Me and Sophia were running in the woods. Again. It was dark, we only had one torch that Sophia had put into her pocket at some point while we were leaving the house. I was holding the torch in one hand, my gun in the other since I safely secured Teddy in my backpack.

Sophia was crying, but she was keeping it quiet, so we didn't draw the attention of walkers. I had bullets, but we still wanted to avoid the dead as much as we possibly could. "Stop, stop, stop." I said and we stopped running. 

I heard the groaning, it sounded close, right behind us. I turned around, raising my gun and torch at the same time. I was about to pull the trigger without hesitation until I saw who it was. "Oh my god." Sophia let out as she started backing away.

"Mama?" I let out. Her left arm from the elbow down was gone, her right arm was barely hanging on since it had so many chunks taken from it, her head was hanging to the side since the left part of her neck was missing so much flesh, I'm not sure how she was walking since there were so many bites taken from her legs, she was barely recognisable since her face was missing half of her features, but I knew it was her. She was wearing the same clothes, the necklace around her neck was the same, she was missing one eye but the one she had stared at me. I knew she didn't recognise me, because that wasn't my mother, it was her body, but it wasn't her. However, there was something about her eye, the way it looked at me, maybe it was because I've seen her look at me like she wanted to hurt me so many times and that's what this walker wanted to do. "Oh my god." I muttered, keeping my arms raised. I backed away; I didn't want to shoot her. "You did this to yourself! You're the reason we were in that forest! If you didn't make me go out there with you then you wouldn't be like this right now! Why do I feel bad if you did this! You're dead! You're not my mama, I'm not hurting her, you're just a chewed-on corpse!" I yelled at it, still backing away so I wouldn't have to shoot it. "Damnit." My voice cracked as tears streamed down my face. "I hate you! This is all your fault!" I yelled at the body of my mother.

"Ellie, we either have to run or you have to pull the trigger." Sophia said sadly from behind me.

"Goodbye, mama." I said quietly before pulling the trigger. The bullet lodged itself in her head before she fell down. I walked over to her, taking the necklace from around her neck and putting it in one of the side pockets of my bag. I stared at her for about twenty seconds before I saw figures coming our way. I kissed my fingers before gently touching my fingers to her forehead. "I hate you, but for some god damn reason I still love you... I'll see you on the other side, mama." With that I got up so me and Sophia could keep running.

Me and Sophia hadn't gotten to the highway, but we'd gotten to a nearby town. It looked like a nice street, where families would've lived. I headed over to a garage, I shot the padlock before pulling it open. Their car was missing, so whoever lived here tried to escape this world, maybe they did, maybe they're out there somewhere. Either way, two children were a part of this family. I grabbed one of the children's bikes and a cart, using rope I found I connected the two so that when the bike was moving it would drag the cart along with it. I wheeled the bike out. "What the hell?" Sophia laughed.

"You wanna get to that highway? Get in." I pointed to the red cart with a smile. "You can't cycle, so I'm gonna have to pull you."

She shook her head and got in, holding her crutches over her lap, taking dolly out of her waistband and holding her close to her heart. "What if my mum and your dad aren't there when we get to the highway? What if nobody else got out? Or they did, but we may never see them again?... I don't think we can survive just the two of us."

I sighed. "There's a fine line between the beginning of the story and the end of the story. People think they're two different things, but they aren't, they're actually quite similar. It's you who chooses whether this is the beginning or the end. Whether there are people on that highway when we get there or not... This is just the beginning, because with me around? Nothing bad will ever happen to you." I smiled at her.

Sophia nodded, wiping a couple stray tears off her face. "I thought I was the older sister."

"You are, but you're also the softie. Someone round here has to do all the heavy lifting while you're crippled." I smiled before getting onto the bike and starting to pedal. I wasn't entirely sure of the way, but I followed signs... Until there were no more signs.

"Left or right?" Sophia asked when we got to a fork in the road.

"You choose." I responded.

She hummed. "Maybe left."

"Left it is." I nodded, cycling left.

"Are you okay?" Sophia asked after a while of silence.

"I'll be fine." I responded. 

We were getting closer to the highway; I could see what looked like my dad crouching on the floor. His hands were covering his face. I noticed Lori hugging Carol and her body seemed to be shaking. "They made it." Sophia said happily.

"Yea, and they think we're dead." I scoffed. "Who do they think we are? We're literally awesome. We ain't being taken out, come on now. They gotta have some faith in us."

Sophia laughed. "Put them out of their misery would you."

I laughed before ringing the bell on the bike. Dad stood up slowly and turned around, Carol too, everyone else also looked over in shock. I saw that everyone apart from Jimmy, Patricia, Andrea and Shane were there. "Y'all didn't really think we were dead, did you?" I smiled.

"Oh my god!" Dad yelled, running over to me and Sophia. Carol started running over too. I stepped the bike, took off my bag just before dad scooped me up into his arms and hugged me tightly. Over my shoulder, I saw Carol helping Sophia out of the cart before tightly hugging her daughter. "Don't ever do that to me again." Dad muttered. I didn't acknowledge it, but I could feel how wet his face was and I knew he'd been crying and the same with Carol.

"I'll try." I said before kissing his wet cheek. Dad walked around the bike, his right arm was holding me so he took his left from around my back to hug Sophia as well, Sophia took one arm off her mum to hug dad at the same time. Carol took her left arm and placed it on my back. We took a minute before walking over to everyone, Sophia and Carol hanging back as they grabbed Sophia's crutches and our bags which I'd forgotten about.

I jumped down from my dad and hugged Carl, he gripped me tighter than I thought he would. "I'm sorry about what I said to you after Jacob, and I'm sorry I swung at you in the RV. I was wrong, and I was angry."

I smiled. "It's alright. Just don't sneak off in the middle of the night again."

"Why don't we just take a step back now." Dad said, tapping Carl's shoulder. I laughed at my father before everyone else insisted to take a turn hugging me and then Sophia before I could eventually go back to my father who picked me up again. Carol put her right hand on my back, Sophia stood in front of me so Carol put her left hand on Sophia's left shoulder, dad put his right hand on Sophia's right shoulder.

"Where's Shane and Andrea? Jimmy and Patricia, did they..." I trailed off.

"Shane's dead." Rick stated. "Jimmy was in the RV, but it got overrun."

"They got Patricia, she was holding onto me. They just took her right from me." Beth said, hugging her father tighter.

"Andrea?" Dad pushed.

"I saw her go down." T-dog stated.

"They definitely got her? I thought she shot?" Carol questioned T-dog.

"There were walkers everywhere." Lori shook her head.

"Did you see her?" Carol asked, the silence told us that nobody saw that she actually died.

"I'm gonna go back." Dad started to put me down, but Rick quickly interrupted.

"No." 

"We can't just leave her." Dad pointed out.

"We don't even know if she's there." Lori agreed with Rick.

"She isn't there. She isn't. She's either somewhere else or dead. There's no way to find her." Rick shook his head, so dad tightened his grip on me and put his hand back on Sophia's shoulder.

"So, we're not even gonna look for her?" Glenn asked.

"We've got to keep moving. There've been walkers crawling all over here." Rick replied.

"I say head east." T-dog suggested.

"Stay off the main roads." Dad agreed. "The bigger the road, the more walkers. More assholes like that. T, behind you." T-dog got out his knife and walked towards the approaching walker before stabbing it in the head, letting its body dropped before he walked back over to the group.

Apparently, the day me, Sophia and Jacob went missing, to keep the group distracted and to not send everyone into the woods and cause a panic, they'd cleared the cars from the road. So, I hopped on my dad's bike, Sophia went in a car with her mother, Lori, Carl and Rick and we drove off. Mine and my dad's bags were in one of the cars, I couldn't remember which, I didn't care. I was just glad I had my dad.

We'd been driving most of the day when we heard a beep from one of the cars behind. Everyone slowed to a stop, which I'm quite happy about because I was freezing on the bike. Everyone started getting out of their cars, me and dad hopped off the bike as we formed a circle, Sophia and Carol walked straight over to me and dad. Dad saw that me and Sophia were shivering, winter was coming quicker than any of us realised since we'd pretty much lost track of time. Dad took off his jacket and made me stand in front of Sophia before he wrapped his jacket around us and zipped it up. Sophia wrapped her arms around me best she could with her crutches, but we instantly heated up. "Thanks, daddy." I smiled at him.

"Thank you." Sophia agreed quietly.

Dad smiled at us before looking over to Rick. "You out?" 

"Running on fumes." Rick replied.

"We can't stay here." Maggie pointed out.

"We can't all fit in one car." Glenn countered.

"We'll have to make a run for some gas in the morning." Rick replied, taking off his jacket and giving it to a freezing Carl.

"Spend the night here?" Carol asked.

"We can build a fire." Lori said, tightening the jacket around Carl.

"If you go out looking for firewood, stay close." Dad said to everyone. "Only got so many arrows. How's everyone doing on ammo?"

"Not enough." Rick shook his head.

"I got one and a half magazines." I said, holding up my gun and a full magazine but nobody could see since it was under my dad's jacket.

"We can't just sit here with our asses hanging out." Maggie reminded us.

"Watch your mouth." Hershel said since he wasn't a big fan of swearing. "Everyone stop panicking and listen to Rick."

"All right, we'll set up a perimeter. In the morning we'll find gas and some supplies. We'll keep pushing on." Rick told everyone.

"Glenn and I can go make a run now, try and scrounge up some gas." Maggie offered.

"No, we stay together. God forbid something happens and people get stranded without a car." Rick shook his head.

"Rick, we're stranded now." I said quietly.

"I know it looks bad, we've all been through hell and worse, but at least we found each other. I wasn't sure, I really wasn't, but we did. We're together, we keep it that way. We'll find shelter somewhere. There's got to be a place." Rick ranted.

"Rick, look around. There's walkers everywhere." Glenn stepped forward... He said even though there were currently no walkers in sight, but we knew what he meant. "They're migrating or something."

"There's gotta be a place not just where we hold up, but that we fortify, hunker down, pull ourselves together, build a life for each other, build a life for our children. I know it's out there; we just have to find it." Rick explained.

"Even if we do find a place that we think is safe, we can never be sure for how long." Maggie shook her head. "Look what happened with the farm. We fooled ourselves into thinking that we were safe there."

"We won't make that mistake again." Hershel stated.

"We'll make camp tonight. Over there." Rick pointed to where there were some old castle ruins or something just off the road and into the forest. "Get on the road at the break of day."

Carol put her hand on Sophia's head as she turned to my dad. "Does this feel right to you?"

"What if walkers come through or another group like Randall's?" Beth asked, going over to Rick.

"You know I found Randall, right? He had turned, but he wasn't bit." Dad said to Rick. Poor Beth didn't get her question answered. Rick didn't look very surprised as he nodded and looked down.

"How's that possible?" Sophia questioned.

"Rick, what the hell happened?" Lori asked.

"Shane killed Randall. Just like he always wanted too." Dad realised.

"And then the herd got him?" Lori raised her eyebrows.

Rick stayed silent for a dramatic amount of time before he spoke. "We're all infected." He stated.

Everyone was in shock, processing this information. "What?" My dad broke the silence.

"At the CDC, Jenner told me... Whatever it is, we all carry it." Rick replied.

"And you never said anything?" Carol questioned from behind me and Sophia.

"Would it have made a difference?" Rick asked.

"You knew this whole time?" Glenn sounded shocked.

"How could I have known for sure? You saw how crazy that-" Glenn interrupted Rick's defence.

"That is not your call to make. Okay, when I found out about the walkers in the barn, I told for the good of everyone." Glenn reminded us. Sophia stiffened behind me at the mention of walkers and the barn as she was thinking about Jacob walking out.

"Well, I thought it best if people didn't know." Rick replied.

"Doesn't matter, what's done is done. We know now, that's what's important, right?" I looked up to my dad, he didn't know what to say so he just nodded. Truth is, I agreed with Glenn, but I understood why Rick did what he did. Rick smiled a little at me, silently thanking me before he walked away. I thought he just needed a minute alone, but Lori followed after him.

We'd set up camp. We had a fire that everyone was sitting around apart from T-dog who was up on one of the broken walls and Rick who was making sure there was nothing nearby. I was sitting next to Sophia, resting my head on her shoulder, my dad's jacket was still around us both, but we couldn't zip it up since I was beside her. My dad and Carol had been grabbing firewood, and I noticed them having a small conversation before dad walked over and sat next to me and Carol sat next to Sophia.

There was a noise from the woods. "What was that?" Beth asked.

"Could be anything. Could be a raccoon, could be a possum." Dad said, grabbing his crossbow and standing up.

"Or a walker." Glenn added.

"Or Rick." I stated when Rick came into viewpoint.

"We need to leave. I mean, what are we waiting for?" Carol questioned.

"The last thing we need is for everybody to be running off in the dark." Rick shook his head. "We don't have the vehicles. Nobody's travelling on foot."

"Don't panic." Hershel stated.

"I'm not sitting here and waiting for another herd to blow through." Maggie shook her head. "We need to move, now."

"Nobody is going anywhere!" Rick whisper yelled at us, trying not to draw a walker but he was still upset.

"Do something." Carol tried.

"I am doing something. I'm keeping this group together, alive. I've been doing that all along, no matter what. I didn't ask for this. I killed my best friend for you people, for Christ's sake!" Even though Rick was whispering, it was very loud and very angry, Sophia flinched at the sound and covered her ears. I sat up straight as I watched him, putting my hand on Sophia's knee. "You saw what he was like. How he pushed me, how he compromised us, how he threatened us. He staged the whole Randall thing, led me out to put a bullet in my back. He gave me no choice! He was my friend, but he came after me." Rick informed everyone; Lori was holding Carl as he started to cry into his mother's chest. "My hands are clean. Maybe you people are better off without me. Go ahead. I say there's a place for us but maybe it's just another pipe dream. Maybe I'm fooling myself again. Why don't you go out and find out for yourselves? Send me a postcard. Go on, there's the door. You can do better? Let's see how far you can get... No takers? Fine. But get one thing straight... You're staying? This isn't a democracy anymore."