BLACK OUT DAYS | THE WALKING DEAD

Them

Nate didn't think he would ever get used to losing people but this one hit him harder than he thought was possible. He saw the looks of concern everyone kept giving him after Beth's funeral and then after Tyreese's, like they thought that he might break. Maybe they were right and he was already broken. It felt like he was. He couldn't talk to any of them, he might as well have been a walker with the way he moped around. Maggie and Sasha were acting the same way but Maggie at least cried more and tried to talk to some of them.

However, once they were on week three after leaving Atlanta, they were all just as miserable as he was. They were running low on water and it was getting harder to find after they realized all the rivers were dried up. They sent smaller groups out to see if they could scavenge anything and each one of them came back to the vans empty handed. Maggie, Sasha, Daryl, and Alice were the last group to come back with nothing to show for it.

They only got about ten more miles out of the way before the vans broke down for good and then they were forced to walk the rest of the way to Washington. At some point, they noticed they had a herd of walkers trailing behind them. Jasper, Sasha, and Michonne were at the back of the group and he kept looking over his shoulder every few minutes.

"We'll deal with it when it becomes a problem." Michonne said to him and he forced himself to nod.

"We could take them out, the three of us. Right now." Sasha said, Jasper's grip tightened around his crossbow and then he sighed and shook his head, and let his grip loosen.

"No, Michonne's right. We can't risk it." He replied, she didn't seem too thrilled with his answer and he watched her back as she walked ahead. He knew she was suffering more than the rest of them from the loss of Tyreese and Bob but he didn't like how much she was willing to risk.

"Rick's probably coming up with a plan to deal with it, right?" He asked Michonne with his gaze still on Sasha's back.

"Yeah, probably."

"It's gonna rain sooner or later." Rick told Nate and Daryl as he held Judith in front of him. Carl was hanging towards the back, standing with Maggie and Nate's eyes flickered up to the clouds above them.

"I'm gonna head out, see what I can find." Daryl told them, shrugging off the shotgun he had on his shoulder and handing it over to Rick.

"Don't be too long." Rick replied and Carol offered to go with him which Daryl immediately refused but she followed him anyways. Nate continued to walk next to Rick in silence until Rick finally decided to speak up. "It's been three weeks since Atlanta. I know that you and Daryl both lost something back there." Nate continued to stare at the ground.

"I'm fine." Nate suddenly insisted and Rick forced himself to nod, even though he didn't believe him.

"Okay." He replied and decided to drop the conversation. They could talk later when they found a place.

They eventually came across a bridge over a dried out river and they stopped to make a plan for the walkers that were getting closer. Rick's hope was that they would push the walkers towards the bottom of the trench and the impact would crack their skulls. Rick, Abraham, Michonne, Sasha, Rosita, Jasper, and Glenn stood across from each other as they waited for the walkers and the others waited on the other side. The plan was starting to work until Sasha decided to jam her knife into a walker's eye. Michonne snapped at her in a low voice as she kept going but it seemed to be no use.

"Flank her." Rick told them and Jasper quickly moved to Sasha's left.

"Plan just got dicked." Abraham commented. Jasper barely got an arrow into a walker that was about to take a bite out of Sasha's arm and Michonne had pulled her to the ground.