Dead Man Walking | Rick Grimes

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The leaves crunched underneath my boots noisily, making me cringe. The trees bristled with the breeze, and birds chirped overhead. On any other day, I would admire the beauty around me, smile, and listen to the birds sing their songs above me. But on a day like today, where so much loss and the constant shadow of worry threatened to break me, it went unnoticed. Siddiq kept quiet next to me, his eyes darting around our surroundings nervously. So far, only four hours have passed since we branched away, putting as much distance between them and us. Siddiq stopped and looked around, his eyes pausing on a tree branch smothered with red tar-like blood.

"We were right here," Siddiq silently muttered, "This is where they found me," The ground was littered with all sorts of tracks, making it hard to determine which could've belonged to walkers and which belonged to my children. Siddiq pointed a finger further up ahead.

"They ran that way, and I ran the other way," Siddiq whispered, his brows furrowing together, "I turned back," Siddiq walked forward, seemingly retracing his steps. He stopped and turned back, eyeing the distance behind me, "I saw one of them go down—I don't know who,"

"Let's go," I said abruptly and started in the direction Siddiq saw them run in. My eyes stayed glued to the floor, straining to distinguish the tracks apart. There were dozens imprinted in the ground, but what caught my attention was the slight indentation of a body. Siddiq's telling the truth, one of them fell.

A sense of hope bloomed within me. There's no blood painting the ground—that in itself is good news. I traced the indentation with my pointer finger, studying the print further.

"What's that?" Siddiq asked, sounding interested. I turned to him and flashed him a small smile, my mood lifting. I motioned for him to join me, my attention on the tracks again.

"Do you see that?" I questioned. Siddiq squinted and cleared his throat, straining to see what I saw. I pointed to the print again, moving my finger along it, "You were right about someone falling,"

"I see it now," Siddiq murmured, "There's the legs, palm prints," I nodded and looked a few inches forward, seeing a clear, deep imprint of a boot.

"They went this way," I whispered and stood up, slowly following the tracks. It was muddled with dozens of walker tracks, but they were there.

"How'd you learn to do this?" Siddiq asked, his voice low.

"My dad taught me," I answered, smiling at all the memories of he and I in the woods together, hunting. "He liked to hunt, and I wanted to be around him. So, I asked him to teach me,"

"You were a daddy's girl?" Siddiq asked with a smile, his tone sounding surprised. I turned to him and cocked an eyebrow, a slight smirk on my lips.

"What's with that tone?" I questioned, feeling somewhat tickled. Siddiq shook his head and lifted his hands in the air.

"Just didn't expect you to be the type," Siddiq quickly explained, "From what I've seen, you're a tough, headstrong woman—one that doesn't take anything from anyone," He's only known me for about a day. Either he's really good at reading people, or he's been watching us—fooling us... fooling me. He must have noticed the look on my face because he quickly started scrambling for words.

"C-carl and Selena were able to tell me about you and Rick for a bit," Siddiq quickly explained, "Before the dead came,"

I shook my head and stayed quiet, not wanting to attract unwanted attention. Best case scenario, all we see out here are walkers. Worst case, we run into Saviors. I have a rifle that's dangerously low on ammo, a handgun, and my knife. Siddiq only has his knife. We run into Saviors, and it'll be the end of the road. They'll kill me for sure, and maybe they'll take Siddiq since he has some medical training. The tracks continued to lead us further and further, but they were faint—almost non-existent at this point.