Chapter 16: Familiar faces

No one's POV

Outside of a deep forest in grass field where a camp has been set up with about four or five RVs, couple of tents and about 28 people in the camp. Among them is teenage girl with with short dirty blond hair wearing a red ball cap and wearing a Steelers jersey, khaki shorts, and dark brown eyes. She was sitting at the top at one of the RV's with a machete resting in her lap looking out for any undead attempting to enter the camp even though there were none out there. All there was was some birds and insects chirping people chattering in the camp, and the annoying mosquito bites that Rachel Collins is getting frequently.

"Doing okay up here, RC?" A man's voice came from behind her. Rachel looked behind her to see that a Hispanic man with short black hair and a light beard with a grey shirt and some dirty jeans.

"Same shit, Martinez." Rachel replied.

Martinez smirked at her response. "I got it from here. Go get some chow."

"Thanks, man."

Rachel didn't even bother standing up. Instead, she hopped down on the edge of the RV landing on her two feet perfectly.

"Don't try and hurt yourself!" Martinez called to her.

"Wouldn't dream of it!" Rachel shouted back sheathing her machete while she was walking toward where all the people were at and took a seat on a chair observing the people around her.

There was Mitch, a cocky short tempered guy who was working on the tank trying to see if he can fix the engine, and was doing a terrible job doing it.

He may be a tank operator, but he's not the best.

Rachel never really cared for Mitch or pretty much most people in the group she was in right now. The only real people she cares about is Martinez, Mitch's brother, Pete, and Aisha.

Martinez never really talked about his past or what he did before the outbreak, but when Rachel asked him, she noticed that he had a look of shame and guilt on his face, so she let it go. Honestly, Rachel didn't even care, cause he's keeping the group going so far, and he's doing a fine job at it as well, and they had a good relationship so she won't argue.

Pete's a good, even headed guy, but Rachel finds him naive and is somewhat unaware of how bad the world has gotten. He was a soldier that was stationed at Ft. Benning, before he left mostly because of his brother egging him, and was sick of just doing nothing all day. Rachel initially didn't like him, because of her hatred towards the Military and the things she witnessed in the early stages of the outbreak, but later on, she warmed up to him and saw that he was a good guy.

Like Pete, Rachel was at first not very fond of Alisha due to her being military, Army Reserves more specifically, and for Alisha the feeling was mutual because of her unit getting slaughtered by both the undead and angry civilians who did a lot of cruel and despicable things to her friends from hangings, mutilating corpses, and burning them alive. She still has nightmares about it. But after some time, and a little chat from Martinez, they eventually formed a friendship.

Rachel's POV

"Mitch still up there trying to fix the tank?"

I turned to see Alisha walking out an RV with two cans of Chef Boyardee Spaghetti and Meatballs, along with some forks. She tossed one of each to me.

"Danke." I said in my fluent German opening up my can and took a bite. "Yeah he is. I can see the problem just fine, but he's too dumb, and stubborn to see it."

Alisha gave me a quizzical look, which made me grin. "Tracks are getting rusty and falling apart. She can still move but not for long."

She chuckled at my answer. "You seem to know how tanks work."

I shrugged. "Ehh.. I know enough. My grandpa is the tank master."

Alisha looked amazed. "You're grandpa was in a tank?"

"Uh huh. WWII, he was the gunner, but he quickly learned other parts of it too."

"He drove a Sherman right?"

I shook my head. "Panzer IV. German."

She looked at me all surprised with wide eyes. "Jesus..."

I chuckled. "I know, a shocker. Fought on the Eastern Front. He was only 21. One of my best friends had a Russian grandpa that fought in WWII."

"You think both grandpa's fought in the same battles?"

I nodded. "Stalingrad, Kursk, and Seelow Heights."

She chuckled. "Sounds like you guys were WWII geeks."

"And with good reason." I told her.

"So how'd he came to the States?"

"When the Russians were just outside of Berlin, Grandad got the hell outta dodge with his mom and little brother to Western Europe," I explained. "Couple of months after the war ended, he moved to Pennsylvania and worked in a steel mill plant. Later on had my dad, and my parents had me."

I reach into my shirt and pulled out a necklace with a silver oval shaped dog tags that were my grandpa's. "He gave this to me on my tenth birthday."

"Looks cool."

We both heard Mitch just yelling out of frustration, which resulted in us snickering.

"You're freezing, idiot." I mumbled humorously, meaning that he was not even close towards the problem.

I turned back to Alisha. "So I never got to ask you, what do you call the the legions of walking corpses?"

She smirked at my question. "I called them screechers, cause they tend to do that obviously."

I nodded. "Touche." I took another bite of my canned food.

"You?"

"Zombies." I simply said.

"Never thought anyone would call them that."

I grinned. "Yeah well... Me and my friends watched some horror apocalypse movies and played those sorts of video games so-"

"We got Biters!" I heard Martinez yelled. "RC, Alisha with me! Rest of you, keep this camp safe!"

Just like that the camp immediately stopped what they were doing and started going alert to see what was going on.

I sprang from my chair and dashed towards the outskirts of camp with my machete unsheathed. Martinez and Alisha came to my position as well.

We could see about nine or ten zombies all gathered around what Martinez likes to call the pit, while a couple of them were just shuffling and making there way towards us as soon as we were in their sites. I quickly made the assumption that someone fell in and was surrounded.

"Alright, you two take out the stragglers and help me out with the rest of them as soon as your done."

"Got it, boss." Alisha acknowledged as she walked quickly to the one closest to her and stabbed it in the eye with a combat knife. I sprinted towards my target that was picking up the pace as well, but I pushed it back and stabbed it at the side of the head and yanked it out quickly causing it to collapsed to the ground. We quickly came to Martinez's aid as he got swung his baseball bat killing one zombie and crippling the next one allowing me to give it a good slash on the head, while Alisha kicked another one to the ground stabbing it right on the front of the skull.

As we finished off the rest of them, We could hear a little girl whimpering and a mans voice trying to comfort the crying girl. All three of us got a better view to see that there was a man dressed in all black from the jacket to pants with a black eye patch on his left eye looking up at us with a terrified look while holding a little girl with blond hair tightly in his arms.

"Holy shit..." I heard Martinez whispered. I looked at him trying to read his facial expressions and I can tell that this is not the happy holy shit shoclo, but bad kind of shock. I could tell right away that Martinez knew this guy, and I was eager to find out.

We helped them out of the pit and Martinez and the other guy whom I'm going to call Patchy for now gave each other a stare for a few seconds before Patchy finally said. "Thank you." And hugged the girl again telling her that she was okay.

I went to Alisha's side and murmured to her, "Keep your eyes on him."

"Thank you for stating the obvious." She smugly replied.

I shook my head. "No. I mean keep your eyes on him." I whispered again emphasizing on him. "Martinez knows this guy and not in a good way."

Alisha finally got what I was saying and she nodded. "Got it."

After warning Alisha, I went to the girls side and got down to her level. "Hi sweetie, my names Rachel. What's yours?" I said all friendly and caring.

She looked down at her feet obviously shy. "Meghan." I heard her mumble.

"That's a pretty name." I commented trying to make her feel better. I offered her my hand.

Meghan took my hand and shook it.

"You want to have something to eat?" I offered.

Meghan looked up at Patchy trying to see if he was okay.

He nodded with a smile. "Go'n 'head, honey." He said in a gruff southern accent.

I offered her my hand to which she took and I led her back to the camp with Alisha not far behind.

"Taken care of, guys!" Alisha shouted relieving the camp.

As we both took a seat, I decided to ask Meghan something. "Who's that man?" I didn't go with 'Is that your father?' Because I might say the wrong thing, and bring up some bad memories.

"His name is Brian." She replied. "My mom, Aunt Tara, and me met him back at the apartment a week ago. We were hiding from the monsters."

I smiled at her. "The monster won't get you now." I assured her.

But my gut was telling me that Patchy was a bigger threat than the zombies, based on the look Martinez had on him. I needed to find out who this guy was and I needed to find out now!

We finally see where Rachel is at after all this time! Now the real question is how will the reunion with Casey and Yuki work out? Hope you guys like Rachel's nickname for the Governor lol. FYI, like Yuki, Rachel is based off a very good friend of mine so to my friend, I hope you loved this chapter and hope your happy you made and appearance lol :P

I'm pumped for tonights episode, but a concerned for Beth cause Dawns is obviously not the best cop in the world, but I have hopes that its not her time, she's grown into a badass!

Anyways hope you guys loved this chapter. Feel free to review, comment, and enjoy :)

Thanks guys! DeltaSandman out! :)