As she rode in the deserted Atlanta streets at top speed, expertly maneuvering through the walkers for their close escape, Rick barely held himself not to clutch her waist tightly behind her back, holding his hat with one hand against his abdomen and tightening the other around the side of the bike. His day was becoming weirder, getting rescued like that by another stranger, but there was no time for questions yet.
He had no idea from where she had shown up or why she was helping a stranger, Morgan had been too wary, knocking him up first, tying him to the bed before he started questions, and the man had only saved him from a sole walker.
There were dozens of those abominations on the streets now, picking up their sight, the sounds the mighty motor made but she knew what she was doing. She zigzagged the streets without even halting a second, climbing the sidewalk when she needed to find space to slide through the mass of the dead.
Rick realized then she didn't only know what she was doing, but she also knew her surroundings. She made a turn to the left without slowing down, inclining the bike dangerously close on the pavement with the momentum before they slipped through the hands that were clawing at them. Ahead of them, Rick saw a narrow alley with fences, the back of it blockaded. Behind it on the horizon, Rick saw the majestic silhouette of Grady Memorial Hospital, half-burned, half-destroyed, broken, and deserted like everything else in the city.
He couldn't understand what had happened to the city. Well, he could, he could even smell it in the air underneath the stinky smell of the dead, rotting flesh, but he couldn't wrap his mind around it. While he had ridden on the horse, everything had turned into a worse horror movie.
Atlanta had been bombed—napalm, Rick smelled Sulphur in the air beneath all the other scents. Rick had only seen a bombarded city in the movies and documentaries, but Atlanta's downtown scenery looked close to those pictures.
The small hair on his back stood up as the woman stopped the bike in a shadow place under the darkening sky and sat still astride it as Rick stepped down from her back. They were momentarily safe behind the fence even though a few lingering walkers were still trying to reach them pushing themselves against the fence links.
Rick stared at them, still taken aback, his mind again having difficulty to progress everything, but the woman didn't even bat an eye. "What the hell were you doing?" Rick heard her hissing, and when Rick returned to her, he saw her eyeing him with an equally pissed look, shooting at him daggers with her sharp green eyes.
Her soft brown hair was twisted up in a tight bun, and despite the apparent anger and the roller coaster she had just made them run through wildly, she still looked like the most collected person Rick had ever met so far at the end of the world in her dark leather jacket and leggings.
Then she snapped, "Do you have a death wish or are you just plain stupid?"
Rick frowned. "I was trying to get to the refugee center—" he replied placidly. "What happened here?"
"What do you think happened?" she asked back, looking annoyed now before shaking her head, muttering, "I don't have time for this…"
Rick decided to ignore her last remark, but instead questioned; he needed to know what happened. The city looked like a dead place, no pun indeed. "They bombed the city?"
She jerked her head into a curt nod. "Yeah. They lost control, then decided to wipe it clean…" She swayed her head again irritated, "Seriously, where have you been?"
'In a coma, sleeping' came to the tip of his tongue, but Rick held it back. He had been sleeping, sleeping while his family had had to live through this. The sudden realization had almost knocked the breath out of his chest again, hurting more than his wound at his side. He breathed out laboriously, bracing himself against the pain and hurt, and reached toward his chest to take out the photo he'd put in the pocket over his chest.
They had to be alive, they had to.
As soon as his hands moved, hers too. She twisted aside in a heartbeat, slipping down from the bike, and when she stood up in front of him, she had already drawn her gun and was pointing it at him.
"Hands where I can see them!" she barked.
Rick stopped, and raised his hands in the air, narrowing his eyes at the quick and commandeering way she had fired the command. "You've just saved my ass over there—" he motioned toward the walkers with the tip of his hat.
"I hate people dying on me—" she shot back, "Don't take it personal."
"I'm Rick Grimes, King County's Sheriff Deputy—" Rick introduced himself, hands still in the air as she was still pointing the gun at him, before he started explaining, "I've come to the city to look for my family. My wife, and my son. I've got a picture of them in my shirt's pocket and wanted to show it to ask if you've seen them. I mean no harm."
She eyed him again with a keen, penetrating look, and Rick knew she was trying to decide if he could be trusted. Rick understood. That much he'd understood of the new world. She holstered her gun again at her hips the next second, waving her hand at him in a single, wordless command.
Rick fished out their family photo and walking to her a bit closer at the bike. "Lori. Carl—" He showed the picture, "Have you ever seen them?"
Her head crestfallen, looking at the photo, she shook it. "No. Sorry." She looked up at him. "Why did you think they were in the refugee center?" she questioned. "The chain of command was broken before the bombings started, but didn't you hear what happened in the city?"
Not wanting to share what had happened to him, Rick only shook his head, but instead asked, "Where's everyone?" He waved his head vaguely, remembering the deserted watch posts, tanks, and equipment he'd seen on the streets. Morgan had seen everything had gone, the whole civilization had fallen, and Rick had seen the hospital, their station, but—but he had hoped something was still running in the city. It had to.
"Most just left in the chaos, abandoning their posts—" she replied this time holding back a sigh, her expression softening an inch around her curt edges, "Some died…Whatever is left just try to hang on where they are until something comes up." She paused a second, giving him another sharp look, but this time it held a warning.
"You should be careful parading in Atlanta's streets like that, Deputy—" she said, tipping her head toward the duffel bag still sat on the bike's back. "There're a lot of gangs on the streets now and they would happily kill you for it."
"I can't die yet. I have to find my family," Rick replied seriously, but she actually smiled at that.
"A family man…" she remarked, "So where have you been, Deputy?" she asked, "Why weren't you with your family? Couldn't you desert your post? Are you that honorable as well?"
"No." Rick wasn't that honorable, but he still didn't want to tell the woman he had been in a coma, sleeping while the world ended.
He didn't know what to do, where to start looking. He had to find his family, but he didn't even know where to begin. He recalled Morgan's words, the rumors of CDC working on a cure, and the woman had really a commandeering air around herself, something Rick couldn't pinpoint. The quick and certain way she had reacted and drawn her gun screamed practice and authority, but Rick couldn't be sure if she was in law enforcement agencies or just had the skill.
"I met with a man, told me there're rumors about CDC working on a cure—" he started but stopped as she reacted once more, stepping away from him in a sudden whirl, drawing her gun again.
"Wh-?"
"Are you bit?" the demanding question came fiercely, her Glock pointing at his head, but her eyes weren't fixated on his face, but on his lower body, toward his side.
Rick followed her gaze and saw her staring at the red stain over his dusted creamy shirt at his side. "Are you bit, goddammit?!"
Fuck!
His wound must've started bleeding again under the bandage after he'd fallen off the horse. Rick quickly shook his head, remembering the way Morgan had reacted to his wound. So far, she had taken it better than him, at least Rick was up at his feet, without a shovel knocking him out.
"I was shot—" he answered hastily, shooting his hands up in the air again to placate her, she wasn't knocking him out, yeah, but she was a way quicker and more agile than Morgan. "Before all of this…" he went on with the same urge, also realizing that he needed her, he needed her to stay alive in this crazy world for tonight. Rick felt like a fish out of the water in the city worse, and he'd seen how she rode that bike through the streets. She knew the city. Rick was going to find his family, but he was going to need help. It was as clear as the darkening sky above them.
Because for now, he needed something else, too, a safe place to pass the night.
"You asked me where I've been…I was in a coma, sleeping."
"What?" she echoed, her eyes widening an inch, betraying her cool bravado.
"There were these perps that I and my partner were after. We stopped them on the backroads. We thought they were only two, but they weren't. There was a third one. He shot me. At my lung from the side," Rick quickly briefed.
"You're kidding, right?" she asked again.
Rick shook his head. "I just woke up yesterday."
She waved her head at his side, where he was bleeding. "Show me…" Rick stared at her. She demanded again in that commandeering tone, "Show me your wound."
This time he obliged, started taking his shirt off his waist and unbuttoning it at the end of her gun. Everything suddenly became so surreal, Rick felt for a split second he was dreaming, this wasn't happening. The snarls and growls behind them and Sulphur in the air with the death scent was a constant reminder that he wasn't. When he unbuttoned his shirt, he opened it to the side and showed her the bandage.
"Pull it off—" she demanded again, jerking her head at the bandage.
"For Christ's sake—" he shot back.
"Show me your wound or I'm leaving right now!" she minced each other.
Rick knew it wasn't a bluff. He carefully peeled off the plaster that kept the gauze pad on his scar tissue and showed it to her as she demanded. "Happy now?"
She gave him a cool look, and Rick waited for a retort, but shaking her head as if suddenly she was tired, she dropped her hands. "You better not lie to me, Deputy."
Rick affirmed it with a terse nod, closing off his wound, and started rebuttoning his shirt. "I understand the precaution—" he told her. "The man I met yesterday. He saved my life, too, then cuffed me to the bed."
She laughed lowly, "Well, he sounds like a smart man." She paused, looking conflicted, and Rick knew what was passing in her mind. She grumbled under her breath the next second, before asking, sounding very displeased, "Do you have a place to go? Hide in?"
Rick shook his head.
"Fuck—" she muttered, passing a hand through her hair over her forehead, letting out a deep sigh. "I'm so gonna regret this…" She waved her hand at him. "C'mon, let's go. We gotta hurry."
Dutifully, Rick followed her as she turned toward the bike and graciously slid a leg over it. "Where?" Rick asked, climbing at her back again.
She pointed forward, toward the Grady. "There. You need a doctor."
"Do you know there?" Rick sputtered out.
She looked over her shoulder and threw a smirk at him, as Rick realized she hadn't told him her name yet. "Better. I live there."
# # #
Even though she rode to a side street in the narrow passageway that would bring them to the back of Grady's parking lot, there was a part of her that questioned her decision, rather loudly in her mind. She was bringing a new people in, which they—Captain Hanson and Dawn had decided not to a month ago unless they were wounded and harmless.
As clueless as he seemed, strolling in the streets like that on his horse, Amanda didn't suppose the King County's Sheriff Deputy was a harmless man. There was that intense look in his eyes. He had played cool with her, and to be honest, Amanda felt if things were different, the man would have reacted differently, too. Amanda was good at reading people, and she knew what she saw.
But she also knew the good from the bad, and the first thing he'd asked was about his family. I can't die yet. The earnest and intense way he'd told it had even moved her a bit. Deputy Rick Grimes couldn't die yet, because his family needed him.
Besides, the man was one of them, too. A cop. She just couldn't leave one of them out there like that. I just woke up yesterday. The words were so bizarre that Amanda couldn't even begin to imagine it or how it had happened, but he was also injured too? So perhaps they would understand why she had to bring him in? He was an injured cop. She had to help him.
God!
How the hell she was going to bring him in?
Because sneaking away on off-time, stealing supplies then bringing in injured strangers might be a bit too much even for Dawn to eat it up to Hanson. Even Dawn covered for this shit, the woman would never let it go again, and one day was going to come back to collect them. Amanda didn't want it. Her debts to Dawn were becoming too much, a damn too much, even Lamson had noticed it.
No. They had to come in how she had gotten out.
She stopped the bike in a corner under the roof in complete shadows and stepped down. She shot at him a look over her shoulder to see if he was following her and saw him shouldering his duffel bag. Well, at least, he was coming in bearing gifts.
They were so pitifully low with guns. Each person who had deserted their posts had also cleared a piece of their arsenal before they made out. When they left the bike and infiltrated the parking lot, Amanda pushed him under the alcove beneath the terraces. Lamson was still up on the roof, but she didn't want to take her chances with her senior officer too. It was better they crept inside without any drama and finished the day. Everything would look better in a new day, or they said.
God.
Where the hell she was going to keep him tonight? Hide him in a closet room? She supposed she could find a space to stash him inside until the next morning and thought of something without throwing herself in front of the lions, but that also meant leaving him alone in the hospital without anyone overseeing him.
Nope.
Amanda knew the good from the bad, and he really didn't look like a sonofabitch, but Amanda wasn't stupid, either. Nor she was a very trusting person. Well, he could understand, right? He had said the man he met yesterday had cuffed him to the bed after all. His words.
When he made a move to walk out of the shadows of the terrace to the backdoor, she pushed back against the wall. A bit too harshly perhaps as his face crumpled, holding back a groan.
"No. Not from there." she hissed, shaking her head.
She possibly should be a bit softer with him, the poor man might be a hell of a day, but her day had been a long one, too. After that she received a look, silent and keen, searching without words. He had an affinity to do it, and Amanda felt him assessing her as carefully as she had, then putting the dots together he slowly mused out, "I thought you said you live here."
"Yeah…about that," she trailed off with a shrug.
His eyes jerked up upward, checking the roof, clearing catching the sight of Lamson in uniform. "You're trying to hide," he observed.
She shrugged again but admitted, no way to keep it secret anymore. "My people. They don't know I was out."
The deputy raised his eyebrow, his eyes rolling up to the roof again, then they narrowed darting down at her before he declared. "Y-you're cops."
Amanda gave back the fellow law enforcement officer a firm nod. "Officer Amanda Shepherd of APD—" she replied, tilting her head upward. "Now, let's go before my partner up there spots you and you get shot another time."
This wasn't what they both expected how their day would be, especially him, Amanda couldn't even begin to imagine how hard everything had to be for him if he were saying the truth, of course, she added to herself. It was a pesky little reminder constantly buzzing in the back of her mind, but that annoying voice was what had kept her up at her feet since her childhood.
He followed her instructions without another word as Amanda made him sneak inside. It was even harder than sneaking out, as they needed to climb up the elevator shaft. When he saw a few rotters corpses down on the ground, he had flinched but climbed on the top without another word afterward. Well, he was quick to adapt, Amanda supposed. When the first time she had been here, she had thrown up.
He struggled with the climb; Amanda saw his wound bleeding worse. "I've got clean bandages in my room—" she told him, securing the harness as they made a pit stop, "You can change it."
"Thank ya—" he mouthed out laboriously before putting up his feet on the ledge but didn't complain. Amanda took it as a sign.
After a gruesomely long hour, they managed to climb out and Amanda made them sneak in the corridors toward her room at the left-wing as fast as possible. He looked worse to wear now and Amanda didn't want to push their chance before he passed out.
They made it to her room without any further accident, and when Amanda slid the room's door open and he walked inside, she understood better what the hell she had done. She had taken a man—a man she didn't know anything about inside her room in the hospital secretly to pass the night. It wouldn't be the first time the officers had done anything like this; she had seen a few nurses already passing nights with some of her co-workers, but Amanda had never done it before.
It wasn't even that kind of stuff, and what the hell she was going to do with him?
His eyes wandered around her quarters, a single standard room in the hospital wing, as he quickly took in everything. Amanda had no personal belongings in the room, no photo frames, pictures or such stuff people did to turn a place into their own. She had only her uniform and gear scattered over the couch across the sickbed, a few books she read before they turned off the lights, and her training tights and shirts. The only personal stuff that could be found in the room was the small blue training ball and elastic bands she used to work out in the mornings.
His eyes lingered on her uniform more than anything else, as if he was checking over her story too, then more than walking, he crashed on the small couch and rested his head on the back of it. He looked weary as he pinched the bridge of his nose tiredly, closing his eyes.
Suddenly Amanda felt something stirring in her chest, and words left her before she knew it, "I know some people in the city. Trying to hold up as we do—" she said as he lifted his head to look at her. "I can bring you to them if you want to look around for your family."
"Thank ya—" he nodded again in a low voice before adding, "I also want to see the refugee center."
"I'll think of something—" she replied. Well, she was out on the city patrol tomorrow. They kept outside patrols in the vicinity of the hospital, trying to keep things in order. The refugee center wasn't that far away.
She shed off her leather jacket and threw it over the chair beside the sickbed as his eyes followed her, giving her another look, keen and searching, but then his gaze stayed on her shirt's chest, but he wasn't checking out her boobs. No. He was looking at the blue APD insignia over her white tee-shirt she had relieved after she had taken off her jacket.
"Why did you do it?" he asked suddenly as Amanda dropped herself on the edge of the bed and started taking off her boots too, placing her leg over her knee.
She yanked the boot off forcibly, combat boots always came off with difficulty, and dropped it on the ground unceremoniously. "Did what?"
"Helped me—" the Deputy clarified. "Why're you still putting your neck out for me?"
Amanda lifted her head, throwing away her other boot. "You're one of us," she replied stiffly. And she was a cop, she still was. The civilization had fallen, and there was no APD anymore, everyone was drifting, everything was drifting, but Amanda Shepherd was still a cop. "And like I said, I hate people dying on me."
She threw herself back on the bed, in her leggings and t-shirt, and unwrapped her holster from her hips, and put it beside her pillow as she lay down. She was facing him as he sat on the couch, still watching her. Her hand was placed just beside her holster, too, and she made no moves to hide it. Its meaning wasn't lost on the man either, but she still added, looking at him straight in the eye as she lay on her side.
"I grew up in foster homes, Deputy, and do you know what a foster kid learns fast growing up?" she asked and replied fast, "How to sleep with one eye open. Try to screw me, and I'll kill you even before you blink."
With that, she closed her eyes, her body facing him, her hand placed beside her gun, knowing that he did take her fair warning.
# # #
They returned before the evening from what Glenn had started fearing being a disaster when he had seen the older Dixon brothers getting high. But a twist of fate, or good luck, or some deities finally decided to have mercy on them, nothing bad happened.
His first run with a group, and it actually hadn't turned out as bad as Glenn thought it would have. They had found a lot of supplies from the department store, clothes, equipment, necessities, even those little pills Lori had asked from him secretly. As soon as the brunette woman had mentioned them in secret, Glenn had understood, also understanding her need for the secrecy, and agreed to look for them for her in secret.
When he passed them to her in the evening after they returned while they prepared supper from the supplies they had brought, Glenn had given them to her, acutely aware of Merle Dixon's stare on them too. The man had caught him picking them up when they went back inside the store after that 'like a damn action movie' rescue they saw on the streets, and Glenn supposed he was checking out to see for whom Glenn had picked them up.
Nosy, stupid man, Glenn passed in his mind, knowing they would've never taken him with them. Glen hadn't wanted, but when Shane hadn't wanted to come—risking it for a few trinkets and cans as he called it, they had no choice but took the man. Merle Dixon could be an asshole, but he was an asshole who could shoot better than anyone in their group aside from Shane and his younger man.
The first thing Glenn had learned at the end of the world was that the options were limited, and you had to do with what you had. He was still a half-full-glass kind of guy.
When the stars started shining above them, they sat around their campfire, only letting tinders burn around a ring of stones, and ate their supper, huddled together under the blankets. Some of them were trembling, but Shane didn't let them put more fuel on the fire.
"So how was it?" Dale asked. "How was the run? I admit I felt fearful a bit when we heard the radio cracked up in the day, nothing came up."
Glenn lifted his head, startled to hear it. They were trying to warn people for going to the city or pick up them from escaping it if they could, but in the last weeks, even their radio had fallen silent. "Radio cracked up?" he asked breathlessly. "Someone tried to make a contact."
"Yeah, but we couldn't get in contact—" Shane replied, throwing a thin branch inside the tinders. "The reception was bad. It died off."
His shoulders dropped. Everything was going worse, but then he remembered what had happened today. His eyes cast around and he looked for Merle, but he wasn't around, either. Glenn turned to the others. "I saw someone today too in downtown. He was ahorse—"
"Ahorse?" Carl whispered in awe from her mother's arms as Lori cradled him across her lap under the blanket they shared, her hands gently going through the boy's unkempt hair, those baby blue wide eyes glinting sapphire in the darkness, unlike her mother's hazel ones. Glenn had seen their photo album, and their family photo Carl showed his friends in the camp. The boy was almost a carbon copy of his mother, but those baby blues was from his father, the late officer Grimes Glenn had never met before.
Glenn smiled, remembering the man on the horse was also wearing a Sheriff uniform like his father, "He was also wearing a Sheriff uniform like your dad, Carl, with hat and all."
"Really?" the boy squeaked, drawing up from her mother's embrace. "Tell us what happened!" he demanded like a nine-year-old enthusiasm for good stories over a campfire.
Glenn started recounting, turning it even more suitable for the occasion. "Then whoop! He was almost done! Surrounded by the geeks! With no escape!"
"Nooo!" Both Carl and Sophie exclaimed in the same moment, closing their hands over their mouths as Glenn did exaggerate things a bit further as Lori and Carol tried to hush them into silence.
Glenn smiled, leaning over the fire. "But suddenly she showed up!" he whispered.
"Who?" they whispered back breathless.
"The chick on the bike!" Glenn replied, darting his eyes between the kids as they looked at him expectantly, listening to his story. "She just came into between them, snitched him off amid the walkers, then rode away—"
"Like a damn action movie—" Merle's slurring drawl commented again as he swaggered toward them and dropped himself down on the ground, still only in his vest as he smoked a cigarette. Both Lori and Carol gave him a narrowed eyes look, hating it when he smoked in front of their kids. "I tell ya', folk. Juuust like a damn movie—"
"Well, it's still good to know that there are still people out there helping each other—" Lori's words chided as she drew her son closer to her chest under the blanket, but her eyes had cut over to Shane as she had said the words.
The other man stood up after that, his brown eyes on Lori, giving her a look, but without any word, he walked back to his tent. Glenn thought it was something the couple in secret had had earlier, so he tried not to put his nose in it, as Merle took another puff from his cigarette and blew the smoke out, murmuring, "Yeah, idiots."