A/N: Welcome back readers!

I am sorry this chapter is later than usual… my dog, an adorable lab/beagle mix, died very suddenly and very violently this weekend. I have been so devastated and heartbroken. Please keep Sandy in your thoughts. 3

I didn't make it to 65+ reviews this week so I will only be posting once, but special thanks to those who did review: Heidi191976, Tania Ibarbia, .75, NicoleTheresa1, Emberka-2012, SixJay, cherry1122, SarahCullen4, Panda b, WhiskeyGlass, DarylDixon'sLover. Y'all are awesome!

Companion song: "Losing hope" by Jack Johnson

Disclaimer: I do not own or have any rights to the characters/plot of TWD series. I am just a fan exploring the marvelous, macabre world Robert Kirkman created.

/

Chapter 9: Glass

Trouble found them on the fifth day. The wound in Kyle's thigh was healing up well, his coloring was normal and he could walk again, though it was unsteady, Beth didn't need to support him anymore. Their pace was still excruciatingly slow—particularly because they were running low on water again. It was astonishing how quickly their bottles emptied and yet there was still a constant, dry itch at the back of her throat. Plus, the cans of food were waning too. Since first stocking up in the town where Dr. Edwards died, they had not found much food and they hadn't stayed in one place long enough to search a town thoroughly. Only a few items had been added to their packs but many more had been removed. They needed to ration better… if they kept eating like this they would be out in less than a week.

With this worry in mind, they decided to comb the next town carefully.

Deciding where to start their search was a struggle, Beth wanted to start at the houses but Kyle wanted to start in the shops.

"I am older and therefore wiser, young grasshopper," he quipped. There was a slight hitch in his step but Kyle's normal joking nature had returned and for that, she was grateful. Beth knew that it was a sign he was finally feeling better and the pain was subsiding. Although she found the humor impractical and even exasperating at times, it was meaningful because it was so purely Kyle. At times, she was jealous of his persistent humor. She wondered what would come that naturally to her and when would she rediscover it? Or was it something that was so irrelevant in this new world that she would never find it?

She conceded, turning towards the businesses and giving him a small punch in his arm.

"Ow!" he mocked, obviously not hurt but still rubbing his arm where she hit him. "You're hulking up those muscles fast, girl! You're going to have to get permits for those guns!"

A car repair shop came into view and they decided to start there.

"Won't be any food but maybe I can find something to help get a car going! It'll be good to teach you a bit about mechanics. Plus we can get you back to your group faster since I won't be hobbling around and holding you back." There was a soft smile on his face but it didn't warm the sad look that frosted over his eyes.

"What're you gonna do when we get there?" she inquired. The gloomy look told her a lot, but she wanted to hear it from him directly. They both continued searching the shop for anything useful.

After a long pause he responded, "I'm not sure, Beth. Your people... they saw me in that hospital and I doubt they will be thrilled to run into me again. I was involved in the negotiations when they took hostages to exchange for you and Carol." This was a new piece of information to Beth.

Who is Carol? How did my group take hostages? How is my group any better than the hospital, taking people for their own gain? These dark thoughts swirled in her mind, adding to the unending list of things she didn't know about her life before the bullet.

The most pertinent question was of course whom her "group" consisted of. Kyle always used the word "group" and never called them her "family." Kyle had described three big men and a woman, Noah, and now Carol. None of the names sparked anything in her inert memory. Kyle didn't know if any of them were actually her family members or if they were just people she had met along the road since the turn. She didn't think this was very likely, why would people she just met risk their lives to track her down and take hostages to get her out of the hospital?

"After all the shitty negotiations, and you getting shot at the hospital, I don't think I'll be welcome." Kyle shrugged his shoulders a little, not meeting her gaze but instead glancing between his feet and their surroundings.

Beth realized that it didn't really matter who they were or what they thought of Kyle. She couldn't remember those people but Kyle, he was family now, and if they couldn't accept that, then the two of them would continue on their own.

"Nah. We're a package deal now. You're my brother and we'll stick together."

As she said it with such sincerity, a visible weight lifted from Kyle's shoulders and she could have sworn that his eyes shone with grateful tears before he changed the topic.

"So do you even know how to drive or am I gonna have to find a 'Student-Driver' sign too?" he eased back into the teasing, seamlessly covering up his small moment of vulnerability before adding some tools they found to their packs.

When it was nearing sunset, orange streaked the sky but they had nothing to show for their day. They searched the several shops without finding any sustenance; the town had clearly been looted already.

"So… you were right… we should've started in the houses. I guess I am older but not wiser!" he laughed easily, keeping his voice low as they left another convenience store empty handed.

Beth wasn't listening though. She had a bad feeling creeping over her, heart beat picking up and her mind was moving quickly to figure out why she suddenly got the sense that something bad was going on. She thought back to the buildings they had searched. Eight different places in this small town but there had been nothing. Not only were there no useful items… but nothing.

Absolute silence in all the buildings. There hadn't been any live rotters.

"Shit," she muttered under her breath.

Where are they all? She questioned, coming up with several possible answers to her own silent question.

Kyle was too far ahead of her to have heard her whispered curse or to notice that she had stopped in her tracks. But then he rounded a corner, stepping out from behind a large department store that spanned an entire city block. And that's when her question was answered.

There were hundreds of rotters all milling around the block. From the cursory glance she had gotten, it seemed like there had been a large explosion in the street. Cars nearby had been pushed and dented in strange ways. All the windows, including those on the third floor of some of the buildings, were blown out and Beth guessed it was from the impact of the explosion that attracted all the rotters. It must have been recent if all of them were still there, but it couldn't have been in the last few hours because they would have heard a blast of this size from the other side of town. The explosion was clearly man made and she wondered if it had been a trap to get all the rotters in one place or if it had been an accident. If it was the former, that meant people, possibly dangerous people, were close by. But even if it had been an accident that had blown away the living too, Kyle and Beth were not safe here with all those moving corpses so close by.

Beth pulled a stunned Kyle back around the wall, hiding in the shadows and hoping they hadn't been spotted, or smelled, by any of the dead.

No such luck.

Rotters began streaming around the building towards them. So Kyle and Beth turned and ran back up the street. Beth could have easily outrun Kyle since his leg was still slowing him down. However, instead of running ahead, she stayed behind him and killed the monsters that got too close to them. She used only the machete since using her bow would mean the arrows would be left behind.

"There's too many. They don't get tired but we will. Gotta find somewhere to hide!" she yelled, already slightly out of breath. However, they had finally gotten ahead of the rotters that were now trailing about 40 yards behind them.

"Up there. Bet there's a fire escape we can climb up." Kyle nodded towards a three story brick building ahead with an awning that was, amazingly, still intact. It looked like an apartment complex.

They were prepared to run through the alleyway to see if there was a ladder in the back, Kyle still in the lead. But there was a surprise in the alleyway. Rotters had flooded the alley from the back, crashing through the narrow space between the buildings like waves on rocks. They wouldn't be able to get through this way, so Beth turned to go back up the street. She turned around and saw that the rotters had almost caught up to them on this side as well.

They were surrounded.

Trapped.

And Beth saw only one way out, so she leaped onto the large suburban next to her. She turned and gripped Kyle's hand to help him up. A warning rose from her chest but the shout died in her throat.

She watched as a rotter materialized out of the shadow of the building and sunk its teeth into his shoulder.

A strangled shriek erupted from him. She yanked on Kyle's hand, still gripped rigidly in hers, and Kyle slipped out of the monster's mouth. Beth swiftly stabbed it in the head with her small knife and it crumpled to the ground. However, more were coming. The scream had attracted even more rotters, from where she stood on the car it felt like at least a hundred were barreling towards them.

Kyle stood on top of the SUV with her while she continued to hack away with her knife at the rotters that attempted to climb over the hood towards them. His shoulder was spouting blood like a garden hose.

"Beth…" he wheezed, "you've gotta go, now!"

She hesitated. Beth knew he was right and she knew that Kyle would be unable to scale the apartment building with his injuries. She wanted them to jump from the car to the green awning, break a window and get inside the apartment building. From there she was hoping there was roof access, where they could hide until the herd dissipated or a fire escape to climb down and escape the other side. She moved to give him a boost so he could jump to the awning but he protested.

"I can't come with you," he breathed. His dark brown eyes were somber but firm.

"I can't leave you behind." She replied with false sternness. She knew they didn't have time to argue and she also knew that he was right, he couldn't come with her.

She had a brief moment of déjà vu. Someone telling her to go, to run, and escape from danger while he stayed to fight off walkers.

"You have to. Take my weapons, and my pack if you can carry it. You'll need all of it," he said as he began pressing weapons into her hands and she tossed his pack onto the awning. She took out a few more rotters with his ice axe.

"I'm sorry," she breathed. Even in the dim light from the descending sun she could visibly see the life draining from him, color slipping from his face contrasting with the deep red of the blood that spattered his neck and saturated his shirt

"Go! I'll distract them… Be safe, sis." The severity of his normally jovial voice was startling. Beth nodded, an unspoken promise to be safe. However, she still couldn't bring herself to leave.

And with his last ounce of strength he reached his hands down and helped boost her over to the green awning. Luckily, the awning was very sturdy, made out of a thick plastic that easily accommodated her weight and kept her at a safe height above the insatiable monsters below her.

Unfortunately, the pressure that she had put on Kyle as he helped her off the car had caused him to topple into the street, into the rapacious hands of the rotters that began to rapidly converge on him, biting and tearing at any flesh they came into contact with. His brown eyes looked straight up to meet her blue ones, their view temporarily unobstructed by the heads of the dead. Kyle's eyes were pleading, full of terrible agony. Hers were blurring rapidly, filled with tears mourning the loss of her only companion, her teacher, her brother. She felt paralyzed, wishing she could help him, that she could reverse time and take away his pain. His lips moved, he was saying something to her. But she couldn't make it out. His voice was weak and the rotters were growling too loudly as they tore apart their feast.

What is he saying? she wondered desperately. These are his last words and I can't hear them!

And with that, she watched as the light flickered out of his eyes. He was gone. After another second her view was completely obscured by the mass of corpses that surrounded him.

Her mind cleared. He had sacrificed himself for a reason: to save her. She needed to get out of here before the rotters realized she was still here or his loss would be in vain. She took the spike of Kyle's iceaxe and broke the window right above her. The petite blonde scrambled in through the window quickly, worried that the noise would attract rotters stuck inside the building she wanted to be upright when or if they came into the room. Kyle and her hadn't cleared this building earlier and it wouldn't do her any good if they came as she was stuck, compromised halfway out the windowsill. However, in her haste, small pieces of glass stuck in her stomach and one in the back of her shoulder blade. She shook this off, she would deal with her injuries when she was in a more secure location. She slung the bags over her shoulders, happy for once that they were not as full as normal, and made sure that her bow and quiver were on top so she could get to them if needed. Flying through the building, she made her way to the apartment on the exact opposite side of the complex. Looking out the window here, she saw that there were almost no rotters on this side of the building—they must have all been attracted to Kyle's screams in the front. She considered going down the ladder right away but decided to get a view from the higher vantage point of the roof before taking off into the unknown darkness. The metal creaked slightly as she scaled the fire escape.

The backside of the building and the streets surrounding it seemed mostly clear. She silently hurried to see the front of the building, where she had left Kyle. From her point on the roof, in the darkness that had fallen, the rotters were indistinguishable. Dark, terrible monsters blended in with the street and each other. There were so many that it looked as if the ground itself was actually moving.

Beth was conflicted, unsure of how to proceed now. Should she run into the night to an unknown location that would be safer and not surrounded by the undead? Or should she stay up here on the roof that she knew was relatively safe for now, and hope that the rotters dispersed quickly so she could have a clear exit in the morning?

Both options sucked and both depended largely on chance. She wished she had someone else to weigh in on the options.

She decided to leave now. The darkness would make it harder for her to see but it would also provide her with some cover. Plus, she knew all the rotters were distracted on one side of the building now but what if when she woke up they were surrounding the building, or if the rest of them from the other street came over too, making escape impossible?

As she turned towards the back of the building again, it hit her. Kyle's last words, the begging in his eyes.

He had been telling her to shoot him.

It was the pact. She was supposed to shoot him so he wouldn't feel the horrible pain of being ripped apart, so he wouldn't turn. Guilt gripped her so tightly that it squeezed the air out of her lungs. It was the promise she had made him and she broke it. Beth left Kyle to die just like Dr. Edwards had died, being torn apart by the teeth of dead humans. She was disappointed in herself, but she vowed to Kyle's soul—wherever it was—that she would do her best to keep the only other promise she made her brother. She would stay safe.

/

The night spent tromping through the forest was quiet. The only noises she heard for hours were her own quiet breathing and the occasional crunch of a leaf under her boot. After spending weeks with Kyle's constant monologues and jokes and the raucous of the dead as they had surrounded them on top of that car, the silence was deafening. It made her paranoid. She kept thinking that she had actually lost her sense of hearing, so she would occasionally rustle her fingers next to her ears just to reassure herself that her ears were still working.

The forest was dense, not allowing any moonlight to penetrate the canopy to reach her. Her eyes had adjusted after a while but she still had not been confident enough that she could adequately inspect her wounds. She had felt in the dark to discover that the glass shards in her were small but she wanted to wait until there was light again to pull them out and stitch herself up. Now, after hours of walking through the night, the pieces minced her skin further with every step and she knew she needed to get to a place where she could pull them out soon before they carved even deeper holes into her.

As she stumbled, half jogging and half falling throughout the night, her mind had ample time to wander. Horribly, she was reminded of her nightmares. The ones where she was alone running through a forest, just like now, and someone was missing. She truly was living in that nightmare now. And as much as she missed Kyle… it was not him that she wished for in that moment.

She desperately wished the man from her dreams were there to lead her through the forest. The angel that would certainly take care of her and guide her to safety. She could almost imagine those dirty, muscular arms warm around her, carrying her out of danger. The ache in her heart at this thought was so painful that it managed to overpower every other feeling.

Her hands instinctively grasped at her chest, as if it might burst open, and for a moment she forgot about the numbness in her legs, the blisters on her feet, the stab in her shoulder, the dryness of her throat, the throbbing in her head and the hollowness of her stomach. All that mattered was the absence of the man from her dreams.

When the dreams first started she believed that he was merely a figment of her subconscious—someone she'd made up to comfort her in her nightmares. But this pain, the longing Beth felt in this moment, convinced her that he must be real. As her mind drifted it connected the dots and she figured that this was probably the strong man that she had been taken from when the Grady Memorial people kidnapped her. She wished she remembered him, really remembered him, not just the vague, shaky image of his back from her dreams. Her brows scrunched together as she tried to summon him from the depths of her lost memory… but nothing came.

With the emptiness caused by this nameless man's absence still throbbing in her chest, she continued pushing her way through the trees.

Finally, as the first signs of dawn approached she became too exhausted. The adrenaline from earlier had burnt out and left her body feeling empty and depleted. Carrying two packs and not resting for any food or water all night didn't help either. She had hoped to stumble into the next town or a cabin out in the woods but hadn't yet.

So she set her packs down right on the forest floor and pulled out water, a medical kit and the hammock. There was only half a canteen of water left. After greedily downing just enough to wet her throat and pouring a little on the wound in the side of her stomach to clean it, she used her fingers so swiftly pull the shard of glass out. She removed her gray t-shirt, leaving only her tank top again and firmly pressed the material against the bleeding hole. The bleeding, which had started again when she yanked the glass out, staunched after only a short time. Beth wasn't sure if this was a good sign or not but either way she quickly threaded a needle and sewed herself up. It was sloppy but as good as she could do given the angle and the lack of pain meds.

The glass in her shoulder proved impossible. It was lodged perfectly in the part of her back that she just couldn't reach.

"Shit," she muttered quietly. How was she supposed to get this out? What would happen if she left it in there?

That's when she heard a noise for the first time in hours and it hadn't been caused by her. A twig had snapped about thirty yards to her right and slightly behind her.

"Need some help?" a voice asked out of the hazy forest.

In one seamless motion she dropped to the ground, rolled over her pack and grabbed her bow and quiver. An arrow was notched and the string was pulled back in her hand in a matter of seconds. She aimed in the direction where she had heard the voice. Beth's eyes raked over the man in front of her. He had a machete holstered in his belt and a tall walking stick in one hand with the other hand held straight up in the air as a show of surrender. There was a full pack attached to his back and a green poncho was tossed over it. His skin was dark, there was a scruffy black beard that a pair of goggles dangled around his neck, and his eyes were surprisingly calm. He didn't seem to be startled to find himself staring down the arrow pointed at his head. Beth didn't feel afraid and she considered lowering her weapon at the warm, kind look in his deep brown eyes. But logic won out. The last men she came across had been vicious, tried to rape her and kill Kyle. What if this man was with a larger group hiding in the forest and he was just trying to lure her into a false sense of safety?

"Didn't mean ta scare ya, ma'am. Just happened to be startin' my morning off when I saw you struggling with that bloody mess on your back," he gave a small smile that warmed his eyes even further. His southern accent comforted her, made her feel at home even though she couldn't explain why.

He was staring at her in happy wonderment. Not in the creepy way that the men in the CVS had leered at her. But he gazed at her as if he was just soaking in a miracle of seeing another living human being. At this realization, she slightly loosened the drawback on her bow.

"Name's Morgan. Sorry to stare, but it's been so long since I saw something other than walkers," he stated as he remained rooted to the spot.

Walkers. She knew that word. It had been the word that popped into her head before. Kyle and the doctor had only used the word "rotters" to describe them. Was it just a coincidence that this stranger used the same word that belonged in her subconscious?

Beth still hadn't said anything, but she glanced around them, trying to see if there was anyone else hiding in the forest.

"If ya don't want my help, that's fine. I'll just leave ya be and get on my way," he shrugged as he began taking slow, tentative steps backwards.

"Why do ya want to help a stranger?" she questioned sharply.

"Why? 'Cause all life is precious."

/

A/N: As always, thanks for reading! Hopefully this chapter was fast moving and exciting. Annnnndddd there was a little nod to Season 5 Finale in there.

Next chapter will be LONG, and there will be some big time jumps because Beth and Daryl are meeting VERY soon ;)

Please favorite/follow and before you go please leave me a review! I could definitely use some support after my terrible weekend. If I hit 75+ reviews I will update twice next week!