"Every parting is a form of death, as every reunion is a type of heaven." – Tryon Edwards
After traveling all day on the tracks, with few breaks to rest, the trio and Judith finally took refuge among trees, away from the tracks for the sake of cover, when night fell. Since Tyreese and Carol hadn't slept as long as Georgie the night before, all things considered, Georgie opted for the first watch. Tyreese and Carol lay down on the ground on either side of her while Carol curled Judith up against her as well.
Seated with her legs bent and her knees pulled up close to her chest, Georgie rested her arms atop her knees while holding her hunting knife in her right hand; prepared to use it at a moment's notice. The world around them was quiet and things just felt a little off. It had only been five days since she had first met Tyreese, Lizzie and Mika, and it had been one week since meeting Carol on the road. Five days before Carol, she had lost every single person in her previous group. That had been twelve people, not including her. Twelve people had died when a herd of walkers came out of the woods and she was the only survivor. Her friend Dana and Dana's two children had been among those losses and Georgie felt guilt over surviving. She hadn't been the one keeping watch when the attack began, but she had been away from the group to go to the bathroom. She couldn't help but beat herself up over it; that maybe if she hadn't gone off for those few minutes, she could've done something more and her people would be alive right now. Instead, she had to return to the sounds of their screams and bodies being torn apart by the hungry dead.
Staring out into the darkness of the woods, the moon up above, which was fuller than days prior, went unnoticed to her. Her eyes were adjusted enough to the darkness, though, that she had no problem seeing if something moved nearby. And, aside from the snoring come from the exhausted pair on either side of her, all was silent enough that Georgie could also hear if anything approached.
It was quite possible that several hours had gone by, judging by the fact that the woods seemed brighter, when Georgie finally heard something shuffling a few yards up on the tracks. Climbing quietly to her feet, she walked off to inspect and spied three walkers coming from the direction she, Carol and Tyreese had been headed.
Quickly, she went up to them and stabbed one in the head, and the other two were hasty enough to react. They turned upon her and reach their rotting arms out toward her, biting at air. She kicked one back a couple of feet to by herself some time so she could stab the other in the skull. The last one grabbed onto her arm and she swung it to the ground and backed up, making sure it hadn't scratched her in the process. When she had determined she was perfectly okay, she jumped forward with her boot and stomped on that last walker's face with renewed vigor. She even gave a slight twist of her foot for good measure.
Stepping back to inspect her handiwork, Georgie reached down and rolled each walker over and off the tracks. She remained crouched down near their level for a few moments, letting different thoughts roll around her head before standing back up.
Georgie turned around and walked back toward the others when she noticed Tyreese was awake, though still lying down as he looked over at her approaching. When she got closer, he sat up and gave her a nod of his head.
"Were you saying a prayer over them or something?"
"Huh?" Georgie looked over her shoulders at the three walkers she put down and then back to Tyreese. "Oh, no…I was just…I dunno. Thinking."
"About the girls?"
"A little bit of them," she replied. "A little bit of everything, really."
Tyreese leaned his back and his head up against a narrow tree trunk. "I hear ya."
"What are you thinking about?" Georgie took a seat across from him. Since he was up and staring in the direction she had been previously, she chose to situate herself facing the opposite. They had better coverage that way.
"Did Carol tell you that she killed my girlfriend Karen and another guy named David when they got sick?"
Georgie hesitated. "Yeah, she told me after we first met, when she was explaining why she'd left the prison; how it hadn't been her choice." Georgie stuck her knife in the ground, aimlessly drawing in the dirt. "I promised her I wouldn't say anything to you. It was her secret to tell, not mine."
Tyreese accepted this information. "I forgave her," he spoke. "I know now that Karen wouldn't have gotten better, and Carol made sure it was quick; that they didn't suffer. I just…can't forget it though."
"We're not meant to forget losing people we care about. I think that would be worse than having no one we care about, or love, to lose," she remarked. "What's that saying – it's better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all? Right?"
Tyreese nodded. "I suppose so. It'd be a hell of a lot easier though with the loss."
"Well, duh." Georgie smirked.
Silence fell between them for a while.
"You think we're closer to Terminus?" he wondered.
"We gotta be."
"We still haven't seen any more signs, though."
"Well," Georgie muttered. "That track has to run out eventually and, when it does, it'll lead us somewhere; whether it's turns out to be Terminus or someplace else."
"I wonder if the others who got out of the prison have seen similar signs."
"Maybe."
"Maybe they're there, waiting."
"Maybe," Georgie repeated herself.
"I hope they're safe," Tyreese continued. "And if my sister is there, then…even better."
Georgie stared at the ground. "I'd like to hope my son is there."
Tyreese smiled ruefully at her. "You still hoping he made it away from that Cub Scout camping trip?"
She had since told him about what had happened to her when the outbreak happened, and her losses, same as he did about what him and his sister Sasha had been through; living in a neighbor's underground bunker for seven months in their native Jacksonville, traveling for weeks with a much larger group which made it north to Georgia, "working" as a guard in The Governor's Woodbury, and then defecting to the prison with several others, which included Sasha, Karen and David.
"I have to," Georgie finally answered. "It's the only thing that's keeping me going." Then, glancing toward Carol and Judith, she added, "Well, it was the only thing. Then I met that little girl and she melted my heart."
Tyreese grinned brightly, following Georgie's gaze. "Yeah, she does that." After a few more moments of silence, he looked back at Georgie and nudged her foot with his. "I'm up now. Why don't you catch a few hours of sleep before we're on the move again?"
"Yeah, okay."
Without another word, Georgie rolled onto her side and used her arm as a pillow. Closing her eyes, she let the thoughts in her head slowly fade away as she eventually lost her fight with consciousness.
Once morning had broken, Georgie was up and awake simply from a random ray of light shining at the right angle through the canopy of leaves and focusing right on her closed eyelids. Sitting up, she found Tyreese was now holding Judith and feeding her from the last jar of actual baby food from the diaper bag. Carol was still asleep, but facing away from them.
"Morning," Tyreese greeted.
"That it is."
"I was thinking we should find a stream or something soon, to clean the soiled cloths we're using as diapers for her."
"We can't put the clean ones on her if their wet. It could give her a chill and make her sick."
"There's still a couple of clean cloths we haven't used yet in the bag," he assured. "Wish we had soap to clean the dirty ones with, though."
"If wishes were horses," Georgie smirked.
She finally sat up and crawled over to Carol to wake her up. When the older woman stirred and sat up, she excused herself for a few moments to go to the bathroom behind a bush nearby. When she returned, the three adults took a few swigs of water from the canteen and shared a handful of toasted pecans they had brought with them from the grove, along with sharing a can of clam chowder which, in truth, tasted a bit spoiled. It was enough to sustain them for a while, though, and that's what matter, even if their stomachs may disagree with them later.
Soon enough they were on the tracks again and Carol spotted the three walkers Georgie had taken care of in the early hours of morning, but made no comment about it. The sound of cicadas provided the soundtrack to their journey and, as the morning progressed, Tyreese took the lead on the tracks while Carol and Georgie walked side by side; the latter yet again carrying Judith.
By noontime, they had finally come upon a sign for Terminus.
"We're close," Carol stated the obvious. "I'm gonna get the three of you there, make sure you're safe, but I'm not gonna stay."
Tyreese was giving the sign a proper looksee when Georgie snapped her head toward Carol. Tyreese looked more slowly at her, accepting this decision, while Georgie felt a little betrayed. In a week's time, Carol had become a good friend and confidant, more or less the only family she had. The idea of separating from her now felt like losing her to death. However, Georgie didn't say anything. She couldn't force Carol to stay. If the older woman felt the need to leave them, Georgie would have to find a way to get past it.
Also, the shuffling of a walker coming out of the woods distracted either of them from conversing further on the subject.
The walker was a little different from most they encountered; not because it was decaying in a way they'd never seen before, but because it had a handcuff on one hand. It just seemed like a strange thing. At least to Georgie, it did.
Tyreese and Carol looked at each other and he shook his head. "I can't. Not yet."
Carol just stared at him. "You're gonna hafta be," she grumbled as she walked toward the walker with her knife. As she stabbed it in the head, she tumbled down to the tracks with it. As soon as she sat back up, that's when she noticed the large herd of walkers not far off, coming toward them, and she whispered, "More."
She got to her feet and ran over to Tyreese and Georgie. Tyreese picked up Carol's bag and handed it back to her as the three of them and Judith got off the tracks and began to dart through the trees on the opposite side. They crouched down behind some trees and earth; waiting to see if the walkers would continue on the tracks, but the walkers instead crossed the tracks and began to approach the direction the trio and Judith had gone to hide.
Just as they were about to jump up and continue to run away, a rapid succession of gunfire in the distance distracted the walkers. They dead turned toward the noise, which also piqued the curiosities of the trio, and headed back along the tracks toward the sound.
Georgie, Tyreese and Carol remained hidden with Judith while they watched the walkers leave. Then, when the coast was clear, they wandered out of the woods and looked in the direction of Terminus; where the sounds of gunfire originated and where the walkers had gone off toward.
"That gunfire," Tyreese spoke. "It could've come from Terminus."
"Someone was attacking them, or they were attacking someone," Carol suggested.
"Either way, it doesn't sound as if Terminus is such a safe haven after all," added Georgie, as she shifted Judith around from one hip to the other.
"Do we even wanna find out?" Tyreese wondered.
Carol nodded. "Yeah. There's another track due east that'll get us there." She looked back at Tyreese and Georgie. "We'll be real careful. We're gonna get answers."
Once off the track and cutting through the woods, they came upon a hunting shack. Parked in front of the hunting shack were a dusty car and a man in a baseball cap, setting up some sort of bottle rocket and talking to someone on a walkie-talkie about a woman with a sword and a kid in a hat.
"…Yeah, I told Albert I want the kid's hat after they bleed him out."
Silent as the grave, Carol crept up behind the man and pressed her revolver against the back of his head. His hands went up in initial surrender. "Keep your finger off the button and drop it," Carol demanded as he let the walkie-talkie to the ground.
"Listen, y'all don't hafta do this," he insisted. "Whatever ya want; we got a place where everyone's welcome."
"Shut up, man," Tyreese remarked.
"Okay."
"We're friends with the chick with the sword and the kid with the hat."
Tyreese had bound the man's hands with rope they found and led him into the shack where he now sat.
"They attacked us. We're just holding them," the man insisted.
"I don't believe you," Carol replied.
"Who else do you have?" Tyreese asked. "Do you have their names?"
"We just have the boy and the samurai, that's it. We were just protecting ourselves."
"I don't believe you," Carol repeated, digging through his bag.
"There's a bunch of us out there in six different directions. There was a lot of gunfire back home. We need to set off our charges all at the same time to confuse the dead ones away. That's good for you, too."
"No, it isn't." Carol zipped up the bag and looked at the man. "There's a herd heading toward Terminus right now. We don't want to confuse them away. We're gonna need their help."
"It's a compound. They'll see you coming…if you even make it that far with all the cold bodies heading over."
Georgie handed Judith off to Tyreese as he stopped Carol who had thrown the man's bag over her shoulder. Whatever Carol had planned, Georgie was going with her. She felt confident that Tyreese could keep Judith safe and a watchful eye on the bound man.
"Carol, how you two gonna do this?"
"We're gonna kill some people," she replied, looking over to Georgie who pulled her gun from out of her back pocket.
With a nod, Georgie followed Carol out of the hunting shack as Tyreese shut the door behind them.
"We need to get past those walkers," Carol remarked once they had made it away from the hunting shack and we nearer to Terminus.
Georgie sighed, pressing her lips together. "Well, there is one way. It's disgusting, but I've had to do it before and it worked."
"What?"
Gesturing toward a lone walker, Georgie stepped past Carol without a word and put the walker down with her knife to its head. Once it dropped, she pointed at the poncho it was wearing.
"Put that on," she said. "Then we cover ourselves with its blood and guts. It'll mask our scent and the others won't be any the wiser. I'll wear its jacket over my shirt."
"Well, that is definitely disgusting, but it a very good idea."
And that is exactly what they did.
Carol pulled its poncho off and put it over her head, and then Georgie shimmied its jacket off, which smelled worse and made her gag a few times as she slid it on. Using her knife, Georgie slice open the walker's chest and the two women looked at each other briefly before digging right in, pulling the innards out and wiping it all over the walker's clothes they were now wearing. They covered their hands, arms and faces, while careful to keep the blood away from their eyes, nostrils and mouths. Carol went even further by rubbing it into her hair, whereas Georgie simply put the hood the jacket up over her head to hide her hair.
Satisfied with their appearance and new, nauseating odor, the pair continued on through the woods in the direction of Terminus. They wandered casually among the several walkers around them, alerting none.
When they reached the Terminus compound's chain-link perimeter fence, they looked down to see men, bound and gagged, being dragged away by other men who we clearly friends of the man back at the hunting shack.
"That's Rick," Carol pointed, to the man with the beard who was the first to be dragged away. "And that's Daryl, the one with the angel wings vest." The other two she pointed out as Glenn and Bob."
"Bob?" Georgie perked when she narrowed her gaze upon the black man. "Bob Stookey?"
Carol looked at her and nodded. "Yeah. You know him?"
"The first group I was in, he was a part of it, too," Georgie explained. "We got overrun by walkers and we all scattered like leaves on the wind. The few of us that survived together, we assumed he died with the rest."
"Huh, small world."
"Tell me about it."
The women began to move around part of the fence for a better view and angle as they watched the four men dragged into one of main buildings. Carol set the Terminus resident's bag down and removed one of the automatic rifles from underneath the poncho. Georgie picked up the other rifle and held onto it as she waited for Carol to make the first move.
Using the scope on the rifle, Carol mentioned something about the large propane tank and continued to scan the area just as she dropped the rifle down and when the herd of walkers finally made their appearance. Georgie opened the bag and pulled out a firework.
"What do I do with this?"
"Firework," Georgie commented, holding it up to Carol. "Gun." She shoved the firework it into the barrel of the gun she was holding. Then, she pointed in the direction of the propane tank. "Boom."
Carol flashed a small and brief grin. "You never used to be a pyro or anything, did you?"
"Well, I am a Leo, and that's a fire sign, so…"
Carol quickly went about propping the firework-end of the rifle through one of the links in the fence before picking up the automatic rifle again. Aiming at the tank, she fired three shots until propane began to spill out. Georgie then whipped out a lighter and lit the fuse on the firework. Both of them turned, covering their ears, as the firework shot off toward the breach and set off a massive explosion.
Georgie couldn't help but let out a small, but victorious laugh at the sight of the fireball, walkers flying away in bits, followed by a large plume of black smoke.
That was definitely the distraction they would need.
Jumping up to their feet, Carol grabbed the bag and they each grabbed their respective rifles. They made it down toward the area where the walkers were still making their way into the compound, having fit right in among them since they still stunk like walkers. Quietly, they ambled along, careful not to draw attention to themselves as they neared the buildings which were being slowly overrun by several burnt and charred walkers. Some Terminus residents were running away, some were getting eaten alive by walkers, and others were firing shots at the walkers.
Just as the herd Carol and Georgie were walking with was being gradually taken down by shooters on a roof somewhere, Carol pulled Georgie toward one of the buildings to take cover before whipping out her rifle from underneath the poncho again. She aimed it at a Terminus resident in the distance and fired a single shot into his head, followed by multiple rounds at the shooter on the roof.
The sound began to draw walkers to them, so Georgie grabbed Carol and pulled her inside the building, closing them in, just in the nick of time.
Georgie stepped into a room with folding tables set up and a multitude of different items covering them. There were backpacks, clothes, hats, stuffed animals, blankets, toiletry items, jewelry and even weapons. Everything was neatly placed, almost like you would find set up at a garage sale or some sort of clothing and other essentials drive for the homeless.
"What the hell is this place?"
Carol shrugged and shook her head as she entered into the room behind Georgie. She walked over to a table with watches; picking one of them up and pocketing it before spying the weapons across from her. Georgie was already there, sorting through a few of the knives. When Carol snatched up the crossbow, Georgie gave her a look.
"Whose is that?"
"Daryl's," Carol answered.
"Does any other this other stuff belong to your people?"
"I don't know."
As Carol threw the crossbow over her shoulder, Georgie grabbed one of the extra hunting knives and pocketed it into the loop on her belt, on the opposite side of her body where her own hunting knife was sheathed. Carol had already moved onward, away from the loot, so Georgie quickly followed after while gunshots outside could be heard still ringing out.
The next room they came upon was large and felt strange.
There were tons of candles little all over the place; on the floor, on tables and shelving, hanging from the ceiling and some ensconced on the walls, where words were painted, stating, 'Never Again. Never Trust. We First, Always.'
"Well, this isn't unsettling," Georgie quipped, sarcastically. She had pulled her rifle out and had it aimed, scoping the room out as Carol moved around the candles on the floor, stepping on the names painted there in white. Letting her gaze follow Carol's form, Georgie began the same trek through the candles.
"Drop your weapons and turn around," came a woman's voice and the click of a gun behind them.
Georgie and Carol stopped in place.
"I wanna see your faces," the woman continued, angrily.
Several feet away was a door that led back outside. Light was shining underneath and walkers were banging at it, their dead groans just as raspy at ever.
"Now!" the woman shouted when Georgie and Carol hadn't reacted fast enough.
Carol removed the crossbow from her shoulder and rifle, setting them to the ground, and Georgie did the same with her rifle as well. She was more hesitant on her knives. However, just as Carol made like she was about to remove something else, she grabbed her rifle back up and spun around, emptying a few shots at the woman.
"No!" the woman screamed, her gun flying out of her hands as she fell to the ground.
Georgie took the opportunity to pick her rifle back up. She was able to kick the woman's gun out of the way of her reach while Carol ran over to the woman, who stood up enough to try and tackle Carol. One of the tall candelabras got knocked over in the process, its candles scattering across the floor, as Carol and the woman were soon tussling on the floor as well; the woman trying to get Carol's rifle away from her. They were up again and down again, knocking over more candle displays.
When they were both finally up again and the woman had grabbed something to hopefully bash Carol's head in, Carol had her gun poised and ready to shoot at the woman's head. Before Carol could pull the trigger, however, the woman sighed, visibly saddened.
"The signs? They were real," the woman spoke. "it was a sanctuary. People came and took this place."
"Just tell me whe—" Carol tried to interrupt.
"And they raped," the woman continued, "and they killed, and they laughed, over weeks. But we got out, and we fought, and we got it back. And we heard the message." The woman looked as if she was going to drop right there from a mental breakdown as tears of anguish brimmed her eyes.
"Which was?" Georgie inquired, not sure she wanted an answer.
"You're the butcher, or you're the cattle."
It began to sink in; the belongings in the other room. Georgie's stomach soured and she steeled herself.
"The men they pulled from that train car: where are they?" Carol demanded.
The woman wouldn't respond so Georgie aimed her rifle and shot the woman in the leg, dropping her to the floor in pain like a sack of potatoes.
Carol seemed unperturbed by the move as she shouted, "Where are they?"
"Now, point it at my head," the woman said to Georgie, who still had her rifle aimed at her. The woman chuckled. "You could've been one of us," she said to both Georgie and Carol. "You could've listened to what the world is telling you."
"You lead people here and you take what they have and you kill them? Is that what this place is?" Carol questioned, her own rifle aimed at the woman as well.
"No, not at first," the woman shook her head. "It's what it had to be. And we're still here."
Carol lowered her rifle. "You're not here, and neither are we." She picked up the crossbow and gave a nod to Georgie.
They were done here, with this woman.
"C'mon," Carol said, and the two of them turned and walked off toward that outer door.
Carol opened the door and they both stood back as the walkers filtered in right past them without a second glance and headed straight for the woman on the floor, who began shouting out. Carol and Georgie slipped out into the sunlight, leaving the woman to be devoured alive.
Once they had made it out of Terminus and back up into the trees where they'd left the bag, Georgie had to drop down to her knees for a moment and catch her breath while Carol stared off at the burning, overrun scene that was now what was left of the compound.
"Do you realize what was going on there?" Georgie asked. "They were killing people and taking their things, sure, okay. But where were the bodies? The walkers that showed up were led here, they weren't already here."
Carol didn't answer, she just looked away and got down to her knees as well, pulling off the poncho and wiping the dried walker blood off her face and out of her hair as best as she could.
"I thought I'd seen everything," Georgie muttered, mirroring Carol. She removed the walker's jacket and used the inside of the hood, which was the most clean, to wipe the dried blood from her face and arms. "They were fucking cannibals back there, weren't they?"
Both women caught each other's eye. Carol didn't have to nod or verbally respond to know she was certain what Georgie had deduced was true.
"My people will run. They'll head here into the woods for cover and get their bearings," Carol remarked. "We should find them."
"What about Tyreese and Judith?"
"We'll go back to them afterward, with the others. Rick will want to see his daughter."
Georgie gave a nod of her head. "Alright," she agreed. "Lead the way."
It was only minutes of walking through the woods, following the sound of voices nearby. It had been easy, really. It was hard to miss a group so large, among the trees, that weren't walkers. Carol approached first, slowly and warily. Georgie knew about her reservations, how the older woman had left things with her group's leader and how the others probably knew what she did. But considering what she and Carol had just done, Georgie was certain Carol would be welcomed back into their good graces.
The closer the two women got, the group sensed them.
The man with shaggy, dark hair and the leather angel wings vest turned his head first. The moment he noticed Carol walking up, it was as if everything bad in his life fell away. He ran to Carol without hesitation and pulled her into his arm, hugging her tight. Both were smiling to happily and the gesture made Georgie's heart swell.
Considering everything that had experienced together recently, they more than needed some good moments.
The others in the group smiled brightly; giving Georgie the impression that maybe they hadn't known after all what Carol had done back at the prison. The leader, Rick, smiled as well and moved forward. Clearly, all was forgiven and forgotten in his eyes. While he and the boy in the Sheriff's hat Georgie assumed was Rick's son Carol, as well as a woman with short brown hair approached Carol, Georgie spotted Bob standing among the others. She caught his eye and waved and his eyes widened with surprise. The pair moved closer toward one another with smiles on their faces.
"Georgie?"
"Bob," she greeted. She went right up to him and hugged him.
It was always nice to see a familiar, friendly face.
"I thought you died," he said.
"I thought you died, too," she replied with a laugh. "When we got overrun all those months back, me and a few others got away."
"You did? We must've run off in opposite directions," he deduced. "I just thought everyone in our group died."
"No, a few of us made it and we eventually found more people. We even found a house for the winter."
Bob nodded. "That's good, that's great. I'm glad you survived."
"Me, too." Georgie stepped back from Bob and looked back over at Carol. "I wouldn't have gotten very far recently without Carol, though."
They both looked over toward Carol who had just finally stopped hugging Daryl as Rick came up to her. Georgie took a few steps nearer to the older woman, out of instinct.
"Did you do that?" Rick asked, gesturing slightly with his head in the direction of Terminus.
Carol couldn't find the words. Tears were stinging her eyes, so all she managed to do was nod as Rick pulled her into a hug of his own.
"You have to come with me," she finally said when Rick released her.
Georgie smiled, knowing why.
The group, now including Carol and Georgie, walked off down a road, and approached the hunting shack to find Tyreese walking out of it. He was closing the door behind him, Judith in one arm and her diaper bag in the other.
When Rick spotted his daughter, he dropped everything and ran. Carl, too.
Tyreese handed the child over to her father, and in turn enveloped his approaching sister into a big hug. The others smiled over the happy reunions and Georgie found herself tearing up over it all. What Rick was experiencing right now was what she could only hope for and she was happy for him and his son to have their little family back together.
After the initial reunion, while they were finally all able to catch their breaths, literally and figuratively, Carol and Georgie approached Tyreese. There were a few walkers, completely dead or impaled, scattered around the property.
"What happened?" Carol asked.
"There were a bunch of walkers out here and he got his hands around Judith's neck," Tyreese replied. Carol and Georgie both shot apprehensive looks at the hunting shack. "No, he's dead. I—I had to. So I did. I could."
"I don't know if the fire is still burning," Rick spoke, looking off, beyond the tree tops, at the sight of dark smoke billowing up into the sky.
"It is," Georgie assured.
Rick looked back at her briefly, the first time either made eye contact with each other. "Yeah," he agreed, looking back at the smoke. "We need to go."
"Yeah, but where?" Daryl asked.
"Somewhere far away from there."
Back on the tracks, the group of sixteen people, which included Georgie, found their way onto the tracks, with their respective weapons and other minor belongings in hand, passing the sign for Terminus.
While most walked single file, some walked two by two; Carol and Daryl, Tyreese and Sasha, and Georgie and Bob. The latter were playing catch up. Then there was Rick who, for whatever reason, Georgie sensed was not with the group. She looked long enough over her shoulder to see him dip a dirty piece of cloth into some tacky walker blood on the track and write something over the Terminus sign. Whatever it was, she didn't know.
Georgie turned back and looked forward.