"No!" Noah demanded as Tara started to run towards Maggie, wrapping his arms tightly around her chest to restrain her.
"Let go of me, right now!" Tara screamed as she fought against his strength, trying desperately to break free from his grasp. Seeing Maggie lying motionless on the ground was too much for her to handle. "I need to get her!"
"Stop! Tara, listen to me!" Noah cried, turning Tara in his arms as he pulled her closer to the building that they stood near; his eyes locking on the car that had hit Maggie as two men in police uniforms emerged from it and started to lift Maggie's limp body onto a stretcher.
"Don't touch h-" Tara began to scream, but her voice was muffled into the sweaty palm of Noah's hand as he covered her mouth, his body crouching down slightly so that he was eye-level with her.
"Shut up," he demanded sternly, slowly lowering his hand from Tara's mouth. "You want her to live?"
"Of course I do!" Tara cried defensively, raising one hand to her eyes to brush aside the angry and terrified tears that began streaming down her cheeks. "What the hell do you think?"
"Then let them take her," Noah replied, his eyes widened and serious. "They can take care of her, I promise. We just have to find a way to break in there and get her and her sister out as soon as she's healed. Okay?"
"Okay," Tara responded with a light nod of her head after a brief pause where she considered what Noah was saying to her. Without another second of hesitation, Tara gripped tightly onto Noah's arm, forcefully dragging him back in the direction of the car that she and Maggie had driven there in.
"Where the hell are you taking me?" Noah asked, not doing anything to prevent Tara from dragging him along.
"We're going back to get the rest of my group, and then they're gonna come back here with us and we're gonna get my girlfriend and her sister out of the damn hospital," Tara explained all in a rush, not even hesitating to call it 'her' group or to call Maggie her 'girlfriend'.
As they approached the car, Tara finally released Noah from her grip, practically tossing him at the passenger's side door, as she ran to the driver's side: her heart pounding faster and faster in her chest with each passing second. She didn't trust the people in the hospital: especially when it came to Maggie's life.
The drive back to the church went by quickly, as Tara didn't slow down the entire time: driving just as fast and recklessly as Maggie had been driving in order to get Beth back. She understood where all of the adrenaline had come from now.
The sun was slowly starting to sink down into the horizon as yet another day was coming to an end when Tara pulled the car up to the entrance of the church. The first thing she noticed was the church bus was now sitting closer to the road, and the other members of the group had scrounged up as much gas as they could find; which now sat in red gas cans that were lined up at the door of the bus.
The noise of the car's engine must have been loud enough to be heard inside of the church because before Tara even had the chance to shut it off, the heavy wooden doors of the church swung open revealing Michonne and Carl with their weapons drawn.
"Oh... thank God," Michonne commented with a soft breath of relief as she allowed the blade of her katana to fall back into the sheath on her back, catching sight of Tara climbing out of the driver's side.
Carl's gaze shifted from Tara over to Noah, and he kept his gun drawn, pointing it towards the unfamiliar face. "Where's Maggie?" he asked; his tone accusing as if it were Tara's fault that she wasn't there.
"Where the hell's everybody else?" Tara questioned, ignoring Carl as she gestured for Noah to get out of the car as well. She quickly jogged towards the church in a frantic rush, but was blocked off by a suspicious Michonne.
"What the hell happened to you? We all thought that you and Maggie split on the rest of the group, and now you come back here a day later driving a random car; without Maggie and you brought a strange boy with you…" Michonne attempted to explain the confusion as Rick and the rest of the group made their way to the front doors from the interior of the church, apparently awaiting an explanation as well. "Where the hell were you? And where's Maggie?"
Tara took a deep breath as she prepared herself to explain what had happened: jerking her head towards Noah first to introduce him. "That's Noah… Maggie and I ran into him in Atlanta."
"Atlanta? What the hell were you doin' in Atlanta?" Rick asked gruffly, his eyes squinted with confusion.
"We followed a car for hours… Maggie said it was just like the car that Daryl told her took Beth." This statement from Tara caused a loud sigh of disapproval from Abraham. "Anyway…" she continued with a loud huff of annoyance, her voice growing more frantic: eager to let everything out, "they realized that they were getting followed, so we decided to run after them on foot, and we ran into Noah… Told him we were looking for Beth and he said he just escaped from the hospital where they were keeping her.
"Maggie started running in the direction of the hospital and she… she got hit by the car. They took her to the hospital… They have Maggie and they have Beth. We need to go back and get them. They belong here…"
Rick considered Tara for a long moment before he began nodding his head very slowly, agreeing with her. "Alright…" he mused softly before he looked around at all of the surrounding faces. "Let's get on that bus… We're going to Atlanta."