Amy's POV

Not even seven in the morning yet, and Amy was already blistering from the heat. She longed for an actual hair-tie but made do with the scrap of shoe lace she had scavenged days ago, tying half of her hair out of her face because a regular ponytail probably wouldn't last the day. She hated having to tie and re-tie her hair, so without a proper elastic to use she was forced to settle for the half-ponytail look these days.

She had half a mind to borrow T-Dog's machete and lob it all off, be done with it. But her ginger hair was, in her opinion, one of her best features. It paled in comparison to Brittany's shining golden ringlets, of course, which was the more conventional standard of beauty—but still. She liked her red hair. They say redheads have a temper, and she liked the fiery reputation. Especially nowadays. It suited her.

Unfortunately, her coloring meant that her rosy skin fried painfully under the relentless Georgia sun. Her arms and the back of her neck was so sensitive that she couldn't stand to wear the shirt that Carol had given her. She wore only a tiny, thin tank top and loose fitting cargo pants, and she endured the heat of direct sun baking her alive, stinging her already burnt and peeling arms.

Which was why, when Shane stopped beside her and grabbed her bare shoulder, she reared up and hissed like a cat. He lifted his hands up in surrender as she continued to snarl testily at him.

Though he kept his distance, she could tell that he was inspecting her raw, sunburnt skin with a frown. "Dang, girl. Guess sunscreen is a lost luxury these days, huh?"

Amy grunted and looked away, avoiding his gaze as she crossed her arms and resumed scowling at the others who still debated about who-knows-what over the map. She felt feverish and her skin tingled uncomfortably. In the back of her mind, her dad's voice was warning her against heat sickness and advising her stubborn ass to stay indoors today, but she knew that was not an option.

Shane's attention was drilling a hole in the side of her head. She could somehow sense, feel that he was thinking along the same lines. Possibly even on the verge of suggesting that she hang back to help out Dale with the camper, to avoid the sun as much as possible.

Without fully thinking it through, she turned on him before he had the chance. "Is it really wise for you to be part of this team?"

Shane's face went blank with surprise as he tried to understand why she'd suggest such a thing, and then abruptly darkened. What other reason could there be? He knew she referred to Lori.

He pushed away from the car he'd been leaning on. Having grown up surrounded by dangerous men—military veterans, police officers, whatever ilk her father rubbed elbows with over drinks at the bar—she knew how it looked when a man not only contemplated violence, but had the skill to back those dangerous thoughts up. And how it looked when he was considering just how much he could get away with.

This was the Shane from the show. Up until now, she had only caught rare glimpses of this man, but he was unmistakably a different person when he got like this. It was like a switch flipped in his mind and everything narrowed into a life-or-death scenario, and he had long since decided that he would survive, no matter the cost. That he would go to any lengths, cross any line to make sure that no one stood in his way. Especially concerning Lori.

And somewhere deep, deep down, something inside her whispered encouragements at him. Dared him to act on those thoughts, to make the first move. Her body, of its own accord, stepped away from the car and mirrored his stance, her arms falling loosely to her side, tensing in preparation of what came next... but before he had the chance to make the first move, to utter whatever no doubt venomous, threatening remark was on the tip of his tongue, they were interrupted.

"Ready to go?" Lori demanded, like she was aware she had just interrupted something and was fed up with them both. Her brown eyes lingered on Amy, for some reason.

Shane was the one to respond, thankfully. He turned away from Amy and gestured down the road. And with the metaphorical snap of a finger, he switched back to the other Shane, the one that the group was most familiar with. "Been ready," he smoothly answered.

He sounded unbothered, which agitated Lori further. Like she wanted him to snap at her. Like she'd seen their argument brewing and stepped in deliberately, intent on being part of it. Amy looked to Shane, whose eyebrow arched at Lori.

Amy looked back at Lori, who opened her mouth—

Once again, the tension was broken before a real argument could ensue, this time by Rick and Glenn's swift interruption. "You sure you'll be all right?" Rick asked Glenn as he tucked his revolver safely into its holster on his hip, the weight of the weapon tugging at the waistline of his jeans.

Glenn waved the question off. "Totally. I'll be fine! They probably didn't get too far." Reading their unconvinced expressions, Glenn's smile fell and he looked back at Rick. "Hey, remember how we met? The part where I saved you? Give me a little credit. I'm not exactly helpless."

Rick nodded at that and looked a little less miserable at the memory. That quickly faded, though, and in the next breath he was solemn again.

Seeing that his friend was quickly drowning in his emotions over the fact that Carl was missing, Shane smoothly stepped in to take over the conversation for him. He grabbed Glenn by the shoulder and helped steer him in the correct direction down the road. "All right, well, if you get too mixed up, just turn around and head on back to camp. I'm sure Dale would appreciate the company."

Glenn forced a polite grin at the suggestion. "I won't. But thank you." The younger man turned to walk backwards as he departed and waved at all of them. "Be careful!" He hollered. "And good luck!"

"Hey, try keep it down, will ya?" Shane whisper-yelled back. "Still got walkers around here!"

Glenn put his hands up in apology and mimed zipping his lips. Then, he finally turned and began to make his way through the tall grass towards the woods. They watched him until his figure disappeared into the trees. Lori tugged at Rick's shirt and gestured down the road. "Let's go."

"Lori, are you sure you don't want to borrow some pants—"

"Amy. Yes. For the last time. Thank you, I appreciate the concern, but I'm sure I do not want to wear pants in this sweltering heat. Okay?"

Amy clenched her jaw and she and Rick's eyes met for a fleeting moment. He looked like he wanted to say something, like maybe he agreed that Lori should protect her legs from the sharp, relentless thorn bushes out here. But he kept quiet, brooding, almost dragging his feet like he was torn between moving as fast as possible or going over every single inch of ground several times just to be sure there were no signs of Carl.

As they had trekked deeper into the woods, one thing had made itself abundantly clear: Lori had severely underestimated the terrain. She wore thick, strappy sandals, the kind you might expect to see paired with tall white socks and worn by an old American man vacationing in Europe. Great for hot days walking on manmade trails that were cleared out and developed for hiking.

Awful for traversing underbrush that was never meant for a human to cross without the proper tools. The shortcut that Glenn helped devise would save them about an hour's worth of travel and keep them away from roads, which was important because they could not afford to come across other people and walkers were unlikely to force their way into these thick woods without proper motivation.

Not to say that this way was safe. What it lacked in the danger that Lori was prepared to face—strangers and walkers—it more than made up for in steep ravines, vines, thorn bushes and various woodland creatures ranging from swarming, biting gnats to large venomous snakes. The back woods of Georgia were deep and difficult to navigate, and from the moment they set food inside, their arms had been swinging to bat away either bugs or leaves.

And Lori was wearing shorts. Already, she had quite the collection of scrapes and a burgeoning rash on the back of her ankle and calf from poison ivy.

It's not that the woman didn't know which plants she needed to avoid—she definitely did. In fact, she was able to identify more types of plants and bugs then Amy ever could hope to without the help of a smart phone. It's just that the woods were overgrown. There was not enough space to avoid coming in contact with some of it.

In the television series, they had made the woods look green but spacious, with trees and grass that didn't get too tall on the actor's legs and plenty of fresh water. Reality was quite different, at least in this specific area of the woods.

As they crested a steep hill, they stopped for a moment to catch their breath and stare down at what awaited them on the other side. The incline abruptly changed again, into a narrow valley, one that looked tedious but not impossible to navigate. There was another less cumbrous route within seeing distance, maybe fifty yards away, which would take longer but negate the valley altogether.

Lori, having also spotted it, pointed it out as the rest of them panted and caught their breath. "We should head that way. It looks less dangerous."

Shane shook his head and looked at Rick. "This ain't dangerous," he said. "It's just steep. Come on, take my hand. I'll help ya—"

"Are you serious?!" Disbelieving, she looked from the men to Amy. "It's so thick down there you can't even see the ground. There could be snakes! And god knows what else. What if it goes farther down than we think? Wouldn't you rather head a few feet over to avoid all that?"

"The weeds will be no thicker down there than they are up here," Amy attempted to reassure, her voice much calmer and quieter than the brunette's.

"You don't know that!"

"Lori—"

"Don't 'Lori' me," she snapped at Shane. Then she stopped, hearing herself. Lori blinked and studied each of them in turn and realized that they had no intention of following her advice, despite all the things she'd said. "Seriously?" She asked again. "Fine. You guys be careful down there, I'm going around."

And with that, she turned on her heel and headed away from them.

"Lori," Rick called, to no avail. "Lori!"

"Man, come on." Shane shook his head to himself and started to climb down the hill, stepping sideways so that he had surer footing. He held the rifle in his hands with it pointing down at the ground, careful to keep it out of the weeds as he went.

Amy was a lot less confident in her footing so she made sure the safety was on and tucked her gun safely into the waistband of her pants. She then mimicked Shane's method of side-stepping down the hill, careful to grab a tall, sturdy weed here and there as needed. Rick made sure his weapons were tucked safely and followed suit.

Amy's foot touched something that was obviously not solid ground and she gasped as she jumped back.

"Amy!" Rick quickly reached out to catch her before she could tumble ass over elbows. The weeds she'd just been stepping through moved of their own accord, and she watched with wide eyes, heart hammering in her throat as a sharp, salient hiss came from within the tall grass.

"Don't move!" Shane's deep voice rumbled as he swung his gun around and took aim. His gaze darted through the grass as he tracked the movement of the snake, which traveled quickly up the hill but in the opposite direction of them. "C'mon, you son of a—"

"Guys?!" Lori hollered from the ridge she stood on. "Is everyone okay? What happened?"

"Fine!" Rick called out over top of Amy's head from where he still held her upright in his arms. She grabbed his forearm and nodded, and he helped her get back on her feet. "It was just a snake!"

"A snake?!" Lori turned as though to hurry across the ridge and wait for them on the top of the hill, but when she started forward, she screamed. She flailed her arms and swatted at the air erratically, like something they couldn't see was attacking her.

Amy turned and realized that Rick was gone from beside her. She looked up the steep hill and saw he'd taken off in great, loping leaps up the side of the hill, the smartest path to get to his wife. Shane was also running their direction but it was down the center of the valley, the most direct—if difficult—path. He batted aside tall weeds and jumped over obstacles in the underbrush below, calling out to Lori along with Rick.

Amy stayed rooted her spot and checked to make sure the snake wasn't poised to strike as she took the first step down the hill. Her legs quivered slightly from the adrenaline coursing through her veins. She wasn't afraid anymore but she couldn't stop the way the potent chemical racked her body.

By then Rick and Shane were upon Lori and patting the woman down. Shane turned in all directions with his rifle poised and ready to fire, and though Amy couldn't exactly make out what was being said, she gathered that whatever had accosted the woman was likely a bug.

"Stop!" Rick grabbed Lori by the shoulders to still her and then raised a hand, swiping it down her collarbone. She made a panicked noise caught between a scream and a cry as she clutched at her shoulder. "It's off, it's off!"

Lori continued to swipe at her hair, like she felt something clinging to her, and Amy rolled her eyes. A spider, she deduced. The woman had stepped into a spider web and panicked.

Not that she had much room to talk—she had stepped on a snake and panicked as well. Perhaps not as violently, but still. She had lost her footing and panicked all the same.

As the four of them met up at the crest of the hill, Amy couldn't help but brood over how absolutely ridiculous their search party was. It felt completely inept. Unprofessional.

It had not felt like the focus of this outing was to search for Carl. No, in all honesty, it felt like she was party to a bumbling group of idiots fumbling through the woods. And she hated it.

She and Shane met eyes and she sensed that she was not the only one who felt it. His gaze was dark and impatient, and he must have seen his irritation reflected in her as well because they fell into step beside each other and pushed ahead of the couple behind them.

When they finally crossed out of the woods and onto the road leading into town, Lori was in the worst condition of all of them. Somehow she was covered almost head to toe in scrapes, her legs having taken the brunt of it, and on her shoulder there was a burgeoning spider bite. Potentially venomous, according to Shane.

Whatever species the spider had been it was fast and had spiky legs, but Lori had no desire to delve into the details of it and got a little jumpy whenever the topic was brought up, much to her chagrin. Rick was certain it had been an orb weaver spider due to the sheer size of its elaborate web, but Shane still warned that it could potentially have been its more dangerous cousin, the brown recluse.

For now, there was a bright red bump on Lori's shoulder where it had evidently bitten her. It might have been Amy's imagination—or impending heat stroke distorting her vision—but she thought maybe she even saw some shades of purple. Purple was not good.

Though it was something they'd have to keep an eye on, they could not focus on it or even stop to turn back. They were already there. And she was already dreading the trip back.

The town appeared just as deserted as the rest of the world had looked from the moment she and Brittany awoke on the roof of that department store. She could see abandoned cars dotted all along the road, some with doors left wide open.

The traffic lights weren't lit up. None of the street lights, either. The storefront lights were out, too. It was just as jarring to see now as it had been the first time, to see a modernized town completely without power and devoid of life. And it didn't look like people had just vanished into thin air. If you looked for it, you could clearly see the signs that something horrible and deadly had chased people out of town and into hiding.

Evidence of a fire near one of the vehicles. Scorched metal and blacktop. Corpses that sat propped up against walls of buildings on the sidewalk or laid out in the street. A thick layer of dirt and grime coating everything. Some of the windows of buildings and cars alike were busted out, shattered glass scattered across the ground. Paper and trash littered everywhere. And the stench. It never truly went away, not as far as Amy had experienced. It always lingered in the air.

And of course, there was the omnipresent infestation of walkers. It didn't look to be too overrun, actually. Nothing like Atlanta had been. Just a few stragglers here and there, especially near the edge of town close to the woods.

Close to them.

Rick started to brush past her and go to help Shane deal with them but Amy reached out to stay his arm. When he turned to her, she nodded her head to indicate Lori.

He looked back at his wife, then to Amy again, watching as she withdrew the small, but heavy hammer she'd taken from the arsenal this morning.

She nodded at Rick again and waited until he reluctantly turned to go to his wife's side. When she finally turned to join Shane she found he was already making his way back towards them. Their eyes locked and then he glanced back to notice that Rick lingered behind with Lori.

Amy knew how complicated this situation was for everyone, but for Shane especially. Rick was his partner. Had been his best friend—no, his brother—for years. The person he could count on to be at his side through everything, thick and thin. Then he got hurt, and Shane stepped up to take care of Rick's family because that's what a brother was supposed to do. And Amy had always speculated that maybe Shane felt some misplaced guilt about Rick getting shot in the first place, thus made it his self-imposed mission to watch out for Rick's family, and then things with Lori... escalated.

But that's all it was, really. Speculation. Shane wasn't the type to share his feelings about Lori or Rick. She could see that he felt something by the way he looked back and saw Rick wrap a comforting arm around Lori. He kept his face carefully blank, but the fact that his gaze lingered on them at all said a lot.

Amy decided against commenting. She raised her hammer and wagged it at him. "No guns," she said. He tore his gaze away from the couple behind them and finally looked at her. His features twisted into skepticism. "Unless you want to draw more of them over to us."

He just raised his eyebrows, as if he didn't see the problem with that thought.

She gaped at him. "Shane, no. You don't know if there's a hoard waiting just inside one of those buildings, waiting for an excuse to come out."

He grunted in acknowledgement but still didn't really seem convinced. He frowned. "Maybe. If that's the case, wouldn't it be better to draw them out in the open? Instead of going inside the building and potentially getting trapped with them?"

Amy blinked. Then blinked again, hesitating... "Well... maybe—"

Shane cocked his gun and pointed it at one of the walkers in the distance.

Amy leapt forward to push his gun down so it pointed at the ground. "Maybe if there was more than two of us!"

Shane shoved her off his arm and whirled to scowl at her.

"Maybe if those two could think about Carl without panicking! Maybe if we had a tank! Maybe if there wasn't a possibility that Carl—"

But Shane was done listening to maybes. He took a wide step away from her, lifted his gun, and popped off a loud, resounding shot.

"Shane!" Amy hissed as the walker Shane shot went down, and he dropped to a knee to aim at another. "You can't let me finish what I'm saying?"

She was disgusted, absolutely enraged at this man for forcing them into this situation. She wanted to smack him upside the head—to explain all the veritable reasons he could have royally screwed them all—but there was no time anymore. They had no choice.

Walkers came out of every corner. Any one of them that had previously been staggering around drunkenly in the street now swiveled to head straight in their direction. At a glance, she estimated between ten and fifteen, and those were just the ones that she could see.

But they were like cockroaches, and that meant that for every walker you could see, there were probably another few hiding out of sight.

Finally, she just picked a route and started down it with her hammer ready.

"Amy!" Rick and Shane called simultaneously. "Amy, stop!"

As if she was the unreasonable one in this situation. She heard Lori say to one of them, "Let her go!"

Amy felt her temper rising, reaching towards an explosive breaking point, as she came upon her first target and swung the hammer with punishing strength. It hit the walker in the head so hard that it fell back on the ground with a splat.

No time to linger, she turned and caught the clawed hand of another one that had descended upon her. She shoved its arm away and as it staggered a step back, she closed the distance between them and swung the hammer over her shoulder, crushing its skull.

She didn't wait around to watch it land on the ground beside the first as she moved on to dispatch another.

On and on it went, with walkers rushing towards the gunfire and her rising to meet the ones that slipped through Shane's line of fire. She couldn't hear Rick's gun for some reason, but she had no time to turn and find out why.

A bullet whizzed past her ear at one point and when she whirled around, she saw a walker blow back on impact as the bullet struck it in the shoulder. Not a kill shot, but it bought her enough time to leap forward and swing her hammer high. Once the walker's head was no more than a split melon, she straightened and nodded at Rick, who lowered his gun and nodded back after a beat.

If she had to describe the look on his face, she'd guess that he was disapproving of her choice to tackle the walkers head on instead of standing back and firing off a gun like Shane.

Truthfully, if it was completely up to her, she would have preferred to strategize and sneak through them and then use her hammer on the ones they couldn't avoid. But obviously it wasn't up to her. Not with Shane popping off shots left and right at any walker that so much as twitched.

At times, if she really took a second to think about it, it scared her how easily she adjusted to the killing. It started with Jim. Before him, she was stuck in denial about their situation for what felt like a long time, and half-convinced that if they just explained to the group what had happened—that they had... somehow teleported into this universe, that... well, that maybe they could finally start to make sense of it all.

But it became clear that day just how wrong she was. They would never understand, never accept. She's not sure she would ever truly accept it, herself, let alone make sense of it.

It was her fault that Jim's death had dragged out for so long. She knew what his fate was supposed to be, and yet she sat in that camper with him and ruined everything. How could she have been so selfish? She thought, at the time, that he had been a fail-safe. A test. He was about to die shortly anyway, so what did it matter? The risk was worth the reward. That's what she thought, how she justified it to herself.

But she robbed him of a peaceful ending. He was supposed to choose to end it himself, propped against a tree at the edge of the woods with a cool breeze rolling over his feverish face, thinking of his daughter.

But she had ripped the possibility of that peaceful ending from him, and almost caused Sophia to get hurt in the same fell swoop. So she'd done the only thing that made sense.

She killed him.

And since then, she had grappled with it in her mind. Had she killed Jim, the person? Or was he too far gone at that point? Was he more walker than Jim?

And, perhaps most disturbing of all... why didn't she feel bad about it?

No, she didn't regret shooting him. She regretted trying to find a more diplomatic way in the first place. As if there was any way to talk their way out of their new reality. Brittany had been right about being unable to convince the others. But she was wrong about sitting back and letting things play out.

They eventually made their way into the heart of the town square, overlooking a row of buildings. On one end of the street there stood what appeared to be a daycare with a playground out front. On the other end was a hardware store, and in between were what looked to be remodeled storefronts made into apartments.

Lori stepped up at the head of the group beside her, with Shane and Rick lingering behind to share a silent conversation that Amy sensed was mostly about her and her actions. She chose to ignore it for now.

Lori pointed at the daycare. "He's there," she said, sounding certain. She looked to Rick with shining eyes. "We have to go now!"

Amy glanced at Shane. She said to Lori, "You think Carl is in the daycare?"

"They have a playground outside," Lori reasoned. "It's where any kid would go."

"What about the hardware store?" Shane suggested. "He's not just any kid, I mean—come on. Carl used to beg us to take him to the gun shop instead of an ice cream parlor, remember?"

While Rick's lips twitched into a grief-stricken smile, Lori's eyes flashed with fury. "That is my son, in case you've all somehow managed to forget that. I am his mother. And I'm telling you that in these circumstances, after being so alone for so long—he would have gone there to hide."

"Okay," Amy finally cut in. "What's it matter? If we're wrong about one, then we'll just need to check out the other anyway, right? Let's go to the daycare first."

"Rick?" Lori put her hands on her hips. The look on her face dared her husband to disagree.

Rick didn't look at any of them, his gaze affixed to the ground as he said, "The daycare's on the corner. We could start there, work our way in."

"Fine," Shane agreed in a clipped voice, his teeth clenched tight. "Let's just make it quick—day light's burnin' and Amy's right. No matter where we start, we'll have to keep searchin' until there's nothing left to search."

(A/N): All right, guys. There it is. That's the first chapter from Amy's POV. What did you think? Is she as bad as some thought?

I don't always agree with Amy, but I have a lot of fun writing her character. It can be hard to put myself in her perspective. It would be a little like trying to write from Shane's POV.

Her POV will continue next chapter!

If you have time, leave a review and please be kind :)