Chapter 7: Confrontations

Riley glanced over at Carl, a little bit unsure of what to say to this very angry man in front of them. Luckily, she didn't have to because Lindsay jumped in quickly again, positioning herself between them and him.

"This is Riley and Carl. They were traveling out in the woods by themselves. I brought them in," she explained, her gaze sharp as she stood like a wall to block him from harming them.

She felt his eyes scanning her and she followed his gaze when it locked on the gun stuffed into her jeans.

"You didn't take their weapons?" he asked, voice hostile and stiff.

"I wanted them to feel safe and comfortable here. I know they're not going to hurt us and I'd appreciate it if we could have this conversation somewhere a little more private," Lindsay muttered.

Jacob's eyes flashed but he remained silent as his gaze bored into Lindsay's. The two stared each other down for a moment before a dark smile upturned the corners of his lips. "Fine. We'll talk."

Slowly, he turned away with Lindsay on his heels and the two of them headed toward a tent at the other side of camp. Riley had a feeling there would be a lot of shouting and this probably wouldn't be the last they heard of the argument. Looks like their first day here wasn't going so well... One thing that was for sure was that they needed to keep their distance from Jacob. She knew what it was like to lose someone, but he seemed completely out of control.

"We should take a look around," Carl said after a moment, bumping her with his shoulder.

He was right. It would be better to get a look at their surroundings and see what these people had. Before he could say anything else, she grabbed onto his shirt sleeve and pulled him toward the fence. She shot a glance over her shoulder to the tent that Jacob and Lindsay disappeared into before focusing her attention on everything else. It was beginning to get dark so it would be harder to get a good look at the camp, but looking around in the dark was better than not looking at all.

At the center of the camp was a fire pit where most of the children sat around, playing with their toys or reading books. Against all the fences were tents and places set up for people to keep watch. Nearby the campfire sat a few tables that looked like they were for preparing food. Large crates and bins were tucked away underneath them. Other than that, there wasn't much to see, especially with the light fading so quickly.

"Nothing really special about it," Carl murmured.

"No. Not really. I don't like that the tents are right next to the fences though. We'll need to be careful about that," she breathed, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.

"Yeah, you're right... I think David wants us to go over. We don't have to though."

He pointed over to the glowing orange of the fire pit where David was gesturing for them to head on over. Both Blake and Chris were visible nearby and she ground her teeth.

"It's okay. We'll be fine. It's too early to head to bed anyway," she hissed, biting the inside of her cheek as she started toward them.

David smiled as they approached. "Hey there. I just want to apologize for Jacob's behavior. He just lost his wife and he's a little on edge... Chris and Blake have your sleeping spots set up and it's going to be a little while until dinner. Thought you might want to come sit with us instead of being by yourselves."

"Oh um... Thank you," Riley said awkwardly, looking down toward an empty log and then taking a seat on it.

Carl sat beside her and her eyes locked with the dancing flames in front of them. The rest of the evening went by in a bit of a blur which consisted of eating dinner with everyone, trying to make conversation, and ignoring the most annoying flirtatious smiles from Chris. Of course, this had the be the guy they were sharing a tent with...

As soon as they were done with dinner, she and Carl headed straight for the tent. She had a feeling she wasn't going to sleep very well tonight so it was probably best to turn in early and get as much interrupted sleep as she could.

Inside, the sleeping bags were set up a little to close to Chris' and Blake's for her liking, so she scooted hers over as far away from theirs as she could. Unfortunately, the tent wasn't big enough for all of them to sleep very far apart, so it was either sleep close to Chris and Blake but away from Carl or the other way around. She would much rather be back to back with someone she trusted rather than an obnoxious flirt who would no doubt use the situation to try and get her to fall for his charm.

The thought made her want to retch.

Just after Riley had moved her sleeping bag, both Chris and Blake entered the tent. Carl stiffened and plopped his sleeping bag down right next to hers.

"Aww didn't like where I set yours up, Riles?" Chris asked with a pout.

"You better shut up if you know what's good for you," she growled, unzipping her sleeping bag and slipping inside of it.

"Ooh, you're feisty. I like girls like that."

"Just ignore my idiot of a brother," Blake interjected, giving Chris a good whack.

She rolled her eyes and slipped inside the sleeping bag, glancing over at Carl to see he had gotten in his as well and he was being more quiet than he usually was. Whatever...

Placing one hand on her stomach and one behind her head, she looked up at the ceiling of the tent, trying not to tell herself that she was tired and needed sleep. It worked for a while - until she could hear the light snores of the two brothers across the tent. They tempted her to shut her eyes and close the world out for a few hours.

Her eyes darted over to Carl's figure as she turned on her side to get a better look at him. He had his back to her, forming a barrier between her and the two other boys in the tent. She shook her head and sighed. She didn't need him to be protective over her. And yet he still was. It was nice to know that they had finally started to form a connection of trust that ran deep enough to prompt him to be protective. If anything, she was probably better at protecting him. A small smirk stretched across her lips and she turned on her other side so her back was to him.

But wait...they were trusting each other now... Riley promised herself that she wasn't going to get attached to anyone when she'd met him and his dad and Michonne. And here she was, trusting Carl to cover her back, traveling with him, and even beginning to enjoy his company... This wasn't supposed to happen...
Grinding her teeth, she mulled over these thoughts until sleep eventually took her in its grasp...


"We're going."

Riley put her hands on her hips and looked up at Lindsay with a determined expression. Carl cast a wary glance her way.

"We usually don't let the kids go on runs. There are plenty of things you two can do around here to contribute."

"But our old camp let us go on runs. And we're used to doing that. I'd rather come and stretch my legs," Riley insisted.

"If I let you guys come, you'll be treated just like everyone else. You have to contribute. Can you handle that?" Lindsay asked hesitantly after a moment.

"Yeah, we can."

"Alright. Go get some ammo from Justin and meet me back here in five minutes."

Riley turned with a satisfied smirk. "Come on, Carl. Let's go get our ammo."

He followed after her, remaining silent for a moment before speaking when they were out of range from the others. "Why are you volunteering us to go? I thought you wanted to lay low..."

"Well we're trying to find your dad aren't we? How are we going to do that sitting around here? Plus, we'll get free ammo." She shot him a grin before continuing, "besides, we can pretend to struggle a bit so it's not that obvious we know what we're doing."

"Good point... And Riley?" He latched onto her arm and pulled her to a stop, turning her to face him. "Thanks for helping me look for my dad."

She shrugged. "It's not like I have anything else to be doing. Come on."

Riley knew that she was brushing him off a bit more quickly than usual, but she couldn't shoo out those thoughts that had been swirling in her mind from last night. She had to put a little bit of distance between them...

After filling up their gun clips with ammo, they set off out to meet up with Lindsay and the others. They were taking a vehicle this time to the nearest gas station. They only had one working vehicle, a rusty little pick up truck that only had three seats. She and Carl were offered the seats while everyone else sat in the bed of the truck.

The ride itself was rather short, but it helped her get a little bit of an idea of what was around here. So far, there had been that one strip mall, a couple of office buildings, a railroad track, and a little gas station. It wasn't too rural, but not exactly urban either. Resources were probably a bit low, which was a problem. However, it would make it a bit easier to look around for people. They would be where the buildings were and that would give them a better chance at finding Rick and Michonne.

The gas station itself seemed to be clear of eaters on the outside, but that didn't mean they weren't lurking around on the inside.

Lindsay stopped the truck and killed the engine. Riley waited for Carl to slip out of the truck before she did and she scanned the building, not detecting any movement through the grimy windows. It seemed too safe for her liking and it set her on guard for anything that might come out at them, dead or alive.

"Alright we're mainly looking for fuel or any car parts. If you see any food or anything that you could use as a weapon, grab that too," Lindsay instructed, handing each of them a burlap bag for them to put their findings inside. "If you see a roamer, avoid it if you can. If you have to kill it, do it silently unless there's a whole group. Then you call out to us and we'll help take care of them. Let's go."

Lindsay and the other men that tagged along (she was pretty sure their names were Jack and Patrick) split off toward different parts of the gas station. Riley looked over at Carl and he nodded at her, knowing exactly what she was thinking just by the look on her face. They were going to stay together and look.

He started forward toward the closed garage and stopped in front of it. "Wonder if it's open..."

She shrugged. "Dunno, but if it's full of eaters, it would be a bad idea to open it up."

"Yeah you're right. Which is why we check." He smirked a little at her and balled his hand into a fist, knocking against the metal of the garage door.
Well that was definitely smart. If there were any inside, they would hear them start pounding against the door.

After a few seconds, the growling began and she pressed her ear against the door, trying to listen and figure out how many were inside just by sound. There were multiple snarls, but she couldn't get a good count. Three, maybe four? "There's definitely some inside. Don't know how many, but more than one. We can keep that in mind..."

She turned away, glancing over at Lindsay as she checked the gas pumps for any gas. There wasn't much else on the outside that seemed to be useful, but she noticed scruffy-haired Jack lifting a tire into the bed of the truck.

"Let's go inside. See what we can find," she suggested, moving toward the food mart section of the gas station.

Just glancing inside through the window, it was easy to see that most of the shelves were empty. Some of the aisles were toppled over and of course dried puddles of blood stained the tiled floor.

"Looks clear from out here," Carl muttered, slowly reaching out to open the door.

The two of them slipped inside and she slid her knife from her jeans just in case anything came jumping out. Nothing.

"Okay, we quickly scan the place for anything. You start on that end and I'll start on this end," she said and received a nod from him.

Riley slipped over to the counter and began to sift through drawers and cabinets. The only thing she ended up coming up with was a pack of candy. Starbursts to be exact. Those would be a good treat for later so she stuffed them into her pocket instead of putting them in the bag and continued to search. A few rags on the floor went straight into the burlap bag and she didn't hesitate to add a pair of scissors to the collection. A moment later, the door opened again and she straightened out quickly. Carl popped up from behind an aisle, but he was too close to the shelf and ended up smacking the back of his head on it.

"Are you okay?" she asked, wincing a bit since she knew exactly what that felt like.

Her hand jumped up to feel the closing gash on her forehead just as he spoke in a low grunt, "I'm fine."

"You guys find anything useful?" Patrick asked, scratching the top of his balded head.

"Just a few things here and there," she said with a shrug. "Haven't checked the back rooms yet though."

"Alright, I'll go check those out, you keep looking here."

He disappeared down the hall and she turned her attention back to Carl.

"Are you bleeding?"

He shook his head, running a hand through his greasy brown hair. "Nope."

"Okay good. I think this place is pretty clear, maybe we should-"

A loud curse echoed from the back room and she immediately stiffened. What was wrong?

"Roamers!" Patrick shouted, a gunshot following as he backed down the hallway into the main room they were in.

Riley fumbled with her gun tucked into the back of her jeans and clicked the safety off. He must've barged into the garage where the walkers were before. She was only expecting a few, so when the room started to flood with the dead, she wasn't prepared. The space in the room wasn't large enough for them to fight them off, especially they way they were flooding in. However, both she and Carl made it a point to hold their ground and shoot down each walker than came reaching for each other or Patrick.

The door came crashing open to reveal Jack and Lindsay. They could take all of them on together, right?

One walker grabbed onto Jack and reached down to sink its teeth into his arm. She quickly turned her aim onto the walker's skull, but a shot from Lindsay's rifle beside her sent it flying across the room.

That was too close.

The rest of the room emptied out with their combined efforts and once they were all down, there was hardly any place to walk with all the bodies littering the floor.

"I uh, found something!" Carl shouted, his voice breathless from the exhilarating confrontation.

Riley sucked in a breath and pushed through the squishy, body-covered floor over to him. Following his gaze to one of the dead on the floor, she noticed what he was talking about. The walker had a large "W" carved into its forehead. That was...odd. Someone intentionally captured the walker, carved a letter into its forehead, and then let it go.

She used her foot to kick over one of the other dead and sure enough, there was another "W" right on its forehead. Were all of these marked? Each of them turned over a few more and each result was the same.

"A trap, maybe?" Jack suggested, crossing his arms over his chest.

Lindsay's eyes narrowed. "I don't know. But we should check the garage and get out of here. Just in case. Riley and Carl, go back to the truck."

Riley didn't like being told what to do, but she remembered that they needed to try and lay low, and picking an argument with the head woman in charge wasn't the best way to do that. So she and Carl returned to the truck and climbed inside. They didn't have to wait very long for the others to return and Lindsay wordlessly started the truck. If they were lucky, the whole incident wouldn't mean anything, but luck was hard to come by these days. The only luck they had today seemed to be getting back to the camp in one piece.

The even weirder thing was that Jacob wasn't screaming at them when they got back to camp and actually even offered to help them unload their findings from the back of the truck. Something was definitely going on with him which made her feel a bit uneasy. It was only when he started to look suspicious sneaking around did she feel better. It should have made her feel worse, but him being nice was just weird.

"Hey Carl," she murmured, eyes still locked on Jacob as he ushered Samantha and Henry into a tent on the far side of camp.

"What's up?"

She turned her gaze onto him. "How do you feel about snooping?"

A smirk jumped to his lips and she grinned wickedly. She'd take that as a good thing.

Glancing around to make sure no one was watching, she shoved her hands in her pockets and slowly made her way across the camp. Carl kept pace with her and she tried to make it seem as thought they were only looking out beyond the fence. When she was sure no one was watching, she gave him a shove toward the back of the tent where they could crouch and listen in and no one would notice.

The two of them crouched side by side and leaned toward the canvas of the tent to try and get a listen in. At first, it was quiet, but then she clearly heard Jacob's voice.

"I know it's them, okay!"

"B-but how can you be so sure, you s-said that you d-didn't see their f-faces," Henry's mumble came quickly after.

"Don't question me, boy! The girl's eyes. I saw them peering through the window when we were banging on the door screaming for help. I wouldn't forget that. There's no way I'm wrong. They killed her. They're the reason she's dead. And I'm not gonna let them get away with it!" Jacob growled.

"It's alright Jacob," Samantha cooed. "We'll make sure that this will go your way. I promise you that. I'll stand by you and so will Henry."

"W-what?!" Henry stammered.

"You heard what she said, boy! You're helping, aren't you?" Jacob hissed.

"Y-yes sir! W-what are w-we going to d-do?"

"I'm going to talk to Lindsay later. If she won't listen, we'll take matters into our own hands. I'll make sure to let you know what's going on," Jacob said gruffly.

"I can keep an eye on them. They won't expect me poking around. They'll think I'm just being nice," Samantha murmured.

"Good, good. Why don't you go find them now? Maybe you can get a confession out of them."

Riley latched onto Carl's shirt sleeve and tugged him out from behind the tent. They needed to put as much distance between them and Samantha as possible. As they were hurrying away, she glanced back to see that Samantha was just exiting the tent. And that was when she rammed right into someone's back.
Without thinking, she grabbed onto whoever it was as she started to fall. Her eyes squeezed shut as she made impact and she remained motionless for a minute until the familiar, cocky voice of Chris reached her ears.

"Rather cozy, huh? I'm glad you changed your mind, Riles. I knew you couldn't resist me."

Nostrils flaring, her eyelids flew open and she stared down at Chris with disgust. That smug smirk playing on his lips infuriated her and she gnashed her teeth. She leaned over his face, drawing in a deep breath when she saw his smug expression change to something of surprise. It was her turn to smirk because instead of kissing him like he was probably dreaming about, she mustered up as much saliva as she could and spat right in his face.

"Pig," she growled, pushing herself to her feet and brushing the dirt off her jeans.

Blake, who she hadn't noticed before, was holding back snickers and Carl cleared his throat a few times to try and force the laughter away. Chris scrambled to his feet and wiped his face furiously with his shirt, anger glowing in his eyes.

"You little bitch," he snapped, smoothing his hair down.

Riley lunged toward him, but hands wrapped around her wrists like shackles and she only got a few feet before she was yanked back.

"You'll draw too much attention," Carl murmured, his grip on her still firm and unwavering as she struggled.

He was right.

Here they were, supposed to be laying low and staying inconspicuous and she was ruining for all of them just because of an idiot who couldn't keep his mouth off of flirt mode. He wasn't worth the effort. Besides, this was only temporary. They weren't going to stay here forever and soon enough she wouldn't have to see Chris' despicable face ever again.

She stopped struggling and he let go of her wrists instantly. Without another word, she turned on her heel and slipped toward the campfire, drawing in quick, deep breaths to flush the anger out of her body. With every breath, more and more flew out like a river and she sat down on the log next to the crackling fire.

"Anger like that gets you killed," Carl muttered a moment later. "I know from experience."

Riley scoffed, crossing her arms over her chest. "How can you know from experience? You're still alive."

"I almost died because of it. Just warning you, okay?"

Before she had a chance to retaliate, Samantha came up behind Carl with a polite smile.

"Am I interrupting anything?" the blonde asked, looping her thumbs on her jean pockets.

"No," Riley muttered, digging her heels into the dirt.

"Okay great. I just wanted to see how you guys were adjusting. It must have been scary being out there all by yourself. How long has it been since you've been with another group?"

Carl shuffled over to Riley and sat down next to her, replying before she could, "I dunno a short while."

Vague answers. Good.

"It must be hard jumping from group to group... How did you guys end up in the river yesterday? You're lucky we were there to help. I'd hate to imagine what would happen if we weren't..."

Riley nearly snorted. This woman was so fake it was laughable. "We just slipped in by accident," she said with a shrug.

"Oh that's awful. You weren't running away from anything? Roamers? Or people?"

"Nope."

"You sure about that?" an irritated growl came from behind.

Both she and Carl jumped to their feet to face Jacob, who'd apparently been prowling around. She wasn't surprised since he couldn't seem to keep his nose out of everyone's business.

"I know you two are the ones that left us behind. You could have saved us. And then my wife wouldn't be dead. Don't you lie because I know," he sneered.

"There's nothing you can do about it. Lindsay will never believe you," Carl hissed.

"I don't care what she believes. She's not going to stop me."

Riley's eyes narrowed into animal-like slits. "Do your worst."


A/N: Well Riley and Jacob are at each other's throats now! We'll have to see what his revenge will be, hmmm ;) This was a bit of a filler chapter but I promise the next chapter will be more interesting! Anyway, I want to thank you guys soo much for all the feedback and the reviews and everything! I'm really glad you guys are enjoying it and hope you enjoyed this chapter! :D