⌜ chapter thirteen ⌟

Rick's the first one into the bar, followed by Glenn, and then MJ. They're ready for anything or anyone to be in there, but it's only the man that they came for. Luckily.

"Hershel." Rick calls out to him.

"Who's with you?" He asks, not bothering to turn around and face them.

"Glenn and MJ."

"Maggie and Matt send them?"

"They volunteered." Rick tells him. "They're good like that."

Rick walks over to the bar, and MJ motions for Glenn to hang back a little with her. Rick has had more time around Hershel than either of the other two.

"How many have you had?"

"Not enough." Hershel tells him.

"Let's finish this up back at home." He says as he leans forward. "Beth collapsed, is in some sort of state. Must be in shock. I think you are too."

"Matt's with her?"

"Yeah, but Beth needs you." Rick tells him.

"What could I do?" He asks. "She needs her mother. Or rather to mourn...like she should've done weeks ago. I robbed her of that. I see that now."

"You thought there was a cure. You can't blame yourself for holding out hope."

"Hope?" He looks up at Rick. "When I first saw you running across my field with your boy in your arms, I had little hope he would survive."

"But he did."

"He did." Hershel nods. "Even though we lost Otis. Your man Shane made it back and we saved your boy." MJ looks down at the mention of those two. "That was the miracle that proved to me miracles do exist. Only it was a sham, a bait and switch. I was a fool, Rick, and you people saw that. My daughters deserve better than that." He says and then pours himself another drink.

MJ tells Glenn to keep watch at the door, and he nods. She then leans against the bar near him, and Rick walks back over to them.

"So what do we do?" Glenn asks. "Just wait for him to pass out?"

"Just go." Hershel calls over his shoulder, and they all look at him. "Just go!"

"We promised Maggie and Matt we'd bring you home safe." Rick says as he starts over toward him again.

"So, what's your plan?" MJ asks as she walks forward. "Finish that bottle? Drink yourself to death and leave your girls alone?"

Hershel stands up and turns to face the two of them. "Stop telling me how to care for my family, my farm. You people are like a plague! I do the Christian thing, give you shelter, and you destroyed it all!"

"The world was already in bad shape when we met."

"And you take no responsibility!"

"Oh, I take a lot of responsibility." She tells him.

"You're supposed to be their leaders!" He looks between MJ and Rick.

"Well, we're here now, aren't we?" Rick walks up beside her.

"Yes." He nods. "Yes. Yes, you are." He turns around and walks back to the bar where he was sitting before.

"Come on." Rick goes to stand beside him again. "Your girls need you now more than ever."

He moves his arm out of Rick's hold. "I didn't want to believe you." Hershel says as he looks up at him. "You told me there was no cure, that these people were dead, not sick. I chose not to believe that. But when Shane shot Lou in the chest, and she just kept coming, that's when I knew what an ass I'd been, that Annette had been dead long ago, and I was feeding her rotten corpse. That's when I knew there was no hope. And when that woman walked out of that barn, the look on your faces—" He looks between Rick and MJ. "—I knew you knew it too. Right? There is no hope. And you know it now, like I do. Don't you?" Rick and MJ look at each other. "There is no hope for any of us."

"No." MJ shakes her head. "As long as I have Ellie and I have Jack, I have hope." The blonde tells him. "And as long as you have your family, it is your responsibility to fight for them."

"Look, I'm done." Rick says. "I'm not doing this anymore, cleaning up after you. You know what the truth is? Nothing has changed. Death is death. It's always been there, whether it's from heart attack, cancer, or a walker. What's the difference? You didn't think it was hopeless before, did you? Now there are people back at home trying to hang on. They need us, even if it's just to give them a reason to go on, even if we don't believe it ourselves. You know what? This— This isn't about what we believe anymore. It's about them."

Hershel looks at him before finishing what's in his glass. He then flips it upside down and slams it on the counter. He's done.

The door opens suddenly, and they all turn to see who's walking in. "Son of a bitch." A man with short, curly hair says. "They're alive." He looks at his friend, who chuckles.

MJ stays close to Hershel, and Glenn goes to stand behind the bar. The guy with the curly hair sits at a table and his friend wanders to the bar, not far from Hershel.

"I'm Dave." Curly says as Rick pours him a drink. "This scrawny-looking douchebag is Tony."

"Eat me, Dave." Tony — who's anything but scrawny — says.

"Hey, maybe someday I will." He then looks at Rick. "We met on I-95 coming out of Philly. Damn shit-show that was."

"I'm Glenn. It's nice to meet some new people." He says as Rick goes to give him a drink as well.

"Rick Grimes." He hands one to Tony and then sits on a stool next to MJ.

"What about you, pal? Have one?" Dave asks. "Sweetheart?" He smirks at MJ.

"We quit." She tells him, her expression hard. She doesn't trust new people easily, never has. Her group was a huge exception.

"You've got a unique sense of timing, my friend." He smiles as he looks at Hershel.

"That's Hershel and MJ." Rick says. "They lost people today, a lot of them."

"I'm truly sorry to hear that." Dave says. "To better days and new friends. And to our dead — may they be in a better place." The men raise their glasses and take a drink.

Dave leans to the side and they see the gun in his waistband. Rick and MJ exchange a look, something that Dave notices.

"Not bad, huh?" He pulls it out and shows it to them. "I got it off a cop."

"I'm a cop." Rick tells him.

"This one was already dead."

"You fellas are a long way from Philadelphia." He says as he takes another drink.

"It feels like we're a long way from anywhere."

"Well, what drove you south?" MJ asks, and he looks at her.

"Well, I can tell you it wasn't the weather. I must've dropped thirty pounds in sweat alone down here." He says as he rubs his eyes.

"I wish." Tony says, amusing Rick.

"No, first it was D.C." Dave says. "I heard there might be some kind of refugee camp, but the roads were so jammed we never even got close. We decided to get off the highways, into the sticks, keep hauling ass. Every group we came across had a new rumor about a way out of this thing."

"One guy told us there was the Coast Guard sitting in the gulf, sending ferries to the islands."

"The latest was a rail yard in Montgomery running trains to the middle of the country — Kansas, Nebraska."

"Nebraska?" Glenn questions.

"Low population, lots of guns." Tony says.

"Kinda makes sense."

"Ever been to Nebraska, kid?" Dave asks. "A reason they call 'em flyover states." He says, and Tony laughs, causing MJ's jaw to tighten as she shifts. "I say somethin' wrong?"

"I was born in Kansas, have family from Nebraska." She tells him, and Rick looks at her.

Dave clears his throat, sensing that she's not warming up to them like the others. "What about you guys? Where you headed?"

"Fort Benning, eventually." Rick tells him.

"I hate to piss in your cornflakes, officer, but, uh... We ran across a grunt who was stationed at Benning. He said the place was overrun by lamebrains."

"Wait, Fort Benning is gone? Are you for real?" Glenn asks as his group's leaders look at each other, both disappointed.

"Sadly, I am." Dave says. "Oddly, the truth is there is no way out of this mess. Just keep going from one pipe dream to the next, praying one of these mindless freaks doesn't grab ahold of you when you sleep."

"If you sleep." Tony interjects.

"Yeah... It doesn't look like you guys are hanging your hats here." He says as he looks around the bar. "You holed up somewhere else?"

"Not really." Rick lies.

"Those your cars out front?" He points over his shoulder with his thumb, toward the door.

"Yeah. Why?" Glenn asks.

"We're living in ours. Those look kinda empty, clean. Where's all your gear?"

"We're with a larger group out scouting, thought we could use a drink." Hershel says.

"A drink? Hershel, I thought you quit."

"We did." MJ says. "They didn't." Her eyes flicker to Rick.

"Well, we're thinking of setting up around here." Dave says. "Is it— Is it safe?"

"It can be," Glenn starts and the others in his group look at him. "Although I've killed a couple of walkers around here."

"Walkers? That what you call them?"

"Yeah."

"That's good. I like that." He nods. "I like that better than lamebrains."

"More succinct." Tony says.

"Okay, Tony went to college."

"Two years."

Dave and Tony are chuckling, but the others aren't laughing. Glenn's starting to pick up on the fact that MJ and Rick are both done with this conversation and their current company. They were done the moment Dave asked where they're living.

"So what— So what, you guys set up on the outskirts or something?" Dave asks. "That new development?"

"Trailer park or something?" Tony asks as he stands up and walks past them. "A farm?"

Dave starts mumbling Old McDonald. "You got a farm?" He asks as he looks at Rick.

MJ clears her throat when she hears Tony peeing in the corner. Rick looks in his direction and then back at MJ, he can tell how annoyed — angry — she's getting.

"Is it safe?" Tony asks.

"It's gotta be." Dave says. "You got food, water?"

"You got cooze?" He asks, and MJ clenches her teeth. "Ain't had a piece of ass in weeks." He chuckles as he looks at MJ. "You wanna get out of here — you and me, sweetheart?"

"Hey!" Rick stands up, and she grabs his arm. His jaw tightens as he settles back onto the barstool next to her.

"Listen, pardon my friend. City kids — they got no tact." Dave says, rubbing his forehead. "No disrespect. I'm sorry." He says as he looks at MJ.

"Sounded pretty damn disrespectful from where I'm sitting." She tells him.

He clears his throat. "So, listen, Glenn—"

"We've said enough." Rick cuts him off, not liking that Dave's decided to try and exploit who he thinks is the most naïve in their group.

"Well, hang on a second. This farm, it sounds pretty sweet." Dave says as he then looks over at his friend. "Don't it sound sweet, Tony?"

"Yeah, real sweet." He says as he walks over to them again.

"How about a little southern hospitality? We got some buddies back at camp, been having a real hard time." He says. "I don't see why you can't make room for a few more. We can pool our resources and manpower."

"Look, I'm sorry. That's not an option." Rick tells him.

He pauses a moment. "Doesn't sound like it'd be a problem."

"I'm sorry. We can't." Hershel says.

"We can't take in any more." MJ says. "We're not going to."

"You guys are something else. I thought— You know, I thought we were friends." Dave says.

She scoffs. "You had one drink. And then your friend made some highly disrespectful comments."

"We got people we gotta look out for too." He continues, pushing over what she said.

"Not my problem."

"We don't know anything about you." Rick says.

"No, that's true. You don't know anything about us." He looks between Rick and MJ, getting the sense that they're both in charge and not just Rick like he originally thought when they walked in. "You don't know what we've had to go through out there, the things we've had to do. I bet you've had to do some of those same things yourself. Am I right?" He asks, but they don't respond in any way. "'Cause ain't nobody's hands clean in what's left of this world. We're all the same. So, come on, let's— Let's take a nice friendly hayride to this farm, and we'll get to know each other."

Rick shakes his head. "That's not gonna happen." He tells him.

"Rick—"

"This is bullshit." Tony says.

"Calm down." Rick says.

"Don't tell me to calm down. Don't ever tell me to calm down."

"Whoa." Glenn straightens his posture.

"I'll shoot you three assholes in the head and take your bitch and your damn farm!"

Rick gets to his feet, immediately placing himself between Tony and MJ. Dave's standing now too as he tells Tony to relax.

"Take it easy. Nobody's killing anybody." He says and starts for the counter. "Nobody's shooting anybody. Right, Rick?" He asks as he hops over the bar that's to the left of Hershel.

Tony reaches for his gun, and MJ stands up, moving closer to Rick. They're now standing back to back — he's facing Dave, and she's got her eyes on Tony. Dave pulls his gun out and sets it on the counter, showing that he's not a threat to them.

"We're just friends having a drink, that's all." Dave says. "Now, where's the good stuff, huh? Good stuff, good stuff." He repeats as rubs his hands together. He then leans down, and Rick puts his hand on his gun, but Dave just picks up a bottle. "Look at that. That'll work."

Glenn and Hershel are watching their leaders, neither one exactly sure how this is going to go down. MJ and Rick both turn slightly and they look at each other.

"You gotta understand," Dave says, regaining Rick's attention. "We can't stay out there. You know what it's like."

"Yeah, I do." Rick nods. "But the farm is too crowded as is. I'm sorry. You'll have to keep looking."

"Keep looking." He echoes. "Where do you suggest we do that?"

"I hear Nebraska's nice." MJ says, and Dave laughs.

"Nebraska." He looks at Rick. "Your girl's funny." He goes for his gun, and Rick pulls his out of its holster.

As soon as his hand brushes against MJ's as he goes for his gun, she pulls hers from the back of her waistband. Rick shoots Dave, and MJ shoots Tony — both in the head. The two bodies hit the ground, and MJ takes a step back, bumping into Rick.

He looks down at her as Hershel and Glenn glance between the two of them. MJ takes a deep breath as she looks up at Rick. And then Crowley's voice echoes in her head.

"You'll thrive in this new world. You're more monster than you realize."