"Hell is empty and all the devils are here."

-Unknown

✪☮✪☮✪

CHAPTER ONE – First Light

Just get in, grab the meds and go. In, snatch and out. That's how easy it was supposed to be. There wasn't supposed to be anyone left alive in the hospital and the only walkers that were in the hospital were behind locked doors. We needed medicine, and I had volunteered to be the one to get it. I couldn't let Morgan go, in case something happened, and leave poor Duane without a father, especially after what happened to his mother, Jenny.

One day everything was normal. I had come home from my latest tour in Afghanistan to visit one of my old best friends, who had managed to get himself shot in the line of duty as a sheriff's deputy. He was in a coma, and the doctors didn't know when he was going to wake up. Rick Grimes just laid there in a hospital bed, wearing a scratchy hospital gown, day after day, and it was horrible to witness. It had brought on an abundance of old memories and feelings, seeing him so lifeless but not so.

He was my best friend, and, once upon a time, the focus of all my teenage desires, along with Shane Walsh, and when we were kids we would all run around together, the three of us against the world. Until we grew up. Rick started dating Lori towards the end of high school, and they got married real young. Shane and Rick became cops, and I decided to join the army, partly to see more of the world and do some good, partly to get away from Rick and Lori's marriage. I would keep in contact, sending letters, photographs, postcards and a few phone calls each month, but it wasn't like it was before. Then he went and got himself shot, and, even after everything, I still couldn't help myself. I flew back home, and was by his side, consoling his wife (or soon-to-be ex-wife, according to her. Rick hadn't mentioned their separation during our last conversation, but apparently that's what they were), looking after his kid.

Then shit hit the fan. An infection spread around, bringing the dead back to life, sorta. The dead would wake up, but it was like the light inside their head had died and been replaced with one of those energy saving bulbs that only had enough power to emit a dim glow, rather than a brilliant light. The person they were before didn't come back. Instead all that was there was a deep hunger, a need to rip into flesh, to spread the infection further.

Lori and their son, Carl, my godson, left for Atlanta with Shane, while I stayed behind to help the military try and keep the numbers of the undead down, though I knew that wasn't the whole reason. Shane told us that Rick was dead and I knew that part of me just didn't want to leave him, dead or alive.

So I stayed, even when the army got overrun, and most of the walkers left, looking for a new food source. I found an empty house, near to Rick's now empty place, and fortified it. When Morgan, the injured Jenny and their son, Duane, arrived on my new doorstep, I let them in. Most people wouldn't nowadays, but I was determined not to lose my humanity.

I let them in, Jenny turned, and Morgan couldn't put her down. I led her outside and then when I had led her a distance away, I escaped her, and ran back to the house and barred the door again. She found her way back a lot, upsetting Duane, so Morgan and I tried to keep him inside the house, and away from the windows, as much as possible.

So when we decided that we would need more supplies, I volunteered, grabbing my pack and attaching the silencer to my Glock in case I ran into anyone unsavory. The walkers were attracted to noise, and I didn't want to have too many of them on my tail. I managed to get into the hospital alright, making my way to the South Wing Recovery Ward, already knowing from numerous visits before all this happened where the meds were kept.

I walked past the cafeteria, being as quiet as possible, not wanting to agitate the trapped walkers. I hadn't been inside the hospital since Shane had told me that Rick had died, but I knew that they were there from the writing on the door. Don't open, dead inside. I didn't want to run into Rick, if he had turned. I think I would be stuck like Morgan. Wanting to put him down, give him peace, but not being strong enough to do it. So I steered clear, until now.

I kept my gun out, the safety off, silencer attached, ready to take out anything that tried to attack me, as I made my way down the corridor to the pharmacy opposite the nurse's station. I quickly entered, checking for any walkers inside. Sometimes they would sit on the floor, waiting for their next meal to come to them and then would grab the idiot who thought that because it's on the ground and not moving that it's dead.

Seeing that it was empty, I quickly started to grab supplies, stuffing them all into a small black medical kit that I would stow in my backpack. It became clear to me that people had believed the hospital to be beyond hope, as there had been practically no looting here at all. Although some of the supplies had been knocked over, the pharmacy was still pretty much stocked full, so I grabbed as many boxes of medication as I could; antibiotics, anti-viral meds, pain relievers, contraceptive pills (it was an apocalypse but, on the off chance I did find someone I'd be willing to jump into bed with, I didn't want to take any unnecessary risks), allergy medicine and others.

I was organizing it all in the field kit, planning on raiding the nurse's station for gauze, bandages and antiseptics to treat any minor injuries I would need to treat in the future, when I heard a door open and a rattling as someone, or rather something, bumped into an abandoned gurney just down the hall. I quickly zipped up my bag, and slung it over my shoulders, withdrawing my gun again. I moved into the shadows by the door, pressing my back to the wall, but keeping the nurses' station in my sight.

The padding of feet moved closer, and I saw the silhouette of a person by the nurse's station. I didn't move, hoping that it wouldn't pick up my scent. I had prayed that I would avoid bumping into any walkers, especially if it were Rick, but it seemed that God had simply stopped listening to my prayers. A gentle crash brought me out of my thoughts, as the walker knocked the phone over, and started searching for food on the desk.

I watched it, not wanting to waste a bullet on a single walker, and only realized that the person was not as dead as I thought when I saw him light a match.

That's when I decided to come out. He was clearly unarmed, so the only threat would be me.

"Who are you?" I asked, trying to keep my voice quiet and level as I held the man at gun point. It was too dark to fully make out his face, but he was definitely a patient, with the gown pillowing out around him and a bandage wrapped around his lower chest. The man seemed to be speechless, probably hadn't seen another person in a while, and just stared at me. "Answer me, or, so help me God, I will shoot you. I will fucking shoot you, unless you speak right now!"

"Thea?" The man croaked, but the voice was familiar. I reached behind me, and grabbed my torch from my backpack. I hadn't wanted to use it, in case the light drew attention, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

I clicked it on and the small beam of light almost burned my eyes after they had adapted to the dark. I lifted it to the man's face, and almost dropped everything in my hands.

This couldn't be happening.

It was impossible. He was dead, which meant that I was either now dead myself or I had finally snapped after everything that had happened and everything I had seen.

It couldn't possibly be him.

"You're dead. They told me you were dead." I said, tears rolling down my cheeks, my hands tightening around my torch and gun, not willing to let my guard down for a hallucination.

"I'm not dead. It's me. It's Rick." He said, his strong Georgian accent soothing me as he stepped closer, his hands held up. He looked like shit. He was thinner, his bandage was disgusting, and he looked unsteady on his feet. I tried to swallow, but it was difficult due to the emotional clot in my throat.

"You been bit?" I questioned, not lowering my gun, pushing off a proper reunion until I was certain that it was safe. I couldn't risk my life with people depending on me.

"Bit?" He said, sounding confused.

"Yeah, bit. As in 'bitten'. As in 'did someone take a bite outta you?'"

"T, what are you talkin' about?" I realized then that he really did not know what I was talking about, and I lowered my gun slowly, unsurely. "What's goin' on? Where is everybody? Where's Carl and Lori? And Shane?"

"You shouldn't be talkin', Rick. I take it you just woke up, and you'll need all the strength you have to get outta here with me," I said, as I hurried round the side of the nurses station, and grabbed all the bandages, antiseptic wipes and cream, gauze, a pair of tweezers, a pair of scissors, as well as disposable gloves, safety pins, sticky tape, band aids and a couple bottles of water I found in one of the cupboards before packing it all away in my backpack. "Because I'm gettin' you outta here now to somewhere safe."

I moved towards Rick, grabbed his hand and dragged him down the dark hallway, moving slower than normal as he was understandably weaker than he had been three months ago. He looked so sick, and I could see the sweat beading along his forehead as he pushed himself to move faster. Rick tugged on my hand, pulling us to a stop as his eyes trailed around the hall, soaking up the horrifying images of blood pools, bullet holes and then the door to the canteen. He stared at the words sprayed across the door in complete perturbation. DON'T OPEN, DEAD INSIDE was the message that had thrown my best friend for a loop, especially when the door started to rattle as though it was trying to be opened.

"They've smelled us." I whispered to him, as we backed away slightly and I raised my Glock again. Soft, throaty moans started to erupt from behind the doors, as they started to open slightly, stopped by the chains and wood plank. When the hands started to reach out for us, the door shaking violently under the pressure of all the dead on the other side, I pulled Rick with me and pushed through the double doors next to us, and headed for the staircase next to the elevator. The elevators were fucked anyway.

I handed Rick my torch, then grabbed his hand again, both needing to help him forward and needing to convince myself he was real and alive. We took the stairs slowly. Rick was still weak after all, and I didn't want to push him too hard, since we were going to have to move quickly when we got outside. Once we stepped off the last step, I let go of his hand, taking the flashlight from him and stowing it back in my backpack.

Taking his hand again, I pushed open the fire exit slowly with my hip, and blinked rapidly as I tried to readjust to daylight. Rick was doing the same, and I gazed at him a moment, not really knowing how to prepare him for the next traumatizing sight he was about to see. If he had thought that inside the hospital had been bad...things were infinitely worse outside.

Bodies were lined up in rows, wrapped in dirty old sheets and left to rot. It looked so callous to just leave the bodies on the ground like that, attracting flies and starving animals, but at the time, the army had no choice. We were being overrun, and we hadn't had the time to start digging graves or even piling them up to burn them. It wasn't humane to leave them the way we had, but post-outbreak, it was every man, woman and child for themselves. It isn't about what's right or what's wrong now, at least to most people. It was about survival.

I watched Rick, as his eyes widened in both fear and emotional agony. He probably didn't know half of these people, but they were all dead and probably had no one to mourn for them now. I think this was his moment of harsh realization. I don't think that the inside of the hospital...what he had seen in there...I don't think that had cut it. The bodies lined up in neat, efficient, little rows, all rotting flesh and buzzing flies...that's what got to him. Made him realize that this wasn't the world he had left behind when he got shot and put into a coma.

This was a whole new world.

Rick stumbled down the metal steps that led to the ground, and I followed silently behind him, my gun raised as my eyes raked across the area for walkers, occasionally flickering back to my best friend as we slowly moved past the deceased. Rick was trembling and looked like he was trying to decide whether to cry or scream. Mostly he looked traumatized.

"I'm sorry, hon, but we've got to move faster. We can't be out in the open for too long." I felt like such a heartless bitch for pushing him, but we were too vulnerable where we were. If a group of walkers sniffed out our scent, and came towards us, we'd have no choice but to run into the hospital. The hospital was not defendable anymore, plus there were already walkers in there. The hospital was a no go.

We had to head to my car as quickly and as quietly as possible, but Rick was slow, having only just woken up from a three month long coma. I'm surprised that he was able to walk properly. We walked out of the entrance way, and then we were faced with a climb up a large grassy hill. Knowing that his legs were still somewhat weak, I pulled Rick closer to me, and draped his arm around my shoulder, wrapping my free arm around his waist to help him. It was still a little too slow moving, but once we made it up the hill, my Explorer, that I had 'borrowed' from one of Rick's neighbors, who weren't lucky enough to get out of King County, since Lori had mine, was in sight.

All we had to do was maneuver the abandoned temporary army base. Together, we trudged past abandoned helicopters, jeeps, tanks...any tents left behind were in tatters. Rick was still looking around with horror in his eyes, but he still didn't ask the one question that I had been preparing an answer for since I found him. What the fuck happened here?

Luckily, there wasn't any walkers around, so we managed to get to the Explorer without any trouble. They were pretty quiet during the day, the walkers that is. They only got riled up when there was a lot of noise, or when they smelt fresh meat.

I helped Rick into the car before rushing around the front, and climbing into the driver's seat.

I spared another glance at Rick, and could tell that he was falling apart at the seams. It made my heart hurt. The Rick I knew was a happy guy, all warm smiles and twinkling blue eyes. This Rick...he had woken to a world that was broken and full of danger and uncertainty, one full of the dead who feasted on the living. I guess I could understand if he had a mental breakdown, though I kinda hoped he wouldn't. I wasn't really in the right frame of mind to deal with it, which sounds kind of selfish, but he wasn't the only one who was now dealing with this massive change. Everybody was.

I started up the Explorer, and pulled away almost too sharply, jolting Rick out of wherever his mind had gone to.

He stared at me as I drove, before tentatively reaching across the space between us and placing his hand on my shoulder. Since I wasn't expecting it, I jumped at the sudden feel of his hand, and almost swerved across the road.

"Jesus, Rick. Scared the crap out of me." I said, shooting him a small smile, resisting the urge to place a hand over my rapidly beating heart.

"This ain't real. This is a dream. You're not here." Rick said, and I shot him a worried glance. My eyes scanned his face quickly, before returning to the road. He was sweating and pale. He'd overexerted himself too soon after waking up, and it was partially my fault. I couldn't feel guilty though. I couldn't just leave him there, with no clothes and a dirty bandage wrapped around his bullet wound. He was my best friend and he needed me.

"I'm here, Rick. It's real, I promise." I tried to assure him, but he just shook his head, his blue eyes widening.

"No, you're half a world away. You ain't with me. It's a dream. It's all a dream."

Rick started to sob, and I felt my heart shatter as he continued to insist that I wasn't there. To be fair to him, he wakes up from his coma, in an abandoned hospital, that's got dead people lined outside of it, and his best friend, who he thinks is supposed to be in Afghanistan, is suddenly in front of him. It's almost rational for him to think, after the emotional trauma he had just experienced, to believe that he was having some trippy coma dream.

I felt tears pricking in my eyes when he started to mumble to himself to wake up, and I took one hand of the steering wheel and grabbed his hand in mine, squeezing it tightly, trying my hardest to make him see that I was really me, that I was really with him.

He didn't even seem to notice my hand in his, but, for a second, I had to put this problem aside as we had pulled up outside the home that Morgan, Duane and I were temporarily living in. It was a couple doors down from Rick's place, not that he noticed as he continued to mumble to himself.

I couldn't stay in Rick's place, the home he had shared with his wife and son, it felt weird. Whenever I was on leave and I would come home to King County, I would always stay with Shane. It was fun at his place, at least when he was single. When he wasn't, let's just say that Shane dated quite a few questionable personalities which were not so fun to be around.

Reluctantly letting go of Rick, I climbed out of the Explorer, and saw Duane at the door, waiting for me. I smiled at him, before circling around the car again to help Rick out. Except when I opened the door, he almost fell on top of me. It seemed his energy supply was running on empty. No surprise there. He hadn't been fed in two months. It's a miracle he survived.

"Carl. T. Lori." Rick kept mumbling in his hysteria, over and over again.

"Duane, get your daddy to come out here and help me!" I called to Duane, and he rushed back inside, panic clear on his face.

Rick didn't exactly look healthy. Duane was probably thinking the worst. I pulled on Rick, but he was practically unconscious now, so, this time, he really did fall on top of me. I struggled to get out from underneath him, and began to panic slightly when I heard the telltale groans of an approaching walker.

Suddenly there was a gunshot, and the walker dropped dead in the middle of the street. He must have been a businessmen or something, the tattered, bloodstained suit and ruined brogue shoes a tell-tale sign, but that didn't really matter anymore. None of that mattered anymore.

Suddenly a pair of scuffed, dusty boots blocked my vision, and Morgan was pointing his gun at the back of Rick's head.

"Is he bit?" Morgan asked, as he helped me move Rick off of me with his spare hand. I didn't answer straight away, as I pushed myself up onto my haunches, tucking my arms underneath Rick's as I prepared to carry him. When I gestured at Rick's feet with a nod of my head, expecting him to help me carry him, Morgan pushed for answers. "What's his wound, T?"

"Gun shot. He's the guy I told you about. I thought he was dead, but he's not. I need to get him inside and check that his wound isn't infected." I snapped, my patience quickly running out the longer that Morgan hesitated. I needed to help Rick, and we needed to get inside. That gunshot would have attracted all the walkers from the general area to where we were, and we needed to get inside before they arrived.

"Did you check for bites? How do you know he isn't bitten?" Morgan demanded, and I looked up at him, my eyes dark.

"I took a chance on your wife. One that very nearly cost me my life. You owe it to me to take a chance on him." I realized that it was a low blow, but desperate times and all that.

Morgan stared at me for a moment, before he tucked his gun into the waistband of his jeans and grabbed Rick's feet, helping me heave him inside. Together we carried him into the house, and into one of the bedrooms so we could place him on the bed. After I had finished getting some of the gauze and medical tape out of the bag, as well as some of the antiseptic, I turned around and my eyes widened at what I saw.

"What are you doing?" I questioned, as Morgan continued to tie Rick's arms to the bed posts either side of his head.

"Until we check him over, I just want to take this precaution," Morgan stated, and quickly cut me off when I opened my mouth to protest. "You were right, outside. You let me and my family in here at great personal risk and it...backfired. I just want to be sure this time."

I was very unsure about it. I mean, Rick had already had one rude awakening today, but at the same time, I understood where Morgan was coming from. We hadn't taken the necessary precautions last time and his recently turned wife had almost taken a bite out of his son. So instead of arguing, I just nodded and let him continue, if only for his peace of mind, but for Duane's as well.

Once we had cleaned and dressed his wound, I told Morgan and Duane to go into the other room and wait there and cook some dinner. Morgan had opened his mouth to protest, but I gave him a particularly dark look and he relented, ushering Duane out of the room and closing the door behind them.

I sat in a chair by Rick's side, washing the sweat off his face, neck and chest with a damp rag while he lay there still unconscious. When that was done, I had nothing to do but wait. I stared at him, only feeling a little bit creepy, marveling over the fact that he was still here. He was alive. I almost couldn't wrap my head around it, because Shane had seemed so sure that he was dead.

While Shane was at the hospital getting Rick, I was packing up Lori and Carl at their place.

"Lori, take whatever you need to get to Atlanta. Clothes, food, water...whatever," I shouted to her, as I helped Carl pack his stuff into a duffel bag I had given to him. Carl was sitting on his bed, looking like he was about to cry. He was just a kid, twelve years old, he probably didn't understand. "Carl, sweetie, you read comics right?"

"Yeah." He sniffed.

"You ever read any about zombies?" I questioned, as I stuffed a few pairs of his underwear into the bag that was next to him.

"Yeah. Is that's what's happening, Aunt T?" Carl asked, and I looked at him.

"You know that I would never do anything to purposefully scare you, right? You know that I would never lie to you, yeah?" When Carl nodded, I continued. "I saw a man bite another man's ear off, and not in a Mike Tyson way, do you understand? I watched a man who had been bitten die and wake up again and start walking. But there's a safe place in Atlanta. Shane and I are gonna take you, your dad and your mom there. Where it's safe."

"Dad's coming?"

"Shane's gone to get him from the hospital," I replied, as I packed a few shirts and jeans into the bag as well. I heard Shane rush into the house, and then heard him say something to Lori that I couldn't quite make out so I decided to go investigate. "Pack your school books and a few comics you want, but don't make it too heavy, okay? If you don't pack your school books, I ain't gonna save you from your mom."

I left Carl in his room, and found Lori and Shane in the master bedroom, and Lori was shaking her head at Shane, crying.

"What's wrong? Did you get Rick?" I questioned, and Shane turned to me and I could see it in his face without even hearing the words. "You didn't get him."

"I tried, T. He's gone. I really tried, T! There were soldiers shooting people in the hallways, and those dead things and everybody panicking, and I couldn't hear Rick's heart beating. I tried, Thea. I'm sorry."

I felt like for a moment my heart stopped. My knees felt weak, and tears started rolling down my cheeks. I was a soldier. I had seen dozens of men die on the battlefield, men I had bonded with as we trained and worked together, but out there you get desensitized to it. Rick was different. He was my best friend and I'd been in love with him most of my life. I clamped a hand over my mouth as I tried to muffle my sobs, and Lori quickly moved towards me and wrapped her arms around me. We clung to each other, his would-be ex-wife and his best friend, crying over the good man we had both lost.

I thought I would never see him alive again. Inwardly, I had been steeling myself to see him as a walker. I knew how painful it was for Morgan each time his wife walked by the house, how it made Duane cry to hear his dead mother as she rattled the door knob again only to walk away. I knew why Morgan didn't shoot Jenny. He couldn't bring himself to do it. Just like I was pretty sure that if I stumbled across Rick's reanimated corpse, I would have just run in the opposite direction.

So now I waited for him to wake up.