very long time which means I could become you!"

"Did you just mean that as a compliment or an insult?" she inquired. "Cause it sure sounded like an insult."

"I'm not good with stability," I argued back. "I'm a student of chaos theory, Eb's."

"You're doing good with Judith," Ebony assured me. "And I'm sure Carl will come around eventually. She patted my shoulder, "love you babe."

"Love you," I sighed.

When the sun rose over the city of Atlanta, two days after we had set out from the prison both Ebony and I watched in awe at the sight of the abandoned city.

"Would you look at that," Ebony gasped, staring through a pair of binoculars. "I can't see any walkers."

"Doesn't mean they're not there," I answered.

We turned to look at each other than silently got back in the car. Neither of us had been in a big city for a long time, I had been here about five months ago but a lot can happen in five months. There's death in that city…but there is also life.