Disclaimer: I don't own the characters of The Walking Dead, just my OC's.

Authors note: alright, I'm introducing another OC here, don't shoot me for it.

I woke up abruptly as the door behind me was suddenly attempted to be pushed open.

"Micah?" Sophia asks from behind the door. DAMN! I fell asleep. Rubbing my eyes I saw that the stupid rotary phone was in my lap.

AGAIN?! this was the eight time in the last two weeks. I woke up in the morning and there it is, sitting in my lap. The first two times were extremely weird since I was up in a tree, the first time there was three dead walkers on the ground. I wanted to toss the stupid thing, but every time I tried , I couldn't do it. like something was holding me back.

Grumbling I pull my suitcase to me and toss the phone into it and zip it up again and then get to my feet.

"Sorry Sophia, come on out. Everything in here is clear." I shouldn't have said that, I should have looked around the house before I said anything. The door opened slowly and she stuck her head out to look around to check. At least she's becoming more and more perceptive about her surroundings. "How'd ya sleep?"

She rubbed the back of her neck and shrugged. "Fine I guess, thanks for finding the clean blankets and pillow, it would have sucked if you hadn't."

I roll my eyes and laugh. "You think that's bad? Try being forced to sleep in a thorn tree because you ran out of ammo while a group of walkers are down below."

"Geez." She says with a sigh, she then shifts her arm and stares at the gun holstered under her shoulder.

"Takes awhile to get used to it huh?" I ask, she nods and averts her eyes and adjusts the rig. "Well, you can get used to it now, gotta check for biters before we try to eat breakfast. Gotta barricade the doors and lower windows and then try to find anything usable." Then I thought about it and remembered that I hadn't cleaned and oiled the guns, or sharpened any of my knives and screwdrivers. I look towards the window and saw that it was covered with a thin blue and white curtain. I slowly went over to it and shifted it aside slightly to peer outward. There wasn't anything moving out in front that I could see, but this just lets us view the front yard and only a few dozen yards into the forest. That still leaves the side of the house, porches and back. "I think it's best time to show you how to clean and oil a gun, and a knife as well." I say as I set down slowly onto the floor and zip back open my bag and pulled out my little faux leather bag that's about nine inches long and three wide, the same tall. It made keeping everything together easy and didn't take much space.

I looked around quickly and found a newspaper on the floor near Sophia beside a nightstand on the floor. "Can you hand me that, makes the space less messy."

"Sure." She says, then bends down and picks it up and hands it to me and sits down. I look at the front of it and see the caption. 'Nostradamus was wrong!' I think I was supposed to laugh, but I don't know who Nostradamus is. "Who's Nostradamus?" Sophia asks with a scrunched up look on her face.

"I dunno." I shrug as I unfold the paper onto the floor and put my bag on it and unzip it. "Alright, I'll clean my ruger first and show you how it's done." She nodded and watched seriously as I unscrewed the nut that connected the collar at the end of the stock and the one in front of the receiver that connected the whole barrel and action to the stock. Then I pulled it off, pulled out snake cleaner and oiled up a torn piece of paper towel and ran it through the barrel. I gave her the tutorial for everything from scraping the fowling around the entrance of the barrel to oiling up the barrel and cleaning it with a wire brush. Then I asked her to assemble it as I disassembled the Kel-tec and showed her how to clean a semi-auto pistol.

This whole song and dance took thirty minutes since I skipped a few lessons, then it came down to cleaning the gun she carried, revolvers are a lot easier to clean then most other guns, except for single shot guns. She did it easy enough, though we didn't take out the cylinder and the whole sha bang, because quite frankly where hungry. By the time we where done there was almost half a shirt worth of dirty ripped clothes on the stained newspaper. Then I pulled out my kukri and the puck like whetstone and put the handle on my chest and swirled the stone in a circle on the right blade side in short sections all the way to the tip. I handed it to her and she did the same on the other side and almost nicked herself a few times. I took care of a few screwdrivers, four in total, two for her and two for me.

"After breakfast we'll look around for a few things and I'll see about making a holster for it to attach to your pants." I tell her as I get up and put my screwdriver in the thin pouch next to the Kel-tec.

"You can do that?" Sophia asks and yawns at the same time.

"Yeah, whenever grandma and grandpa were late coming home from work I'd go over to my next door neighbors house and she taught me the concept of 'ghettofying'. Her word for holding up her house and car with nothing but duct tape and improvised anchorage screws made up of nails with beer bottle caps." I turned to her and showed her the screwdriver tube. "See that? Leather and metal slinky. Kinda like the original catwoman outfit when Tim Burton directed that one batman movie."

"Huh?" she asks with a side tilt. I gave her a 'really?' look and shook my head.

"It doesn't matter now with the world electrically dead and all." I say still shaking my head. Then I pull out my kukri and Kel-tec and go to the window and peek out the window again. "There was one walker with it's back turned us and shambling towards the woods. "Hey, you ready for some target practice?"

"I…um… I don…" she sighs and then pulls out the revolver. "Alright." She finally admits and begins to walk over.

I shush her and then look at the window and to my cleaning bag. "Get the gun oil so the window doesn't make any noise." I whisper to her as she stops. She nods and picks it out of the bag and calmly walks to me and hands it over. I pull off the top cap and spray it down the sides of each side of the sill and go up it with liberal squirts and then rub it in. I flip the latch slowly and push up the window slowly at first, and then calmly inch it up to where Sophia and stick out the barrel of the gun and see through the sights. "Alright, here's a first lesson at shooting from elevated angles, adjust it to where you aim down a little bit below your target, but not that much since these rounds don't kick that much. Now try to kill this walker in three rounds or less alright?"

She nods her head and I step aside as she pulls up the revolver and stick it in between the window and the sill and leans down to where she could angle it. "Alright… I've got it." she says then slowly readjusts it.

"Alright, in this situation where you've got time, take a deep breath and release half, then calmly squeeze the trigger. But remember, if you miss the first time you have to cock the hammer back. I'm trying not to rush you but if you miss the head and hit the shoulder the walker will turn and probably see us and let others know where we are." She gives me the 'shut up' look and I hold up my arms and then she looks back and takes a deep breath. "Alright, let out half." She does. "Alright, line up the front and rear sights on the back of it's head, and then calmly ssssqqqqquuuueeeezzzzeeee." The revolver goes off with a little pop and the walker drops to the ground.

"I DID IT!" she shouts and then we both clamp a hand down over her mouth and watch calmly for any other movement. A walker comes out into the little driveway about sixty feet away from us.

"I'll take care of this one." I whisper, she nods and hands over the revolver without question as I sheath the kukri and kel-tec. I lean down and stick the revolver out of the window and line up the sighs, and quickly take in a breath, let out half and then squeeze the trigger. It took a second or two and then the walker fell over. "Bullseye." I whisper smugly.

"Nice shot." Sophia whispers as well. I nod and hand her the revolver and inch down the window till it clicks softly.

"Thanks, and that's my longest distance without a scope to." I say proudly. Grandma and Grandpa would be proud. Then the happiness drops out and I sigh. "We'll probably have to pull the bodies out into the woods." I turn to the door leading out of the room and pull out the kukri and kel-tec once again and heads towards it.

"Why's that?" Sophia asks as she follows behind.

"Cause it'd be obvious that someone's living in this house or has been living in it." I tell her, then stop and think about it. "You may wanna take out those used shots, don't know what's out back or in the house." She nods and goes to the duffel and leans over it and opens up the cylinder and then picks up the cleaning snake and pokes the metal end through the cylinder and pops out two spent cartridges and then reaches into the duffel and then she digs around and then pulls out two of the tiny bullets and pops them in and closes the cylinder and gets back to me.

"Wait, but what about my mom or… or Rick and Daryl, Glen or Shane?" she asks quietly in a demanding tone. "We're not just gonna stay here, we gotta find my mom and the others!"

"I know that." I hiss at her quietly. "And we are, when we ditch the bodies, eat breakfast and search the house, then we're going out into the forest and try to find the road. The chance of us actually making it to the road in a day with enough sunlight left to make it back or go anywhere in time. So we're gonna have ta actually sleep here again tonight."

"Oh." She says with a crestfallen look. "Sorry."

"It's fine, but for now, get ready." She nodded and I got on opposite side of the door and she put her free hand on the knob and slowly turned it and then opened the door as I raised up the Kel-tec ready to fire at anything that would jump out at us. Nothing did, instead it was just a empty hall that was partially light up the light passing through a thinly veiled window to the left of my a few feet away. The second floor had a L shape layout in a hallway form. Four doors in all including the one I was standing in at the moment. I stepped out and looked both ways and then signaled Sophia to come out of the room. She did and pulled the door almost closed behind her, I stopped her from closing it fully. "If a walker is up here then we know that it's gone into the room if it's wide open, if we're forced to retreat back into the room, it's easier to get in."

"Alright… so what do we do now?" I nod towards the door opposite of me down the hall and she follows my gaze.

"Stand where you can see the stairs but also see me. We don't know if there's a walker downstairs or not, or if there's one we missed last night. Remember, we only check to see if the door was closed and then locked ourselves in after killing the ones downstairs." She nods and moves down the hall about three feet and stops and raises up the revolver and braces it against the wall. "And remember, stay up here for now, do not, and I repeat, DO NOT, go downstairs without me."

"I get it already." She says.

"Just checking." I tell her as I creep towards the closed door. I stick out my thumb and forefinger while still grasping the kukri and pinched the door knob and slowly twisted it. the door opened up and I went in slowly looking around, but luckily found nothing. Same went for the other two rooms, one was a bathroom and the other was another large room with another bathroom attached as well. Didn't bother checking anything out, though the first room looked interesting from a glance over, but right now I was with Sophia looking down over the railing to listen or see if anything was on the first floor.

"I didn't see anything." She whispered to me. "But I heard something creak every once in a while."

"Yeah, you never really know how much noises a house makes till it's almost silent." I whisper back. "But then again, walkers are quiet bastards, especially if they had their throats bitten out."

"Eeeewwww." She said wrinkling her nose. I shrug and take a step on the first one down.

"Well, ready to go?" I ask, she nods and takes a step after me, making sure to go slow. "Step to the sides or the edge, or directly on the middle, it has more support and makes less noise." Then I stepped on the edge and slid onto the next one and ended up making more noise than anything. She giggled and I blushed with embarrassment. "But then again, it doesn't matter much to danger prone Daphene's like me." I mutter as I bring my right leg down to the stop my left leg was on.

"Roger Raggy." Sophia giggles in a mock Scooby-doo voice. I smirk and roll my eyes and continue on down the steps. We stop again to view over the rails either way and don't see anything again. "How are we going to barricade the door?" she whispers. I look forward and saw the problem. The two double doors with the glass around it. More than one walker could just lean up on it and they come swinging in.

"See any book shelves or benches we could use as door stops?" I ask her. I sure as hell didn't.

"No." she looks around with me and then looks at me. "What are the chances of there being more walkers in the house?"

I sigh and take another small step down the stairs. "Well enough. Come on, lets get this nightmare over and done with for now." we finally reached the first floor and looked either way to see nothing but empty rooms. "Alright, the walkers we got rid of are in the back room of the house and the door is blocked." It was also the room with a few sardine cans in it that we round.

"Alright, so what do we do now?" Sophia asks as she steps onto the floor behind me.

"I say we go around looking as a group, we'll start with the kitchen first and work our way around in a circle. We'll try to scavenge anything left in the house after we go back up for breakfast, alright?"

"Alright." She says with a nod and holds up the revolver posed and ready for an attack. We started off going left into the kitchen and found another pack of sardines, I made a crack about her breakfast and she stuck out her tongue. We found a blanket and a pillow in the pantry inside the kitchen, luckily we didn't find a child walker, that would have been a bitch.

After ten minutes we finally finished up the search, so far there wasn't any actual walkers inside the house besides the dead ones in the little closet. I had to open it up real quick to find anything, only thing in there worth it now is a tool box, I went ahead and grabbed it. Never know when you could use one. The windows on the back of the house were busted open, but luckily they were covered up. The doors weren't going to stay closed unless we propped them close, and there wasn't that much furniture big enough or heavy enough to do the job. We're gonna have to find some boards and nails. We went back upstairs after closing the downstairs doors and putting empty glassware on the doorknobs. Whenever a walker or someone walks in they'll more than likely slam the door or jolt the glass off and break on impact with the floor.

After about ten minutes of eating pop-tarts and pouring water into semi-clean cups, we washed them out over the bathroom sink, and adding kool-aid packets to the water, found in a car on the road last week, we finally began to scour around the house. "You find anything yet?" I ask Sophia from inside a closet in the bedroom, so far all I found was a bunch of shoes and church clothes for some woman.

"Yeah, an empty box of shotgun shells." She says from coming out under the bed. I go out of the closet, not funny, and head to here.

"Let me see." She hands it over and I look at it. "Huh, .410 winchester self defense loads." I read aloud as I turn over the little black box. "twenty five rounds for each box. Find any shells?"

"Nope." She said popping the 'p' a little. "But where's there's a box there's usually a gun right?"

"Maybe." I shrug. "But then again, this house looks ransacked before, someone probably came by after the owners died, found the gun and shells and then dumped them in a big bag or something. Ha, saw one guy wearing a trapshooting vest filled to the brim with them picking off walkers from the top of a overturned bus." That was passing through Russelville a week after the major outbreak in Arkansas.

"What happened to em?"

"Some guy popped him the back of his neck after he took out the biters. Grandma took out that guy when he got bite a few minutes later than handed the vest over to the first guy's wife after she picked up his gun."

"Why where you guys there in the first place?" She asks as we exit the second room and go to the last one.

"Because Grandma's friend was there and her back route to it was packed with other cars and walkers. Took us two days to get through it all and finally get there only to find out she was killed by her turned son in her home." I opened the door slowly and saw nothing inside it as well. I slowly went in with the kel-tec raised and pulled out a flashlight from my pocket to do a more thorough check of all the nooks and crannies. "We had to stop in a diner and reload all our guns and then we watched it all happen."

I checked under the bedframe, don't know why since it was a skeleton and nothing else, then went to the closet and slowly opened it again to find nothing but empty space. "Mama wanted to go find her sister after it happened." Sophia said quietly as she looked inside a overturned dresser and found a sock.

"Did she?" I ask as I go to a broken nightstand and pilfer around with my foot.

She stopped and shook her head at me. "No, daddy wouldn't let her. Said she was SOL unless she came to us." She stopped and chocked slightly on a sob, and then went back to searching.

"Only people my grandparents applied that rule was for rapist, racist, the ignorant bigoted zealot… and my mother." She choked on another sob and began to giggle.

"They said that?" she asks.

I shrug and ignore the laughter. "Well, my mother was implied in the least."

"Let me guess," some new voice said, and then a clacking/snapping noise sounded as I whirled around bringing up the Kel-tec and pointed it at the door. My heart was in my ears and my hand shaked as I saw the business end of a hollow double barreled shotgun being held by a tall girl with black hair and tan skin wearing a dirty and grungy shirt and jeans. "absentee mother?" she had a mild accent, Hispanic maybe? "Drop the gun gringo."

"You're outgunned," I warn her as Sophia finally snaps out of it and raises up her revolver. "you put down your gun."

The girl snorts and the gun wavers slightly, it looked a little heavy in her arms, the gun that is. Its an over-under style and by the bore size I'd say .410. "Yeah but my has more power and a better range. So shoot me, by the time you do you'll be torn to hell and back."

I sneer at her and turn off my flashlight and point the kel-tec at her head. "Oh, and it's half-gringo by the way chica."

She gritted her teeth and took a further step into the room. "Watch your mouth shorty, I'm not above blowing your brains out all over these shitty walls. Personally I'd prefer brain matter to crappy wood."

"Beats floral patterns." I snort.

She raised her eyebrow and did the 'uh yeah you got a point' head shake and noise. "Touché shorty. But since we aren't ending this standoff, how about you tell me why the hell you're in my house?"

"Your house?" I ask skeptically. "Wait, you're the one who's been sleeping the pantry." I deduce suddenly.

"Can we please lower the guns?" Sophia pleads with almost a tearful look. "Do we really have to kill each other?"

The girl glances at her and her look wavers slightly, then she stares at me with a glare. "Alright granger, I'll put down mine if you put down the both of yours at the same time."

"Cliché much?" I ask with an eye roll. "Fine, count of three we lower out guns, put mine on safety and you two pop open yours."

The girl tsked at me and shook her head no. "Nice try shorty, how bout you holster yours and the rest is peachy keen."

I shrug and nod my head yes. "Fine with me. Alright, one, two, three." We all steadily lower our guns, I click the safety on mine and put it in the holster as the girl lowers her and pops it open while Sophia swings open her cylinder. "Alright then, guess we outta introduce ourselves. Who wants to go first?" awkward silence ensued.

"Um… I'm Sophia." The girl turns to her and nods, then glares at me.

"Micah." I glare back at her. She was about 5'6 and look a few years older than the two of us.

"Rosa Satico." The girl, Rosa said as she tucked her gun in the crook of her elbow. "Now then, why the hell are you two in my goddamn house?"

"Obvious to me." I retort at her. "Besides, you should be thanking us for getting rid of your walker trouble without much of a problem."

"Thank you?" she asks angrily. "Do you know how long it took me to drag those two dead heads you dropped outside into the forest?"

"We we're actually going to do that." Sophia admits to her sheepishly.

"Oh really?" Rosa asks.

"Yes actually, we were since we planned to stay an extra night without tipping off someone that we're here." I tell her bitingly.

Rosa sighs and runs her hand through her long black hair. "Alright, sorry for being bitchy. It's just… you can never be careful ya know?"

"Don't have to tell us." I remark. "But here's a question, where have you been? Cause you sure as hell weren't here last night."

"Out getting supplies from town." She said boredly as she propped up against the door. "But two dumbasses where having a hell of a time riling up the dead heads so I had to hide out in the liquor store till like three last night before I could find a time to get home."

"What'd they look like?" Sophia asks excitedly. "Was one a tall guy wearing a sheriffs hat? Or another with a crossbow?"

"Look sister, all I saw was some fat guy in a ball cap and the other guy I couldn't really tell since it was so damn dark." Rosa shrugged. Sophia's face fell slightly and said 'oh' quietly. "Wait, you two from a group?" she asks warily excited.

"She is." I tell her as I lean against the wall. "I'm just helping her get back since she got separated from them. After that, I'm going out on my own again."

Rosa snorted and rolled her eyes. "Oh great, your one of those lone wolf guys."

"Bite me bitch." I flip her off as well.

"Hey, kids shouldn't use words like that at your age." Rosa chids.

"Oh please, I'm twelve and I rode the damn bus to school. Most of the kids in second grade curse more than sailors."

"Doesn't make it right." She says, then sighs and rotates her arm around. "Look you two, I'm hungry and tired, can we sit the hell down?"

"Your house." Sophia says as she leans up against the dresser.

Rosa's pause and eye aversion clued me in. "I take it you're not from here huh?"

She sighed and nodded her head. Then stopped and thought about something. "Look, before we go into story time, let me grab my shit at the bottom of the stairs alright?"

"I'll help." Sophia says cheerfully as she skips to the door.

"Thanks Sophia." Rosa says with a smile.

"Take it to our room Sophia." I turn to Rosa and sigh. "It'd be safer up here than downstairs."

She shrugged and shifted the gun around. "Fine with me. it's down by the stairs sweetie." She says with a smile to Sophia, she nods and heads out the door.

"So tell me, what happened to the two guys you saw last night?" I ask as I step closer to her. "Cause you said they riled up the walkers and you had to stay the night in town, walkers usually chase their food."

She turns to me with hollow eyes and nods her head yes. "Good observation, the other guy shot fat guy when they were running away. Asked fat guy for his gun and then shot him in the gut to be bait."

I stick my head out the door and see Sophia struggling to pull up a roller cart up the first few stairs. "What are the chances that those two where from her group?" I whisper to Rosa.

She narrows her eyes and shrugs. "Mild, I know of another group around here, probably from up north from the sounds of them. There's also a family that's still around here, but I don't know where specifically."

"So where ya from?" I ask her as Sophia nears us. The little cart/bin thing was packed slightly with some wax paper to fill in the gaps, and I saw it was halfway full of boxes of dry food and a cloth vest with pockets on it filled with shells.

"New Mexico originally." She said with a long forgotten stare. "On our way to… fuck it I forgot awhile ago. Anyway, we, mom, dad, my brothers and me where stuck in traffic on the highway in Alabama and then shit story from then on." I saw a little bit of tears welling up in her eyes and she wiped them away.

"Find the gun here or?"

"This?" she shifts the shotgun up. "Yeah, found it in the pantry with about eight boxes full and four others halfway." She reached behind her with her free hand and pulled out a handgun. "Now this belonged to my older brother."

"May I?" she gives me a warning look and then grudgingly hands it over. I looked at it and saw it was a double stacked 1911 .45. Rock island Armory made. "How many mags you got?"

"Three more with about two more boxes of fifty." She says as I hand it back to her. She reached into her pocket and pulled out two mags packed full.

"Give me a thick piece of cloth and I can attempt to make a holster for those." I tell her boredly as Sophia finally reaches the top step and then wheels off to the room.

"Really?" Rosa asks. I nod and she smirks and ruffles my hair. "Thanks Micah. Now, think you can help me with this?" she asks and shrugs the shotgun in her arm.

I look at it and see it's a 32 inch barrel. I try to think about it and a coach gun comes to mind. "What's your problem exactly?"

She nods to Sophia's direction and we both walk off after her and close the door behind me and sit down. "To damn heavy, to damn long, and sometimes the ejector catches."

I nod and scratch my chin and then snap my fingers and go to the tool box I found and rifled through it and came back with a hack saw with fine teeth and a chalk line marker and tape measure. "Well, my solution is going western with it, though the ejector is a little out of my league, but we can make a crack at it later."

Sophia smiles and Rosa shrugs and unloads it and puts it down on the floor. "Fine, but I want the stock the same."

"Figured." I remarked as I put down the hack saw and measure out the barrel length, yep 32 inches. I pull out the chalk line marker, put it down on the sixteen inch mark and snapped it down. "Uh, maybe we should try down at the end first to see if the saw will hold up?"

Rosa sighs and picks up the saw and puts her hand down near the end and pins the stock under her knee. "I'll do it, my gun after all, well, now it is."

"Rosa, where's your family?" Sophia asks just as she put the saw down on the metal. Tim O'brien once said that kids are the ones that can ask such hard hitting blunt questions the best.

Rosa sighs and sits back down on the floor. "My older brother wanted to be some tough gangsta, hence the gun. Anyway, when a dead head first showed up he wanted to go out there and show how tough he is." She snorted and pulled out the 1911 again. "Shit head left this in the car and tried to go at it with a tire iron. Took out a knee and then started taunting it, a few more tough guys from the highway, we were stopped because of traffic, got out and started cheering him along, and then out of nowhere," she sniffed. "six more pop up and are all over them." She wiped away her tears and sniffed again. "My momma's screaming her head off, papa's running into the midst and disappears, and then my little brothers crying and another one pops up. He dragged down momma and all I'm doing is sitting in the damn car trying to get a fucking signal on my cell."

We spent a few silence filled moments looking at each other and trying to keep it together. The general feeling was that of remorse and grief. Then finally I sigh and leaned back onto my back and looked up at the ceiling. "My grandparents and I got halfway through Alabama about a month after everything went to shit when we met up with a big group of people in some little town." I felt my leg shaking and I tried to will it to stop. "Don't know why we even bothered staying the damn night there, the people in the group… they just screamed something was off about them. So… so damn strange… no, not strange. Bad, just horrible about them, but… but we stayed the night anyway. Then the next thing I know waking up is that me and grandpa are…" I choke on a sob and let out an exasperated grunt as I wipe away tears and snot.

Sophia buried her head in her knees and sobbed. "My daddy was in our tent when me and momma where at the campfire when a group of roamers came out of the woods. We… I.. none of us could really do anything until Rick and the others came along and saved us. But when the sun came out…" she sniffed and rubbed her eyes.

And that was the silence for the next five minutes, us sniffing and partially sobbing. Then Rosa finally got up on her knee and started working on the barrel and after 15 minutes was almost half way through the end part. "I think this will work." She announced and wiped her eyes, then her stomach rumbled.

"Here." Sophia says and hands her a pack of pop-tarts.

Her face lights up and she snatches it quickly and opens it up and bites in feral like and moans in satisfaction. "Oh god, you two are gifts from god." She says. I chuckle and sit back up and sigh.

I turn to Sophia and give her a serious look. "Sophia, stay here with Rosa while I go off for the road."

"What?! WHY?!" she practically yells at me. Rosa and I shush her. She ignores us and glares at me. "You said we'd go to the road together. You said you'd help me!" she yells accusingly.

"AND I STILL AM!" I yell back at her, then stop and take a deep breath. Rosa looks at the two of us with narrowed glares. "Look, I fully intend to help you out, and I know I said we'd both go to the road, but things have changed." I look at Rosa and sigh. "We have another member to our, I'll use this term loosely, group. And no matter what, the safety of this group is our priority at the moment. Rosa hasn't sleep that much, she's tired and she's hungry. We can't bring her along, that'd be a possible suicide waiting to happen, same if we both left her along here, the possibility of a walker coming along and getting in here while she sleeps is an even higher one."

"I'm not that weak and pathetic." Rosa warns accusingly.

"And I'm not saying you are." I say without an attempt of reassurance. "But trust me, we can't take any chances."

"And why do you care so much?" Rosa counters. "Weren't you saying that you were going to be going on your merry little way when you drop her off?"

"Yeah, and I still plan on it. But at the moment we're all in this together, and we're all sleeping here tonight, so I want it to be safe at least." Then I pause and think about it. "What do you plan on doing Rosa? What's your plans?"

She doesn't say anything at first and instead starts to cut into the barrel, then stops and stares at me. "We'll cross that bridge when we get there." She turns to Sophia and smiles sadly. "Sorry sweetie, but I agree with Micah, he's been on his own more than you and probably the same length as me, but he's better prepared and more likely to get to the road and back with less problems without us." Sophia doesn't say anything, and instead starts to cry. Rosa stops sawing and goes to Sophia and holds her to her and starts to rock her back and forth and sooth her. She looks at me with a blank look and mouths 'go'. I nod and pick up the ruger and head to the door. "There's a road to the highway about three miles from here, but the quickest way is through the woods. Go down to the road and find a lightning struck tree and attempt to go in a straight path after you take a right. It should be a slight trail but mark it if you can." I nod again and open the door and step out. "Micah," I turn to her as she cradles Sophia. "be careful."

I smirk. "Always, oh, and Rosa."

"Yeah?"

"How old are you?" she smirks and shakes her head.

"Don't you know you shouldn't ask a woman that question?" I laugh and shake my head, she does the same and pats Sophia's back. "I'm sixteen."

"Good to know. And don't worry, I will be back." I turn and close the door and head down the stairs and exit the house and close those doors as well. I get out into the front yard, turn and look up at the window to see Rosa and Sophia look down at me. I kiss my fingers and hold them out for them, they do the same and Rosa holds Sophia closer. I turn and start to walk off, glad I never took off my backpack and that there's water bottles full in the duffel. Dear god, please help me survive this.