Three

Six minutes. It was getting too close. Henry was starting to squirm in his seat, and Sophia felt the cold dread creep up her spine. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes and squeezed the steering wheel tightly in her hands. Seven minutes.

A little whimper from the back seat had Sophia turning around to gently stroke her little brother's head.

"Don't worry," she whispered. "She'll be back." A smack against the side of the car startled her, and she whipped back around in her seat to see a walker's broken fingernails scraping trails of dark blood along the window. Sophia gasped and shrunk back in her seat, immediately reaching for the glove compartment. She pulled out the other gun but took a deep breath to calm herself. She knew if she used the gun, that might bring more walkers closer. There were already two more close by, and if that many showed up so quickly, there was no telling how many more were near.

She rolled the window down just an inch and grabbed her knife. She waited until the walker's face was right up against the glass before pushing the blade hard into its skull. She cringed as the sound of blade against bone, and she felt her stomach turn at how easily the blade slipped back out, dripping almost black from the putrefied organ she'd just pierced through.

Before she had time to even wipe her blade, the next walker was up at the window. Then the next one stepped up. She put down one and then the other. And before she could get her knife from the skull, the walker fell back, and the knife slipped out of her grip. The noise had startled Henry, and his whimpers were now cries. She grimaced and started to open the door, but out of the corner of her eye she noticed something coming around the building. She looked up, and from the side of the building, a small herd was approaching. There were maybe fifteen or twenty, but that was more than she could handle on her own.

In less than a minute, she was surrounded. Her blood ran cold, and she squeezed her eyes shut. The sound of bloody, broken fingers dragging across the dirty windows of the old Jeep made her stomach turn.

Henry was getting louder in the back, and Sophia turned in her seat again, rummaging through the pack behind the seat. Under blankets and diapers, she found a pacifier. He generally didn't take one unless he was hungry, and only then he'd take it for a minute or two tops, until he realized there wasn't milk in it. Still, a minute or two of quiet while she tried to figure out how the hell to get out of this situation was better than nothing.

Luckily, Henry took to the pacifier quickly, and Sophia turned around, started the engine and looked at the lifeless eyes staring back at her while teeth gnashed and fingers stretched toward her on the other side of the glass.

She thought about using the gun again, but there was only so much ammo. After a few shots, she'd be out, and all that would've done was attract more walkers. So, she did the only thing else she could think to do. She pressed hard on the horn, and the snarls grew louder, almost drowning out the wound as bony hands slapped against the windows.

The fear began to take control, and her hands began to shake. The whole Jeep was rocking now. The sound was too much, and she put her hands over her ears. But when a loud pop pierced through the cacophony of dead voices, she snapped her head up just in time for the walkers to lose interest on the vehicle and turn toward the sound. She caught a glimpse of her mother with her arms raised over her head. She pulled the trigger on the pistol in her hand over and over again, drawing the walkers away from the Jeep. She saw the fear in her mother's eyes just before a walker stepped in the way.

The walkers were losing interest in Sophia fast, and she was frozen in fear. But when Carol held her hand up and motioned in a circle, she realized what she was being asked to do. Moments later, her mother was out of her sight, and the herd was filing back into the department store.

Sophia took a deep breath, trying to calm her frayed nerves, and she put the car in drive. She hit the gas and took off toward the back of the store, looking for any door that might be a possible exit. The first one she had in her sight was a loading door. There were two. One had a semi-trailer backed up to it. The other was slightly open from the bottom. She pulled up close and waited, praying her mother would get out safe and unharmed.

...

Carol's lungs burned as she pushed the cart down the path toward the back of the store. The walkers were coming, but she had quite a lead on them. All she knew was that she had to lead them away from Sophia and somehow get out of the place herself.

They were coming, and her heart was hammering in her chest. She turned a corner blindly, thankful when she came to a set of swinging doors by the back restrooms. She looked over her shoulder long enough to see they were still trailing her.

Pushing through the doors, she made a sharp left, past a couple of small offices. In the back were dozens of steel shelves with toppled over boxes scattered across them. Wooden pallets lay in shards on the cement floor from where they'd likely fallen during looting.

She peered through the dim light coming from the sky lights. When the first few walkers came tumbling through the swinging doors, she took off toward the back wall, steering her cart around fallen boxes and shelves. That was when she saw the sunlight coming through the gap from the loading door. She didn't stop running until she got there, and though the rasping snarls behind her were growing louder, she knew she had time. She reached down to tug at the door only to find it wouldn't budge.

"No," she panted. "Shit!" She got down on her hands and knees, pushed up against the door and lifted with her hands. She strained and pushed, and the door barely moved. The track the door was made to rise and fall on was dented, as if someone had purposely sabotaged it to keep something out. Or in. She winced and strained again to no luck.

Unfortunately, the walkers had infiltrated the warehouse, and Carol only had two options. Stay and try or run for her life.

Another set of swinging doors was just about ten feet away, and Carol knew if she didn't get out now, she wasn't going to. So, she pulled herself up with the cart and hurried toward the doors. She glanced over to see more walkers filtering into the back of the store through the other doors. That gave her hope that she could safely get out to Sophia now, but she wasn't out of the clear yet. A few walkers stumbled along the aisle in front of her, and Carol managed to knock them out of the way with her cart.

When she turned toward the checkouts, however, one walker came out from the next aisle, grabbing her by the hair and surprising her. The cart when flying, crashing into the wall, and Carol screamed as the walker dragged her to the ground.

Her head smacked against the concrete floor, and she groaned in pain while trying to hold the walker up by the neck with one hand. She cringed when the stench hit her, and she desperately felt for her knife.

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see more walkers wandering over. At that point, the adrenaline kicked in, and Carol managed to get hold of her knife before jamming it through the walker's eye. It went still and fell against her, heavy. She let out a pained cry as more walkers ambled toward her.

She shoved the dead weight off of her, untangled the fingers from her hair, re-sheathed her knife and pulled herself up, ducking out of the way as another walker missed her by just a few inches.

She grabbed her cart and rushed off toward the front doors, stumbling out into the sunlight. She squinted until her eyes adjusted to the brightness, and a heavy dread sunk in her chest when she couldn't see the Jeep.

She started running in the direction she'd motioned for Sophia to go. The wheels on the cart jostled and cracked against the pavement. She didn't dare look over her shoulder, because she knew what she'd find, and she didn't want any distractions from getting to her daughter.

Just as she was about to reach the corner of the store, the Jeep came skidding around, a wide-eyed Sophia behind the wheel. Carol gasped, and Sophia hit the brakes.

"Mom!"

"Stay in the car!" Carol yelled, running around to the back hatch and haphazardly tossing the supplies into the back with the rest of their possessions. She pushed the cart away and hurried to get into the passenger's side. "Go!"

Sophia hit the gas, and the tires squealed when she sped across the parking lot toward the street. Carol's hand flew to her chest, and she took a few gasping breaths before looking over at her daughter. Sophia's chin was trembling as she forced back her cries. The tears on her cheeks gave her away, and Carol reached over to touch her shoulder.

"I'm ok. We're ok," Carol promised her. "You did great, Sophia. You did." Sophia shook her head, and Carol squeezed her shoulder. She peered out the mirror on the passenger's side door, watching the department store quickly fade into the distance as Sophia hauled ass through town. "We're alive. You did good. You did good."

...

"They're not here." Lydia stood with her father's crossbow in her hands while he looked over the map. There was no sign of Rick or anybody Daryl knew. The old jail had been looted for ammo and weapons long ago, and there hadn't been anything of worth to scavenge except for some stale potato chips in a turned over vending machine.

There were only signs of a struggle, of bloodshed. There were no notes or indicators of a backup plan. And there hadn't been one. This had been the plan.

"Maybe they aren't here yet," Lydia offered. "Maybe we should wait." Daryl looked around, making a mental note of all of the broken windows and broken-down cars along the street.

"There ain't nothing here. They would've been here before us. They woulda moved on." He looked back down at the map. He knew Rick would've waited three days at the most. After all, he had his own son to think about. Carl was just a little older than Lydia and had been staying with his dad ever since his mom got re-married. Whatever happened to Lori, Daryl wasn't sure. Neither Rick nor Carl had wanted to talk about it. But, he did know Rick and Carl had escaped during the first evacuations. They'd traveled together for a while with a small group. There had been two radios. Rick had one, and he gave one to Daryl. They'd made a plan for if they ever got separated, and that was exactly what had happened. A month or so ago, what was left of the group had been separated when a herd came through their camp. Daryl had stayed in the area with Lydia for a couple of days, hiding out in the back of a broken-down van, but there had been no sign of the group, and there had been no sound on the radio. Keeping in mind he had a kid to worry about, he took off out of the area shortly after and started for the meetup point.

Rick was a cop. He was tough. He would've done just about anything to keep his son safe. Daryl was certain he was still alive, but where he would've gone after the meetup was anyone's guess. There were plenty of places they'd hung out at as kids, but those places were miles away, and it would have been a waste of resources to go check each of them.

He had a daughter to think about, just as Rick had a son, and he had to put her before anything or anyone else.

"Dad?" Daryl looked to his daughter. "Let's find someplace. Maybe we can look around tomorrow. Maybe they left a note or something. Somewhere." Daryl nodded shortly and folded the map. He tucked it in his pocket and took the crossbow from Lydia.

"C'mon. Stay close." Lydia nodded and followed behind him. She kept an eye out as they walked, heading straight down toward a row of houses off the main drag. A loud thump of a hand against a pane of glass startled them both, and Daryl turned sharply to aim his crossbow, only to find a walker trapped in the post office, ribs stick out, rotted flesh sunken in against the bones in its face. He could see the jagged tears in the skin on the wrists and wondered how desperate the person it used to be must have been.

"Dad. Look." Lydia tugged on Daryl's sleeve and pointed toward the side of a small supermarket a few buildings down. In large, black spray-painted letters was an arrow. At first it looked like a child's simple artwork, but when they stepped closer, Daryl saw the words that were painted underneath. Daryl. Amarillo. Rick.

Daryl stepped closer to the building, keeping his crossbow taut in his hands. He lowered it slowly after they stepped into the alley, and he surveyed the ground along the wall the graffiti had been sprayed.

"What're you looking for?"

"Clues," Daryl murmured. "If it's really Rick, he would've left something."

"Dad, it's gotta be him," Lydia pointed out. "How many Rick's and Daryl's would be trying to meet up right now?" The kid had a point. Still, he had to be sure.

It didn't take long for Daryl to find something, either. Stuck deliberately in the ground and wedged between a couple of rocks was Rick's badge from the King County Sheriff's Department. Daryl picked it up and held it out for Lydia to see. Her eyes lit up, and Daryl stuck the badge in his back pocket.

"So we're going to Texas?" she asked. Daryl thought for a moment and looked up just in time to see a walker turn into the alley. He pulled her out of the way, lifted his crossbow and put a bolt right through the creature's eye.

"C'mon," he grunted, tugging the bolt from the skull. "Let's find a place to sleep tonight. We'll figure out the rest in the morning."