AN: Here we are, another chapter here.

I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!

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Daryl had gotten trapped, by the passing herd, at the farthest end of where they were working to move cars. In the scramble for cover, T-Dog had slipped and cut his arm on the jagged metal of a badly wrecked car—some of the metal slicing far too easily into his skin. The smell of fresh blood had immediately drawn Walkers toward them, and Daryl had rushed to grab for a nearby piece of cloth out of another truck—a rag of some sort—and get it wrapped around the wound before he looked for cover for the both of them.

It had been T-Dog that had suggested the use of other corpses. The Walkers didn't come after anything that smelled dead. Daryl and T-Dog had covered themselves with corpses from the nearby vehicles and hovered close to a truck—hoping to go entirely undetected.

Daryl had to hand it to T-Dog, the idea had worked. The herd had passed them by without even seriously sniffing either of them. As soon as it was gone, Daryl meant to try to help tend to the cut on T-Dog's arm—hoping it wasn't anything that Carol couldn't handle. There was, to every gray cloud, a silver lining. Because of her terrible experiences with Ed, Carol had learned quite a few medical skills that were now immeasurably valuable. She knew how to do stitches since, more than once, she'd put a few in her own skin to save a trip to the ER that would have resulted in more injuries later.

Daryl meant to tell T-Dog the good news—that Carol could likely patch him up and, in all honesty, do it well, but he never actually got around to doing that.

He'd no sooner shucked off the corpse that had been covering him and helped T-Dog out from under his cover, when he'd heard a loud commotion of screaming. At first, Daryl couldn't make out specific words, but he knew the voices, even as they blended in with other shouts and screams.

Andrea and Carol were screaming.

Almost instinctively, Daryl started running as fast as he could toward the part of the traffic jam where he'd left his family. His knees felt like jelly. He almost doubted they'd be able to carry him. His lungs were constricting as though he'd run for a much greater distance. His head felt light and not entirely like it belonged to him.

He reached Carol first. She was being held by Lori who had an arm looped tightly around Carol's throat. She was screaming around the hoarseness caused by the hopefully unintentional choking. Lori was crying, and she was clearly overcome with some grief of her own that was making her act irrationally. She was trying to cover Carol's face with her free hand like that might relieve both of them of the sight of something.

"My baby! Daryl! My baby! They're after her…Sophia…Daryl…"

It wasn't much, but it was enough. Daryl followed Carol's line of sight and ran, on his jellied knees, toward the next gathering bunch of people. Dale was holding Andrea back, though he held her with arms crossed hard across her chest instead of one arm looped across her throat.

Glenn was hanging over the guardrail, like he was looking down on some sight, and Shane was pacing, slightly frantically, not far from him.

"The hell's goin' on?" Daryl managed to get out, jogging toward Shane. "The hell happened?"

"Two Walkers," Shane said. "Sophia and Carl took off over the rail and down toward the woods. Walkers broke off and chased them. Rick went after them."

Daryl's heart slammed hard in his chest—it felt like it was pounding hard enough to crack a rib. He searched the view in front of him, much like Glenn was doing, but he saw nothing that indicated where they were or where they'd gone.

"Which way'd they go?" He asked

Shane pointed.

"That way. Straight down."

"Stay here," Daryl said. "Keep an eye out. Don't let no damn body scatter. Keep 'em from gettin' lost."

Daryl called back the last of his commands. He ran down the embankment in the direction that Shane had indicated he should go. He could have tracked them, if he'd needed to, in the overgrown grass of the area, but he could move faster by simply following Shane's indications.

He only hoped he could move faster than any other threat.

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Carol felt like she might actually die. She couldn't breathe—and that condition continued after she'd finally gotten enough presence of mind to shuck off Lori's arm. Her heart felt like it might explode. Her muscles ached. Her arms ached—she suddenly felt panicky. She couldn't remember what her daughter felt like, wrapped in her arms. All she could think was that she might never feel that again—and she wasn't sure that she could survive such a loss.

Every time she opened her mouth to say something—to communicate something—intelligible, only one thing seemed to escape with any predictability: "My baby…my baby…"

Andrea, somehow, had appeared and she'd wrapped herself around Carol. Carol had wrapped her arms around the familiar body of her sister-in-law. She'd breathed in a scent that was familiar to her. She'd accepted her comfort. She'd felt the dampness of her tears.

And then, backing off a little when she could breathe again, Carol had noticed that Andrea was covered in blood—big, angry splotches of blood stained her skin and her clothes.

"Oh—oh no…oh God…" Was all that Carol managed to stammer out before Andrea shushed her.

"It's not mine," she said. "It's not mine. The Walker came after me. Trapped me. I killed him but…I lost track of the kids for a minute and…Carol…it's all my fault…it's all my fault…"

Carol's own anguish was staunched a little by the evidence of Andrea's suffering. Carol was almost thankful, too, for the momentary distraction from her own pain.

"No," Carol said. "No—no—it just…"

She couldn't say anything she wanted to say because, really, she didn't want to have to say any of it. She wanted this all to be done. She wanted it to be over. She wanted it to have never happened. She wanted to wake up, in the car, with her head tipped over against the window, and with Daryl shaking her gently to tell her that she'd get a sore neck and that she was having a bad dream.

But Daryl wasn't there—he'd gone after Sophia. Daryl would find Sophia. He would bring her back.

He had to bring Sophia back.

What Carol managed to get out was enough to help calm Andrea. Together, they could offer each other physical and emotional support. Carol and Andrea both made their way toward the guardrail where Shane was waving his arms almost like he was directing traffic. Everyone was slowly making their way there and he was waving them back.

"Everyone's got to stay back," Shane said. "Stay busy. Find something to do. We've got to stay together. Rick and Daryl have gone after them. They'll bring them back. But the last damn thing they need is more people going out there and getting lost. That just draws attention away from the kids. It just creates a distraction that keeps them from focusing on what's important right now. Find something to do. Keep your hands busy. But keep as quiet as you can. We don't want to draw that herd back anymore than we already have. Rick and Daryl will bring the kids back, but we've got to do our part to create an environment where that can happen with the best results."

He sounded like a police officer. Carol was almost certain that this scenario—this exact scenario—was nothing that they would have been prepared for in his former line of work. However, Shane was clearly able to adapt the training that he did have for other emergencies into handling this particular emergency and diffusing as much of the tension as was possible under the circumstances.

Carol appreciated his words, and she accepted his orders. She wanted to run the same way that Sophia had run, but she accepted that what Shane said was true. If she ran into the woods, Daryl would feel torn and divided. He would feel the need to come after her. He would feel the need to rescue her. He would feel unable to devote his full attention to Sophia and her safety. In this moment, all that mattered was Sophia's safety.

Carol sat down on the guardrail, and she wrapped her arms around Andrea, drawing as much comfort from the woman as she was able to offer her for the time being.

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When Shane's general indication for direction no longer served Daryl, he turned to his other senses. There was far too much disturbance on the ground for him to track anything or anyone quickly. Numerous sets of feet had come through here—more than he even knew about when he'd entered the wooded area—and that meant that Walkers, or even other people, had recently passed through here. In order for Daryl to track any specific person through here, he would have to study the evidence of their movements carefully. There wasn't time for that in this situation.

He followed, instead, his sense of sound.

He could hear scuffling and moving about. It came from several directions at once, but Daryl followed after the loudest sounds of movement—the lighter sounds of movement, after all, could have belonged to animals stirred up by all the confusion.

Daryl found Rick. The two Walkers had gathered company in the woods. Now there were three Walkers. A fourth Walker lie dead on the ground. Rick was attempting to fight the three that were still standing with a large rock, held in his hand, like a miniature club.

"Come off without a fuckin' knife?" Daryl growled, grabbing his own knife and bringing it home into the base of one Walker's skull. He dropped the Walker that had been threatening Rick the most and, as soon as it hit the ground, he pulled his knife loose and went after the next.

"I wasn't expecting this," Rick protested, trying to bash in the Walker's skull with the rock.

Daryl dropped the second one and then finished off the third. Then, he turned toward Rick. He hadn't put his knife away—and he bent down and cleaned the blade on a Walker's shirt. He still didn't sheathe the blade, though.

"Always gotta fuckin' expect this now, I guess," Daryl said. "Where'd you hide the kids?"

He figured that Rick had put the kids somewhere out of reach of the Walkers as soon as he'd realized that he was armed with nothing more than a big rock, like some kind of caveman. He looked up, letting his eyes scan the branches around them—the place where he would have tucked the children quickly if he'd needed to do so.

"I left them in the creek," Rick said.

"You what?" Daryl asked.

"The creek—it's not far from here," Rick said. "I left them there."

"Why the hell would you do that?" Daryl asked.

"If you hadn't noticed, I was a bit outnumbered," Rick said. He bowed up, slightly, but Daryl didn't give a shit. He wasn't afraid of Rick—and he wouldn't have been afraid of him even if he hadn't been holding his knife. "I thought I could lead the Walkers away and kill them. I told the kids to wait for me. They're alright, they're hidden."

Daryl's stomach felt nervous—sick, even—but he nodded his acceptance. There was nothing to do, now, but accept what Rick had done. It had been done, and there was no undoing it. Still, he would have preferred that they'd never been left alone, especially not after he'd seen evidence that their tracks weren't the only ones to pass through here.

"Let's just fuckin' go get 'em," Daryl said. "Get back before Carol or Lori has a stroke."

Rick nodded and led Daryl back through the woods. He seemed to know where he was going. It wasn't too long before they crossed the area that Daryl had noted as having evidence of a particularly high number of recent passers-by. A little further away, and in a direction where Daryl had never travelled, they found a creek.

"I left 'em right down here," Rick said. He gestured toward an opening where the creek was somewhat shrouded in trees and vines.

The place that Rick indicated was empty. There was nothing there.

Daryl turned quickly on Rick. His hand tightened around the knife that he'd forgotten he was carrying. He felt the handle against his palm.

"Where the hell's my kid?" Daryl growled.

Rick was already holding his hands up in surrender—trying to calm Daryl. He was practically wall-eyed.

"Just take it easy," Rick said. "They're both gone. They probably went back to the highway. That's all. I told them—keep in that direction and they'd end up back at the highway. I told them to go without me, if I didn't come back. I didn't know if I could handle the Walkers. They probably started back toward the highway, that's all."

"That better fuckin' be all," Daryl said, heading back toward the highway himself. "What kinda fuckin' stupid ass motherfucker leaves two fuckin' kids alone in the woods when the damn things is crawlin' with Walkers?"

Rick didn't answer, but he didn't have to. He simply followed Daryl, a few steps behind, back toward the highway. Daryl hoped, at the very least, that Rick felt as absolutely sick to his stomach as Daryl felt.