Disclaimer: I do not own anything you recognize. I only lay claim to Adrian and Kale.

AN: So I do realize that I just posted chapter 23 yesterday and as much as I would love to let y'all worry and stress for the next week about what is going to happen next, I can't help but post this chapter so soon. Mostly because this is a gift from me to you, my lovely readers, in celebration of me finally hitting S3 Ep. 1 in my story.

P.S. To those few reviewers that have left me messages telling me Adrian is Mary Sue, first off if you don't like it, don't read it and move on. Second, life is full of Mary Sues, not everyone can have 6 different personalities just so you can be happy. So swallow it and get over it.

BTW I am sorry that it has taken me so long how to figure out how to space this thing properly. I have the breaks in my original copy but never realized it didn't do it when I posted it. Now, on with the story.

Chapter 24

Adrian had been running for hours. The plan to defend the farm house turned out badly and everyone had abandoned trying to protect it. Adrian had lost sight of everyone after she had went off on foot to help fight off the walkers. Unlike Daryl's bike, it wasn't so easy for her to stop her bike, shoot off a few rounds and then kick up dust.

Adrian had run out of ammo long ago but had kept the empty guns instead of throwing them away. Guns weren't so easy to come by these days and knew that they could be useful in the future. Adrian had seen everyone drive off in different directions to get off the farm but had been too far from her bike and decided to strike out of foot.

Adrian knew the section of woods she was in would take her back to the highway and knew in the general direction that they had originally all stopped at. She figured that since everyone had broken off that they might all meet up there.

By the time dawn had approach Adrian was exhausted. She had been running for hours, taking a break to catch her breath only when absolutely necessary. Her legs and lungs were burning. Her arms her starting to shake with exhaustion. Her mouth and throat felt as dry as sandpaper. The sun had only been up for no more than two hours and if she didn't take a break soon, she just might pass out.

She hadn't seen a walker for the last few hours but she didn't want to take any chances. Adrian had just stopped to catch her breath when she noticed that the trees seemed like they were getting thinner up ahead. She hoped the highway was close because she couldn't hear anything over the sound of her heart pumping, her blood rushing, and her heavy breathing.

Adrian broke through the trees and almost wept with relief to see a guardrail. She had finally made it to the highway. And she could hear voices. Almost to her breaking point, Adrian crawled up the embankment and over the guardrail before anyone noticed her.

"Jesus Christ!" "Adrian!" "Oh my God!" Adrian heard it all but couldn't tell you who said what. Adrian went to go and take a step but her legs chose that moment to give out on her and her vision suddenly became a swirl of colors. She expected to hit the hard asphalt of the highway but was abruptly stopped by someone's arms.

Adrian had to blink a few times before her vision would clear to see who had caught her. When her vision finally cleared, Adrian seen a tired and bloody Rick above her. Soon others filled her vision as well.

Questions were thrown her way and she tried to answer but she was panting too hard to form a word, much less a sentence. When she was able to slightly focus, she noticed that her arms and legs were twitching with frequent muscle spasms.

After a minute Adrian caught her breath. "Where's Kale? Is he here?" she finally asked, still panting lightly. The group got quiet and Adrian didn't like it. "Where is he?" she asked again, but again, no one answered her. Her entire demeanor started to change in that moment.

Her eyes took on a wide eyed panicky look, she began to pant harder because of her rising panic, and her muscle spasms seemed like they were getting worse.

"Where is he?!" she finally yelled, knowing that it was probably dangerous to do such a thing in the open like that but she wanted a damn answer.

"He's ain't here. We don't know what happened to him." Daryl finally answered.

"He was with Andrea. They came to help me when I got cornered. Andrea went down but we don't know if she was bitten or not. We lost sight of him after that." Carol said. Adrian let is sink in that Kale wasn't with them. He was either bitten and turned into a walker or had gotten stranded at the farm after everyone took off.

The shock was too much for her system to handle after running all night on an empty stomach and started to become dehydrated. Her body finally did the only thing it could to help her cope. Her body shut down and her whole world went black.

Her body went limp in Rick's arms as silent tears she hadn't even known she was shedding ran down her face.

Adrian was violently jerked out of a dreamless sleep by the sound of a car horn. At first she was disoriented but faintly heard the sounds of car doors opening and closing.

Adrian remembered the farm being overrun with walkers. She remembered the barn catching fire. Being caught too far from her bike as everyone decided to abandon the farm. Running for miles and miles to get back to the highway and prayed that that was everyone else was going. Getting to the highway and then collapsing.

Then she remembered someone telling her that not everyone made it to the highway.

Andrea hadn't made it off the farm as far as any of them knew.

And neither had Kale.

Once that piece of information clicked into place Adrian felt herself start to panic.

Kale hadn't made it off the farm. Kale was gone. She had failed him. When she had first taken him in she had promised that she would watch over him. That as long as he was with her that she would make sure that he would be safe.

But in the end it turned out that she had lied to him. Just like she had ended up lying to Seth.

The more she thought about it the more she hurt. After a few minutes she turned onto her side, curled into as tight a ball as she could manage, threw her arms over her head as if to protect it, and screamed as loud and as hard as she could.

Everyone was in front of the small convoy and was about to do what they could to set up a small camp for the cold night ahead when they heard an ear piercing scream coming from behind them. Everyone started running towards the scream expecting to see a walker tearing into someone at the very least, but then realized that the screaming was coming from the back of the SUV where they had put Adrian.

Daryl and Glenn yanked open the back of the SUV with everyone standing behind them to see a small back ball with wild, fanned out red hair that continously kept letting out a horrible, bone chilling scream.

"Somebody shut her up!" Rick yelled in a loud whisper. Daryl and Glenn reached in at the same time, both talking to her to get her to be quiet. "Adrian you have to be quiet. There might be walkers around." Glenn said grabbing her leg.

"Fuckin' woman! Shut the hell up! You wanna bring another damn herd down on us?" Daryl growled, trying to get her head out of her arms.

"Fuck." Daryl growled shouldering his crossbow. "Glenn. Get in there an' get her on her back. She ain't gonna shut up willingly." Daryl said to the Asian boy. "What?!" Glenn asked, surprised. "Get in there an' help me with her damn arms!" Daryl snapped at him.

Glenn handed his shotgun over to Maggie who was standing behind him and crawled into the large space with Adrian and, with much help from Daryl, got her onto her back and tried to pull her arms away from her head. After a minute or two of fighting her extremely taunt muscles, Glenn and Daryl finally got her arms away from her face.

Daryl ended up grabbing both of her small wrists in his left hand and slammed them onto the floor on her left side and firmly placed his right hand over her still screaming mouth, his hand thankfully muffling the screams. After a minute or two of both Daryl and Adrian staying like that everyone ran off to gather firewood and such for the night.

Adrian continued to scream for what seemed like forever but it gradually turned from a desperate, painfilled scream to an angry, hellfired scream. Daryl could only take it for so long before he snapped.

"Alright! Fuck, when are you goin' to stop?! You been at this for the past fifteen fuckin' minutes! Now shut the fuck up or I'ma make you!" Daryl growled at her, his nerves already frayed.

Daryl felt her close her mouth and grit her teeth together. Then she opened her eyes and locked her bright, angry green eyes onto his annoyed blue ones.

"You even think a fuckin' bitin' me or some shit like that an' I'll knock your fuckin' lights back out." he growled at her, eyes narrowed.

Normally Daryl like her fire and temper, mostly when it wasn't directed at him, but this was different from what he had seen in her before.

This was a hard, bitter anger.

And in his opinion, that was one of the most dangerous kinds of anger.

They had been on the road for two weeks now.

Everyone was wary of Rick now since he had told the group that not only was everyone infected with the walker infection, but that he had killed Shane to keep everyone safe.

Both had come as small shocks to Adrian, but after the farm, it was as if she was a stranger to everyone.

After her screaming fit in the woods she had become cold, hard, and distant. It seemed as if she had gone into hardcore survival mode and only cared for herself most of the time, although if one paid close enough attention they could see that she was seemingly protecting not only Carl but also Lori in small ways.

A jacket here, her food when she refused to eat there, and other small things. Since the news of Kale's disappearance, it seemed as if Adrian was on full autopilot.

She was worse than Daryl used to be before be became the unoffical second in command, just with much less lip about it.

When walkers showed up and they had no choice but to fight, she fought the hardest and most violent. When supplies were needed and it was too dangerous to do it, she was the first one to volunteer. She never laughed anymore, she never smiled, and on most days ignored everyone in general. It was getting colder every day and warmer supplies were needed if they were going to make it.

They had picked up what was needed over the last two weeks from houses and such that they would try to hole up in but they needed to hit a real store. But to hit a store for everything that they would need was too dangerous.

Adrian had volunteered to lead the run but refused to bring any more than two or three people with her. She had chosen Daryl, Glenn, and T-Dog to go with her into Bass Pro shop that she had found a few miles away.

At first Rick had refused but Adrian had told him point blank that she was going whether he approved of the run or not.

The night after the farm Rick had declared that from then on his word was law, but every now and then Adrian would fight him about his decisions. Rick didn't like it but he knew that at that point that they needed her more than she needed them. She had been doing just fine on her own before they showed up and he knew she could do it again.

Adrian, Glenn, T-Dog, and Daryl stood a few yards away from the store, hidden by some abandoned vehicles in the parking lot. "Alright." she said turning to them.

"Everyone knows what we need. Any warm clothing you can find, flashlights, lanterns, sleeping bags, anything you know will be useful. Dixon, I know you're probably gonna head for the hunting section so gather any ammo you can find while you're getting more arrows or whatever." she said in her now usual flat, emotionless tone, eyeing everyone to make sure that they understood.

Adrian turned back around making sure that the coast was clear. "Alright boys. Let's hit the ground runnin'." she said right before she took off towards the doors.

Most of the store had been picked clean but there was plenty of what they were looking for except for ammo. That section hadn't been picked clean, but there hadn't been as much as they would have liked. Four hours later the small scavenge team showed back up at the small house they were holing up in with a beautiful bounty of everything that they would need for a while other than food and water.

Adrian had trouble sleeping these days and had told everyone that she would takeover watch duty that night. It was midmorning and freezing outside when Rick walked outside to see Adrian propped up on the railing looking out for any danger.

"Adrian." Rick said lowly. The only reaction that Adrian made to his presence was a slight tick of her jaw.

"You need to sleep. Daryl tells me that you haven't slept in almost two days. You can't keep pushing like this. You do and you're likely to collapse. I need you as healthy as possible right now." Rick told her taking a few steps towards the mostly mute red headed woman.

"I'm fine Rick. Go back inside. And while you're at it you can tell your little tattle tail to mind his own business." she said, dismissing the man.

"Daryl didn't tell me much that I didn't already know. That everyone doesn't already know. You hardly eat when we do manage to find food, you barely sleep and when you do it's no more than a few hours at most. You can't keep pushing yourself like this. It's not healthy." Rick tried again.

Finally fed up with the lecture, Adrian whipped her head around to coldly stare at the older man. "The world isn't healthy Rick. Fucking dead people walkin' around trying to fucking eat us. Eat your son, your pregnant wife. You wanna wory about someone's health, worry about your wife. Deal with your own fucking problems of keeping everyone in that house alive and leave me the fucking hell alone." she growled, hard green eyes narrowed into tiny slits.

Rick sighed in frustration and stomped back inside. That woman was so maddening it made him want to rip his hair out most days!

They had been on the road for a full month now and had found another small, dingy farm house to hole up in for as long as they could get away with it. They were in desperate need of food so Adrian and Daryl had decided to go out and try to find some kind of big game to bring back.

They were lucky to find a small pack of four decently sized wild boar and managed to kill them before they realized what happened. They had a bit of a time hauling them back to the house. It took them a little while to find a good place to skin the boars so that none of the blood would attract the walkers straight to them.

After cutting up all of the meat they brought it back to the house and had a small feast that night. T-Dog had discovered what turned out to be a smoker, which turned out great for them so they could smoke the meat and have food for a few more days.

Adrian still gave most of her portion of food to either Carl or Lori but no one said anything about it. Adrian tried to avoid sleep as much as possible because she hadn't had anything but nightmares since leaving the farm.

It wasn't so much the nightmares that she was afraid of as to who would show up in her nightmares.

More often than not thought, it was Seth. Yelling and screaming at her that she had lied to him.

And then shortly after Kale would show up and accuse her of the same thing.

AN: Let me know what you think, an if you didn't like how the chapter was written out, I don't blame you. I probably could have done a little better.