† "They must turn from evil and do good; they must seek peace and pursue it." - Peter 3:11 †

The rush of an attack caught Ana Maria off-guard. She hits the ground, tumbling with her assailant.

Her injured shoulder, still healing from taking a bullet a couple months ago, brings the former cop to scream in agony. At seeing the face bearing down on her, Ana Maria grits her teeth and growls out at the girl who brought her own demise from the colony and shot her to escape.

As the younger female slashes her knife down, Ana Maria blocks Hannah's wrist in the rising of her crooked arm. Head-butting the girl, Ana Maria starts to exact her revenge as the inexperienced fighter falls off of her.

"Get up, Hannah!" Ana Maria spits down at her, stretching the muscles of her ailed shoulder as she raises her fists in waiting.

As Hannah clutches to her head and Dalton moves to help her, Ana Maria points at him with a menacing lean as she says, "Don't you fucking dare! Back the fuck up, Romeo or you'll get it too!"

When Hannah takes warily to her feet, Ana Maria waits until those pretty blue eyes find some focus again. In the last chance that she's going to give her, Ana Maria winds up her fist and smashes into Hannah as she so often fantasized about. Her last torture of her was cut short by her little boyfriend and Nick.

A betrayal, that set her over the edge.

This bitch shot her! Now she had the nerve to try and attack her?

Hannah's fate—as far as Ana Maria was concerned—belonged to her.

Hannah swings and misses in her painfully hazed delirium. In this opening, Ana Maria gives another blow of her fist across Hannah's swelling cheek.

Hannah falls backward and this time, the opportunity to stand again that Ana Maria formerly gave disappears. Ana Maria's bloodlust has taken over her manners for a fair fight. From her makeshift belt, she pulls her machete and stalks after the girl crawling back to get away from her.

"If you're going to pick a fight with someone, Hannah, you better be ready to pay the price!" Ana Maria yells, her face drawn down from the rain and the curls of black hair sticking to the sides of her face.

Dalton and Fisher go to Hannah, bringing her up in trying to shield her from Ana Maria's coming death.

The cop is stopped short when the barrel of Nick's shotgun blocks her from her target.

"Move, Nick. She started it. I end it." Ana Maria trembles under the adrenaline coursing through her system. A sensation, she'd almost forgotten. One she loathed, one she loved. For at this moment, she felt alive again. The empty hole within her promised to be filled in the spilling of enemy blood—if only temporarily—until she needed it again.

"Put it down." Nick orders.

Ana Maria's eyes are heavy on him before they cast to the side. Tossing her machete to the ground, she gleams back at Nick in the same hatred she held for Hannah. Over his shoulder, Ana Maria watches Emma clutching onto her swollen belly. On that protective hand, is another, with Paige clinging in uncertainty.

"What are you going to do now, Nick? Shoot me?" Ana Maria asks as the two standoff in a way much similar to the memory that sent her in the colony to the first place. A confrontation, that leads her to betray all of them at the beach with her own inability to trust.

In his eyes, she sees it too. He's remembering the same thing and regret, the unspoken apology, reads in those deadpan eyes of his.

He lowers his gun and takes his step backward.

"This ends," Nick starts, looking from his former ally turned enemy, to the girl who started all this, "I need ya both to swear that this ends here. If we're gonna live together, this has to be it. We got enough goin' on back there. We got enough goin' on out 'ere with the sick. Hannah, I'mma start with you...I'mma ask you...is this done?"

Hannah spits out the blood pooling in her mouth and it sprays over the golden floor of the woods. She replies, "No. It's never done."

"Agreed," Ana Maria seethes back and her confidence in having Hannah dead is clear in her tone.

"Have it your way..." Nick trails off, as he hands his gun to Fisher to hold.

Returning to Ana Maria, her handy belt is his subject of interest.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing?" Ana Maria tries to back away, as Nick's hands loop out the rope she's fastened around it. Holding her to him, Nick makes no apologies when hands end up in awkward places to get the rope out.

Her elbow jolts up, aiming to hit him in the temple. He moves backward and with the force of her missed hit, Nick lets her fall to the ground.

Not letting her get a moment to realize what's happening, he's on her.

Knee in her back, Nick's tossing away the other blade from her belt, her gun, anything else she can use against him when he's through with her.

"Hold Hannah," Nick orders the other two men.

Though he doesn't look back, Dalton shakes his head in protest and Fisher grabs the girl writhing in his grip.

Tying the knot over both of her wrists, Ana Maria's skin pinches under Nick's skillful knot.

"I swear to God Nick! You're dead if you don't get these fucking ropes off of me!!!" Ana Maria shouts, eying the gun from her distance and how she can use it to shoot Hannah and all these men to feed the zombies when they came.

In her focus, Ana Maria's vision racks into a different perspective with the movement a half a mile off.

Zombies, at least a dozen, head in their direction. Hannah screams behind her, protesting to her own bounds as her hands are tied the same.

Kicking up her knee to stand, the dead leaves cling to Ana Maria's body and hair from the fall.

When she goes to move, to run, Ana Maria finds dead weight pulling her back. Following the trail of rope, she finds Hannah tied to the short slack given between them.

"You've got to be fucking kidding me, Nick!" Ana Maria screams, approaching the man with every intent on hurting him, as she's dragged back to her enemy.

He's ignoring her, moving to the deer and gutting it out. In this time, he's giving Dalton a lesson on how to do it, even though the boy is clearly distracted by what he's just done to the two females.

The steam from the body heat of the dead deer joins the coming fog. Over her shoulder, Ana Maria watches the dead and their rapid approach to the living they obsessed to devour.

"The zeds are coming, Nick! You can't leave us like this! We'll be dead!" Ana Maria announces and when she does, the rest of the group cowers back to Nick and Dalton near the dead deer.

Helplessly, Ana Maria looks to the two women who were under her protection out here in the wild.

Paige says, "Nick, we can't leave them like this. It's not right."

"They'll figure it out. 'Cause if they can't figure out how to live through this together, well then, they ain't gonna figure it out ever." Nick replies as he finishes up with Fisher in tying up the last hoof of the gutted deer.

As Dalton adds the last of the organs into a jar, he shoves it into his pack before sending another worried look to the bound women.

Dalton pipes in, "Well they're coming with us so they'll be fine, right?"

Raising his head to look at the two women again, Nick offers the shadow of a shrug.

"Who says they're comin' with us?" Nick begins to drag the deer with Fisher as Paige offers up to drag the deer with them to move faster.

Warily, Emma follows and her worry shows as equally as Dalton's while she hangs back.

Hannah goes to move forward first to follow and when she finds tightness in their line, Ana Maria and she look back as mirrors to discover their grim fate. The rest of their rope is tied off to the sturdy branch of a nearby tree.

Hannah threatens in a broken cry, "When I tell Doyle he's gonna be pissed!"

Nick, unfazed, continues on as the rest of them hang their head in shame and continue on. The hungry growls of the dead hit the ears of the survivors. Two of which, are convinced, will soon be ripped apart by them.

"Dalton, please!!!" Hannah cries after Dalton turns his back.

He hesitates, his head raising from shame with her plea. When he turns back to look at her, she's crying, desperate, terrified.

It's the first time she's spoken to him, looked at him, for two months. Angry, in the belief that he betrayed her trust, that he used her when he did none of those things. He'd kept a secret, his only wrong in their friendship, that she blew out of proportion. A trend, he's noticing, that she took on in her life.

Maybe Nick was right for doing this.

Dalton takes the gun off the ground that was Ana Maria's. They both look at him warily when he moves toward them, then past the threshold to the coming infected.

"Dalton, what are you doing?!" Hannah asks, trying to move toward him, but cut short by the lead given on the ropes from the tree and Ana Maria's anchor.

He fires in rapid succession. Missing the heads of some of the dead, but nails some at first shot.

Returning to Ana Maria's belt, he reaches as Nick did for more bullets. In finding only five, he dares to glare up at Ana Maria who scowls down at him. Unhappy, of course, with the situation, but relenting in knowing that he's saving their lives.

He loads the clip, killing the rest of the infected before they can make it within reach of them.

As the last one falls, it reaches out, spazzing as the last of its sorry life leaves its decomposing body.

Bringing the gun to hide in the back of his pants, it catches up the brown fabric of his shirt as it drapes wet over his jeans. Taking the gun, Ana Maria is glowering when he walks past them without a word, to follow the path of the dragged deer and the living.

"You can't leave us, Dalton! Please!" Hannah begs and he stops again.

Turning back, he gusts out visible air before he says, "This isn't my call. I did all I can do." He looks back and forth between the two women. "He's right, you both need this. Work together. I'll see you both at the colony."

His cleft chin lifts as his mocha eyes move to the woods behind the women.

"Better figure it out soon. There's more on the way," he adds.

In the hardest thing he's ever had to do, he ignores the pleading from Hannah as it continues after his heavy steps. Tears glaze over his eyes as guilt encompasses him whole.

When he catches up to the others, they look to him in a silent question for their well being. A question, he can't answer, even if he had it.

//Author's note: Sorry it's been awhile for an update! Next chapter will be up Sunday! Thank you all for reading/voting!