Morning stars wake me up and sounds in the woods draw me in. I shoot things. I'm good at shooting things. I do other things, too. Upon returning to the camp after the dawn has gone from silver to orange, I half-expect no one to be there, and that would be fine, but the men are waiting for me. That's fine, too. Whatever is fine. Sun, rain, night, day, life, death, alone, together. It's all fine.

There is no together, though. Not for me, not really. I step through the makeshift barbwire fence, the men turn their heads to me, Owen's among them, but who is Owen to me, anyway? Who is anyone to me?

I am alone.

The men are packing. Not much to pack. Owen stares at me. I ask what. He says there's blood on my face. And on my hands. I look down at my fingers, stained so bright. I move my tongue around my mouth and ask him if he's never seen someone eat a raw squirrel before, then I pull a Swiss Army knife from my back pocket and hand it over. I tell him I took it from his backpack. I say thanks. He takes it slowly and nods, not a sure nod, a whatever-you-say nod. But then he pulls a canteen and a rag from his backpack and hands them to me. You could've shared, he says.

I pull a second dead squirrel from my belt and give it to him. Joe comes over and slaps me on the shoulder and praises me. I don't really listen. We leave the camp and the woods soon after.

As I walk along the tracks, I watch my feet. Each boot moves over the ground, claims part of it for just a moment, pushes off of it to move me a bit forward, to walk on. Always walking on. Covering ground, going somewhere. Why? It's a game. Follow the trail, take it slow, no rush, no rush. Consistency. We'll reach them eventually. They'll still not want me there even when we do. I watch my feet. I don't talk. Owen talks. Clouds rolling in, he says, and it might rain. It doesn't smell like it, but I don't tell him so. He asks me if I often run off into the woods and kill woodland creatures without telling anyone. I see a footprint. Old. We're falling farther behind. It's Rick's footprint. My pal Rick. Officer Friendly.

No, I won't go there, there's angry, I don't like there. Here's numb. Numb's better.

Owen says coming out of the woods covered in the dried blood of my victims is pretty badass but he doubts it will save my life. I doubt it, too. Look at the forest, on either side of us, there's always a forest to be found wherever you are in Georgia. I wish I was in one of them now. I wish I was in one of them and I would just lie down and the world would quit moving in that piece of the forest and I would stay there forever and feel nothing forever, numb numb numb, who was that boy with the hat? Who was his father? Who was the man with the tattoos, the leather vest, the truck?

Owen mimics me saying oh, yes, Owen, you're absolutely right, whatever was I thinking, you're so smart, and good-looking, and I should listen to you –

I ask why the hell I should listen to him.

He says oh, God, she talks? Warn a guy.

I tell him that he has absolutely no authority over me, and until a day ago, I assumed he was dead and never really cared. I remind him how he asked if I had missed him during that month he was in the hospital, before the walkers. I tell him that I didn't. I tell him that actually, it was a relief, because I could spend the night with Tyler instead of Tyler always spending the night with me because he would take any excuse he could to get away from the big brother who got his kicks by making him feel like shit. I tell Owen that I never cared about him, and that hasn't changed.

One of the thickest silences I've ever experienced falls down on the two of us and almost steals the air. It's kind of nice. Ahead of us, Dan and Len work together to put down a walker. I stroke my bow. Wish it had been me. Owen kills the silence with a laugh, a long, dry laugh, with a touch of a whistle to it. It fades away, I think we're done here, but then he says that he guesses he doesn't have to tell me that the group I love so damn much has clearly left me for dead.

He guesses right.

He says did they ever care about me? Well, looks like that's changed.

He doesn't get it. I tell him that.

He says he gets it fine, he gets that I'm too dumb to wake up and see that these people, my people, don't give a shit about me. My feet stop and my arm goes out and catches his and my mouth hisses that they had their reasons and Owen's face is very close to mine, and those eyes, I hate them, no I don't, and Owen says he doesn't care about their reasons, he cares about mine. I let him go, step back. Stare at a flower growing up from the tracks. It's a pretty purple color and it's been crushed by a boot and now it's dirty and broken. Owen asks why I still want to find them. He sounds out of breath. He says he knows I still want to find them, says that if I didn't, I wouldn't still be with his group. He says I hate his group. He says his group disgusts me. So why, asks Owen again. These people abandoned me, he says. A twelve-year-old girl, he says. Why do I still want to find them?

Pretty flower, dirty flower, broken flower.

"I love them."

I turn from the flower and walk after the others. Owen's with me five steps later. He asks who they are. These people that I love. Should I not tell him? My mouth's already moving. People I met, after, a man who used to be a cop, a woman, I don't know what she did . . . My feet go, step, step, cover ground, move toward something. Away from something.

"And a boy."

Owen says he gets it now. No, he probably really doesn't. And a boy, he mimics. He says I sound like I just finished doodling some kid's name on a notebook and, let's consider it, am I really old enough for romance?

"It's not like that with him."

Not anymore. Never was. It was deeper than doodles on a notebook. I don't even know what romance is.

What's it like, then, Owen wants to know. Is this boy a replacement for Ty? Another lost puppy dog?

"He's nothing like Ty. He's not a lost puppy dog. He's brave and he's smart and he's nice and he's good –"

I stop again, can't breathe, can't talk, not for a while, sure as hell can't look at Owen, he's standing there and I know he's watching me, but he says nothing, just watches, finally it's me who talks, but at that point I do look at him.

"He's better than you. He's better than me. I pointed a gun at his father. Aimed it in, had the hammer back, the whole nine yards. He'd been hurt, and I thought he'd died and turned. Then he talked to me, said my name, told me to stay safe. To keep his son safe . . . And I didn't put the gun down. I stood there, sighted in, and I thought about it and thought about it and thought about it until his son, my . . . until the boy came in, and I couldn't let him see, so I put down the gun and lied but God help me, I don't know if I would have pulled the trigger or not. I just know that I wanted to. I wanted to kill him, this man who had kept me safe, who had been. My. Family."

I take a breath, I'm sweating. Owen's looking at me like he looked at me after I came back with bloodstains. I'm not done.

"You asked me why I still want to find them. It's to warn them. Because I love them. Because I don't blame them. And because if I can pull it off, if I'm fast enough, I can warn them and come back to this group in the same night. I can cover my tracks and no one'll know the difference. Because fact is, the three of them won't want me anymore. They'll all know the truth by now, he'll have told, the cop will have told. And you're right, Owen. You're right. This group does disgust me. But I may just belong here."

His mouth has closed again. What's that in his eyes? What does he think? I can't tell. I can't care. We're falling behind. I start moving. Faster. Wish I could run, past all of them, wish I could fly. I'd find a cloud and hide, no one would ever see me again, everyone would forget me, I would forget them.

Owen calls after me. He wants to know why I wanted to kill the cop.

I keep moving. He says my name, I stop, I turn. He's still standing where he was. He shakes his head. He says that that's the most important part of the story, the why. The why's are what make us move. He licks his lips and tells me the why's are what separate the good guys from the bad guys. The clouds have covered the sky behind him, gray and powerful. A warm wind blows through his hair and through mine, but it still doesn't smell like rain.

I could tell him my why – that I wanted to keep the boy, the boy I love, safe, and in the moment, the gun seemed like the best way. I could go so far as to tell him that, even if I'm sorry, so sorry that I held the gun up, being sorry is not the same as regret. I can't regret holding up the gun for Carl. It was wrong. I can't regret it and that's wrong, too. And not regretting it might be the worst part of everything. It might be why I think Owen's wrong about the why's.

"I'd say that we're born to be good guys or bad guys." I meet his eyes. "We are who we are."

I turn again and walk again. I watch my feet. Going somewhere. Going somewhere.

Going wherever the men go.