A/N: As always, thank you for sticking with the story!

PLEASE READ BELOW BEFORE STARTING THE CHAPTER

This is a short update that deals with an unpleasant topic. If anyone wants to skip it, they will miss almost nothing in terms of direct plot.

I've included the trigger warning in the end notes and there will be a two-sentence summary at the beginning of the next chapter. I apologize in advance if anyone finds the update offensive, I was shooting for realistic.


By dawn most of the herd had moved on, so Daryl used the stragglers as target practice from a second-floor window before they walked to the Hummer as he collected his arrows along the way. When he got to what looked to have been a middle-aged woman in a flowery dress, he yanked out the bolt and along came her right eye, optic nerve dangling below. He gave it an unimpressed look and scrapped the arrow against a tree trunk to remove the organ.

Lucas sat behind the wheel again, this time with Daryl riding shotgun and Michonne in the back. It took them all of ten minutes to get to Senoia, which was a ghost town, barely a moving corpse in sight. They had found a phone book during their idle time the day before, so they knew exactly where they were going: Senoia Drugstore, right next to Senoia Health Clinic, on SR 16. They parked the car in the driveway of a nearby house that was out of sight and proceeded to their destination on foot.

The pharmacy was their primary target, so they went for it first. It wasn't a big place, but certainly larger than the one they'd previously visited, and surprisingly not as picked through. Daryl maintained his position from the day before as entrance guard while Michonne and Lucas hopped over the counter. He'd given her a list of the drugs he was looking for, so they both got busy right away. After a thorough search, Lucas held boxes of lithium, carbamazepine, lamotrigine, fluoxetine, escitalopram, sertraline, vilazodone, alprazolam, clonazepam, risperidone, and lurasidone.

"Does she need all that?" Michonne asked.

"No, it will probably be a combination of two, maybe three. We would normally take several months trying out the ones that are better suited to the patient's overall health condition, adjusting dosage, and following closely with therapy, blood tests, and other exams, but…" he trailed off.

"Are you a doctor?"

"I was a second-year psychiatry resident, so I did study medicine, just never got around to practicing it," he answered. "What about you?"

"Lawyer. Fulton County CAWAC ADA," Michonne said.

"CAWAC?" Lucas asked.

"Crimes against women and children."

"That's tough. These undead must not seem like all that much compared to some of what you've seen."

"Yeah. Every once in a while, I look around and think that things could be worse. Not really comforting," she said.

"We done in here?" Daryl asked from the front, sounding a little annoyed. The other two had been talking long enough.

Michonne looked at Lucas who answered, "yes."

"Good, let's move next door then," Daryl more or less barked.

They quickly made their way to the clinic's front door and were halfway through the usual knock-and-wait procedure when they heard shouting in the distance. In less than five seconds all three were crouching in the reception area, Daryl spying out of the window. It took about fifteen minutes to spot six moronic walker magnets who, unfortunately, looked very much like they were bad news.

"Hey! There's a clinic over there," said one of the guys. "And a drugstore!"

"Good, let's go," another guy instructed the other four.

Shit! Michonne, Daryl and Lucas started scanning for somewhere to hide, but to no avail, the rooms were too scarcely furnished. When they caught conversation inside the building, they went through a door which hadn't yet been opened, finding a small office with a table facing the right wall, a couple of filing cabinets, a tiny window close to the ceiling, and a heap of walker carcasses taking up most of the floor space. The stench was unbelievable.

They heard feet shuffling around and, all of a sudden, the clinic was filled with numerous yells of "Claimed!" This was quickly interrupted by an authoritative voice that said, "There's no time for this now! You, go stich this idiot up. I will go to the pharmacy to get antibiotics and some party favors. The rest of you, look around, I'm sure there'll be fun stuff here as well."

Daryl, Michonne and Lucas heard things being tossed and turned, the noise getting closer to them with each passing minute. Michonne's gaze swept the room in a last attempt to identify a place for them to take cover, but there wasn't any. Or was there? She looked at the pile of cadavers and, with a resigned sigh, dove in. The men followed suit and soon all three were buried under pounds and pounds of undead. Lucas had to muster all his strength not to throw up as his senses were assaulted: a pair of lifeless eyes staring at his own from a mere inch away; the overwhelming putrid smell, which made it almost impossible to breath; the feel of decaying flesh against his skin; the taste of liquified brain matter that slowly dripped on his face and insisted on seeping into his mouth.

The door to the office flew open and was closed with the same speed.

"Fuck!" exclaimed guy X.

"What's in there? Smells worse than Billy," guy Y said with a snicker.

"Looks like a pile of everyone who worked here. I sure as hell ain't gonna search in there."

"Don't look at me."

"Hey Billy, c'mere. I think you'll like what's in this room," X said.

A minute later the door was once again opened and immediately closed, which was followed by a gagging noise and some uncontrolled laughing.

"Fuck you!" guy Z, presumably Billy, now joined the conversation.

Once the commotion had died down, Y said, "Fuckin' with people is always great, but we better not open this room again."

"Yeah," agreed Z. "Put a chair in front of it or somethin', so we don't forget which one it is, and let's move on."

A thud was heard, followed by the sounds of the three guys moving away.

Michonne, Daryl and Lucas waited a bit before silently extricating themselves from the pile of walkers; it would have been safer to remain as they were, but it was so fetid they decided to throw caution to the wind. Daryl and Michonne had barely started their wordless communication to try and figure out their next move when they heard the others coming back.

"I don't see the point of searchin' the place if we can't claim the stuff," said Y.

"Yeah," Z agreed.

"Long as I get the girl first when we find 'em, I don't give a flyin' fuck 'bout anything in here," said X.

"You gonna have to be quick claimin' her," Y pointed out.

"Already did," X said.

"You can't claim someone we ain't found yet," Y retorted.

"Course I can! Claimed her back at the house when I found her shirt. Me and her gonna have some fun," X said in a disturbing tone of voice.

Daryl moved to position himself between Michonne and the door without realizing he was doing it.

"Pussy is pussy, I don't care if I get it first or last," Z said.

"You don't know what you talkin' about. If you're not first, you don't get the best part, them fightin'," X said. "Seein' them realize there ain't no point in fightin' no more is better than cummin'."

"You sayin' it's better if the girl ain't into it?" Y asked skeptically.

"Of course!"

"And you, um, have a lotta experience with that?" Y again.

"Oh yeah, lost count of how many whores I took, even choked a couple. That was fun, seein' life go out from their eyes, like you turnin' off a lamp, but I prefer to leave them alive, so they'll always think on me," X answered matter-of-factly.

A silence of a minute or so followed.

"What about the cops?" Z asked this time.

"What about 'em? No one cares 'bout no whore," X said. "Come on, the sooner we finish here, the sooner I can get me that girl."

Michonne and Daryl looked like they might throw up. Lucas actually tasted bile, the living accomplishing what the dead couldn't.

Another half an hour went by before the men left. After waiting to make sure no one was coming back, they got out of the room and, without exchanging so much as a word, or even a glance, Daryl went to the reception while Lucas and Michonne scavenged for medication. Twenty minutes later Lucas had added several boxes to his collection of pharmaceuticals and the three of them walked back to the car.

"Once in a while?" Lucas asked Michonne, still fighting the urge to hurl.

"Yeah…" she answered with a weary sigh.

They fell silent again.

"I, um, want to thank you for, you know, helping me find the medicine," Lucas finally spoke. "Where can I take you?"

"The farm," Daryl said, looking to Michonne for confirmation, which she gave by nodding her head. "It's off SR 85, so we gotta go back to it and keep goin' north. I'll know when we get close."

"OK."


A/N: Trigger warning: Discussion of sexual assault.

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