⌜ chapter one ⌟

It hasn't been long since the explosion at the C.D.C. — a couple of days maybe. Nobody's really keeping track anymore.

Every morning, Rick and MJ try to get through to Morgan on the C.B. But they never do. They're losing faith that they ever will, but they can't stop trying. They owe him too much. They owe it to him to continue on that slim chance that they'll reach him.

They're all leaving Atlanta now and they're cutting down on vehicles, it's an attempt to conserve gas. If they can use less, they can go farther with fewer stops. At least, that's the goal. And they'll take the small victories.

So, now Jessica and Jack both ride in the RV with Dale, Glenn, Andrea, T-Dog, and Shane. Rick drives the car with Carl, Lori, Sophia, and Carol. And Daryl leads the way on his motorcycle with MJ sitting right behind him.

She holds onto the leather vest that he wears now and watches the scenery as they ride by. She likes being out of the car and feeling the wind. Mostly, she likes that for those short rides, she feels free. That, and the past few days she and Shane have been getting into arguments. They all felt it was best that the two aren't stuck in closed quarters.

MJ tears her gaze from the tree line when the motorcycle starts to slow. She looks ahead and sees a bunch of abandoned cars and an overturned big-rig. Daryl turns the bike around and heads back toward the RV.

"See a way through?" Dale asks, and Daryl nods before telling him to follow. He rides around Rick's car and then heads back.

He leads the way, and MJ's grip on him tightens slightly as she looks at all of the cars. There's people's belongings that were left there, not to mention a few dead bodies.

A squealing noise starts behind her, and she turns her head to see smoke coming out of the RV's engine. She pats Daryl's shoulder, and he stops the bike. She then climbs off the back, and he gets off as well.

"I said it. Didn't I say it?" Dale complains as they all climb out of the RV. "A thousand times. Dead in the water."

"Problem, Dale?" Shane asks, and MJ rolls her eyes.

"Just a small matter of being stuck in the middle of nowhere. With no hope of—" He stops when he sees Daryl looking through one of the cars. "Okay, that was dumb."

"If you can't find a radiator hose here..."

"Then you don't belong behind the wheel of a car." MJ mutters as she opens the hood on a yellow Mustang that's parked nearby. "God, I wish I had time to work on this beauty." She says, and Jack chuckles as he looks at her.

"There's a whole bunch of stuff we can find." Daryl says.

"I can siphon more fuel from these cars for a start." T-Dog says as he looks around.

"Jack, go with T. Learn a thing or two." MJ tells him, and he follows after T-Dog.

"Think we can find some water?" Carol asks.

"Or food." Glenn adds.

"This is a graveyard." Lori says, and they all look at her. "I don't know how I feel about this."

"I hear you, I do." MJ looks at her. "But we really don't have the luxury for that kind of sentiment anymore. We have to survive somehow."

"Come on, y'all. Look around." Shane tells them. "Gather what you can."

Jack follows T-Dog, and the others start looking around. MJ talks to Dale for a couple minutes about what exactly they need in order to get the RV running again, and then she goes to look for the best that she can get out here. Glenn stays with Dale to help with what can be done in the meantime.

"You said you learned about cars from your brother and your old man?" Daryl asks while MJ's looking under the hood of a car.

"Mostly my older brother." She nods. "My dad usually wanted me inside looking after my younger brother, but Dean would take me out after he fell asleep. Or when Sam was playing somewhere, and my dad was preoccupied with his work. Don't get me wrong, my dad didn't care if I learned, he just wanted someone watching out for Sam."

Shane finds a truck full of water, and Daryl points it out to her. She shakes her head as he pours it on himself. At least Glenn thinks it's funny. Carl walks over to MJ, and he climbs up so that he can see what she's doing.

"Can you teach me?" He asks, and she glances at him.

"Uh... I mean, I can try." She nods. "I've never really been a good teacher though. I usually just learn by doing." She says as he watches.

"I can do that." He says, and she smiles.

Rick runs over then and starts telling everyone that they need to get under the cars. His voice is low, but demanding. MJ immediately ducks down and grabs Carl, pulling him off of the car that she was looking through.

She turns to look for Jack, Daryl, and T-Dog, but they're all gone from her sight. Lori and Carol crawl under one car as MJ gets Carl to go under another. She turns to run, but he grabs her arm, and she sighs. She doesn't have time to argue because the large crowd of walkers is getting closer.

So, she crawls under the car with Carl and sees Sophia under the one across from them. Rick's under another car on the other side of Carl, and Shane grabs Glenn. They quickly duck to hide as the walkers start to pass. Dale's on his stomach on top of the RV, and Andrea's inside. She has no idea what's going on until she sees a bunch of them start to pass the window.

MJ pulls Carl closer to her and she keeps turning her head to check on Sophia. She's scared and has her hand over her mouth as she clutches the doll that Morales' daughter gave to her before their family went their own way.

Daryl saw the walkers coming and had Jess and Jack hide under a car. Now those two are huddled together, hoping that they aren't found by the walkers. T-Dog accidentally cut his arm when he bent down to hide from sight, and it's really bad.

The walkers start to pass where MJ and the kids are, and Carl huddle's into her. He buries his face in her shoulder, and she looks at Rick. He's keeping an eye on them as well.

T-Dog has his blood all over his shirt, and one of the walkers is following the smell of it. Daryl runs up behind it and stabs it through the head with one of his arrows. He lays the dead walker over T-Dog and tells him to be quiet. Then he grabs a dead body from a nearby car and lays on the ground.

MJ looks at Sophia and makes a motion to tell her to stay quiet. It seems like the walkers have all gone through, but MJ doesn't let Carl go just in case there's more. A few seconds pass and no more go by.

"You did good, bud." MJ whispers and then she hears Sophia start to panic behind her.

A walker growls as it bends down, and MJ turns her head to see what's going on. It starts crawling under the car, trying to get to Sophia, and she screams. Carl grabs tighter onto MJ, and she looks at Rick.

"I can't." She whispers. "Go!" Her voice is still low, and he quickly starts to climb out from under the car.

MJ grunts as she then reaches her arm back and pulls her handgun from the back of her waistband. But she can't get a clean shot at the walker. The bullet could go straight through its head and hit Sophia. Not to mention that the sound would bring back every walker that just went by them.

Sophia gets out from under the car and climbs over the railing on the side of the road. She slides down the hill and completely disappears from MJ's sight. Rick follows after the terrified little girl and the two walkers who are after her.

They all climb out from where they're hiding and move toward the railing. Carol's in tears. "Lori. There's two walkers after my baby." She says, and Lori tries to keep her quiet so that she won't bring the other walkers back in their direction.

"It's my fault." Carl says, and MJ looks down at him. "If I hadn't held onto you, you could've killed those walkers. She wouldn't be out there right now."

"Hey, hey, hey. No." She shakes her head as she kneels down and looks at him. "This is not your fault. You were scared and you reacted like anyone would. You do not feel guilty, okay? You didn't do anything wrong."

"But now she's out there, and—"

"And your dad will bring her back." She cuts him off. "We'll find her. This isn't your fault."

He nods, and she wipes tears from his face.

—

"You sure this is the spot?" Daryl asks as he looks at the empty opening in the creek.

"I left her right here." Rick's telling them how he found Sophia and had to tell her to hide while he went to kill the walkers. "I drew the walkers way off in that direction up the creek."

"Without a paddle — seems where we've landed."

"She was gone by the time I got back here. I figured she just took off and ran back to the group." He says. "I told her go that way and keep the sun on her left shoulder."

"Hey, Short Round, why don't you step off to one side." Daryl calls to Glenn. "You're mucking up the trail."

"Short Round was Chinese, dickhead." MJ says as she glances at him. It bugs her when people make comments like that, especially since Glenn's already made a point of telling Daryl that he's Korean.

"Assuming she knows her left from her right." Shane says, ignoring her and Daryl, and the blonde looks at him.

"She's twelve, not stupid." She tells him.

"What the hell do you know about twelve-year-olds?"

"I know they're a hell of a lot smarter than you are. Shit for brains." She mutters the last part under her breath.

He glares at her. "I heard that."

"That's not surprising, Dumbo. With your big ass ears."

"MJ." Rick looks at her.

"How would you know so much about kids anyhow?" Shane questions.

"My daughter's twelve." She tells him as she looks up at him. "Sophia understood Rick just fine."

"She's tired, she's scared. She had a close call with two walkers. You gotta wonder how much of what he said stuck." He argues, and she clenches her teeth.

"Got a clear set of prints here." Daryl says, and MJ looks​ over at the man with the crossbow. "She did like Rick said, headed back to the highway. Let's spread out, make our way back."

"She couldn't​ have gotten far." Shane says as he helps Daryl out of the creek, and then Rick. They all start moving.

Daryl leads the way with the other four right behind him. The men have their eyes open for any walkers, but MJ's looking for any monster that might be out there. It's been a long time since she's seen anything besides a walker and it's making her anxious.

"She was doing just fine till right here. All she had to do was keep going." Daryl says, and the others look at the trail that he's been following. "She veered off that way."

"Why would she do that?" Glenn asks.

"Maybe she saw something that spooked her, made her run off." Shane suggests.

"A walker?"

Daryl shakes this head. "I don't see any other footprints. Just hers." He tells them, and MJ wracks her brain for any other monster that she possibly could've seen that would make her change course.

Vampires are fast, but they still leave footprints — and they tend to travel in large groups, so there'd be a lot. It's the wrong time in the lunar cycle for a werewolf, plus a little early in the day — and again, it'd leave footprints. Not many things can go without leaving prints in the dirt.

The one monster that sticks out most in her mind is a wendigo. They can use the treetops to get around, but it's still unlikely that that's what they're dealing with. They usually stay in the Minnesota woods or up in northern Michigan, though she and her brothers did hunt one in Colorado​ once. And it wouldn't be too far off to think that one would stray from pattern with the way that things have been going. If they're running low on food, they could migrate elsewhere.

And then there's always the possibility that a ghost spooked her. There are definitely enough dead bodies on that road for a vengeful spirit to manifest out here.

MJ rubs her temples, she's giving herself a headache. Especially at the thought of it being a ghost. It would not be easy to put one of them down out here. Besides the entire group thinking she's lost her mind when she salted and burned the corpse, how the hell would she even find the right body? And even that's if the body hasn't already gotten up and walked away.

"So what do we do?" Shane asks. "All of us press on?"

"No, better if you and Glenn get back up to the highway." Rick says. "People are gonna start panicking. Let them know we're on her trail doing everything we can. But most of all, keep everybody calm."

"I'll keep 'em scavenging cars. Think of a few other chores. I'll keep 'em occupied." He looks at Glenn. "Come on."

Daryl has Rick and MJ follow him, the three of them keep looking. Eventually​, Sophia's trail just gets even harder to follow.

"Tracks are gone." Rick says.

"No, they're faint, but they ain't gone." He tells them. "She came through here."

"How can you tell?" He asks. "I don't see anything. Dirt, grass."

"You want a lesson in tracking or do you want to find that girl and get our ass off that interstate?" Daryl questions.

"You have to know what to look for." MJ tells Rick. "What's been disturbed in the grass and what's still in its natural place. Broken leaves, snapped twigs and sticks. There's a lot more to it, but there's a start."

"Seriously, the hell did you do before all this started?" Daryl asks as he glances at her.

"Nothin' you want to know about."

"How is it we've spent all this time together and we didn't you that had a daughter or a husband?" Rick questions. "Why aren't you trying to find them?"

"Don't have a trail to follow." The blonde says. "And I couldn't take it if what I found was their bodies... Or worse." She clears her throat.

"You could find 'em alive." Daryl reasons.

"Luck's never really been on my side where my family's concerned." She hears something behind her and turns around to see what it was, but there's nothing there.

The three of them keep going and soon come across a walker. Daryl tells Rick and MJ to go one way while he goes another. MJ whistles, gaining the walker's attention, and it lets out a loud growl. Daryl shoots it in the head and it falls to the ground. The whole thing makes MJ think about her brothers again — about all the hunts they went on.

The three of them walk toward it, and he then pulls his arrow out of its head. Daryl starts looking around. "Sophia!" He calls out.

Rick pulls a knife out of his pocket and kneels down next to the walker. He starts looking for something on the body while MJ moves away from them, watching their surroundings. She's got a bad feeling in the pit of her stomach.

"What are you looking for?" Daryl asks.

"Skin under the fingernails." Rick tells him and then flips the body over. "It fed recently." He says as he looks in it's mouth.

"While you two play Biology Class, I'm gonna take a look around." MJ says as she glances at the two men.

"Don't go too far out."

"Yes, Dad." She mutters as she walks away from them.