Ch. 4

No one spoke. They only cried.

Well, no one cried, except for the Greene's.

They cried a lot. Over their loved ones that had departed the world so long ago, but whose bodies stayed up and walking. Trying to kill them.

Sam didn't care for their feelings right now though. He had a friend to bury.

"Rick. You can have your gun back now."

Rick took the gun and holstered it. "Are you alright?"

"I just shot my best friend in the head Rick. I've known him since we were five. I ate dinner at his house. My family went to church with his. We fuckin' did everything together. Am I alright? You better fuckin' believe I'm not." Sam left Rick and the
others standing there and picked his friends body off the ground.

Sam knew where he would bury him. Under a tree near the edge of the property. Shaded and overlooking the fields, but still close to the woods. Michael would have liked that.

It took him an hour to dig the grave and put Michael into it. An hour spent in silence, and sadness.

But after the grave was filled, and the sound of a shovel digging into the ground had gone away, Sam took a seat and reached into his pack.

"After we split up, I found Liam washed up on the side of a creek. He had been dead for a few days. He was just covered in mud and half sunk into the ground. He never was the strongest swimmer," Sam pulled out a bottle from his pack. "He still had this
on him though. Sentimental bastard. I poured a little on his grave and then took a swig."

Sam tilted the bottle and let the whiskey flow onto the grave. "Don't drink it too fast. That's all you're getting until we meet again. Sleep well Michael. Goodbye brother."

As he walked back to the farm Sam felt the stinging of tears in his eyes. It was all so fucked. He didn't know if any of his friends were alive, he was stranded in America with no way to get back to Ireland. And the two leaders of the group were in a
power struggle that was bound to end in one way, blood.

Sam just hoped that Rick would wise up before anything major happened and Shane killed him. He hoped.

When he stumbled into the camp there was no one there. Not even the kids or Dale, who was always within a few feet of the R.V. every time Sam saw him.

But then he spotted someone. They were making their way to one of the blue pickup trucks that belonged to the Greenes.

He quickly sprinted over to ask what was going on when he saw the driver.

"Hershel?" Sam asked as he leaned against the passenger window."What are you doing?'

"I'm going to get drunk," He responded bluntly.

"Oh well, I didn't really expect you to be upfront about that." Hershel just stared at the boy. "Room for one more? I could use a good drink right now."

"You have some right there," Hershel pointed to the bottle hanging out of Sam's bag.

"Special occasions only, and even then one drink limit."

"Get in."

"-so then Michael looks Mr. Riley straight in the eye and says 'I swear sir, I'm an open book. Now some of those pages are torn out or shredded to shite, and I do believe that a few chapters are in Spanish, but I am an open book!' And considering
what he did to the library, and the fact that most of the books were spanish books, I'm surprised he wasn't expelled right then and there."

"How is it he managed to shred half of the schools language section without anyone noticing?" Hershel asked as he refilled our glasses.

"I was always the distraction while Michael did whatever he had to do. It was just the way we worked together. We were always close. Closer than the rest of our group," Sam drained his glass and refilled it again.

"How long did you two know each other?"

Sam shrugged. "Our whole lives basically. So seventeen years I guess. Through thick and thin. Only took the apocalypse to drive us apart. We were brothers in everything but blood. I really thought that out of the two of us he would have made it. When
everything happened, he had all the ideas. He knew what to do. But to see him like that…"

Sam felt a hand on his shoulder. "I understand. When I saw Shane put bullets into Lou… and then open those doors to the barn, I felt as if everything I had was gone. That my life was over, and well, I guess that's why I'm here. Hoping to find what I lost
at the bottom of a bottle."

"If it makes you feel any better, that was popular before the apocalypse. My da, he would look and look, but he would never find anything, so he would come home and take it out on me."

"My father was the same. He would come home and use his fists to show me how he felt. When he died I did not go to him, and that is something I will never regret."

Sam raised his glass. "Cheers mate."

Hershel drank deeply and refilled his glass, but strangely enough he didn't drink.

"What is it like out there?" Sam looked to Hershel with a puzzled expression. "On the road. Rick tells me that it's horrible, but from what I've gathered, he wasn't even on the road for more than a few days. So what is it like? Truley."

Sam knocked back his glass and slammed it onto the bar. His hand reached to his belt where he kept his gun and hovered it there. Doing it made him feel safe. After three months on the road, it was the only way he was able to fall asleep or feel relaxed.

By knowing that he had his gun with him. Ready to use.

"I'm not nearly drunk enough to answer that Hershel," Sam said, trying to seem light hearted.

Hershel just nodded, "Just tell me one thing. Is it as bad as Rick makes it seem?"

Sam shook his head. "No, it's worse. Far worse."

"They thought that they were being clever. But I knew that Maggie was on the pill the moment she was through the door. Not wanting anyone to handle her bags, especially the one that had all of her toiletries. She was never like that before, but once she
was home from college she was nothing if not secretive."

Sam laughed and stumbled from behind the bar, looking for the next bottle the two of them would drink.

"From what I've heard she's always been a bit of a wild card. In a good way of course."

"When she was twelve she was caught shoplifting a packet of cigarettes."

Sam shrugged. "Could be worse. She could have ruined half of the library."

Hershel opened his mouth to respond but was cut off when the two of them heard a car pull up outside of the bar.

Sam felt himself sober up some almost immediately and he hovered his hand above his pistol.

The footsteps clanked loudly against the wooden frame of the outside of the bar. Sam thought that it was two people. Then the shadows on the windows confirmed his theory.

The doorknob clicked and Sam gripped his pistol tightly, ready to draw it when needed. But then he relaxed his grip.

It was just Rick and Glenn.

"Hershel, Sam," Rick said as he strolled into the bar.

"Rick, come on in. Want a drink?"

"Who's with you?" Hershel asked instead of greeting them.

"Glenn."

"Maggie sent him?"

Sam stepped away from the bar and let them talk.

"How many have you two had?"

"Not enough," Hershel said as he swirled the contents of his glass.

"I was just about done," Sam said as he set the bottle he had found on the bar.

"Let's finish this up back at home," Rick whispered. "Beth collapsed. In some sort of state. Must be in shock, I think you two are as well."

"Maggies with her?"

"Yeah, but Beth needs you."

Hershel scoffed and took a drink. "What could I do? Se needs her mother, or rather, to mourn. Like she should have done weeks ago. I robbed her of that. I see that now."

"You thought there was a cure," Rick reasoned, "You can't blame yourself for holding onto hope."

Hershel finished his glass and set it down. "Hope?" He smiled and faced Rick, "When I first saw you running across my field with your boy in your arms, I had a little hope he would survive."

"He did."

Hershel nodded. "He did. Even though we lost man Shane made it back, and we saved your boy. That was the miracle that proved to me that miracles do it was a sham. A bait and switch. I was a fool Rick. And your people saw that… my daughters deserved
better than that."

He began to pour again. And Rick walked back to talk with Glenn.

"What do we do? Wait for him to pass out?" Glenn tried to whisper quietly.

"Just go!" Rick turned and faced Hershel. "Just go!"

"I promised Maggie I would bring you home safe."

Hershel chuckled. "Like you promised that little girl? If it wasn't for Sam she would have died!"

Rick stormed over to the bar. "So what's your plan? Finish that bottle? Drink yourself to death and leave your girls alone?"

Hershel shot up from his stool. "Stop telling me how to care for my family! For my farm. You people are like a plague! I do the Christian thing, give you shelter, and you destroy it all!"

"The world was already in bad shape when we met," Rick pointed out.

"And you take no responsibility! You're supposed to be their leader!"

"Well I'm here now aren't I?!" Rick shouted, finally losing his cool.

"Yes. Yes… yes you are," Hershel sat down.

"Come on! Your girls need you now, more than ever," Rick put his hand on Hershels, but the old farmer brushed it away.

"I didn't want to believe you. You told me there was no cure, that those people were sick! I didn't want to believe you/ but when Shane shot Lou in the chest and she just kept coming, that's when I knew what an ass I'd been. That Annette, and Shawn, and
even Sam's friend Michael had been dead and I was feeding rotting corpses! That's when I knew there was no hope!" He turned and faced Sam. "And when that boy came out of the barn, the look on your face, that's when I knew there was no hope. That there
was no hope for any of us."

Sam looked to the ground and Rick looked to Glenn who shook his head.

Cautiously Sam walked over to Hershel.

"Hershel. Listen, I think we should get back-"

"Oh not you too!"

"Listen to me! Do you want to be like our fathers? A man who practically lives in a bar only to come home when it's too late? Because let me tell you right now old man, that's where you're heading, and if you get there your children will hate you. I hated
mine… you hated yours. What makes you think your kids'll be any different?"

"Look I'm done, I'm not doing this anymore!" Rick said once he was done talking to Glenn."Cleaning up after you. You know what the truth is? Nothing has changed. Death is death, it's always been there, whether it's from heart attack, cancer, or a walker,
what's the difference? You didn't think it was hopeless before did you? Now there are people back at home trying to hang on. They need us, even if it's just to give them a reason to go on, even if we don't believe it ourselves. You know what, this-
this isn't about what we believe anymore. It's about them."

The bar was quiet. Glenn stood by the door shifting the weight of his gun between his hands. Sam looked on at Hershel and Rick, a bit of respect for the former sheriff in his eyes.

Hershel though, he knocked back the last of his whiskey and slammed it on the bar. He was done drinking.

Sam smiled and patted the old farmer on the shoulder.

Then the doors opened, and Sam felt the need to grab his pistol again.

"Son of a bitch, they're alive." Two men had just walked into the bar, and Sam thought that they could not have looked more different.

One was a muscular man in a tank top and surprisingly enough, he seemed to have some sort of product in his hair.

The other would have been a poster child for american obesity. He had a plain white shirt and was wearing a hat, but Sam was more concerned with the shotgun he had in his hands rather than what he was wearing. And from Rick's face, so was he.

The two of them smiled and laughed at the sight of living people. They pulled up chairs and sat down, but not before grabbing a half full bottle of whiskey and pouring themselves some.

"I'm Dave," the skinny one introduced himself, "the scrawny looking douche bag there is tony."

"Eat me Dave."

"Hey maybe someday I will." He laughed at his own joke. "We met on I-95, coming out of Philly. Damn shit show that was."

"I'm Glenn," he said with a broad grin, "It's nice to meet some new people."

"Rick Grimes."

"Samuel Conall."

Dave smiled, "What's that accent? Irish?" Sam nodded. "So you got stranded out here huh?"

"Me and a couple of my friends. They didn't make it. Rick and Hershel here were kind enough to let me tag along with them."

Dave took a sip of his drink and looked to Hershel. "How about you pal, you want one?"

"I just quit."

"You got a unique sense of timing my friend." Sam could tell he wasn't going to like this guy.

"Like Sam said his names Hershel. They lost people today."

Dave actually looked sorry. "I'm truly sorry to hear that. To better days and new friends. And to our dead, may they be in a better place."

Sam dumped a little of his whiskey on the floor before drinking like the others.

Dave set his glass down and both rick and Sam saw the gun that was in his waistband.

"Not bad, huh?" he grabbed the gun and held it out to Rick. "I got it off a cop."

"I'm a cop."

"This one was already dead." Dave and Tony both laughed.

"You two are a long way from Philadelphia," Sam said.

"You're a long way from Ireland," Tony retorted.

"Not by choice."

"Well to be honest, it feels like we're a long way from anywhere," Dave interrupted.

"What drove you south?" Rick questioned.

"Well I can tell you it wasn't the weather. I must've dropped thirty pounds in sweat alone down here." Sam had to give him that, it was hot in Georgia. "No first it was D.C. I heard there might be some kind of refugee camp, but the roads were so jammed
we never got close. We decided to get off the highways and into the sticks."

Sam nodded, it was what his original group had done when Atlanta turned out to be bullshit.

"Every group we came across had a new rumor about a way out of this thing."

"One guy told us there was a coast guard sitting in the gulf, sending ferries to the islands."

"The latest was a rail yard running trains to the middle of the country, Kansas, Nebraska."

"Nebraska?" Glenn asked.

"Low population, lots of guns," Tony chuckled.

"Kinda makes sense," Glenn said.

"You ever been to Nebraska kid?" DAve asked, and Glenn shook his head. "A reason they call 'em flyover states."

Sam noticed a shared look between Dave and Tony.

"How about you guys?"

"Just drifting right now," Rick told them, "We were originally going to go to Fort Benning but Sam told us that it was gone."

Dave laughed. "Gone is an understatement my friend. We ran across a grunt that was stationed at Benning and he said that the whole place was either overrun by lame brains or burnt to the ground. Truth is, there is no way out of this mess. Just keep going
from one pipe dream to the next, praying one of these mindless freaks doesn't grab ahold of you in your sleep."

"If you sleep," Tony added.

"You know it doesn't look like you guys are hanging your hats here. You holed up somewhere else?"

Sam put his hand near his gun. "We actually just got out of a pretty bad spot. Walkers came out of nowhere, swarmed out camp. We were the only ones to make it out. That's how Hershel lost his family."

Rick gave Sam a discreet nod.

Dave nodded "Well we're thinking about setting up around here. Is it safe?"

"It can be," Glenn told them. "Although I've killed a couple Walkers around here."

"You both called 'em that, Walkers. That what you call 'em?" They all nodded. "That's good. I like that. I like that better than lamebrains."

"So since Bennings a bust where you guys thinking about setting up? The outskirts, that new development?

Tony got up and waddled across the bar "A trailer park or something? A farm?"

Dave began singing "Old McDonald". "You got a farm?"

No one said anything as the tension in the room rose, and the sound of Tony pissing in the corner filled the room.

"Is it safe?"

"It's gotta be."

"You got food water?"

Sam met Ricks eyes and shot him a look that said 'These guys are casing us. We need to go.'

"You got cooze? Ain't had a piece of ass in weeks," Rick gave Sam a look that told him that he knew.

"Listen pardon my friend, you see city kids they got no tact. No disrespect. So listen Glenn-"

"We've said enough." Rick interupted.

"Well hang on a second. This farm, it sounds pretty sweet. Don't it sound sweet Tony?'

"Yeah real sweet."

"How about a little southern Hospitality?" Sam's hand closed around the grip of his pistol. "We got some buddies back at camp, been having a real hard time. I don't see why you can't make room for a few more. We could pull our resources, our manpower!"

"Look I'm sorry that's not an option," Rick told them.

Sam knew what would come next.

"Doesn't sound like it'd be a problem."

"I'm sorry we can't," Hershel told them.

Dave laughed. "You guys are something else. I thought- I thought we were friends."

"Drinking buddies aren't always the best friends," Sam told him.

"Look we just got people we gotta look out for too."

"And so do we," Sam told him.

"We don't know anything about you," Rick pointed out.

Dave nodded, "No that's true. You don't know anything about us. You don't know what we've had to go through out there, things we've had to do."

'I bet you enjoyed them too' Sam thought as he kept an eye on the fat one, who seemed to be glaring at Rick.

"I bet you've had to do some of those same things yourself, am I right?" Rick continued to meet Dave's gaze.

"You don't survive the Apocalypse with clean hands," Sam said.

"True enough," Dave smiled. "So come on, let's take a nice friendly hayride to this farm and we'll get to know each other."

Rick looked down at his glass. "That's not gonna happen."

'And know they know for sure we've got a farm,' Sam thought to himself.

"This is bullshit!" Tony yelled.

"Calm down," Rick ordered him.

"Don't tell me to calm down! Don't ever tell me to calm down!"

"Alright let's just all take it easy!" Sam said taking his hand off his gun for a split second.

"I'll shoot you four assholes in the head and take your damn Farm," in less than a second Rick was on his feet and Sam's hand was back on his pistol, ready to draw.

Dave rushed to get between the two. "Whoa Whoa Whoa! Relax. Take it easy. Nobody's killing anybody. Nobody's shooting anybody right Rick?" Dave hoped over the bar so that Rick was sandwiched between him and Tony.

Rick's hand went to his gun and Tony reached for his. Sam slowly drew his but kept it hidden behind the bar. Dave placed his on the bar in clear view so that Rick wouldn't see him as a threat.

"We're just friends having a drink, that's all. Now where's the good stuff?"Dave bent behind the bar and Rick placed his hand on his gun again. Dave came back up smiling, carrying a bottle of whiskey. "Hey! Look at that! That'll work."

Everyone was beginning to become unhinged. Sam could see Glenn glancing around the room nervously and Hershel eyed Dave with a look of both fear and distaste.

"You gotta understand Rick, we can't stay out there. You know what it's like."

"Yeah I do. But the farm is too crowded as is. I'm sorry. You'll have to keep looking."

"Keep look- wheredo you suggest we do that?"

"I don't know. I hear Nebraska's nice." Sam smirked.

Dave laughed. "Nebraska," Sam saw his give a look to Tony and raise his eyebrows, "Theseguys."

Dave lunged for his gun but Rick drew first and sent a round into his chest splattering the wall behind him with blood.

Sam raised his gun and shot Tony in the head before he could even lift his shotgun. Tony pulled the trigger of his gun as his heavy body fell to the floor.

All happened in less than a second. Both dead before they hit the ground.

'Well fuck.'

AN: Here's chapter 4! Hope you guys liked it and I'll see you next time! Also I changed the name because I didn't like the previous name, sorry. Don't forget to leave a review! ~Pacco1