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

Thirty-Seven

I'd only been in the city about seven months ago but so much had changed since I'd been back. The roads and sidewalks, no longer maintained were cracked and growing out with weeds, wild animals were running freely through the city, there were bones strewn across the ground, the evidence of walkers were all over the place.

"Where are we?" Ebony questioned in a whisper.

"Spring Street," I answered, glancing at the sign over a former deli. "Why are we whispering?"

"There could be walkers!" Ebony replied.

"We haven't seen any," I answered again. "Most likely they're chasing the animals that have taken back the great plains of the City of Atlanta."

"Thank god there isn't any more Discovery Channel, David Attenborough," Ebony smirked.

I chuckled and threw on my best impression of a British Accent. "Watch as the Homo-Sapien makes its way through the Great Plains of the City of Atlanta on a hunting and gathering expedition."

"Stop that!" Ebony laughed.

"Watch as the great femina hunters search for food in these trying times," I laughed as we came to a stop out the front of a dishevelled looking hardware store. "This could be a good place to have a look."

"We left the cruiser outside the city," Ebony objected. "We may look badass but we can still only take small loads."

"That's where that comes in handy," I grinned, pointing at repair and delivery truck with the door wide open, half crashed on the sidewalk.

"Yeah just let me Macgyver up a tool kit," Ebony growled.

"Just keep an eye out," I growled, heading over to the truck. I shot a walker in the head as it started out from underneath the truck. I wrenched my arrow out and cleaned it off on my jeans as I climbed inside the truck. Searching around for the keys I found them on the floor with the key chain attached to a severed finger. "Well that's disgusting," I whispered, tossing the finger out the cabin. I inserted the keys and turned it on-nothing. "Damn it," I cursed, it had a half a tank of gas.

"Problem?" Ebony asked me.

"It's got gas but for some reason it won't start," I replied. "I wish Rick had let me bring Mattie with us. He would have sorted it." I got out of the car and popped the hood, as I stared at it I realised that I had no idea what I was doing. "Any gas cans in the store?" I asked Ebony.

Ebony vanished inside for a minute and came out. "Must be Christmas." She tossed it over to me and I set about syphoning the gas, sitting my bow against the tire. "There's minimal supplies in there at best, someone has picked this place over and most probably everything else as well."

"Anything on the map?" I asked her.

Ebony pulled the map out of her pocket and opened it up. "Department store," she answered, "hospital about a forty-five minute walk away-we should steer clear of that. It would be ground zero for the walkers."

"Anything useful?" I asked.

"When I came here a few years ago," Ebony started, "you were on tour. I seem to remember there was hunting club nearby. They'd have weapons."

"If they're not already used up," I reminded her. I finished with the gas and handed it to Ebony to carry. "I hope we can find a new bow at some point, or some parts-I need some parts."

"We need a lot of things," Ebony replied. "I'm thinking of setting up a school for the kids which means pencils, books, stuff like that. We also need clothes, baby clothes, adult's clothes, hygiene products, guns, ammunition."

"Thank you," I grumbled.

The two of us continue on, making our way through the city. We came across several walkers, taking them out one at a time until we found a functioning vehicle that we could load with some supplies. We weren't finding much in the way of food or ammunition but we were finding clothes and general medical products. We loaded up our new pickup with the boxes of clothes and basic medical supplies but as we did we were both wondering where the hell all the walkers were. There was a possibility that the walkers were leaving the cities as the food ran out but not with the amount of walkers that there were in the city. There would still be some walkers in city-there had to be.

As we carried on through the city, Ebony was the first on to spot a sporting goods store. She let me out in the parking lot and I loaded my bow as I made my way inside. The place was littered with walkers. Between me and Ebony we managed to take them out one by one until they were just corpses on the ground. We made several trips back to the pickup with enough arrows to last Daryl and me a long time, some clothes and some MRE's stored in the back. The delivery receipt was dates almost a year ago-they hadn't been unpacked yet. Just as Ebony removed the last box, I came around the back of the counter and pulled a black wooden box out from underneath the glass. The piece of paper on the box was marked out for a Scott Waters, apparently Scott had paid almost a grand for a brand new Lycan Compound Bow.

Just what I always wanted, a new bow.

I was beginning to think that we were going to need another car and that we'd just take the gas and abandoned the cruiser when we got back out.

After the sports store we found something in the way of clothes for the adults as well as the kids. It was about time something started going our way.

"It's getting late," Ebony spoke as we made our last stop for the day. She put the pickup out into the street and we started searching the stores. As we came around the corner Ebony and I suddenly found ourselves faced with a head of at least fifty walkers.

"Fuck me sideways," I gasped.

The walkers all turned to face us, their yellow eyes staring us down like the meat we really were.

"Run!" Ebony shouted.

I nodded and we took off in the direction of a beauty shop. I slammed the door shut behind us and when I turned to find out exactly what we were looking at-it was a lingerie store. "Well this is awkward," I gasped, looking out the window. "I'm gonna die in a beauty shop/lingerie store." The only thing keeping out the walkers from us was a thin security grate and a glass window. We had five minutes at best.

"Well at least we could die pretty," Ebony laughed. "Maybe we should grab something for the guys."

"Watch the door!" I shouted, ignoring her comment but smiling about it at the same time. I ran out the back of the beauty shop to search for anything flammable. I was looking for anything that had a warning sign about being flammable. "GET TO THE BACK OF THE STORE!" I shouted.

"Way ahead of you," Ebony answered. Her eyes widened when she saw me pour a bottle of something over the rest of the chemicals. "What the fuck?" she asked me.

"Big boom!" I grinned, noticing that she was holding a bag of something. "When we get out, you run back to the car as fast as you can-we're leaving!"

She nodded and hesitatingly opened the back door. "Two geeks in the alley."

"Take 'em out!" I ordered.

Ebony took off outside and I threw a lighter down on the chemicals. I ran out after her and ducked down behind a dumpster as we both heard smashing coming from inside the store. "I told you to run!"

"Shut up!" Ebony snapped. She grabbed my arm and we took off running to the pickup. The sun was starting to set as we took off down the road, we'd gottan almost down the street before I heard the explosion tear through the streets. "You're a bloody WMD, you know that, right?" Ebony shouted out the window.

"I get told that a lot," I grinned. "So what's in the bag?"

"I told you we should get something for the guys," she laughed.

"So we could have died and you were thinking about looking pretty?" I rolled my eyes.

"Girl's gotta have her priorities," Ebony grinned.

I laughed. "Just get us to the cruiser. I wanna go home."