Author's Note: I will be updating this story for now again until there's more season 6 episodic content for me to work with where my other story The World We Live In is concerned. Hope you enjoyed this chapter, and don't worry, this story is far from over. Yes, some people died, but it paves the way for new characters to once again join Team Family. But don't fret...not all is lost.

As always, please READ & REVIEW! — xoxo, Holly

"And another one gone, and another one gone
Another one bites the dust "
— Queen

There wasn't a moment to waste. There was no time to just stand still and think about options or outcomes. It was all about going with your gut and just moving at a time like this.

Jo ran at full speed down the hall, her blonde hair flapping behind her as if she was running against storm winds. She was in a panic but yet somehow keeping her wits about her as she shouted out Sophia's name at the top of her lungs. Sophia was her priority in this moment. Sophia was her daughter, regardless of what DNA said. She knew Rick had an eye on Mika and could keep the younger girl safe, but Sophia had gone off, gotten separated. Her brother Finn was a grown man and capable of saving himself, as harsh as it sounded in her head, and her mother, as harsher as it sounded, could do the same if it came to it. Jo could only think about Sophia as she ran and shouted.

If there truly were tens of thousands of walkers out on the road, starting to force their way into the hotel's ground floor, it was only a matter of time before they accumulative weight and unwavering, undead persistence allowed them to push open the doors to the stairwells and make their ways upwards to the second, third and fourth floors.

It was all about getting Sophia and getting the fuck out, and hoping like all hell that the others made it out successfully.

"Sophia!" Jo screamed once again, turning the corner.

"Jo!"

Sophia whipped around in a flurry of motion and found the teenager ducking her head out of one of the rooms that overlooked the parking lot and no doubt had a terrifying view of the horde outside.

"Oh, thank God," Jo muttered.

As she retraced her steps to meet Sophia halfway down the hall she'd just torn through, the teenager stepped out into the hall with Piper behind her.

"What's happening?" Sophia demanded, embracing Jo for a quick moment. Too say she was nervous was the understatement of the year.

"Lena was upset over Raffy dying. She broke all those walkers out there out of some college football stadium a few blocks away and led them here. They're already getting in, that guy Jamal's dead, and soon enough they'll figure out how to make their way here," Jo replied. She looked between both girls. "It's time to abandon ship. C'mon."

Without hesitation, but with a nod of her head to signal onward, Jo ran with the teens in tow toward one of the other stairwells at the backside of the hotel. As soon as they burst through the doors to that stairwell in question, they could hear the snarls not far off. The walkers must be filling in the ground floor pretty damn quickly.

Jo turned around and glanced at Piper. "Is there a fire escape to this hotel at all?"

The slightly older teenager shook her head. "No," she replied, garnering an immediate sigh of frustration from Jo. But, then, she added, "There are a few back doors, on the ground floor that lead down a sort ramp-like entrance onto the street behind."

"But the ground floor is filling up with an enormous amount of walkers."

"I don't know what else to say," Piper shrugged. "You're the grown-up. You're supposed to lead us to safety, right?"

Frowning, Jo sighed. "Well, you're not exactly a child, either. I mean, yes, I'm going to lead you both to safety as best as I can, but it's time to grow up now. The adults in your life aren't gonna be around forever and you need to know how to protect yourself and get yourself out of tough situations like this. If you can't, you'll end up as one of them." Gripping the gun in her hand, Jo gestured for both girls to follow her as she led the way in the direction of the back of the hotel. "We'll go down one of those back stairwells. Hopefully there aren't too many walkers coming at us once we get to the main floor." Turning to Piper, she eyed the girl. "You will show us where the exit out the back of the building is. Can you do that?"

"Yes," Piper nodded.

"Good. Stay close and don't break rank from me." Once down the remainder of the hallway, Jo pushed the door open a hair to the stairwell they were now closest to. Listening carefully, the sound of snarls was quite distant, giving her a bit of hope. "Alright, c'mon."

Once the door was opened more, she made sure both girls were right there with her as she led the way down the stairs. Reaching the ground floor door happened mere moments later and the sliver of a window that peered out into the hall beyond the door provided insight of what they were in store for. Narrowing her gaze through the darkened corridor, she tried making out how many walkers were approaching. Without running electricity or windows to offer any other form of light, it was very hard to determine shapes.

Taking a steadying breath, Jo opened the door slowly and cautiously as she felt Sophia's hands reach for the hem of her shirt out of comfort. She cast an assuring look back at her surrogate daughter and poked her head out into the hallway, where the sound of snarls and shuffling feet were getting louder.

Pulling her head back inside the stairwell and closing the door quietly and quickly, Jo whipped her head around and looked at both teens. She needed to see that they got out alive, but something was clawing at her mind and filling her with guilt; a sort of unfinished business, if you will. She bit her bottom lip and frowned as she acknowledged the task she had to undertake.

"Alright, you gotta do this now and you gotta do it quick." Jo cast a glance at Sophia and then at Piper before looking down at the gun in her hand. "Have you ever shot a gun?" Jo asked suddenly.

Piper shook her head. "I always had a knife."

"Do you have a knife on you?"

"Y-yes."

"Take it out and hold on to it like it's part of your hand." Turning her gaze back to Sophia, Jo handed her gun over. "Take this, use it if they get too close, but only if you need to. Gunfire will draw more of them to you."

Sophia nodded obediently. "Got it—wait. Aren't you coming with us?" she asked nervously.

"My mother's upstairs. I need to make sure she gets out to," Jo admitted. "I can't—I can't leave her behind. Not after I just found her."

Piper looked terrified by Sophia seemed to accept this information. "If it was my mom, I'd do the same." Sophia nodded with a strength in her that made Jo swell with pride and wish Carol was around to see. "We'll be fine. We'll get out. We'll find the others and meet up with them. But you gotta promise you'll get out, too. I can't lose you."

Tears began to sting Jo's eyes; happy ones. She cupped her hands on either side of her adoptive daughter's face and smiled. "You won't. I'll find you when all this is over," she assured. "You get out, and you find Rick for me, and you let him know I'll be right out as soon as I can."

Placing a kiss on Sophia's forehead, she leaned back to see the girl nodding. She looked between both girls then and nodded at the door. Without another word, she ushered them out of the stairwell and watched them run like bats out of hell, crying out briefly as one walker got a little too close to them for comfort, but Sophia pistol whipped it to buy them time.

And time was something they were all running out of the longer they remained in the hotel.

Removing the knife sheathed at her side, Jo jumped back in surprise when upwards of ten walkers began piling toward the door she was standing outside of. Pulling herself back into the stairwell, she shut the door and jumped again at the sight of decaying faces pushing up against the sliver of window in the door. The door had clicked shut, but it hadn't locked and soon enough they would push it open.

Praying to a God she didn't actually believed existed, Jo inhaled and exhaled a nervous breath and then turned to run back up the stairs, wincing at the pain in her shoulder that was flaring up at the most inopportune moment. She didn't stop at the second floor, but did at the third where she knew she'd left her mother. Running out of the door and down the hall, she turned right and continued to head back toward the room her mother was supposed to be "taking care of" John in.

"Harry!" she called out. Then, "Mom!"

She burst into the correct room and found John on the floor, slumped over on his side, facing away from Jo. There was blood on the side of his head from an obvious puncture wound, indicating Harry had kept her word and indeed put John down before he reanimated. The sound of water running in the bathroom alerted Jo and she pushed open the door to find her mother washing her hands.

"What are you doing? There's no time for hygiene," Jo admonished, turning off the faucet and grabbing at her mother's shoulder.

"I did it," Harry muttered, looking down at her hands. "I killed him."

Jo frowned solemnly. "No, he was already dead. You just provided him with the dignity to stay dead."

Harry shook her head. "No, I didn't. I couldn't do it. Everything I've been able to do in this new world and I couldn't do that."

"But there's a wound in his head."

"Yeah, I did do it…after he…he woke up."

"Okay, well, good. But we gotta go now or we won't get out at all," Jo insisted. "They're all getting in. I made sure Sophia and Piper got out safely. There's a back exit or two apparently? It's gonna be difficult, but if we leave now, we'll be okay."

"I can't…"

"Yes, you can. You can do this. We can do this. Together."

Harry looked so happy, and yet so sad at the same time as she looked back at her daughter. "No," she muttered, pulling the collar of her shirt away from her neck to reveal a bloody gash in her shoulder. "He came back when I was holding him."

"He bit you?" Jo's heart fell.

Harry nodded. "I'm sorry. I didn't want to leave his side. I thought I had more time to hold him and say goodbye. He just…he came back so quickly. He caught me off guard, and that's when I stabbed him, because I knew he wasn't John anymore. John would never bite me." She sighed. "I used to think I had all the time in the world. I thought I'd have the time, this time to get to know you better; to meet my granddaughter."

Tears stung at Jo's eyes as she leaned her head down against her mother's chest for a moment. "We got time," Jo insisted, lifting her head back up. "We'll get you out of here."

"No, see, I have to stay."

"No, you don't," Jo shook her head as if Harry was insane.

"I do. See, John was in the military. He'd only just retired about a year or so before the outbreak. His specialty was in explosives. A couple of months ago, we developed a plan in case this place fell. We always knew about the stadium; the risk it posed being so close with so many rotters inside." She was staring off toward the window that Lena's body had fallen out of. "He made a run to Fort Benning weeks ago with Finn, Milo and Raffy. They came back with explosives, a lot of explosives; enough to take down a building this size."

"For what?"

"For a moment like this," Harry replied. "If the Commune fell to that many rotters, everybody would make a run for it and the detonation device would get switched on."

"Wouldn't you need electricity?"

Harry smirked. "We're talking about a fifty-year-old explosives expert with thirty years of military training. He didn't need electricity."

"When does it detonate?" Jo wondered nervously.

"When I connect the wires and push the button."

"No."

"Yes."

"No, you'll get stuck in here."

"Joanna, I'm dead regardless. If I can die containing as many of those things as possible so you and the others can get safely away, then you gotta let me do that. Let my death have purpose."

Jo closed her eyelids shut tight, trying to come to terms with this. Her breathing felt erratic from nerves and grief from the impending loss of the mother she had finally just gotten back into her life. "Where is this detonation device?"

"In my office."

Jo's shoulders slumped. "The ground floor is getting overrun. You'll never make it there alone."

"Maybe not in one piece, but I will do what needs to be done."

Jo knew that sentiment all too well. "Okay, fine," she nodded. "But I'm going with you."

"Jo, no. You have to get to Rick and those girls. You need to find Finn."

Shaking her head, Jo grabbed her mother's hand and moved to lead her out of the hotel room. "Try and stop me."

Gunfire echoed off the walls as Rick ran backward in order to keep the approaching mass of walkers in sight. He emptied his gun within moments and, with shaky hands, reached into his pocket to grab a few spare bullets to reload. Not wanting to waste those bullets, however, Rick holstered his Colt and removed his red-handled machete from his side, holding it out in front of him as Mika cried at his side and Nicole, the redheaded former ER nurse, held a stapler in her hands as her only weapon.

"Where's an exit?" Rick barked at Nicole, his head whipping over to her with an anxious and expectant stare.

"O-over there," she stuttered, pointing toward doors on the back side of the hotel. "It's some maintenance rooms. Bu-but they have doors that lead out to th-the back. There's a street directly behind the h-hotel."

Leaning down, Rick scooped Mika up with his left arm and she immediately clung to him for dear life as he allowed Nicole to lead the way. As they got near the door in question, she reached a hand out and struggled to get it open.

"What the fuck—is it locked?"

"No, it's stuck," Nicole whimpered, banging on the door out of frustration.

"Stop that. We don't need anything else to draw them in."

"This fucking place," she muttered. "I told Milo to oil these damn hinges. They've been getting stuck for weeks."

"Here," Rick spoke, passing Mika off to Nicole, who took the girl into her arms in surprise. Stepping back, Rick lifted a leg and kicked at the door and then grabbed at the handle, trying to jerk it open. "There's no way this is just stuck. Someone locked this door." He pointed at the handle with the tip of his machete and turned to his right to see the walkers ambling closer. "Is there another exit?"

Nicole nodded. "The door next to it," she replied.

Sighing out of frustration and reluctance, Rick grabbed for the second door and, surprisingly, it did open for him. As he ushered both females inside, a walker reached right for him but dropped moments later before it could even lay a finger. There was a bolt lodged in its skull and Rick snapped his head up to find Daryl and Tara running toward him with their respective weapons raised.

"Daryl," Rick called out. "You okay?"

The archer nodded. "As good as can be," he answered as he slipped inside the room with Rick and Tara in tow. "We took out as much as we could from the fourth floor, but we ran out of bullets."

"Did you see how many were out there?" he asked, shutting the door behind them. "Did you see Jo or Sophia on the way down?"

It was pit black in the room so Rick couldn't see Daryl shaking his head. He had to rely on the sound of his voice only.

"There's hundreds or thousands of those bastards outside. There's too many of them," Daryl remarked. "And we didn't see Jo or Sophia. Where did you last see them?"

"I don't know where Sophia went but Jo went to look for her."

Rick felt a strong hand on fumbling to grasp at his shoulder. "S'alright, brother. They'll both make it out."

"Will we?" Tara wondered, her eyes slowly adjusting to the dark, the same as the others.

"Nicole, right?" Rick called out. "Where's this exit?"

"This way," Nicole replied, her voice leading the way toward the back of the room. The sound of a table of some sort dragging on the ground echoed off the walls and offended the senses in such close quarters. "We never used this room other than as an emergency exit, which we never had to use before. So…so don't mind the clutter we gotta move around."

She spoke a little too late as Rick walked right into the corner of the same table that had been moved out of her way. Cursing under his breath he began feeling even more anxious than he already was.

"Daryl," he muttered, as the sound of walkers began to pass by the door they had just entered in.

"Yeah?"

"I gotta find Jo. I can't leave without her."

"Well, you ain't getting out that way now, unless you wanna find her as a one of them."

"Well, I can't not do something."

"You could scale the building like Spiderman," Tara remarked.

"Funny," Daryl snickered sarcastically.

"I wasn't trying to be," she insisted. "I'm serious. Every building typically has drain pipes. Rick could try climbing up one to a window upstairs, break the glass with his gun to get in." When there was no audible response, she added, "It's a suggestion, and it's better than no suggestion."

"I appreciate it, but I don't think that'll work," Rick muttered. "Soon as I even attempted something like that, I'd probably pull the pipe away from the building and fall off with it."

He sighed nervously as Nicole pulled the outer door open and light finally filtered into the room. It was virtually silent outside, except for faint sound of the walkers snarling in the parking lot at the front of the hotel, echoing off the other buildings surrounding the area. At least they hope it was just echoes and not the herd making their way onto the road which was their only exit out of the area.

As they began to slip out the back door quietly, Rick raised his machete and shielded his eyes from the sun with his free hand for a moment until his sight adjusted to the brightness. Straight ahead of them was a large, bright blue dumpster right near the concrete ramp down the back of the property that led to the road directly behind the building. Rick and Daryl both spread out to ascertain the safety of their immediate surroundings with their respective weapons at the ready. The snarling from the front of the building was much louder now that they were outside but the line of trees lining the back of the property on the curb prevented them from seeing what the threat level was in either direction on the road.

Stepping up to the property fence, Rick peered through and looked to his left. "There's a Citgo at the corner. We might be able to find some different vehicles."

"That's the direction the walkers came from. There's probably stragglers and once a few see us, more will," Daryl remarked. "I say we go right, down that side street across the road, make a run for it once we got our people together."

"And where do we do that? Do we just stand here and wait until everyone figures out where to go and meet us?" Nicole questioned, still holding Mika.

Rick bit his bottom lip. "The apartment building across the street," he said, gesturing through the fence. "We'll go inside there and keep a lookout." He looked at Daryl who nodded, accepting that plan for now. Then, noticing Nicole struggling with the ten-year-old's weight, he turned his back to them both and pointed to his back. "Hop on, Mika."

The girl moved quickly, grabbing her hands onto his shoulders and hooking her legs around his waist as she climbed onto his back. Rick held onto her left leg as he got accustomed to her weight on him which wasn't that bad. He had to hunch forward slightly, but he could still move with enough ease with her. It was a necessary move. She wasn't armed and wouldn't be able to run as fast as the adults with her short legs.

Not wasting anymore time, Rick led them down the concrete ramp and unhooked the cast iron gate at the bottom, pushing it open slowly while keeping a careful eye out. The other three hurried quietly behind him as they stepped up to the sidewalk and stopped to look both ways; not for traffic, obviously, but for walkers.

As they began to dart across the street in a straight line, one behind the other, toward the apartment building, the sound of gunfire echoing in the air alerted each of them. Their heads whipped to the right to see a few of the random Communers their group hadn't really gotten to know, along with Finn, Milo and Merle. They were coming from the Citgo gas station at the corner, firing their guns at a small group of walkers that had broken off from the herd, on the road that intersected with the one they were all on.

"Merle!" Daryl shouted.

The older Dixon grinned big when he spotted Daryl. "Little brother!" he shouted back, firing a single shot into a walker's head.

As the group coming from the corner ran to join Rick's group, a walker stepped out from a parking lot across from the gas station and clamped its teeth down on the shoulder of one of the unfamiliar Communers. As the young, nameless man pulled himself away, screaming in pain, Rick grimaced. The young man just kept screaming, which was the last thing any of them needed.

A woman ran to his side, crying out hysterically and shot at the walker, but missed; only managing to hit it in the throat, so it kept on coming. Finn growled angrily and made the kill shot. As the walker fell backward, another walker stumbled forward and grabbed onto the woman, biting down on her face, ripping it away as she screamed as well. Blood sprayed out everywhere as Milo shot the offending walker in the head, dropping it.

As there was no saving either of them at this point, and with their screams only drawing attention from the herd that was literally only a block away, Rick made eye contact with his brother-in-law and both men nodded. Passing Mika back off to Nicole, he quickly told his group to head to the apartment building. He then hurried over to Finn's side and crouched down at the wounded couple with him as Milo and Merle took out the stragglers.

"Shh," Rick urged the couple, to no avail. "You gotta stop screaming."

Taking a steadying breath, he shot Finn another knowing look. Rick placed a hand over the wounded man's face and turned it away from him as he stabbed him through the side of his skull with his machete. The wounded woman screamed again, but it was more from the shock of what she'd just witnessed Rick do.

"Nina, I'm sorry," Finn insisted; hesitating to do what he knew needed to be done.

"Finn," Rick muttered urgently.

"I know," the younger man replied solemnly. Aiming his gun at Nina's head, he pulled the trigger and dropped her.

Turning away, Finn avoided eye contact with Rick; not because he was angry at Rick for anything, but because he was just upset with everything at the moment.

"Did you see Jen or my sister get out?" Finn asked as he joined Rick's side; both of them running toward the apartment building Daryl had led the females to.

"Jo went upstairs to find Sophia," Rick replied, his nerves frayed. "I didn't see Jen." He could see the younger man's shoulders slump, the same as how his were. "I'm sorry."

"If they don't make it…" Then realization hit him. "Shit—and my mother."

"They'll make it. They have to," Rick insisted, although there wasn't too much conviction in his voice. "They have too to live for. I don't know your mother or Jen very well, but I know your sister, and she is a fighter. She's gone through too much to go out now, stuck in there."

"We all gotta go sometime," Merle remarked, having been listening to the brothers-in-law talking as they walked up to the front steps of the apartment building.

"You're gonna want to stop talking," Rick hissed. As Daryl opened the door for them and they began slipping in, Rick hesitated and turned around, looking toward the back of the hotel. His hand gripping the handle of his machete was shaking. "I can't…" Turning around and facing his friend, he cocked his head slightly to the side. "Daryl, I gotta—"

"Yeah, yeah, I know," the archer cut him off, stepping outside onto the porch to stand guard in the event of walkers approaching the building. "Go find your woman. I got this."

Rick gave him a nod as Finn moved to join him. "No, Finn. Stay here. If I don't make it back, you help lead the rest of any survivors away from here with Daryl. You go to DC with them, and you find my daughter, your niece. Understand me?"

Finn huffed. "Jen's in there."

"And I will try and find her, too. Just stay put."

Without waiting for confirmation that his brother-in-law agreed to what he said, Rick ran back across the street and up the concrete ramp just as a second floor window shattered. He looked up to see glass showering down to the ground, followed by bedsheets tied together like a rope dropping down from the window. It looked so cliché, but in the time like this it proved necessary.

Stepping back slightly to get a view at who was about to exit the window, Rick spotted Karen climbing out, carefully avoiding and remaining shards of glass, and then descending the rope, gripping it tightly in her hands. She slid down as far as she could before she could drop safely the rest of the way to land on her feet without breaking or spraining a foot. Rick hurried over to her, to spot her as she dropped the rest of the way in case she needed something to break her fall. She did slightly lose her balance when she touched down, and winced as mild pain shot up her leg from her foot, but smiled with relief to see Rick there.

"Who else is up there with you?" he inquired.

"Tyreese and Sam."

"Anyone else?"

Karen shook her head sadly as Sam began to descend the rope next. "Ana got attacked on the stairs. She wasn't fast enough to get away. The walkers grabbed her leg and pulled her down and they just surrounded her so quickly," Karen informed, tears stinging her eyes. "Oh God, her screams."

Rick grimaced. Sure it was sad about Ana, but he was imagining Jo suffering the same fate. He turned his face away from Karen and looked up to see Sam dropped down to the ground as Tyreese climbed out next. Sam looked completely shaken but he was in one piece, even if covered in a little bit of blood. Rick couldn't help but wonder whose it was.

"Go across the street, to the apartment building just there," Rick pointed through the property fence. "Daryl and a few of ours are there waiting."

"Are Jo and he girls there?" Karen asked.

Rick shook his head slightly. "No, well, Mika is. She was with me, but Jo went off looking for Sophia and neither of them have come out yet."

"I'm sorry, Rick," she muttered.

"They're making their way up the stairs now," Tyreese announced as he dropped down to the ground, placing his hands on his knees to brace himself as he straightened his posture. "The second floor is gonna be swarming with them soon enough."

That was the last thing Rick wanted to hear and it showed on his face as his own tears stung at his eyes.

Fortunately, one good thing happened next.

The same door he'd come out of with the others burst open and out tumbled Sophia and the other teen girl, Piper. As soon as his adoptive daughter saw him, she threw her ran right over to him and threw her arms around her next with a cry of relief.

Rick wrapped his arms tightly around her back and sighed with relief as well, although it was short-lived. "Did Jo find you?"

Sophia pulled back and nodded. "Yeah, but she went back for her mother."

Rick's shoulders slumped. There had been such a glimmer of hope there for a second when he saw Sophia come out and now it was gone. "Okay," he nodded, feeling a bit distracted by his thoughts. "Where's her mother?"

"I don't know."

"Alright," he muttered. "Go across the street. Daryl's waiting in an apartment building with some of our people. Hurry up."

"Aren't you coming?"

"I gotta find Jo," he insisted.

Tyreese placed a hand on his shoulder. "The entire first floor is overrun, Rick. You won't get in. You'll get killed before you could take two steps in any direction."

Rick shrugged Tyreese's hand away. "I gotta do something."

"Surviving is doing something," Karen remarked. "Jo would want you to survive so at least one of you could go find your daughter. You know that's what she'd want."

"It's not what I want. I want her."

"She's probably dead, and you want to go get yourself killed," Sam grumbled bitterly. "You have people who still depend on you; you have children, Rick."

Rick glanced at the towheaded man. "You don't think I know that?" he growled slightly.

"If you do, then why are you going to risk your life?"

Tyreese frowned. "Sam's right, man. You can't go back in."

"You gonna stop me?"

"I can and I will," Tyreese replied. "I'm a big man. You know I can knock you out with one punch. I will throw you over my shoulder and carry you away from here if I have to."

Rick hesitated, clenching his jaw as well as his fists. "Goddammit, fine." Gesturing down the concrete ramp, he added, "C'mon, this way."

At the base of a different stairwell she'd originally gone up earlier to first go looking for Sophia, Jo peered through the sliver of window in the door to see plenty of walkers bumping into each other in the ground floor hallway on the other side.

"Shit," she muttered.

"There a lot of 'em?" Harry questioned.

"Hell yes." Throwing an anxious look over her shoulder at her mother, she sighed heavily. "There's only one way we're getting through that hall and to your office in one piece."

Inhaling deeply, Jo opened the door slowly and as quietly as possible. Reaching a trepid hand out, she grabbed onto the arm of a walker and yanked it toward the door, which she opened up a bit wider to pull it into the stairwell. She had to move fast as she shoved the door shut with her body and simultaneously stabbed the eternally hungry creature in the head with her knife.

As the body slumped down the stairwell wall, other walkers out in the hall began pounding at the door, having been alerted to movement.

"Keep that door shut," Jo commanded, as she crouched down in front of the walker.

"What are you going to do?" Harry wondered, pressing her back against the door with as much strength as she could muster.

Holding her knife in front of the walker's chest, Jo grimaced. She answered her mother's question by stabbing the walker and dragging the knife up from gut to gullet. Blood and intestines began to spill out onto his lap, and Jo didn't stop there, despite the immediately offending stench that filled the air. She stabbed the legs, the arms and the face; just hacking away and ripping it apart with her hands.

"I think I'm gonna be sick," Harry remarked, bringing a hand up to cover her nose.

"You can be sick when you're dead," Jo commented, and then looked up sheepishly, realizing what she'd said. "I'm sorry. I forgot."

"It's okay," Harry assured.

As Jo returned to ripping apart the walker with her hands, having set her knife down on the floor, a door to one of the upper floors opened up to the stairwell, followed by heavy and hurried footsteps descending the stairs. Both mother and daughter looked upward expectantly. They could tell that kind of movement didn't belong to a walker, so they felt safe enough at the moment.

Then, at the top of the landing several feet above them, Michonne appeared with her katana at her side and covered in blood. She looked as relieved to see them as they were of her.

"Oh, thank God. There you are," Michonne exclaimed, hurrying down the rest of the stairs and looking at what Jo was doing with curious eyes.

"We need to get to Harry's office, but this floor is full of walkers," Jo informed, pulling intestines out, and having to stop for a moment when the stench and gore suddenly got the better of her.

"What's in the office?" Michonne wondered.

"This building has been rigged to blow up in case something like this ever happened," Harry replied. "John set it up a few weeks ago with plenty of C-4 he found at Fort Benning. The detonation device is in my office. I just need to connect the wires first and as soon as I press the button: boom."

"You're doing it by yourself?"

"I've been bit." Harry reached up to reveal her wound to Michonne. "Long story short: John did it. Lena shot and killed him. Jo killed Lena. And then John came back and bit me. The end."

Michonne frowned, and then looked away from Harry to Jo, who was fighting back the urge to vomit. Crouching down beside the blonde, she set her katana down and began grabbing the intestines as well. "We're gonna wear this shit, ain't we?"

"That's the plan," Jo struggled to reply over the lump of vomit stuck in her throat. She swallowed it back as best as she can, but couldn't do it anymore. Turning around quickly, Jo threw up on the floor behind her; hunching forward on her hands and knees. Spitting the rest of it out of her mouth, she turned back toward the eviscerated walker with renewed vigor. "Alright, I'm good."

She and Michonne both began to wiped the blood all over their arms and chests, getting each other's backs as well. They wiped the blood on their faces; careful to keep it away from their eyes and mouths. They rubbed it in their hair and clothes and then stood up to coat Harry as best as they could. There was plenty of blood to go around, and it was offending Jo again as her stomach began to sour.

Draping intestines and other body parts around their shoulders in order to mask their own scents and smell like the dead, which they sure as hell did, they were prepared for making the risky trek into the walker-infested hallway.

As the three of them stood there, Jo and Michonne each reached back down for their respective weapons as they looked at Harry who was struggling to maintain her weight against the door with her gradually weakening state from the infection in her system. Michonne took over, grabbing onto the door handle and making the decision to lead the way out since she had the larger weapon. Although, she would have to keep it lowered as they made their way through the hall.

With a nod of agreement, Michonne determined it time to open the door.

Slowly and quietly, she pulled it open and the other two stepped in time behind her. Several walkers' heads turned toward them but they just kept their wits about them as best as they could. Neither one spoke nor did they try making eye contact with any walker, as if the undead would someone they were alive from that alone. Walkers came close to them, sniffing aimlessly in their direction. Several bumped into them as well, because the hallway was just that congested. The women were tensing; jaws and fist clenching as they breathed quietly and steadily out their mouths because of the overwhelming smell.

It was working rather well.

The walkers didn't seem to give a shit about them. There were one or two that got a little too close for comfort, possibly able to sense something human about them, but then getting pushed off by other walkers. The women tried snarling to fit in better, but Harry wasn't that good at it. Just before they reached her office, the walker of a child, as sad as that sight was, came stumbling up against Harry, which startled her. The noise that came from her alerted other walkers, especially the child one, who bore its teeth and bit into her hand.

Jo and Michonne snapped their heads toward Harry and then grabbed her quickly as they darted the rest of the way to the office, which was only a couple of feet away. Michonne raised her katana and swung, removing heads in her way with graceful ease while Jo jammed her knife into the heads nearest her; both kicking at others to keep them back as best as they could.

Jo struggled with the door knob a little at first and then was able to shove it open; pulling her mother inside. Michonne piled in after them and immediately threw her back up against the door before setting it on lock with the deadbolt and then stepped away to let out a breather.

"Getting out is gonna be much harder than getting in here," Michonne remarked, giving her blade a shake of excess walker blood.

Harry sauntered tiredly over to her desk and pulled open a bottom drawer. She pushed some papers aside and lifted up to reveal there was a false bottom as she removed the detonation device in question. Jo and Michonne watched anxiously as the older female turned and crouched down to pulled something out from underneath a shelf, which turned out to be two wires. Leaning against the wall behind her, Harry sank down to the floor with a tired sigh and twisted both wires together.

"How long until this places blows?" Jo inquired.

Harry looked up at her daughter and smiled sadly. "The second I hit the button, which is why you two need to get out of here as soon as possible," she replied. "I might have fifteen, maybe twenty, minutes left in me. I need to press the button before then or it won't happen at all. Please make sure you get away from here quick. Find the others that got out, get them away from the building. Don't let my death be in vain. Please."

Jo and Michonne both nodded as they watched Harry shove the tangled wires into the end of the detonation device and then let her thumb hover just below the trigger mechanism.

"Are you sure you can do this?" Michonne asked.

Harry nodded. "I have no choice. I have to do this. I need to." Turning her gaze up to Jo, she stared warmly. "You and your brother were the best thing I ever did. The only happiness I ever felt in my life was the moments you were born. I wasn't there for you during your life, but I will be there for you with my death." She nodded at her own comment and looked over to the left. "There's an axe in that cabinet, and some extra bullets. Take 'em."

Michonne stepped forward and pulled the cabinet door open. She grabbed the box of bullets up and shoved it into one of the deeper pockets of the cargo-style pants she was wearing and then passed the axe to Jo who needed the larger weapon more than she did. Taking it gingerly, Jo nodded at Michonne and then crouched down to her mother's level.

"Thank you," she muttered. "For everything you did and didn't do for me."

Harry smirked. "Give that daughter of yours a big kiss for me when you find her. Tell her Grandma Harry is watching out for her in heaven, or wherever it is I end up in the afterlife." She chuckled at herself and then, as an afterthought, she added, "Give that husband of yours a kiss for me, too. He's a good lookin' man, and if I were twenty years younger…"

Jo chuckled as well, but her slight laughter was tinged with grief as tears began to roll from her eyes. "I will. I'll kiss them both and hug them tight and never let go. Finn, too. I'll tell him you love him."

"Thank you, Joanna. My girl." Harry gestured toward the door with a nod of her head. "It's now or never, you two. Stop wasting daylight."

Michonne reached a hand out and gripped Jo's shoulder to get her to stand up. Jo just nodded and stood back up to her feet.

"Love ya," Jo muttered, stepping backward toward the door.

"Love ya, too." Just as Michonne unlocked the door again and was about to open it back up, Harry called out, "Hey." Both women at the door looked back at her. "Goodbye."

"Bye, Harry," Michonne replied.

"Goodbye, mom." Jo smiled ruefully and then turned to look at Michonne.

With a flurry of motion the door was lurched open and Michonne swung fast and efficiently, allowing Jo to close the door behind them so no walkers would get inside the office and prevent Harry from doing what she needed to do. Side by side, both women ran toward the lobby, which was a mistake, since that's where most of the walkers were still piling in from. There was definitely no getting out that way or down the opposite hallway, and the way they'd come from was too congested with walkers that knew they were alive. Their only option — as walkers began gaining on them — was through the courtyard and hopefully find a way out on the other side.

With her axe raised, Jo struck the glass of the door. As it shattered before them, they then moved through the opening, careful not to scratch themselves on any shards because of the walker blood coating their skin. At breakneck speed they darted across the courtyard as walkers began spilling in behind them. The door on the other side gave them a perfect view of the hallway at the back side of the building, which was congested with walkers now. And it seemed they were officially screwed.

Michonne, however, had been part of the Commune basically since the beginning and new all the ins and outs. "This way," she pointed with the tip of her katana toward a window as they ran in that direction. "That window leads into a room. We break the window and crawl in, and then make a run for the stairs that'll be just outside that room. We get to the second floor, break another window, and we'll hafta jump down."

"And hopefully not break our legs in the process."

"If we do, we crawl the rest of the way out."

With her axe, Jo once more broke the glass, this time to the window. Michonne pulled a chair over to help them climb in. She hurried up and removed her brown, leather vest and draped it over the ledge so they didn't cut themselves on the shards sticking out, letting Jo climb in first. Once both had made it into the room, they wasted no time looking back. They hurried over toward the door and pulled it open, immediately kicking at walkers in their way and swinging their respective blades into skulls.

To their immediately left was a door to a stairwell that they yanked open. A walker very nearly clamped its teeth down on Jo's arm, but Michonne's blade swiftly lodged itself into the walker's cranium, dropping it like a hot potato.

"Thanks."

"Don't mention it," Michonne muttered as the two of them slipped into the stairwell and then took the stairs two at a time.

If they had ten minutes left to get out, that was definitely a lot, but the clock wasn't the only thing they were forced to fight against.

Once in the second floor hall, they heard screams of what could only be someone being ripped apart. And, sure enough, when they looked down the hall, they saw it was the doctor, Gavin Trevitt getting his face and neck torn open from decayed teeth and hands. His unfortunate fate allowed them the distraction to head toward a room facing the back of the building without too many walkers in their way.

As they darted into the room, they found they weren't alone. Inside were Milton and Jen, cowering and holding what appeared to be simple kitchen knives in their hands.

"Oh, thank God," Jen muttered. "How do we get out?"

"We jump out a window," Michonne remarked, deadpan.

"We'll break our legs in the fall," Milton admonished.

"We don't have any other choice," Jo replied. "My mother has this place rigged to explode within the next five to ten minutes, give or take. We need to go now."

Michonne stalked up to the window and swore under her breath. "There's bars on this window. We gotta find a different room."

"Why are there bars?"

"I forgot. We installed them to use this room as a type of jail cell, so no one could get out that we put inside here. Fuck."

"Alright, come on." Jo led the way back out of the room as walkers came stumbling toward her and the others.

As they neared a room at the end of the hall that faced the side of the building, Michonne opened the door and looked back at Jo, letting her in first and then as Jen got close, a walker practically launched itself at her and bit down on her hand, removing two fingers in the process. Jen screamed out in pain as blood spewed from where her fingers had been. Michonne and Jo looked back in shock and, as another walker came to finish the job, Milton shoved Jen toward the other two women, condemning himself in order to save Jen. The approaching walker bit down on his arm and as he yanked it away, two more walkers came up to him; one biting into his neck and another at the ear on the opposite side. He screamed out in pain, matching Jen's agony, but when Jo made eye contact with him, he seemed rather resigned to his fate and Jo could only nod at him.

He'd earned her respect at last. He'd put someone else's life before his own.

Without another word, Jo slammed the room door shut and turned around to see Jen hunched forward and bleeding on the floor.

"Oh my God, I'm gonna die!" Jen cried out. "No, no, no, no…"

"Shut up," Jo bit out. They didn't have time for her cowering. "Hold your hand out?"

"Why?"

"Just do it, dammit."

As Jen obliged, Jo raised her axed up and then swung down at the floor, severing Jen's arm; halfway between the wrist and the elbow to play it safe as she didn't know how fast the infection might've already spread.

Jen screamed out in agony again, but Jo pulled her up to her feet. "Get up or we're leaving you."

"You cut off my hand!"

"To save your damn life," Michonne remarked as she went to the window and shattered it. She took the comforter off the bed and draped it through the window and gestured for the other two to come over.

"No, you go first," Jo insisted. "You drop down and then be there to help break Jen's fall. I'll climb out after."

"You sure?"

"We don't have time to debate this. Just fucking do it."

Michonne nodded. Sheathing her katana, she crawled up onto the window's edge and then stuck her legs out. Twisting her body around, she gripped the edge with her hands, straining to keep herself up and not just fall backward out the window. Using as much upper body strength as she could muster, Michonne slowly lowered her body down the side of the building, her feet dangling and then, with a shaky breath, let go.

The spewing of expletives and the soft thud coming from outside indicated that she'd gotten out just fine.

"Okay!" Michonne shouted up. "Send out Jen!"

Quickly removing a pillowcase, Jo draped it over Jen's severed hand and wrapped it tightly around the stump just as quickly as possible while leading her over to the window. "You can do this, Jen. Think of Finn waiting for you."

Jen's lips and chin were quivering. She was crying out of fear and pain as she nodded begrudgingly as Jo helped her crawl up onto the windowsill. Gripping as tightly as she could on the younger blonde's forearms, Jo did her best to dangle her out the window without just unceremoniously dropping her.

She did, however.

The door to the hotel room clanged open and walkers began to spill inside, which distracted Jo. Her grip on Jen released and the younger woman fell. Fortunately, Michonne was down below and broke Jen's fall. As they clamored to their feet, Michonne looked wildly up at the window.

"Jo! Come on!"

There was no response.

"I think walkers got into the room," Jen muttered, lethargically. Blood loss was getting the best of her. "She had to let go of me."

"Oh God," Michonne muttered. "Jo!"

Still nothing.

But then, "Go! I'll be right behind you!"

Michonne stared up at the window, having heard Jo's voice to know she was still alive. At least, for the moment she was. With minimal relief, Michonne threw Jen's good arm over her shoulder and began to lead her toward the back of the building, toward the concrete ramp.

Rick was pacing in the front yard of the apartment building with his fingers twitching over his holstered Colt. His nostrils were flaring, his jaw clenching and unclenching, and his heart was beating so fast he felt like he was going to drop dead.

"You're gonna wear a hole in the grass, man," Merle quipped, leaning against the porch railing with his bladed arm draped across his lap.

"I'm gonna wear a hole through your head if you don't shut up," Rick sneered, throwing a dangerous look over his shoulder at the one-handed man.

"You're going to draw attention to yourself, Rick," Morgan spoke.

He had made it out of a third story window moment with the help of a rope he'd found, minutes after Rick had led Tyreese, Karen, Sam, Sophia and Piper across the street. Morgan had gotten out alone, losing two Communers that had been trying to escape with him up to the third floor. When he had informed Rick that he hadn't seen Jo either, Rick had headed straight into the apartment building, kicking open the door to the downstairs apartment on the right and knocking shit over out of frustration.

When Rick had seen how shaken Mika looked to see him acting so rashly, he felt an instant pang of guilt and went back outside to calm down.

"We need to think about getting the hell out of here," Milo advised. "Eventually the herd is gonna split. Not all of them will fit inside the hotel and those fuckers are gonna spread out, they'll come this way. We need to be on the move."

Rick turned around and glared at the bearded blonde man. "You wanna go, then go. I ain't keeping you here. But I'm staying until Jo gets out."

"If she hasn't gotten out by now—"

"If you wanna keep your fingers, you won't wanna finish that sentence," Daryl threatened, knowing how hard of a time his best friend was having at the moment.

If Rick lost Jo he was certain that would be the straw that broke the camel's back. Daryl knew that Rick cared for Sophia and Mika as his own, that he loved them as his own, but he also knew Jo meant so much more to him. The couple had been through so much together since Jo came into his life. Losing the prison, their friends, and not knowing whether there daughter was alive or dead in the world had been tough enough to try and deal with. But through all that, at least Rick and Jo had each other. The entire group was a family, of that there was no question, but Jo was his lifeline. Without her, Rick would lose himself and become something less.

Daryl could almost see pieces of it now in his friend's eyes. The light was going in them. Rick was hardening, becoming a shell at the thought of walking the world without his other half. Daryl knew how that felt. Sure, he and Carol had never had the chance to become anything more than just good friends who loved each other, but he knew something more could've developed between them and with that chance gone forever, a part of him died with her back at Terminus and he was certain he'd never get it back. He didn't want that for Rick.

Everyone's attention was drawn back to the hotel at the sound of shattering glass echoing off surrounding buildings. A few walkers up the road stirred at the noise and started ambling forward with renewed vigor.

Rick, along with Daryl and Finn hurried up to the property line, stepping up to the sidewalk parallel to the street and stared with anticipation toward the hotel. Then, moments later, they saw two figures walking down the concrete ramp, through the trees lining the sidewalk at the back of the hotel's property. One was a dark-skinned woman and the other was a blonde woman, being helped along by the former.

His heart swelling with hope, Rick darted out across the street. Pulling out his Colt, he shot an approaching walker in the face as both women hurried away from the concrete ramp and out onto the pavement.

"Jo!" Rick called out with relief, but then stopped in his tracks.

Michonne looked up at him with a grimace as he realized the blonde woman wasn't Jo.

"Jen!" Finn shouted as he rushed past Rick and pulled his girlfriend into his arms. She cried out in pain upon the gesture and he pulled back to notice she was holding what looked to be a bleeding hand wrapped in a pillowcase. "What happened?"

"Rotters bit my fingers off," Jen whimpered.

"Jo cut off her hand with an axe to prevent the infection from spreading," Michonne informed as she limped away from the hotel while Finn scooped Jen up into his arms bridal-style.

Rick turned toward Michonne at the mention of Jo's name. "Jo—is she?"

Michonne shrugged. "She was right behind us."

"I'm going back for her," Rick decided, taking a step forward but was stopped by Michonne grabbing his arm.

"No, we need to get as far back from the hotel as we can."

"Jo's still in there!" he growled.

"Harry had the hotel rigged to blow sky high if it ever got overrun like this. If we have two minutes left, that's a lot."

"I only need one."

"Rick, don't be an idiot."

"Oh, shit, the failsafe," Finn muttered. "Rick, Michonne's right. John found a shit ton of C-4, planted it all over the hotel."

Michonne eyed the younger man. "Your mom was bit, twice. We got her to her office and she's in there with the detonation device. She said she loves you." As Finn nodded solemnly at that information, Michonne turned back to Rick, trying to pull him back toward the house where she saw the others. "She gave us fifteen, twenty minutes tops. And time is up, Rick. I'm sorry."

A wave of so many different emotions began to hit Rick, but at the forefront was anger and denial. He couldn't just stand there and let Jo die in an exploded building. He had to do something. He had to save her. He had to—

A series of orchestrated blasts from inside the hotel suddenly went off. The ground below everyone's feet rumbled like an earthquake had struck, car alarms in cars thought to be long dead came alive and then came the windows to the hotel shattering outward as the entire building suddenly imploded. Like dominoes or a game of Jenga, the building collapsed inward on itself. A huge billowing of smoke and debris shout out in every direction causing everyone at the apartment building to take cover or just drop to the ground as not to be injured from the blast or any form of shrapnel.

As smoke continued to fill the air around them and coat them with the dust, each person got back up and stared across at the empty space which was once the hotel. There were a few small fires burning here and there, but mostly it was just all smoke, which caused almost everyone to cough and hack.

"No," Rick muttered, scrambling up to his feet. "No, no, no, no, no…"

He wiped the dust from his face a bit to see better and waved a hand in front of him to clear some of the smoke as he began stalking toward the rubble. Daryl was at his side, placing a hand on his shoulder.

"Rick, she's gone."

"No," Rick whined, tears stinging his eyes worse than the dust and smoke.

His nostrils were flaring again, but it was from the overwhelming feeling of grief he was trying to rein in but failing miserably at. He got halfway into the road and dropped down to his knees. His hands were outstretched slightly in front of him and then he just dropped them to the pavement and hunched forward onto the ground as he sobbed loudly. His sobs wracked his entire body and he was virtually inconsolable at the moment.

Everyone else seemed just as stunned and shaken. Karen was holding Mika close, who was crying as well, but Sophia was the other one to take this new development as hard as Rick. She dropped to her knees, sitting back on the heels of her feet and began to cry. Daryl stepped back toward her and crouched down beside her, pulling her into his arms to hug her close. He couldn't imagine how the teenager was feeling, having losing one mother so soon after the other. Jo and Sophia had been through so much together, just as Rick and Jo had.

Falling over onto his side, Rick curled himself into a fetal position and just continued to cry for the loss of the love of his life.