CHAPTER TWO
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     THE WALKING WASN'T the worst part. The endless stretch of road she walked along wasn't what was bothering her about the journey she had decided to undertake. It was the five walking corpses that she had killed, thinking about how unfair it was that she even had to do so in the first place as she did it. It was the dawning thought that her family might not be alive.

     That was what made her upset. The fact that she had left the nearly irrefutable safety of the CDC to chase people that were likely dead or impossible to track down. Her feet ached after the constant hours of walking, her tongue felt dry and her stomach growled. Everything felt like one big mistake. She felt utterly hopeless.

Arden's feet stopped moving and she stood in the middle of the road, staring at it like she challenged it to just swallow her whole so that she wouldn't have to deal with any of her problems anymore. A rustling noise emitted from her left and she unsheathed the sword and quickly stabbed into the skull of the body.

Just as it fell to her feet she heard the faint sound of an engine down the road. Her sword was lowered, the tip of it just barely scraping against the pavement. The first working vehicle she had seen since she left approached her, an old looking RV. A few cars trailed behind it. Actual people.

She didn't move or flinch at the cars coming, there was no way she would let them go right past her. Luckily for her, the vehicle slowed to a stop a few feet in front of her. Every car behind it came to a halt and she let out a breath of soft relief.

She couldn't tell who got out first or from which vehicle in her shocked haze, but the first person she registered was a man clad in a sheriff's uniform. "What're you doing out here?" he questioned first in his southern drawl, as if it was some strange thing that she would be traveling alone in the middle of nowhere. Well, now that she was actually thinking about it, it did sound quite strange. And she had no clue how that would appear to this man.

"Trying to get to Atlanta," she told the man. At that point, several people had exited the cars and were all looking at her. This made her feel remarkably out of place.

"Don't go there,"  another man in a baseball cap who suddenly appeared from behind the sheriff man warned. Arden's attention was torn from the sheriff to him and they glanced at each other for a moment before the sheriff spoke again.

"It's gone. Everything's ruined there, it belongs to the dead now," he elaborated. She felt her heart sink. Was it even a slim possibility, if any, that her family could still be alive? Her gut screamed that they couldn't be. And the way these people were speaking, she would be dead for sure if she even tried to look. "Looking for someone there?"

"Not anymore," she responded quickly with the slow shake of her head, slowly replacing her sword back into its sheath.

"You're welcome to come with us," a woman who held a young child's hand next to the sheriff told her. A few thoughts raced through her head at that moment, all conflicting with each other. What about her family? Could she trust these people? What could the harm really be?

"Where are you headed?" she questioned, figuring she should at least find out where they were going before joining them.

"The CDC," the sheriff responded. This was another thing that made her heart drop, thinking of returning to that place. Even more thoughts entered her head before she nodded and sighed.

"I can take you there," she offered. "That's where I just came from."

"Oh, could you? That would be very kind of you, we'd owe you," the woman with the child said with hope laced in her voice. She looked around at all of the other hopeful faces, appearing so tired and worn down. And that was when she knew that she had to help them.

"Yeah, of course. It's safe there," she answered, confirming her previous statement. It seemed as if one monotonous breath of relief was let out by the entire group, beyond pleased that they were going somewhere safe.

"We can't thank you enough. I'm Rick," the sheriff man introduced. He turned and gestured to the woman and child. "This is my wife Lori and my son Carl. That's Glenn, Andrea, Dale, T-Dog, Shane, Carol and her daughter Sophia, Daryl, and Jacqui."

Each individual person lifted their hand and moved in some form of greeting as Rick gestured to them. She nodded and took the silence as her cue to introduce herself. "I'm Arden," she said.

"Nice to meet you, Arden," Rick acknowledged. He then directed her to the RV that headed up the front of the vehicle train, telling her it would be best for her to direct them all there from that car.

Everyone got moving fairly quickly, eager to escape to what they believed to be their salvation. The only thing Arden really focused on was the RV. Thinking about anything else gave her a pounding headache. It was an old vehicle, but not a rusty and dirty kind of old. It was a bit of a warm and welcoming old that gave you a sense of home when you stepped inside.

She sat down in one of the worn seats closer to the front of the car so she could help with the navigation as requested. She was handed a map by Dale as he started the RV back up. "We're pretty concerned about the number of walkers out there, being so close to Atlanta," he spoke up as they started driving down the road she had spent so long walking down.

"When I was back there, they were all pretty dead. Like dead dead. But we shouldn't count on that when we go there," she explained seriously. Dale nodded as she turned her attention back to the map. Everything looked familiar and she knew exactly where to go. "You're going to want to keep heading down this road and take the first right turn. And keep heading down that road. It leads straight there."

Dale hummed in response and Glenn, who was sitting in the passenger seat remained silent with the other two. Jacqui sobbed quietly in the back for reasons that Arden was completely oblivious to.

"So what did you do before this whole thing happened?" Glenn asked casually with a smile, breaking the silence. She almost wanted to laugh at the still hopeful tone that he possessed. But she didn't. Just the way he spoke alone gave her a little hope of her own.

"Well, I worked at the CDC. Lots of good I did, right?" She laughed slightly at herself, thinking of the many ways that she and Dr. Jenner had failed the world. His expression seemed to seem slightly less cheery when her words alluded to there being no cure for the terrible disease that plagued the planet. But he didn't say anything about that.

"Why did you leave?" he asked, evidently not seeing why someone would leave the safety of such a facility. She was quiet for a moment, knowing that she must seem crazy to someone who had been out there in the middle of it since the apocalypse began.

"I wanted to find my family. But now hearing about what Atlanta's like..." she trailed off, her crestfallen look telling him all he needed to know.

"I'm sorry," he apologized, not because he had done something wrong but because he knew what it was like to have your entire family out there and not knowing what happened. She was about to tell him not to worry about it when Dale suddenly spoke.

"Hey," he alerted, raising a hand to point at the gigantic structure that was the CDC. What she thought of as something more hopeful now that she returned with these people. All of the cars in the long line stopped once the RV came to a soft halt.

Each and every one of them piled out of their cars, Rick lifting his gun at the sight of hundreds of bodies in front of them. Arden had the same feeling of reality, the same feeling of crumbling away just like the world had.

"Are they...?" Rick began and Arden pulled out her sword, ready to fight any walker that could possibly try to attack.

"I don't know. But be on the lookout," she advised quietly as they all moved forward. Everyone began to cough at the putrid smell of the dead, the buzz of flies invading all of their ears. Rick urged everyone to keep moving and to stay quiet.

Arden headed up the front of the group with Rick, hoping that Jenner would let them in. She remembered specifically him telling her that he wouldn't let her back in if she left. She was afraid that she wouldn't be able to give these people a place to go like she said she could.

The group's coughs and Rick's shouts to keep moving got louder, which made Arden very anxious. She had been much quieter on her own, that being the reason as to why she had gotten by so smoothly. They finally reached the front doors, just as sealed as when she had left.

Rick and Shane began by attempting to open the door. "There's nobody here," T-Dog remarked as he banged on the metal. Rick looked at Arden almost expectantly when T-Dog said this.

"No, I swear to God there is. He's in there," she promised, knowing the man inside was either being simply a coward or incredibly paltry about her leaving.

"Walkers!" Daryl shouted, everyone turning at the sight of one of the dead limping towards them. Arden readjusted the grip on her sword as the children of the group started to cry out in fear, every gun in the group being cocked. Daryl quickly stepped forward and shot the walker in the head with his crossbow. "You led us into a graveyard!"

He lunged forward at Rick, the person whom his statement was directed at. "He made a call!" Dale defended as Daryl was pushed back by Shane and away from Rick.

"It was the wrong damn call!" Daryl spat angrily. Shane yelled at Daryl to shut up and he paced quickly back to Rick.

"Rick this is a dead end," Shane tried rationalizing. "Do you hear me? No blame."

"Where are we gonna go?" Carol questioned miserably.

"She's right, we can't be this close to the city after dark!" Lori interjected, looking directly at Rick for a decision. At this point, Arden had guessed that everyone looked to him as a leader. And Lori was right. The sun was setting and night was falling upon them, making it tremendously dangerous for them to be there. Arden turned to the metal doors and began to pound on them.

"Fort Benning, Rick. Still an option," Shane offered after Arden gave the door one last hit.

"On what? No food, no fuel. That's a hundred miles," Andrea argued.

"A hundred twenty-five. I checked the map," Glenn corrected.

"Forget Fort Benning! We need answers tonight. Now!" Lori shouted over the groans and cries of her child. Arden couldn't help but feel guilty for the entire situation. She turned to the camera that she knew was positioned outside while everyone screamed at each other and shouted for them to leave.

"Jenner! Let us in! Please!" she yelled. The camera twitched and Rick's expression changed.

"The camera! It moved!" he called out to the rest of the group who were too busy trying to scurry away from what they now saw as a dead end.

"You imagined it," Dale dismissed, one leg already turned away to bolt back to the cars as quickly as possible. Shane walked up beside the two and continued Dale's dismissal of the camera.

"It moved," Rick persisted.

"It's an automated device. It's gears, okay?" Shane tried convincing, but Arden knew that wasn't what it was. She knew for an absolute fact that a man sat behind those walls watching them through a computer. And she knew that he wasn't letting them in. "They're just winding down. Now come on!"

The screams started to overlap one another, Shane yelling at Rick that the place was dead, Lori screaming that no one was there. Rick pulled away from Shane's grip on his shirt and banged on the doors once again.

"I know you're in there, I know you can hear me! Please, we're desperate," he begged, the desperateness he spoke of evident in his voice. "Please help us. We have women, children, no food, hardly any gas left!" 

Lori ran up and repeated her 'there's nobody here' mantra as Rick continued his begging. Arden stepped closer to the camera. "Don't let these people suffer, don't let them die because you're angry with me! Please!" she screamed, tears welling in her eyes. She knew full well from what they were saying was that they wouldn't survive if they didn't get in.

Shane began to pull a screaming Rick away from the doors and Arden felt someone pulling her away as well. "YOU'RE KILLING US! YOU'RE KILLING US!" Rick shrieked as he finally turned around. Arden kept yelling that Jenner was a coward, a murderer for what he was doing.

And then the clanging sound of metal echoed and a blinding white light emitted from the doors. They had opened.