(As Yet Untitled)

by DomWeasel

Watching the series again back in late 2022, I was reminded how much Sophia's arc in the TV show depressed me. Thought about it for several months and then rewrote season 2 with an original character to have some fun and take a break from another project, and to create a timeline where Sophia may or may not live as long as her comic counterpart. I don't know, I haven't finished yet

4. The Exodus

Theodore crying 'Jailbreak!' took a moment to register with me. With everyone. Then it hit and there was a mass exodus. Carol and Sophia hung back at the house and Lori stopped Carl from running after everyone but called out ahead of them. "What's wrong?"

"Randall's missing!"

"Missing? How?"

"How long's he been gone?"

"What's goin' on?"

"Hard to say!"

"The cuffs are still hooked." Rick pointed the way he did. "He must've slipped them."

"Can you do that?" Andrea asked me and while I didn't like the implication, I did know the answer. So did she. "If you've got nothing to lose."

"You could do it." I confirmed and looked for myself. The cuffs were thick with a mix of dry and fresh blood, enough to serve as lubricant.

"The door was secure from the outside." Hershel closed and opened it, showing it wasn't broken. It was pristine.

"I thought you made sure it was secure!" Rick turned on Daryl.

"I did!" Daryl growled "You see any busted panels? You think he tidied up after he ran?"

"He got out somehow!"

"It's a combo lock." I pointed out. "The only way he's getting through that is if someone forgot to lock it." I proceeded to kick all the walls, proving they were solid. "Or someone let him out."

"Dale!" Rick roared it out but the old man was already there.

"Forget it." He said calmly. "I've never been out of sight all day."

"RICK!" Shane's scream of fury was further off but it made me jump, unlike Rick's shout. I saw everyone look at him in shock and I stepped out of the shed to see him stamping up to the house. He was sheeted in blood and even from this distance it was clear his nose was broken. "He's armed! He's got my gun!"

"Shit…"

"Are you okay?!" Carl screamed from the house.

"I'm fine! The lil' bastard just snuck up on me! Clocked me in the face!" With his face looking the way it did, I would have guessed the intent hadn't been to just put him down for a few minutes. Shane spat some of the blood trickling into his mouth and it left his teeth stained.

"Alright, Hershel! T-Dog! Get everyone back in the house! Glenn, Daryl, you come with us!"

"T!" Shane pointed at Theodore as he marched straight at him. "I'm gonna need that gun!" He was on the warpath and no one, not even Dale, could fault him for that. Sure, maybe Randall had been seeking revenge on the guy who had been most vocal about wanting him dead but that couldn't justify away Shane's rage.

"Just let him go!" Carol called. "That was the plan wasn't it? Just let him go."

"The plan was to cut him loose far away from here!" Rick's blood was boiling. For once he and Shane seemed to be on the same page and I found that chilling. "Not on our front step! Not with a gun! Get everybody back in the house! Lock all the doors! And stay put!" He was already heading off beside Shane with Daryl and Glenn following almost meekly after the two cops.

I wasn't interested in hiding. It was the shed that had my attention.

"That means you too, you know." Andrea was stood over me.

"You think he's coming back to his prison?" I asked. "I want to know how he got out."

"What does it matter how he got out? He's out!" She took my arm and tried to pull me away but I shook her off.

"Look at around!" I pointed at the cuffs and then at the walls. "It's all secure! Cuffs locked, door locked; walls solid!" I kicked them again and then climbed up the sides but Daryl had done his job right. There were no holes. "How did he do it?"

Andrea wanted to obey Rick's order but her own curiosity was piqued. "He could slip the cuffs. We know that."

"The door was locked. It's a four digit combination lock; it'd take you hours to war-dial that and that's only if you could reach it."

"Hey!" Theodore appeared in the doorway. "Come on!" He jerked his head at the house.

"Close the door." I said.

"What?"

"Close the door. Lock it. Like you found it."

He looked to the adult woman. "Do it." She said and he shook his head but complied, shutting us in and locking the door, leaving us in a gloom besides where the setting sun cut through the cracks in the high walls. There weren't many; Daryl had made the place virtually airtight save for the ventilation near the roof. I climbed up on the freezer stored in the corner but from that platform, nothing gave. Andrea awkwardly climbed the oil drum but also found nothing. The walls were solid. That only left the door.

Shed doors were secured in the middle and a door made of individual thin planks was flexible. I sat down and pressed my feet against the bottom of the door and it gave, folding outward. I put more pressure on it and I was able to jam my leg in the gap.

"That must be it then." Andrea knelt beside me. "This is the only way."

"If you've got nothing to lose." I could probably make it out but it would be a tight squeeze and Randall was bigger than me. Not by much but still. "Let us out."

Theodore unlocked the door. "Can we go now?" He demanded but I was kneeling in the dirt.

"There's no marks. There's no signs of someone scrabbling in the dirt. There's no skin or fibres on the door frame."

"What are you? CSI?" Theodore asked with the last vestiges of his patience. "In the house! Now!"

"He didn't get out this way. No… That means someone let him out."

"Who?" Andrea asked. "And don't say Dale."

"Dale wouldn't let him go on our doorstep; that'd just give Shane an excuse to hunt him down and put a half dozen warning shots in his back." Theodore took hold of my arm and threw me towards the house. I let him. "Shane wouldn't let him out for that excuse because… He'd know we'd know. So that leaves someone else or…"

"Or what?" Andrea was thrown alongside me. "His friends?"

"Maybe. Maybe they didn't leave. Maybe one of them comes scouting, creeps up to the house for a closer look and just happens to find his old buddy Randall locked up. Maybe Randall heard someone say the combination, he passes it on, it's unlocked and they're smart enough to lock it up again so no one knows he's gone until it's too late."

"Shane didn't see anyone else."

"Before getting smacked in the face with a rock? Why would he?" I asked. "There's three options." We were at the house now and Theodore shoved us both indoors. "He slipped the cuffs and he slithered through the gap in the door without leaving any trace. Or he slipped the cuffs and a friend let him out."

"What's the third?" Maggie was right in my face.

"One of you let him go."

"Now why we would do that?"

"I don't know. Maybe you didn't like the idea of him being loose out there, even a few dozen miles away, in case by a million to one, he came back alone or with those friends. So you let him out, tell him to run and let the boys track him down and then put him down before he can run his mouth off. Problem solved."

"No one would do that." Maggie's eyes seemed to gleam at me in the gloom.

"Really? Most of you wanted him executed the other night. Maybe you figured a way around it."

"Shut up, Bas." Dale was the one who spoke. "No one would do that. No one. We all know that."

"We know that." Lori confirmed.

I shrugged. I didn't know what to think. This was just another exhausting event in several weeks full of them. It almost made me nostalgic for lying faint with blood loss alone in a house with just Sophia. Things had definitely been simpler. Though almost certainly we would both be dead by now.

They had boarded up the lower windows of the house as a crude fortification. I said crude because the gaps were pretty big. Walkers were rather dumb but if they could work door handles then they could figure out to pull on a plank rather than smack it with their hands. It did mean however that we could look out. But when the sun set, the darkness was almost total even with a fitful full moon. The moonlight didn't do much out here on the open fields and the lights in the house meant our eyes weren't adjusted. I would have suggested a couple of people standing watch outside but I had used up all of my credit for the day by stalling the retreat into the house.

They were all trying to take their minds off of things by keeping busy and preparing the house. I found the arsenal; the gun bag. The small collection of shotguns and pistols was pitiful considering the overrun military positions we had seen, and the ammunition… I had never used a gun so I ignored them and checked out the meagre collection of hand weapons. I assumed the big farm implements and tools were outside because the small weapons looked rather sad though I guessed that was because the good stuff had already been claimed. There was a small axe and I slipped that into my belt.

"Do you really think Randall didn't escape by himself?"

Andrea had been more than a little intense ever since Amy died and this was no exception. She stood rather close. "I've slipped through a lot of tight spaces in my life. He didn't get through that door." I said simply.

"So you think Shane let him go?"

"Do you think Shane would bust up his own face? Because I don't know… Breaking his own nose?" It was strange that I fully believed he would kill someone to protect himself but I had doubts he would hurt himself to do the same thing. "I don't know..."

"But you think."

"There's three options. Take your pick. Or just wait for them to bring him back. One way or another…"

Andrea was not mollified and went to glare through the gaps in one of the windows. I was left to think about the fact that it didn't really matter how Randall had gotten out. One way or another, he was now finished. Making last night's conversation a complete waste of time. Another waste of time to add to the long list. Everything we seemed to do was ultimately a waste of time and effort. The CDC, the Vatos nursing home, the intent to go to Fort Benning and the past week trying to think of a non-evil solution to Randall. All time wasted. And some of them thought that looking for me and Sophia had been a waste of time and effort as well. It seemed we just stumbled from crisis to crisis that never properly resolved themselves.

We all heard the distinct sound of a shot. Not a rifle shot like Sophia and I had heard, the sound of Carl getting shot, but quieter. A pistol. The uproar was immediate and a dozen questions were asked before Theodore brought silence with a simple cry. "Shut the hell up!" He shrugged apologetically at Hershel. "Just listen."

We listened. We all listened and there was nothing. Nothing at all but the ever present bugs out on the fields.

"It was just one shot." Beth tried to put a hopeful spin on things.

Maybe one shot was all they needed.

Everything was quiet. We were listening to each other's breathing and that seemed quite mad. But everyone was savvy enough to know that one or two people going outside to investigate would be a bad idea. Very bad. Stay in the house. Stay in the house and hear another shot.

Everyone knew it was a bad idea to go out, except Andrea. "I'm going after them."

"Don't." Lori spoke before Dale had the chance. "They could be anywhere. And if Randall comes back, we're gonna need you here."

"She's right." Dale threw in his piece. "We'd just end up sending someone out to look for you."

"And someone to look for them." Theodore mused.

I heard the sound of the front door then and I looked at incredulously at Daryl and Glenn as they came into the main room. "You didn't lock the door?" I asked at large. Here we were hunkered down in case some guy after our blood showed up and the castle gate was open…

Daryl looked about swiftly. "Rick and Shane ain't back?"

"No." Lori answered again and her tone told me she was talking to stop herself from worrying.

"We heard shots."

"Maybe they found Randall."

"We found him." Daryl growled quite ominously.

"Is he back in the shed?" Patricia asked.

"He's a walker." He said, meaning they had put him down. No one seemed reassured by the news though.

"Did you find the walker that bit him?" Hershel pressed.

"The weird thing is…" Glenn started and then hesitated. "He wasn't bit."

"His neck was broke." Daryl explained.

"So he fought back." Patricia said.

"The thing is…" Now Daryl hesitated. "Shane and Randall's tracks were right on top of each other. And Shane ain't no tracker so he didn't come up behind him. They were together."

Lori didn't care about Randall. She stood up and all but wrung Daryl's collar. "Would you please get back out there and find Rick and Shane and find out what on earth is going on."

I thought Daryl might be annoyed. Most of us did. Instead he replied in an unexpectedly caring tone. "You got it." He made for the door.

"Thank you."

"Guess you were right." Andrea said to me. "… He didn't get out by himself."

Lori looked around sharply and everyone else looked at their feet. There was obviously going to be another serious conversation in this room.

"Hey, yo!" Daryl called from outside.

Lori was the first out the door, expecting to see her husband and Shane returning. Andrea and Glenn were next and I followed. No one else seemed inclined to leave the sanctuary.

There was no Rick or Shane. Just Daryl staring off in the direction of the barn and I stared myself, letting my eyes adjust. My first thought was that I was seeing things and then that familiar cold ripple of fear coursed through me. I wasn't imagining anything; the fields were full of movement all the way up to the woods. We saw them and then we heard them. Not the riled up growling but that low gurgling. And there was a lot of it. Enough to bring the others out.

"Patricia!" Hershel instinctively whispered. "Kill the lights!"

"I'll get the guns!" Andrea said and the two women darted indoors.

"Maybe they'll just pass like the herd on the highway." Glenn suggested. Ever the optimist. "Maybe we should just go inside."

"Not unless there's a tunnel downstairs I don't know about." Daryl replied. "A herd that size will rip the house down." It would take just one bumping against one of the boarded windows for all of them to decide they wanted in. The lights went out. That was not comforting. And the walkers were now doing to the barn what they would do to the house; blindly attacking the closed doors. "Listen to that." He said and then pointed. "Look at that." The noise the ones attacking the barn were making were drawing in the others so that the distant shapes began to thicken into a solid mass.

"Ideas?" Theodore was bouncing on his toes.

"Naw." Daryl admitted. The usually implacable man was at a loss.

And none of the rest of us had anything to offer.

Lori burst out of the house. "Carl's gone!"

"What?"

"He… He was upstairs! I can't find him anymore!" She was hyperventilating and I ran indoors. I went upstairs for the first time and all the doors were already open, and so was one window. I slipped through it without thinking onto the porch roof and let my instincts guide me. They took me around to a point where a kid could climb down. I dropped down and then ran back to the front where Lori was gone but Andrea, Dale, Glenn and Theodore stared at me dumbfounded while Jimmy, Maggie and Hershel were going through the gun bag.

"He slipped out." I said and I couldn't believe it. "The little son of a bitch got out of a window and climbed down."

"Looking for his dad." Daryl finished for me. "Figures."

Maggie took a shotgun for herself and slapped another into Glenn's hands. He looked at her with astonishment. "… Maggie?"

"You grow up country, you pick up a thing or two." She replied.

"They got the numbers." Daryl was still in shock. "It's no use."

Hershel hefted one of the other shotguns. "You can go if you want."

"You gonna take 'em all on?" Daryl wasn't incredulous. If anything he sounded impressed.

"We have guns." Hershel said, loading shells. "We have cars."

"Kill as many as we can." Andrea was also stocking up and Theodore jostled her aside to help himself. "And we use the cars to lead the rest of them off the farm."

"Are you serious?" Daryl asked Hershel. He was almost cradling his crossbow, like Sophia had with her doll.

"This is my farm." Hershel had a scary tone. "I'll die here." And a scarier mind. He walked away.

Daryl was unfazed though and then it was like the shock just melted away. "Alright… It's as good a night as any." He slipped over the porch rail.

He took his bike. Andrea and Theodore took the Ford pickup. Glenn and Maggie took the car that Shane had been using. That left me, Dale and Jimmy on the porch.

"I'll get the RV going." Dale said. "If we have to leave…" He left it at that. If their hasty plan didn't work, the mobile home would be home. Again.

"Barn's on fire." Jimmy pointed. "Look."

He was right. Flames had suddenly risen up inside and the hay was going up fast. In just a few seconds, the entire base of the barn seemed to be burning. The walkers that had swarmed it caught the flames and it was shocking how fast the fire seemed to catch and spread over them.

Dale brought the RV lurching out in front of us just as I heard yelling in the house. "Maybe Rick or Shane set the fire and they're in there!" He called.

"Go with him!" I told Jimmy. "I can't shoot!"

He nodded and ran and I did too, indoors.

I almost collided with Lori. Carol was trying to stop her from coming out but with Sophia clinging to her other arm, she only had the one to try and stop her.

"Where are you going?"

"My boy's out there! I've got to find him!" She scratched me as she tried to get by.

"What are you going to do? Run through the woods looking for him? Through all of them out there? If he's out there, he's heard the shots!"

"Or he's seen the fire." Beth supplied.

"And he's coming back. He's fast. He can slip by them." Perhaps. "But we can't just go running out there!"

"We have to." Patricia said from the window.

"What?"

"Look."

Lori and I stumbled outside together, followed by Carol and Sophia. Dale had driven the RV down to the barn and now it was being swarmed by walkers in a way disturbingly reminiscent of ants on ice cream. They were a black stain against its beige exterior while the burning barn added a hellish background. "Oh shit." More walkers were heading toward us, towards the three vehicles going back and forth behind the fence. They were piling against it, oblivious of the shells and rounds being drilled into them by Andrea, Glenn and Daryl. It would be minutes before they broke the wire down. Some were already through it and I jumped as another shotgun sounded close by. Hershel was true to his word and defending his property. There was another noise that made me jump but also painful. It was Lori screaming for her son and her shrill voice was more intense than all the shooting and the rising drone of the dead.

"Why can't he listen for once?" It was hard to tell if Lori meant her son, or her husband.

The fences were breaking, the wooden posts giving in to the sheer weight of the dead piling against the unyielding steel wire and while some were tangled in the barbs, the rest pressed on for Hershel. They weren't the problem. There were others, to the left and behind us. All around us. The gunfire and now the bright blazing beacon of the barn were drawing them in from all around. For what must have been miles. I couldn't begin to count how many had come from the direction of the barn and now dozens were coming in from elsewhere. The barn… Where the RV sat unmoving and only the fire raged.

A hand found what remained of my left, sending a spike of pain up my arm. It was Sophia. I looked around to see her mom grappling with Lori and realised the girl had sought the only safety she trusted away from her mom. Carol went into the house and Lori screamed for her son again.

"Where's Carl?!" Sophia was shaking.

"With his dad." It was the only thing I could say. I had no idea where Rick, Shane or Carl were. I couldn't see Daryl or Glenn and Maggie now. Only the blue Ford pickup that was thumping down walkers into the dirt to no effect. They lurched back to their feet with maybe a few broken bones but still able to walk.

Beth and Patricia stumbled out of the house with Carol who looked around, momentarily stricken, and then saw Sophia with me. The relief on her face was almost painful.

"We've got to go." I said, pulling the hatchet from my belt. Walkers were coming straight at us; the ones that weren't making a beeline straight for Hershel who was standing his ground with his shotgun, firing and loading shells like a remorseless machine so that he had a fan of bodies on the ground in front of him. There was a snap and the walker nearest to me went down, followed by others as Lori fired a .38 at them. "Lori!" Carol and I shouted it together. She looked around and then she yelled at Hershel.

"Hershel! HERSHEL!" Whether he could even hear her after all the shells he had fired was anyone's guess. "HERSHEL!" She snatched up the gun bag. "Hershel! It's time to go!"

It was. It really was. Sophia screamed as a walker came at us and she wouldn't release my hand, leaving me awkwardly swinging the hatchet. It cracked into the skull of the walker as cleanly as a melon and the thing collapsed immediately, almost tearing the weapon from my hand. I held it tight and ripped it free and smashed it into the face of another. I felt Sophia's hand pulled free of mine and whirled with the axe only to see it was Carol grabbing her daughter. Lori fired her .38 again and then a scream far worse than Lori's cry for Carl ripped into our ears. Screaming. Screaming. Five women screaming. Me screaming. Patricia screaming as a walker ripped a chunk out of her neck and red. Red in the dark. Red as more walkers tore chunks out of Patricia's arms. Screaming as she held onto Beth and wouldn't let go. Lori screaming as she fired her last rounds and the revolver clicked uselessly in her hand. Beth screaming as Patricia finally let go. Carol and Sophia screaming as the woman was torn apart in front of them as walkers piled on top of her.

I screamed again as I swung the axe to take a bite out of a walker's face and then kicked another away which thumped heavily off the pickup as it suddenly roared up in front of me. Sophia fairly flew through the air as Carol threw her into the back and Andrea sent a round past my ear close enough to burn it and I felt something hit the back of my leg, making me leap forward and follow Carol and Sophia into the bed of the truck. All three of us screamed together as hands reached from the back for us. Dozens of hands. A forest of hands. The truck lurched forward and I cracked my head on the cab and for a few moments, or minutes, I saw everything in what seemed to be slow motion. Several of the hands fell back as heads wetly popped black juice and then a body landed on me to which Carol and Sophia both held tight and then the truck lurched again only to this time keep moving.

We seemed to pass through a long tunnel. A tunnel of grey faces full of teeth and without eyes. Face after face and hands. Many, many hands. The body on my legs fought itself free and I saw it was Andrea. She had her gun and it painted pretty lights in my vision.

Daryl was in the tunnel. Flying. He looked at me and I waved. His eyes narrowed and then he flew away before the lights in the tunnel all went out.

[][][][][][]

I woke up and splashed about except my hands didn't hit water but hard metal and a fresh lance of pain shot up my left arm as my right hand smarted. A hand pressed down hard on my chest. A big strong hand that didn't let me move at all.

"Bas is awake." Theodore said.

Three blonde heads suddenly appeared at my feet, seeming to blur together before I made out Andrea, Beth and Sophia as Theodore released me. Andrea lost interest immediately while Sophia clambered into the truck to look at me. "You hit your head." She said.

"I got that." I replied. I tried to pick myself up and instead fell onto my front in the truck.

"They think you have a concussion." She said, unresponsive to my fall.

I didn't have time to be concussed but I suspected they were right. I saw we were on the side of the road and Daryl's bike was there. I looked around and it took a moment for me to find him and Lori. She was by the side of the road, retching but she didn't seem to have anything to actually bring up. Daryl was there with his crossbow, keeping watch for her with something of a pissed look. Andrea was watching the other way. Also looking pissed.

"What's going on?"

"We were talking." Carol was on the opposite side of the truck to Theodore. "About what to do, and Lori…" She trailed off.

"Made herself sick." Theodore finished.

"She wants to go back." I said.

"Yeah…"

"You don't."

"We've no idea where anyone could be now. Going back there is just suicide." He said. "…But who cares what I think?"

I nodded, winced, and felt the back of my head. I had bled a lot but head wounds always did. There was a lot of swelling but that was also typical of head injuries. How did I know that? It took me a moment to recall every person I had seen receive a 'tap on the head' where reality had set in and they had needed serious help. That would be great. If I lasted this long just to die from a bump on the head…

Daryl and Lori returned to the truck and she had that sheen of sweat you saw only on pregnant women and junkies. "The highway." She was saying. "That's where they'll be. That's where they'll go. Glenn too."

"Figures." Daryl said.

"We don't know that though." Andrea replied. "We haven't seen Rick or Shane since they left last night. We don't know what might have happened to them out there." Although she had some thoughts, clearly.

"And Carl?" Lori asked in that twitchy way of hers. "I should just… What? Accept he's dead out there in the woods? Like you did with Sophia?"

Andrea folded her arms and then she began to talk in that tone of hers. "I never-"

"Oh, shut up." I said and she turned on me. "Both of you. You got some other place to be?" I asked Andrea and then I looked at Daryl. "We got any water?"

"No." He said clear as day.

"There's water on the highway. Remember those water coolers Shane found? Did you take them?"

"He's right." Daryl pointed at me. "Even if Rick and Carl ain't there, it's a good reason to go. Unless you want to drink out of the truck's radiator."

"I'm not trying to be the bad guy here." Andrea still had her arms folded. "I just don't think going back into that herd's a good idea when we've only got about fifty bullets between us."

"I'm going." Lori climbed back into the cab of the truck while Theodore pulled a face and did the same. Beth was savvy enough to follow, meaning that myself, Andrea, Carol and Sophia were left in the bed and this time I was conscious. Conscious that riding in the back of a pickup on a cold morning was awful.

Conscious and counting. Yesterday morning I had known sixteen living people, plus one prisoner. Today, seven. The memory of Patricia having her throat ripped out came back to me and I clasped my left hand, even though the parts that had been bitten were gone. The thought of everything that had happened made me reach into my pocket and pull out the bones.

"Are those your fingers?" Carol drew Sophia close to herself.

"Yep…" I pushed them around in my palm with my remaining fingers. "Helps to put everything into perspective." I closed my fist and put them away.

"You kept those?" It was hard to hear her over the slipstream.

"Seemed like a good idea at the time." Still did. I was alive. That was something at least. I wasn't sure what the something was but it was something. "What happened?"

"We lost the farm." Andrea answered. "We lost Patricia. We lost half the group. We've got about fifty rounds left and half of us can't shoot. Now we're heading back after spending half the night trying to get away."

"The usual then."

She stared at me and then she actually laughed. It was one of those days.

A familiar hand slipped into mine and Sophia gave me that look. The big eyes that silently asked why everything was so terrible and kept on being terrible. As always the only answer I could give was a squeeze of her hand. It was a better answer than any I had been given, especially the time when my only source of good food had been stealing leftovers from outdoor restaurant tables before they could be cleared. Living as actual vermin.

Sitting in the back of this pickup truck with the back of my head throbbing and my left hand stabbing; I really couldn't say which life was better.

Winter it seemed was finally here and after the relatively peaceful week, the dead had come with it. Theodore weaved around them so that every few minutes a figure would whip by, often with a painful thump as their grasping hands made contact with the wings of the truck. A few were knocked down and the four of us watched them grow small on the road. Sometimes rising. Sometimes flapping about like fish. Corpse after corpse but not a great sea of them like at the farm. I guessed that was because most were still there. Perhaps the barn had burnt out by now. Probably not. The smoke would draw their attention and all the stragglers marching toward the memory of the gunfire would keep them there.

Sophia shivered and Carol and I both moved closer to her, sandwiching her tight. It was the only thing we could do. We weren't dressed for the outdoors. Andrea had lifted her collar to protect her neck but all she could do for her bared arms was fold them. After a while she leaned on me, instinctively seeking the nearest source of warmth in the metal box. She didn't even think about it and I caught the moment when she realised what was she was doing, and consciously decided to stay where she was. I doubted it was much warmer in the cab.

They hadn't slept at all during the night so they all dozed. I had hit my head so I had to stay awake as best as I could. I didn't really know how to do that because there was no convenient distracting thought to have. All that happened was that I ended up replaying all the events of the past few weeks; all the shooting, the explosions, the bodies… I thought about the first time I had seen a dead person. Back then, seeing a hobo who had died from malnutrition, infection or simply giving up on life had just been normal. I had even once been grabbed by the cops to give a witness statement, and they had tried to put me through Child Protective Services. Shouldn't have left me in an unlocked room on my own. Turned out it was easy enough to slip out of a police house. Much easier than slipping in.

Sophia's fingernails dug into my hand and Andrea went for her gun as a horn blared suddenly. Carol only looked tired. It was all getting to be too much for her to even respond to.

It was Glenn and Maggie. Neither vehicle had completely stopped before the two farmgirls were out and flying at each other. Their conversation was too fast and too high for me to follow. I only heard 'daddy' a few times and that was all that I needed to know.

"And then there were ten." I heard Andrea remark before she pragmatically went over how much ammunition Glenn and Maggie had left. A handful of shotgun shells between them. And not much gas in the tank. Nothing to eat and nothing to drink. All the supplies we had had were in the farmhouse or the RV.

Theodore appeared relieved to see Glenn which was because even though Glenn looked almost as young as me at times, he was still an adult male. Myself, Beth and Sophia were kids in his eyes; a third of the group. Lori was a pregnant woman and I didn't recall ever seeing Carol fight. So that left Theodore, Daryl and Glenn as the adult men and Andrea as a fighter. Only half if Maggie really did know a few things from growing up country.

"So what's the deal?" Glenn asked. "What are we doing?"

"Heading for the highway." Daryl pointed the way he did. "Figure if any of the others made it out, that's where they'd go. An' there's some supplies there. Bas remembered that water you and Shane found."

Glenn looked around at me and frowned. "What happened to you?"

What did my front look like? He couldn't see the bump on my head. "No seatbelts."

He nodded. "Maybe you should get in here." He said, indicating their vehicle.

"No. You go." I told Carol and Sophia. "Get warm."

"What about you?" Sophia spoke before Carol could.

"I need some fresh air." I said to her and then squeezed her hand one last time. "Go on."

Daryl led, Glenn followed and Theodore took up the rear. It was a strange convoy but sitting in the back of a truck with Andrea was stranger.

"You were a lawyer, weren't you?"

She gave me a look. "Civil rights. Not criminal."

"Still sitting with a lawyer. Who has a gun… Guns…"

"… How hard did you hit your head?"

"I see dead people."

She rolled her eyes. It was a distraction though and she was probably grateful for that. Probably. She was thinking about Dale. The last I had seen of the RV had been down at the barn where it had looked like it was going to burn with it. If Rick or Shane had set that fire and Dale and Jimmy had made contact with them and they had shot their way out, the sound of it had been lost amidst all the other shooting.

"You think it could have been different."

"What?" She asked.

"Do you think we could have defended the place, or was it just a matter of time before we were driven off?"

She twisted awkwardly. "I think we wasted too much time on Randall and we paid the price for it."

"Patricia did." I twitched involuntarily at the thought of all the red.

"So you think you were wrong now?"

"No. I still think if we had shot that kid in the head, we'd have opened the door to a whole bunch of worse things. And if Shane would leave Otis to die to save himself and kill Randall to protect us from a vague threat, he'd definitely kick my skinny ass out to fend for itself."

"You think Shane killed Otis?"

"That's his rifle, isn't it?" I pointed at the gun bag. Lori must have put it back in there after last night.

She looked at it. She looked at it for a long time and then she sighed. "Dale thought the same thing. He said Shane all but admitted it. I didn't want to believe it but…"

"You like Shane."

"He's protected all of us!" She declared and then seemed to doubt those words. "He's been good to me." There was no doubt there. "If we see him again, he'll have to explain himself. He'll have to explain everything." Meaning Randall.

"You don't think he's at the highway?"

"I think you and Sophia surviving out there alone for days was a miracle. I don't think we're going to have another miracle so soon." She looked back down the road. "Not after everything." The light drained from her eyes. She was thinking of Amy. It had only been a few weeks.

For something to do, I took a look in the gun bag. We had pistols that we had no ammunition for, Otis' rifle and the shotguns were dispersed. The little axe I had been using last night was in there and I pushed it back into my belt.

"You don't want a gun?" Andrea asked, noticing I only took the axe.

"I can't shoot." I shook the bag. "Not like we have the ammunition to spare to teach me."

We knew we had reached the traffic jam when we slowed right down and after the first few bumps and bangs as Theodore negotiated the way, we both lay down. She chose her front and actually seemed to drift off. I lay on my back, resting my sore head on my hands and looking up at the thick grey clouds above. It was cold and it was going to get worse.

We snaked on and on and then a sudden lurch woke Andrea and I almost kneed myself in the face before another lurch pitched me upright. In the past, an old man with a shotgun or rifle was something I had avoided like a plague. Now there were two of them grinning at me. Dale and Hershel were both blood-spattered but alive and Dale was first astonished and then relieved as Andrea leapt out of the truck and hugged him. The coldness between them since the CDC was gone. I watched Hershel get the same treatment from his daughters and it was impossible to say which of them had the most tears.

I had seen a Grimes reunion before but I hadn't been lucid last time. That one when Rick had come back from the dead had featured a lot of tears. Understandable. This time Lori was too relieved to see her son alive to feel anything but joy. And her husband. Who was covered with even more blood than Dale and Hershel. On his face, his chest, his arms and his hands. That was not good.

Glenn was more restrained than Andrea but he and Dale were relieved to see each other alive. Carl and Sophia hugged. Rick clasped hands with Daryl. I watched all these reunions from the back of the truck; my arms folded on the roof. Theodore hugged the door of the truck; a pistol ready in hand.

I recognised where we were. It was where the RV had broken down and where Sophia and I had gone off the highway, fleeing the stragglers of the horde. We had come in a great big circle it seemed. There was a yellow car with a blanket and a flashlight on it and collection of water bottles, cans and jars. There was a message on the windshield in white paint that had been almost obliterated by the rain. SOPHIA STAY HERE WE WILL COME EVERY DAY. They hadn't known my name then.

"Where'd you find everyone?" Rick asked Daryl.

"Well this guy's taillight was zig-zagging all over the road. Figured he had to be Asian driving like that."

Glenn actually laughed. "Good one."

"Where's the rest of us?" Daryl asked. Someone had to.

"We're it." Rick answered.

"Shane?" Lori's voice cracked ever so slightly.

Rick shook his head once. The look on his face. He had the stare. That stare that said he hadn't even begun to deal with it. Lori got a similar look.

"Patricia?" Hershel asked and I cringed with Carol and Sophia while Lori was still processing Shane.

"They got her." Beth's voice was husky from crying all night. "Took her right from me I… I was holding on to her, daddy, she just…" It was all the description they were going to get and Hershel cradled her as it crushed her again before she rallied. "What about Jimmy? Did you see Jimmy?"

"He was in the RV." Rick began but Dale cut him off.

"We saw Rick and Carl in the loft of the barn so we went to them so they could climb down and… And it broke down on me again. They were all around us, they got the door open and that kid… He…" Andrea and Glenn held his arms. "Rick broke down the back window and I got out of there… But Jimmy…" He couldn't continue and we all filled in the blanks. The walkers had got the door of the RV open and they had been so busy tearing Jimmy apart that Dale had escaped with his life. Judging by his bloodied shirt, some nasty cuts as well. But still nothing like the horrible fate that had befallen Jimmy. And I had told him to get in the RV with Dale. Because he could shoot.

"But Shane?" Andrea asked. "They got him?"

"Shane's dead." Rick said, and then breathed in sharply, as if it was the first time he had admitted it himself.

"I shot him."

Thirteen heads including my own looked with astonishment at the cowboy hatted head of Carl.

"You, you what?" Lori spluttered. "You shot Shane?"

"He came back."

Lori looked at Rick who swallowed and nodded. Another reason why he had the stare. Lori kept a good hold of her son as she tried to process both the loss of Shane and her son being the one to put a bullet in his reanimated corpse. Rick meanwhile had to press on. Forget about it. Put it to the side.

"We got to keep moving." He said. "There'll be walkers crawling all over here."

"Company." I pointed down the road.

Theodore looked and continued hugging the door. He was completely exhausted. Spent.

"Stay off the main roads. Bigger the road, the more walkers, the more assholes like this one." Daryl took up his crossbow. "I got him." He put it down with a clear shot through the eye.

"Water's still there." I pointed at the delivery truck.

They had already picked through all the nearby vehicles, siphoning gas out of them too, all of this on the day and the day after Sophia and I had gone missing. After Carl had been shot, they had been forced to abandon the area which was the reason for the message on the car. The pickings for food had been slim before. There was nothing now but at least there was plenty to drink. Theodore loaded up the pickup with more than a dozen jugs because it was better to be safe than sorry. They collected as much gas as they could too but they couldn't go far because the dead were everywhere and while Daryl could snap one at a time with his crossbow, we only had small weapons to fight with. My little axe, knives and a wrench from Hershel's car was all we had.

My breakfast was a spoonful of peanut butter.

We moved on. Daryl had his brother's bike, the families went into Hershel's suburban, Hershel and his girls were in the Hyundai with Glenn, Theodore drove the pickup with Andrea and Dale in the cab and I chose to remain in the bed of the pickup. I had two blankets and one I rested my battered head on and the other, I wrapped tight about myself. As the day wore on, the chill in the air went away and I was fine. Lying back there, surrounded by the water, it was almost possible to imagine I was somewhere else entirely. Not back in Savannah in the past but somewhere far away with blue skies, golden sand and girls wearing very little. Maybe it was a childish fantasy but fuck it, I was seventeen. When you were tired, hungry and hurting; what was a little unimaginative sexual fantasy?

We didn't get far that day. When I heard the horn, my guess was fuel rather than danger. The way we drew up slowly confirmed it. I didn't even bother to get up as I heard everyone else disembark. I had nothing to offer. Nothing to contribute but a rumbling stomach and a mild headache. But then a pair of sad eyes appeared at the rim of the bed of the truck and then gazed at me until the guilt forced me up.

I put the blanket around her and her mother gave me a grateful nod. I was used to the cold and they weren't. Looking around I saw everyone else had layered up with clothes from the traffic snarl. I felt underdressed as all I had was the second blanket. We reached the head of the convoy in time to hear Maggie sum things up quite well. "We can't just sit here with our asses hanging out."

"Watch your mouth." Hershel said sternly. The same tone he had used while pledging to defend the farm. "Everyone, stop panicking. Listen to Rick."

I sat on the hood of the Hyundai and looked at our leader. It was hard to be reassured by a man who was covered in dried blood and who gesticulated with a gun in his hand. "Alright, we set up a perimeter. In the morning, we'll find gas and some supplies. We'll keep pushing on."

"Glenn and I can go make a run now." Maggie suggested. "Try and scrounge up some gas."

"No, we stay together." Rick literally waved her down but with his gun-free hand. "God forbid something happens and people get stranded without a car!" He spat the words like bullets though.

"Rick, we're stranded now." Glenn pointed out.

"I know it looks bad. We've all been through hell and worse but at least we found each other!" He looked around at everyone and then settled on myself and Sophia. "We lost faith, we didn't think it could happen but it did. It did! And now here we are again! We're together! We keep it that way."

The euphoria of the reunion that morning and the relatively light casualties had worn off it seemed. No one seemed reassured by his words and this spot on the side of a small backroad where the autumn leaves had formed a dry constantly rustling blanket was not welcoming.

"We'll find shelter somewhere. There's got to be a place!" It was hard to tell if he was talking to us or himself.

Glenn seemed to think the latter. "Rick, look around." He spoke softly, pleadingly. "Look around. There's walkers everywhere. It's like they're migrating or something."

"There's got to be a place." Now he was talking to us. "Not just where we hole up but we… Fortify! Hunker down. Pull ourselves together. Build a LIFE for each other! I know it's out there; we just have to find IT!" He snarled the words and he believed them. He believed them and that was why he was pissed because he believed it and couldn't find it.

"Even if we do find a place." Maggie seemed to be the designated voice of pessimism. Her and Glenn. "We think it's safe. We can never be sure for how long." Rick gave her a filthy look so she quickly explained herself. "Look what happened with the farm. We fooled ourselves into thinking it was safe."

"We won't make that mistake again." Hershel spoke for himself and his level voice actually struck me. He meant it. And without Rick's guttural snarling, it was a comfort.

"No we won't." Andrea backed him up. "We find a place and we do what we should have done before. We spend every minute we can making sure it's secure."

"Yeah. We don't give up hope now." Dale followed them both. "After everything we've been through, everything we've suffered; we don't just give in now." He was blatantly still thinking about Jimmy, but he was still Dale. Andrea squeezed his arm but Maggie and Glenn, Beth and Sophia; they weren't convinced. Theodore was numb; wearing the same expression as during the reunion on the highway. Daryl was impassive. Carol and Lori… I didn't know.

"We make camp tonight. Over there." Rick looked off to the left and I saw how numb I was. There was some kind of ruin there and I hadn't seen it until now. "Get on the road at the break of day." It was a vague plan but I had noticed Rick would rather give a vague plan than nothing.

"Better than nothing." Dale said, which was as optimistic as anyone could be about the open stone walls.

Beth wasn't comforted. "What if walkers come through? Or another group like Randall's?" She looked for answers from Rick. He had none.

"You know I found Randall, right? He'd turned, but he wasn't bit." Had he really just said that a night ago?

"How's that possible?" Beth pressed.

"What the hell happened?" Lori asked, meaning Randall, and Shane and everything Rick and Carl had been through during the night. Rick nodded meaninglessly a few times but didn't speak.

"Shane killed Randall." Daryl said what we had all been thinking. Me since figuring out there was no way he could have escaped alone, Andrea shortly after and everyone else when Daryl and Glenn had returned to the house. "Just like he always wanted to." Daryl wasn't the only one who could see the truth in Rick.

"And then the herd got him?" Lori needed Rick to talk about it and Rick… The look on his face…

"Oh shit…" I said involuntarily and they all looked at me, confused, and then back at Rick. The look on his face. "Oh shit."

"We're all infected." He said to a leaf on the ground and then looked up and around at a whole bunch of baffled faces.

"Whut?" Daryl voiced the confusion for them.

"At the CDC. Jenner told me." Rick said, as if the pieces were sliding into place for him. He didn't see how Theodore looked at him. He was no longer numb. He looked like he was thinking of breaking his rifle over Rick's skull. "…Whatever it is… We all carry it."

In front of me Sophia suddenly clutched at her head and I immediately took a hold of her. She twisted and clung to me, shaking like a paint-mixer. She wasn't even crying. She was just terrified, as if she thought she was going to turn grey, chew off her face and become one of them in an instant. Her mother held her from the other side but didn't take her eyes off of Rick.

Dale took off his hat. Daryl walked around in a little circle. The others stood their ground, except for Andrea who advanced on him. "And you never said anything?" Andrea asked. "After everything we went through there?"

"You knew this whole time." Glenn was no longer placating.

"How could I have known for sure?" He pointed at Andrea with the hand that held the pistol and she did not appreciate the gun in her face. "You saw how crazy that son-"

"That is not your call!" I couldn't remember ever hearing Glenn angry before.

"No it isn't." Andrea backed him up.

"When I found out about the walkers in the barn, I told for the good of everyone."

"Well I thought it best if people didn't know." Rick said, and that grim logic hit everyone hard. They had nothing to say in reply. Not a word. Rick turned about and walked away and I wondered about a man who felt more comfortable about telling people they were all doomed to be walking ravenous corpses, than admitting he had killed his best friend.

"Son of a bitch!" Theodore suddenly snapped in the silence and then he straightened up, shouldered the rifle he carried and went to the pickup where he got one of the water jugs. An angry but practical man. He stomped over to the ruin with it. His little outburst prompted Lori to go after Rick, Daryl loaded his crossbow which hopefully meant some kind of critter for dinner and Hershel led his girls after Theodore.

Sophia had stopped shaking but she wasn't letting go. I looked at Carol who shook her head and I didn't know what that was supposed to mean. The back of my head and my hand both spiked with pain to remind me to be grateful that things could be worse.

"Come on, son." I looked to the right to see Carl, alone with both his parents gone being led away by Dale. That left myself, Carol, Sophia, Glenn and Andrea on the road. Glenn felt betrayed to the core and he would need someone to lead him away; he was hugging his shotgun for comfort. Shane's shotgun.

I realised that I hadn't actually thought about what Rick had just said. The girl clinging to me didn't know what to do with the news and I… I just didn't care. Why didn't I care? Because I was a godless heretic in the land of the blessed so I didn't care what happened to me after I died? Because it was just more crap to throw on the pile? Because there was nothing I could do about it anyway? It wasn't as if it made any difference now.

Or maybe after knocking my head I was still dazed.

Eventually Sophia let go, if only so she could cling to her mother instead. Andrea sat on the roof of the pickup, keeping watch and collecting her own thoughts. Maggie retrieved Glenn from the roadside and neither of them looked good. Better than Dale though, I saw him with his shirt off and there wasn't much they could do but change the bandages from the very basic first aid kit Hershel kept in his car. Bandages and band aids; that was it.

I made myself useful by collecting firewood; it was no challenge gathering twigs from under trees. With the others dealing with the fact that rest was no longer eternal without brain trauma, I worked mostly alone. Alone until Rick joined me. I assumed from the way Lori had come back that she knew what I knew. That Shane had died at Rick's hands. But she knew the details. Whatever they were, they had her disturbed. Deeply disturbed. I didn't know if she was clinging to Carl because of last night or because of today.

I had tried to avoid killers all my life. That hadn't been hard considering how low on the food chain I had been but I had still known of them. Savannah wasn't a violent city and the most common kind of criminal had been housebreakers and burglars like me. Now I had spent time with Shane and now Rick. Both killers. Both cops. Ironic.

"You got somethin' to say?" He growled suddenly.

"Do we even have any matches or a lighter?"

His face creased with confusion momentarily and then he scoffed. He still had that stare. He picked up a log and dragged it back to the ruin where no fire could possibly thaw the chill that greeted him. They all agreed with Glenn; he had had no right to choose to keep what he knew to himself, especially from those of us who had been to the CDC and seen what Jenner had shown us.

I didn't know what the ruin had been but it was four walls that provided shelter from the wind and cover for a fire. A fire was the only comfort we had as night fell. We had water but the only food we had had been the meagre supplies left on the yellow car on the highway. That was doled out, eaten and stomachs growled for more and whatever the hell Daryl came back with didn't go far between fourteen people. It made me think how good the food on the farm had been. Eggs almost every day… We had been spoiled.

Hershel took a look at my head and said I would be alright. He figured stitches would have been a good idea but he had no supplies. He almost got a smile out of Maggie by asking me how I managed to keep getting hurt. No such smile from Beth. She wouldn't be smiling for a long time.

I thought that hitting my head had left me remarkably calm. After hacking off my fingers and then being forced to look for water, I had been incredibly on edge and my relief at being found by Daryl had almost made me weak at the knees. Now, I was hungry, cold, out in those godforsaken woods again, it was dark, and I knew that there was absolutely nothing stopping a swarm of walkers from coming out of those trees. Everyone else was twitchy and on the edge of panic and I felt… I reached my right hand back and forth in front of me, watching the blur of motion and it was very much like being tipsy before being properly drunk. I guessed that being concussed was better than being frightened half out of my mind like all of them and panicking at a single noise in the woods. They wanted to take off, either to find the source of the noise and to get far away from it.

But Rick was having none of it. "The last thing we need is for everyone to go running off in the dark." The growl he had had all day was becoming guttural. "We don't have the vehicles. No one's travelling on foot." He was rightfully contemptuous of the idea. Even with the moonlight, it was another inky black night and anyone other than Daryl would have been lost within minutes. And that was in the woods. Walking on an open road at night? No thank you.

"Don't panic." Hershel wasn't. He held his shotgun ready and I thought that he had been quite upbeat all day, despite losing his home last night. He had seemed happy to die there and now, he had a very firm resolve to live.

"I'm not." Maggie replied to him in the measured tone of someone trying to control their panic. "I'm not sitting here waiting for another herd to blow through." She said and then addressed Rick. "We need to move, now."

"No one is going anywhere." Rick's voice was the measured tone of a man who wanted to yell 'Sit down and shut the fuck up', but couldn't. I wasn't the only one who could read the subtext and it struck them in different ways. The Greene girls were alarmed. Daryl agreed. Sophia burrowed deeper into her mom's arms. Andrea was pissed.

"So what's the plan? We just sit here and hope for the best? We have to do something." She had that tone I remembered from the nursing home, from the highway. It was not the best choice for Rick who wound just a little bit tighter, and snapped.

"I am doing something!" He snarled at Andrea and he had his automatic in hand again, just like earlier. "I'm keeping this group together. Alive!" He practically puked the word. "I've been doing that all along. No matter what." He said in a more measured tone and then the rage boiled up again. "I didn't ask for this! I killed my best friend for you people, for Christ's sake!"

And there it was, in the open. It came as a revelation to Glenn, to Maggie, to Carl, Carol and Theodore. Not to Daryl. Not to Dale. Andrea had the last unwilling piece of the puzzle put into place. Beth caught my attention. While Maggie looked aghast and her dad had guessed the truth, it looked as if she had realised it too but hadn't wanted to believe it. Perhaps she had figured it out from the revelations about Randall's escape, or that the blood on Rick's jacket could only have come from stabbing someone up close. Either way, she intrigued me.

Rick only saw the horror and disgust. And so the justifications began. "You saw what he was like. How he pushed me. How he compromised us." Rationalisations born of guilt. "How he threatened us." I saw Dale nodding unthinkingly. "He staged the whole Randall thing. Led me out to put a bullet in my back." What I had guessed, what Daryl knew and Andrea had to accept. "He gave me no choice!" Rick flapped his arm and my eye was entirely on the gun he was waving. "He was my friend, but he came after me! My hands are clean." He was speaking to the group but that part was for himself. He would be asking himself if it was true for a long time though.

Shame was a powerful thing. People would do all kinds of terrible things to avoid an embarrassing secret of theirs getting out. Far worse things than the secret because that was how powerful shame was. And they were ashamed now because they agreed with the man. Shane had been temperamental, aggressive, eager to kill Randall and furious at being denied. He had had two allies in the group and that had been his best friend and Andrea. She had liked his zeal for protecting the group but Shane had broken Randall's neck. If he had shot him or stabbed him, that might have sat okay with her but watching her hands, I could see her figuring out whether she could snap someone's neck, and then smash up her own face before luring her best friend into the woods for a murder. The answer was no.

But just two nights ago Dale and I had argued that killing someone for being a threat was wrong. Now Rick had done it and we agreed with it. We were all hypocrites. We were ashamed.

Rick looked every one of us in the eye. Hershel, Daryl, Dale, myself, we could meet his hot-eyed gaze. No one else could. Four of fourteen. "Maybe you people are better off without me. Go ahead." He pointed into the darkness. "I say there's a place for us but maybe it's just another pipedream." He declared mockingly, referring to the CDC, the nursing home and Fort Benning. All the milestones on the road of hell. "Maybe I'm fooling myself again. "Why, why don't you go and find out yourself?" He didn't even seem to notice that he pointed his gun right at Maggie who flinched. "Send me a postcard!" He spat. "Go on, there's the door." He pointed into the dark again. "If you can do better let's see how far you get."

I had told Dale that I knew guys like Randall. Guys who blindly followed any strong presence in their lives. They welcomed direction and not having to think for themselves. Lots of people were like that but most had boundaries; lines they wouldn't cross. They welcomed people who would cross the line so they didn't have to. Now Rick had shown himself to be that person. While he might have claimed his hands were clean, they were dirty and he had gotten them dirty for the group. It was a simple enough equation.

"No takers?" Rick asked. "Fine. But get one thing straight." His eyes had taken on a manic look I had seen before only in addicts. "You're staying? This isn't a democracy anymore."

I lay back in the plant litter. I had little idea how I had ended up in a collection of tents by a quarry outside Atlanta or why fate had decided I would live through the attack on that camp. Now I was in some ruin on the side of the road with a bunch of people I didn't know and if I didn't want to die, staying with them was my only option. The only thing I had in common with them was that their prospects for survival were the same.

Author's Notes:
As I said in the summary, I wrote this for fun. I had been writing in third person for a while so it nice to go back to first person. I hope that Bas doesn't come off as a Gary Stu though he certainly goes that way during the meeting that decides Randall's fate. Bas is a mouthpiece for a lot of my criticisms of season 2 and to voice things that people have said over the years, like Shane being responsible for not setting a guard on the quarry camp but blaming Rick for what happens and no one ever calling him out on this. I also liked having Bas interject in the row between Andrea and Lori, about them both having valid points.

If you need a history, in the OTL Bas died during the fish-fry attack; just an anonymous extra who died before the Morales family went their own way and Rick led the others to the CDC. He is seventeen, he is a kid and while he may be resourceful, he's not a fighter or shooter and so he doesn't matter like the other established characters. With so much of his time being spent with Sophia and Carl, he doesn't impact other events so much.

There's an official series timeline on the wikia I use which says Sophia went missing on October 29th and is discovered as a walker on November 3rd. Which means the first half of season 2 covers just six days. I tried to work within that timeline. But for it to make sense, Daryl doesn't fall all the way down a hill into a creek and takes a bolt in the side along the way. Instead the horse just throws him and he's only minorly injured. Daryl finds them on November 3rd, the same day that Shane decides to tear open the barn. It had to be Daryl who found them. Who found Sophia like he promised.

Why write an original character when it's about Sophia surviving? I considered having her survive by herself, but Sophia as seen in the show is a very fearful person, acting much younger than she is. I couldn't make her like Clementine and I wouldn't try to live up to that example. This Sophia has a chance to grow though. Which is the whole point.