AUTHOR'S NOTE: So, been a minute, huh? I'm just playing, but fr, this came out really good, so I hope you enjoy it. This chapter is almost entirely oc besides the setting, so I hope that it is as exciting to read as it was to write, anyways, enjoy!

"We don't have long, we need to secure the doors," Lee said.

Clementine stood shaking in place. Lee walked over to her, knelt down, and pulled her in. She shook still, but with Lee back, she was slowly calming down.

After at least two minutes, Glenn came back into the room from the office and quickly informed Lee "The doors are all locked, now why did I have to do that?"

Lee kept Clem close as he took a deep breath before warning, "They're coming."

"They? Walkers?" Carley asked.

"More than I could count, I saw them heading this way, must've heard those two very loud gunshots," Lee explained.

"Oh my-" Katjaa mumbled.

Lee turned his attention to Kenny and Lilly, both of which were on the ground. Kenny was conscious, while Lilly was not.

"You alright?" Lee asked.

The man gave no word response. He eventually got up from his knee with a slight shot of pain, so the knee wasn't totally out of the woods yet. Either way, he had to lock this place down, whether it meant making a choice about Lilly and Kenny or not.

"How long do we have?" Carley asked.

"As long as they take. Two minutes maybe, but they definitely heard those shots," Lee warned.

When Lee had heard the shot, he imagined the worst, when he got to the store, he was relieved to see Clementine alive more than anything, but seeing Larry go down so easily left him with an uneasy feeling.

"Clementine, stay close. Glenn, you too. We need to keep this place shut tight. It may be our best bet of surviving this whole thing."

The two mentioned both nodded, the younger of which looked terrified. Lee couldn't imagine what all this was doing to her.

Lee looked around the room hoping to find something to help secure the place when he saw something horrifying. Just over Clementine's shoulder, in the windows of the store, a walker began pounding on the window. Lee pulled Clementine behind him and yelled to the rest of the store's inhabitants "They're here!"

Even more so than before, the store exploded in a frenzy of movement, all of the living people inside sprinting around the place desperately hammering up defenses. Before Lee knew it, the place had been completely congealed in the noises of the groaning undead.

He could hardly hear himself think, he needed to start thinking of an escape plan. This place wasn't going to hold. He looked around the place, all the exits were covered now, that was if Lee didn't know this place as well as he did.

There was one place that Lee knew the other survivors wouldn't have thought to cover, in the bathroom, through the roof, there was a crawl space leading to a hatch to the roof, an idea of his father's so long ago. Lee sprinted to the door where he had left the duffel bags, grabbed them both, and led Clementine to the bathroom.

"Where are we going?" Clementine frantically asked.

"We're getting the hell out of here," Lee remarked.

Lee picked Clementine up and lifted her into the space on the roof.

"But what about everyone else?" Clementine pleaded.

Lee looked into her eyes. He tried to form some sort of argument, but no matter what he thought up, it all led him to the same question, when did he lose his empathy?

Lee looked back at the survivors, panicked, desperately defending the place against the walkers, then back at Clementine's pleading glare. He groaned, tossed the bags up into the space with Clementine, and ran back into the store.

"Guys," Lee called.

Nobody heard, they continued holding back the door and pushing against the defenses.

"Hello?" Lee called once more.

Still, no response.

"Hey!" Lee commanded, everyone paused, glancing over at Lee standing in the bathroom door.

Lee wasn't sure how to proceed. Their undivided attention was what he wanted, and now he had it, but he wasn't used to having so much command over people.

"Get into the bathroom and crawl through the roof, we're getting the hell out of this place," Lee commanded.

Slowly, they obeyed, one by one walking into and through the bathroom, up to the crawlspace, and eventually up to the roof. Lee counted them as they ran by, Duck, Katjaa, and Kenny were the first to go. Then, it was Carley, who looked back in horror as the defenses started to crack. Glenn was the last to go, warning Lee as he ran by, "This place is going to fall apart any second, we gotta hurry."

Lee then turned to head to the door, but noticed he was missing someone. In the door stood Clementine, still with that pleading expression, like the whole time she meant for this person in particular to be saved. Lee turned back around and scanned the store. It didn't take him long to see a still unconscious Lilly lying on the floor. Lee glanced back at Clementine one more time before lunging in Lilly's direction.

He quickly picked her up with all of his strength. His knee fought against him as he carried her as well as he could toward the bathroom. Just before He could get to the door, a nearby window would burst open with several walkers flooding through. They were going to be in between him and Clementine if he waited another second. He couldn't get there fast enough with Lilly in his arms. He looked down at the unconscious woman and back up at Clementine. He made a reluctant expression and dropped the woman. He immediately sprinted to the bathroom and looked back at Lilly.

She opened her eyes and rubbed her head, but that was all Lee saw. He didn't even wait to see what would happen, but with the walkers bellowing through the store, Lee could imagine what would happen. Lee locked the door and immediately boosted Clementine into the crawlspace before pulling himself up as well. Lee heard from up in the area as Lilly fought for her life, screaming throughout the store. Lee felt a lump in his throat as he crawled through the space.

After a fair bit of struggle, Lee managed to crawl through with Clementine to the roof. When they emerged, they saw the group huddled up around part of the roof. Lee stared at them curiously, but didn't understand what they were all looking at. Lee looked around the roof and saw a few dead walkers.

"No," Lee muttered under his breath as he rushed over to the group and pushed through.

On her back with her husband and child at her sides was Katjaa, with her stomach wide open.

"No. No- This is- no," Lee began to hyperventilate. He turned to Clementine and shielded her eyes.

"Don't look. Just. Don't. Look." He wasn't sure if he was talking to himself or the girl. It was both. Lee held her close and tried to calm himself. He wondered how it all went so bad so quickly. Everything was going so well that morning. They were stocking up fairly well on supplies, they embarked on a mission with their best survivors and now this?

Lee reminisced back to the moment with Lilly, the moment he once again was robbed of a choice. He wanted so desperately to get her out of there, for Clementine or himself, either way, he needed that, but he was robbed of that opportunity. He knew he didn't make a choice that killed her, but now here he was, on a roof, surrounded by the dead, holding the only thing he had left.

Lee didn't make noise, but the hot tears that rolled down his cheeks told the whole story. Clementine squeezed him tight, desperate to help him, but the tears kept flowing. It was at this moment that Lee finally found himself again. Two days ago he wouldn't have dared to cry over death, as he had depicted himself as a taker of life, but now he cried over the loss of a relative stranger. It was the moment he finally accepted the world he was in. With Clementine tucked into his shoulder and a dead mother behind him, Lee was finally there, fully, completely there, experiencing the truest horrors that the world had left to offer. His mission would not change. He would not let this happen to Clementine, never.

…

As Clementine peered over Lee's shoulder, she stared into the eyes of the dead woman in horror. It was the third dead body she'd seen that day. She had never lived through such a horrible day.

"Lee?" Clementine asked.

"Yeah?" Lee questioned.

"I'm scared," Clementine said.

"Me too," Lee affirmed.

"Promise you won't let me get hurt like Katjaa?" Clementine asked.

"Never," Lee answered.

"I won't let you get hurt either, okay?" Clementine offered.

"Thank you," Lee finished.

Behind the two, Kenny sobbed over the body of his wife as Duck did the same. Glenn and Carley watched in horror, the former of which vomited over the side of the building as the rest of the group emotionally discharged.

…

As the hours passed, the group remained on the roof. With no other options, that was where they would stay for the rest of the night. They didn't know what the next day had in store, nor did they know if they would survive it.

In the end, Carley ended up being the one to finish off Katjaa, Kenny and his son didn't make a peep for the remainder of the night. Lilly and Larry were gone, or at least it seemed that way. They hadn't heard a scream in a while, but all signs led to her being gone. The day took a heavy toll, Larry, Doug, Lilly, and Katjaa. It was all just too much for any sane person to bear.

Despite their efforts, not a soul would sleep that night, not even the children. Lee and Clementine stared into the horizon, watching the stars to pass the time when a sudden noise startled them. It was loud, but it was unlike anything they had heard before. It was like everything had ceased, and it had. Everything around them became dark as the nocturnal lights of the town finally died out like everything else. The walkers were the only sound left.

It was a cold night. Clementine leaned on Lee's shoulder, but kept her eyes open through it all. There were no further conversations exchanged that night, but everyone knew what the people around them were thinking, it was just up to them to carry on now.

…

When first sunlight finally came, Lee peered down at the horde and noticed that quite a few of the walkers had left, not that it made any difference, for the crowd was still unreasonably large, but Lee was one to take note of things like this anyway.

Lee jerked his shoulder to get Clementine's attention, which he did with relative ease.

"Hmm?" Clementine squeaked out through a hoarse, dehydrated, exhausted voice.

"It's morning," Lee remarked.

"I know," Clementine said.

"That means it's time to find out how to get out of here," Lee explained.

"Where are we gonna go?" Clementine inquired, Lee had no real answer.

All he could offer her was optimism. "We are going to find a safer place," Lee declared.

"Where," Clementine questioned.

Lee made an answer, but he really had nothing. He got up and was about to go to the group when Clementine spoke up, "Maybe we could go to Savannah, where my parents are."

Lee thought about it for a moment before leaving her with a "Maybe," and walking toward the rest of the group.

They sat on the edge of the building with clear exhaustion.

"We gotta get out of here," Lee started.

Glenn, Carley, and the boy looked up at him while Kenny remained unresponsive.

"Yeah? Got any ideas?" Carley asked.

"Well, I don't, but the girl wants to go to Savannah, now I-" Lee explained before being interrupted by Kenny, "Savannah is as good a place as any, we could get on a boat if we got there."

"Really?" Glenn asked.

"No shit, really, I used to captain ships up there from time to time, good place to fish." Kenny said in an unenthused voice.

"I'll be damned," Lee said, glancing back at Clementine.

"Yeah, but how do you plan on us getting there?" Glenn questioned.

"He brings up a good point," Carley acknowledged.

Lee looked down at the horde underneath them. The growling had largely vanished, but the walkers remained, as if waiting for a sign to move.

"It's like they don't even know we're up here," Lee observed.

"What do you mean?" Glenn asked.

"They're not even being aggressive, they're just there. Maybe if we made a noise somewhere else, they would go that way," Lee explained.

"You really think that would work?" Carley questioned.

"Yeah, that sounds really risky," Glenn agreed.

"Well, do you two have any better ideas?" Lee asked.

The two glanced at each other, then back up at Lee. Their silence served as their answer.

"Well, we got all those guns you brought back, could we not, you know…" Glenn asked.

"No, Glenn, we can't mow down the crowd of walkers with the loudest weapon imaginable," Kenny dismissed.

"My plan it is," Lee remarked.

"Yeah? And how do you plan on making enough noise to attract this entire horde of walkers?" Kenny questioned.

Lee scanned the area for anything of use. There were, of course, the guns, but that wasn't really much of an option, unless he could make a better use of them somehow. There wasn't much else, Lee looked for any other option, but found none.

"Did any of you use a car to get here?" Lee asked.

Kenny looked up at Lee incredulously as Glenn and Carley stared at him, "Yeah, we did," Glenn answered.

"Okay, so you're going to need to trust me for a second," Lee explained.

"Wha- Lee? What the hell are you doing?" Kenny pressed.

"Like I said, you're going to have to trust me," Lee said as he walked back over to Clementine.

"Hey, let's go," Lee called.

"What? Where are we going?" Clementine innocently asked.

"Savannah," Lee said.

Clementine smirked and walked over to Lee. When the whole group was gathered, Lee explained his plan in simple detail. He was going to blow up the car the group came in with a mag of ammo aimed at the engine, or Carley would, more accurately. Once the car blew up, they would wait a second for the walkers to be drawn and they would make a run for it. Nobody really objected, but there were obviously doubts among the group.

"Look, we have to do this, otherwise we'll starve up here and be no better off than Lilly was," Lee explained. Nobody would question the plan after that.

Everyone got into their positions and when Carley began tap-firing shots into the engine of the pickup that the group came in, Lee warned Clementine again to "Stay close," which she simply nodded to. Before long, the car started to bellow smoke from the engine.

After a few more bullets, the car was on fire, then, suddenly, it exploded in a fiery flash that was louder than Lee had imagined.

They waited a few seconds, just as Lee had planned, and the walkers started to walk at and into the fire. They were unaffected by the flames, but at least they weren't threatening the group. It was their time to escape. With one simple signal, the group hopped off the roof and sprinted down the street, Lee hanging back with the duffel bags to make sure the children stayed ahead with the group. Lee only looked back once, seeing his hometown ruined, and turned back, running back to the group. They were not followed by walkers.

It all became a blur as the group continued to sprint, never slowing down, never looking back, never taking a breath. One moment they were trapped, the next they were three miles out from Macon.

Lee finally slowed to a running pace and alerted the group to hold on.

"You wanna stop?" Carley asked.

"Savannah is days away if we continue on foot," Kenny remarked.

"Yeah, we should stop for a minute. There's a neighborhood over there that we could post up in for the night," Lee suggested while pointing in a slightly curved direction compared to where they were going.

"Lee, I'm thirsty," Clementine said.

"I know, I'll find you something as soon as I can," Lee said.

It was well into the morning by then. The group would carefully scavenge through the first house they saw for supplies and go from there. It went relatively well too, the group cleared out a cozy little one-story house and settled in. Lee found Clementine a water bottle, of which she was grateful, and the group decided to relax for a minute.

As everyone sat down, Kenny didn't. He didn't even let his son take a break, instead, he took him out into the yard to try to get a car working. Glenn, Carley, Lee, and Clementine took this as an opportunity to finally rest. Clementine passed out on Lee's side within minutes while everyone else stayed awake.

"Hell of a day," Lee ramarked.

"Got that right," Carley agreed.

Glenn nodded.

"I've never seen anything like that. You know? It was just so much-" Glenn didn't finish that thought.

The other two shook their heads, but they agreed, that was a sight that nobody should have seen.

"Oh my god, Clementine saw that," Carley added.

"And Duck," Glenn added .

Lee looked down at the girl. She was so innocent when he met her, she still might have been now, but she had seen too much horror. Too much blood. Too much death. Too much violence. Lee didn't just want her to survive, he wanted her to live. That was no life that he wanted for her.

But that was the problem, it had to be that life. It was either that life or no life and Lee would be damned to let her lose her chance at it. It was an enigma, a terrible situation. She was affected by the violence every time, but it was starting to worry Lee. One of these times she was just going to shrug it off like it was nothing. He had to teach her otherwise. He couldn't let her go down that path. He had to make sure she remembered right from wrong, even if not a single other soul in the world did. She needed to be that beacon of light for this world that he met in her backyard. He couldn't let anything else happen.

"There's no avoiding it, not anymore," Lee ramarked.

There was a brief silence before Carley cut back in, "Christ that's bleak," she said in a somber tone.

"It's the way things are now, I just need to make sure she doesn't lose herself in all of this," Lee explained.

"That's really noble, Lee," Carley complimented.

"I never had a choice, it's just how things have to be," Lee concluded.

"Well, if anything happens, you have my word that she'll be cared for," Carley offered.

"Mine too," Glenn added.

Lee only nodded.

There was a subtle noise of a car starting out front, which was accompanied with loud cheering.

"Guess they got the car started," Glenn so perceptively inferred.

"We're still going to stay the night here, right?" Carley asked.

Lee thought about it a moment before answering, "No, there's too much daylight to stop now, we oughta get moving, we might make some real ground with a car."

Duck slammed open the front door and excitedly announced to the group that "We got a car started!"

"We heard," Glenn joked.

Kenny soon walked up from behind him with a smirk and made his first positive remark since the night before, "You fuckers ready to make some miles?"

…

The group made their way into the truck with Kenny driving, the kids sitting in the middle seat, and Carley sitting beside them with the window down.

Glenn and Lee volunteered to take the back seat. The car was almost full of gas, which was an absolute gift from god at this point. They obeyed no traffic laws, going over seventy-five on a forty. They were absolutely moving. In the bed of the truck, it was hard to make a conversation, while the loud wind blew over them and they felt like they had to hold on tighter with Kenny's very reckless driving.

Eventually, they would slow down to a forty, which finally gave Glenn and Lee the chance to get a word in.

"Well if the walkers don't kill us, you can count on Kenny," Glenn jeered.

"No kidding," Lee agreed.

"Hey, we mean what we said before," Glenn reminded.

"I know, I appreciate that," Lee admitted.

"Just know, our priorities are the same, the kids have to come first," Glenn declared.

"They're all that matters," Lee added.

The two nodded.

They remained silent for a few minutes before Glenn broke the silence again, "What are we going to do, you know, when we get there," he asked.

This posed a good question. Clementine was obviously going to want to look for her parents, which was entirely possible, but Kenny's priorities were obvious. He was going to get on a boat and get out to see, no questions asked. Whether they agreed with this or not, that was going to happen, one way or another.

"Clementine wants to look for her parents," Lee told Glenn.

"Oh," Glenn reacted with an awkward tone.

"They're dead Glenn, I know for sure, but I just can't tell her," Lee explained.

Carley sat in the front seat, listening through the back window, for Lee's sake it was a good thing that Clementine was asleep.

"Well would it really be better for her to see them dead?" Glenn asked.

It was a fair question, one that he hadn't been given much of a chance to think of with the chaos that was the past few days. She had seen plenty of blood and guts in the last few days to last a lifetime, but if she saw her parents. Something told Lee that seeing that would hurt her a lot more.

"I- don't know…" Lee answered.

"Let's just- Let's just think about it when we get there."

The next few hours were relatively silent, save for Glenn's continual jokes about Kenny's driving, which Lee was starting to suspect to be on purpose because no normal person taps the break to send their passengers forward. The children got some decent rest and the crew made very good progress, that was, until they didn't.

With the kaputing sounds of an engine, the car rolled to a halt. They were out of gas, it was roughly four o'clock by now and the crew needed to start looking for a place to hold up. Luckily, they were only one day out from Savannah and there was an abandoned truck stop within their sights.

It was a relatively short walk and the place was completely devoid of life, even walkers were nowhere to be found. Seldom did Lee and his group get so lucky, but after a day full of progress, things were looking up, at least for most of the group.

It turns out that duck got his name from never being quiet, but he was anything but his regular self right now. He spent most of the day resting and he was really excited when he helped his dad get the car running, but now that things were calming down and he was left to his thoughts, he wasn't doing so well. It was fortunate that so many of their group survived the drug store and it was even more fortunate that they had such a stocked arsenal, but things just weren't sitting well with the father and son. Everyone took Katjaa's death hard, but none more than Kenny and Duck.

They watched from a booth as everyone else ate and drank. It was a sad sight to anyone from the outside, but there was nothing to be done. Katjaa couldn't have been brought back to life, at least not in a way that Kenny or Duck would have liked, and now… There was just nothing. The group got comfortable and slept through a silent night, all but Kenny that was. He stared out the window of the place with a contemplating expression, wondering how things got so horrible.

(LAST NIGHT)

She didn't remember much of how she got to where she was. The last thing she remembered was punching Kenny and then fainting, but she had somehow hit the ground. She rubbed her head as she took in her surroundings. The first thing she saw was the last thing someone else saw of her. It was Lee, shutting a door behind him, locking her in the store.

What was going on? She was out of it, but when she started to focus more, she heard it, the groans and screams of both people and former people all around her. The place was lit well, it was night time and she could see walkers all around the place. She was trapped. The office was barricaded off with a shelf and the windows were coming down all around her.

Did Lee leave her here to die? Surely he could have saved her, right?

She scrambled to her feet and was nearly tackled by a walker. She screamed and shoved it to the side. If they didn't notice her before, now they had. She quieted herself and focused. She had seen situations worse than this, she could get out of this one too.

This was different though, she couldn't hear a thing over the groans, she couldn't think of any way to get out of there that she could survive. It was just her against the odds versus an insurmountable amount of the undead.

"Shit," she said as she realized the direness of her situation. She scanned the room vigorously, hoping against hope to find something, anything left behind that could aid her. There was nothing, not a weapon in sight, not any perceivable way out of the place. How could she make it out of there, she had nothing. She turned and walked to her father's corpse, untouched by the survivors. It lay there with a bullet in its head, motionless, pale, decaying. She stared at him not in denial, not in acceptance, but understanding.

Her whole life, every time a challenge faced her, she would be taught to overcome it, not to keel over and give up. It killed him, he died out of unwillingness to accept defeat. When she hurt herself falling off of her bike, he picked her up and made her try again. When she played sports as a child, defeat was a foreign word. When she joined the army the men learned what tough meant, and now it was the walkers' turn.

She gritted her teeth and pushed forward. She looked down at her father and wore a reluctant face as she picked him up. She hung him in front of her and pushed toward the walkers with a groan. Her father was heavy, her body fought against her, but using her father as a shield, she pushed the front lines of the crowd.

They pushed back, slicing and gnawing at her father. She tightened her stance and pushed into him. She kept pushing until she was in the crowd. She had walkers all around her, trying to find a place to bite her. If her jacket wasn't real leather, she would have been a goner, but she survived narrowly.

She kept pushing through until she was roughly halfway out. By this point, her muscles were wearing, as was her jacket. She didn't initially notice it when it happened, but one of her legs had been kicked by a walker. She fell to her knees and continued to shield herself as well as she could. She still wouldn't give up. Under all the weight of the crowd, she pulled her father on top of her.

Like a turtle's shell, her father took the brunt of the attacks for her. She crawled, expending every bit of her energy to get out of that crowd.

She felt the walkers tear apart her father's body and tears rolled down her face. She kept pushing, she had to. The sounds of flesh peeling off of his body haunted her. She continued to push.

It all became a blur for her. She just went through the motions, left foot, right foot, repeat. Just before she made it, her shield was taken from her. Her father's slumped body finally fell off of her and she picked up her pace. Her jacket tore around her lower back. She was vulnerable.

Just before the walkers got a chance to take her, she made it out. Her legs were weak, her spirit was weakened, but she still sprinted. She ran as fast as she could to get away and eventually made it into a car. She shut the door and locked it behind her. She lay down to avoid being seen. She took heavy, exhausted breaths. She was out, she was free, and she would live another day. Her father's plan was to head to the coast, that didn't seem like a bad idea.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: So, that was nuts. That was nuts, right? Lots of death, lots of emotion, lots of character dev, and most importantly, lots of new content with Lee, Clementine and the gang. I was on a roll with this chapter and I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. If all goes well, I might be able to get a new chapter out pretty soon, but you know, sometimes writer's block hits, whatever, I'll try.

To get updates or dm me personally with questions, follow me on Twitter lucashauthor or Insta lucashtwd my dms are ALWAYS open for questions.

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See you soon with Chapter 5!