(I DO NOT own The Walking Dead, Code Lyoko, or any names/brands that might appear in the story. Any references to any person living or dead is merely a coincidence, and should NOT be taken as intentional. All of that being said, I hope you enjoy the story! :D)

(Clair Fay belongs to DinoWriter23.)

('Syn' belongs to Rayne Arianna Maranochi.)

Dominic was brought out of the county jail by Syn and Clair. The group of three then proceeded to fight their way through the undead around the jail, killing whatever was in their way. Dominic saw several of the National Guard soldiers were now undead, and now also trying to attack them. But the three pressed on all the way to the end of the street they were on, still being followed by the walkers.

"What now?!" Dominic snapped.

"We get to our van!" Syn frowned. "We parked it on the other side of town, but we can reach it if we're fast!" she added.

Dominic groaned as he went down on one knee and turned around, using his AR-15 to shoot at the walkers to buy a little time. But, strangely, no matter how many times he shot them they would not go down. The arms, legs, chest, stomach... No matter where he hit, they still kept coming.

"You need to hit them in the brain! That's what kills them!" Clair said.

"What?!" Dominic asked.

"Just do it!" Syn replied.

How? Why? A bullet to the heart should have killed them! But only hitting them in the brain does the job...? What demons from hell were they?! Experimentally, Dominic aimed for the head of a walker and he pulled the trigger, watching it fall straight to the ground...

...No wonder the National Guard lost.

Clair grabbed Dominic by his forearm, pulling him back up to his feet as the walkers grew closer. Syn approached a few walkers, using the blades on her bolo staff to quickly eliminate them. The blades slashed into the rotten flesh like a knife through butter, sending brain, blood and skull all over the asphalt below their feet. Clair joined in when a few more walkers approached, but she had no difficulty eradicating them.

It was all too easy for them...

Dominic, astonished as he was, quickly started running after the girls after they proceeded to run from the horde. The three of them went through some nearby alleyways, tossing over trash cans and moving a dumpster in an attempt to slow down the walkers. It surprisingly worked, and the three managed to run fast and far from the undead nightmare...

They ran for what seemed like hours, dodging more of the dead and going through a bunch of alleyways. They tipped over trash cans and moved several dumpsters, buying themselves a little more time as the dead kept trying to get them. They managed to get pretty far, considering the situation, quickly hurrying down main street of town.

The three of them hid inside of a small fast food restaurant, shutting the door behind them. They went to the back of the store to rest for the moment, Dominic feeling so exhausted that he had to sit on the floor. The two women stood in front of him, Clair was checking her knives and wiping off the walker guts and blood off of it. Syn was examining her bolo staff, finding it was still holding together easily.

"W- Where did you come from...?" Dominic asked, panting as he tried regaining his composure.

"We're from a FEMA camp not far from Sante Fe... We went looking for supplies and we stumbled onto this town." Syn informed.

FEMA was deployed in New Mexico? Dominic wasn't surprised, considering there was walking monsters all over the place... but how many camps were there in the United States? How many countries deployed their emergency organizations, and is there any of them left...?

"How bad is the outbreak...? Is it all over the state?" Dominic asked.

"It's all over the world... Europe, Asia, North America and the other continents... It's everywhere. All over the world, I think." Clair sighed.

"Everywhere...? Jesus Christ..." Dominic gasped.

Syn looked out of the front window of the store, seeing they were somewhat clear. There was some walkers on the road now, but that didn't worry Syn at all. What worried her was that she saw a large herd heading towards them from down the road... There looked to be hundreds, maybe thousands of walkers in that herd. She knew they needed to get back to their camp.

"Okay, we need to keep moving. The walkers are coming." Syn informed.

"Got it. Dominic, you gotta get up. We got to keep going." Clair said.

Dominic readied his rifle as he stood up. The walkers were still a danger, they had to get outta town as fast as they could. Syn, Dominic, and Clair ran out of the back door of the fast food restaurant and started running down an alley, getting back onto another street and finding they were already close to the outskirts of town. Clair and Syn could even see their van far off in the distance... So, the three started running, but unfortunately it drew the attention of the herd down the street...

They needed to run...

The walkers, hungry for the flesh of the people down the street, started quickly hurrying to try and catch them. The three living humans started running for the van, Dominic looking behind himself and firing off bursts from his rifle. But there was too many to kill before Dominic ran out of ammunition, so the three just kept running. Eventually they managed to get to their van, Dominic and Clair opening the side door and diving inside as Syn got to the driver's seat, the walkers getting closer and closer.

"HANG ON!" Syn exclaimed.

Dominic shut the side door as Syn started hurriedly driving across the street and straight towards a nearby highway, getting far from the walkers behind them... Worried beyond all belief, Dominic couldn't help but feel happy to leave the jail behind...

Clair was looking out of the back window of the van, very happy and relieved to see that they were now getting far from the walkers.

"I think we're good now..." Clair informed.

"Alright, good to know..." Syn replied.

Setting her knives down inside of her holsters, Clair sat down across from Dominic and took a glance at him, seeing that his eyes were still wide from the adrenaline and everything else that happened to him.

"Are you okay...?" Clair asked.

"I dunno..." Dominic muttered.

"What were you even inside for? You were in jail, so I thought I'd ask..." Syn shrugged.

The former prisoner just stared at the steel floor in front of him... What would they do if he told them why he was inside? Would they throw him out? Abandon him to the dead? He was going to have to take the risk, though... he had nowhere else to go.

"I was in jail for murder and dealing narcotics." Dominic admitted, pinching the bridge of his nose as he gave a stressed and tired sigh. "I was in a gang not long ago. Nothing big-time, just a group of idiots trying to make some quick cash... I only hung around them to sell a lot of the shit I had..." he said.

Clair stared silently at him, Syn just staring at the road without uttering a word... both of them weren't very surprised, but murder wasn't really the expected response.

"One day I caught my boss, Marco... he shot some kid from a rival hood in retaliation for a bad meet, it was just some little kid... She was a fucking toddler that was the daughter of one of the OG's, and a gang war started thanks to that. A lot of homies from both sides of the hood ended up dropped on the pavement, and Marco ended up getting clapped by a drive-by." Dominic sighed.

"What happened after that?" Clair asked.

Dominic gave a small shrug. "I went solo for a few months since both gangs ended up dead or dropped their flags... then I got busted by some undercover cop while trying to sell him some black tar. As he was patting me down on the hood of his car, the gun in my waistband went off... The poor bastard died in the ER, but... fuck. I didn't mean for the gun to go off... I swear to god I didn't mean that to happen..." Dominic said, full of regret.

He was silent for a few, brief moments before he spoke again. "So then I was supposed to be transferred to some shithole outside of Santa Fe, and then the outbreak happened. And after a bunch of days in that cell, here I am." he finished.

Syn pulled over the van on the side of the road... She turned off the engine, put the keys on the dashboard, sighed and closed her eyes as she leaned her head back on her seat. Dominic just kept staring at the ground as Clair finally cleared her throat, adding some sound to a long silence.

"Well... you did some bad things. But we need people at our camp. We'll keep your past to ourselves, but you need to promise you won't tell anyone else, or give us a reason to regret this. You don't seem like a murderer, or even a bad guy, but if you cross us then we'll deal with you... understood?" Syn warned.

Dominic was silent again... Would the FEMA camp even be good for him? Would it keep him alive...? What was gonna happen? Dominic didn't have an answer to any of those questions... but then again, he had no choice. And as a result, he gave only one word as a reply:

"Deal."