The World We Live In Chapter 12: Hold On, a walking dead fanfic

Author's Note: Thank you for all the positive reviews and I'm glad ya'll have enjoyed my original "scenes"! Now, back to your regularly scheduled program. :P

"Hold on

Hold on to yourself

For this is gonna hurt like hell"

― Sarah McLachlan

It was a quiet car ride along the empty, leaf-scattered road; each person seemingly lost in thought.

It had been three days since the group had left the large house outside Greensboro, North Carolina and now they had made it to Richmond, Virginia. They could've gotten there sooner had a tire on one of the vehicles not blown. They had no spare so they split off into small groups to find one. Plus they stopped to sleep or use the bathroom. A decent sized herd of walkers was involved at one point, wherein everyone had to scatter and hunker down for a few hours among the dirt and trees of the woods. Those nice new clothes they had last changed into back in Greensboro is what they still wore and with sweating, killing walkers and practically rolling around in the woods, their clothes were once again far from being fresh and clean. But that wasn't anything they weren't already used to.

It was radio silence between the other vehicles as the GMC Suburban traveled alone on the road. Inside, Tyreese was driving, with Noah in the passenger seat. Rick sat directly behind Tyreese, holding a walkie-talkie in his hand, while Georgie sat to his right, behind Noah, staring out the window. Behind her was Michonne and behind Rick was Glenn.

Rick glanced away from his own window and to his right to stare at Georgie, who he hadn't exchanged many words with since they left Greensboro. She was still coming to terms with her loss and really wasn't talking to anyone. She did, however, offer to come on this run to Noah's home; expressing the need to keep herself occupied, both physically and mentally. Rick had consented, agreeing she needed this as well, and also he was enjoying her company more and more every day.

"How far out?" Rick asked of Noah.

The teen looked over his shoulder, to the odometer and then back to Rick. "About five miles."

Rick nodded and brought the walkie-talkie to his mouth. "Hey, Carol."

"I'm here."

"We're halfway there. Just wanted to check the range."

"Everybody's holding tight. We've made it five hundred miles. Maybe this can be the easy part."

"Got to think we're due. Give us twenty minutes to check in."

"We don't hear from you, we'll come looking."

"Copy that."

Rick signed off and found Georgie looking back at him. He offered a small smile and she attempted the same. To further prove he was there for her and that they would be okay, he reached his hand across the seat and gave hers a comforting squeeze before she turned back away.

Noah began talking to Tyreese about his feelings or something. Georgie wasn't sure. She'd begun to drown out their conversation. And while she was no longer looking at Rick and was once again staring out her window, she still reciprocated the hold he had on her hand. It helped, considerably; that contact, that touch.

"…Two more miles," she soon heard Noah saying to Rick.

"Alright," Rick replied. "Let's pull into the woods. We'll go on foot. Stay off the road."

"We don't need to."

"Just in case."

They drove about a quarter mile more up the road and then Tyreese veered slowly down off into an opening in the trees where there were two wrecked vehicles. Everyone hopped out of the Suburban, with Michonne and Glenn piling out of the back. They each made sure they weapons were about them; Michonne slipping her katana behind her back like a badass. Georgie had grown to seriously admire how talented the other woman was with that blade. She looked down at her hunting knife and her Beretta, knowing she was capable, but a katana did seem cooler.

"This is good," Rick announced, inspecting where they were. "Through the trees, it might just look like part of the wreck."

As if on cue, the walkers inside the other two vehicles stirred and groaned at them.

"It's this way," Noah informed, gesturing with his thumb over his shoulder.

Through the woods, the passed tree after tree and even the occasional corpse that had decayed to nothing more than a skeleton with the earth growing up around and within its bones. It only took a couple of minutes when they found wire string tied all around several trees as some sort of deterrence to walkers.

"Your people do this?" Michonne asked.

"Wanted to," Noah replied as he limped along, still recovering from whatever had happened to him in Atlanta. "They must have."

The six of them began to crouch in-between the wires like thieves breaking into vault secured by lasers.

"Ah!" Noah gasped, touching his hand to his head where he was suddenly bleeding.

"You alright?" Georgie asked.

"Yeah. Yeah."

Noah, Michonne, Glenn and Tyreese moved ahead as Rick and Georgie lingered a bit, both staring a little suspiciously at the wires. He turned his focus to her, placed a hand to her arm to stop her for a moment. Georgie's eyes looked at his hand and then up at his face. His hair was greasy and damp with sweat, just like everyone else's, his beard was a little unruly and there was a thin layer of dirt on his face. But it someone worked for him. He was still handsome. He also seemed concerned.

They simply exchanged a look but no words.

Rick looked like he wanted to say something, but didn't. Instead, he gestured for her to walk ahead of him. Then, no more than a minute later of walking, they were all upon the edge of the woods, with a glimpse through the trees at a large red and metal gate. Just outside it was a sign that read: Shirewilt Estates.

Rick grabbed Noah by the shoulder. "They have spotters? Snipers?"

"We built a perch on a truck. Sometimes it's out front."

"Not today," Glenn informed.

All six of them got their weapons ready in case they needed to use them as they quietly stepped out of the woods and up onto the road that led into the gated community. On the hot pavement, there was the shredded body of some sort of animal and a few feet up was a broken grandfather's clock lying on its back. It was random, but not important enough to give a second glance to.

Noah reached the gate first and grabbed it; rattling it slightly and listening for signs of life or unlife. "You hear that?" he asked, looking back at the others.

"Just wait," Glenn whispered. He grabbed onto the fence on the side of the gate and pulled himself to look over the top. Crestfallen, he looked back over to the other and shook his head.

Noah suddenly became anxious as he mimicked Glenn by pulling himself up onto the fence, but took it once step farther by jumping over onto the other side. Georgie couldn't find the gumption to react to the teen's obvious worry about his mother and twin brothers who were supposed to still be residing inside the community. She didn't have much gumption for this trip here to Richmond anymore, anyway. However, that didn't stop her from joining the others by climbing up the fence and jumping over to join Noah as well.

Inside the Shirewilt Estates looked like the aftermath of a battle. There were burnt house and burnt corpses on the ground. Items from homes were scattered all about as well.

Noah kept muttering "no" over and over, hobbling faster up the road, which Rick calling after him. When the teen broke off into a run, Rick shouted his name and ran off after him, and the others followed him to where the road became an intersection with four roads that came together. More dead bodies could be seen lying on the pavement, and there was even a walker ambling up the road a ways. Noah began to cry, and dropped down to the ground while everyone else just took in the scene around them.

There hadn't been that much in the way of hope that the community would work out, but now it was a certain fact that it wouldn't work out.

Georgie turned around, noting a foot-tall brick wall with the message 'Wolves Not Far' spray-painted on, and on the road within the intersection was a yellow sun drawn in chalk.

Tyreese walked up to Noah and placed his hands on the young man's shoulders. "It's alright. You'll be with us now."

Michonne scowled at the sight of the walker that was still shuffling up the road toward them. "I'll get 'im," she announced, unsheathing her katana.

Rick crouched down beside Noah. "I'm sorry, Noah. I truly am." Then, toward the others, he added, "We should see if there's anything we can use and head back."

"Then what?" Georgie asked.

Rick stood up just as more walkers began to approach.

"They see us," Michonne commented, her tone dejected.

"We can make a quick sweep," Glenn spoke.

"I'll stay with him," offered Tyreese, standing stalwart.

Rick nodded as Glenn and Georgie watched Michonne slayed the walkers. He pulled out his walkie-talkie again and turned it on. "Carol, do you copy?"

"We're here."

"We made it," he said. "It's gone."

Georgie sidled up beside Glenn and the two of them walked together up the road, stepping around the bodies and other debris. The first house they came upon, they walked up the driveway. This house and its property, like all the rest, was a wreck. If the homes weren't burnt, belongings from the homes were scattered over lawns, inside the garages, on the sidewalks and in the roads. They could only begin to wonder what inside the homes must look like.

At the first house, Michonne stepped on an encased baseball jersey, smashing the glass and pulling the jersey out. "Clean shirt," she muttered.

Rick touched her arm. "We'll figure it out."

"We will," Glenn agreed, eyeing the inside of the garage.

"There's some garbage bags in the garage," Michonne muttered some more. Next to Noah, she seemed the most disappointed about the community not working out.

Georgie, on the other hand, had doubted their chances with Shirewilt after the discoveries they had made in Greensboro. There seemed to have been a shift inside her somewhat. She went from leaning toward the optimistic side of the spectrum to the pessimistic side. She felt just as broken as these homes and that glass Michonne stepped on.

While Glenn and Michonne meandered around the garage, Rick looked at her. "You didn't think it would still be here?"

"Did you?"

Rick turned slightly so that they were standing side by side, and lowered his voice as if they were about to have a private conversation. "After it happened, right after with Beth in the hospital, I saw that woman Dawn. She didn't mean to do it. I knew it. I saw it. But I wanted to kill her. I remember I just wondered if it even mattered one way or another. Didn't have a thing to do with Beth. I don't know if I thought it would still be here. But Beth wanted to get him here. She wanted to get him back home. This was for her. And it could have been for us, too."

"The house in Greensboro could've been for us, too, and look how that turned out."

"I know."

"I feel like there's no place left in this world for any of us anymore. We're just gonna continue to drift aimlessly, like ghosts or echoes; just constantly reminding each other of the way things used to be and never will again."

They were both leaning against the car in the driveway and Rick took a chance in placing a hand on the small of her back with Glenn and Michonne nearby. "I almost wanted to stay in that other house, even after everything we found. A part of me was wishing whoever did those terrible things would come back so I could kill them, and not even because they deserve it, but because I wanted to do it for you." He leaned in until she had turned her face a little to look back at him. "I wanted to give you vengeance for your son's death."

Georgie attempted a smile. "And they say romance is dead," she whispered.

Rick rubbed her back and they both looked forward at the other broken down homes as Glenn walked up to them. Rick discreetly retracted his hand and they both looked at the younger man who seemed a little disenchanted about everything as well. Something seemed to be on his mind as he moved to leaned against the car as well, on the other side of Georgie.

"Penny for your thoughts?" she inquired.

"I was thinking about that guy in the storage container. Back at Terminus. How I made us stop," he looked at Rick. This was something Georgie hadn't been around for. It had happened just before she met the group. "After the prison, on my trip, I got Maggie back. Things went okay. Losing Washington, losing—" he trailed, crouching down to pick up a baseball bat, "—losing Beth right after just finding out she's alive." Glenn stood back up, gripping the bat. "I hadn't caught up with you yet. If it were now, I wouldn't make us stop. We'd run right by."

"I would've shot that woman dead," Georgie chimed in, referring to Dawn. She never knew Beth, but Beth was part of the group, and Georgie was part of the group, therefore Beth was her family by proxy. "Right or wrong."

"But we need to stop," Michonne spoke up as she approached with the jersey and a black garbage bag in her hands. "You can be out here too long."

Georgie sighed. "She's right. As jaded as I've become recently, I know we need to stop, too. Staying at that house in Greensboro, before…" she trailed, and brought hand to her lips. "Things seemed good for once. We had a place to rest. Hell, we had a place to call home, even if it was meant as a stopping point for here. But we also considered going back there if this didn't work out."

"This could still work out," Michonne insisted.

The other three just looked at her, not seeing her vision.

A short while later, all four of them had a black plastic bag filled with supplies they had swiped from neighboring houses. They congregated in front of the house Michonne had just come out of, with her looking hopeful about something.

"We could put some of the garage doors together against the break. Park a car against them until we can brick it back up," she was saying. "It can work."

"This place is surrounded by a forest. There's no sight lines. Whoever, whatever would be on top of us without us even knowing it," Rick replied as they walked along the road. "That's probably what happened."

"That's what happened to us," Glenn remarked.

Michonne wasn't content with Rick's dismissal of her idea. She stopped walking and turned around to face the other three. "We could start taking down the trees. We use them to build the walls up." She glanced from one to the other. "Look."

She began to move again, walking over to a rusty, vine-covered fence with a large gap in it. Rick, Georgie and Glenn followed her into the small clearing on the other side of the fence to find old tire tracks in the grass and bodies ripped in half or into parts all over the place. Michonne noticed it first, the stone base of the fence. It had breaks in it. Someone had wrecked it on purpose.

"It doesn't matter," Georgie said.

"What?" questioned Rick; still looking in the same direction as Michonne.

"You said you wondered if it even mattered if you killed Dawn or not. It doesn't matter if you had done it or if I had, or that Daryl did. It doesn't matter."

"Washington," Michonne spoke up again. "Eugene lied about a cure, but he thought of Washington for a reason."

"But he was lying," Glenn reminded.

"About the cure, but he did the math and realized that Washington was the place where there'd be a chance. We're close." Off Rick's sigh, she added, "What if there are people there? Huh? What if it's someplace that we can be safe? We're a hundred miles away. It's a possibility. It's a chance; instead of just being out here, instead of just making it. Because right now, this is what making it looks like. Don't you want one more day with a chance?"

The snarling of walkers coming out from the woods ended the conversation.

Rick eyed the walkers and then said, "We should go." As Glenn, Georgie and Michonne moved to head back inside the gate, Rick continued. "It's a hundred miles away." They turned toward him. "We should go to Washington."

Georgie noticed Michonne try to smile, thankful that Rick had acquiesced to her new ideas. She also noticed Rick was about to say something else before everyone's thought process was cut off by Noah shouting in the distance.

"Rick! Help, Rick! Glenn! Michonne! Georgie!"

The four of them took off running immediately, holding onto their garbage bags and also, once again, pulling out their weapons. As they got closer to Noah's cries, they found him pinned down on a porch by two walkers.

"Help!"

"Noah, hold on!" Georgie shouted, as Glenn whacked the male walker in the head with the baseball bat and Georgie stabbed the same one in the head with her hunting knife.

Rick took care of the female walker still blocking Noah from running. Offering his hand to the teen, Rick asked if he was okay. He then went off to assist Michonne with a third, particularly difficult walker; leaving Glenn and Georgie to pull Noah up to his feet.

"It's Tyreese!"

"Where?"

"My house. He's been bit."

The adrenaline got everyone's hearts pumping as they ran off, following Noah. When they got into the house, they found Tyreese surrounded by his own blood, slumped on the floor against the wall and he looked incredibly out of it. Rick dropped down to his knees and grabbed onto Tyreese's hand, holding it stretched out. Georgie moved around to the other side of the Tyreese. She pulled off her belt and tied it around his infected arm and held it firm with one hand while simultaneously wrapping her free arms around Tyreese's shoulders. She pulled his head closer to her chest in a way to keep the big ol' teddy bear of a man steady and to keep him comforted as Michonne readied her katana for what was about to happen.

"You hold him!" Rick shouted at Georgie.

"I got it! Go!" she shouted back.

Rick then directed to Michonne, "One hit, clean! Go!"

And with a slice, Tyreese's arm was severed. Rick fell backward slightly, holding the severed end and then dropping it to the floor. Georgie untied her belt from around Tyreese's, well, stump and didn't bother putting it back on around her jeans just yet. It wasn't a priority. Rick and Glenn got a very lethargic Tyreese up to his feet as Michonne and Noah led the way out of the bedroom and down the hall. Georgie brought up the rear; every personal issue she was dealing with took a backseat to her friend's well-being.

"Push it," Rick growled.

"Let's go! Let's go! Let's go!" Glenn urged as they darted out of the house.

Michonne's voice echoed from the backyard. "Through the back!"

They made their way around the house and then back to the main road in, up to the padlocked gate.

"We've got to break the chain," Georgie announced. "Let's go."

Glenn moved forward. "We can use the bat."

"I got him," Noah insisted, taking Tyreese off Rick's arms, no pun intended.

"Can you hold him up?" Rick wondered.

"Yeah."

"Get ready!" Rick shouted as Glenn got the gate open and walkers began to tumble toward them, snarling and hungry.

Rick fired his Colt at them and used his machete simultaneously, Glenn continued to use the bat, Georgie used both her hunting knife and Beretta, and Michonne stuck to her trusty katana, but the walkers still seemed to slip past them toward Tyreese, most likely smelling his fresh blood from his severed limb. Rick took two shots and killed the last walker and they all immediately holstered their weapons and ran over to their dying friend. Glenn and Rick once again lifted him up to his feet and their small group made their way out of the Shirewilt Estates and back onto the main road.

As they made their way toward the woods, there was another walker on the road, but Rick said for them to leave it. They needed all the time they could get.

"Stay with us, now. Stay with us," Georgie repeated over and over. She didn't want to lose someone else she cared about so soon.

They all hurried through the woods as fast as they could with Tyreese and they each held up those wires from earlier to help him through. However, he was getting much heavier and fell forward. Rick strained to pull him back. To make it more difficult, Tyreese's foot got stuck so Georgie turned and tried to unhook it as the same walker from the road approaching, clearly having followed them. They got away from the wires in time, though, and the walker got caught up by them.

"You got to hold on, man. Hold on!" Rick commanded over Tyreese as he laid on the ground staring up, disoriented.

They each grabbed onto Tyreese, some grabbing him at the shoulders, supporting him under his back, while the rest at the feet and legs, and all grunting through it. They passed the skeleton overgrown with plants and made it back to the Suburban moments later, where they pulled Tyreese into the seat middle seat. Glenn climbed into the back again and still had a hold on Tyreese's legs while Rick and Noah had a grip on the big man's shoulders. Noah ran around to the other side and hopped in beside Tyreese, while Michonne climbed into the back, the three of them holding the man up and keeping him conscious while Georgie climbed into the passenger seat and Rick ran around to the driver's side, pulling out his walkie-talkie at the same time.

"Carol, we're at the car," Rick announced. "Tyreese was bit and we cut off his arm, but he's bleeding real bad. We need to cauterize the arm and wrap it. Get Sasha and Carl away; they don't need to see this." Rick tossed the walkie-talkie onto Georgie's lap and then started the engine, only for the wheels to spin from being stuck in the mud. "Come on, come on, come on, come on."

As soon as the Suburban got free, it slammed into the wrecked truck in front of them and the back of the truck popped open, allowing dismembered torsos of walkers to fall onto the Suburban's hood and windshield, or roll off onto the ground. The walkers hadn't been put down. The grunted and snarled, and it made Georgie gasp as little as she stared at them. And, for whatever reason, they each had a W carved into their foreheads.

"Come on. Come on!" Georgie pleaded.

Rick put the vehicle in reverse, causing several of the walker torsos to fall, and then turned the wheel, taking them around the wrecked truck. By the time they had made their way back onto the road, Rick was driving at a breakneck pace. Georgie had gotten up and turned around in her seat to look back at Tyreese to make sure he was still with them. She reached further into the middle seat and placed a hand on his perspiring forehead, and she frowned.

Turning back around, she sat down and looked at Rick who caught her gaze.

"He's burning up," she muttered, sadly.

Georgie watched as Rick's jaw clenched and he returned his eyes to the road. Everyone remained silent, just listening to Tyreese's breathing and the pounding of their hearts in their chests.

After about two or three miles up the road, Tyreese muttered, "Turn it off."

No one knew what he was talking about. Georgie glanced back to see Glenn patting the big man's shoulders, letting him know they were all there for him. Tears began to sting Georgie's eyes, sensing they might not get back to the rest of the group in time and she didn't know if her mind and her heart were ready for what came next.

Rick began to look over his shoulder, back at Tyreese. Everyone else followed suit, noticing Tyreese's eyes were shut. Noah reached his hand out and announced there was no pulse. While trying to wrap their minds around Tyreese being gone, Rick brought the Suburban to a stop on the side of the road. The five survivors of the trip to Shirewilt Estates climbed out of the vehicle as Rick and Glenn pulled Tyreese out to lay him upon the road.

Rick looked up at Michonne, who nodded at him and unsheathed her katana. Rick got to his feet and walked away, not able to watch as Michonne stuck the blade into Tyreese's skull. Instead, Rick walked over to a crying Georgie who had slumped down against the Suburban. He fell down to his knees and leaned forward, pulling Georgie into his arms. As she laid her head upon his shoulder, she saw Michonne wipe her blade and then saunter off a few feet before sitting down on the road with her back to everyone else. Noah had walked away a bit to drop to his knees as well while Glenn remained the only one standing, leaning back against the Suburban with his face in his hands.

They each needed to take a few moments to come to terms with their new loss.

"We look not at what can be seen, but we look at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal," Gabriel was speaking over Tyreese's open grave which had been dug under a weeping willow tree. A sheet was draped over his body and everyone took turns shoveling dirt onto him. At the top of his grave was a crossed made out of two large sticks and some twine, and his beanie was draped on top. "For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made from hands, eternal in the heavens. In the heavens."

Sasha was the last one to throw some dirt onto her brother's body before dropping the shovel onto the ground where Rick walked over and picked it up. Everyone walked away, back toward all the vehicles while Rick remained and finished burying their friend. Georgie walked off with Carl, who was holding Judith close to him, but both she and the boy had turned to look back at Rick who seemed to be placing this loss upon his shoulders as another burden to carry.

"Let's get your sister a bottle, huh?" she suggested, patting Carl's shoulders.

"Yeah, okay."

Once Tyreese was buried, Rick sauntered away from the group, heading into the woods to be alone with his thoughts for a while. Everyone else was still at the vehicles, their spirits down considerably and for good reason. But, despite their grief, they couldn't deny the hunger pains in their stomachs. They hadn't eaten since the day before, except for Judith who had her bottles mixed with what was left of the powdered milk. They had run out of what little food supplies they had brought from Greensboro. With so many of them, the food was spread thin to begin with and they hadn't been successful in finding any more on the trip to Richmond.

They had found a few items back at the Shirewilt, but in the chaos of getting amputating Tyreese's arm and getting out of there, they had dropped the bags and left everything behind.

"What are we going to do about food?" Eugene asked. "My stomach is growling something fierce and I know I'm not the only one who's hungry. We should ask Rick what—"

"How about you put a pin in it, Mullet Man," Georgie snapped, finally uttering what she'd been calling him only in her head. "Yes, we're all hungry, but griping about it ain't gonna change things. In case you didn't realize, we just buried a friend and I think that calls for some time to mourn and not harp on Rick with every issue. What? You don't think he ain't hungry, too?"

"Geez, woman," Eugene mumbled. "Don't get your panties in a twist. I was just talk—"

Out of her own grief and anger and overall aggravation, Georgie lunged at Eugene, but he was lucky there were a few people between him and her. Tara and Glenn held her back and she shook them off, throwing her hands up, showing she was fine.

"I'm alright, I'm alright," she assured, but not before glaring over at Eugene. The mother in her came out a little bit. "Smart-mouth me one more time, boy, and I will kick your teeth in and complete your redneck look."

Eugene seemed to sink into himself as Georgie turned away from everyone else and stalked off into the woods as well.

Right about now, Rick was the only one who seemed she could feel calm with. He wasn't far off either, so it barely even took a minute to reach him and, when she did, he was sitting on the ground, leaning up against a tree. In his hands he had a dead leaf and was picking it apart and tossing the pieces away from him in a daze. He sensed someone approaching, though. When he looked up and realized it was Georgie, he seemed to perk up slightly; more than he probably would have for anyone else, save for his children.

He felt a little embarrassed, however, to have her find him there, wallowing. He turned his face away from her as if somehow that would make her not see him.

"So, I almost scratched Eugene's eyes out a minute ago," she announced, her hands on her hips.

Rick grunted some sort of laugh at the image she gave him.

"I actually called him Mullet Man to his face," she continued, sitting down beside him. "I've only been doing that in my head."

"You, too?" he finally spoke; a ghost of a smile upon his lips.

"Yeah," Georgie nodded. "I also threatened to kick his teeth in."

"What'd he do?"

"Be himself, pretty much."

Rick tilted his head and looked over at her. "I'm sorry if I just walked away from all of you like that, I just needed to clear my head."

"Don't apologize for that. You keep saying sorry to everyone for all these deaths that happen to us and around us as if you could've done something, when you couldn't have. You're sitting here, blaming yourself for everything that's gone wrong because you're the leader of us and apparently you think that means it's all your fault and only your burden to bear," she commented, watching him look away. "Well, I got news for you, Officer Handsome: it's not your fault, and it's not your burden."

Rick let what she said sink in and then he knitted his brow together before turning back to look at her with a smirk. "Officer Handsome?"

Georgie shrugged, smirking back. "It got a smile outta ya, didn't it?"

She shimmied over to him a bit and made the bold move of climbing up into his lap. His hands immediately went up in the air and waited for her to sit, just staring up at her and feeling his face flush with heat, amongst other places.

"We're too sad," she whispered. "There's not enough happiness in our lives anymore."

"I agree," he whispered back, his lips almost close enough to brush against hers.

Placing her hands on the sides of his face, her thumbs sweeping over his dirty, scratchy beard, Georgie looked him in the eye. "We need to do something about that."

"Yeah," he nodded slowly, bringing his face closer to hers. "We do."

Encircling his arms around her waist, Rick moved his hands up her back and pulled her up against his chest before claiming her lips in the name of lust. It was such a feverish and frenzied kiss that their teeth clanked together once or twice and lips were gently bitten. The feel of each other's breath within their mouths and their hands roaming the other incited Rick to spin her around, off his lap and pin her to the ground. Leaning down over her body, Rick knelt with one of her legs between his. Georgie's hand found their way into the dirty and stringy brown curls atop his head while he lowered his body weight onto of her. He pulled his lips away from hers only to leave a trail of heated kisses down her chin and then down her neck where he began to suckle at the skin of her collar bone.

They were forgetting where they were, and they didn't seem to care in that moment.

They needed this distraction, and they wanted each other; to hold on to each other.

Although they were both very much clothed, Georgie could still feel him upon her inner thigh as he ground boldly against her. And just as his hands began to slip underneath her shirt, they were brought back to the harsh light of day.

"Hey! Rick! Georgie!" Abraham called out from a distance.

The pair looked in the direction Abraham's voice came from and then they looked at each other, ceasing all movement and holding their breaths in anticipation of Abraham or anyone else approaching and finding them in that position.

"We should move out!"

No one walked into the woods and in on Rick and Georgie in their compromising position and, for that, they were grateful.

"Yeah, alright!" Rick shouted. "We'll be right there!" He looked sheepishly at her and then leaned in for one, long kiss. "To be continued," he teased.

Georgie smirked as he lifted his weight off her and then knelt, leaning back on his feet. As she sat up, she could feel her heartbeat leveling out to a steadier pace and she watched as he gestured in the direction of the rest of the group.

"You should go ahead of me," he spoke, placing his hands into his lap. "I can't just yet."

Georgie looked down, got his meaning and then looked back up at him with a laugh; with him, not at him. "Okay."

Climbing to her feet, Georgie straightened her clothes and ruffled her hair a bit so it didn't look manhandled. Letting out a sigh, she turned to walk off, but Rick grabbed onto her hand before she could. She looked back at him again and he slowly let her hand slip from her grasp until he was holding onto only one finger, just like she did for Judith.

When she was finally, and unfortunately, free of Rick, Georgie walked through the trees and out of the woods, onto the road where the vehicles were parked. Most everyone had begun to climb inside whatever car they were going to travel in.

Daryl wasn't one of those people.

As Georgie walked past him, he snatched something from her hair and she whipped her head around, feeling around her hair to figure out what he'd done.

He was holding a leaf in his hand. "Why you got a leaf in your hair?"

"It, uh—it probably fell out of one of the trees," she lied. "Have you seen my hair? A family of mice could get lost in there for days."

Daryl flicked the leaf to the ground and Georgie watched how it drifted from side to side as it fell.

"Mmhmm," Daryl looked at her, almost as if he could tell and it made her blush.

Quickly, she turned her head away and went over to the Suburban and found Carl and Judith inside with Noah. All three kids were in the middle seat, where Tyreese had been and the windows were down.

"You want shotgun?" Carl asked. "My dad's probably driving this one again if that's okay."

"Like hell he is," Georgie smiled. "It's my turn at the wheel."

She slipped into the driver's seat and looked in the side view mirror in time to Rick coming out of the woods. He stopped to talk to Daryl and was straightening his shirt, and then Abraham and Carol walked up as well, probably to discuss where they would all be going.

When Rick finally approached the Suburban, he went straight for the driver's side only to find Georgie there.

"Shotgun for you," she said, giving him an impish look which he reciprocated as discreetly as possible.

He tapped the side of the vehicle and nodded. "Alright. I could use a break anyway." Looking into the middle seat, he saw his son and on the floor, in a box lined with a shirt, Judith lay while Noah had climbed into the very back. "Ya'll buckle in." As he walked around the back of the Suburban, he made his way to the passenger side door and opened it. Once he was inside and the door was shut, he turned to Georgie. "Abraham's gonna take the lead."

Georgie nodded. "Sounds good to me."

Once all the vehicles were off driving down the road, one after the other, Georgie began steering with only her left hand.

Carl and Noah couldn't see it from where they sat, but Georgie and Rick were holding hands on the front seat as they drove along in silence.

When Rick finally approached the Suburban, he went straight for the driver's side only to find Georgie there.

"Shotgun for you," she said, giving him an impish look which he reciprocated as discreetly as possible.

Georgie nodded. "Sounds good to me."

Once all the vehicles were off driving down the road, one after the other, Georgie began steering with only her left hand.

Carl and Noah couldn't see it from where they sat, but Georgie and Rick were holding hands on the front seat as they drove along in silence.