Changing To Adapt ➵ TWD

➵ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ ꜱᴇᴠᴇɴᴛᴇᴇɴ

There's a scream, wrestling the overwhelming white noise into submission, tucking it into a tiny corner. Lucas shakes his head out, eyes sweeping across the area.

"Out of the way!"

Of what?

He turns towards the voice, head swinging lazily with him, only to be yanked away. Trudging directly through where he was standing is a. . .

is that a horse?

What the hell?

Daryl sends him a withering glare.

"Thanks." Lucas croaks out.

Swinging his eyes back to the scene, he sees Andrea pulling herself up from the floor, the corpse on the dirt beside her having been knocked back by the bat in the horse-riders hand.

"Lori? Lori Grimes?" She's shouting, panting through a short brown fringe.

"I'm Lori!" 

Said woman comes rushing through Daryl and Lucas, standing directly in front of the horse. Lucas leans closer to the older man on his left, lowering a hand into his pocket to grasp protectively at the foldable knife. "She knows her name." He whispers.

"Rick sent me. You need to come with me now."

"What?"

"There's been an accident. Carl's been shot. He's still alive but you gotta come now."

Lori's lips part, a terrified gasp of air preventing her from saying much else. The singular shot they heard in the woods. She was right, something had happened.

"Quickly, just come!" The short-haired woman yells, waving her towards the horse.

Hastily nodding, Lori slips her arms out of her backpack and drops it to the dirt, rushing over.

"Woah, woah, woah!" Daryl grits his teeth, swapping his crossbow into his other hand to swing his arm in gesture to the newcomer, "we don't know this girl! You can't get on that horse!"

Lucas drops his narrowed eyes on the woman, "the hell are you taking her?"

"Rick said you had others on the highway?"

They nod.

In a single breath, she spouts the directions towards a farm, capable of housing them until the situation blew over. She leaves just as quickly as she came, now with Lori on her heels.

Helping to tear their clueless eyes from the scene, the walker from earlier pulls itself back up, twisting its head towards them with an audible creak.

Daryl storms past, only seconds to lift his crossbow and put a bolt between its eyes. "Shut up."

Lucas lifts his brows in tired acceptance, sticking by Glenn's side and wasting a few seconds to stare out into the open, wishing for more information.

Glenn's arm darts up suddenly, the back of his hand pressing against Lucas's forehead.

Lucas eyes Glenn in confusion.

A touch from something living is rare these days. He almost reacted like he would've had he seen a fist flying his way.

"You're heating up," Glenn says, frowning.

Lucas tugs his hand back down, dropping it. "Might be getting a cold. I dunno, man." He whispers back, honest in the face of Glenn's non-judgment.

They hit the highway quicker than they thought they would, Glenn quickly moving ahead to de-escalate the shock bound to be coming from Dale.