CHAPTER FIVE

Daryl's driving along a highway, and Andie looks behind them to see a silver car and a blue truck following not far behind. He goes across the grass to get to the other side of the highway where others from his group are.

Rick quickly makes his way over to them as those cars cross too, and Andie stays close to Daryl as they all gather. She's now standing beside his bike as everyone runs to those they feared they had lost on the farm.

Carl runs over to his mother, and Rick joins them after greeting Daryl. Hershel's two daughters run to him, and Glenn's not too far away. A woman with short hair moves a bit closer to Daryl, but keeps her distance when she sees the prisoner not straying too far from his side. Another man is standing with the blue truck, holding his gun as he slings his arm over the door.

"Where'd you find everyone?" Rick asks as he looks at Daryl, and Andie leans against the car near them, using his body to shield her from the others.

"Well, those guys' taillights zigzaggin' all over the road — figured he had to be Asian driving like that." He says, and Glenn chuckles.

"Good one." He says sarcastically.

"Where's the rest of us?"

"We're the only ones who made it so far." Rick tells him.

"Shane?" His wife asks as she stands up, and he simply shakes his head.

"Andrea?" Glenn asks.

"She saved me, then I lost her." The woman with the short hair says.

"We saw her go down." The man at the blue truck tells them.

"Patricia?" Hershel asks, and his younger daughter shakes her head.

"They got her too, took her right from me." The blonde says. "I was... I was holdin' onto her, Daddy. She just—" She sobs into his chest. "What about Jimmy? Did you see Jimmy?"

"He was in the RV. It got overrun." Rick says, and Andie realizes that Jimmy was the one who saved her, Rick, and Carl.

"You definitely saw Andrea?" The woman with the short hair asks.

"There were walkers everywhere." Rick's wife tells her.

"Did you see her?" She asks, but no one can give her a definitive answer.

"I'm gonna go back." Daryl says, starting for his motorcycle.

"No." Rick stops him.

"We can't just leave her."

"We don't even know if she's there." Rick's wife says.

"She isn't there. She isn't." Their leader tells them. "She's somewhere else or she's dead. There's no way to find her."

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

"We gotta keep moving." He says. "There have been walkers crawling all over here."

"I say head East." The man at the truck says as Andie lightly smacks Daryl's bicep and points out the corpse headed straight at them from farther up the highway.

"Stay off the main roads." Daryl says as he goes for his crossbow. "The bigger the road, the more walkers, more assholes like this one. I got him." He shoots it in the head with an arrow.

"What about her?" Rick's wife asks, pointing at Andie. "I mean, she can't stay with us. We were gonna kill her. How are we supposed to trust her?"

"You're still afraid I'll hurt your group? After I helped save you guys?" The teenager questions. "I didn't even do anything to— You know what? I don't care. I'll just leave."

"Alone?" The woman with the short hair asks as the younger girl adjusts her bag on her shoulder.

"I do just fine on my own."

"Yeah?" Daryl challenges. "Falling out of trees while you're asleep? Agreeing to stay with a group full of creeps and rapists?"

"That last one is a mistake I make once." She tells him. "I learned my lesson. I'll avoid all people from now on — dead or alive."

He watches her for a moment as she heads in the direction they came from. "Hold up!" He calls, and she sighs as she stops before turning back to face him. "I'm comin' with you." He tells her, and her eyebrows furrow as she glances around his group.

"What?"

"You can't leave." The woman closest to him says.

"Daryl, don't do this." Rick tells him.

"Letting her go off on her own is the same as leaving her for dead." He argues. "I'm not abandoning another person and letting her die alone." He tells them, and they all know who he's referring to.

"He's right." Glenn says. "Forcing her to leave isn't right. Especially since we're the ones who brought her to the farm in the first place."

"She hasn't been violent." Hershel says, looking around at his people. "And she was so upset by what Randell said that she vomited in the grass."

"Yeah, how about we don't talk about that." Andie mutters.

"Daryl's word for her is good enough for me." The woman at his side says.

"Okay, as much as I love listening to whether or not I'm being voted off the island — I'm done listening to everyone pass their judgment. Adios."

"Hey." Daryl walks over and grabs her arm, and her jaw tightens as she turns to look at him. "I think you stand a better chance at finding your mom again some day if you don't get yourself killed while you're off playing the lone ranger. What if a walker had found you in the dirt before you woke up after you fell out of that tree?"

Her expression softens as her hand absentmindedly moves to her side. "Would it be too much to ask that someone help me treat this?" She asks. "I think it's getting infected."

He turns his head to look at Hershel, and the older man nods.

—

It's well after nightfall now, and the group's holed up in a low area that's surrounded by brick walls. They have a small fire going, just enough to provide a bit of warmth as they huddle around it. Glenn and the Greene family are close together, and Carl's curled into his mom's side as she holds him. Rick and T-Dog are on the walls to keep watch over everyone. Andie and Carol are closer to Daryl as he mans the fire.

"We're not safe with him — keeping something like that from us." Carol whispers. "Why do you need him? He's just gonna pull you down."

"Naw, Rick's done alright by me." Daryl tells her.

"You're his henchman, and I'm a burden." She argues. "You deserve better."

"What do you want?"

"A man or honor."

"Rick has honor."

"Everyone wants someone to do the right thing, lead them to safety, be their protection..." Andie scoffs as she shakes her head. "But no one ever wants to see the shit that they have to go through before they become someone capable of those things. People go through hell and make more mistakes than you can count before they get to be the man you wish he'd be from the jump. The job doesn't come with a handbook, but it does come with judgment and ridicule."

"You don't see anything wrong with what he did?" Carol questions.

"Who gives a damn that he didn't tell you we're all infected with whatever turns people into them?" She looks at the older woman. "You didn't know — you lived your life like normal. You know — you still live your life like normal, but now you have to be afraid that whoever you're with when you die doesn't have a chance to put anything through your brain before you turn into one of them. Yeah, I definitely see why you're better off now, and he's such a monster."

"You're a mean little shit." Daryl says as he looks down at her.

"You wanna put the shackles back on, force me into subordination?"

"Naw, I think I like you better with a weapon in your hands." He tells her, and she smirks.

"What was that?" Beth asks after they hear a twig snap in the woods.

"Could be anything." Daryl says as he gets to his feet. "Could be a raccoon, could be a possum."

"A walker." Glenn adds.

"We need to leave." Carol says. "I mean, what are we waitin' for?"

"Which way?"

"It came from over there." Maggie points.

"Back from where we came." Her sister adds, and she nods.

"Yeah."

"The last thing we need is for everyone to be running off in the dark." Rick speaks up. "We don't have the vehicles. No one's traveling on foot."

"Don't panic." Hershel says as more noises come from the woods.

"I'm not— I'm not sitting here waiting for another herd to blow through." Maggie says. "We need to move, now."

"No one is going anywhere." Rick tells them.

"Do something." Carol says.

"I am doing something!" He whisper-yells. "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!"

"Your friend was trying to kill you. You killed him for you." Andie says, and Daryl looks down at her. She's still sitting on the ground, her eyes on the fire.

"You saw what he was like, how he pushed me, how he compromised us...how he threatened us." Rick continues, ignoring her comment. "He staged the whole Randell and Andie 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. My hands are clean...

"Maybe you people are better off without me." He doesn't acknowledge that Carl's crying as he buries his head in Lori's chest. "Go ahead. I say there's a place for us, but maybe- maybe it's just another pipe dream. Maybe— Maybe I'm fooling myself again. Why don't you— Why don't you go and find out yourself? Send me a postcard. Go on, there's the door. You can do better? Let's see how far you get..." He tells them, and everyone glances around at each other, but no one makes a move. "No takers? Fine. But get one thing straight — you're staying, this isn't a democracy anymore." Their leader looks at them a moment longer before walking away from the group.

"You're eerily calm." Glenn says, and Andie looks up at him, knowing that he's talking to her.

"If it were the dead in the woods, we'd hear the moans and groans as they get closer. And Rick doesn't scare me, even as a dictator." She tells him. "I don't understand why you're all so eager to jump on his back. He may be a bit cranky, but he doesn't seem that bad."

"Says the girl he was gonna shoot." Daryl says, and she lifts her head.

"No, he wasn't." She refutes. "Maybe Ranger Rick can kill a threat who's got their own gun, but he's not an executioner. If he had it in him to kill me and Randell, he would've pulled the trigger before Carl even walked in."