AN: Here we go, another little chapter here.
I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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"He had no damn business leaving her out here in the first place," Alice muttered. "Now we're on some kind of fucking wild goose chase because slippery Rick can't keep his hands on a kid."
She was walking a few feet in front of their little search group, clutching a large stick that she was using as a walking stick. She really didn't need the tool, but she'd been amused that the fallen branch was just the right size for her and she'd already demonstrated that it was pretty effective in taking down the three partially rotted Walkers that they'd encountered.
Andrea was stuck out here with Carol, Lori, and Alice because she hadn't been quick enough to get in any of the other groups when they were breaking up to take different areas surrounding their highway camp. She wanted to help look for Sophia, and she honestly didn't mind the company that she was with, but it seemed like the longer they searched and found nothing, not quite sure how to even go about searching because every time they raised their voices to call out for the girl they were met with more Walkers coming toward their voices, the more tempers in the small group began to rise.
Carol was, and understandably so, beside herself with the whole situation. Her daughter was missing. She'd spent a night out in the woods, which were likely full of Walkers, and it was looking like she might end up spending another out there. Because Carol was in this condition, and because of the fact that the girl was missing, Alice was pissed off at the world and, in particular, with Rick. And Lori? Well Lori was acting more like her presence there was an act of charity than anything else.
And Andrea was really starting to wonder how long it was going to be until she had to figure out how to get the bodies back to the highway.
"Rick had no choice!" Lori responded sharply.
Suddenly the whole group came to a halt when Alice stopped her forward progress, having somehow become their leader for the moment, and turned around to make a face at Lori.
"He had no choice?" Alice responded. "How did he not have a choice? When it comes down to abandon the kid or don't abandon the kid, you've got two choices. You either leave the kid, which makes you an asshole, or you don't leave the kid, which makes you at least seem like a decent human being!"
Andrea wasn't sure what her place was in the moment. The only thing she could do was step toward Carol the three steps that were separating them and put her arm around her. Carol wasn't in any condition to fight with anyone and it looked like she didn't need to be involved in this anyway. It was going to take place with or without her input.
"He did what any of us would have done," Lori protested. "He did what he had to do. He didn't have a weapon."
"Except a gun," Alice offered, shifting her weight.
"If he had shot that gun then the whole herd that passed us would have been right back on us," Lori said. "Aren't you and…them…"
She gestured off to the side and Andrea assumed that "them" must refer to Merle and Daryl.
"Aren't you the ones always screaming about noise and everything else that gets the attention of those creatures?" Lori finished.
Andrea pretended she wasn't at least a little pissed off at the facial expression that Lori made when referencing "them", who she couldn't even be bothered to give names to in the moment.
"Yeah, OK," Alice responded. "Fine, I'll give you that. Good old Officer Grimes didn't want to call the herd back. Why the hell didn't he just kill them there instead of leaving Sophia to trot off and kill them some other damn place?"
"What did you want him to do?" Lori asked. "I'd like to know what you would have done. In that situation? I'd like to know if anyone could have done things any differently. If you didn't have a weapon? You didn't have your knife? You couldn't have done things any differently!"
Andrea let her eyes dart around, wondering if the women knew that their voices carried. She could hear the growling already and she could see at least two Walkers, partially hidden by trees, making their way toward them. It wasn't going to be long before all of them got to test their strength against the creatures.
Alice looked toward one of them too. The one that seemed to have spotted them or smelled them or whatever it was that the creatures did. She dropped the stick she was holding on the ground and pulled her knife out of her belt. She held it up, stepping toward Lori, and then she dropped it on the ground by the woman's feet.
And then she scared all of them by running toward the Walker that was ambling toward them. She rolled it to the ground with the impact of their bodies and Andrea grabbed Carol in the instinctual way that came from sheer terror. She was almost one hundred percent certain that Alice had just lost whatever was left of her mind as she struggled with the thing.
And for the moment it had left all of them in the position of being paralyzed with their mouths open.
"Help her!" Carol finally choked out.
"I don't think she wants it," Andrea got out in response.
And it didn't look entirely like she needed it. She'd already found herself, in the leaves around her, another stick and before they could discuss it much beyond the point they were at, she'd jammed it through the eye of the writhing corpse.
When she hit her feet, she stomped on the skull several times, until she'd finally elicited a crunching sound from it. And then she stood, looking more insane than victorious, and panted while she looked down at it.
Carol tore loose from Andrea and ran over, but Alice only caught her in a halfhearted hug, breathing heavily from her exertions. Then she pulled away from Carol and made her way back to where she'd been standing before, gathering up her walking stick and bending down to pick up her knife by Lori's feet. She slipped the blade back into her belt and her breathing remained audible and ragged while she readjusted her now filthy clothes.
Everyone still remained frozen, except for Carol who seemed to be wandering at best.
"You don't fucking leave people," Alice spat, when she could speak again. "You just don't…It's the fucking soldier's creed for fuck's sake. You leave no man behind…and this is a damn child we're talking about."
Suddenly Andrea didn't know if the woman was even mad anymore. Now she sounded, on top of being clearly spent for the moment, like she might cry.
She turned and started walking forward again, but her head was hung, making it evident she was really doing very little searching for signs of Sophia's whereabouts at the moment.
Carol rushed her steps to walk beside Alice, but Andrea remained frozen to her spot a moment and didn't begin to walk again until Lori started to follow them.
"That's how everyone wants it to work," Lori offered, "but that's not necessarily the way it works. You said you were with another group before. You're not with them now. Sometimes you don't have a choice."
Alice stopped walking.
"They're all dead," she said without turning back to look at Lori. "Every last one of them died…they died on me, but I didn't leave them. Not until they were dead. Don't you tell me about what the hell I have or haven't done."
Alice turned around then.
"You don't even know where your son is half the damn time. When we were at camp? When we stop places? He wanders around…if anyone's lost in the woods it should be him. Do you think you'd feel the same way? If it were Carl out here? And we were all looking for him because he was gone for over a day? Do you think you'd be singing your husband's praises and paying homage to his balls?"
"You leave my son out of this!" Lori snapped, closing the distance between her and Alice until she was close to Alice's face. Andrea felt her pulse pick up at the tension of it and Carol stepped into the fray a hand going to each woman's shoulder as an effort to keep them apart.
"Stop it!" Carol spat. "Stop fighting! This isn't helping!"
"You stay away from my son," Lori said to Alice, shaking her head at her and ignoring Carol's pleas to end whatever was starting here. "You don't touch him, you don't look at him. You stay away from him."
Alice stared hard at Lori and then she smirked. She nodded her head and cocked an eyebrow at Lori, the smirk not leaving her face.
"Yeah," she said. "Whatever. I'll stay away from the kid. I didn't want to be around him anyway…but thanks for answering my question."
Lori backed up a step then and looked at Carol who looked, in Andrea's opinion, almost entirely defeated.
"I'm sorry about Sophia," Lori said. "I really am. I don't even know what you're going through right now. But Rick couldn't have done things any differently. None of us could have, no matter what anyone says. He's a good man and he did what he thought was best."
Carol didn't respond to Lori. Either she couldn't respond or she didn't believe the woman, Andrea wasn't sure which, but she didn't say anything. Alice seemed to have decided to stay quiet now, but the smirk on her face said clearly that just because she was biting her tongue didn't mean that she wasn't full of things to say.
"OK, listen," Andrea interjected quickly. "Let's just…go back to the highway. Let's see if anyone's seen anything. Let's find out if there's been any luck at all. We'll regroup. We're not getting anything done like this and we don't need fighting over what Rick did."
Suddenly Andrea was the center of Lori's attention. Lori turned, full body, in her direction and Andrea nearly backed up from the surprise of having the woman's eyes piercing through her. She hadn't done much voicing of her opinion on the subject, but it looked like Lori had apparently thought that she was "on her side" in the matter.
"Rick didn't do anything!" Lori snapped, directing it at Andrea.
"I think no one's disputing that," Alice quipped.
Andrea shook her head and sighed. She held up a hand in Lori's direction and tried to shoot some kind of warning at Alice who had dropped her free hand over Carol's shoulder while they stood waiting to either go back or go forward.
"Look, Lori," Andrea said. "I'm not saying that Rick did the right thing or that he did the wrong thing. None of us were there and we only know part of the story."
"Rick is a good man!" Lori responded. "He's a good man and he did everything he could do. He did more than anyone else would have in that situation!"
Andrea didn't mean to. She really didn't mean to. She didn't even know where it came from and she wasn't even aware that it had been hiding inside of her. She certainly never meant for it to escape. It was inappropriate on every level that it did. And it wasn't her intention. But intention or not, it happened.
She laughed.
And as soon as the sound escaped her mouth she understood why, but that didn't lessen her desire to take it back and swallow it down.
"You think you could have done better?" Lori asked with accusation. She laughed, but hers was a different kind of laughter. "I guess you think that you could have gone after her and handled the situation better?"
Andrea laughed again, now at the fact that Lori looked like she was ready to tear into her. She shook her head.
"I don't know if I could have done any of it," Andrea said. "I don't know…I wasn't there. But I don't think everyone would have left her. Merle wouldn't have left her. Daryl wouldn't have left her."
"Stop!" Carol cried out sharply and suddenly. "Just stop! I don't want to hear the fighting anymore! I just want my daughter back! And this isn't helping! Stop!"
And her outburst called in two more Walkers that had apparently been slowly following their sounds and had honed in on them more completely with the added benefit of hearing her voice ringing through even louder and more harshly.
Carol, armed like the rest of them with a knife, took down one of the Walkers…clearly sinking into it with the aggression and frustration that the whole situation was bringing out in her. Andrea rushed the other and knocked it to the ground with her impact, sinking her knife into its skull only moments after it hit the ground.
And she was surprised when Alice walked over and offered her a hand, heaving her to her feet without a word.
"Andrea's right," Alice said after a moment. "We should go back. Tell them there's nothing out here…no signs of anything…if Sophia were around here? She'd have come out for this."
Before they could unanimously decide, though, that they would start the trek back toward their camp, the sound of a shot ringing out echoed through the tree tops above them. In confusion and stunted panic they all looked at one another.
"Do you think…" Carol stuttered, the first to finally speak. "Do you think that means someone found her?"
Andrea didn't want to admit that she thought that meant that someone was likely dead, given that they apparently were against using guns for Walkers, but she didn't say it immediately.
"Rick and Shane are the only ones with guns," Lori said. "I think that means they're in trouble. We've gotta get back."
And Lori darted back the way they'd come with the rest of them following behind her at a slightly slower speed, no one willing to admit that they weren't as concerned as they maybe should be over the possibly less than ideal fate of the two men who were, as Merle had told Andrea repeatedly, likely to kill each other "over a piece of spoiled pussy".