When Beth and Daryl got back to the church, Rick was holding a meeting outside.

Everyone looked up as they joined the group, Maggie especially. She stood across from them with Glenn's arm around her shoulder, her eyes puffy from crying, watching Beth closely.

Rick laid the map out on the ground and stepped back to address everyone. "Alright, so we all know the plan has changed. Now we just have to figure out our next move. I wanna hear everyone's thoughts on it. We'll start with you, Glenn."

Glenn turned to Maggie with an unspoken question and she nodded, so he looked around the circle at everyone and spoke. "Eugene still thinks that Washington is our best chance at finding some place safe. He said they would've been better prepared for something like this; taken priority over other cities for stockpiling supplies." He scanned over the faces around him. "Maggie and I think we should go there."

Rick mulled over the suggestion, not seeming convinced. "Six hundred miles is a long trip based on a guess from somebody who's already lied to us once. Where is Eugene, anyway?"

Maggie glared pointedly over at Abraham. "He's in the truck. Recoverin'."

"Recovering?" Rick waited for Abraham to explain but the man just folded his arms and stared down at the map without a word.

Rosita spoke up to break the silence. "It's a long way to go, but Eugene is smart. He knows things. He lied about having the cure because he doesn't think he's strong enough to survive without someone protecting him, but Eugene has nothing to gain from suggesting Washington if he doesn't think we'd be better off there." She looked over at Maggie and Glenn. "I vote we go."

Rick called out Abraham's name to get his opinion but the man still didn't acknowledge him.

Rosita rested her hands on her hips and scoffed at his pig-headedness, turning to answer for him. "Don't you worry about him. He goes where I go."

Going around the circle, Rick asked for everyone's input, and it seemed the general consensus was for DC.

When Beth's turn came she paused before answering to share a quiet look with Daryl. He nodded his agreement so she turned to the group.

"I guess we're in, too." Beth happened to glance over at Maggie and see the way she was frowning at them.

Rick bent down and picked up the map. "It's settled then. Is there much gas left in the firetruck?"

Rosita shook her head. "It's almost on empty."

"Alright, well there's plenty of room between the truck and the car for everyone. Let's get our things loaded in the vehicles and leave in 15." Rick watched them head into the church and caught Daryl's attention as he passed. "Help me figure out the route we'll be takin' before we go."

Beth left him and went inside, walking over to where she and Daryl had slept last night.

She had just bent over to start rolling up her sleeping bag when Maggie came up behind her. Beth saw the boots approaching and sighed, sitting back on her haunches and waiting for her sister to start crying again, but she wasn't prepared for what actually came next.

"What's goin' on with you two?" Maggie's arms were crossed and she stared accusingly down at Beth.

"What?" She looked up at her sister's stern face, completely caught off guard.

"You and Daryl. I wanna know what's goin' on."

Beth felt her cheeks start to flush with anger, but she calmly finished tying her sleeping bag together before she stood up and looked Maggie in the eye. "Not that it's any of your business, but Daryl and I are just good friends."

Her sister barked out a sarcastic laugh. "Good friends? He's been attached to your hip since we got back."

Beth grabbed Daryl's blanket off the floor and rolled it up quickly to hopefully get away from her sister's interrogation. "Nothin' is goin' on Maggie. We just….grew closer after the prison. He's been there for me."

She picked up the bedding and held it under her arm, trying to brush past so she could get outside again, but Maggie blocked her with a sudden expression of concern.

"He's not pushin' himself on you, is he? You tell me now if he is and I'll set him straight. Just because he helped you doesn't mean you owe him anythin' in return."

Beth stopped in her tracks, outraged that her sister would accuse him of such a thing. "Daryl is a good man, Maggie. If you knew him at all you'd understand he'd never dream of doin' that."

"So you don't have feelings for him, then?" Maggie leaned down slightly to get a better read on her sister's face.

"Maggie," Beth was glad her face was already pink as she slipped by, "could you be any more annoyin'?" She started walking up the aisle, eager to end the conversation when her sister called out behind her.

"You have no idea what you're doin', Beth."

Beth spun around, seeing her older sister staring back at her with a patronizing look, and she lashed out. "You don't have a good enough track record as a sister to be tellin' me what to do, Maggie. The days of you bossin' me around are over. I don't need you anymore."

Beth swallowed thickly, feeling a stab of guilt as she saw Maggie's face fall, but she was too stubborn to take it back and jogged down the steps.

She found Rick and Daryl examining the map they had spread out on the hood of the car. Rick pointed at an area. "I want to stay off the major highways. If we cut across here we can get on route 29. That takes us all the way to DC, and there's plenty of small towns on the way to look for supplies and gas as we go."

Rick started folding up the map. "I'll keep this with me in the truck and take the lead. You drive the car, Daryl. There's more than a half a tank of gas in each vehicle so we should be good for a while, but if I see an opportunity to get some more I'll pull over."

Daryl nodded and opened the driver's door to get in, stashing his crossbow on the floor of the passenger's side for easy access.

While everyone else loaded the truck with the last of their food and belongings, Beth threw her armload in the car trunk and headed for the passenger door to sit beside Daryl, but Maggie beat her to it. With a pointed look, her sister yanked open the car door and plunked herself on the seat.

Reaching for the back door handle with irritation, Beth watched Glenn get in the other side and nod across the car at a young woman with brown hair standing behind Beth, groaning when she realized she'd be designated to sit in the middle because she was the smallest.

She shimmied over to the center, meeting Daryl's gaze in the rear view mirror and rolling her eyes. He chuckled under his breath at her predicament, and Maggie glared at him. "What are you laughin' at, Dixon?"

He started the car and put it in drive, responding to her evenly. "I ain't laughin' at nothin'."

"Well then wipe that smirk off your face and pay attention to the road." Maggie glared out through the windshield and settled back into her seat.

"Maggie." Beth chastised her sister but she was just ignored.

When they got on the road, almost a half hour had passed before anyone spoke because of the tension Maggie brought to the car. The woman sitting next to Beth had been restlessly drumming her fingers on her leg for several miles when she finally spoke. "Ok, I can't take this. It's going to be one long ass road trip if nobody talks." She turned to Beth and smiled, holding out her hand. "My name's Tara. Come here often?"

Beth giggled and shook her hand. "Beth. No, I'm new in town."

"That's cool. I can totally show you around, if you want. We could grab some pizza, maybe go see a movie. I hear Dead Man Walking is back by popular demand."

Beth laughed out loud and covered her mouth to stifle it when Maggie glared over her shoulder.

Daryl looked back at her in the rear view mirror. "She prefers hamburgers," making Beth blush when she saw him smirking.

Tara looked back and forth between them with a little smile. "You guys make a cute couple. How long have you been together?"

Everyone else in the car froze. Beth and Daryl locked eyes briefly in the mirror until he looked away nervously, and Maggie turned around in her seat to level a stare at Tara.

Taking in the dirty look aimed at her, Tara's eyebrows shot up. "Oh, they're not together? Shit, sorry guys. I guess I misread that one."

Glenn looked out his window and snickered until Maggie reached back and pinched his leg. "Ow ow, okay. Sorry."

Maggie was clearly annoyed, and shifted in her seat, trying to get comfortable until she growled in frustration at how much room Daryl's crossbow was taking up. "This thing keeps jabbin' me in the knee!"

Beth straightened in her seat to get a look and made an innocent suggestion that came out all kinds of wrong. "Just stick it between your legs."

Tara started to howl with laughter, and even Glenn risked another pinch to the leg by joining her. He raised a disbelieving brow at Beth and she shook her head, mortified. "I didn't mean it like that! You guys are a bunch of perverts," but couldn't help the giggle that came out.

"Oh, I like you." Tara nudged Beth's arm. "We're going to get along just fine."

Nearly an hour later they passed a large road sign that said 'Welcome to Athens, Georgia Population 119,980', and Daryl pulled up behind Rick when he saw the truck was coming to a stop.

Rick jumped out and stood in the middle of the road, hands on his hips, staring at the on-ramp further up the road that was plugged full of stranded vehicles. He looked up at the overpass, too, but it was just as crowded in either direction.

Everyone got out of the car, and while Tara walked over to the back of the truck to let the others stretch their legs, the other four joined Rick to see what the problem was.

Daryl slung his crossbow over his shoulder and looked at his friend. "What's goin' on?"

Rick let out a troubled breath as Michonne joined then, gesturing at the ramp. "That's the route I wanted to take. But it doesn't look like it's gonna happen."

Shielding his eyes from the sun overhead, Daryl pointed at the road they were already on. There wasn't a car in sight. "What's wrong with this one?"

"Remember we wanted to keep off major highways? That also included stayin' out of cities, or at least anythin' bigger than a small town." He pointed in the direction they'd come from. "You saw the sign back there. Population 120,000? That's a lot of dead people."

Everyone traded worried glances as they pictured what that could mean. Best case scenario…they manage to weave their way through all the abandoned cars and stray walkers and come out on the other side of the city. Worst case scenario….the streets would be too full for them to get through without attracting unwanted attention and they get cornered by a herd.

Michonne pulled out the map and started scanning it. "Can't we just back track and get around it somehow?"

Rick shook his head, pointing at all the side roads they had already passed. "Everythin' else just leads to the Interstate, and that would be even worse."

Beth reached for the map and examined it while Rick spoke. "If we're gonna do this, I'll keep takin' the lead with the truck. I'll be higher up and have a better vantage point for spotting openings for us to get through. This isn't New York City, by any means, but it's big enough, so we need to keep our wits about us to get through it."

Beth passed the map back to him, looking over his shoulder as he showed Daryl the route he'd be taking. "This cuts straight through. We'll follow it and go diagonally across this intersection and then left on Peter Street here. That will lead us right back to 29."

He looked Daryl square in the eye. "Keep as close behind me as you possibly can. If we get separated I'll stay on the street I'm on for as long as I'm able and wait for you."

Daryl nodded once, and everyone started walking back to their respective vehicles. As if they needed a reminder of what waited for them, a large group of walkers started emerging from the woods across the road, trailing after them as they pulled away.

The area they went through first was just scattered subdivisions, and they only had to slow down a couple times to drive over lawns when the road was blocked by cars.

Rick turned right onto the twinned highway that lead into the city, picking carefully around the clusters of vehicles that dotted the road. There weren't many walkers visible, just the odd straggler here and there, and Beth couldn't decide if that was a good sign or not.

The parallel lanes of the highway soon converged into one two lane road as they approached the outskirts of the city, and they drove past dozens of small businesses. Cars were parked haphazardly everywhere and garbage littered the ground, but the undead seemed to be in hiding.

Tara looked out the windows and voiced what everyone was thinking. "This is eerie as fuck. Where are they?"

Daryl kept a firm grip on the wheel as he tailed the truck, steering around a city bus that was blocking part of the road. As he came around the front bumper, a walker stepped up to the car and slammed its hands against Maggie's window, making her scream and jump in her seat.

Daryl yelled at her, furious. "Jesus Christ, Maggie. Put a fuckin' lid on it. I gotta focus here."

She swallowed thickly and settled back into her seat. "Sorry. It won't happen again."

They continued on, the area becoming more densely populated, and the side streets that were lined with older traditional homes now turned into city blocks.

The truck approached the first intersection, Rick steering it up onto the sidewalk to get around a five car pileup. Daryl followed him, and as they creeped along a male walker lingered alongside Tara's window, snarling in at her and smearing its hands over the glass.

She looked up at it with disgust and said, "Go away, douchebag. You're not my type."

Beth put a hand on Tara's knee to get her attention, shaking her head quietly and holding a finger against her lips, and Tara whispered, "Sorry."

They went through one intersection after another, inching around abandoned cars and trucks, and going up over curbs and around when necessary. It seemed like the street would never end, and Maggie finally asked quietly, "How much further before we turn up that one Rick mentioned?"

Beth pulled forward in her seat and looked up through the windshield, pointing at a sign. "That's Lumpkin Street. There's another 4 way after this, and then at the next intersection after that we follow Rick across it diagonally to the right."

They followed the truck to the next one and came across another mass of car wrecks that closed off the street. Rick once again went up over the curb and around a lamp post, the truck rocking from side to side as it dropped down off the sidewalk and back onto the pavement.

Daryl followed suit, but didn't notice how high the curb on the other side was until it was too late. The street sloped down sharply into a storm drain and, when he drove forward, the car's hind end was too low to clear it. The back bumper came to rest solidly on the edge of the sidewalk behind them with one of the wheels hanging just above the ground. Daryl hit the gas, but where the car was rear-wheel drive the one tire just spun against the pavement.

The white truck was getting ahead of them now, and Daryl stepped on the accelerator again until Tara spoke up. "Um, guys, we might want to get going now."

She stabbed her finger against her window and everyone looked to their right, seeing a group of at least a hundred walkers shuffling toward them.

Daryl gave the car more gas but it did nothing. The first couple walkers came up to the passenger side, pressing their decaying faces against the glass, and Glenn put a hand on Daryl's seat, shaking it. "C'mon man. We're going have to leave the car or we'll be trapped in here!"

Daryl slammed the heels of his hands against the steering wheel and looked up into the rear view mirror, locking eyes with Beth. She was still perched forward, her hands grasping the top of each front seat, eyes wide with fear. He spoke only one word, but she knew instantly what he was asking her to do. "Beth." She shook her head slightly, still caught in his gaze, and he reached back, putting his hand on hers.

Glenn started screaming, "We need to go, and we need to go NOW! They're almost here!"

Beth took one last look at Daryl and bowed her head, her stomach twisting with anxiety that she would be the reason they all died if she couldn't do as he asked.

Closing her eyes and trying to block out all the distractions around her, she pictured wrapping her hands underneath the metal lip of the back bumper, and imagined the cool metal digging into her palms. Beth had never moved anything this heavy, but she didn't want to overshoot and flip the car either, so she gritted her teeth and pushed, squeezing the fingers on Daryl's hand so he knew to step on the gas at the same time.

The car lurched forward, both rear wheels spinning against the pavement now, leaving the walkers behind. Glenn slapped Daryl's shoulder with a look of relief on his face, thinking he pulled off a miracle.

Daryl only briefly met Beth's gaze in the mirror again, nodding at her before turning his attention back to catching up with the truck.

It was nearly half a block ahead of them by now, and he darted around cars as quickly as he could to gain ground on them.

The white truck was approaching the last intersection, and it was huge. Cars and trucks littered the expanse between the five streets that lead away from it, and Daryl watched as Rick weaved his vehicle across and turned onto the far right exit.

He stepped harder on the gas but they were still about 30 seconds behind when they heard the sound.

Up ahead, a large herd started moving out into the intersection the truck had just crossed from the street on their immediate right. Daryl floored the car and screamed at everyone to hold on, but the walkers were too far in for them to take the same street as Rick. Several bodies struck the passenger side and their left bumper clipped another vehicle, forcing them to take the road straight ahead of them instead.

Daryl's knuckles were white against the steering wheel while he yelled, "Shit shit shit."

They all watched helplessly as the truck disappeared from their view down the other street.

Maggie had her hands braced against the dash, and there was panic in her voice. "What are we gonna do? We don't know this city! How are we gonna find them with that herd blockin' us?"

Beth leaned forward more until her head was almost next to Daryl's and pointed straight ahead. "It's okay. I know the way. Just keep goin' along here and drive over the river. Then turn right onto Broad Street."

Maggie turned around in her seat and looked at Beth. "How do you know where you're goin'?"

Beth just shrugged at her. "I looked at the map. Figured somebody ought to where Rick kept it with him."

Daryl pushed his shoulder back against her hand and she saw him look in the mirror at her, his eyes filled with pride. She blushed and cleared her throat. "Okay, turn right here and follow that street until it ends."

She navigated him through a couple subdivisions before they reached the spot she wanted.

Beth nodded ahead of them. "That's Peter Street. Should probably go right first and see if they're waiting for us where they first turned on to it."

Sure enough, Rick sat behind the wheel of his vehicle, anxiously watching his side mirror for signs of them when they pulled up in front of the truck.

Rick leaned out the window while Daryl backed the car up into a driveway to get turned around. "Where were you?"

Daryl rolled his down to answer, shaking his head. "We'll explain later. Let's get the hell outta here before that herd catches up to us."

Rick lifted a hand in agreement and started driving, leading them away from the city. They rolled all the windows down in the car once green fields started flashing by, letting the wind blow in around them.

Tara sprawled back in her seat. "Holy shit. That was intense." She smirked and reached down, tugging on the fabric of Beth's scrubs. "You need new pants, and I need new underwear 'cause I'm pretty sure I crapped myself twice back there."

Beth giggled, and even Maggie looked over her shoulder and smiled at her and Glenn. Leaning forward, Beth braced her elbows on the front seats. "You done good, ."

Maggie folded her arms and looked over at him with an eyebrow raised. "Yeah. Not bad, Daryl."

"Mmmm." He rested his elbow on the door and stared ahead, brushing off the compliments, and Beth grinned, leaning back against her seat with a contented sigh.

Just your average road trip in the ZA...

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