uh, so this was not suppose to keep going... But it did, and it has now been geared more to a maleoc/Daryl/Rick story it seems... I am toying with some of these ideas but have not settles on exactly where I wanted to land in the long run, because again, this was not suppose to keep going...

I guess now is a good time as ever to declare I do not own the walking dead and I have not and will not make money off this story, not even in a '50 shades of gray' kind of way. Im not really interested in writing a book or any kind of money I could get by selling the story line. I'm liturally just typing. Edits are bearly a thing with this story so if you don't like mentally fixing the spelling, grammar, blah blah blah, don't read. If you are interested in betaing... well, I'll see where I wanna take this first. I am not planning to follow the story line of the walking dead, but setting up a good background I think... This is Pre-Zombies so far, and appearently so far its starts 5 years before... I am heavily editing a lot of minor details as well with each chapter.

-Loner

Rick, fucking, Grimes, Aiden couldn't help but think as he watched the officer and sheriff stroll down the sidewalk across the street from where Aiden was sitting on his motorcycle, helmet on, dark tented visor down covering his face, probably thought he was a breath of fresh air with how boring he looked to the short man. Aiden would say otherwise though. Aiden hated boring. Boring made Aiden's blood run dry and the anger he carried with him, all the damn time, increase to the point of exploding. It was all Aiden could do to not explode randomly on the nearest passed by, fist flying, a scream of rage on the tips of his lips.

Instead of fighting like his body so told him to do, he was sitting nicely on his bike, like a good boy… er, man, in the middle of a small boring town watching the boring sheriff walk up to the Icrime scene of a boring cookie cutter house. And, no, this wasn't his crime scene. He did know whose it was, though, which is why he was even in this bloody town with its gross ass people and box shaped minivans. He and his gang had been tacking the traitorous bastard for a week now, with hopes of bringing the asshole to justice, the gangs justice. The bastard knew it too, else he wouldn't have mockingly chose to come to this upscale, normal in every sense of the word town. He was laughing at Aiden with this kill, and Aiden was raging inside all the more for it.

Fucking bastard. I'm gonna kill him in the most creative, painful way I can imagine, Aiden thought as he angrily added more violent nail marks to the beautiful paint job on his bike just below the handle bars, where his hand sat. In a moment of clarity, Aiden apologetically stroked the marks after feeling the chipped paint dig into the skin underneath his nails. Another reason to kill the asshole. How dare the bitch make him ruin his favorite bike.

Aiden sat for hours on his bike, watching through his visor as police, EMTs, and forensic shifted around the crime scene, probably ruining any traces of the asshole who did the act in the process, like little ants whose colony just got invaded. Why it took so long to take pictures and dust for prints in a small 2 room home, Aiden didn't know, didn't care to know. The short man just wanted to go in and look for the next clue. The next price of the puzzle, so he could call Jefferson and Terry, both of which were outside the town waiting for the next destination, and be on his way out already. Aiden wanted to catch the bastard before he left the damn state, not after.

Try as he might, Aiden just didn't have enough information on the guy yet to narrow down how he was planning to leave. Everything about the guy screamed desperate, paranoid, and crazy. To be fair, Aiden briefly thought, tilting his head as sharp eyes caught the curtains move in the window of the living room and a set of eyes meeting his for a brief moment, the guy had been with them long enough to know Aiden was one evil, sickeningly sarcastic sadist who would stop at nothing to get his hands on the man.

Calm as ever, like he hadn't just locked eyes with the sheriff that finally noticed him from across the sea of heads watching along the border of the crime scene tape, Aiden reached out and turned the key to the engine, bike roaring to life. The front door opened as Rick Grimes started the trek across the front lawn to get to him, the man's partner following behind like a lost puppy. Aiden grinned, one of his sharp grins, not that anyone would notice behind the full faced visor, at the Sheriff and kicked off, bike screaming down the way as he swerved around the oncoming traffic and around the corner.

The next time Aiden saw the sheriff, it was, give or take, a day and a half later, approximately 36 hours later, at another crime scene. Aiden was late, again, to the scene. Unsurprising really, Aiden had thought

the bastard would have left the town by now. He had only come across the scene as he was leaving to meet up with his left and right hands and recognized it for what it was.

Aiden's hand tightened on his handle bar, causing the bike to ram up in noise, probably calling attention to himself, even as he reached up to hit the Bluetooth call button built into his helmet. The phone rang, once, then twice…

"'Ello, boss man," the voice answered the phone that obviously wasn't his by the shout of 'Gimme my phone, asshole' in the background.

"Change of plans," Aiden growled out in annoyance. It was like the killer knew Aiden was trying to leave.

"Ten-four," the voice that could only belong to Terry with its jokingly high tone, like he was trying to mimic Jefferson and felling horribly.

"I do not sound like that!" Jefferson shouted, probably getting ready to start another fight with the blonde man.

Aiden hung up before he had to hear the scratchy static of their shuffle to get the phone back. He didn't want to hear it.

Aiden pulled off to the side, not shutting the bike off but letting it go into rest mode. The quiet vibrations between his legs calmed him somewhat as he watched the scurrying of officers from the street corner. Maybe with this new scene, the officers sitting on the old one would move here so he could sneak in. It was a long shot, but maybe.

Rick Grimes seem to notice the man on the bike faster this time. He didn't know who the man was. The license plate of the bike said it was stolen off a Harley registered to a Terry Jefferson that didn't exist. Well, actually, the old man did, but, when Rick called to inquire about the situation, the granddaughter who answered the phone insisted her grandfather never owned a motorcycle in his life. If the old man did, her grandmother would kill him before he could ever get on it. It had led to a very long background story that Rick found both fascinating and a waste of time listening to, considering it took over an hour for the woman to tell and Rick being the ever polite person he was couldn't just hang up on her. What was it with people and their unnecessarily detailed life stories? He had cursed his southern upbringing that day. Multiple times.

Needless to say, Rick assumed the man didn't exist. But then, why was a man that didn't exist, pull up about 100 feet from the latest crime scene, his latest crime scene? Rick slipped the mini-quick notes pad and pen back into his breast pocket of his uniform as he stared at the non-existence idling at the street corner. Unless, Rick thought, he was returning to the scene of the crime.

Rick turned to his best friend and partner, "I'm going to go see if I can talk to that guy." He pointed to the guy on the black motorcycle on the street corner. "Maybe he knows something."

Shane followed Rick's finger with his eyes, finally taking note of the guy from the last scene. "More like ask if he did it," his partner grumbled, "Probably did. Sick bastard."

Rick had to agree with him on this. It was sick. How anyone could gut another person like a fish and just spiral the intestines out in a mocking message, one they weren't sure was for them or someone else, eyes shifted to the guy on the bike at this thought, he didn't know. It was a long and tedious, almost ritual,

process. It didn't help that the last one was declared alive when it happened with cause of death being blood loss, more than likely halfway through.

Thinking back to the last scenes message of 'how do you like the town I found for you?' Rick found himself saying, out loud, "Or maybe the message is to him." Never throw all your eggs in one basket, as his mother always said.

Shane 'pfft' at him, and turned away to stalk further into the scene, "Yeah. Right." He didn't believe it for a second. Even if it was true, that would still mean this guy in the helmet was connected to the murders, which meant they still needed him to come in for questioning. "Good luck on that."

An engine roared, just as Rick had turned and started to walk towards the street corner. Then, a bike was driving past him on the street, making a turn down a street Rick knew for a fact ended as a dead end. He waited, there at the stop sign, where any law abiding citizen was required to stop, hoping to maybe catch the man as he tried to leave. There was only one way out of this particular block after all.

What Rick Grimes didn't seem to understand, and found out after waiting for 10 minutes, was Aiden wasn't law abiding at all. Aiden didn't care about what he was and wasn't supposed to do in the eyes of the law as he rode his bike over lawns and pulled the handles up to jump a small brick garden wall to get the street on the other side. The man had no quims in almost running a small chicken dog over or the child chasing it around the back yard. Aiden didn't look back even as the parents, pushed open the back screen door to yell at him. He was not turning around, and Rick, fucking, Grimes found that out 20 minutes later when he got the call about some idiot almost running a child over in their own backyard a few houses away.

Rick just sighed as he stood next to the tire tracks of the motorbike, having had to leave the crime scene temporarily to take the statements of the family. This made the guy look bad. Especially in the eyes of his partner, who was convinced this was their killer.

Aiden had been right. Small town cops seemed to number in the lower half of the double digits, because there wasn't a watch car posted anywhere on the street of the first victim. After a second run down the street, Aiden was confident there wasn't any undercovers laying low as well and pulled into the driveway of the first victim. This place was even more sickening up close, he thought as he cut the engine and pulled off his helmet.

It was late at night, more closer to early, early morning. Most of the residents on the block were probably asleep already, so Aiden didn't really worry about being discovered. Even if he was, the response time of the cops this late at night was a good 10 to 15 minutes in this town. It was just small enough to have a skeleton crew for a night shift, and the closest vehicle still on the road during the shift change is at the latest crime scene, probably gorging down a midnight lunch.

Under cover of darkness, the only light came from the street lamps above that were so far spaced apart you couldn't really call what they gave off light, Aiden left his helmet on the seat of his bike and made his way to the door. He didn't crouch down or make any shifty movements even as he pulled his lock picking kit out of his front jacket pocket (He knew for a fact that when you looked shifty, people thought you were). After a bit of twiddling with the tools, the door's lock clicked open, and Aiden was tucking his lock picking kit away, switching it for his pocket knife. Reaching up, cursing his height as he had to go onto his tippy toes where a normal size man would just have to reach out, he used the sharp bladed end

of the knife to pick off the sticker running from the door to the frame to further warn people that breaking into a crime scene was illegal.

Once he carefully peeled off the end on the frame of the door, Aiden opened the door to the first crime scene with a hum of success. Aiden took a moment to bend down and slide off his shoes, going forward in just his socks and leaving the dirty things at the door. It was the little things that helped keep Aiden out of trouble or keeping him from being caught. As long as he didn't step in the blood, no one would know he had been any further then the door. There was a reason the crime scene investigators had to where surgical booties after all. Going forward in socks wasn't the best idea, but it was the closest to keeping his presence in the house to a minimum as he could get at the current moment. Just like his leather biker gloves were the best surgical gloves that he had on him as well. Again, not perfect, but it works, especially when dealing with smaller scale towns where everyone seemed to at least recognize everyone.

Now. Let's see what I can find that hasn't been trampled on by the idiots called emergency services, he thought as he moved further into the house, silently shutting the door behind him.

Rick woke up coughing early in the morning of his only off day in about 2 weeks, as a heavy bundle of elbows and knees landed on him, threatening to crush his spleen out through his asshole and his lungs through his nose.

"Daddy, daddy, wake up," the child cried as he jumped on the man's chest for good measure. "It's time to get up!"

Rick groaned in pain at the little man's actions. "Okay, okay." Rick reached up to catch the child's waist and lift the kid up a few inches to stop the bouncing. "I'm up. I'm up." Rick opened a blurry eye to look at the child.

The child looked down at his dad, face covered in childish suspension as he took in his dad's clearly exhausted form. The kid wasn't an idiot, quite the contrary, he was rather kind of smart for a six year old. He knew his dad's job was tiring and long, and his mother, or rather the woman who gave birth to him (because while he may call her mother or mom, he didn't see her as a mother figure), yelling at the man didn't help. His father had come in late last night, while the child was supposed to be sleeping (he wasn't, but after a quick check around 10 his mother never checked up on him again so she didn't know). His mother, despite staying up on her own free will, waited up for him. The moment, the man walked through the front door, the woman was on him again; whisper yelling, though the kid could hear it all from the top of the stairs where he waited as well chewing his bottom lip in worry, about how the man was late and he should have been home hours ago. The child had sat at the top of the stairs behind the hallway wall upstairs, silently crying as his parents had their not so quiet argument. He didn't understand why his mother was so upset with his dad. His daddy was out saving people and putting away the bad guys, but his mother didn't seem to appreciate it. The child felt safer at night knowing his father was out there protecting him from the bad guys and monsters, as long as his father came home at night.

The child has scrambled to get to his room as his mother bellowed out for his father to sleep on the couch tonight. The door had just softly clicked closed as his mother's loud thumps reached the top of the stairs. Tomorrow, the child thought as he climbed back in bed, he would let his dad sleep in a little longer.

Now, at 9 o'clock, way past breakfast time, the child was sitting on his father's chest, watching as his exhausted , and definitely not well rested, father opened his other eye to stare at him with both sleep ridden eyes. "What?" his dad, Rick Grimes, grunted up at him.

With the most serious face he could muster up, the child said, "You know I love you, right, daddy?"

Rick blinked up at his son, Carl, wondering why the child was looking so serious for a six year old as he processed what the kid said. "And I love you, little man," he muttered as he pulled the kid down for a hug, planting a wet kiss to the kids head as well. It seemed, these days, Carl was the only one to say those words to him. It made him sad beyond belief, but at the same time glad that his child wasn't afraid to say it.

"I know," was all the child said, holding an almost depressed tone, before he pushed back and opted off his father's chest. "Now," all traces of seriousness replaced with a childish delight, "you promised we could go to the Park today and get ice cream." The child giggled at him as Rick groaned and sat up on the couch. A hand flew to his aching forehead as he remembered, yes, Rick, indeed, did promise the kid that.

A couple of hours later, Rick was just about to sit down with Lori and Carl when his phone rang.

"Don't answer that," Lori almost snarled at him, disapproval glowing in her eyes.

"It could be work," Rick defended as he started to get up from the chair he just sat in. Honestly, it wasn't that he wanted to answer, just that as sheriff he had to answer. It was the rules .

"Exactly why you should answer it," Lori growled out at him, "Its your day off and we are having a family meal." The 'for once' was left off, but Rick could feel it floating in the tense air of the room.

Rick didn't understand why his wife was being like this. "I have to, it's part of the job," he defend himself. Lori knew when they got married that Rick was a cop. He loved his job just as much as he loved her. She knew he wasn't going to give it up. They had talked about it in the early stages of their relationship when they were going over their goals in life. Sure , Lori had married a low ranking officer at the time, not a sheriff who was always on call, but that was beside the point.

"RICK GRIMES!" the woman roared as she stood from her chair, one hand flat on the wooden tables surface, the other pointing at him as he reached for the phone, "IF YOU ANSWER THAT PHONE, YOU WILL BE SLEEPING ON THE COUCH FOR A MONTH!"

Rick paused, only for a second, knowing his wife had meant it, before picking up the phone. "Hello, Sheriff Grimes…"

It was work. Damn. His eyes cut across the room towards his seething wife, eyes apologetic. She plopped down into her chair with an angry huff. She was ignoring him. Yep, he was definitely in the dog house now.

By the end of the third crime scene, Rick needed a drink. Lots of drinks. Between his job and his wife, the poor officer was stressed to kingdom come. Shane for his part declined the invitation when he had asked his partner if he wanted to come along.

"Nah, man, you go. You look like you could use some time away from the misses and I have too much paperwork here to do." Shane waved a hand over his desk that was covered in files as if to say 'see.' "This murder mystery turned serial killer," because that is what it was now, "has put me so far behind in my paperwork, I'm pretty sure the courts are going to start dismissing my cases."

"Can't you just do it tomorrow? When the Feds get here , we won't be doing anything but sitting on our hands anyways," some nameless officer asked from the door as he pulled on his wind breaker.

"I'm hoping," Shane said easily, as he put the pen to the paper he was originally working on when Rick walked up, "that won't happen, and if it does, maybe I can talk boss man to let me off early." Shane looked up at the group of leaving officers, using the butt end of the pen to point at them, "Unlike you losers, I'm a single man. I have to work for my sex life, while you guys already have one."

The group laughed and Rick couldn't help but retort, "Yeah, well, some of us would count you the luckier man."

"For real," one of the few female officers started as she picked up her purse, "I mean, I love my husband, don't get me wrong. It's just he can be so…" she paused, probably trying to figure out how to explain it without sounding bad, "Meh," she said. "I swear, between my job and my kids, we don't get any alone time anymore, not like we use to. Our sex life is reduced to quickies in the shower and our dating life is mac and cheese with a weeny on the side." This statement earned her a chorus of laughter from the others.

"Yeah," the unnamed man was speaking again, having pulled his keys from his jacket pockets, "kids do that to you. I just want to send mine to a relative and leave them there, sometimes. I would like just one day, just one, where we can lay in bed and not have to worry about anything. Hell, at this point, I cool with just lying there cuddling."

"My wife's pregnant," some greenie was saying, earning him a round of 'congratulations' mid-sentence that he just waved off, "accident really. We didn't know drinking while on the pill reduces the effects of the pill."

"Yeah. I found that one out the hard way too," Rick chimed in. Not that he wasn't happy about it at the time. No, he was quite ecstatic about it. His wife, Lori, however, was not. She said she wanted to wait until her career as an independent interior designer kicked off. Rick, even though he didn't want to, had agreed to wait. They made it about 6 months into the marriage before finding out she was 2 months pregnant and way past the abortion time limit.

"Anyways, since then she has been nagging at me at all hours. She is either super hormonal or super hungry. It's a mess." The young officer whined, "I don't know what to do most days."

"Just be there," the woman officer said sympathetically, patting the man on the shoulder.

"And if she wakes you up at 3 am to unlock the bathroom door," Rick said in amusement, clearly remembering his own experience with the situation , "because someone apparently accidentally locked it," eyes shifted to Shane, who was pretending he had no idea what Rick was talking about, "break the door down if you have too. Nothing like being young, in love and having both the father-in-law and a pregnant wife pissed at you."

"That was one time!" Shane grumbled, crossing his arms over his chest, "Years ago. Let it go."

"I'll let it go when Lori stops bringing it up, man."

The group laughed at the two partners.

"Shit," the female was saying, after looking at her watch "is that what time it is?" she looked up at Rick. "I got to go home, it's almost midnight. You better too," she told him as she headed to the elevator down the hall, "if you want to make it in time for that drink."

As if on cue, everyone started following her example. They bid good by to each other and separated once they got out the front door, leaving Shane behind in an empty police station.

Shane got up from his chair as the elevator doors shut tight, making his way to the window overlooking the parking lot. His eyes spotted Rick going down the steps and followed the man as he climbed into his car. The engine started up a few minutes after the door closed, and Shane was moving away from the window before the car even started to back out of the parking spot. Shane picked up the phone on the desk and dialed the familiar number that he knew without looking by without looking.

"Hello? Grime residence, Lori speaking," a female voice drifted through his ear.

"Hello, beautiful."

Call him a monster, a cheat, or even a home wrecker, but Shane was a man in love. A forbidden kind of love that sent shivers straight to his cock every time he thought about her. His best friends wife, his secret crush turn lover. Somehow, Shane got a pleasant little chill every time. There was just something about fucking your best friend's wife that made Shane feel young and in powered. No. Shane wasn't in love with the woman, herself, but the with the knowledge that he was fucking the woman who pledged her loyalty to his best friend. Shane had always been the bad boy shadow to Rick's good boy image. It's that shadow in his heart that just couldn't get enough of fucking over that good boy that gave Shane the most pleasure.

Fucking Lori… well, that was just a side effect. He, honestly , couldn't stand the woman. Didn't see what Rick saw in her really. She was too domineering for his taste, and he didn't like having to fight with her for dominance. Then again, maybe that was the reason Rick fell for her in the first place. Dormant woman were hard to find. So, Shane supposed Rick snatched her up before he could lose his chance.

By the fourth murder, a good week in since the first one, someone found a body strung up across the towns power grid company towers. It was a rather gruesome death. The body was so charred that they had to use dental records to find out their identity.

In June of 2021, Philip Blake Sr. or what was left of the ashes and bones was laid to rest under a remarkably boring and simple head stone, not that anyone cared. The survivors of what was left of his family, his son, Philip Blake Jr., his daughter-in-law, and their daughter, Penny, didn't show up to the funeral arranged by the man's mistress and soon to be wife.

Later that night, before the dirt had fully settled upon his grave, the local police department got call of a teenager designating tombstones via pissing on the grave. Police arrive just as Aiden was swinging a leg over his trusty motorbike, laughing cruelly at the men in uniform going in the opposite direction, the direction he had come from. Yeah, now we can say Aiden was a murder and a cruel one at that.

There was always someone bigger and tougher waiting around the corner. While Aiden was the smallest adult man most people knew, he was always going to be more violent, more sadistic and way tougher. It was a fact he will go to the grave proving.

"I'm don here," he said, tone rough with dark glee. Terry and Jefferson nodded, and as one the kicked off, finally putting the traitorous bastard in the rear view mirrors. He had somewhere to be.

A pretty little thing waited for him to visit and a brother who actually posed a challenge sometimes when he was there visiting the pretty little whore of a lover. Not that he would ever call Daryl Dixon a whore outside their play time.

You know what? Thinking about it… Maybe Rick, Fucking, Grimes wasn't too boring looking after all, he quietly thought now that his mind wasn't colored dark red. He would have to stop next time he was in that God forsaken town just to be sure. Next time…