"You gonna be alright out there?"

Rick walked over to me, eyeing the car I had said I wanted to take on a test drive. I could fix the vehicles, but it would be better if I said it would be better for me to get the cars moving to see if anything was still wrong with them.

I just wanted some time away, not having to think about watching the baby or building the wall or . . . what happened to Carl. He wore a bandage over his eye now, he probably would forever, and he'd have to relearn how to shoot. I just needed a distraction to stop myself from thinking about it.

"I just want to take the car out and see how it runs," I told him. "And I can stop at the rock face, and try to climb again. I'll probably get some more time out there without Glenn and Martinez pissing each other off."

"Alright." He reached for his back pocket and held out a map for me to take, with a black X drawn into the paper. "I marked down Alexandria, just in case you get lost or something. I know how useless you can be with directions."

I feigned a laugh. "I know how to get back from the rock face."

"Just in case," he repeated.

Rick opened the door for me as I drove the car out of the gates, and I put the hazards on for a click or two to say thank you before I sped off down the road. (Well, sped off at my maximum 55 miles per hour.)

The car was running fine at low and high speeds, no odd sounds came from the engine or exhaust and all the electrical seemed to be working as well. I turned on whatever CD was left on the radio and played some music to keep my mind focused on something else.

As I pulled up to the rock face, I locked the car, put the keys away in my bag so I didn't lose them and made my way over the fence to climb the walls. I had gotten used to climbing around halfway up with my bare hands, but if I wanted to go higher then I would have to pierce the stone with the tip of my axe. If the blade rolled then I would just sharpen it until I could find another axe or make one. All in good time, I supposed.

I climbed myself up to the halfway point I had made it to before Glenn and Martinez were fighting, and I realised just how scary this could be. Taking my axe, I put the axe to the wall before swinging it back and jamming it down into the stone above my head. I pierced the rock and pulled down to see if it would hold.

It did, shocker.

I pulled up my body weight and tried finding a place to hold and get my feet secure so I could remove the axe from the wall again and keep climbing. Once I felt kind of secure, I pulled the axe back and pierced it again higher before pulling my body up again.

"Okay," I breathed. "It's working. Cool."

This was a lot harder than I ever expected it to be, and it got worse when I was high enough to fall and do damage to myself. The problem was keeping up my own body while I moved the axe, and I hated that part so much. I just needed to get more confident, but why did the things I wanted to learn have to be so dangerous?

Finally, I got my leg up onto the top ledge and rolled my body over.

I breathed in and out heavily as I looked around, wondering what I could see from the top. It was a gorgeous view, the land almost silent. Then I saw something in the distance, whites and blues against the green forest surrounding it.

A town.

I stared out at it, following the road that led from where my car was to the town with my finger. I took a second, weighing up my options. Alexandria was running low on food, which meant I should probably take a look and see what I could find. It would be a waste of fuel to drive back and tell Rick that this place was here, and how much time would it take before we got a run group out here—no, I should scout it out myself and if there was more there then we could come back.

Turning back to the edge, I began to descend the rock face in the way that I had climbed up, which turned out to be much harder than just climbing upward, as much as gravity wanted to see me fall back to the bottom.

When I reached my car, I started in the direction of the town I'd seen, following the path I followed with my eyes at the top. It was just a straight shot before I came across signs that directed me in the same way I remembered.

Hillcrest.

It had big wide open streets with buildings made of the wooden panelling I had seen everywhere we travelled. Still, it was cute. I stopped on the first street, pulling onto the right side of the road. The town seemed pretty empty, but I had to make sure no walkers were lurking around. Instead of trying each house first, most of which had broken windows, I took my knife and butted one of the var windows to start searching.

Kicking away some of the glass, I began searching around in the car for food, but I found nothing much inside, nothing of use anyway. Once I looked around and saw no walkers emerging from any of the buildings, I headed to loot the closest ones, starting with the kitchens.

Nothing . . . great.

The rest of the house had nothing much of use either, and after making sure there were no stashes of food or anything, I made my way back outside to search the next house. When I stepped outside the door someone hit the back of my head.

I groaned as I woke up, blinking heavily a few times before trying to look around. When I went to move my arms to stand, I couldn't pull them around to the front of me. From the feel of whatever was digging into the back of one of my wrists, I assumed that it must've been a zip tie. I leaned my head back against the car that I was sitting against and forced myself to look around, to see who had captured me.

There were people around me, ten, by my count—nine men and a woman. My weapons were gone, probably in my bag that sat on the bonnet of my car that one of them, a man wearing a green pilot jacket with sewn-on badges was searching through.

The closest one noticed that I had woken up and stalked closer to me. "Look who's awake," I shrank at the look he was giving me, already wanting nothing more than to get back to Alexandria. His eyes hid something that turned me sick. "Thought you could take our stuff, huh, girlie?"

"I didn't know there was anyone here," I spat.

He howled out in laughter, clapping a hand down on my shoulder. "Oh my God! Did you all hear that? I didn't know there was anyone here," he mocked my accent, and the others around laughed. "Jesus, I was not expecting that. God, aren't you glad we grabbed her now?"

"No," the woman said. "You said you saw more of them."

"I thought there would have been more," the man beside me stood up. "Come on, Cammy. Who just sends a kid out looting?"

"I'm not looting," I snapped. "I was looking for somewhere to stay for the night. Don't want to sleep in the car again."

"Look at that, Jon," another man snapped. "You kidnapped a loner."

"Harris," Cammy grabbed his arm, seemingly calming him.

I rolled my eyes.

"I'm with Harris," a man said in a green pilot's jacket. He had a badge sewn on that said Liam. "We kidnapped a fucking kid, and she doesn't even have anything on her. Nothing we want, some nails, some water. No food."

"That doesn't mean she wasn't taking our stuff," Jon said. "We came out here to loot, how's it gonna look when we come back empty-handed because some teenage girl took anything worth a damn in this town."

"We just take her back, Lee," Cammy said. "Kid could do with some luck, spending all this time on the road. How long have you been travelling?"

Jon got bored or distracted easily and walked over to look through my things,

I shrugged. "Since the beginning, but I'm not going back with you, or . . ." I nodded to Jon digging through my bag, "him."

"I don't recall you having that choice," Cammy said.

"Let's just finish looting this town, get everything we can and we'll head back," Liam ordered. Some of the men left to look in the nearby houses.

I looked around for a way to get free, I would not let these people take me back to wherever they lived. I didn't know what kind of people they were but with how bitchy Cammy was and the way Jon spoke and looked at me . . . I doubted the rest of their people would be that much better.

"We gonna do the whole spiel?" Harris asked.

Liam shrugged. "I don't see the point, she's alone. Doesn't have the same impact."

"Or is she?" Jon smirked. "There's something marked on that map, community, maybe?"

"That was marked on the map when I found it," I said maybe too quickly. "I checked it out a few weeks ago, thought maybe there was a stash but I couldn't find anything."

He placed it down on the car and stalked over to me. "I don't believe you."

"Does it look like I give a fuck what you believe?"

He smirked.

Liam walked over to the car and looked down at the map. "There is no town or anything on this map."

I breathed out a sigh. Alexandria was too recently built for it to have been added to the maps yet, which meant they didn't know there was a town there. But they knew there was something there, and if they were going to explore it . . .

"We should still check it out," Jon suggested.

"No," Liam denied. "Not without more people, we don't know what this place is and if she's lying about having a community then they could be armed."

I had to get out, I realised quickly, get back to my people. My eyes shot around to find something I could use to cut the ties when I found it—the glass I had shattered to get into one of the cars. I waited for them all to turn their backs before I made my move. I stuck out a foot, reaching across as far as I could, catching the shard on my heel before dragging it back towards me. I put my leg back where it was and twisted my body to the side to reach the piece of glass, before holding it in my hands.

"How about you tell me the truth, sweetheart? Make this easier on yourself," Jon knelt in front of me, a hand reaching up to grab my chin and turn it his way. The way he was looking at me like I was prey . . . I didn't even care about Alexandria anymore, I just wanted out.

I wanted it to be over.

"Just leave her be, Jon," Liam called from his spot reading my map, his tone sounding like he got stuck with him rather than caring about the asshole in front of me. "Fucking creep."

I felt sick as his thumb traced over my bottom lip, tugging it downwards. "Maybe if you asked nicely . . ."

I lurched forward, biting down between his thumb and fingers as hard as I could. He screamed out, and I cringed, but used the distraction to keep cutting the tie, allowing my hands to move with less subtlety. How did Rick do this?

"You bitch!" Jon finally used his other hand to hit me in the jaw.

My teeth lost their hold, and my mind went blank, but I kept a hold of the glass as my body lurched to the side. Jon grabbed me by my throat and lifted me back into a sitting position, slamming me back against the metal body.

When the tie snapped, I tightened my grip on the glass and lunged forward, stabbing the shard into his neck, the force sending us both falling to the ground. I couldn't move, not when there were almost certainly guns aimed at me now. Pulling his body over, blood spurted out of the wound and I squeezed my eyes closed as it splashed on my face.

"She killed him! She killed Jon!"

Bullets pounded into his body, shielding me from any that flew my way. I waited for him to reload, before trying to make my move.

I reached for Jon's gun, pulling it free and sending shots off to the closest one to my bag. When he fell to the ground I drove over for my backpack and ducked behind the car. They were yelling, running back from where they had been looting to come and kill me.

Shoving my arms through the straps of my bag, they rushed me and I darted for the house at the end of the street. I threw my arm back and shot, getting the blonde-haired one behind me in the chest and stomach. He fell to the ground, in the doorway as his friends yelled out his name.

"Nick!"

I ran downstairs into the basement kitchen, and dove behind a sofa. But their footsteps kept chasing me. I gasped for air as I sprinted downstairs and ducked behind a sofa. I needed to stop them from chasing me and regroup, but their straps were heavy on the wooden floor upstairs as they followed me in.

Nail bomb—I had a nail bomb spare from the RV.

Pulling my bag around to my front, I grabbed the bomb and the matches Rick had given me that day, sparking it before lighting the fuse of my bomb. I waited for it to burn down before dropping it in the doorway where one of their footsteps pounded down the stairs to get me.

I ducked behind a house as the bomb went off, blocked from any shrapnel by the wooden exterior. The man behind me let out a blood-curdling cry before gargling on his blood. I didn't let it stop me until I rounded the house that saved my life, getting under the crawl space to hide. The body was visible between the gaps in the plank.

"Jackson!"

"What the fuck?" Cammy screeched. "What the fuck?!"

More people went to follow my steps when Liam, their voice of reason, stopped them. "Everyone stop for a second! She could have more!"

"She could get away!" Harris argued.

"She's not gonna get away without her car, besides, we know where she's going."

I froze.

Of course—they saw the map in my bag where Rick had marked Alexandria on the map for me. They had been in communication with a bigger group, so if I ran away and left them here, they could tell their group about Alexandria.

"You keep in the streets, don't let her get back to her car," Liam took over. "Everyone else, search the houses and watch out for traps. I don't know if she would have attacked us before Jon pissed her off but she had this bomb in her bag already. If you find her, just shoot. She doesn't get to live after this."

Harris turned to the one who had been searching through my bag. "Why didn't you take the bomb?"

"I didn't know what it was!" He raised his hands in defence.

"It doesn't matter now!"

"What about their bodies?" Cammy asked.

"We'll get them in the cars once we kill this bitch."."

They began to split off in the directions Liam had demanded of them. I used this time to search my bag, finding my gun and knife inside. My axe was still tied to the handle of my bag, so I moved it to my belt. I holstered my weapons and watched their movements, trying to decide the best way to take them out. I couldn't let them live if they knew how to get back to my community.

Four of them began walking away from this side of the street, one of them stopping in the middle to watch my car. That left two of them on this side. I waited and watched to see where their steps went, one of them entering the house I was underneath while one went next door, taking the back entrance.

With my body blocked, I followed after the latter, my knife in my hand. I waited by the back door, listening for his steps around the house, hoping he would come back out the same way before the guy next door. Except he didn't come back out, and his steps began walking upstairs.

That would work, he'd be hidden enough for me to take down.

I followed him into the house and made my way to the steps, trying to keep my steps as quiet as possible as Daryl had taught me. The man was peering inside one of the rooms upstairs when I saw him. I tiptoed forward before grabbing him, covering his mouth as he tried to yell out.

"Shut up!"

When I got him back into the bedroom, I jammed the tip of my knife into his neck and then dragged it across, spilling blood all over my hands. His body became heavy, and as I tried to lower him to the ground his body hit the bedside table.

"Caleb, you alright?" A man called from downstairs. "Caleb."

"Fuck, fuck," I muttered, rushing to a window and glancing out.

There was a roof just under the window over the garage. I sheafed my knife, slid my fingers underneath the window and lifted it as quickly and as quietly as I could as the man downstairs began coming up to check on his friend.

I crawled out onto the roof and back towards the window at the top of the staircase as the man called out. "Oh my God, she fucking killed him!"

There was no one close enough to hear his cry, so I wasn't too worried about drawing any attention to us. I peered around the corner to the bedroom where I left Caleb, and the man was kneeling over his body, his eyes darting around the bedroom. His attention turned to the windowsill, the one I crawled out of and left blood over.

I slid the window open behind him and jumped back into the passage, pulling my axe away from my holster, and as he stood up, I slammed it down into the base of his neck and yanked downwards. He didn't cry out or scream, so it pierced deep enough to make him choke on blood or break his voice box.

He fell face-first into the ground.

Four left.

Taking the last door at the end of the hallway, I ducked down under a window and began looking for the others. Harris was standing on one of the awnings above the porch of a house across the street, and I saw a shadow in the same house downstairs. It was a woman, Cammy.

I couldn't find Liam, but a man was still patrolling the centre of the streets, walking up and down in a repeating pattern. He was the one that was put there so I couldn't get back to my car, not that I wanted to escape yet. Still, if I wanted any chance of getting to the others across the street then I'd have to take him out next.

The next house over had a garage I could jump to so I could get down, and check the house for ways to kill him quietly. I knew I'd either have to lure him away or kill him from over here and hide again before they could find me, but the street was too open for me to attempt to get over to him and slit his throat.

Before I could get out of the house, I needed to distract them. I grabbed a vase from the bedside table, gagging at the smell of the mould that had grown from the dead flowers, and went back to the other side of the house where I had killed the two men. I threw the vase as far as I could up the street, and it smashed.

"What was that?"

"I don't know," Harris asked. "Miles, check it out."

I rushed back to the end bedroom, hanging down from the window before turning my body around as I dangled between the houses. I pressed my feet against the wall and kicked myself across to the lower garage, landing against it with a thud. Again, I lowered myself down enough before dropping between the houses, keeping myself behind the wheelie bins as cover.

Turning around, I took the side door into the next garage, looking for supplies. Rags and bottles—good. I poured out any of the cleaning supplies onto the ground, before I stuffed the rags into the bottle, layering them in a way that would divert the air backwards. That was how silencers worked, I learnt from the survival guide, that instead of having the explosion happen at the front of the gun it would send the sound waves backwards—not perfect, but better.

The man was still patrolling the main street when I saw him again, alone, already given up on the distraction I caused with the vase. I took my opportunity to pick another one of them off. It was the only way I could win something like this, but as it turned out, I was good at it.

He fell to the side as I fired the trigger, and the plastic bottle clattered to the ground in front of me. I peered around the corner until I could see one of the others if they knew about his death yet, but I didn't have to wait long.

"Miles!" One of the men, Harris, called.

There were just the three of them now, Cammy the girl, Harris and Liam in the pilot jacket—they were the only ones I hadn't killed yet. The other two ran out of the houses they were in. Harris jumped down from the garage roof.

"He's dead!" Cammy was the first to the body, kneeling over him. I retreated into the garage and hid between a shelf and a large red toolbox, tucking myself away from the view of anyone who might come in through the side door. "She shot him!"

Their footsteps came to a stop as they all approached the body. If I had a Molotov or nail bomb I could have taken the three of them out but I didn't have the supplies to make one. I had to do this quiet, keep doing this quiet.

"Did anyone hear where it came from?"

"No, she must have a silencer."

"We looked through her stuff, she didn't have a silencer!" I couldn't make out their voices well enough to know which was Harris and Liam.

"Well she fucking has one now, doesn't she?!" Cammy snapped. "Can she make them?"

"No, ain't no way."

Yes, way—I had another silencer made with an empty cleaning supply bottle that was on the shelf beside me. Just in case, but I was running low on rags tucked away in this corner so I had to get somewhere else if I wanted to take them all out this way.

I tried listening to see if they'd moved yet, to see if I could make a move yet, but they were all still over the body when they began talking again. Cammy was the one to ask, "Why doesn't she just go?"

"She's hunting us."

My eyes shifted to the open door, and I squinted. That was one way to put it . . . If hunting them meant that they couldn't tell their people about Alexandria, I had to do that. I kept my knife in my hand as I waited.

"Just . . . just find her. You two stick close together, keep an eye out," Liam must have said. "She's just a kid, but . . . we can't let her live after this."

They were moving.

Growing restless in my hiding place, I crept behind the car and stepped back into the kitchen. I could hear the growling down the side of the house, walkers that were roaming, finding their way into the town because of the explosions and gunfire.

Steps grew closer to the house,

I held the knife to her head, telling her to be quiet before she could call out for help. If anyone followed her in, they couldn't shoot me unless they wanted to hit her. I wanted to get her back into the main room before I killed her, to hide her body away.

"Let me go," she tried, "please."

"Why? So you can ambush another teenage girl?" I spat.

Her face turned feral, like her pleas were just an act as she looked over her shoulder, jerking to get out of my grasp. "You're gonna die, bitch."

I yanked her back by her hair. "Not before you."

"Cammy, you in here?" Harris called out, before walking in through the side door. He spotted us before I could hide us in the other room and raised his gun. "Let her go!"

"Put it down!" I screamed.

"Just shoot her!"

I ducked my head behind Cammy, he'd have to shoot her if he wanted to get to me and with everything I'd seen between the two of them, I doubted he'd do that. But I needed another way out. Killing her now would leave me open, and I'd have to get away from them.

Shadows moved in the dirty windows behind me. The walkers were coming—I could use them. I waited, the tip of my knife pressed against her neck as I tried to listen over Harris' yells to find out where they were. Close. They were close. As the first walker approached the door, I shoved Cammy towards them and dashed into the room behind me.

"CAMMY!"

There was screaming and gunfire behind me, and I knew the walkers had bitten her before Harris was able to do anything about it. Gabbing my gun, I ran. No part of me expected to hear his heavy footsteps following behind me so fast.

I made it into the living room when he grabbed me, slamming me down on the table, taking my arm and battering it against the wood until I dropped my gun. The cry escaped my mouth, and he kicked the gun across the room.

"You made that silencer? Huh, bitch?" Harris jammed the barrel of his gun against my temple. "You could try begging."

His eyes were wild as his head came down in front of mine. He was too emotional, solidifying my theory that he and Cammy had been in a relationship. Dangerous, it meant this was dangerous. It wasn't the same as losing a friend.

I used it to my advantage. "Didn't work for your girlfriend."

His jaw set as he straightened up, letting out a visceral sound from the back of his throat. Dangerous. He was going to kill me—that was my moment.

I rolled my head forward, the gun slipping away from my face before he could pull the trigger, and it left a hole in the table. Kicking out, I got him in the shin before rushing to grab a chair and swinging it at him. It broke on impact, knocking his gun out of his hand. He watched it fly across the room before his eyes returned to me.

"I'd rather kill you with my hands anyway," he spat.

"Don't you bloody try me," I raised my knife to him.

"You want a pardon?" He breathed, bewildered. "NOW?!"

I didn't give him the satisfaction of flinching. "I don't need one."

He rushed forward, slamming his knife down when I ducked to the side. I kicked my leg out, which he grabbed, lifting me and using it to drop me to the ground. On my back, I pulled my foot out of his grasp and kicked again, knocking him backwards to give me a chance to roll over and run for my gun.

Harris must have done the same thing when he saw my movements, but I was quicker. I rolled onto my back and shot, and the silenced bullet hit him in the middle of his forehead.

My body fell limp on the ground, and I panted. I had to move, get away from this house—I had made too much noise already. But I was exhausted, and there weren't many of them left to come and find me. There was one—

"Harris? I heard screaming . . . was that Cammy? Is she alright?" A male voice cut in and out between the white noise. Liam—the pilot.

I shot up and looked at Harris, spotting the blinking light of the radio hooked on his belt.

"What were those shots? It's quiet now, do you know where that girl went? Does anyone have a visual on her? Is she dead?" Liam tried again, and I stepped to the window and looked outside to see him. He wasn't in the main street. "Hello, anyone? Does anyone have anything?!"

I squatted down to pick up the radio and pressed the button to answer. "They're all dead."

There was a moment of silence, of denial before he called out for his others, "Caleb? Andrew?"

"They're dead," I repeated. "It's just you now."

More silence. His voice came through quieter, scared—he was scared of me. "Listen, girl. We can go our separate ways—you won't see me again. Hell, I'll even get in my car and drive away first, so you know I'm not gonna be following you. You win."

Didn't feel like it.

I considered his words before realising that he and his men looked in my bag, they saw my map. They knew where Alexandria was. If I let him go, he could just come back with more people and bring them to attack us.

Raising the radio to my lips, I said, "I can't let you leave."

There was no break in the radio static as I waited for a response that never came. He was making a run for it, trying to get back to his car and leave before I could catch up with him.

Ducking out of the door, I went behind the house to get back to his car so he didn't see me. I squeezed into the back door of the end house, running upstairs to the ground floor behind where he parked just outside. It was still there, right where they parked it, which meant that I'd beaten him here.

I heard him first, his heavy pants giving away his location as I hunted him down. He was sprinting for his truck, his head whipping around to find me. I stepped out between the buildings where they parked, my axe ready in my hand. Slashing downwards, I aimed for his ankles, and he collapsed.

He dropped his shotgun just out of his reach, so I walked around him and picked it up so he couldn't get to it. There were bullets in the chamber—good. The barrel clicked back into place and I cocked the gun, resting my head on my shoulder as I lined him up in my sights.

"Please, you don't have to do this!" Liam tried crawling backwards away from me as he begged. "You don't—you can let me go!"

I lifted my chin from the gun and tilted my head. "Would you?"

His mouth opened and closed but he didn't say anything—his silence was the only answer I needed to pull the trigger. He jerked backwards, his face torn apart by the shells and he died instantly, the blood pooling around his head.

Now I won.