A.N. I'm sorry this chapter took longer than I thought to write. I really wanted to dialogues to be right and in characters and it was way harder than I thought it would be! Anyway, I hope you like it and I'm really excited to write the rest, I have a lot of great ideas for you guys! Thank you for all the follows, likes and reviews!

CHAPTER 3

The Sun was burning low in the Virginia sky, though the temperature was still pretty warm, even for a late September evening. Maggie led the way into the woods, with Dean walking beside her. Sam followed them close behind, and Enid was at the end, a few feet away. The group still had a couple hours to walk to reach Alexandria, and they had to walk fast if they wanted to arrive before they ran out of sunlight. The four of them walked in silence for a while, before Dean found the guts to break the awkward silence.

"What the Hell happened to you, Maggie?" he said in a low and comforting voice, making sure not to speak loud enough for Enid and his brother to hear.

The short haired brunette raised her eyes to meet Dean's. He could clearly see in them that she was broken, just like he was. Nobody that's ever been to Hell came back the same and he knew that. She had this exhausted look in her eyes, the one that doesn't go away no matter how much you sleep. Because this was not exhaustion from tiredness, it was exhaustion from life itself. With that one look, Dean seemed to understand that Hell wasn't the only reason behind it. Whatever was happening here was bigger than he thought, and she must have lost so much, more than he could ever understand.

"Hell happened." She sighed. "And even though I'm back, it seems like I never left."

"Yeah, believe me, I get that..." he said before asking "How did you get back, anyway?"

"I don't know how I got back, I don't. One day I was down there and the next I was here. But if you ask me, whatever brought me back should've left me there, because this, all of this, is even worse than Hell" she answered, looking at the ground. They kept on walking in silence, both feeling like some things were better left unsaid.

Behind them was Sam, who was turning his head around far too often than he should've to keep an eye on Enid, who was starting to get really annoyed by the tall stranger.

"You don't have to always check up on me, you know. I can take care of myself." Enid said abruptly to Sam.

Sam raised his eyebrows and stopped, surprised that the girl addressed to him. He turned around and waited for her to catch up with him. "Yeah, I saw that earlier! The way you killed all those walkers, that was, hum, I couldn't have done it better." He said with a sincere smile, trying his best to bound with her and make her feel important. Too many times have his father and brother looked down on him, thinking he wasn't good enough. He knew that feeling too well and he didn't want to make Enid feel that way.

Enid was glad he said that, even though she didn't let any emotion appear on her face. She couldn't let herself let her guards down. She had to appear strong and confident, even when sometimes she really just wanted to be a normal teenage girl, who would need protection once in a while. "That's because you're out of practice." She said in a cold way.

Sam chuckled softly, thinking back on all the monsters and creatures he'd killed since he was even younger than her. "Yeah, probably" he said, still smiling to himself. "So Enid" he continued, "How did you-"

"Shh" she said quickly.

"What?" Sam said.

"Shhh" she repeated, looking around, gun pointed towards bushes.

Just as Sam was about to ask again what was wrong, a walker crawled its way out of the bushes, groaning softly. It looked like it must have been a middle age man; its skin was a pale shade of grey and half of its face was sort of missing, so was one of its leg. Sam flinched in surprise, while Enid quickly took her pocket knife out and went ahead to stab it in the brain, making the groaning stop. Dean and Maggie ran back to the others as they heard the brief struggle.

"Enid! Are you okay?" asked Maggie, looking at both Sam and the girl.

"Yeah" she answered, as if it was nothing.

Dean took a look at his little brother, making sure he was okay before saying "Alright guys, we should hurry up if we wanna get there before sunset."

They all nodded and followed Maggie as she led the way. The four of them walked in silence for about half an hour until they finally got out of the woods and stepped on the main road again.

"We're here" said Maggie, pointing at the erected walls and sliding door at the end of the road.

The Winchester brothers raised their eyebrows in synch. Alexandria was much better than they'd expected, you know, in a post-apocalyptic town kind of way. They even could hear children playing and people laughing inside the walls. Whatever those people had lost, no matter how much that was, they still seemed to have a good thing going on. Whoever that Rick guy was, he knew how to take care of his people, and they had to give him that.

The two guards up on the top of the fence were quick to load their guns and aim at the new comers.

"It's okay! They're with me!" shouted Maggie to the guards, who then signaled to some people inside the walls to open the gates. The little group stepped inside as soon as the sliding doors opened. A bunch of people gathered around them, whispering to one another, making Sam and Dean feel uncomfortable and unwelcomed. Dean, true to himself, kept his hand on his pocket knife, ready to aim at anyone who'd give him trouble. Sam looked around awkwardly, trying not to meet anyone's eyes, even though they were all starring at the new comers.

The whispers stopped one after the other as a man slowly approached. He had long brown and curly hair pulled back, as well as a well maintained grey beard. He had a blue shirt tucked in his pair of jeans and his sleeves were rolled up to his elbows. He must have been in his mid 40's, and from the brief description Maggie had given the brothers earlier, they guessed soon enough that this had to be the group leader, Rick Grimes. The bearded man approached cautiously, looking around at his people, before laying his eyes on the two strangers standing beside Maggie.

"Maggie, what's all this?" Rick asked in his deep and loud voice, pointing at the new guys with one hand and keeping his other on the gun attached to his belt.

"Rick" she said, "This is Sam and Dean Winchester".

Sam quickly pulled his hand out of his pocket and handed it to Rick, trying to make a good impression. Rick simply looked at it with some sort of a disgusted face and ignored him, making Sam awkwardly put his hand back in his pocket. "What a douche bag", Dean thought to himself, with a judgmental look on his face.

"What are they doing here?" he asked again, with an almost too serious tone.

"They are old, hum…" she started before looking at the brothers "friends, from back when the world hadn't gone to hell. Enid and I found them up on the 236."

Rick still didn't look convinced.

"They can help, Rick." She continued.

Rick slowly approached the two men, got almost too close and asked his usual questions. "How many walkers have you killed?"

"Well, if you count this morning, that might have been, what 30? 40?" Dean said, looking at his little brother for approval "But before that, we haven't killed that much walkers, sorry to disappoint" continued Dean, doing quote marks with his hands on the word walkers.

Rick looked at him in confusion. "Are you saying that before this morning you hadn't killed any walkers?"

"Well walkers, no. To be honest, we don't even have any idea what's going on in here. We were helping out our friend Bobby up in South Dakota before heading out to a little motel just outside Virginia two days ago. And I swear the world was still in its shitty but normal state then! I mean dead people weren't just walking up the streets!" Dean answered.

"Well…" said Sam in remark to his brother's last sentence.

"Shut up Sam." Quickly said Dean.

"Dean, they're in this mess as much as we are, we have to tell them!"

"Tell us what?" Said Rick abruptly.

"We sort of…" started Sam.

"Sam, no." Interrupted his big brother.

Sam, who started to get annoyed, sighed heavily then said "Dean!"

After a brief silence, keeping the eye contact with his brother, Dean defeated "Fine, but don't say I didn't warn you."

Sam took a deep breath then said "Well, we might not have killed much walkers, as you call them, but we've had our fair share of killing all sorts of things."

Rick frowned in response, just as some people started to whisper behind him.

Sam continued nervously "Yeah that's, hum, it's sort of what we do. We're hunters, we, hum, kill all sorts of monsters, ghosts…"

"I beg your pardon?" answered Rick, confused.

"Yeah, I know, weird, right?" started Dean in a sarcastic tone. "We don't normally brag about it, but Sam here pulled out an High School Musical's We're all in this Together crap and thought you should know, so…"

"It's not possible" said Rick, as the whispers grew louder.

"Rick, it's true" Said Maggie. "And they can help us."

Rick thought about it for a second. "Well, even if this was true, walkers ain't the problem anymore. It's people we gotta worry about now. We need guns, weapons!"

"We have that!" exclaimed Sam.

Rick raised his eyebrows in surprise "Where?" he asked.

"In our car, up on the road!"

"We're gonna need those."

"Yeah, of course!"

"No, no, not of course, no way!" jumped in Dean. "They're our weapons!"

"Not anymore." Rick said looking at Dean dead in the eye. "You're gonna go get them in the morning. Daryl will go with you."

"Look, no offence sheriff, but we don't need babysitting" Dean answered, unimpressed.

"Yeah, well no offence, but I don't know you, and I certainly don't trust you. I'm giving you a chance because Maggie does, and I trust Maggie with my life. You have to know that we can't take any chances, so it's either that, or we kill you right now." Said Rick in his most serious tone.

Dean kept the eye contact with the Sheriff for a few seconds before raising his hands in defeat. "Fine, have it your way" he said.

Sam simply gave Rick a nod and a shy smile, to show him in a way that he knew who was in commend.

Later that night, Michonne joined Rick in their bedroom. He was sitting on the bed, taking his dirty clothes off. She slowly sneaked behind him and pressed a kiss on his cheek.

"They seemed okay" she said "I think they could help us". She wrapped her arms around his neck, laying her hands on his chest.

"Mmmh" simply answered Rick, closing his eyes and leaning his head back against Michonne's shoulders.

"You know, you didn't trust me either when we first met, and I turned out fine, didn't I?" she said with a playful smile.

"You turned out more than fine" he said, turning his head to kiss her lips.

"I think you should give them a chance" she said, pulling away from the kiss.

Rick caught her lips again. "You know, I really don't want to think about them right now" he said, deepening the kiss. They rolled over on the bed, kissing, smiling, as if the world wasn't so bad after all.