Untold Secrets

Chapter 13- Life or Death Decisions

We drove through the night and in the morning I woke up to Lori saying "Hey, we gotta turn around." Beth and I were still holding onto each other. "Straight back to that herd? Umm..no." T-Dog answered. "The highway is back there, that's where they'll be. Rick will go back to where we first broke down, and Glenn too." Lori said. "We're headed east...get to the coast, we should've done that from the jump. Look, we have a shot to get out of here in one piece." T-Dog explained. "I gotta find Carl. He may have escaped with somebody." Lori argued with him. "I hate to say it, but they're on their own. There's no way to even begin to start looking." "You're wrong!" Lori shot back at him. "Look, we can't go back. I'm sorry, it's suicide." T-Dog said, trying to convince her. "Alright, then let me out." Lori said and opened the door, which caused the car to swerve a little. "Hey! Woah!" T-Dog yelled, trying to control the car. He finally did and stopped the car. "Turn around or you let us out right now!" Lori said fiercely. "Please T-Dog? I need to find my dad and so does Beth." I begged. "You're out of your damn minds." He answered. Lori closed the door and he finally turned around.

We made our way to the highway and we saw everyone. We stopped and ran out. "Daryl!" I cried and ran to him. "Oh my god." He mumbled, relieved as I hugged him. "Where'd you find everyone?" Rick asked Daryl. "Well those guys' tail lights zig zagging all over the road figured he had to be Asian driving like that." Daryl teased Glenn. Glenn chuckled and said "Good one." "Where's the rest of us?" Daryl asked. "Shane?" Lori asked. "Andrea?" Glenn added. "She saved me, then I lost her." Carol said sadly. "We saw her go down." T-Dog added to Carol. "Patricia?" Hershel asked. "They got her too. They took her right in front of me. I was holding onto her daddy she just..." Beth stopped between small cries. "What about Jimmy? Did you see Jimmy?" She asked. "He was in the RV, it got overrun." Rick told her. "You definitely saw Andrea?" Glenn asked. "There were walkers everywhere." Lori said. "There's no way she could've made it, unless she headed into the woods..." I said. "I'm gonna go back." Daryl said, heading to his motorcycle. "No." Rick stopped him. "We can't just leave her." He objected. "We don't even know if she's there, like Casey said." Lori said to him. "She isn't there, she isn't. She's somewhere else, or she's dead. There's no way to find her." Rick said. "So we're not even gonna look for her?" Glenn asked. "We gotta keep moving, there have been walkers crawling all over here." Rick said to everyone. "Stay off the main roads, the bigger the road the more walkers, more assholes like this one. I got him." Daryl said and shot a arrow through a walkers head.

After they were all done discussing, we started heading out. I rode on the motorcycle with Daryl and we lead the group. After about an hour, Rick honked his horn. "We should stop." I told Daryl and we did, as well as everyone else. Then everyone got out of their cars to see what was wrong. "You out?" Daryl asked Rick. "Runnin' on fumes." He answered. "We can't stay here." Maggie said, worriedly. "And we all can't fit in one car." Glenn added. "We'll have to make a run for gas in the morning." Rick concluded. "Spend the night here?" Carol asked in disbelief. "I'm freezing." Carl shivered. "We'll build a fire, yeah?" Lori suggested. "You go out looking for firewood, stay close." Daryl instructed her. "Only got so many arrows, how you doin on ammo?" Daryl asked Rick. "Not enough." He answered, obviously frustrated. "We can't just sit here with our asses hanging out." Maggie barged in. "Watch your mouth. Everyone stop panicking and listen to Rick." Hershel told everyone. "Alright, we'll set up a perimeter. In the morning we'll find some gas and some supplies. We'll keep pushing on." Rick stated. "Glenn and I can go make a run now, try and scrounge up some gas." Maggie suggested. "No, we stay together. God forbid something happens and people get stranded without a car." He said seriously. "Rick, we're stranded now." Glenn said. "I know it looks bad, we've all been through hell and worse, but at least we found each other. I wasn't sure, I really wasn't. But we did, we're together. We keep it that way. We'll find shelter somewhere, there's gotta be a place." I listened on to Rick and started getting nervous. We're in the middle of nowhere and you never know where that herd is or when it could show up.

"Rick, look around ok? There's walkers everywhere. They're migrating or something." Glenn continued. "There's gotta be a place not just where we hole up but that we fortify, hunker down, pull ourselves together, build a life for each other. I know it's out there, we just need to find it." Rick said. "Even if we do find a place and we think it's safe, we can never be sure...for how long? Look what happened to the farm. We fooled ourselves into thinking that was safe." Maggie argued. "We won't make that mistake again." Hershel said to her. "We'll make camp tonight over there. Get on the road at the break of day." Rick said. "Does this feel right to you? What if walkers come through?" Beth asked, worried. She was ignored when Daryl spoke up. "You know I found Randall right? He turned but he wasn't bit." "How's that possible?" Beth asked. "Couldn't you only turn if you were bit or scratched?" I asked, confused. "Rick, what the hell happened?" Lori asked. "Shane killed Randall, just like he always wanted to." Daryl said and eyed me again, proving his point that Shane was in fact, a murderer. "Then the herd got him?" Lori asked. There was a pause. Then Rick said "We're all infected." softly. "What?" Daryl asked, walking a little closer to the group. "At the C.D.C, Jenner told me. Whatever it is, we all carry it." He was cut off by Carol. "And you never said anything?" "Would it have made a difference?" Rick said back to her. "You knew this whole time?" Carol asked again. "How could I have known for sure? You saw how crazy that--" He was cut off by an angry Glenn. "That isn't your call, ok? When I found out about the walkers in the barn, I told for the good of everyone." "Well I thought it best that people didn't know." Rick said and then walked away with Lori following him.

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Later that night we made a fire and sat around it, trying to keep warm. Daryl squatted next to me, adding sticks to the fire when Carol started talking to him. "We're not safe with him, keeping something like that from us. Why do you need him? He's just gonna pull you down." She started getting on my nerves. I know everyone is upset about what happened, but she shouldn't be so ungrateful. "Rick does everything for this group Carol, consider it lucky that we made it this far, without him we could all be dead." I told her seriously. "Casey's right. Rick's done alright by me." Daryl said, backing me up. "Your his henchman, and I'm a burden. You deserve better." She said as I rolled my eyes. I know we are all exhausted, but what does she think? That Daryl just gonna run off with her? Daryl is loyal and would never leave the group. "What do you want?" Daryl asked her. "A man of honor." She responded. I scoffed and looked away towards the fire. "Rick has honor." He said, which ended the conversation. Yeah, you tell her Daryl.

I was getting sleepy, so I rested my head on Daryl's arm for about 5 minutes until I heard Maggie said "I think we should take our chances." "Don't be foolish. There's no fuel, no food, no ammo." Hershel told her. Then, some leaves rustled and I jumped a little, scared and surprised. "Woah, woah, its ok." Daryl assured me. "What was that?" I heard someone ask. "Could be anything. Could be a raccoon, could be a possum." Daryl told them. "We need to leave, what are we waiting for?" Carol asked, urgently. "Which way?" Glenn asked. "It came from over there." Maggie answered. "Back from where we came." Beth concluded.

I glanced at Rick who had an irritated look on his face, then he finally spoke up. "The last thing we need is for everyone to be runnin' off in the dark. We don't have the vehicles. No one's traveling on foot." Then a branch snapped and I grabbed Daryl's arm on instinct. "Don't panic." Hershel told everyone, trying to calm us down. "I'm not waiting for another herd to blow through, we need to move now." Maggie argued, trying to make the call. "No one's going anywhere!" Rick declared. "Do something!" Carol said. "I am doing something! I'm keeping this group together, alive! I've been doing that all along no matter what! I didn't ask for this!! I killed my best friend for you people for Christ's sake!" Rick yelled at us. "You saw what he was like. How he pushed me, how he compromised us, how he threatened us. He staged the whole Randall thing, led me out to put a bullet in my back. He gave me no choice! He was my friend but he came after me. My hands are clean!" Then I heard Carl start sobbing into Lori as she held him close. "Maybe you people are better off without me. Go ahead. I say there's a place for us but maybe it's just another pipe dream. Maybe I'm foolin' myself again. Why don't you go out and find out yourself? Send me a postcard! You can do better? Let's see how far you get. No takers? Fine. But get one thing straight--you're staying. This isn't a democracy anymore!" And with that, Rick's speech ended.

But we never knew that the end to the farm was only a whole new beginning.

A/N: ok so I typed out this whole chapter and then my ipad deleted like the part at the end with Rick's whole speech so that really ticked me off -_- BUT OMG WHOS READY FOR THE DEAD, WHITE, AND BLUE WEEKEND?! :D I AAAAMM!! Well, season 3, here we come! xoxo -Emi