Future Ghosts • TWD

43. The Governor.

"Hey, just- you got her?" Rick said softly as he handed his daughter over into the arms of his son. He had returned that night and finally held his daughter for the first time. Now he was walking out in the basketball courts with his children, Hershel, and Beth.

While he was out there, though, something caught his eye. A walker at the fence. The thing about this walker was that it wasn't acting much like a walker. It was standing there with its left hand on the fence and it's right hand holding onto a basket. In the basket was about a dozen canisters of baby formula.

Rick stared across at the walker, quickly coming to realize that it wasn't a walker at all. It was a woman. A living woman. The woman had a wound on her leg and the walkers started to notice it. She pulled a sword out of a sheath on her back and backed away before cutting off the head of a walker.

"Should we help her?" Carl shouted over to his dad. Rick gave no answer. He ran to the gate as the woman toppled over, passing out before she could kill the last two walkers surrounding her.

Carl killed the two walkers before tossing the keys over to his father. "Ah, shit!" Rick hissed as he flung the gate open. Both Carl and Rick ran out and started shooting at the walkers.

Hershel showed up at the gate, having seen the commotion. "Is she bit?" he asked.

Rick searched the woman for bites, but came up empty. "Gunshot," Rick said. He picked up the woman and hoisted her arm over his shoulder before carrying her into the gates.

•

"We can tend to that wound for you, give you a little food and water, and then send you on your way," Rick said, pacing over to the woman. They had brought her inside, but she refused to give them her name or any information on why she was there. "But you're gonna have to tell us how you found us and why you were carrying formula."

The basket the woman had been carrying had formula and a toy dinosaur inside. "The formula was dropped by a young Asian guy with a pretty woman. The toy, a blonde girl. Small," the woman said, her voice low and raspy.

Rick turned to look at Daryl for a moment, but Daryl kept his gaze on the woman, glaring. "What happened?" Rick asked the woman.

"Were they attacked?" Hershel asked.

"They were taken," the woman said.

"Taken? By who?" Rick asked her, furrowing his eyebrows.

"By the same son of a bitch who shot me," the woman hissed.

"Hey, these are our people," Rick said, crouching down to the woman's level. "You tell us what happened now!"

He hit her on her wound and she lurched back. "Don't you ever touch me again!" the woman spat.

Daryl lifted his crossbow, pointing right at the woman's head. "Better start talkin' or you're gonna have a much bigger problem than a gunshot wound!" he growled.

"Find 'em yourself," the woman said.

Daryl lurched forward, ready to use whatever method he had to use to get Rosie, Maggie, and Glenn back, but Rick stopped him. "Hey, put it down," he said. Very reluctantly, Daryl lowered his weapon. "You came here for a reason," Rick said, stepping forward.

"There's a town," the woman said, glaring at Rick. "Woodbury. About 75 survivors. I think they were taken there."

•