Disclaimer - I do not own The Walking Dead or any of its characters. I only own my original character Rayne and anything else that seems out of place.

Thank you to lyannann31, jrocha374282, FaerieQueenCrystal, xXxDragonPhoenixXx, olliensam, kmreece and filthie for choosing to follow and favorite this story.

And a huge THANK YOU to Kaikitty165 and a guest for the absolutely amazing reviews of chapter 52, they made my entire day!

So I know a lot of people love Carol, but I honestly can't stand her, so she won't be playing as big of a role in my story as she did in the show. Most of her somewhat badass moments, will be done by Rayne. I'm sorry if this pisses anyone off, but it's Rayne's story and she's my hero in this.

As always reviews are appreciated.


After arriving at the church with his new friend in tow, Daryl sat everyone down and told them about what had happened in Atlanta. They all agreed that they would go after Beth and Carol with everything they had.


The next morning Daryl was in the church with Tyreese, who was taking the pipes off of the organ to use as weapons. He turns to see Sasha swinging an axe, completely destroying one of the pews.

Ty gets down from the ladder and hands one of the pipes to Daryl, "It was- it was good you weren't here for it."

Daryl nods his head to Sasha, "She hanging in there?"

"No."

Daryl takes the pipes outside and shoves them into the ground by the porch alongside the others, leaving them sticking up as a defense for the church.

"Are you gonna take the cross, too?" Gabriel comments as he watches them dismantle his church.

"If we need it." Daryl states.


On the other side of the church Rick and Michonne are boarding up the windows alongside Carl, Rayne and Nico. Rick nods over to his son, "He wants to go to Atlanta, but I can't have that."

"Then you stay. I'll go." Michonne offers.

"I owe it to Carol."

"We all owe Carol."

"I owe her more." Rick says feeling horrible that he had exiled her in the first place.


Nico heard what Rick had told Michonne, leaning over to his sister he asked her, "Are you ever gonna tell 'em who really rescued everyone from Terminus?"

Rayne shakes her head, "No."

"Why not Ray?"

Rayne sighed as she turned to her brother, "I didn't do it for the accolades, Nic, I did it to rescue my family. Whether Daryl and I are together or not, Carol means somethin' to him. And if lettin' Rick believe that Carol saved everyone, keeps her around and makes Daryl happy, then I'll gladly take this secret to my grave."

Nico shakes his head as he hugs his sister tight, leaning down to whisper in her ear. "He will never know how much he doesn't deserve you."

Rayne laughs as she pulls back from her brother, "He's a good man. There ain't too many of 'em left nowadays." She sees Daryl looking at her and she gives him a wink, she can tell by his face that he's confused, but he smiles all the same in return. She giggles as he walks away thoroughly confused, she glances up at Nico, "I think I'll keep him."


An hour later the group is preparing to go, Rayne, Daryl, Michonne and Nico loading up all of the supplies into her truck. Rick is inside saying goodbye to Judith and Carl, kissing his daughters head before handing her back to Carl.

"We'll be back soon." He says hugging his son.

"I know."


Daryl leads the way in the box van with Rick riding shotgun, Sasha and Tyreese in the back, while Rayne and Nico followed in her truck with the kid Daryl and Carol had rescued.


Out on the road down by the farm overrun with walkers, Glenn walks back up to Tara who is trying to get water out of the firetruck. "They got no clue we're here." He tells her.

"That's great news for GREATM. In less great news for GREATM, we just scraped the bottom of the water barrel."

Glenn furrows his brows, "What is- what's GREATM?"

"Us. Group name. Solidarity. Band of brothers. GREATM." She says pointing down at the water bottles with their first initial on the cap which spelled out the word. "Thinking about getting a tattoo on my knuckles. Sorry, I'm just trying to think of something else, you know?"

"Yeah." Glenn says taking his water bottle and drinking a sip.

"Anything?" Tara questions Maggie as she walks up, she's been tending to Eugene since Abraham knocked him out hours ago.

"No."

"Should we get him to the church?" Glenn asks his girlfriend, she shakes her head, "Moving him could make him worse."

"What will make him better?" Rosita asks.

"Waking up. If he doesn't—" Maggie let the sentence hang in the air, they all knew what she meant.

Rosita grabs the bottle of water with the A on top and walks over to Abraham, who is still kneeling on the ground. "Come on. You haven't had anything to drink all day. Take the bottle. Seriously, my six-year-old nephew didn't pull this shit."

Abraham slaps the bottle out of her hand and she sighed, leaning over she looks down at him "Don't do this, Abraham. Look at me! Look at me!"

He jumps to his feet, rage etched across his face as he stared her down with malice. A gun cocks and he turns to see Maggie with her gun drawn, pointing at his head. "Sit down or I'll put you down."

She uncocks it and puts it back into the holster as he kneels back down on the ground.

"Well, what's next on the agenda?" Rosita asks.


In Atlanta the group was gathered in the basement of the building that the kid Noah, had directed them to, which was just across from the hospital. "At sundown we fire a shot into the air. Get two of them out on patrol. Then once it's dark enough that the rooftop spotter won't see us, we go. We cut the locks on one of the stairways, take it to the fifth floor. I open the door, Daryl takes the guard out."

"How?" Ty asks Rick.

"He slits his throat. This is all about us doing this quiet, keeping the upper hand. They're not expecting us. From there, we fan out. Knives and silenced weapons. We need to be fast." Rick shows them on the floor in the drawing he made of the building, Noah had told them what it looked like.

"Tyreese, Sasha, take them. Daryl, you take care of whoever is in the kitchen. I got Dawn. Rayne and Nico, anyone gets past us or comes up, you take 'em out. If they're smart, the rest of them will give up. Then it'll be seven on three. Eight on three once we get a weapon to Beth."

"Fourteen on three." Noah says. "The wards will help."

"That's best case. What's worst case?" Ty asks. "All it takes is one of those cops going down the hall at the wrong time. Then it's not quiet. All hands on deck. We're talking about a lot of bullets flying around."

"If that's what it takes." Sasha says with a shrug.

"It's not." Ty says shaking his head. "If we get a couple of her cops alive out here, we do an even trade. Theirs for ours. Everybody goes home."

Rick stands up, "Yeah, I get it. And it might work. This will work."

"Nah, that'll work, too." Daryl says pointing to Noah. "You say this Dawn, she's just trying to keep it together, right?"

"Trying and doing are two different things."

"You take two of her cops away, what choices does she have?" Daryl says his eyes locked on Rick. "Everybody goes home. Like he said."


Back at the firetruck Glenn realizes they need to go scavenge, "We need more water."

"There's a creek up the road a few miles southwest of here." Tara says having looked at the map.

"Y'all go. I'll stay here." Maggie says.

"You sure?" Glenn asks her concerned.

She nods, "I am."

"Okay."


Tara follows Glenn and Rosita down the road, turning off and walking through a field. They pass a downed telephone pole with about four walkers trapped underneath of it.

"Stay here, guys. Don't get up. There is nothing for you in Washington." Tara snarks.

"That's not funny." Rosita says.

"It's not not not not funny." Tara smirks as they continue walking.

"Hey, I get that we're all dealing with things in different ways-" Glenn starts to say, but Rosita interrupts him, "Listen, I don't know what to do without DC anymore, but I'm not dealing with it. I'm over it. I just want him to be okay."

"Eugene wasn't strong. He isn't fast. He doesn't know how to use a weapon. The truth hurts, but he's useless. He had one skill that kept him living. Are we supposed to be mad at him 'cause he used it?" Tara questioned.

"Damn right." Glenn grumbled.


Back at the truck Maggie pulls the ladder down off of the top of the truck, she takes it up front and leans it up against the truck over Eugene, before she takes a blanket out of the truck and drapes it over the ladder to cover the man. She walks back and snaps at Abraham, "Get over yourself. You're not the only one who lost something today. It's never gonna get any better than this."


At the stream Glenn dips his bottle into the water and pulls it up, frowning at the dirty color of the liquid. "Perfect."

"You think it's any clearer upstream?" Tara asks.

They both turn as they hear fabric ripping, Rosita tearing off a piece of her shirt. "Probably not. Doesn't matter. Let me see." She takes the bottle from Glenn and rigs a quick filter for the water.

"So, you just built a water filter in about two minutes, huh?" Tara says impressed.

"Eugene taught me. Takes a while, but it'll be clear. Then we can boil it."

"Were you with Abraham before it all happened? " Tara asks.

Rosita shakes her head, "No. No, I was with other people just trying to make it."

"How'd you wind up together?" Glenn wonders.

"We crossed paths in Dallas. Me and my group, we were fighting off some dead ones and he jumped in from out of nowhere with that big truck. Rest in peace. He had Eugene in the cab. And afterwards, he told me that he was trying to save the world. And that he saw what I could do. And he wanted my help. He was the first person to ask me for that since this all started. Maybe he was lying, too."

Glenn suddenly sees a splash in the water to their right, "You see that? Those ripples. Those are fish."

"Okay, how?" Tara asks totally bewildered.

"Come on." Glenn says picking up their guns.


As planned Noah sent a shot into the air drawing the woman Darcy and one other cop their way. He hobbled away from them as best he could as they got out of the car, drawing their guns on him. "Put it down, Noah. Put the gun down." Darcy tells him.

Noah puts the gun down and raises his hands, as Darcy tells him, "Hands up. Turn around."

The other officer comes up behind him with a set of zip ties and secures them around his wrists. "You let me know if it's too tight, okay?"

"I thought you were smart, Noah. You think we wouldn't hear you?" Darcy questions.

"Where are those rotters you were shooting at?" The other cop asks him.

The two cops turn as they hear a whistle, finding themselves staring down the barrels of six guns. "Hands." Rick tells them.

"What do you want?" Darcy asks.

"Whatever this is, we can help." The other cop says.

"You do what we say, we don't hurt you." Rick tells them flatly. Both cops hold up their hands in defense. "Good. Now turn around. Put your guns on the floor and kneel."

The cops obey as Rayne walks up behind Noah and slices the ties on his hands. "Thanks."

"You're welcome." She says giving him a smile.

"We need to talk. There's water if you need some and food." Rick tells them as Daryl and Sasha secure their hands with ties.

Daryl yanks the male cop to his feet, the cop looks over at Rick, "Mind if I ask you something? The way you talk- the way you carry yourself- were you a cop? Believe it or not, I was, too."

"That's Lamson." Noah says. "He'll be down for this. He's one of the good ones."

The group turns as they hear tires squealing coming their way, they all scatter to the sides as the car flies up and two cops start shooting out of the windows. Darcy and the other cop jump into the back as the driver guns the engine, the tires squealing as it pulls away. The group opens fire on the car, Sasha places a bullet into the rear tire causing the car to fishtail.

The group runs after the car finding it stalled at the side of a building, the doors open showing the cops jumped out in a hurry. Rick sees two of them running away towards the front of the building, "Two, on me."

As the group runs after the cops Daryl lags behind to check the car and a nearby trailer to make sure no one was hiding in them. The trailer was clear, but as Daryl shuts the door, the bald cop that was driving the car rushes him taking the hunter to the ground.

Daryl gets to his feet as the two throw punches, neither of them connecting. The cop then knocks Daryl to the ground, putting his hands around his throat and choking him, as the walkers stuck to the ground try to bite Daryl's face. The hunter blindly reaches out for something to use as a weapon, his arm dangerously close to the walkers teeth beside him. Realizing his only choice is to use his surroundings, he jams his fingers into the eyes of the walker and rips the skull off of the body, the spine dangling in the air as Daryl bashes the man in the head with it.

A gunshot sounds as a bullet embeds into the skull of the living walker, the cop looks up finding a pissed off brunette with a rifle pointing at his head.

"Okay. You win, bitch." The cop snarks.

Rayne clenches her teeth as she positions her sight between the man's eyes, her finger hovering over the trigger. "Rayne. Rayne!" Daryl says trying to get her attention, but her eyes don't move from the cop. "Nix!" He hollers using her nickname which serves to gain her attention as she looks into his eyes. "Three is better than two."

She lowers her weapon with a nod as Daryl relieves the man of his weapons and ties his hands. Daryl shoots her a wink as he leads the man inside, she follows with a smile on her face and a shake of her head. Her only thought at that moment was, 'we have such a dysfunctional relationship.'


The group minus Rick takes the three cops into the warehouse, Darcy tries to plead their case with Daryl. "Your friend, what's his name? I need to talk to him. Your plan is going to get me and my friends killed."

"We're gonna make it work." Sasha says.

"It would work if you had different cops to trade." Darcy says. "Dawn's running Grady into the ground. A bunch of us want her out and she knows it. Pretty sure she knows we want Lamson to replace her, too."

"Dawn doesn't know that." The bald cop says.

"She might. And she's smart. So there's a good chance you can't make this deal work and that'll leave us all dead. But if you let us go, we'll take care of Dawn ourselves and then we'll let your friends go and this is over."

"No, we're not gonna do that." Lamson says.

"Do you want to die?" The woman says looking at her partner.

"No. I just need you to shut up right now. You can make this work. But you've got to be able to talk to her."

"Noah told us all about her." Sasha informs him.

"I've known her for eight years, ma'am. I know this woman. And my only interest is peaceful resolution, not dying, and sleeping in my bed tonight. So, please, let me help you. Please."

"Hey, Rick." Daryl calls to him, "You're gonna want to hear this."


After killing the walkers pinned underneath the telephone pole, Glenn and Rosita strip off their jackets, removing the inside liner which resembles a net, hoping to catch some fish with it.

Rosita chuckles as Glenn tosses her the lining from his jacket, she glances over her shoulder at Tara. "Hey, how are we doing over there, Tara?"

Tara gasps as she tugs something free from the ground, she stands up grinning as she holds up a muddy backpack. "Pretty damn good. How about you?"


The three head back down to the creek, Tara sits down on the bank and proceeds to go through the pack, hoping to find something they can use. "A screwdriver. Phillips head."

Out in the water Rosita and Glenn hold their makeshift net under the water, patiently waiting for the fish to swim over it. "Almost. Almost. Now." Glenn hollers as the two lift the fish out of the water, the creature twisting around in the net as they laugh.

"Hell, yes." Rosita smiles.

"It worked. Nice. You know how to clean these things?"

Rosita chuckles, "I know how to clean these things."

Glenn gives her a serious look as he hands her the net. "Good, we're gonna need that. Wherever we all wind up. You in?"

She chuckles again, "I'm in."

"Good."

"Guys." Tara calls gaining their attention, they see her holding something in her hand. "You will never believe what's in this bag."


At the hospital Beth had been entrusted by one of the cops to save Carol's life, as the officers were ordered to take her off of her support machines. So after using the key for the drug locker she was provided, she took the necessary medicine and injected it into Carol's IV. Beth was hopeful, she knew that if Carol was there, then there was a chance that others were too, and that meant she just might get out of the hospital alive and back to her family.


Inside the warehouse Rayne, Nico and Daryl were keeping an eye on the bald cop and the female, Darcy. While Sasha and Tyreese gathered some food and water from the cars outside. Across the warehouse floor from them, Rick was talking to Lamson, trying to decide if this plan that Daryl and Ty endorsed was going to work out.

"She'll tell you she won't make a deal. She'll tell you she won't compromise. But she will. She always does. Just- just know who you're talking to."

Rick nods as he looks down at his watch, "Probably heading out in the next 10 minutes or so. Anything you need before we leave?"

"Actually, water would be great."

"Will do. Thanks, Sergeant Lamson."

"My name's Bob." He says which serves to catch Sasha's attention as she grabs the waters.

"You're still a cop." Rick tells him.

"No. No, the real ones are all gone." After Rick walks away Lamson sighs, "Damn it." He notices Sasha walk up beside him, a concerned look on her face. "I'm- I'm okay. I'll be okay."

"Me, too." She said.

"The parking lot, when you were bringing us back up here I- I saw a rotter. I saw one of the rotters and I knew him." He said as Sasha took a seat beside him. "His name was Tyler. I met him at Grady. We were both sent there when shit started going down. It took two whole days to evacuate everyone. Didn't sleep. We didn't eat. But still, it was the two best days of my life. I was supposed to drive the last van of survivors to the zone and Dawn pulled me off. She wanted someone she could really trust and she put Tyler on it instead. These- these people were gonna all be evacuated. I was really pissed. I saw him out there. Stuck out there, melted to the asphalt. And all I could think was, "That would have been me. It would have been me. He saved my life." He's been out there the whole time. Like he's a part of the street. Some screwed up, endless joke. And there's nothing I can do about it."

"So let me help you. Do you remember where he was?"

"Yeah, I- I can take you right to him."

"We're not going out there, but I'm a good shot. Show me."

"Okay. South side of the building. You can see him from in there."


Maggie sighs as she takes a drink of water, before she stands up and walks over holding it out to Abraham. "You're thirsty. Don't say you're not." She kneels down beside him, "Did you want me to shoot you?"

"I thought I did. But I didn't."

Maggie hears groaning and she gets up running over to Eugene who has finally come back to consciousness. "Hell- hello?"

She kneels down beside him, "I'm coming. Stay right there. Don't try to move. You're gonna be okay."


Glenn and the two women are walking back to the truck and he smiles looking over at Tara. "You know, the more I think about it, maybe it wasn't completely not not not funny."

They head back up into the road and Glenn notices Tara glance over at the farm filled with walkers. "Hey. Don't even look at it."

The women smile as they walk back towards the truck, Tara flipping the yo-yo she had found in the backpack making them all laugh.


Sasha takes Lamson to the other side of the building to find a close window to see his friend.

"You see him?"

"About 20 yards right of the sedan. There's a half wall. He's leaning against it." He says backing up behind her.

Sasha steps up to the window, setting up her rifle on the sill and looks through the scope. "I see him. Are you sure that's him?" As she turns to look at him, Lamson rushes her slamming her head against the window and knocking her out. As Sasha hits the floor, Lamson runs out of the building as fast as his feet will carry him.