++++++ I do not own the Walking Dead or any affiliated characters apart from my OC. All rights belong to Kirkman and the AMC ++++++

Fifty-Nine

Rick and I had been clearing the traps out for about an hour when we came across a large boar lying listlessly on the ground. We looked at each other, neither of us were vets but there was clearly something wrong with that animal.

"We should put it down before it infects something else," I suggested. "Last thing we need is some kind of epidemic or something on our hands."

"Agreed," Rick nodded.

I handed him my hunting knife and as he started off through the bushes to put the boar down, a low shuffling caught our attention. Both Rick and I took cover in the trees and watched as a walker came through the trees and straight at the boar on the ground. Rick mouthed instruction for us slowly retreat.

I can take it, I mouthed right back at him, gripping my bow tightly.

Rick glared at me and I sighed.

Fine! I growled.

We turned to leave but…

"Wait!" gasped a small voice.

We stopped.

"Please. Please? Please help me."

I turned around and realised that the walker was in fact a woman. I instantly aimed at her, not knowing whether she was armed or not.

"I know you don't know me," she pleaded.

Rick nodded. "I know that."

"But can you please help me get this to my husband?" she whispered. "We haven't eaten in days."

Rick dug around the bag he was carrying and handed the woman the lunch that we'd brought with us. "Here." When she hesitated to take it Rick told her to go ahead.

She snatched it off him. "Thank you." As she started digging into the food, she looked us both up and down. She seemed to trust Rick more than me cause I still had my bow drawn. "Do you have a camp around here?"

Rick nodded. "Yeah."

Her eyes lit up. "Could we possibly come back with you? We've been doing…very badly on our own."

Rick paused and looked at me. "I'd have to meet him. And I'd need to ask him some questions, both of you."

"What questions?" she asked us.

"Just three," Rick assured her, using what training he had as a sheriff's deputy to calm her down-or trying to anyway. Ah yes, the three questions, I frowned. The council had come up with the three questions as a sort of screening process when it came to admitting people into the prison.

How many walkers have you killed?How many people have you killed?Why?

"When we get to your camp," he added.

"You have a gun on you?" I inquired before Rick could. I didn't trust this woman one bit, something seemed off about her-that or it could have been all the times she's spent with just her husband.

She shook her head.

I handed Rick my bow and walked towards her. "I'm just going to make sure," I assured her when she jumped at my coming at her. "We don't know you, so I'm gonna tell you this. You try anything-anything-and I will kill you. You will be the one to lose."

She looked at me sadly. "I don't have anything else to lose."

"No, you don't," I frowned.

"You do," she whispered.

I glared at her but didn't say anything. Only when I was done checking her did she start to take us to her camp.

"What's your name?" Rick inquired whilst we walked behind her.

"Clara," she confessed in a drawl. "My name is Clara. Who are you?"

"Rick," he answered. "I'm Rick and this is my wife, PJ."

Clara seemed to smile a little. "How long have you two been married?"

"Couple months," Rick replied, smiling at me.

I smiled back at him.

"That's lovely," she told us. "My husband…Eddie and I were going to Puerto Vallarta for our honeymoon. When they shut down the airports, our connecting flight never connected." Clara continued picking at the food as the two of us followed her. "They wouldn't let us leave the terminal, so…we slept next to these huge marble sculptures from Zimbabwe. On the fourth night…the things just came through. There was a lot of us," she confessed, "and now…now it's just Eddie and me. And I wouldn't have made it if it wasn't for him."

I listened closely. Sometimes it was hard to remember anything from before.

"And it isn't that…" she trailed off. "He saved me over and over again or he show me the things that I had to do…or to be willing to do…if he wasn't still here…I-I couldn't be. I just…I couldn't."

"What were they?" Rick asked.

I watched the two of them as they talked.

"What?" Clara frowned.

"The things you had to be willing to do?" Rick asked.

"Um…" she whispered, "eating whatever we could find-animal carcasses and rotten fruit…and leaving people behind."

Those last three words stung the most.

Leaving people behind.

I'd done plenty of that during my time.

"Hiding from people who needed my help…unlike you two…" she pointed out.

"This isn't charity," I warned her. "Thing about surviving as long as we have…you have to have numbers…If I hadn't realised that then I'd probably be dead by now. People are the best defence against walkers or people. We help each other."

"You call them walkers?" Clara inquired. "I never knew what they were called really."

Rick sighed. "I saw those sculptures at the airport once. My favourite was the kids playing leapfrog."

"Mine, too," Clara smiled. "What Eddie and I had to do, did you do things like that? Do you think we get to come back from them?"

I found myself running my hands over my stomach where little HG was slightly safer from the outside world. I wasn't ashamed to admit that I did what I had to do because I was doing them for my child and for Jade or for Carl and for Judith. I'd never regret my actions as long as I lived.

As the three of us came into the camp site I paused when I saw the lack of a husband sitting around. In fact there was only signs of one set of footprints and they belonged to Clara. I was getting that funny feeling again.

"Eddie!" Clara called out in excitement. "Thank God you're still here. This is Rick!" she grinned, falling to her knees in front of a box. "He's gonna help us. Everything's gonna be ok."

I drew my bow and aimed it at Clara just as she swung at Rick with a knife. "Son of bitch!" I hissed. "Put it down!"

"Damn it!" Rick gasped, just missing the knife.

"I wanted to take the boar!" she confessed. "I just knew…I'd get you two here so much quicker."

"And do what?" Rick demanded to know. "There's two of us!"

"He's starving!" Clara cried. "He's slowing. He needs something alive! Please I told you, I can't be without him."

I looked down at the box with the cloth over the top and realised what was actually under there. It was big enough for just a head.

Eddie's head.

"So I kept him! It was wrong!" I can't do things like this!" she told us, gripping the knife. "And…and you have to do things like this!" Clara raised the knife and stabbed herself in the stomach."

"Jesus Christ!" I gasped as Rick went to help her.

"Let me be like him," she whispered.

"You want to be a walker?" I frowned, trying to pick the logic out of her last wish. I looked at Rick who shrugged and told me to look out for any more walkers.

I rolled my eyes and walked away from crazy town. It wasn't long before Rick came up behind me, cleaning the blood off his hands. "She dead?" I asked him.

Rick nodded. "Yeah…I let her go, didn't shoot her in the head. It was her last wish."

The two of us started back to the prison in silence.

When we came to the gates, I waited as we were let back inside.

Could we really come back from the things we've done?