It doesn't take long, doesn't take long at all, for us to come up on the trucks. The trucks the Governor had, big trucks that look like they could bust through the side of a house. They're not moving, though, they're just sitting on the road, and the road is littered with bodies. And five or six walkers that gnaw on those bodies. Dad slows, stops the bike, and once the truck's shut down behind us it's just that eerie sound of flesh being ripped from bone, then chewed, then swallowed. I'm used to that sound by now, but I still hate it. And of course, once the four of us get close enough, the walkers start snarling. A couple of them get arrows in the head, a few others a sword. Then Rick finishes off the last one with his knife, and I back up against the biggest truck, this camouflaged beast, and scan around us. Then there's a loud thwack from behind me, and I jump and whirl and have time to see a face in the window before my dad yanks me away. It's not a walker face, though, it's a human, a woman. Alive.

Dad opens the door, his knife in his hand, and gestures for her to climb out. Rick holds a gun on the woman for a while, then stops, and – in a trembling voice – she tells us her name is Karen. And she tells us how the Governor turned on his own people, his own soldiers. Shot all but two of them – his right hand men, she says, Martinez and Shumpert. Karen hid under a corpse. That's the only reason she made it. Because she hid under her friend's corpse.

Rick asks if the Governor would have gone back to Woodbury. Karen says she's not sure. Then Karen says something about Andrea, asks if she made it to the prison, and we all look at her funny. And Rick tells her Andrea's not at the prison. Which means she might be at Woodbury. Which means, whether for the Governor or Andrea – I'd like to think both, though – we're still heading to that town. And we're bringing our new guide with us.

. . . . .

It's dark by the time we reach Woodbury. We move on foot once we get closer, and we walk back up to it, back up to that junk pile of a wall that I hate very much. We move through some trees, past a falling-apart wooden gazebo, with my dad and Rick at the front, then Michonne, then me and the woman named Karen. We're fifty feet from the wall and out of the worst of the brush when the first shots rain down on us.

My dad and Rick, they have those big guns they brought, rapid-fire ones like what Maggie and Glenn used this morning. Me, I have a new semiautomatic pistol that I despise and a bow that's not exactly rapid-fire, so I dive behind the nearest abandoned car with Karen and Michonne and go ahead keep my bow at the ready, debating if it's worth trying to take a shot with it. My dad and Rick join us seconds later, aiming from behind the car up at the top of the wall where the guards must perch, and then it's just this loud shootout and I hate shootouts because you never know – and my dad's right there, right here, right next to me, but still – if he gets hit –

Then there's a short moment of quiet, when the guards must be reloading or talking or something, and I hear "Tyreese!" and look over to see Karen standing up, arms in the air. "It's me, don't –"

Rick pulls on her, she falls. "Get down!"

But it's too late. "Karen!" comes a distant voice. "Karen, are you okay?"

And Karen's up again, this time moving out of Rick's reach. "I'm fine!"

"Where's the Governor?"

"He fired on everyone! He killed 'em all . . ."

"Why're you with them?"

"They . . . saved me!"

Then, "We're comin' out!" And that's Rick.

I hear my dad loud-whisper No, but Rick's set, I think. "We're comin' out," he says again, and my dad locks his jaw and grabs me by the coat and pulls me with him around the car. He stands up with his gun at the ready, but then he looks over, and Rick must have his hands up, because with a sigh that says he thinks Rick might be an idiot, Dad lifts his free hand and his gun, too. And so I follow him, my bow in the air.

The gates of Woodbury are like the gates to a castle, only uglier. Meaner. And now they open and every instinct in me says get out of here and I can't, especially not after I worked so hard to get to come. So I hold my chin high as we step up to the gate, not quite crossing through, meeting with a big man and a smaller woman, both with dark skin and cautious, distrusting looks on their faces. The woman takes the time to look each of us over, her eyes snagging on me, but the man starts to talk to Rick right away.

"What're you doin' here?"

"We were comin' to finish this. Till we saw what the Governor did."

"He . . . he killed them?"

"Yeah."

Tyreese looks horrified and I decide maybe Tyreese could be alright. If he wasn't with Woodbury.

"Karen told us Andrea hopped the wall," says Rick. "Goin' for the prison. She never made it . . . She might be here."

She has to be here. Andrea's here, and she's fine. I can't . . . I don't want to deal with it if she's not.

And Tyreese, Tyreese is definitely alright. Because he agrees to let us come in and look for Andrea, if we take him with us. The woman with him – he calls her Sasha – goes off because she's guarding the old people and the children. Karen goes with her. Me and Dad and Rick and Michonne and Tyreese go hunting for Andrea. Only it doesn't take long, because all of my group has a hunch about where she'll be. The same place he kept Maggie and Glenn. That fun, fun place. So we walk, fast, through this hellhole of a town, and it makes me sick every step of the way . . . Because it reminds me of the Governor, sure, but it reminds me of my uncle even more. It reminds me of pain and hurt and I want to leave, very much so, and then it gets even worse when we actually go through the alleys and get to the empty slab of gravel in front of all those doors, and then when we go through one that Rick remembers and enter a hallway, the smell of old wood almost makes me sick, makes my collarbone ache and my arm burn. But I won't say a word, I won't. I'm here with the grownups and I'm going to act like a grownup.

"This is where he had Glenn and Maggie," says Rick as he starts down the hallway, his gun up. The place still has electricity, but the single light is dim and casts spooky shadows all around the cluttered hall.

"The Governor held people here?" asks Tyreese.

"Did more'n hold 'em," says Dad, and I remember Glenn's face, his poor face. That was my uncle, though . . . Won't think about that. Dad and Rick and Michonne, they all wait a few seconds before lowering their weapons, and me and Tyreese follow them. My bow's not up, but it's ready. I'm ready. We don't go far, though, the five of us. There's a door at the end of the hallway, a huge metal door. My three people pause, Dad checks me and then lifts his gun again, and Michonne pulls her sword and says, I think to Rick, "Will you open it?"

And Michonne sounds odd. That's when I bother to look more closely at the door. That's when I see the blood seeping from under it. That's when my own blood really starts flowing and I readjust my grip on my bow, on my release, and I position my feet so I'm ready to run, forwards or backwards. And I watch, not breathing, as Rick's hand slowly goes to the lock near the top of the door. "One . . . two . . ."

The door makes a terrible wailing noise as it opens, revealing a room mostly empty except for a chair and a body on the floor, a body with a bloody head and hands, but it's not Andrea, it's not Andrea, only then Michonne's racing forward and she is saying "Andrea!" all scared-like, and I'm confused and terrified but she runs over beside the door, to the left of it, and Rick follows her and then so do I. I'm pretty sure Dad's hand flies out to catch me but he misses and now I'm in the room and Michonne's sitting on a short chair and Rick is kneeling and they're next to Andrea, Andrea, who's slumped on the wall and bloody. With her blood? The body's?

"I tried to stop it," she says. Whispers. She's only whispering. It's dark in here, but I can tell she looks tired. Why – ?

"You're burning up," says Michonne.

And Andrea, she reaches up to her shoulder. She pulls back her shirt. And it's her blood, it's her blood, at least some of it, because Andrea's bit. She's bit, I know it, I've seen that mark before. My hand goes up to my mouth, and I feel Dad take hold of my shoulder, and maybe he's trying to pull me out into the hall, but no, I won't let him, I shrug him off.

"Judith," says Andrea, pulling herself closer to Rick. "Carl. The rest of them . . ."

"Us," Rick tells her, leaning in close. His face looks very different than it did the last time he saw her. I guess mine probably does, too. "The rest of us."

Because Andrea was there in Atlanta, she was there on the farm –

"Are they alive?" Andrea asks. Michonne's holding her.

Rick says yeah. Andrea looks at Michonne – who's dripping with tears – and says it's good she found us. Michonne nods. Her face is all wrinkled up the way faces get when people cry. I'm not crying. I feel like my fingers do when I'm wearing those gloves of mine. Numb. Numb, numb, numb. And Andrea looks up and says no one can make it alone now and my dad says they never could and Andrea's hand ends up gripping mine and I remember the CDC, and Dale, and the piano, and – and – and Andrea says she just didn't want anyone to die, and then, and then she's saying, she's saying I can do it myself, and I've heard that before, and I don't think my dad likes suicide but he doesn't say anything, it's Michonne who says No, and Andrea says she has to, while she still can. And this is all so familiar, so familiar, and Andrea is lying here dying and it's heartbreaking enough but now she's making me think of my mom and how hopeless that was and that's why the tears start rolling softly down my face and I can't do anything about it so I don't try. And Andrea looks at Rick, she looks at Rick and says, "Please." And Rick doesn't say anything for a minute, and Andrea says, "I know how the safety works." And then Rick hands gives her the gun she wants so badly.

"Well, I'm not goin' anywhere," says Michonne, strongly, and I know Carl started to trust her back when she went on the run with him and Rick but I'm just now starting to consider that maybe we should want her to stay, maybe she's good, maybe . . .

And Andrea doesn't argue with her, with Michonne. She looks around at us all, at me and Dad and finally Rick, and she says, "I tried." And she's not even crying, Andrea. She's not even crying.

"Yeah," says Rick in a really raspy voice, "You did . . . You did." And he stands. Andrea drops my hand. I feel her fingers slip out of mine like it's slow motion and then Dad finally gets me out in the hall, where Tyreese has been waiting all along, and for some reason I don't want him to see me cry, so when Dad sits on a chair or a stool or a crate or whatever I bury my face into his jacket and swallow, swallow a lot, and I hear Rick come out and close the door and waiting for it is the worst part, it's the worst part, and Dad has an arm around me the whole time but he has both around me after the BANG. "I'm sorry, baby, I'm sorry," he murmurs to me then, and I know he means he's sorry he let me come here and I'm not sure if I want him to be or not and I can't think about that right now, I can't think about it, the BANG is still ringing too loudly in my ears.