this chapter is a little weaker than the others but we need it for plot reasons. and i hope that the familiar face we see at the end will make it up to you.
nine months after grady.
After Noah left, it didn't really change anything. We stayed in the house, we continued to go on runs. The days started to drag on, the longer we went without finding anything, the more I began to get disheartened, hoping for a sign, for anything.
It felt like we tore up all of Atlanta looking for any of our people. I dragged Jaime, Abbott, and Jay through the old remains of Woodbury, just in case. Tyreese discovered a place called Terminus, but when his group followed the path there, they found it destroyed and abandoned, signs of a gunfight all over the place. He'd looked inside, but when he stumbled upon what looked like the remains of a human slaughterhouse, he turned around and left, queasy. Apparently, there were bodies all over the place, but many of them had been torn into by walkers, all in gross states of decay and ripped apart.
We thought about going after Noah, and we debated it several times over. Beth was adamant that we had to follow him, and I was trapped somewhere in the middle. In the end, we let him go. There was no way to figure out just where in Richmond he was going, and we still had responsibilities here. Plus, if it didn't work out, he might come back here looking for us, and if we weren't here when he did, we'd have no way of knowing he was back in Georgia.
After a good, long debate, we came to an agreement. If, six months or so after he left, he wasn't back, we'd drive to Richmond and try to find him. It was a compromise that, in the end, we decided we were happy enough with. It put a limit on how much time we had left to find our people, to find anyone. As a result, I started going out with the run team more, taking less breaks, spending less time at the house and more time trying to find survivors from the prison.
Four months, four long months, we went without any ideas, any real plans. We spent all of our time driving down old Georgia streets, covering parts of the city we hadn't before, and even retracing over places we had seen. For four months, we just kept on keeping on, and the longer we did so, the more drained I began to feel, and the closer we got to the six month deadline, the more anxious I got.
Until, of course, Beth realized something.
Early in the morning, when the sun was just starting to come through the windows, I woke up to Beth standing over me, her hand shaking my shoulder. Weary, my eyes blinked open to look at her, doing their best to focus on her figure even though they were still blurry with sleep.
"Can I help you?" I mumbled, moody after being woken up. As my vision cleared, I could see the look on her face, and although I couldn't read it, it did register as odd.
"Grady," was all she said, hand still clutching my shoulder, and suddenly, I was a lot more awake.
"What about it?" I asked, sitting up a little in my bed.
"We never cleared it," she said. "Never went back. Like, it was dangerous, but what- what if they've found more of our people? What if they're there, and we leave in two months, and they're still trapped at Grady?"
"Beth…"
"Plus, what they were doing? It's wrong. We can go back, and we can stop them! Dawn is dead. Gorman is dead. We can get them to change! And if they won't, well… we can free all the other patients that are still there. Maybe some of them will want to come with us!"
I stopped to think about it for a long moment. She had a fair point that more of our people could be stuck in the hospital, and we'd have no way of knowing. And I knew myself, and Beth, for that matter, we'd always be wondering if the rest of our people were still there if we didn't check.
I nodded, a silent sort of approval, and Beth gave a smile, even if it did seem a little bit like a grimace.
Later, when almost everyone had woken up, we gathered them all in the kitchen so Beth could repeat what she'd suggested to me.
When she first mentioned what she'd been thinking, there was a lot of skepticism, likely about the fact that her idea involved going back to a place that we'd barely managed to escape from with our lives, especially after the encounter that left Molly dead. Beth, however, used a lot of the same reasoning I'd had when it came to clearing out the prison: that now, we had the manpower and the weapons.
"And what if we don't find any of your people?" Abbott asked, folding his arms over her chest.
"Even still, Grady is a corrupt place where most people there are being held against their will," I interjected. "The least we'll be doing is running through and seeing if they've made any changes since Dawn was killed. And if not, well… we figure out what to do then."
"Plus, there are plenty of patients inside who would leave in a second's notice if they could," Beth added. "We could always bring them with us. Having more people can't hurt."
The conversation went on for an hour or so, before we got the majority of people on board. Many of them still seemed a little hesitant, but all risks had their rewards. It didn't hurt that Beth seemed so dead set on going, and the more I thought about it, the more I agreed.
We decided to take two days or so to work out the details. In the end, since both Beth and I wanted to go, Alice would stay with the kids this time. The rest of us would all be loading up and going to Grady. Luke had wanted to go, too, and had argued with me over it for a long time, but I was firm on the fact that he wasn't allowed to come with, and neither was Mika.
(I didn't realize it at the time, but I think this is the moment when I became the de-facto parent for both Luke and Mika.)
In the end, he'd huffed and pouted, but I wouldn't budge, and in the end, he seemed to get over it. I knew he wasn't happy, but I figured he'd get over it.
The day of, we loaded up to leave. We only had to take two vehicles to fit us all, one of those being the truck, which meant that there was one car left for Alice and the kids to make a break for it.
Before we left, I said goodbye to Mika, Judith, and Alice. Luke had run off to his room after breakfast. I shouted something up at the stairs to him, but when he didn't come back down, I figured I'd give him his space. Instead, I hopped up into the front seat of the truck, powered up the stereo system, and we set of for Grady.
The drive there was a little less than two hours, which wasn't too long, but I did feel nervous. Beside me, Beth seemed to feel the same way, and mostly on impulse, I reached out grab her hand. There was a moment of hesitation before her fingers laced through mine, and she squeezed them.
We rode the rest of the way in silence, save for the soft Elvis music playing from the speakers. About half a block from Grady, Tyreese pulled the truck to a stop, and Beth dropped my hand as we all got out, planning on walking the rest of the way.
The hatchback parked behind us, and everyone else began to climb out. What took me by surprise was when they popped the trunk and Luke slipped out, a pistol in his hands and a rifle on his back.
I blinked, confused, before emotion took over. "What are you doing here?" I all but demanded, before turning to Jaime, who had been driving the car. "What is he doing here?"
Jaime threw his hands up in front of him, as if he were surrendering, and Luke stepped forward. "I hid in the trunk," he told me. "I wanted to come."
"I told you to stay at the house!"
"You're not the boss of me," he argued, and that had me stumped for a moment, before I set my jaw.
"Well, someone has to be," I replied. "And listening to me has helped keep you safe for this long!"
He shrugged, and I wrinkled my nose. "You're waiting in the car," I stated.
"You can't make me stay there," he pointed out. "And once you leave, I'm just going to get out and follow you. I could get hurt doing that, you might as well just let me come along."
I sighed, realizing he had a point. "Fine," I conceded. "You can come with. But you don't fire a single shot unless someone else does first, and you listen to everything we say, got it?"
"Got it," he repeated, looking far too smug. I huffed, but said nothing else, and we began to head for Grady. It seemed to loom before us, and I swallowed, glancing back over my shoulder at Beth. She met my gaze, and despite the nerves itching in the bottom of my stomach, the steady look in her eyes helped to calm me, just a little bit.
When we hit the courtyard, I fought down the wave of memories that surged up in my head. Here was where I shot Dawn, where Molly was killed. It still stung to think about, but I pushed on, my rifle raised and scanning the area. There was a walker or two milling about, but Jaime and Abbott took them both down with melee weapons, keeping it quiet.
The hospital doors were closed, but not locked, and they came open easily enough. From here, Beth and I took point, leading them up the staircase.
"Do you think they know we're inside yet?" Jay asked.
"Probably not," Beth whispered back. "They don't make much use of our the lower floors. They'll probably be a guard at the top of the staircase on the fourth floor, though."
She turned out to be right, because when we hit the top, we found Officer Tanaka. He startled when he saw us, raising his gun, but he realized very quickly that he was outnumbered.
"Beth? Sophia?"
"That would be us," I said. "So here's the deal. You're going to pull out your walkie talkie, call all the other officers, and we're going to have a meeting in the cafeteria."
"I'm- I'm not in charge," he stammered. "Officer Shepard took over after…"
"It doesn't matter who's in charge," Sylvia interrupted from behind me, and I was glad for the way she spoke in a solid, even tone, commanded attention. "What matters it that we greatly outnumber you and your friends, and if you don't all want to be dead for the horror show you've been running here, you're going to call them all together, and we're going to talk."
His eyes went wide, and he reached for his walkie right away, talking into it at low tones. As he spoke, he continued to glance back and forth between us and our guns.
"Yeah, it's important," he said. "I- Beth and Sophia are here, with like- a lot of other people. And they're all armed."
"How many of them are there?"
"More than there are of us," Tanaka answered, and I had to fight to keep my lips from curling up at the corners.
Despite the fact that Beth and I both already knew where the cafeteria was, we let him lead the way there. By the time we arrived, there were several officers already gathered around. Upon seeing us, many seemed taken aback, but others reached for the weapons.
"Don't," I all but hissed. "Keep them holstered?"
"Oh, or you'll shoot us?" a voice demanded, and I looked over to see O'Donnell standing there. "Like you did with Dawn?"
"No," I spat back, feeling something angry rise in my chest. "I'll shoot you like Dawn shot Gorman: while he was writhing on the ground and begging for mercy!"
That seemed to shut him up, and his lips curled into a snarl. I didn't say anything else until everyone else trickled in, Officer Shephard the last of them.
"Sophia, Beth," she greeted, in an almost mechanical tone. "We didn't expect to see you back here."
"We weren't plannin' on coming back," Beth said.
"Yeah, it might have been a poor plan, considering that you murdered Dawn," Licardi spit. "Shot her in the back of the head while she was walking back inside."
I growled. "You have no idea what happened out in that courtyard," I sneered.
"Yeah? Well, what I know-"
"What you know is nothing," I interrupted. "What I know is that Dawn let you all abuse people and destroy lives, commit rape and murder and all kinds of horrible things. What I know is that Gorman held a girl, a little girl, with a knife to her throat, and when he cut it open, Beth and I were the ones with our hands on her neck, trying to stop the bleeding. What I know is that Gorman murdered Molly, Dawn let it happen, and I shot her for it."
A long period of silence followed my words, and in that stillness, I realized that my breathing had become heavy with anger, and my finger was itching too close to the trigger of my gun, cool metal against the pad of my pointer. There was a hand on my shoulder, likely Tyreese, and I forced myself to take a deep breath and calm down.
"Look, no matter what, there's as many of us as there are of you," Smith stated, taking a step forward until he was only a foot or so behind me. "And you may have police training, but you've been holed up here in this hospital for the past few years. We, however, have been surviving on the road since then. We've more than got you matched."
"So?" Shephard cut in, before any of the other cops could speak. Her voice was still calm. "Why are you back? What could you want?"
"We're here for the patients," I said. "We're taking them, any of them that want to come with us."
There's a bit of an uproar at that, a scattered "you can't do that" and "that's crazy", but we wait it out. When they realize we're serious, they seem almost offended.
"They're people," Beth added. "People who deserve the control their own lives."
"There's no way," one of the other officers said, one whose name I didn't care to remember. "There's-"
"Okay," Shepard agreed.
I was so shocked by her agreement that I almost dropped my rifle right there, but instead, I narrowed my eyes. "What's the catch?"
"No catch," she insisted. "You're right. We were police officers. We're supposed to be the good guys, we're supposed to help people. What we're doing isn't helping people. So yeah, take whoever wants to come with you."
I almost didn't believe her. I really didn't. But there was something in her eyes, earnest and impossible to deny, and I knew in that moment, she was telling the truth.
"Guys, she's not lying," I whispered, turning back to the rest of the group.
"She isn't," Beth repeated, sounding almost awed. "She's telling the truth."
Caught off-guard, we all froze before our brains kicked into action. I glanced over at Beth, and when she looked back at me, I could see a mix of confusion and shock that I'm sure was reflected in my own eyes. The two of us stared for a moment, before I realized that I was waiting for her reaction, waiting to see what she thought. She seemed to realize it, too, and she offered me a small dip of the head: agreement.
Shepard, seemingly starting to get either irritated, or nervous, spoke up. "So? Are you in or not?"
Shifting my rifle on my shoulder, I glanced over at Beth before I nodded. "Yeah," I said. "We're in."
One of the other officers, Lam-something, placed his hand on Shepard's shoulder. "Are you sure about this?" He asked, and although he was trying to be quiet about it, it was pretty obvious what he had to be saying. Shepard brushed him off with a bit of a shrug, and started to send off her people to gather all the patients up.
Finally, when the only two cops left were her and Bello left, the other woman hovering along the wall in silence, Shepard turned to me. "How have you guys been?" She asked.
Taken aback, I scoffed. "Did you just… did you just ask me how we've been?" I repeated, incredulous. "Seriously?"
"Look, I don't hold any sort of negative feelings for you," she told me. "Either of you. Yes, you killed Dawn, but it need to happen to put new people in charge."
"Puttin' new people in charge hasn't seemed to do much," Beth pointed out.
"Just because I run this place now, it doesn't mean I have total control over everything that happens here," Shepard replied. "I'm trying to change this place, and we're making progress, but everyone has been set in their ways for a long time now. I want us to be better, but it doesn't happen overnight. It takes time."
"And nine months hasn't been enough time?"
"I don't want to fight with you. You came into this hospital with guns-"
"This hospital that kidnapped us-" I interrupted, but she cut me off.
"-And you demanded something from me," she continued. "And now, instead of arguing over it, I'm giving that to you. Can that not be enough, at least for today?"
"There's no 'enough'," I said. "There isn't 'enough' to justify the blood on your hands."
"Then why are you even here?"
"Some of my people could be here," I told her. "But even with them aside, there's others in this hospital, too, who you've taken, who deserve better. They had lives before this place, and they should get to have lives after it. We're here for them."
Shepard went quiet, considering that. "Fair enough," she replied, after a while "But for however little it's worth, I'm sorry about what happened to you here, and what happened to Molly."
I didn't have a response to that, but Beth did. "Thank you," she said, her voice soft.
As a couple patients began to trickle in, Shepard scanned her eyes over our group, as if just realizing something. "Where's Noah?" She asked.
"He went to go find his family," Beth answered, saving me from having to try and come up with something to say. Shepard seemed to take that as it was, and the conversation fizzled out from there as more and more people began to make their way into the cafeteria. Eventually, there was a small crowd gathered, some of which I recognized, and some I didn't.
I turned to Shepard. "Is this everyone?"
"For the most part," she answered. "There's a couple more, but you may as well get started, or whatever you plan to do."
I shrugged, before turning to the patients, most of whom were staring at me and Beth. "Um, hey guys." I greeted, suddenly feeling a little bit odd addressing them all like these. "You might know who I am, you might not. But my name's Sophia, and this is Beth. We were both injured and kidnapped, like I'm sure most of you were. I don't really know how it works now, but when I was here, they never let us leave.
"We managed to escape, and now we're here to offer that chance to you. Our group is willing to take in any and all of you who want to escape. We have a safehouse, we have weapons, food and water. We believe there's safety in numbers, and that the trick to surviving isn't pushing people down and building on their backs, it's about working together and caring for each other."
By now, the crowd was starting to murmur among themselves. "You're welcome to come with us," I finished. "If you want to get out of Grady, here's your chance."
At that, they all went quiet, giving each other wide eyed looks and glancing around. After a long moment of silence, a woman I only vaguely recognized stepped forward.
"I want in," she said, and took one glance at Officer Shepard before crossing the room and walking over to Beth and I. A second behind her, a man came forward, also coming over to stand by us.
"Anyone else?" I asked.
There was silence, but then: a few, squeaking taps, like rubber on a tiled floor, and a familiar voice said: "Yeah, I think I'd like to come with."
The voice came from across the room, warm, with a distant sort of familarity, the kind that only comes from seeing someone you love after a long time. Just hearing the voice, I thought of comic books, and warm laughter with bright eyes, and-
I looked over and, leaning on a crutch with hair falling into his face, was Glenn.
Beth's eyes went wide, and his name fell from her lips. Smiling, she rushed forward and threw her arms around him. Grinning, I jogged up behind them, and when she finally let him go, I reached out to hug him, a little bit more gentle than she'd been.
"You have no idea how good it is to see you," I whispered.
"Same here," he echoed, with a soft laugh.
When I pulled back, she reached out to place a hand on his shoulder. "Have you seen Maggie?" She asked, a hint of desperation leaking into her voice, and Glenn's grin faltered
"I was going to ask if you'd seen her," he replied. "We were at Terminus together, but we got seperated."
"Terminus?" I repeated, before glancing at Tyreese over my shoulder, who had come up behind me. "Isn't that the name of that place you found?"
"Yeah," he answered, brow furrowing. "It was totally destroyed. You were there?"
Glenn nodded. "I think I have a lot to tell you guys."