oOo

"He's been teaching me this."

Diana shook off Glenn's arm and grabbed her bow. She raised it, adopting a familiar stance that she'd spent weeks perfecting. Then she aimed two inches to the side of Merle's head and drew the silver string until it touched the tip of her nose and her hand rested under her jaw. She released it.

In the whizz of a blur, the arrow lodged into the metal pipe by his head without a flinch from him. When it sunk into his drug-addled brain what had happened, he looked to the side to witness the arrow dissipate like smoke. He yelped and jumped away, tugging at his handcuffs and looking up at her in mild horror.

That was it.

It was done.

"Jesus, Lord in Heaven." Diana heard Jacqui say and saw the woman cross herself with wide eyes.

"Diana, what is- I don't-?" Glenn stammered out with a questioning tone of voice, breaking the otherwise stunned silence.

"I'm so sorry," Diana started with a heavy heart, brow furrowed as she let her eyes roam guiltily. "I'm really sorry I never said anything. I didn't know- I wasn't sure how- I…"

Andrea plowed toward her, enraged and without a shred of sympathy. "You goddamn bitch! You've been letting us waste our ammo all this time when you can do that?! How could you have hidden something like this from us? You know how much danger we've been in! When you could've-"

The Sheriff stepped up to stop Andrea from coming down on Diana in her anger. "Hey, back off. Calm yourself down before you're pointing your gun at her head as well," he said.

Diana cowered back, feeling small and unsure of what to do. Her heart was loud in her ears and she felt close to tears. Anxiety whispered in her ear that they all hated her now and that she never should've done it.

Merle sneered at her and spat at her feet. "Fuckin' nigger demon."

His hateful words stung and she took a step back, almost stepping on Glenn. He grabbed her hand and entwined their fingers in silent support. He always stood by her side, even when he should be hating her for keeping this from him.

He always made sure she could count on him. Diana loved Glenn for that.

T-Dog stumbled to a stand and spat at Merle, "Shut your bitch-ass mouth, you stupid sunovabitch." He held a hand to his ribs and winced with every step he took towards her. At her side, his large hand weighed on her shoulder like an anchor. Grounding and firm.

The anxiety lost its voice. She wasn't hated.

"No, she's a godsend," said Jacqui, joining her hands in front of her chest. "Coming to purge the Earth from these demons."

Diana shook her head fiercely and sniffed back her tears. She'd never expected Jacqui to be such a believer of religious icons. She let go of Glenn's hand and sidestepped the Sheriff. "No, okay, I'm not. I'm none of those things, okay? I'm nothing, you know? I just… I just found something that I shouldn't have. It's not me, it's this." She stretched out her hand with the bow. The golden tint reflected the gray of the clouded sky.

Morales and Jacqui came forward to look at it. Andrea still glared at her from the distance. The Sheriff asked her permission to try it out.

Diana nodded sheepishly, knowing by now it would be for naught. It had only worked with her until now and she was certain it would stay that way.

When his attempt produced no satisfactory results, he turned to her with an inquisitive furrow of his brow. T-Dog was who voiced the question.

Diana shrugged helplessly, her eyes on the weapon. "It's never worked with anyone else except me," she explained. She suppressed a grimace when Jacqui started murmuring to herself and crossed herself again.

She didn't want them getting the wrong idea of her yet again, just because she felt special because of the bow, it didn't mean she actually was special. It was just a coping strategy.

"That's okay," the Sheriff said as he handed it back. "We can discuss this in depth at some other time when the clock isn't ticking." He didn't look like it was okay, he looked like someone who wanted answers, but he spared her that at the moment and she was thankful for it. "Think you can clear us a way out of here with that?"

Diana felt her stomach drop and shook her head vigorously. "I don't know. I don't… I don't think I can. I mean, I've practiced on moving targets before, but never geeks and there are too many of them." She wanted to prove herself and her capabilities, but there would have to be at least ten of her to clear a path through the geeks at the storefront. She knew her limits.

"Hey, it's alright, we'll keep it as a last resource, just in case. That okay with you?" The Sheriff laid a hand on her shoulder and met her eye.

Diana nodded half-heartedly and lifted a shoulder. "Yeah, I guess."

"You guess?" Andrea shouted at her, back on her warpath. "You can easily get us all out of here and won't do it because of what, you never shot walkers before? Eventually, you'll have to. So why not now when our lives are at stake? Are you that selfish?"

"Andrea, take it easy, this is her first time," Morales berated, "She's scared, we're all scared, get over it. We can find another way out." He gave Diana a pitiful look.

Diana hated that look and she hated that she couldn't do what they wanted of her.

She felt her blood freeze inside her veins just imagining it. They'd be on her quicker than ants on fallen candy. There was no way she'd be able to fend off against dozens of them at a time. She wasn't Wonder Woman.

"Okay, so we know that so the streets aren't safe," said the Sheriff, getting back on track. "What about under? The sewers?"

They starting buzzing with the beginnings of a new plan. Jacqui mentioned something about the subbasements and they left to check her theory, leaving T-Dog to recover from his injuries and try the walkie-talkie, and Merle to seethe and wallow and curse about Diana having bewitched his brother.

oOo

Down in the darkened basement, they stared down the ladder to a sewer entrance. The light of their torches danced on the different surfaces, examining the route in question.

Morales spoke up, uncertain, "This is it? Are you sure?"

Diana scoffed. "Definitely no other way to go, so down into the sewers with us, 'cause that's a good idea!" she pretended to cheer and then sighed. "For real, this day just keeps on giving."

"Don't jinx it," Glenn commented. He nodded at Morales and answered, "Yeah, I mean, I really scoped this place out the other times I was here. It's the only thing in the building that goes down. But I've never gone down it. Who'd want to, right?"

The others looked up and at him expectantly. Diana inhaled deeply with widening eyes. Oh, hell no.

Glenn grimaced and looked down at the pit of doom. "Oh. Great."

"No, nuh-uh. If anything, I should be going," Diana confessed, foregoing her past statement and grabbing Glenn by the upper arm. "Can't be that many geeks down there, if any at all. I could totally do it, I could. It'd be good practice."

"No, you're not going," Glenn stated with a firm look. There he was again, putting her safety above his own once more. It'd have to stop sometime; Diana would have to show him that he was just as important.

"We'll be right behind you," Andrea told him softly, in what was supposed to be an encouraging manner. The complete opposite image of how she'd been not five minutes ago. The duality of a woman.

"No, you won't. I don't-" Glenn stopped talking with an indignant huff and looked from Diana to his left to the others to his right.

The Sheriff gave him a pat on the shoulder and told him to speak his mind.

Glenn breathed deeply. "Look, until now I always came here by myself. In and out, grab a few things; no problem. The first time I bring a group… Everything goes to hell. No offense." His gesturing made the light from his torch shine briefly across Diana's vision, blinding her for a second. "If you want me to go down this gnarly hole, fine… But only if we do it my way. It's tight down there. If I run into something and have to get out quick, I don't want you all jammed up behind me getting me killed. I'll take one person-" He stopped the Sheriff before he could volunteer. "Not you either. You've got Merle's gun and I've seen you shoot. I'd feel better if you were out in that store watching those doors, covering our ass."

Next, he turned to Diana. "Please go with him. I know they're many, but you won't be alone and hopefully, it won't come to that. But if it does and if your training with Dixon started when I think it did, then I know you can do this. I need you to do this."

Diana nodded with downcast eyes, displeased.

Then he continued distributing jobs. Andrea was to go with her and the Sheriff, Morales was to go down with Glenn, and Jacqui would be on the lookout to get them out if something were to happen on the surface.

See, strategic to a fault.

Before Glenn began climbing down the ladder, Diana covered his hand on the railing with hers and begged him to be careful. He gave her an anguished smile and continued the descent. That didn't make it any easier for her to let him go.

She followed the Sheriff and Andrea back to the storefront. She tried to keep her distance from Andrea, who kept stealing glances at her. Diana wondered how someone like Amy could be related to her. If she'd been intent on winning her over, she could forget about that now. She did not need Andrea's approval for shit.

They walked warily into the store, trying not to rile up the geeks any further.

They were relentless, even after their 'walking meals' had disappeared from sight for so long, they hadn't desisted from trying to break down the glass doors to get to them. Mob mentality, it affected even those with low brainwave frequency.

Andrea began apologizing to the Sheriff about having had her gun in his face and that was about when Diana drifted to the back of the store, away from their private conversation.

She went through the racks of clothes, trying to distract herself from the noise coming from the entrance. She saw some skirts she thought Alice would've liked, but she knew they weren't the most practical of clothing articles to wear nowadays. She skipped them and mindlessly held up a black sweatshirt that seemed to be Felix's size. She put it against her torso and turned to the floor length mirror.

Her heart nearly stopped when she saw Andrea standing behind her. She threw the shirt away to face her.

Diana pursed her lips and looked off to the side. She cracked her knuckles one-handed with nerves. "Uhh, you need something or…?"

"I'm sorry… about before," Andrea said, straight to the point, "I didn't know what to think when I saw you do that. You gotta admit it's kinda freaky." She gave Diana a wavering smile. "But I know what it's like to be that scared. I just… I just want to be out of here. I need to go back to my sister."

That was a sentiment Diana could understand. She, too, wanted to go back to her family. "Look, I get it, for real. I wanna leave too, and if I could do what you want me to do, I would, but I'm… I'm-"

"You don't have to justify yourself." Andrea gave a small smile. "It's your choice. Besides, it'd be crazy to send you out like that, you wouldn't stand a chance."

Diana knew she was right and meant well, but her choice of words peeved her. And it wasn't like she'd forgotten her outrage from before.

"You're searching for gifts?" Andrea asked, changing the subject. She looked back to the Sheriff, who was controlling something at the entrance. "I got something for Amy." She took a necklace out of her jeans pocket, it had a mermaid pendant dangling from it.

Diana shrugged loosely. "I don't think it's looting if there's no one alive anymore to ring it up for you, right?"

Andrea gave her a rueful smile and put it away again. "Want any help searching for something?"

Diana was tempted to use the phrase, 'no, thanks, I'm just looking', but she wasn't sure her ill-timed humor would be appreciated.

"Nah, I already got everything I need," Diana said and turned to peruse through the racks again. Her words were inconsistent with her actions, so maybe Andrea would take the hint.

"What about something you want? That shirt, maybe?" She didn't take the hint.

I want to leave, Diana thought but refrained from saying it aloud. She knew she was not the only one. "Eh, it was alright."

The outer door shattered to pieces, allowing the geeks to advance to the next one.

Andrea darted to the front to where the Sheriff stood at the ready and Diana followed suit.

She rejoiced for a short moment when she saw Glenn and the others return. He shot to her, skidding on the linoleum floor, and she caught him by the shoulders.

"And?" she asked him.

"What'd you find down there?" added the Sheriff, glancing briefly at Morales.

He shook his head mournfully, breathing heavily. "Not a way out."

Fuck!

oOo

They ran back up to the roof, not wanting their presence to fuel the walkers' mindless determination. Desperation was slowly setting in, replacing whatever hope they'd had.

On the roof, the Sheriff used Glenn's binoculars to search around the area for a way out. He spotted some trucks in a fenced construction site that he knew kept their keys on hand. All they needed now was a way to get past the geeks. So the streets it was, after all.

Diana chewed on the inside of her cheek, trying to think of a plan. She had to do something, what good was she if all she did was stand around like nothing, doing nothing, being nothing.

What if she tried the sniper approach to cover their backs while they made a run for it?

No, there were too many flaws in that plan. First, she'd never shot at such a distance, who knew if her aim would be accurate, she'd be putting them in danger. Second, that meant she'd have to stay behind on the roof and wait for them to come get her. Third, how the hell would they do that without drawing geeks to her location? Fourth, the inevitable tidal wave at the storefront; she'd be stuck on the roof or worse.

Diana shook her head and dispersed that plan. She tuned in on the brainstorming session.

"They can tell us by smell?" the Sheriff asked.

"They smell dead, we don't. It's pretty distinct," Andrea responded with a disgusted grimace.

Ooooh. Diana could see where his train of thought was leading. Bless you, Apocalypse Cowboy, and your disturbing mind.

"So we camouflage, right?" Diana concluded for the Sheriff while pointing at him, "We gotta smell like them."

He pointed back at her with a pleased quirk of his lips and led them down to the store. There he relayed to them his thoughts. "Like she said, if we smell like them, they won't be able to distinguish us from them."

"Or, you know, think Schwarzenegger in Predator," Diana told Glenn, who shook his head in disbelief, "but with less mud and more guts." She ended with a sheepish shrug.

Glenn made a gagging sound. Diana grabbed some pairs of rubber gloves and shoved them in his arms to distract him from the imagery.

"Really? I knew you were the worst at plans, but if bad ideas were an Olympic event, this would take the gold," Glenn complained, pulling a disgusted face.

"Hey, he thought of it, I just said it out loud," Diana excused herself while pointing at the Sheriff over her shoulder.

They dressed in lab coat-like garbs and put rubber gloves on. Then they made their way to the backroom that led to the barricaded alley. Diana could tell their lack of enthusiasm by their gait.

The Sheriff and Morales ran outside to grab the geek he and T-Dog had killed while Andrea and Glenn stood guard at the door.

Diana peeked her head outside and saw the other two live ones shuffling and limping in their direction, attracted by the prospect of a fresh meal.

She waited until Morales and the Sheriff dragged the geek inside and slid out the door before they'd close it.

"Diana? What the hell are you doing?" came Glenn's panicked hushed voice.

This was the best time to test herself. Moving target practice feat. live geeks. Daryl would be proud.

Once they spotted her, they grew even more restless, her human smell ripe in the air. Diana stopped in her tracks, her feet turning to lead and her heart plummeting to her stomach.

She felt scared, but maybe her exposure to zombie movies B.A. desensitized her to them, or she was straight out dissociating from herself because even though she was scared, she wasn't terrified. She didn't feel the existential dread that came from facing your own mortality.

Despite their dangling jowls and bloody rotten snapping teeth, they weren't that frightening to her, at least not as frightening as the mob at their doors.

Diana swore she couldn't understand herself sometimes.

She swallowed around the lump in her throat, hearing the others call her name again. She took a slow step and then another, resuming her stalk towards her target. She powered through the shaking of her hands and raised her bow. With a steady draw, the geek closest to her fell in a heap of decaying flesh at her feet at first shot.

Diana skipped over it and continued.

She drew another arrow.

The last geek was less than seven feet in front of her.

"Diana!" Glenn called once more, urging her to return, and Morales' voice joined him.

She heard rushed footsteps coming up behind her, but she stood still, bow and arrow ready. When the geek was within grabbing distance of her, she released the string and the creature flew backward with the blow, an arrow protruding from its sunken eye socket.

"Hey!" She was grabbed by the shoulder and turned around.

"I did it," Diana whispered breathlessly. Her disbelieving smile contrasted deeply to Glenn's angry brow and concerned eyes.

"Don't do that again!" Glenn's grip tightened on her upper arms.

"Glenn, I killed them," she said emphatically and grabbed onto the side of his neck. Her legs felt weak for some reason. He was not happy with her at all but she only felt a tiny bit bad about that. This was a personal accomplishment and nothing could take that joy from her.

Those two had been an easy start. They were nothing compared to what lied beyond that bus, but now she knew what she could do.

There was a strange power that came with that. She'd felt such a surge of self-confidence when the two creatures dropped at her feet. There was no point in being afraid of something that could so easily be defeated with a draw of her bowstring. And what other reason was there to justify her having found the bow? This is what she was meant to be doing.

There was that coping strategy again, trying to bring her mind some sense of purpose.

"Glenn, I don't think I'm scared anymore," she said to him while he took her by the arm and rushed her back inside, to the midst of the others' staring eyes. She was almost sure her knees were knocking together, and her heart was beating so fast; it was almost drowned out her voice.

"That's the adrenaline talking, alright? It's okay to be afraid sometimes, fear makes you cautious and being cautious keeps you alive, okay?" Glenn tried to meet her wandering eyes. "Diana, look at me, I don't want to see you do something reckless and get hurt."

Diana shook her head. "You don't gotta look at me like that. I'm not insane. I'm not just gonna go out all 'pew, pew, pew', yeah?" She did finger guns to emulate the action. "I know my limits, Glenn. I know I'm not invincible. I'm just saying… I can help out." She looked at the Sheriff, asking for his thoughts.

He pursed his lips and looked away in contemplation. When his gaze returned to her, he nodded. "We could use your skill out there if things go wrong. And you wouldn't be alone."

"I agree," said Morales. He rubbed his forehead and winced. "Don't tell your parents I said that."

Diana pointed a finger gun at him with a wink, feeling too ecstatic for her own good. Glenn was probably right about the adrenaline.

"Now let's do this." The Sheriff asked Diana to use her bow to break through the glass of an emergency case with an ax inside, which he retrieved.

The group stood around the body. The smell was already horrible – stagnant in the air – but still not as nauseating as the smell of hundreds of geeks, the entire city reeked of a thousand garbage trucks piled together. Compared to that, this corpse smelled of roses.

The Sheriff raised the ax over his head to swing down on it, making everyone flinch away, but he hesitated and stopped. He knelt down and began searching the body, and found a wallet. Going through it, the Sheriff told them about 'Wayne Dunlap' and that they should take a moment to appreciate what he was about to do for them.

Diana thought this was worse. Pretending this decayed thing had never been like one of them would, in her mind, make it easier to do what they were about to do. Humanizing them made it harder, made it something to be guilty about.

She didn't want to feel guilty for surviving. A geek was a geek and had always been one; it was easier that way.

"One more thing," said Glenn, looking at its driving's license, "he was an organ donor."

Diana snorted and everyone looked at her in astonishment. "I just think it's ironically appropriate," she justified.

Jacqui shook her head minutely at her. Diana lifted a shoulder.

Then the Sheriff brought the ax down. He separated the limbs by the joints messily, dragging them across the floor, leaving a dark red trail. He swung down on its abdomen and it spilled open, rotten viscera clinging to the ax as he dragged it out.

The stink was foul like nothing Diana had ever experienced before, in her short nursing career or otherwise.

Her face twisted and she covered her nose and mouth with the inside of her elbow. She watched the blood and gunk splatter across the floor and paint it a chunky dark red. She winced into her arm, but remained undisturbed otherwise; the smell might be dreadful, but gore she could handle.

She heard Morales call out in Spanish and it made her think of her squeamish mother. How she would say similar things whenever she saw anything that looked even remotely like innards. The woman couldn't even stand watching 'Grey's Anatomy'.

The Sheriff entrusted Morales with continuing the job and took a small break. He leaned away and breathed shallowly through his mouth. Diana preferred taking the stink by breathing through her nose than having the smell molecules of that nasty thing touch the inside of her mouth.

Glenn bent over at the waist with a groan and Diana rubbed his back compassionately. "Oh, I'm so gonna hurl."

"Later," the Sheriff said.

"Just pretend it's a- a practice dummy, with fake insides," Diana encouraged, but Glenn just gagged and raised his hand for her to say no more.

Morales kept at it, opening the abdominal cavity wider, chopped up organs spilling out with every raise of the ax. Once it was deemed enough, the Sheriff gave them the instructions and started smearing his lab coat with the foul-smelling gunk.

Diana helped with Glenn, whispering awkward words of comfort to him the entire time.

When the Sheriff told them to think of puppies and kittens, all it did was make it worse. Diana gagged, her mind immediately imagining it was the viscera of said animals she was rubbing on her friend.

"Oh God," Diana groaned and took shallow breaths.

Once Glenn was all smeared up, Jacqui came to her and started helping her. Andrea whispered another apology for her outburst before she and Jacqui started covering her in goo and sludge.

Diana told herself she could do it without throwing up. She was – or had been – a professional in the field of health, a student, mind you, but a professional student nonetheless. She could take this.

Then, Glenn turned around and threw up and Diana almost sobbed in near despair, her ecstasy completely gone.

Andrea and Jacqui stopped to admonish the Sheriff for his horrible plan. Diana interjected, saying technically she'd been the one to voice it.

They didn't say anything to that, only gave the Sheriff the side-eye and continued smearing goop onto her.

Andrea dropped a severed hand in her pocket with an apologetic look, while Jacqui scooped a handful of innards and put it in her other pocket. "I'm sorry, honey," she told her.

"Yeah, I'm starting to feel sorry, too," Diana breathed between her pursed lips. This was nothing like Schwarzenegger in Predator, this was the Double-R-rated version of that.

"Do we smell like them?" the Sheriff asked, spreading his arms and turning his face away.

Andrea nodded, her face twisted in disgust. "Oh, yeah." She tucked her gun into Glenn's jeans, saying it was just in case.

"If we make it back, be ready," affirmed the Sheriff, and looked each of them in the eye.

Diana didn't like that 'if'. But she was not about to back down now.

T-Dog spoke up with a clenched jaw, "What about Merle Dixon?"

Diana nodded at him. "Yeah, as much a jackass he may be, he's coming back with us," she said, more for Daryl's sake than her own.

The Sheriff nodded at her, understanding, and dug out the key to the handcuffs from his pants pocket. He tossed it to T-Dog, who caught it and nodded tensely.

Then he asked Morales for the ax, saying they needed more guts, and everyone groaned in protest and repugnance.

Once they were significantly more greased up and more rank and putrid than ever, body parts hanging from their shoulders like scarves, the three finally stepped outside.

The door closing behind them rang in Diana's ears like a gong. Her hand tightened on the bow.

The Sheriff nodded at her and Glenn to advance. Seeing as the two other geeks had been killed beforehand, they jogged up to the bus, careful not to jostle and displace their adornments, and slowly crawled under it.

Diana could see their dragging feet and hear the massiveness of their silent noise. She took a moment under that bus to breathe deeply and mentally prepare herself for what they were about to do.

They emerged on the other side, expecting the worse. When no geek took notice of them, Diana released the breath she'd been holding and shared an ever so slightly relieved look with Glenn. The three of them began limping through the masses, mimicking them.

Without the thirst for the hunt powering them, the geeks were almost languid; leisurely and mindlessly strolling around, searching without searching.

Diana looked to the right without moving her head, down at a female that pulled herself forward by the arms on the asphalt. She stopped and looked up at her with rigid movements. One of her eye sockets was empty and her scalp had been ripped off by her left ear. Diana snapped her eyes away, keeping them solely on target.

Her shoulders tensed and she gripped her bow like a lifeline. Navigating through the sea of enemies, knowing that at any given chance they could sense her scent and attack, made her heart and gut clench tightly. She'd been wrong, she'd been oh-so-wrong; she was still very much terrified.

The sky darkened even more, clouds rolling in, heavy with thunder. Diana could almost see what would happen if they opened up and it came pouring down on them. Her heart fluttered and she suppressed a sob.

Their walk was agonizingly long. Her nose had already become numb to the stink, but even if it hadn't, she wouldn't even have noticed it in her state of inner panic.

There were so many dead eyes, sunken in their eye sockets looking at her without seeing her, and gaunt faces with flayed cheeks and exposed bone, mouths snapping open and closed sporadically. So many bloody teeth and long nails ready to scratch and tear.

Diana's bow sent wave after wave of a relaxing thrum, but it didn't do much. She was too focused on her surroundings, too scared to take her eyes off anything that moved, too alert to the groans of the dead to notice anything else.

She knew the Sheriff and Glenn were by her side, but she felt so alone.

She continued shuffling along the street, trying to mentally talk some courage into herself while dreading the surely oncoming rain.

Then it started. First a small pitter patter, and then thunder roared over their heads and it came upon them in a downpour.

Her baby hairs glued onto her forehead, and Diana saw chunks of gunk rolling off her garb, the dried blood and guts slowly washing away with the water, cleansing her at the worst possible moment.

A geek in front of them with a missing cheek that exposed his molars starting sniffing around them. She saw Glenn flinch away. More surrounding them started snarling, detecting their smell which awakened their hunger.

"Oh God, oh God," Diana mumbled, her pulse spiking through the roof. She heard the Sheriff say the smell may be washing off.

No shit!

Just as he did, a geek lunged at him. He buried the ax into its head and yelled at her and Glenn to run.

And run she fucking did.

She wanted to at least attempt to shoot whatever was in their way, to clear a path, but the rainwater in her eyes blurred her vision and her aim. She decided it wasn't worth the try if it would only slow her down.

Diana ran. She used her bow as a staff and knocked away the geeks that came at her. Her lungs were beginning to burn, her throat tightening around the incoming air, and the urge to cry only became bigger. She didn't want to die like this.

She followed Glenn, knowing the Sheriff was close behind and so were the masses hunting them. They came up to the fence and despite never having climbed one this high before, Diana was up and on the other side of it before the Devil could blink.

Fear-fueled parkour, one could say.

Once they were all on the other side, they disposed of their useless garbs and continued the run. Despite the wheezing of her breath, Diana didn't slow down until she reached the truck.

"Hurry, fucking hurry!" she yelled at the Sheriff, bouncing on the balls of her feet, as he shot at some of the geeks climbing the fence. These bitches could climb? What the hell happened to normal useless zombies? It's all edginess nowadays.

"Rick!" Glenn called and tossed the man the key he'd retrieved from somewhere.

Rick? That was his name? She'd been mentally calling him Sheriff all this time, maybe she'd missed the introduction.

Diana climbed into the passenger seat as soon as the door was unlocked. Glenn climbed hurriedly onto her lap while Rick took the driver's spot and jammed the key into the ignition.

A geek ran up to their window, slamming its hands against it. Glenn yelled at Rick to go while Diana yelped shamefully and hid her face against his back.

Rick reversed and maneuvered the truck out of the construction site, leaving the horde behind.

Diana and Glenn switched positions and she was sitting on his lap, grabbing onto the ceiling for support with Glenn's arms around her middle securing her.

"Oh my God. Oh my God. They're all over that place," Glenn lamented. Diana felt his hold on her tighten and she put a hand over his.

Diana faced Rick, her breathlessness showing in her hoarse voice. "We need to go back to the store, how do we do that without drawing them to us?"

He looked at her, pursed his lips and then spoke, "We need noise to lure them away. Those roll-up doors at the front of the store – that area? That's what I need cleared." Glenn started to protest, but Rick didn't let him. "Raise your friends. Tell them to get down there and be ready."

"Ho-how am I drawing them away? I missed that part."

Rick stopped the truck when he spotted a red sports car and nodded in its direction. He killed the engine and everyone hesitantly climbed out, minding their surroundings. "You'll use this."

Rick smashed the window of the car and the alarm started blaring in all directions.

Diana winced at the noise and said to Glenn, "I'm going with you." He was always being chosen to face danger for everyone's sakes, she wanted to make sure he wasn't alone for all of it. That was why she constantly volunteered to accompany him.

Glenn widened his eyes at her. "What?!"

"No, you're not. You'll be safer with me," Rick said after Glenn's exclamation.

Diana glared from one to the other. "Okay, first of all, why is everyone always telling me what to do? For real? I am not a child and you're not my parents. I said I'm going with Glenn and that is final," she shouted above the noise.

Glenn looked around at the geeks slowly being drawn out of their resting places and nodded quickly. "Okay, fine, just hurry."

Rick returned to the truck. Glenn and Diana climbed into the sports car and Glenn drove away, speeding and bringing the engine to a roar.

He drove recklessly behind the truck, swerving at every curve. He handed her the walkie-talkie. "Here, tell them where to go."

Diana took it, feeling her heart race at the pressure of responsibility and the adrenaline. She raised the device, pressed the button and spoke into it, "Guys-uh, listen up! Meet us down by the roll-up doors at the front of the store, alright? Hurry, we'll be there."

Glenn put his foot to the pedal and passed Rick's truck. Diana winced at the piercing noise of the alarm, but it was working. The geeks were attracted by the sound and paid no mind to the truck.

They sped past the storefront before Glenn backed up and stopped.

The tidal wave was fast on them. Glenn and Diana shared a fearful look. She flinched away from the ones banging on her windows, her hands steadfast around her weapon.

"Come one, come on," Glenn murmured.

"Glenn…" Diana warned, pulling on his shirt to get him out of reach of the geeks at his broken window. "Foda-se!"

"I know, it's alright." He started driving in reverse, luring the walkers with them, away from the store. "Get closer, get closer. Come on."

Then he turned them around and sped away with the growling geeks hot on their wheels, leaving the street empty for Rick to pick up their group.

Diana pivoted to look behind to see them losing the others, leaving them to grasp at air.

She faced forward, suddenly lax in her seat, melting into the hot leather. She only hoped Rick got them out in time.

She sighed deeply, feeling her lungs deplete of air. It was over, they were out of there. She was going back to her family as she promised.

Glenn chuckled over the noise and Diana looked at him. The joy on his face was undeniable and she joined him, a few disbelieving snickers at first until both burst out in laughter.

Soon, they were speeding away down the empty lanes. The scenery rushing by and the city on the rearview mirror. Laughing and whooping and grasping each other's hand in relief and reckless joy and the rush of adrenaline from the successful execution of their stupidly dangerous getaway.


the reveaaaaal! or, you know, partial reveal

with the time pressure, there were a lot of things that were left unsaid, a lot of burning questions that Diana really is gonna love to avoid

please leave a comment! I really wanna read about your thoughts on this! ILY