A/N: I do not own The Walking Dead in any way, shape or form.
Chapter 4
It was decided that they would try for Fort Benning. Because the trip was over 100 miles, it was agreed upon that all gas guzzling vehicles were to be left behind. After some discussion, everyone agreed that T-Dog's van, Shane's jeep, and Adrian's and Daryl's trucks would be left behind, leaving Dale's RV, Carol's jeep, and Merle's motorcycle.
Because they were loosing the truck that held all of their supplies, it was decided that all of their bags would be strapped to the top of the RV and the water cooler would be loaded into the back of Carol's jeep. Rick, Lori, Carl, Sophia, and Carol had picked to ride in Carol's jeep. Dale would be driving his RV with Glenn, Shane, T-Dog, Andrea, and Kale riding along with him.
Some people walked around with gas cans, collecting as much gas as they safely could for their long trip. After all of the gas was collected everyone started to load up in their designated vehicles. Daryl was checking over the motorcycle when Adrian walked up to him. Neither mentioned what had happened the night before.
"What'chu want?" Daryl asked when Adrian didn't say anything, just looking the powerful machine over. "So, I was wondering if I could hitch a ride with you." she said, rocking back onto her heels. "What?" Daryl asked, looking at her as if she suddenly started speaking gibberish. "Well, the jeep is full and I can't ride comfortably in the RV, unless I'm willing to be strapped to the roof with the supplies." she explained.
Daryl just looked at her, saying nothing.
"Please? I brought gas." she said, holding up the half full can, as if she was presenting it on a stupid game show.
"I'll even write your name on it." she said, a teasing smile on her face.
Daryl scoffed at her words. "Whatever." he said, turning back to the machine.
She handed him the gas can, which he took and filled up the tank of the bike. Daryl had taken to wearing his brother's leather vest, a pair of snow white angel wings stitched to the back. Daryl was already on the bike when everyone started to load up, so Adrian decided it was time for her to load up as well.
She straddled the back seat and then scooted forward until she was comfortable and then wrapped her arms around Daryl's waist, which immediately made his muscles lock up. Her hands dropped about an inch, keeping her arms loose but still firmly around his waist. "Watch the hands." he warned, his voice taking on a gravelly sound at the low tone.
"Don't worry, handsome, you're safe from my wondering hands today." she said, patting his stomach in mock comfort.
"I don't start groping below the belt until the second date." she said, teasing the clearly uncomfortable man.
She quietly laughed when he started to sputter, clearly not expecting her words.
TWD
They had been driving for a while when they came upon something that, unfortunately for them, would be something seen more often. Abandoned cars littered the roads and ditches. Daryl turned around when he noticed that the RV had stopped behind him.
"Can you see a way through?" Dale asked Daryl through the window of the RV.
Daryl and Adrian turned to look behind them before Daryl jerked his head, a silent demand to follow him. They drove around the RV to get back in front and slowly maneuvered through the abandoned vehicles. They were getting through easily enough when a loud popping and wheezing sound came from the RV, causing Adrian to nearly jump out of her skin at the sudden, loud noise.
"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph." she grumbled, putting a hand over her rapidly beating heart.
Dale stopped the RV and everyone parked and turned off their vehicles, walking to the front of the RV where Dale was standing, looking at the white smoke in disappointment. "I said it. Didn't I say it?" Dale asked to no one in particular.
"Problem Dale?" Shane asked, holding his shotgun as he looked around the cars, keeping an eye out for danger.
"Only the small matter of being stuck in the middle of no where with no way to fix..." Dale trailed off, finally noticing where they were standing.
"Can't find a radiator hose here." Shane said, making Adrian snort softly at the sarcasm.
"Whole bunch of stuff we can find." Daryl said, digging through the back window of one of the cars.
"We can siphon some more gas while we're here too." T-Dog suggested. "Might as well make the most of it." Adrian said, walking to the RV to grab her bow. When she walked out she had her bow strapped to her back and Kale's shotgun in her hand, handing it to the boy as she walked by him.
"You know what to do." she said to him as she looked at all of the cars.
"Yes ma'am." he said. "And Kale." she whispered, drawing Kale's brown eyed gaze to her. "Keep close to the kids. The last thing we need is for anybody to get separated out here." she told him, her green eyes serious.
After getting a nod of understanding from Kale, Adrian walked away to start looking through the cars. Her and Kale had dug through their fair share of abandoned cars over the weeks when she was daring enough to leave the woods to find things the woods couldn't provide, so they knew the drill. Any and everything useful was up for grabs.
Daryl was helping T-Dog siphon gas while Dale kept watch from atop the RV. Shane was helping Glenn look for the right sized hose that was needed for the RV. Andrea was walking around, clearly overwhelmed by the devastation of it all. Lori, Carol, and Adrian dug through the cars while Kale made half-hearted attempts to look through the cars, but was mostly focused on following Carl and Sophia, who were exploring.
Carol and Adrian were digging through the back of a car when Carol pulled out a pretty bright red shirt, smiling as she held it up to see if it might fit her. Adrian was giving the woman a soft smile at the tiny bit of happiness. When Carol seen the troubled look Lori was giving her, she quickly pulled the shirt away from herself, he smiling falling instantly.
"Ed never let me wear nice things like that." Carol explained. "We'll need clothes." Carol said, grabbing the suitcase she was looking through. Lori didn't say anything but they all knew she didn't like what they were doing. Lori and Carol told Carl and Sophia to stay close while they were looking for supplies. Adrian noticed the kids wondering around and gave a short whistle, gaining Kale's attention. Adrian jerked her chin in Carl and Sophia's direction.
"Yep." he said following behind the kids.
Adrian could clearly see from Lori's expression that she didn't much care for Kale trailing after the kids, but she didn't say anything about it. Adrian walked to the next car and began to look through it for whatever could be useful.
"You don't seemed to be bothered by this." Lori said.
Adrian lifted her head to see Lori looking at her, meaning the words had been directed at her.
"By what, exactly?" she asked, going back to looking through the car.
"By what we're doing. We're stealing from the dead." Lori said shortly.
"Well, it's not my first rodeo." Adrian answered.
"Why, should I be?" she asked when Lori said nothing.
"Yes. At least a little bit." Lori snapped.
Adrian pulled herself from the back seat of the car and turned around to see the clear frustration on Lori's face. "These people are either dead or gone. They don't need these things anymore, we do." Adrian told the brown haired woman. Lori said nothing, just shaking her head in mild disbelief.
"Answer me this then, Lori." Adrian said, waiting for the woman to look at her before she continued.
"It's cold outside, you're freezing. You pass by a car and inside is a jacket. A jacket that could be the difference between you living and dying. Do you grab it or leave it in the car?" Adrian asked her. Lori looked at her a minute before she looked away, not answering, but Adrian knew what her answer was just by looking at her face.
"This is who we are now. It's what we have to do to survive now. The world has changed. More than we ever thought possible, and we have to change too. We have to adapt or we die." she said. When Lori said nothing more, but clearly troubled by the words she spoke, Adrian turned around and continued looking through cars for supplies.
TWD
Adrian and Kale were a few cars ahead of Lori and Carol when they heard Rick telling everyone to get under the cars. Adrian quickly took her bow off of her back and rolled underneath the closest vehicle, Kale did the same in the opposite direction.
It wasn't long before the shuffling of feet could be heard.
There seemed be no end in sight, they were just so many of them.
After a few minutes everything got quiet. It was as if the quiet growls and shuffling feet from the dead were a distant memory. It was quiet, but no one dared to move from their hiding spots. And then a shrill scream split through the silence. Adrian looked up and seen that Sophia was being chased from her hiding place by one of the walkers that hadn't walked by yet. Sophia kept scooting farther and farther away from the danger, until she had crawled under the guardrail and ran down the hill, two of the dead hot on her trail.
Her eyes registered Rick jumping over the guardrail before her brain did. Once her brain caught up she immediately grabbed her bow and rolled out from under the truck with a firm "Stay" directed at Kale when she seen his head pop up from over the cars. She jumped the guardrail and stumbled down the hill. She couldn't see anyone, Sophia, the walkers, or Rick, but she heard them up ahead so she ran in the direction the noise was coming from.
It seemed no matter how fast she ran, she couldn't seem to catch up to them. She stopped, breathing heavily, trying to listen for them because it had gotten quiet. But then she heard a faint yell to her right and ran in the direction she had heard the noise. She came to a shallow creek. She didn't see anything but she heard trees rustling to her right and took off again. She found Rick just as he threw a large rock at the face of the walker he hadn't killed yet.
Adrian lifted her bow and shot her arrow through the back of the walkers head. It dropped with a heavy thud to the ground.
"Where's Sophia?" Adrian panted, eyes darting around but not seeing the girl.
"I hid her at the creek." Rick said, breathing just as heavily as her.
"I followed the creek here, I didn't see her." she said, green eyes meeting blue.
"Come on." Rick said, taking a deep breath, walking back towards the creek. Adrian walked forward and roughly pulled her arrow out of the head of the walker before she turned and followed Rick.
Adrian knew something was wrong when they got to the creek and Sophia didn't answer when Rick called her name. He jumped into the creek and looked into the small hole he had put her in but she wasn't there. Adrian was clearly panicking now. Sophia was just a girl, a very scared girl, who was lost in the woods with no way to protect herself.
Adrian's breathing picked up as she franticly looked around on the ground, looking for any sign of the girl but she couldn't register anything she was seeing.
"Damn it!" she yelled, turning in circles, looking at the ground.
"What is it?" Rick asked her.
"I can't focus! I can't see because I can't focus." she said, rambling about her being as useful as a light bulb in the forest.
"We need to get back to the highway, now. We need Daryl. Bastard could probably track a piss ant through a rainstorm." she said, turning and quickly walking back towards the highway, where everyone was waiting for their return.
TWD
Carol was hysterical when they showed up without Sophia. Rick explained how they needed Daryl's help trying to find the girl. Adrian said she was going back as well when Shane and Glenn volunteered to go with them. The small group was preparing to leave when Adrian walked up to Kale, who was standing behind Carl.
"You stick to him like velcro. I don't care if he has to take a piss, you shadow him like your life depends on it. I'll be damned if we loose anyone else." she told him quietly, but she could tell that both Lori and Carl heard her.
"Is Sophia going to be okay? You're going to find her, right?" Carl asked her, clearly worried about his friend.
"You bet, buddy. That's why so many of us are going." she told him, forcing a smile to help ease his worry.
"I'm scared." he told her.
"I know, sweetie. Tell you what." she said, leaning down so she was closer to his level. "I packed that deck of cards away in my pack. Why don't I have Kale dig it out and you can whip his tail at a few games of Speed. How does that sound?" she said, winking at him which made him smile.
"Sure." Carl said. "Good boy." she said, ruffling his hair.
She could feel Lori's eyes drilling holes into the side of her head, but she could care less. They had already lost one child today. At this point, there couldn't be enough eyes on Carl to make sure he stayed safe. Adrian stood up straight and looked Kale straight in the eyes before she firmed pointed at Carl. He got the message loud and clear.
Adrian then joined all of the men at guardrail and they were off to look for Sophia in what little daylight they had left.
TWD
Rick lead them all back to where he hid Sophia at the creek, Daryl taking charge after Rick pointed to where he had last seen the girl. Rick explained how he left Sophia there and traveled up the creek to lead the walkers away from her but had told her how to get back to the highway in case he didn't come back.
Shane had doubts about Sophia actually understanding everything Rick had said in her scared state.
"Hey, ShortRound. Why don't you move other to one side, you're mucking up the trail." Daryl snapped a Glenn.
It wasn't funny, Adrian knew that, but she still had to bite her lip to keep from laughing at the reference.
"She got out right here." Daryl said, pointing to the embankment of the creek. Adrian walked over to where he pointed and looked down, seeing the clear footprints in in the mud made her want to kick herself. She never even thought about looking in the soft mud for footprints.
Shane helped Rick and Daryl out of the creek and Daryl walked out front, keeping low to the ground so he could see the trail better. They had been following the trail for a few minutes when Daryl knelt onto the ground, looking confused.
"She was doin' just fine 'til right here. Trail veers off that way." he said, gesturing to the right.
"Maybe she saw something, spooked her?" Shane suggested.
"A walker?" Glenn asked.
"Nah, there's nothing here." Daryl told them.
"Alright, Shane, you, Glenn, and Adrian head back to the highway." Rick told his friend.
"I'm staying." Adrian immediately cut in.
Rick cut her a look, about to argue with her, until he seen the determined look in her eyes. "You and Glenn head back to the highway, let them know we're on her trail, but most importantly, keep everyone calm." Rick told him. "I'll have them scavenge the cars, think up a few more chores. Keep everybody busy." Shane said, agreeing with the plan.
"Alright, we'll see you guys later." Rick said.
"Let's go. We're burning daylight." Adrian said to the men. Daryl and Rick looked at each other before nodding their agreement with her statement. Adrian was walking beside Daryl, trying to see what he seen, but she knew she didn't see half of what he did.
"Why'd you wanna come?" Rick said.
Adrian looked behind her to see him looking at her.
"I lost my son, Seth, once. We were camping one weekend, he was around ten at the time. I had forgotten something in our truck so I went back to get it. I told him to sit by the fire and not to move. When I got back a few minutes later, he was gone. I yelled for him, but he never answered. I was hysterical. I ran circles around the campsite, yelling his name. It couldn't have been more than fifteen minutes that he was gone before I finally heard him yelling for me. Turns out he has seen a couple of squirrels chasing each other and he wanted to watch. He didn't realize that he had wondered off so far away. He was scared shitless when I found him." she told them.
Neither of the men spoke.
"My son was only gone for fifteen minutes, in a place where nothing could really hurt him. I had never been so scared in all of my life. I can only imagine how Carol is feeling right now. Sophia is lost, with no idea how to get back to her mother, in a place filled with danger around every tree. No mother should have to feel that kind of fear." she whispered.
They had been quiet for a few minutes before Rick broke the silence.
"The trail's gone." he said, looking around the ground behind Daryl and Adrian.
"Nah, ain't gone, just faint." Daryl said, pointing to something only he could see.
"How do you know? All I see is dirt and leaves." Rick said.
"You want a lesson in tracking or you wanna find this girl so we can get the hell off that highway?" Daryl asked, clearly being sarcastic.
"Both." Adrian said to his comment.
Daryl looked up from the ground and looked over at Adrian.
"Seriously?" he asked in disbelief.
"Yes. I only have a handful of years worth of tracking experience under my belt, which means I'm barely competent enough to hunt down a deer or a boar. When I realized Sophia wasn't where Rick put her, I panicked. I couldn't focus on the ground long enough to register anything I was looking at. I probably looked straight at those tracks she left coming out of the creek, but I didn't see them." she told, clearly frustrated with herself.
"I want to learn how to track like you do. Knowing this stuff could save our lives some day. Maybe even yours." she told him.
Daryl gave her a strange look for a minute before he nodded his head. "A'ight. After we find this girl, I'll start teaching you how to track." he said. Adrian could honestly admit that she was surprised that he gave in so easily. From what she had seen of him so far, she figured that she would have had to annoy the shit out of him before he agreed.
They were still walking through the woods a while later when a stick snapped, causing all of them to crouch low to the ground, Daryl's crossbow and Adrian's bow at the ready, looking out for whatever had caused the noise. They didn't see anything at first but they could still hear leaves rustling ahead of them. They crept closer and seen a single walker stumbling downhill from them. Rick said that he would distract it so Daryl could kill it.
Rick ran downhill and whistled to catch it's attention. It started to growl loudly when Daryl stepped out from behind a tree and quickly shot and arrow through it's head. Adrian walked up to the walker as Daryl yanked his arrow from the dead walkers skull. Rick knelt down beside the walker as Daryl and Adrian looked around.
"Sophia!" they both yelled at the same time.
They gave each other an awkward look before looking down to see Rick pulling on a pair of gloves.
"What are you doing?" Adrian asked him.
"There's skin under it's nails." he said.
Daryl leaned down to get a closer look, but Adrian had no intention of getting any closer.
"It fed recently." Rick said as he turned it over before he started digging around in it's mouth.
"There's flesh in it's teeth." Rick told them, pulling some out from between the walkers teeth.
"Yeah, but what kinda flesh?" Daryl asked.
Rick got a look on his face that said she wasn't going to like what happened next, and his next words confirmed it.
"Only one way to find out." he said, ripping the walker's shirt open and flicking his knife open.
Daryl stopped Rick as he tried to mentally prepare himself for what he was about to do.
"I'll do it. How many animals you killed and gutted, anyway?" he said, now standing over the walker. "Mine's sharper." he said as he pulled his knife out. She had absolutely no doubt that that he knew more about gutting things than they did. Adrian had hunted plenty in her life but she always had someone else to skin and gut them.
Thankfully she knew the basics when shit had hit the fan.
It was an absolutely disgusting job, cutting the walker open. Adrian quickly turned around and started to dry heave when the smell hit her nose. It was was the worst thing she had ever smelled, and she had smelled some pretty bad stuff since she was forced to flee Atlanta. Once she was sure nothing was going to come up she turned around.
The sound was almost as bad as the smell.
Adrian needed something to take her mind off the smell, so she decided to focus on something else.
The something else that caught her attention was Daryl's forearm.
He had put on a pair of gloves before he had started, thankfully. Her eyes traveled up and down his arms, her mind officially taken off of what he was actually doing.
His skin was covered in sweat, they all were, but he also had large dark smudges scattered around his arms that she figured were dirt. Adrian didn't know what Daryl had done to tone his arms the way he had, although she was pretty sure packing around that heavy crossbow helped, but she was grateful nonetheless.
She should not have been turned on, not even in the slightest, especially during their current situation, but she would be lying if she said she wasn't a little turned on.
Once Daryl was done cutting it open he stabbed his knife into the ground.
Adrian felt herself blush like a schoolgirl when she actually felt drool build up at the corner of her mouth.
She was never more thankful than in that moment that they were paying her no attention.
TWD
After Daryl had handed Rick the stomach of the walker, the former cop had cut it open. Once Daryl had confirmed that the walker had eaten a woodchuck and not Sophia, they headed back to the highway. They made it back to the highway with no less than an hour of daylight left to spare. Carol was distraught that they hadn't come back with Sophia. And she became even more so when Rick said that they would resume looking for her in the morning. Adrian could understand both sides of the argument. Carol absolutely hated the idea of leaving her little girl out in the woods all on her own overnight, but Adrian knew that Rick and Daryl were right to stop the search.
Nothing would get accomplished in the dark.
Carol was scared for her daughter, and rightfully so, and was looking for somewhere to place the blame of her daughter's current predicament. Apparently Rick was the target she chose. She blamed him for leave Sophia on her own in the middle of the woods, but Adrian had been out there with him, not Carol, so she understood why Rick had done what he did.
He didn't have any silent weapons on him, the only weapon he had would have rang the dinner bell for the hundreds of walkers that had passed them by. His best option at the time had been to hide her somewhere safe so he could lead the danger away. It wasn't his fault that Sophia had left her hiding spot too early because she had been too scared to stay put until Rick came back for her. Adrian could have rationally explained it a hundred different ways to Carol, but she knew the older woman wouldn't have heard any of it. All she could understand was that her daughter was lost in the woods and they couldn't go looking for her until morning.
Rick, just as upset as everyone else, walked away from everyone. Adrian gave him a few minutes to himself before she walked after him. She found him leaning against a car, his head hung lowly between his outstretched arms. If he heard her approach, he gave no sign of it.
"Rick." she said, gently placing her hand on his shoulder. He didn't answer or move, but she knew he heard her.
"Rick, look at me." she said pushing against his shoulder to get his to turn and look at her. When she finally seen his devastated blue eyes, her heart broke for him.
He was so upset that they hadn't found Sophia, and she could tell that he had a war raging inside of him. On one hand he knew he had done what he had to at the time, but at the same time he was doubting all of his decisions.
"You did everything right. Carol is afraid and looking to place blame, but none of that blame can be placed at your door. You did everything you could with the options you had." she told him firmly, willing him to believe her words.
"Did I? I mean, maybe if I had just-"
"No!" she cut him off sharply.
"Carol wasn't out there. She doesn't understand, but I do. I was behind you, I lost sight of all of you, but you didn't know I was there, that help was coming. You thought you were out there alone with her and two walkers and no weapon. You did what you could. I would have done exactly the same, hell, I have." she told him.
The last part seemed to catch his attention. It may not have been acceptance of his actions, but he wasn't completely drowning in self doubt either.
"It was the day I found Kale. When I found him he didn't know how to defend himself, no weapons of any kind but he had four walkers chasing him. It was too dark to use my bow and I couldn't chance drawing the attention of more walkers, so my gun wasn't an option either. My only option was to get him out of harms way as quickly as possible and take them on one at a time. I grabbed him by his shirt and basically shoved him into a tree and told him to climb and not come down until I got back. Once I was sure he was climbing I drew the walkers away from him. I don't know how far I had to run to get them all separated but it wasn't a short run. I finally managed to kill them all and then made my way back to the tree to see him exactly where I left him." she told him.
"Yeah, but you found him. We didn't find Sophia." he said, the doubt back in his voice.
"The only reason Kale didn't climb down the tree before I got back was that he was to scared to move. Sophia was too scared to stay. You did nothing wrong, so don't doubt the decisions you made out there." she told him.
He said nothing in return so she decided it was best to leave him alone.
They all needed to get as much rest as they could, it was going to be a long day come sunrise.
TWD
Because Daryl was the expert in the woods, he was in charge of the group. He told everyone that they would be sticking close to the creek, since that would be Sophia's only landmark. They would travel about five miles up one side and then walk back on the other side. Dale and T-Tog were staying on the highway, Dale so he could finish fixing the RV and T-Dog because he had been injured when the herd of walkers came through. Adrian asked Kale if he would mind staying with the two men, just for extra protection, to which he agreed too.
They came across a tent after a while. Daryl, Rick, and Shane approached the tent in case something other than Sophia might be inside. Clearly it wasn't Sophia, judging by the amount of gagging the men were doing. Daryl came out saying that is was just some guy who had chosen the easy way out. Then they heard the church bells, which caused everyone to scramble. After a few minutes they all broke through the tree line to see a large graveyard and a white church on the other side of it.
Shane was convinced that it wasn't the right church but Rick wasn't leaving until it was searched. Rick, Shane, and Daryl went inside the church as killed the three walkers that were inside. Everyone's hopes plummeted of Sophia being the one to signal them there when they heard bells go off. They all ran outside and seen a speaker attached to the outside of the church, the bells had been set on a timer to go off.
Carol said she was going back inside before she turned and left, clearly upset. Adrian didn't see who all followed her inside, she turned and decided to walk through the graveyard. Adrian had been looking at random tombstones when she looked up and see Daryl standing in the shade of one of the trees in the graveyard.
"You have the look of someone who is uncomfortable inside of a church." she said as she walked up to him.
Daryl's only answer was a slight shrug of his shoulder.
"You're out here too, so what's your excuse?" he asked her, squinting because of the bright sun.
"The last time I was in a church was for the funeral of someone I loved very dearly." she said, a sad smile on her face.
The sad smile was soon replaced with a teasing one and it was directed at Daryl, which he didn't like.
"What?" he asked.
"You're not as hard and gruff as you make yourself out to be." she told him, her smile growing just a bit.
"What the hell you talkin' about?" he asked, not sure he wanted to know the answer.
"You care. You act like you don't care about any of us, but you do. Your words contradict your actions." she told him.
Daryl didn't say anything but she could see the uncomfortable look in his eyes.
"On the highway, when the herd came through, T-Dog said that you killed a walker that was coming for him and then you covered him with a walker to hide him from the walkers. And now you're out here, helping us all look for a lost little girl. If you didn't care, you would have left T-Dog to the walkers and then would've told Rick to piss off when he asked you to help find Sophia." she explained.
She could tell by the awkward shuffling of his feet that he wasn't used to praise of any kind.
By the time Daryl got over being uncomfortable, everyone had gathered around the tree. Rick decided that he was going to stay at the church for a while longer and look around, in case Sophia heard the bells as well and tried too find her way there.
Shane and Adrian volunteered to stay with him at the same time.
When both Shane and Rick gave her a look she just rolled her eyes at them.
"Neither one of you are carrying silent weapons. One of you is carrying a shotgun while the other is carrying around a freaking hand cannon. Please, tell me how that's smart." she said.
Both of them reluctantly admitted that she had a point so they said no more about it.
"Alright, the rest of you go with Daryl and follow the creek back to the highway. We'll meet you there. Daryl, you're in charge." Rick told the rest of them.
"I'm coming too." Carl said, stepping away from his mother.
"She's my friend, so I should be with you, helping you look." he said, looking at his dad and Shane.
Neither man said anything, unsure of what to say when Lori's next words sealed the deal. "You just be careful, okay?" she said, giving her son a hug.
Everyone could feel the tension when she kissed and hugged Rick goodbye.
After the group that was following the creek had disappeared into the trees Rick asked for a minute before they left. Rick walked inside the church while Adrian, Shane and Carl sat outside. They could hear Rick talking inside but nobody said anything. After a few minutes he came back outside.
"Get what you needed?" Shane asked as Rick walked down the steps.
"Guess we'll find out." Rick answered as he walked away.
The four of them had been walking in silence for a when they heard a twig snap. The three adults snapped to attention to find the noise. Adrian pointed at something through the trees. All three of them lowered their weapons when they seen it was just a deer. Shane raised his gun to shoot it, but Rick called him back, drawing Shane's attention to Carl, who was slowly walking forward with a smile on his face. All of the adults had peaceful smiles of their faces as Carl got closer and closer to the deer.
Everything was peaceful.
Until the crack of a gunshot disturbed the silence, both the deer and Carl hitting the ground.