(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

19. Hannahs Mill

The prison had backup generators in the event of a power failure. After all, in the event of a local power cut the last thing you needed was a prison riot taking place just for the hell of it and so the backup generators were there to keep the lights on, and the doors locked. It meant the entire prison could be powered by these generators for as long as the fuel supply held out.

Which meant it was possible for us to light up the prison interior for short intervals. In retrospect, we should have done this sooner, like before we had visited the Workshop, but hindsight was twenty-twenty. With the lights on for a few hours a day, it was possible for us to properly clean up the dark areas of the cell block and remove the debris from the prison riot, including festering human remains. There was a lingering feeling that something was lurking in the shadows in the cell block beyond the locked gates so going in there with shovels and brooms and clearing it all out went a long way to make it feel more hospitable. There was also the value of taking the crude arrows Glenn had sprayed on the walls on our first foray and turning them into proper directions for when the lights were off. Huge white arrows with red and yellow borders pointing the way would be hard to miss in the light of a flashlight or a candle. You could almost see them in the pitch-dark. I didn't know if Glenn was joking or not about finding luminous paint.

There were probably a thousand different ideas up in the air right now. They were reliant on what we found out there on when they were accomplished. So for example the discovery of a collapsible ladder meant Rick's idea of cleaning the windows of the cell block could be concluded which meant more natural light and it also meant a circle cut out of the glass and a chimney fashioned from pipes slotted through it. The woodburner the chimney was attached to was a lucky find, even if it was rather small especially with an entire section of cell block to heat. But it was heat and it took the chill out of the area. It was also oddly hypnotic and while we had the comfy chairs set up in the common area with the tables, people would gather by the woodburner and sit in basic lawn chairs and simply watch the flames behind the glass.

A ladder and woodburner gave us heat. If we found some solar panels we could have limited electricity which meant light, but only if we could figure out how to wire them up. No one here was an electrician. That was a skill we didn't have. Building a chimney from pipes hadn't required a plumber; just a shit ton of duct tape. It would take a plumber though to figure out how to make a wood-fired boiler so we could have hot showers. At the moment, we had a tank of creek water that could douse you in misery. For most, it was not worth it. Not unless you got hit in the face and hair by walker gunk in which case misery trumped horror.

Some small planks of wood from the Workshop nailed together formed a planter. Some bigger planks nailed together formed a composter. A poor soul with a rake and a wheelbarrow could gather up cut grass and fallen leaves and load up that composter. Many composters. Hershel wanted fertiliser and cutting the grass in the Field and gathering the falling leaves was a chore that wasn't brutal. Unlike the endless task of clearing walkers and burning the bodies. For simple practical necessity they had built an incinerator; a pile of bricks and concrete taken from the burned prison building which formed a half circle. It was more effective than a mere pile of corpses dumped on the ground and it was easier to scrape up the ashes and bones afterwards. If there had been a discussion about whether the ashes could go in the composters, it had been deemed too morbid. The ashes and bones went outside, tossed onto an ever-growing heap because we couldn't dig a hole deep enough for them all and even if we did; walkers would fall into it when we weren't around. I heard remarks about the incinerator and bone pile, and the fences and towers, and how it made the place look like a concentration camp. I had a vague idea what this meant and resolved to search the Library for the relevant history books.

This was what we were doing to make the prison a home. I still didn't think of it as home but as the prison. Putting a sheet over my cell door to keep it warm at night and hide the metal didn't cover up that it was a prison cell. No one was willing to remove the cell doors yet though; they were the last defence if walkers did somehow get into the cell block.

Rick had finally found his vehicle, or more accurately he had given up trying to find something of medium size around the twelve to twenty feet margin, and settled for a six wheeled box truck nearly thirty feet long. The next step up would have been an actual rig and considering the behemoth they had settled on, we could have saved a heap of time by just finding an army truck. It was a fitting vehicle though given our destination wasn't some town that consisted of a gas station, a general store and some houses. We were going to Hannahs Mill which was right next to Thomaston and so it was a big urban sprawl which the group hadn't seen since Atlanta. Which I hadn't seen since leaving Savannah, unless you counted passing through Macon.

There was a store there that sold farm equipment. Hershel knew it well enough. While it was certain it had been looted for things like tools that could be used as weapons, who was looting fertiliser, chicken wire, weed killer, horse feed or all the other things they had only been able to gather in small quantities earlier in the year? If no one had touched it, we could load up the truck and never have to worry about farming equipment again. With the food supplies from the Cafeterias the only reason we would have to leave the prison was for luxury items.

All we had to do was drive across twenty miles of infested countryside into what Milton had described in his journals as a 'Red Zone'. Too much for Woodbury. Merle had been there with them and never passed the outskirts because it had been too 'hot'. That was how Merle had apparently described it to the Governor in Milton's notes but in person, Merle said that Thomaston was 'one giant fuckup of gaping dead assholes'. Colourful, and translated into tactful English for everyone else it meant that when they had scouted it out; there had been hundreds in the streets. That had been months ago though and there was no reason to believe they hadn't wandered off in that time. But… There was also no reason not to think that those hundreds hadn't made enough movement and noise to attract hundreds more.

Andrea said we should look on the bright side, and consider the possibility that if this was true it might mean Hannahs Mill was deserted. No one was really optimistic about these things though.

There were nineteen people in the prison; apparently we couldn't crack that twenty marker. Carl, Judith and Sophia were kids, Hershel was old and Oscar was still recovering from being shot in the thigh. That left twelve adults and two teenagers. Carol would not leave her daughter and neither would leave Lori leave her kids. Beth could defend herself but was no fighter. So Rick had ten adults, including himself, and one teenager for manpower. He couldn't leave the prison undefended against the living and as Andrea was our best shot and had claimed the lives of a couple of Woodbury's soldiers, she had to stay. Tyreese meanwhile was a self-confessed rotten shot so he had to go while his sister remained. Caleb had to stay because Rick was still learning what he was capable of, and Michonne said she was staying… So she was staying…

So that left seven people to go to Hannahs Mill. Rick, Daryl, Merle, Tyreese, Glenn, Maggie and myself. It was a strange looking group I thought, though not as odd as it would have looked in the past. Rick had a grizzled appearance these days which meant that he fit neatly with Daryl and Merle, especially with all their weapons. Tyreese obviously looked out of place with them but he was a big man so that was true most of the time. Glenn and myself looked too young amongst the men and Maggie… Maggie looked way too pretty to be with a group of brigands like us; even on a day like this she looked remarkable.

I was in the back of the Dodge Ram while they were up front. I was lying down on the back seat because I could, and because I had no interest in seeing the Georgia countryside. Broken vehicles and falling leaves… I had seen enough of that last fall. The three of us were in the pickup following Rick and Tyreese in the truck while Daryl and Merle were leading on the bike. Merle hated not being able to control a bike anymore but his ego wasn't so fragile that he wouldn't ride on the back so that he could still enjoy motorcycles.

"You comfortable back there?" Maggie asked with just a touch of irritation.

"Back seat of a car is a great bed." I replied, though in my experience not as comfy as this one. There was a big difference between this cared for pickup and some abandoned junker that more than likely someone had pissed on just to be spiteful. "Too great." I had grown used to my two foam prison mattresses which were a big step up from how we had slept during the winter and this padded back seat was too soft.

"Feels like you're not taking this seriously." Glenn said.

"Do you want me to sit up and look fierce?"

"You could keep a look out."

"For what? The big truck ahead of us? Or the bodies it's dropping?"

This actually made them smile, albeit grimly. The bike could swerve around walkers but the truck could not. Hitting walkers in a car or pickup risked sending them through the windshield but the truck was too big for that, especially with the reinforcement they had added. Most walkers were simply knocked aside with shattered bones that would have killed a person but some were struck down and dragged under. That was why we were trailing behind; to avoid those bodies in the middle of the road. That was why I was lying on the back seat because they weren't keeping look out; they were just dodging bodies. I saw enough gore without seeing walkers pulling themselves to their feet with their ribs or bits of their pelvis' sticking out of their flesh.

Besides, when we got to where we were going I would have enough to do.

Northside Fire Department. That meant a mile down the road was US-19 which ran straight through Hannahs Mill and Thomaston and that meant it was time for our little convoy to stop and take a moment to hold our ground. A little time to deal with the walkers drawn by the noise and to see if it would be too many to handle. It didn't take long surprisingly.

"Y'all serious about this?" Merle scoffed.

"It's called stealth." Glenn said warily.

"It's called getting your dick bit off."

I considered my fingers at this remark and thought that Rick glanced at them too. I also thought it was a typical Merle thought that what we were doing was foolish when he did the exact same thing, except his bike had a motor. Ours had pedals.

Two bikes ridden down a mile of road. Quiet. Subtle. Providing us the opportunity to take a look at what lay ahead without drawing attention to ourselves with vehicle noise or putting ourselves at too great a risk by being on foot. A bicycle offered no protection against walkers but neither did a motorcycle and you could hear a motorcycle a mile off.

It was early morning and we were heading straight east with the sun in our eyes. This had been anticipated, like so many things, and so we both had sunglasses. Glenn could pull off the look but I felt ridiculous. Even more ridiculous on a bicycle. It had been Beth who had tactfully asked me if I could even ride a bike when Glenn had conceived the idea and I had enjoyed the 'Oh, shit' reactions of the adults well-informed about my childhood. As it turned out, the expression was true and even though it had been a decade since I had ridden a bike, a few circuits in the Yard had brought it all back to me. And even I couldn't crash on this mile-long stretch of ruler straight road.

First we passed more of the same; bungalows hidden amongst the trees and seas of grass which were trapping all the leaves so it was one great tangle. We passed a gas station that had definitely been rundown even before all this. It was downhill until we reached what I presumed was a creek but the undergrowth had swallowed it. After that, we reached what was practically the halfway point; the turnoff to the Transportation Department. The map was in my head, just as it was in Glenn's and we exchanged a look. The road had been completely devoid of everything except fallen leaves.

Beyond the halfway point was the real danger. We had good sightlines up until that point. But from now on, the southern side of the road was bordered with a thick tangle of trees and greenery that could have concealed an army, let alone a horde of walkers. Up to that point we had obeyed the traffic laws but now we rode British style; in the left lane. The northern side wasn't much better though. What must have once been finely mown lawns were a meadow now and we started to see signs of fallen civilisation. The vehicles we had seen so far had been abandoned in driveways but now they were wrecks that had hit each other head on. Wrecks that were half-buried in the trees to the south. Wrecks that were just sat by the road. The road remained clear though. Conspicuously clear.

"Something came through." Glenn had the thought aloud. "Something big that cleared the way." All the wrecks had clearly been moved off the road.

"Tank would have just crushed them."

"Tanks can be bulldozers."

"They can?" It would explain a lot.

"I saw it. On the way to Atlanta. Army couldn't get around the traffic so they put the dozer blades on the tanks. Pushed everything out of the way. …Pushed everyone out of the way…"

Up to this point, the bike ride could almost have been called relaxing but now the anticipation was building up. We were headed uphill and what we could see was traffic; lots of it. And it wasn't cleared. It was reminiscent of Atlanta where the vehicles had been bumper to bumper and it stank of metal. Here, you could taste the metal. The trees to the south fell back and it was all packed with cars. Glenn dismounted first and then climbed up on an abandoned SUV for a better view. I meanwhile was disconcerted by the lack of movement. We seemed to have arrived in a junkyard but without any guard dogs. The gas station on the corner flew battered and water-damaged signs declaring it was empty and that didn't seem to have mattered to all the people who had packed their vehicles around the pumps. The vehicles were all so close to one another that the windows were down; the only way people had been able to get out.
The road behind us had been cleared but this crossroads at US-19 was completely jammed. Whatever had cleared the way here had moved on and people had blocked the highway again.

"This could be a problem." Glenn declared from the top of the SUV.

That was putting it mildly. We had known from the outset that we were likely to encounter traffic snarls blocking the path of our truck but nothing that couldn't be cleared with a little effort. This however was gridlock. And this was just at the crossroads; if it was the same all the way south to our destination and Thomaston beyond, we had no chance of getting through. It would take days, and that was if we remained undisturbed.

"You hear that?" I asked.

"What?"

"Listen."

"I can't hear anything. At all." He was disconcerted by the silence.

I climbed up beside him. It was there, barely audible, but it was there. I scratched my stumps. "Get the others. I'll stay here and keep watch."

"That's not the plan."

"Fuck the plan; look at this! They need to see it for themselves. There's enough room to turn around anyway."

"And you'll just stay here?"

"You see any trouble?" I asked. "I've got four different directions to run if I have to."

"Rick won't like it."
"Yeah, but he'll get it."

"You're just going to stand here, right?"

"I might look around." I said and then grinned. "I'm not going inside anywhere. I'll just take a look down there."

Glenn knew me well enough now that he knew I couldn't be dissuaded and Rick would know why I would stay. Watching Glenn leave on his bicycle, I felt oddly tranquil. I was alone. I hadn't been alone like this since leaving Daryl and walking to Woodbury. It was pleasant because even with all the vehicles pressed close around me; I was still in the open.

I didn't stay there long. I went south and it amused me that the vehicles were jammed across all four lanes in both directions. People hadn't had a plan, they had just joined everyone else on the roads with no idea what to do. They had said to go to Atlanta, and then on the way there they had amended it to any of the big cities meaning there had been no reason for me to leave Savannah. Then they had changed it to stay in place; at home. In retrospect, I realised that the authorities hadn't known what to do. But how could they? You could prepare for a riot in a few cities but how did you prepare for riots in every city and every town across the nation? Especially when they weren't riots but the dead rising up and eating people. There was a police cruiser off the road; it had been tipped over on its roof and clearly by hand.

There was no way south along the highway. Glenn and I had taken Jeff Davis Road to get here and we would have to scout the road that ran parallel to it further south. Rick had hoped the main road would be clear and so we would have room to manoeuvre because the small W County Road would take us straight to our destination, but it would be tight.

That was a problem because my ears were still alerted.

I went back to the SUV and stood on it and listened and watched and it was almost entertaining that this town showed no signs of life but back at the prison, we had to deal with a constant stream of dead visitors. Meanwhile I could stand here undisturbed. The thought occurred to me that right now I could be in the sights of a rifleman and he could drop me and I'd never know it. But if I was going to think like that, I might as well imagine a pack of wolves had my scent and were stalking me right now and when the others got here, they would find only my chewed bones. Madness.
Rick had some choice curses when he arrived and saw the great snarl of vehicles. So did Merle. For once they were in complete agreement. He settled his nerves by taking a look around and seeing that the gas station was well plundered, as were the nearby restaurants. There was a medical centre however, and he sent Glenn and Maggie there while he assessed whether there was any point continuing.

"If it's like this all the way south, the parking lots gonna be jammed up." Daryl meant our destination; people would have tried to go around the traffic by going through the retail parking lots. "Ain't no way we gonna get close."

"Maybe." As always Rick chose to be optimistic. "You said it's like this all the way?"

"Far as I looked." I confirmed. "I can go further."

"No. Wait for Glenn. And you can't take the bikes." Trying to take a bicycle through that lot would be suicidal as just one concealed walker in the midst of it could end us both if we didn't see it in time. Much safer on foot.

Glenn and Maggie brought a big haul from the medical centre; more than enough to justify the trip. Glenn had even found some blood test kits that Caleb and Hershel wanted; that got me off the hook then. But it was still only a couple of backpacks worth of supplies.

"You hear that?" I asked.

"Hear wut?" Merle was frustrated.

"Listen."

They looked confused. The men did anyway. "I hear it." Maggie confirmed.

"Hear what?" Glenn looked at her and then me and then back at her.

"Walkers. A lot of them."

The guys strained but they could hear nothing. Rick had been firing that cannon of his for too long and I doubted Merle's hearing was in anything close to a fit state at this point in his life. Daryl and Glenn just didn't have sharp ears it seemed.

"You think they're in town." Rick sighed, knowing where this was going.

"Where else?" I asked. "We'll take a look. If they're there… We'll talk about it." Perhaps it would be possible to lead them off. Perhaps not.

"You and me again?" Glenn asked.

"No." Rick grunted. "I'll go with him. Ty too." He decided and the big man looked startled but then nodded resolutely. We set off and when we were out of earshot he explained himself. "I didn't want to leave you with Merle."

"I can cope with Merle." Tyreese declared, a smile on his face.

"Yeah, but he's lost one hand already because of that bullshit."

I felt conspicuous with the two of them but at this point stealth didn't matter. We only had a mile to walk and after five minutes, Rick held up a hand and then nodded.

"I hear it."

It was like the noise you would hear from a sports stadium, but muted. The dead were there and in a great number but they weren't riled up by anything. What they would sound like if that changed…

"Huh." I held up my arm and the two men could see the goosebumps. "I like that." I said. "I don't like it when I start getting comfortable with them."
"Comfortable?" Tyreese stared at me.

"When you're behind the fence and they can't harm you, they don't bother me. That's not good." I didn't need to explain as both of them glanced at my hand.

"I prefer it out here." Tyreese said. "When you're out here and one of them's coming at you, you can deal with it. When you're behind the fence and you ain't in danger, but they're still coming and you have to take them down…" He shuddered. "It ain't natural. Feels too much like… Not murder, but… Out here you're defending yourself but at the fences, it feels…"

"There's gonna have to be a whole lot more of that at the fences to make the world safe again." Rick remarked gently. "No way round that. Only way things gonna come anything close to the way they was is if we get our hands dirty at the fences. And you're right; it ain't the same as when you're out here." His attention was caught by a lone walker. It was simply standing there, greenish-brown strips of skin peeling off its face and it hadn't noticed us. "I got this."

The walker didn't hear the three of us approach and so Rick casually walked up to it and hacked it down with his machete, leaving Tyreese to fidget with his long hammer. A man with his strength could put a huge amount of strength into it, guaranteeing that despite its size the hammer would put down a walker with a single blow each time. But I still felt he should have had a better weapon with a longer reach. After all a big man provided a lot more for them to bite.

The noise rapidly rose in intensity as we walked by a succession of restaurants, motels and retail outlets and then incongruously, there was a set of golden arches, and beneath them a seemingly solid teeming mass of the undead.

"Now that's something." Tyreese said and I couldn't tell if he was faking calm or genuinely amused by the sight of the great horde around a McDonalds.

"Right where we need to go." Rick sighed. It was a sigh that said he had expected this the moment I had said I could hear something. "That's what, a few thousand?"

They were swarming all over the crossroads and beyond and if they stretched along all the restaurants and parking lots for the stores then a few thousand might have been a conservative estimate. I was fascinated by the way they were growling and gargling to themselves which was a normal noise for them to make but when they were all gathered together like this, it made it seem like they were talking to each other. I wondered how they had become so compact; virtually shoulder to shoulder. It was possible that a large number had drawn more with their noise and as they gathered around a single noisy point, more and more had been pulled in and pressed toward the centre of the sound. But if that was the case, that should have happened everywhere and we shouldn't have encountered so many loners and small groups. They should all have been jammed up in the cities.

"Maybe someone was around." I said, thinking aloud. "They followed them, lost them, and this is where they ended up."

"Right where we need to go." Rick repeated. There were many ways to draw off walkers but they were all dangerous and only became more dangerous the more walkers there were. Noise was out of the question because it would only draw more. A single gunshot could be enough to draw the walkers that had to be lurking in Thomaston; if there were this many here… Or maybe there weren't any there. Maybe Thomaston was empty and all the dead were here in Hannahs Mill. "There's a way to do this." He mused.

There was only one way I could think of and it wasn't pretty; just like anything to do with walkers. I thought about it as we walked back the way we had come to where Daryl, Merle, Glenn and Maggie waited impatiently. Rick explained it to them and the immediate consensus was to leave and check back in a week or so. Or if we didn't leave now, then the walkers were in the southern part of town so we might as well ransack the northern part while we were here. Except we had brought the truck for what could be found in the south, not the north. If we were going to scavenge houses and restaurants, there were a dozen towns closer to the prison we could have gone to. Plenty of places we had already picked at but hadn't cleared. That was the rub for Rick; we hadn't come all this way just to give up; even if that was the sensible thing to do.

"Live bait." I said, with the dim memory of hearing a cartoon animal of some kind saying these words. They stared at me. "That'll draw them off."

"You volunteering?" Merle scoffed.

"Yeah." I replied, which startled him. "Done it before." Though the number that Daryl and I had led off the road were nothing compared to what we had seen down there. "Or we take some more pillows and blankets and go home." There would be a lot more than that to be found in the houses and other buildings up here but I knew how to appeal to Rick. He wanted his farm supplies. He wanted this run to mean something; to make it so we wouldn't have to come out here again. Not on such a large scale anyway.

"You really want to get the attention of hundreds of walkers?" Rick asked. "And, what? Run circles around them?"

I shrugged. "You have a better idea?"

Rick looked at the others and none of them had a solution. Merle was shaking his head while Glenn wore that familiar look that said he thought I was insane. I felt pretty insane, but we had come this far and finding dribs and drabs in the small towns of the backwoods of Georgia was annoying me, and knowing there was so much more to be found here… Why not take the risk? Why not…

I had with me my crowbar. I had my pistol. I had, on Sophia's insistence, an MP5 submachinegun which was lighter and less cumbersome than a rifle. That was it. I would have been more comfortable with just the crowbar and the two firearms would only cause me grief if I used them but they did give some small comfort. If my insane impulse went wrong, I had options.

"You're crazy." Maggie declared.

"I do this, or we go home empty-handed. If we wait, who knows if they'll ever wander off? They might stay here forever." Not unless someone else blundered into them and did what I intended unintentionally. "Look, give me the map." We had brought more than one. "If I lead them east along the road, I can lose them in the trees and I can circle around. They'll either walk on down these roads or head into the trees but once they all get going, they'll keep going. We know that."

"It's never that simple."

"Nah." I agreed. "But what else can we do?"

"You want to do this alone?" Rick asked.

"Better that way." I lied. Only someone actually insane would want to be out here alone, let alone to do what I intended. But I felt this would be much smoother if I was only concerned with myself. Like the old days. "If this gets back to Sophia though, I'll kill you." I declared. "Especially you." I pointed at Merle with my left hand and he scoffed. The chances of him not shooting his mouth off were incredibly low but no one could say I hadn't warned him.

"You're crazy." Maggie repeated.

"Yeah… But if I do this and we get what we need, I won't have to do it again."

This was the decider for Rick. While it was possible that the store would be picked clean and the whole trip would be wasted, he was an optimist. With one big effort we could secure ourselves not just for the winter but for the foreseeable future. All it would take was one maniac willing to do the opposite of what he had done all his life.

The crossroads was thick with them so I had to take a shortcut through some backyards before I could reach the eastern road. Then I paused as I tried to think of the best way to try and get myself killed. The stupid thing to do would be to dash forward and try to pick off a few stragglers on the edge. That was a hard no. So was a gunshot obviously. So my options were to shout to get noticed, which felt too ridiculous, or to hit something. I had a crowbar after all. I could lay into a car without worrying about setting off an alarm because the batteries were long dead by now. I could break a windscreen and then pulverise a hood with none of the old dangers.

Just the new danger of hundreds and hundreds of snarling walking corpses coming at me. Hundreds and hundreds followed by thousands and thousands. My heart seemed to rise up in my chest and actually thump like a drum. It kept pounding like that as I stood my ground which took every fibre of my being as every instinct told me to run. I couldn't though, not right away. I needed their full attention and giving the car a few more hits helped to rile them up. On the road the packed cars channelled them and as they jostled each other, it aggravated them and they went from gargling and growling into that vile shrieking that was usually provoked by gunshots. It announced to the others that I had their attention. For an odd moment I considered how Maggie had been the one to show the most concern about me and then I pushed that thought away and climbed up on a different car so that the walkers could all get a good look at me.

And I got a view of a swarming crush of walkers. They knocked each other over between the cars and trampled the overgrown bushes on the corner flat and every last one of them had their eyes fixed on me. What did I look like to the ones further away? Could they even tell I was alive? How would they know? But they were coming. The sound of breaking glass and metal on metal had gotten their attention and they followed the movement of the others. The others often referred to them as moving herds and I had never liked the term because it made me think of cattle. But now I was using their herding nature against them and again I revised my estimation of how many of them there were upward. Caleb's refuge had been overwhelmed by a huge number. How could the prison possibly resist this?

I leapt from one car to another rather than stay on the ground. My instinct was to stay low and hidden and I had to fight it with every jump because I needed to be seen. That was the whole point. But those instincts were deeply ingrained and when an insane impulse had made you gain the attention of thousands of monsters, the instinct to run away screaming and hide somewhere deep and dark was very strong. With every second I decided it wasn't just an insane impulse; it was stupid.

"What the hell was I thinking?" I thought aloud, my heart now beating so hard I felt it would actually burst. The sound of the walkers went well beyond those of a stadium into something like a hurricane. Living in Savannah I had never experienced the full wrath of a hurricane, just the very edges, but now I had an inkling of what they suffered in the Carolinas and Florida. The noise made by the walkers became a sustained howling roar and that was the biggest assault on the senses. Perhaps I could have contained my fear of the sheer number of them but not the sound they made as well. "What the hell was I thinking?" I leapt from vehicle to vehicle with no danger of falling given how closely jammed together they were until I reached the fork in the road where there was some kind of church.

The map said the two roads re-joined nearby to the south-east. I could leave E County Road and head north and circle around to the part of town I had already been or I could head south, using the trees for cover. My instinct was to follow the roads and go north but I had to ignore that instinct. It was too exposed and I would only lead the walkers north and perhaps even draw them back on themselves. I had to keep following the road and head south-east, past the church.

It was still morning so the sun was in my eyes and I knew I had turned south-east. I pictured the map in my head as I jogged along the road and glanced back to see the walkers leaving the cars behind. I stopped so they could see me clearly and their numbers rapidly surged as they passed the tangle of cars and joined the others flooding either side of the road. There was no space between them; they were packed shoulder to shoulder as they hobbled after me and I thought how truly mad this plan of mine would have been a year ago when the walkers had more mobility. Many of them had been able to move at a jogging pace back then. Now they were reduced to an awkward shuffle; a quick walk. Too quick for my liking. I pressed onward.

And saw another church. We surely did love them. I followed the road, I passed it so I was between two sets of trees and behind me the road was packed completely with pursuing walkers and the rest of them were no less pissed off now that they couldn't see me. If anything the mass movement was only driving them into a greater frenzy; feeding off each other's clamour. I had another odd thought; this was what they meant when they talked about stirring up a hornets' nest.

I left the road, pushed through a thin screen of trees and then I ran with the sun in my left eye across the exposed ground and then abruptly turned my back on the sun as I heard running water. The trees and the sound of what had to be a stream or creek took me back a year and for a moment I saw Sophia in her blue rainbow t-shirt. I actually stopped as the memory of struggling with her as she thought a walker had got her filled my mind. I had put a hand over her mouth and she hadn't offered much resistance. She had been too scared. I remembered carrying her; the way she had not stopped shaking.

I pushed the memory away and went west, keeping the sun through the thinning trees on my back. I could hear the walkers on my right and then behind me as I went west and they went east. But they were still to the north. I could hope they were following the road and would keep going east. If not, they would blunder south-east through the trees and I knew there were other roads that would either take them south into Thomaston or east to God knows where. Macon maybe.

"I'm glad you're not here, Freckles." I couldn't help but think aloud. The noise to my right was appalling and if I hadn't seen it, I would not have believed humans could make that sound. Humans… Now there was a discussion. "It's not so bad this time." With Sophia and with far fewer walkers around I had been terrified by those woods. Now I was alone, there was an entire horde of walkers nearby and I was… Not relaxed. My heart rate must have been at the same level as if I had been running for an hour. But I wasn't trying to hold it together this time. My overriding memory of that day between grabbing Sophia and locking us in that bathroom was thinking 'What the fuck do I do now?' Now I knew what I was doing. "Hoping there's not a whole lot more of them."

We had seen them at the crossroads where the commercial zone began. It reached south for half a mile. If the walkers filled that entire vast space… Well then I was heading into a world of pain.

With Sophia I had been startled to leave the woods and find myself facing a suburb. This time I found myself reaching a treeline and looking on a restaurant and its parking lot. Behind me were trees and bushes and leaves and dirt. In front of me…

I got low and watched. Walkers were streaming up the road. Not a great solid battering ram of flesh like I had provoked but a trickle. The remnants of a greater mass. They were following that mass up the road, walking the four jammed lanes of traffic and I tried to figure my position relative to the crossroads and then stopped because it only meant adding more and more walkers to the total. We were easily into five figures now and seeing that trickle of dead bodies shambling north and hearing the vast number to the north and north-east… I took a moment to have a relieving piss in the long grass.

My mouth meanwhile was dry.

I scurried forward, taking advantage of the long grass, and there were more restaurants and beyond them to the west a big store. Not the one we had come here for though; that was one further north. I moved forward and found myself looking at a fibreglass cow. The thing was stood by the corner of the road, up to its haunches in the long grass, and it had tooth marks on it. Human teeth marks. For a moment I found this so strange I stared at the inanimate animal and then it hit me that this would be the dumbest way to die; distracted by a plastic cow. But fuck… Some walkers had tried to eat it.

Rick and the others had circled around to approach the crossroads from the west; going back almost all the way to the firehouse. They were somewhere on that road, likely watching the horde moving off from a good distance. I knelt by the cow and considered my options. I could press westward and then head north to find them on that road. I didn't feel like pushing my luck though. In this spot I had a clear enough view of the immediate area and it seemed wiser to let the dead keep moving away rather than risk drawing them all back just because of impatience.

My view wasn't as clear as it could have been and I debated whether to remain where I was or to climb up on a vehicle; there was a van and I could have laid down on top of it to be relatively hidden while able to see further. I decided to give it a few more minutes and I knelt and listened while my heartbeat reduced to alert rather than alarmed. I tried to imagine what it would be like to be out here alone for real, with nowhere to go and no one out there to back me up. As unhinged and paranoid as Michonne had been, she could have been so much worse. The world I had lived in during my youth hadn't been much better. It was a grim thought that being eaten alive was only a marginally worse fate than starving to death or dying of sepsis or some disease they had found the cure for a hundred years ago.

I had heard Caleb and Hershel talking about this. As much as we had made the prison habitable, we were still lacking many modern advances and there was no way of restoring them. We could find medication but it would expire sooner or later and we had no means of making more. Dale's sickness last winter had demonstrated how sick you could get when you couldn't stay warm or well-fed, and Lori's glacier-slow recovery from her caesarean… With powerful medicine and a heated infirmary she wouldn't have looked like a strong breeze would sweep her away with the leaves.

So here we were, in this dead town, looking for a few things that might make us live a bit better than the Dark Ages.

The roaring of the dead had not diminished but it must have been at least ten minutes so I climbed up on the van. The landscape was annoyingly flat so my view was not good but it was better than being on the ground. The store across the road to the west had had some kind of military presence as there was a knot of Humvees and tents there but northward got my full attention. If I compared the dead to a snake then I had gotten the attention of the head which had slithered after me. The body had gotten tangled on the eastward road and the tail was caught on the northern road leading to the crossroads. That crossroads was well out of my sight but I could see the walkers heading toward it as a dark mass, trying to press forward but unable to make progress through their own. They had no idea what had gotten the others attention; they just blindly followed each other. They were however trying to follow the body and I looked eastward but saw no sign that the head had followed me. I really hoped they were heading eastward, and then felt a pang of guilt for anyone in the east who would have no idea what I had sent in their direction. Again I imagined what it would be like if these masses came to the prison. Our wooden fence did a fantastic job of reinforcing the mesh fences against walkers but against this many I couldn't see how the whole lot wouldn't just be crushed.

I suddenly felt lonely. It was a peculiar feeling; all things considered. Yes, I was alone but that should have made me fearful. I should have wanted company to give me reassurance and instead I felt lonely because I had no one to talk to as I waited. I had spent years on my own, sometimes going weeks without speaking to another person, and since becoming effectively trapped with this group of people last fall I had become a much more social creature. Still quiet, but nothing like I had once been. I imagined Beth here with me, wearing that determined expression of hers whenever she was masking her fears. She would never have gone along with this mad scheme. Sophia however… She would be angry to hear about it but I thought that if she had been here then in her current resigned state she would have believed it perfectly reasonable; even sensible. What was putting yourself in extreme danger when we lived in constant danger anyway? It was strange to think that her birthday wasn't far off. Maybe it would cheer her up as she realised that despite everything she had reached another birthday when a year ago that had seemed very unlikely. Or maybe she would just brood wondering if she would reach the next one. She was getting very good at brooding. She had a lot of people to emulate when it came to brooding, and sooner or later she would brood naturally as teenagers did.

The way I was now.

I lay on top of the van, watching the tail of the distant undead snake and wondering if perhaps the noise of the head and body had diminished a little. It would be… Problematic… If all I had had done was draw them off barely half a mile and they were now tangled up in the area around those two churches. Even if they were able to clear a path for the truck, the sound of them clearing the path or the vehicles using it would draw them all back. I had five clips for my submachinegun including the one already inserted in it. If, optimistically, I was able to score a headshot with eighty percent of each clip, twenty-four rounds, I would still miss with the equivalent of a full clip. I would eliminate a hundred and twenty walkers, waste thirty rounds and I would make no impression on a horde that big. Neither would the others.

I passed the time wondering how much ammunition soldiers were issued with and how accurate they were and how many walkers they had taken down before running out of ammo and being overwhelmed. That was if they had chance to fire all their ammunition; if the walkers were all conveniently coming from the same direction that might happen but if they were coming from every direction from a maze of urban streets… Cops had been scared of certain neighbourhoods, knowing if they ventured into them they were in hostile territory and completely surrounded. And massively outnumbered. If it was bad for a couple of cops or even a dozen, against a neighbourhood of hundreds or thousands, what would it have been like for a division of soldiers against a city of hundreds of thousands or even millions of walking corpses? No one really liked to talk about how the world had fallen apart because it just seemed so unlikely, but whenever I thought about it the math became relentlessly brutal. After a certain point there had been just too many walkers to contain and by the time they must have considered bombing American cities to rubble it had been too late. They had burned the streets of Atlanta after all and it hadn't made a difference. If they had firebombed Atlanta, what had they done elsewhere? Would I one day return to Savannah to find that they had carpet-bombed it? Or maybe they had only bombed cities like ours, and refused to harm places like New York and Washington. You couldn't blow historic Boston to smithereens. But Atlanta? As I had learned from my Civil War book, they had burned it and the rest of Georgia before. No tears shed to do it again.

I eased off the van and began my rodent movements to take me toward the tangle of military vehicles. I doubted there was anything to find but I was curious. I was correct; their stocks had been well-rifled for anything of immediate practical value. There was a heavy machinegun like the one we had taken from Woodbury but it had sat on top of a Humvee exposed to the elements and now had a thick coat of rust. All the ammunition was gone and I wondered if other guns had been taken. Remembering how the machinegun had sounded firing on the prison and seeing the craters the heavy rounds had left in the walls and towers every day was not pleasant. Remembering their effect on walkers…

The big store, bearing a broken sign that now simply declared Depot looked to have been thoroughly looted in the beginning which meant that supplies useful to us now had to still exist there. I was not going to take a look though; not on my own. I had to go north.

It seemed to me this stretch of road contained every chain restaurant in America but I also saw what we had come here for. The sign was intact and it was a strange feeling to be made hopeful to see the word Tractor. The dead were still moving by the crossroads so I doubled back and found what I needed; a path around the back of the stores. It reduced the noise of the dead somewhat and I found that unnerving and scurried my way along, wary of the trees to the west and the tangles of trash here in the loading bays of the stores. It forced me to take a central path as I had no intention of being ambushed by something emerging from the greenery or that mess of plastic wrap and rotten cardboard. I paused briefly to recognise a tangle of scorched metal was a forklift and wondered how its rear gas canister had exploded. There were no human remains in the forklift, or on the ground around it. Just another mystery in the dead world.

I reached the road and went carefully westward, looking back constantly to be sure none of the dead had spotted me. They were definitely headed east and it seemed my insane idea had actually worked. Maybe it would be possible to herd the dead like this all the time though maybe if you didn't have roads to channel them you would only scatter them over a wide area. Who knew? A question for another time. I passed yet another church and carried on west, wishing I had my bicycle.

The others were at the end of the road, by a gas station.

"You took your time." Glenn declared casually. And I had to laugh because of how strained they looked, besides Merle anyway. He wouldn't show that weakness. Rick was trying to do the same and I wondered if he had gotten an earful for letting the youngest member of this little group here go off on the suicide run. Daryl was trying to look nonchalant but he also looked guilty for not going himself.

"That was almost fun." I said and oddly enough, I wasn't boasting. I meant it. Whatever lingering stir crazy feelings I had had left from the aftermath of our war with Woodbury, they were definitely all gone now. "Chest hurts." I admitted, and it wasn't from lying on top of that van. "So, we wait?"

"I ain't goin' near that." Merle waved his stump, meaning the noise we could hear.

"Did they go for it?" Maggie asked.

"They went for me if that's what you mean. And they were going east. They weren't following me after I lost them so maybe now they're going the right way."

"Any way away from us is good." Glenn declared. "Are you okay?"

"Adrenaline." I didn't want to stand still. "You can go keep watch."

I sat on the pickup and my heartbeat reduced to something approaching healthy. And better for all of us, the roar of the walkers reduced as well. I found it interesting how I could sit there and feel secure, knowing every walker in the area was a part of that mass. Where they were going… It would not be pretty.

"You got a death wish?"

"No."

"You sure?"

"Running and hiding. Creeping about. …It's what I do." I shrugged and Rick kept staring at me with that hard gaze and his head tilt. "You think you should have done it? Glenn and Maggie?" I shrugged again.

"That was a very dumb thing to do, and I let you do it."

"Needed to be done." I said and he wasn't convinced. "You went back to Atlanta for Merle." I spoke softly, not because Merle might hear but because Glenn and Maggie might. "That was a dumb thing to do. But it had to be done. And Glenn rescued your ass and he didn't need to do that either."

"That ain't the point."

"Yeah, it is. You can't do everything. You need the rest of us. Unless you like being the big hero saving us all from everything?"

"I have a responsibility-"

I cut him off. "To what? Make sure the citizens are out of harm's way while you do your duty like a good public servant? You ain't a cop no more."

It wasn't a winning argument to make to Rick because he was never going to let go of that need to protect everyone. It was either his greatest strength or his biggest weakness and I was hardly the person to make that judgement. His own wife couldn't. Rick went up the road to join Daryl and Merle who were keeping a discreet watch on the crossroads.

"Don't mean to eavesdrop, but I think the man's got a point." Tyreese declared.

"Which part?"

"About having a death wish." He said. "First time I met you, you were running toward danger. You and a little kid."

I found it strange to hear Carl described this way. Little, yes. Kid, yes. Little kid… No. Sometimes it might have been true but at that moment, toting his pistol, he hadn't been a little kid. "Sucks to be young." I said, realising that the issues both men were having were with my age. Last year Rick had championed me for going after Sophia and then during the winter I had been kept out of harm's way wherever possible; put to work as a babysitter or sentry. I had done my part clearing the prison only because he had been short of bodies to get the work done. It had been the same with Woodbury; he hadn't had a choice. Desperate. But he could have left me at the prison out of harm's way today and I could still have done something constructive. Literally, maybe. Because I was young, they all thought that was the right and responsible thing to do but here I was. It seemed insane to me to think that way when there were so few of us, not just the group but people in general. You couldn't keep people out of harm's way based on some arbitrary number of cycles around a sun, not now. But it was ingrained in them. Even if they knew every last detail of my childhood and adolescence, they would still treat me like a child.

Their idea of a child anyway.

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

[Sophia]

I thought that it was silly to keep referring to people as Mister and Miss in my head, especially since we had been joined by people whose surnames I did not know. But it was a hard habit to get out of. Mr Greene especially… Carl called him Hershel but it just didn't feel right to me and it felt even less right to think of Carl's dad as Rick instead of Mr Grimes. But Miss Harrison? I could drop that to think of her as Andrea, especially when she was accompanied by Michonne. One carried a rifle and the other a sword and they patrolled the fences with a purpose; sometimes talking, sometimes just marching in silence. Round and round, stopping only to deal with the odd walker. It was quiet today and that was good. Not just because so many of us were away but because it meant I could rake leaves in peace.

Andrea and Michonne were patrolling. Mom was by the Outer Gate keeping watch on the road, and between me and any danger. I could be in the Field without her worrying about me which was all she seemed to do these days. It didn't help that I would still flinch from time to time when I moved in some way that upset my midriff. It happened less and less and I could actually do something useful now but it still happened; a reminder of how close it had been.

I liked collecting the leaves. It seemed crazy to admit it but it was a simple task and in the grass I could pretend I was in a garden and there were no fences with razor-wire around me. The leaves either went in the composters or a barrel with the intention that they would be ploughed into the soil of the area they had cleared. That wasn't work for me; too 'heavy' I had been told. I got to rake that soil for stones, or sift it through a strainer made from chicken wire wrapped around a ring cut from an oil drum. Sifting dirt like it was flour was strange but oddly satisfying. Mr Greene however was picky that small stones be left behind. Which small stones… I just removed them all and separated them by size so he could decide which stones would be ploughed in with the leaves. Farming was complicated.

"I don't think I've ever seen anyone enjoy raking leaves before."

Beth meant it teasingly and how was she to know what leaves meant to me? I took a moment, trying to think of the right thing to say. "I spent a long time in the infirmary staring at the ceiling. Anything's fun after that."

"That… Makes a scary amount of sense."

I smiled. The truth was that raking the leaves had been my chore at home and something dad had not been able to fault me for because I had been outside, out of his sight, out of the way. And mom would send me outside sometimes just to get me away from him and what was about to happen between them. I would rake the leaves and move to the edge of the yard so I didn't hear anything inside. It had been peaceful; an escape. And sometimes I would stay outside until it was dark. Sometimes there hadn't even been leaves.

"I think you got them all." Beth said, meaning I was chasing individuals now.

"If I say I'm done, I'll have to go inside. If I go inside, my mom won't be able to look around and see me. And she'll worry."

"She will?"

"Watch her. Wait for it, in a minute." I pretended I was still working, with my head down but my eyes up and I saw the moment where the panic suddenly filled her and she spun round to see that I was still here and hadn't vanished. She turned back to the road swiftly enough. "Every ten minutes. Like clockwork. Even if she knows that I've gone to our room and your dad's in the cell block, she'll still worry."

"I think everyone's edgy right now."

Because four of the big scary men weren't here. Michonne was reassuringly scary though. Anyone who saw her glare would think twice about attacking here. "She was worrying before. She won't get better… Maybe next year." Bas had told me about time and its healing properties, and I had accepted that only time would make my mom relax. There was no conversation, no combination of words that would stop her fears of me being snatched in the night again. As I had nightmares about it, it wasn't as if she could start to forget about it.

"Next year." Beth echoed.

"I think it's been a year now. Since we all met…"

"Almost."

"Do you remember that day… I think it was three days after…" I didn't need to say after she had lost her home. "Bas had a headache, and you were cleaning that cut on the back of his head and he was saying you were torturing him."

"He was just trying to make you laugh."

"He was?"

"That's why he does a lot of things. To make you smile."

I found this a little disconcerting. "Do you think he's been weird lately?"

"What's weird anymore?" She asked, and she had a point.

"I don't know… It's… I don't know."

Beth gave me a long look. "It's you." She said.

"Me?"

"He's worried about you."

"Why?"

Beth was quiet for a minute, looking up at Oscar who was exercising his leg in the Yard. "When you got shot, he took it very hard. And donating all that blood to you didn't help… He loves you."

I was not expecting to hear this.

"That's why your mom can't stop worrying about you, because she loves you. That's just how it is. Difference is your mom's loved you since you were born and Bas has only had people to care about for a year now. He doesn't have any experience with… Us. That's why I've always liked him. He doesn't say things because he knows it's what you're supposed to say; he says them because he thinks they're the right thing to say. And he usually gets it right, and if he doesn't, I know it's coming from a good place." Beth looked at me and she looked paler than usual. "That's why he's weird with you, because he thinks there's something he's meant to say to help you but he doesn't know what it is and that bothers him."

"There isn't anything he can say!"

"And he probably knows that. But he's not sure." Beth looked away. "That's the worst part, when you ain't sure there's nothing you can do. You feel helpless, and you think that someone else would know what to do or say but you don't, and that makes you feel useless."
I knew what she meant but I didn't know what she was referring to. Or maybe there was nothing specific and she was referring to all of this. Mr Grimes was the leader because other people hadn't known what to do or say, but he had. Maybe now a few people had ideas but mostly; he was the one who knew what to do.

"Maggie's good at that. She's out there and I'm in here… And we're both doing our part but if it was just the two of us, I'd do everything she said because I wouldn't know what I was doing. I'd need her to take care of me. That's Bas' other issue. He's always taken care of himself and now other people are there for him and he doesn't even know how to say thank you. Daryl's the same way. You remember the first time your mom washed his poncho?"

"He made that really weird noise and then went off and hunted all day." I recalled this easily enough. It had been in December when we had been settled for a few days in one place, having a 'rest and mend' day as Mr Grimes had called it; which meant discarding and replacing ruined clothing, washing those that we could and making sure all the weapons were in good condition. Mom had washed Daryl's poncho the previous night and it had been dry in the morning and he hadn't known what to say to the fact he could wear it and no longer smell like a goat. "Now he gets embarrassed when she does anything nice for him because his brother's around."

"He's a bad influence." Beth declared and she was right. I remembered how gruff and nasty Daryl had been originally, and how he had mellowed. With Merle around, he was somewhere in between.

But I was still thinking about the other thing. "You really think Bas loves me?"

"I think you're the first person he ever really cared about. But don't get the wrong idea." She smiled gently.

"I told him, I'll wait until I'm eighteen before I bother him again. Or maybe sixteen." Now it was my turn to smile as Beth looked alarmed. "I know that's mean, but I like making him squirm. Is that odd?"
"No." Beth admitted. "He's cute when he's embarrassed."

"Did you ever like him?" I had to know.

She gave me an amused look. "No." She said which I found gratifying. "We were always just friends. He was always very careful about that."
"Careful?"
"He's told me he didn't ask certain questions so I wouldn't think he was hitting on me. He didn't want to go after the one girl his age in the group, and I didn't want that either. I wanted a friend, and he's been a good friend. I needed a friend after last year… Not another boyfriend. It's nice to have someone…" She trailed off and blushed and I guessed she thought she was becoming inappropriate. But I knew what she meant. She meant it was nice that she could spend time with Bas without worrying he wanted to have sex with her.

"And then he met that girl at Woodbury." I remarked.

"Yes, he did." Beth said carefully. Very carefully.

I decided I didn't want to talk about that. I couldn't see any way that I could without sounding utterly childish. "He thinks Glenn's going to propose to your sister."
Beth nodded. "Maggie's been suspicious about that for a while. She's seen him looking for rings and pretending that wasn't what he was doing."
"Is that… Weird?"
"Looking for engagement rings on dead people? Or proposing?"

"Both." I said.

"There ain't a jewellery store to visit. But marriage? That's nice. That's hopeful. I mean, if Glenn and Maggie can get married, and Carl can have a little sister, maybe things won't be so awful forever. They can get better."

"Carl's… Weird." I couldn't think of a polite way to put it. "I asked him about his parents and he said he didn't care if they sort things out between themselves. …He said it doesn't matter. But of course it matters! And it should matter to him more than anyone!"

"I think he doesn't want to get his hopes up."

"But… Why?"

"He said they used to fight all the time when they were together. They don't fight now." Beth shrugged. "Maybe they're better off… Separated. But I've seen the way they look at each other; they want to be together. They just don't want to… Rock the boat."

"But it's so stupid! They love each other!"

"I'm not old enough to judge." Beth said with a wry smile. "But my daddy says it's stupid. Carpe Diem."
"What?"

"It means 'Seize the day.' Daddy says that's what we all have to do these days. While we can."

That was exactly what I had done when I had kissed Bas. That was why most people had laughed it off. "Maybe it's harder for the adults."

"Maybe they're just stubborn." Beth said and then sighed. "They should be together, while they can. And Carl… He thinks acting like he doesn't have feelings makes him 'tough'. Like Merle."

"You don't like Merle."

"No." Beth confessed, and then felt guilty for it. "He likes to bully people."

"He can't bully her." I was looking at Michonne as she skewered a walker through the fence.

"That makes it worse. He goes after weaker people."

"You don't like being called Goldilocks?"

"It's the way he says it. …What does he call you?"

"He doesn't call me anything. He ignores me. Mom says he's embarrassed about saving my life."

"That's the other reason I don't like him; he wants people to dislike him! It's creepy! Every good thing he does…" She shook her head, unwilling to criticise. "I'm sure he has his reasons. Just like Daryl. But it's hard for me to be sympathetic when he pretends I'm so pale he can see his reflection in my face."

"Could be worse…" I was thinking of the things I had heard him say about Michonne, Oscar, Sasha and Tyreese. Glenn and Dr S too. "I don't know if he actually means any of it though… Have you seen him reading? He pretends to be a dumb redneck but he's reading The Complete Works of Shakespeare."

"Bas said that to me. He said Merle was reading poetry books. I didn't believe him until I saw it… Who reads poetry and then…" She paused and for some reason decided to not give an example. As if I hadn't heard everything that came out of the man's mouth. "I think that makes it worse. He reads beautiful literature, and then acts like a brainless thug."

"Maybe he's just used to people treating him like a thug."
"Maybe. That was true for Daryl… I don't know. I just know when my sister comes back, she's exhausted from dealing with Merle rather than walkers."

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

[Bas]

We had arrived early in the morning and it was gone midday by the time it felt safe to move into the now empty main road. It would take more time to clear a path so we could access the loading bays as there was no hope of parking out front. It was a waste of time to try. But Rick did want to see up close that the area that had previously been choked with walkers was now empty. Empty save for the cripples; and the unspoken question was if they had been like this before or if they had fallen and been trampled by the dead. The dead were always injuring each other but there was something horrific about them crushing each other under foot.

They backed the truck up so that if the dead did return, we could make a quick exit. I didn't think it made a difference whether we entered through the front or back; it would be completely dark either way unless they happened to have skylights which seemed unlikely. Dark stores were nothing new to us so we had come prepared with lanterns in addition with flashlights. The dynamo-lamps got a lot of use these days, especially as people were reluctant to start using up the candles, and it seemed to me they were likely to wear sooner rather than later. Another reason to think about our power grid for the future.

I got to stand guard outside while they went in and secured it. I had done my part for now so I climbed up on the truck. There was no real need to, except it felt better to take the high ground. With the truck parked back there, it was a tight space and climbing up made me feel comfortable. Trees to the south and west, the store to the east and just the narrow entrance to the north. It was effectively a trap. But up here, I was practically invisible from the ground. If trouble came, it wouldn't see me. And might pass on by. After luring off a few thousand walkers, it seemed ridiculous to be fearful of a dozen but you couldn't ever stop being afraid of them because that was how you got killed.

I knew they would be combing the inside of the store slowly and carefully, and then checking it again. And again. And then again. You really could not be too careful in the dark. Was it better to have a small or big group for this? A small group of people were easier to control in a close space like a store, but a large number of people would be able to secure it quicker. I was keeping watch alone when we could have had a half dozen sentries out here with a big enough group. With twenty people and a half dozen vehicles, we could have stripped those small towns bare quickly enough.

"The hell you doin' up there, boy?"

"The dead can't climb." I replied and Merle scowled at the implication, and then remembered my fingers and that climbing was not so easy for me either.

"You're out front now." Rick said, unconcerned by my chosen perch or Merle's belligerence. I slipped by and went inside. Once onto the store floor and after my eyes had adjusted; there was enough light to see by from the doors and store windows. The aisles cast deep shadows however and a few mannequins on the ground told me that they had taken no chances. Mannequins were a nightmare in these places and it was down to your own fears whether you got a bigger shock from the more realistic ones. Personally, I found the ones with blank featureless heads to be more alarming when encountered in the dark.

I could hear Glenn, Maggie and Tyreese over at one side and then I emerged into the light where Daryl was stood. I guessed Rick was putting a Dixon on watch at both entrances. It made sense to have Daryl here with his crossbow in the exposed expanse of the parking lot while Merle was back there in the tight confines of the loading area. Merle was probably unhappy about it. He could be unhappy about being on watch or unhappy about trying to load the truck with only one hand. Great choices. I guessed Rick had put me here so that Daryl wasn't trying to keep an eye on the whole wide expanse by himself.

"Y'all right?" Daryl grunted, almost sociably. He had that look that said he wanted a cigarette but he didn't have any on him right now.

"Quiet back there."

"Quiet here." He said and it was true enough. The growls and snarls from the cripples hidden among the cars actually made things better because otherwise there would have an eerie silence like out back. "Long day." He added, meaning that four people would take a long time to pick apart the contents of the store and load up the truck.

"Worth it?" I asked.

"It's all there."

It passed for a meaningful conversation between us. The trip wasn't in vain and we would have something to show for it. That suited me just fine. I looked out on the morass of abandoned vehicles, wondered where the horde was now and watched a cripple dragging itself toward me.

"You got that?" Daryl asked in an oddly polite manner.

I grunted and then performed a little quick step around the mangled creature. I avoided its grasping hands and got behind it and drove the chisel of the crowbar through the base of its skull. One less. Then I saw something that surprised me enough to say a strange thing. "Humans!"

Daryl looked around and then dropped low. There were indeed live people, a couple of men emerging from the McDonalds, and they had not seen us. I guessed by their movements they were also dealing with cripples; flailing left and right with what looked like wrenches.

"Get Rick."

I complied and I found him in the store helping Tyreese pile plastic sacks of something onto a flat trolley. "There's people out there."

"People?" Glenn spoke before Rick could. "What kind of people?"

"White people?" I offered stupidly and then realised how tense I was. People were not simple to deal with; unlike walkers. "There's two guys, at the moment. Daryl's watching them. They haven't seen us."

"Alright, Glenn get Merle." Rick decided. "We'll all deal with this."

"You sure that's a good idea with Merle?"

"Yes. People will think twice about doing anything stupid if they see Merle. And Ty. No offence."

"None taken." The big guy said and I thought he looked the most tense about a situation involving people. He had only been shot at by Woodbury though; he hadn't been there. He still had fears to imagine.

Six people assembled silently outside the store, and Daryl was already in his hunting posture. I had only a vague idea of what the flurry of signals that passed between him and Merle meant but they seemed ready to stalk forward and use their crossbows if they had to. There were four people now, the two men and now also two women. One of them seemed to be arguing with the men while the other stood apart from the three and perhaps I was just being whimsical but it seemed to me she was enjoying standing in the sunlight.

"Think they were stuck inside there?" Maggie whispered. "Trapped?"

"Maybe that's why they were all here." Glenn said, meaning all the walkers. "They chased them here and then hung around."

"For how long?" Tyreese asked.

"Trapped in a McDonalds? Anything's too long." Glenn answered.

The argument we were observing had to be about what to do now. I hadn't seen any vehicles that might have been theirs and I couldn't believe they had spent all this time here in Hannahs Mill. One of them was pointing eastward while the woman was pointing north.

"I think we should introduce ourselves." Rick declared. "Daryl. Merle. Watch our backs."

The two men nodded and Merle scowled with a ready anticipation as he switched to his rifle.

The five of us approached the trio of arguing people without being seen until we were ludicrously close. It was the lone woman who spotted us and strangely, she didn't say anything. She didn't go for a weapon either, although that was certainly because we had our weapons to hand. Rick had said to let our weapons show, in my case from the strap around my neck, but casually. Not to indicate we planned to use them but that we were ready for anything. The two men had pistols on their belts but nothing like our firepower. One of them had a bald crown and a short beard, the other looked a lot like Merle; same scowl and square head. He also sported some grubby growth on his face that suggested it had grown out while they had been stuck inside. The woman I thought looked like she had spent most of her adult life asking to see the manager and arguing that her children's poor grades were their teachers' fault, not theirs and certainly not hers. It was a mean thing to think but that was what struck me.

"Good afternoon." Rick said and this struck me as rather threatening. "How's it going?"

The bald man decided to answer this just as casually. "Better. We've been trapped inside there for a week. You know what it's like crawling around on the floor of a kitchen? Thank God they left."

"Thank him. He drew them off." Rick said and his eyes weren't on the man but beyond him; wondering who else was inside.

I raised my left hand and waved. It had the desired effect of making them reassess me. Rick with his grizzled beard and hard eyes, and Tyreese with his height and bulk had had their full attention but now they looked over me, Glenn and Maggie and realised we weren't mere kids.

"So what's your story?"

It came readily enough from the woman. They were from Florida. Jacksonville specifically. In little spurts she told a story of how they had spent the past year the same way we had spent the winter; roaming from town to town and trying to stay ahead of the walkers. Like Caleb they had spent time in a secure place, until it had fallen to a crushing number of walkers. They had been luckier than Caleb though. If it could be called lucky for how few of them had made it out. She talked and Rick listened and my attention was on the lone woman. She had a very peculiar appearance to my eyes, being very pale in a way that wasn't natural in this part of the world. She looked even paler than Beth because her short brown hair drew a sharper contrast and while Beth's eyes were blue; hers seemed to be grey. And baleful. She didn't scowl like Daryl or Merle but her eyes contained a wealth of hostility. But not I thought towards us. Not us specifically. The world in general. That was understandable. She was armed and I knew Rick must have spotted it.

What really bothered me about her though was that I couldn't discern her age. Young, but how young? Her pale hostile features were almost unnervingly child-like but her figure was an adult woman's. We never seemed to encounter anyone bland… At least she didn't have a sword.

The woman finished their story, concluding that they had caught on the edge of town by a small herd and been forced to abandon their vehicles. Their first mistake had been to flee deeper into town. Their second had been to try and shoot their way out. This had led to them fleeing into the one restaurant that had been open and she won considerable sympathy points describing the experience of those first few hellish hours of cowering in a kitchen behind the counter, listening to the thunder of hands smacking against the glass and waiting for the inevitable moment it would break…

But it hadn't. Somehow it had stood up to the punishment until the dead had stopped attacking it having seen no movement for hours. And then they had been subjected to the greater hell of knowing they were trapped in a small space with an ocean of walkers around them. Or ghouls as they called them. Trapped by ghouls with barely any food on them, very little water and some bathrooms that had been foul even before they had arrived. Not to mention everything rotten in the kitchen. It was the noise that had been the worse. The never-ending growling of the walkers and their constant pacing around outside.

"How many?" Rick asked.

"Seven."

They were two families; the bald man, Ryan, had two young daughters while the other man, John, had his wife, Amanda, and his son who looked to be a little younger than me. Then there was the strange young woman and John dismissively referred to her as 'That Commie'.

"Commie?" Rick inquired politely.

"If she ever speaks, it's that Commie language." John answered and he gave her a look that contained a wealth of meaning. To my eyes anyway. She knew it too but besides her body getting tauter, she didn't react.

Rick decided not to pursue it. His eyes were calculating, taking in four adults, one teenager and two children. He made his decision. "How many walkers have you killed?"

The question confused them which was to be expected. Ryan stammered out that he had no idea.

"How many people have you killed?"

This question however made much more sense to them. "No one." Ryan answered firmly while Amanda and John nodded.

"Why?"

They had devised these questions after Daryl and I had brought back Caleb. They had gone back and forth about how to screen someone and it all came down to the fact that you couldn't quickly learn someone's experience through all this with a single conversation. The question about walkers and people… It was a baseline. It wasn't the answers so much as how they reacted to the questions. People could obviously lie but you could read a lot into a person about how they viewed dealing with walkers; whether it bothered them, they were indifferent or even if they were enthusiastic about getting rid of them. And people? Andrea and Rick had agreed that people who were unwilling to say 'self-defence' and leave it at that but instead would jabber a bunch of excuses were people to mistrust. Because those people had not come to terms with it. They were volatile.

These people meanwhile offered up that they hadn't needed to kill anyone. They had been threatened and in turn threatened others with their weapons but it had never reached point where triggers were squeezed.

"But you have killed people." Ryan didn't make it sound like an accusation but rather a sad deduction about why we would ask such questions.

"A few men tried to kill me." Rick said. "I killed them first." It was the true. …I didn't think the context really mattered anymore. "Same with some of the others in our group." He added and three of them scanned us, trying to figure out which of us were killers. The young woman didn't react at all. I thought she looked bored and after being trapped in that place for days, perhaps she found all this talk tedious when what she would really have liked was to just run around. Like Carl and Sophia had in the Field that time. "You have a plan?" He asked.

"Survive." Ryan shrugged.

"We ain't got shit." John snarled. "Every place we've been, everything's gone to shit and we've been back on the road lookin' for the next shitstorm!"

"We've got a place…" Rick announced casually.

Rick sent me to get Daryl and Merle and I enjoyed watching these strangers reassess that Tyreese was our muscle when confronted with two grungy men with rifles, crossbows, pistols, knives and one appeared to have a sword for a hand. Two grungy men who were to escort John to their cars. Meanwhile the rest of them would go back to the store. They would help Rick, Glenn and Maggie with our work, Tyreese would watch the back, and I would watch the front with 'that Commie' who had yet to speak a word. I reassessed my thought that she was pale to that she was oddly grey. Beth was pale in a radiant fashion but this woman was colourless; like a fresh walker. I had seen the look before. We all had. She needed regular meals.

I watched her use a short knife to dispose of a cripple. She frowned as it dragged itself toward her with one hand and then she inhaled wearily before knifing it in a manner that would make Andrea and Michonne proud. She still looked bored. I wasn't bored. After my morning; I was enjoying the peace.

Daryl startled me by coming out of the store and then I realised they had circled around the town to avoid the vehicle jams. He looked at her and then shrugged. "Rick says give a hand."

Finding people obviously meant that a task that could have taken us all day was now going faster but it wasn't straight forward. I heard Rick having what sounded like a tense conversation with Amanda and John.

"What's that about?" I asked Glenn.

"They want to know why we're grabbing so much junk." He said and Maggie made a harsh noise. "I guess they're having trouble with the idea we're not surviving day to day like they've been."

"Ain't we?" I found that amusing. "So what? They think we're wasting time?"

"They want to get somewhere safe. They think all those walkers are gonna come back." Maggie shook her head. "Like we won't hear them coming."

"They were trapped." Glenn said diplomatically. "I'd want to get the hell out of here if I went through that. …I have been through that." He reflected. "That's how I met Rick."

The store was a gold mine and in a bitter fashion too. They had spent ages searching for a water pump and this place had dozens of them; big and small. It had everything they had sourced from farms brand new and untouched. There were work clothes that made the prison jumpsuits unnecessary. There was camping gear. Propane tanks. Animal feed. Seed. Fertiliser for gardens or entire farms. Farming stuff I had never seen before and it seemed the only looting here had been for some of the camping gear and weapons. If they had sold ammunition here it was all gone, as was every air pistol and rifle and I had no clue if they were even effective on walkers. There was however a lot of ammunition cases and I took a whole bunch of them and imagined that Andrea would be much happier with these than the cardboard and plastic boxes containing loose cartridges and shells.

But to my great appreciation, the sporting goods slash hunting section had bows and crossbows. People had grabbed air rifles and ignored bows. Daryl could go hunting with proper arrows again. Bolts. We could have a practical alternative to guns.

Because I was me though, I had to look at his treasure trove and consider its real worth to us. Daryl had been making his own bolts because the old ones had worn out quickly enough. The same would happen with these new ones. Propane was a finite resource. Sacks of crop seed presumably had a shelf-life and would expire before we could make use of it. A lot of what we took we wouldn't be able to use because there were too few of us to make use of it. That was true of the world around us; all that stuff left to rust and rot.

Seven people. Four adults, one teenager my age and two kids. Not young kids either; they could be useful. In a very real sense, seven people were the most valuable find today. …At least, if they stopped arguing with Rick anyway.

By the time the truck was packed and so were the other vehicles with every conceivable thing we might need, we were all utterly exhausted and the dead were coming to fill the vacuum left by the horde I had led east. I found that depressing. It would have been nice to leave the town deserted, cleared save for the cripples, but instead we followed the truck at a distance as it once again dropped bodies.

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

There was no question of emptying the truck that day so when we returned to the prison, I was looking forward to eating and then going to bed. Nothing else. But it wasn't that way.

"Are they complaining?"

I had to smirk. "I think they were expecting something else." Perhaps we should have sent them to Woodbury. I doubted that Martinez would have appreciated the gesture.

Sophia frowned and her hostility made me pat her shoulder, startling her out of the grim look if not the thought. "Would they prefer to still be out there?"

"See it from their point of view."

"Big reinforced fences and steel doors." Sophia declared moodily and it seemed she was in full teenager mode this evening.

"It's still a prison. Prisons are bad."

"Do you still think that?" She demanded with surprising force.

"I'm coming around. What's with you?"

"Nothing." She said and then sighed. "Listen to them. They're complaining about this place now… But what was it like when we got here?"

"I think they're just blowing off steam." It seemed to be Amanda and John's way to gripe about everything and anything. It was too dark. It was too cold. This thing was too heavy. Rick had been very patient about it, like Glenn he seemed to think that being trapped by walkers gave them the right to be a little tense.

"Who's who?"

"The two people bitching are Amanda and John." I said and she gave me an appreciative look. "That's their son Austin." I pronounced the name with as much of a twang as I could. "That guy's Ryan, and those are his daughters; Lizzie and Mika."

Sophia looked at them and it seemed someone walked over her grave at that moment because she shivered.

"What?"

She took her time to compose herself, and it was a long time. "I haven't seen any other kids since… Since Atlanta."

I hadn't even thought of that. Being disconcerted by so many people at Woodbury had been a part I had been playing so I hadn't given it much thought but now I realised that for Carl and Sophia this was an alarming event. Enough for Carl to join us. Beth too. And Beth stood very close to me.

I told their story while Rick told Andrea and Hershel he thought that he had gotten most of the shopping list. I heard Hershel remark that now we just had to find some horses to avoid the real backbreaking work.

"What are you doing?" I had to ask Beth because while I had a very different concept of personal space to other, normal, people even I could tell that Beth was well within my space.

"Just go with it." She whispered.

"What?"

"Do it." Sophia said with startling force and both girls glared at me for a moment and I was too tired to ask right now.

Carol came out from the cell block and I wondered how she looked to these new people. A thin woman with a rifle that looked much too big for her was what my eyes saw but I knew better. There was no reason for her to be carrying that rifle besides not trusting these strangers. Ryan was standing to one side with his daughters, unsure what he was supposed to do in this grim place. Carol meanwhile invited him in for dinner and I watched her grimace momentarily as the girls said 'Thank you, ma'am!' Carol glanced at the pale woman who was staring at a broken camera up on the cell block and then she came over to us. "Dinner's ready." She said to me. "Looks like you earned it."
I bit back the remark that she had no idea because it would sound like boasting and I knew I would be in the doghouse later when they learned what I had done today. "We did alright."

She shooed Beth and Carl toward the cell block but she put a finger on my collar like a fish hook when I tried to follow. It made Sophia almost smile.

"Who are they?" Carol asked me.

"Just people. From Florida."

"Just people?"

"They were settled somewhere. Then they weren't. Now they've got pretty much just the clothes on their back and a few handguns. One shotgun." I knew what Carol was really interested in. "I don't think they care for minorities too much." I nodded toward Amanda and John. "They were a little too polite to Tyreese and they weren't happy to see Michonne and Oscar on the way in." In fairness, Michonne would have alarmed anyone. "And they don't like her." I meant the pale woman whose interest had turned to the bullet scars that riddled the prison walls.

"Who's she?"

"No idea. She hasn't said a word. She can handle herself though. Daryl seemed to like her." He had spent the longest time with her out the front of the store and I guessed the positive opinion was entirely because she had not spoken and had just stood watch and silently knifed any cripples or walkers that had shown up. "John kept calling her a Commie, but that could mean anything."

"A Commie?"

"I don't know…" I said wearily.

"And Rick brought them in?"
"They were trapped in a McDonalds for God knows how long until we drew off the walkers keeping them there. They weren't dangerous." I thought of Beth's behaviour but again I was too tired to think about it.

"Okay then." Carol said in that sweet tone of hers that said she was going to be watching intently.

They had made spaghetti for dinner. A lot of it fortunately which meant that seven extra mouths was not a problem. Daryl and Merle took their food outside while everyone else was in the communal area, intrigued to see a whole bunch of new people. Lizzie and Mika got the most interest because most of the group had gotten used to Carl and Sophia being the last children on Earth. In contrast, Amanda, John and Ryan were utterly taken with baby Judith. They had not seen a baby since this had all began which was something best not thought about. Austin made Sasha and Tyreese uncomfortable, doubtless because as a teenage boy he reminded them of Ben, and Allen. In turn, everyone who wasn't white seemed to make Amanda, John and Austin uncomfortable. Michonne picked up on that but her usual silent glaring wasn't at all that different to her silent hostile glaring meaning that besides me only Andrea seemed to notice her attitude. Andrea didn't seem too impressed by these new arrivals.

Except for the pale woman who sat opposite myself and Beth and wolfed down her spaghetti as if she was all alone in the room. When Rick asked the new adults about her, she didn't react. Not until John spoke anyway.

"She was at the last camp we were at and she came with us when it fell. Didn't speak to anybody there, don't speak to us now. Commie seems to think she's too good to talk to any of us."

The woman swallowed her mouthful. "Mudak." She said with all the emotion of a hairbrush, and I snorted. This made her look up.

"Zdorovo." I said.

Now she showed emotion. "Privet ty govorish' po-russki?"

"Nyet." I answered and then carefully and fumbling at every step explained I knew more Russian curses than conversation. The English equivalent would have been 'No English. Speak swears. Fuck, shitheads, assholes.' This was not a disappointment to her though and she very slowly and patiently gave me a message to pass on to John while everyone stared at us. It didn't help that she wore a very wicked smile the entire time that lit up her previously blank grey face. Finally, I had the message. "She says, Russia hasn't been communist for years, and stop staring at my ass you stupid American pig." This was a very tactful translation because Russian curses were very colourful. It had been explained to me that 'mudak' meant 'testicle' but could be translated to mean 'testicle from a castrated sheep'.

I wasn't tactful enough and her smile at John which he had definitely not seen before coupled with his wife's shock that he had apparently been leering at the foreign woman made him take a step toward her. But Rick held up an arm which was enough to check him. "You speak Russian?" Rick asked me casually.

"No. But I knew a guy who worked in a pawnship who was Russian and liked to tell me." I switched to the appropriate accent. "How they insult people in Old Country." I was drawing a lot of incredulous looks and no wonder. I had never thought my knowledge of Russian cursing would ever be useful; I had always wished I had learnt some Spanish. "Sasha." I said to Tyreese's sister. "Meet Sasha." I gestured to the pale woman who was still smiling savagely at John. "Aleksandra."

That completed the introductions. Three adults from Florida, one from Russia of all places, one teenage boy that made Beth anxious and two children who were entirely concerned about eating and didn't seem aware of the adult drama at all. Or to be interested over much in their surroundings. On balance; a good day.

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

[Sophia]

I couldn't sleep. This was nothing new anymore. When we had first come here I hadn't had any trouble sleeping but now the nights when I could sleep easily were quicker to count than the ones when I couldn't. That was just how it was. Like most people we had a blanket over the cell door and it added a layer of comfort to the room that made it much easier to sleep. We also kept the door closed because neither of us were comfortable with having it open. If it had been possible, we would have locked it from the inside. Mom had made a wedge which could be reached through the bars so that if someone was to try to enter the cell by pulling the door open, the wedge would hold it in place and the attempt to open the door would make the chimes she had installed jangle like a horror. We knew; Glenn had done it accidentally and regretted it.

We had arrived here with fourteen people. Tonight, there were twenty-six and even though that was a good thing… They were strangers. And too many people had died here.

"Mom." I knew she was awake because I was awake. "If dad…" I heard her hold her breath. "If dad showed up tomorrow, what would you do?" I had been thinking about it all day as I raked leaves and then hearing the way the man John spoke to the Russian woman and then seeing him start to advance on her had put it in the front of my mind and it would not go away.

You couldn't hear someone thinking, but I could hear mom taking long pauses in her breathing as she thought about it. Breathe in, hold… Exhale. Was she thinking so hard she was forgetting to breathe? Or was it a stress exercise? I didn't know. I didn't know anymore.

"If your father walked through that door tomorrow, I want to say I would tell him to turn around and keep walking." She finally said in an even tone. "And if he took another step toward me, I wouldn't hesitate…" I knew it should have been wrong to hear her say this. To hear her say she hoped she had it in her to kill her husband; my father. But it didn't feel wrong… Instead, I felt sorry that she didn't feel she was in that place. Yet. And then I felt sorry for myself for feeling this way even as my skin crawled. Who would want their mom to be a killer? But I knew a lot of killers now and horrible as it was, it was necessary. Horrid necessity. "Why are you thinking about him?" She asked.

"I think about him." I said, and it sounded like a such a stupid thing to say but I knew she would understand that he was never far from my thoughts. How could he not be? Walking corpses and people shooting at me wasn't going to change that. That was what mom had just said after all. That even after everything she had been through a dead man and the memories of his bare hands still troubled her. We were the same. Small comfort. "That man…" I said, meaning John.

"The way he spoke to her." Mom was on the same page as me. "I think she can take care of herself."

"Are we better now?" I asked. "Are things better now?"

"The more people we have, the stronger we are. More people to work. More people to fight off the walkers. Even if they aren't the people we'd choose."

"Who would you choose?"

"I'd prefer to have Dale and T-Dog back. Axel. Jim and Jacqui. Amy…" She sighed. "But we didn't get to choose before, so we ain't got a choice now."

"We could leave." I said. "Find ourselves a nicer prison."

"I'm not disinfecting another cell block." She declared. "One was enough. And not another infirmary… We're here now. We have to make the best of it."

"I guess." That was everyone said. My middle twinged, reminding me it was never that simple. "I love you."

"I love you too, sweetie."

(17,737)

Author's Notes;

I have not been to Hannahs Mill, Georgia. I have however been on Google Maps at Street View and enjoyed how amusingly the images of Jeff Davis Road switch between summer and winter as you reach the crossroads of US-19. Previously I had them visit unnamed fictional towns with little Molena being an exception. But with Woodbury to the west, Hannahs Mill and Thomaston were the logical locations for Rick's group to explore. If you're interested, I took the fact the series shows Woodbury and the Prison to be within a day's walk from each other to place the fictional West Georgia Correctional Facility near Elkin's Creek along the 74 east of the Flint River; two miles south of Molena.

Glenn and Bas on bicycles. Bicycles never get enough use in zombie apocalypses, despite their advantages over foot travel. I thought that if they were scouting and had meticulously planned the run to Hannahs Mill that Glenn would recommend bicycles. 'His crossbow is quieter than your gun.'

Bas and the horde… It seems more like a Glenn or Daryl move. But Maggie's there to stop Glenn, Merle will hold Daryl back from doing anything heroic and Rick will let Bas do what needs to be done. I try to paint that Rick trusts Bas, ever since saving Sophia, but Bas doesn't really understand this implicit trust. Writing the whole sequence with the horde and the callbacks to that first chapter… That felt good.

A treasure trove. Funny thing about the Walking Dead is that it resources are oddly scare in the richest country in the world. Even accounting for destruction, there's a great deal that should have survived, especially goods that would not be looted due to not having immediately applicable value. In the Comics, Rick talks about looters targeting valuables over canned food which is odd considering that canned food is the first thing people hoard in a crisis. But water pumps? Spades? Chicken wire? I love the Day of the Triffids where the characters are preparing not just for immediate survival but for the long haul; loading up lorries with things they'll need months or years later. And thinking about the fact that tools break. You don't just need tools; you need the knowledge to make new tools. And with most people dead, there's plenty just sitting in stores and home garages. Forgotten. Food will go bad but so much will remain pristine for several years before the weather takes it toll.

Season 3 of the TV series ends with them taking in Woodbury's old and young. Season 4 starts with them having a sizeable population with many adults having joined the prison. Obviously, my timeline doesn't have those Woodbury immigrants, but they encountered Caleb in the last chapter and now they've found Ryan, and Lizzie and Mika. Most of those newcomers existed only to be fodder for the plague and the Governor's second invasion.

Non-canon characters like Amanda, John, Austin and Aleksandra have their purposes which will play out in the next few chapters. Aleksandra was a late addition, a creation of my mind while trying to sleep (I have chronic insomnia and always in January) and I thought of the Russians that appeared in the Telltales series and Kenny's hateful attitude toward Arvo as well as the language barrier. And from this, Aleksandra was born.

I considered a timeskip between events, skipping winter again but decided against it. It's more interesting to me as a writer to introduce certain people and ideas rather than just have them be there in the spring. I'm glad to be expanding the prison population as it gives me more things to do, especially with Sophia who's restricted to the prison grounds by her age. Annoyingly for me, I have ideas for her that can't play out for some time. Hell, I have plans for Terminus and Grady Memorial Hospital (more insomnia derived ideas) that can't happen for ages yet. But I'm in this for the long haul. I enjoy writing this. It flows rather well.