MAD MAX, the walking dead

five: GREAT ESCAPE

"DELILAH?"

***

The group made their way back to the train car with surprising speed. Max couldn't decide whether not seeing any more cannibals was a good thing or a bad thing. Regardless, they only encountered more walkers on the way. If the dead ones weren't shot down by Rick or Max's bullets, Daryl, Bob, or Glenn stepped in to impale their brains with sharp objects.

As soon as they got to the bright red door of the train car, Rick ran up to the side of it. He grabbed the handle with as much strength as he could muster and pushed with his leg to yank the sliding door open.

Max leaned her back against the other side of the train car as Rick's group came spilling out. The hot metal pressed into the back of her head through her matted hair as she readjusted her rifle on her shoulder. She made quick eye contact with Tara and Maggie, who came out of the car to immediately stab walkers beside her with their makeshift weapons. They didn't have time to address Max, but the fire in their eyes gave a clear message. They were getting out.

"Fight to the fence!" Rick yelled, and Max started by shooting several walkers in front of the group. Rosita turned to send her a wary look, but Max only raised an eyebrow at the woman. Did she think she was going to shoot her in the back?

With a slight roll of her eyes, Rosita made the split-second decision to trust the redhead not to shoot her in the back and whipped back around to stab another walker in the eye with her small belt weapon.

Max's body hurt like hell as she ran. She felt particular stabbing pain in her knee, but she pushed right through it as she lifted her rifle up to her eyes over and over and over again. The satisfying snap of the walkers' heads back and spray of red as she hit them was just an afterthought. It was the pulling the trigger that mattered, it was getting out.

The group stuck together in a wide formation to take out all of the walkers, working together systematically to make sure that the people in the middle weren't anywhere near them. Rosita was the first to reach the fence, stabbing a dead one in the head through the metal and watching as it fell to the ground in a heap.

"Up and over!" The woman yelled as she and Abraham began helping people over the chain-link fence.

Max turned to Rick, who was shooting the walkers coming up behind the group. They were the only two with guns. Taking a few steps in his direction, Max held her gun up and began shooting them too. She looked back over her shoulder every few seconds, checking to see if the group had made it over the fence.

Rounding one of the corners on the roof at a dead sprint, some of the cannibals from Terminus began shooting back at the pair. Max let out a small yell of anger as a bullet narrowly missed her shoulder.

First, they kidnapped her, then they were going to shoot her too? Annoying pricks.

She lined up a shot, successfully hitting a man only barely recognizable as Gareth in the shoulder. She smirked slightly as he stumbled to the floor in pain. Unfortunately, he fell away from the shots and somehow managed to get behind the side of the building before Max could hit him again.

She hissed in anger, but upon taking in the state of the facility around them, she figured it didn't matter. The flames from the explosion (which they had yet to discover the cause of) were so hot she could feel the temperature change on her face from several yards away. The whole compound was soon to be up in flames as the fire spread through the largely wooden structure.

When the group behind them was almost entirely over the wall, Max made quick eye contact with Rick, who had since run completely out of bullets, and they ran for the fence side-by-side. For whatever reason, the man decided to trust her in that moment, and she decided to trust him too. The pair left as many dead ones behind as they could to overrun the place, pushing past them with the bodies of their guns instead of shooting or stabbing them in the head.