"By the pricking of my thumbs,

Something wicked this way comes."

-William Shakespeare, 'Macbeth'

We were halfway down the 85 when Rick thought to try the radio. If there was any way to see if Atlanta was safe or not, it would be to see if they still had people responding to the emergency radio channel.

"Broadcasting on Emergency Channel. We'll be approaching Atlanta on Highway 85. Anybody reads, please respond," Rick spoke into the radio, his eyes on the road, and mine on him. I was praying to God that somebody answered and told us that Atlanta was safe, because I didn't have a good feeling about going in there blind. "Hello. Hello. Can anybody hear my voice? Anybody out there? Anybody hears me, please respond. Hello, can you hear my voice? Hello. Hello. Can anybody hear my voice? Can you hear my voice?"

"Rick...nobody is answering." I said, feeling a little disappointed. I hadn't much hope, but enough for it to be ripped apart by the silence on the other end of the radio.

"If anybody reads, please respond. Broadcasting on Emergency Channel. Will be approaching Atlanta on Highway 85. If anybody reads, please respond." Rick continued, and I sighed, before holding my hand out for the radio.

Rick glanced at me before handing it over.

"This is Sergeant Thea Winters of the US Army Special Forces. If anybody reads, I am approaching Atlanta with one guest on Highway 85, and need to know if the area is secure. Please respond. I repeat, this is Sergeant Thea Winters of the US Army Special Forces. I belong to the 75th Ranger Regiment and I am approaching Atlanta on Highway 85, please respond. I am outside the wire, and need confirmation that the Atlanta base is secure. Please respond."

No response came. I sighed and placed the radio back onto its hook.

"I guess we're going in blind. God help us." I muttered, before focusing on the road.

✪☮✪☮✪

"Hello. Hello. Can anybody hear my voice?" A voice crackled over the radio that rested on an old tree stump in the middle of a make-shift camp, and a young, blonde woman rushed over to answer.

"Hey. Hello?" She spoke in to the radio. An older man, with a silver beard, wearing a hat on his head moved towards the radio, wondering who could be on the other end.

"Can you hear my voice?" The voice, a male voice the blonde decided, asked.

"Yes, I can hear you. You're coming through. Over." She said, looking up at the older gentlemen as she tried desperately to be heard by the mysterious man on the other side of the radio wavelength.

"If anybody reads, please respond. Broadcasting on Emergency Channel. Will be approaching Atlanta on Highway 85. If anybody reads, please respond."

"We're just outside the city," The radio crackled and the man seemed to disappear for a moment, and the young woman sighed in frustration. More people had gathered now, wanting to know if they were able to speak to the individual trying to communicate with anyone who heard him. "Damn it. Hello? Hello? He couldn't hear me. I couldn't warn him."

"Try to raise him again," The older man instructed before he spied the man who knew how the radio worked best. "Come on, son, you know best how to work this thing."

The dark-haired man walked over, imbedding his axe into the stump, missing the radio, and took the speaker off the blonde.

"Hello, hello. Is the person who called still on the air?"

"This is Sergeant Thea Winters of the US Army Special Forces. If anybody reads, please respon-" The radio crackled and silenced, but the man recognized the name and tried to get her to speak again.

"Thea? T! It's Shane! Please respond!" He urged her, but only crackling came from the other end of the radio. "Thea, its Shane, please respond. Over. Thea? She's gone."

"We have to go after her. She doesn't know what she's getting into." A tall, thin dark haired woman stated, hugging her son to her side with one arm, the other resting on her hip.

"We can't, Lori. We are surviving here. We are day-to-day." Shane replied, getting back up onto his feet, and staring her down. Thea was his best friend, but he couldn't risk the safety of more of his group. He couldn't risk Lori or Carl by going off after her.

"And who the hell would you propose we send?" The old man questioned.

"I'll go. Give me a vehicle." Lori snapped. She was being ganged up on and she didn't like it. They knew that putting up a sign warning people away from the city was something they should have done a long time ago, and now Thea was heading in that direction. If her friend died, it would be on her hands and everybody else's.

"Nobody goes anywhere alone. You know that." Shane retorted.

"She's our friend, Shane. She saved Carl and me. We would have died if it weren't for her. Somebody needs to go save her this time." Lori said, before she walked away, going to seethe in her tent.

She thought Shane would be all for it. Thea was his best friend since they were kids. It had always been the three of them; Shane, Thea...and Rick. Nobody had been able to come between them, and they would have done anything for each other.

Thea saved them. Walkers had surrounded Lori and Carl as they tried to make their way back to their house, and Thea saved them. Then she gave them her car, and a box of supplies, and a handgun, and sent them after Shane to Atlanta. Thea hadn't known that Atlanta wasn't safe, but she sent them somewhere she thought would be safe for them, and that meant more to Lori than anything.

Now Thea was driving into Satan's new holiday home with no idea what it really held and there was nothing Lori was allowed to do about it.

✪☮✪☮✪

Eventually we had to stop for gas. The cruiser's tank was officially on empty, and we were still a few miles out of Atlanta. I grabbed our bags from the back seat, while Rick grabbed a photograph from the sun visor and tucked it into his shirt pocket.

Rick took his duffel bag and his bag of guns, and I took my backpack and the shotgun I had taken for myself, and we both climbed out of the car. Rick picked up the cruiser's gas can from the trunk, and I rolled my eyes at his optimism. We were very unlikely to find gas around here.

"We'd better step off if we're gonna make it to Atlanta before late afternoon." I said, and Rick nodded.

"I think I saw a house in the distance. We can see if they have any gas." Rick replied, and I sighed, knowing that the likelihood of the people in that house still being alive was low, and even if they were, the probability of them sharing their gas supply with us was even lower.

"Okay, let's go."

We walked in silence for about twenty minutes, until we reached the house. Rick dropped his bags to the ground, as he called out to whoever lived there, while I just scanned the property, my eyes assessing everything. It looked pretty abandoned, if I were being honest, but that was just at first glance. Still, I felt uneasy standing out here in the open like this. I felt bare and naked without all my army greens and bullet proofs on.

"Hello? Police officer and army sergeant out here," Rick started forward, and I followed him, mostly because I didn't want him to get himself shot again. My hands tensed around the shotgun I was holding, and I kept one finger on the trigger, just in case. "Can I borrow some gas?"

Aesthetically, the house looked like a normal house. The small garden in front was beautiful, the flowers still blooming, if not slightly overgrown. The paint was peeling off the roof, but over than that, it looked clean and kept. As if the apocalypse hadn't actually touched it yet.

Rick put down the gas can as we both headed to the front door, and then he took off his hat. He had no clue about how things went down these days.

"Hello?" He called again, as he pulled himself up the porch steps.

"Rick. No one's home, and if they are, they don't wanna help, so we should go." I stated, as I looked around nervously. It was too quiet here, and I didn't like it. Something wasn't right.

"We need gas, T, or we're walking to Atlanta," Rick answered, knocking on the door anyway. "Hello? Anybody home?"

I moved past Rick, as he started looking in through windows, and headed to the furthest window on the porch to try and get a glimpse into their living room to see if they were just hiding out.

They weren't.

"Oh God!" I gasped. I had long been desensitized to these sorts of images, but that was mostly in Afghanistan. Even in the apocalypse I didn't expect someone to shoot is wife in the head, leave a note on the wall and then blow his own brains out.

Rick moved towards me, as my eyes still stared at the three bloody words that had stained the wall. God forgive us. Maybe they didn't think that the world would be put to rights again, maybe they thought there was absolutely no hope, maybe they just wanted to die together as painlessly as possible instead of being ripped into by the monsters that had infested our world. It was still upsetting to realize that some people had taken their lives instead of fighting for them.

Flies buzzed around their bodies, brain matter splattered the wall and the floor, and dark blood stained the white carpet. I had been right. Nobody was home. Not anymore.

As Rick took a look through the window, I walked away, shoulders hunched, shotgun practically hanging from my hand, and tears in my eyes. I had no idea who they were, but seeing that someone had felt so defeated that they had taken their lives...that reminded me of my parents.

"Shane, go get Rick from the hospital! I'll get these two packed and ready, and then we'll go to the Atlanta base. It'll be safe there. I know the guy in charge there. He said that Atlanta was pretty much secure, that they were keeping the dead out of the survivor's camp," I said, as Shane and I debated what our next course of action should be. Whatever we did, we knew we had to get out of King County. The army was dealing with it, but it was not safe here. "We take Rick, Lori and Carl up there. They'll be safe, and Rick will get the medical attention he needs. The hospital here is almost done for. The army is struggling to keep the dead out of that place. You need to get Rick. There'll be a guy at the doors when you get there, tell him I sent you to check something out. He'll let you in."

"Be ready to leave when I get back with him."

I nodded, and Shane rushed out of Rick and Lori's house. Lori was trying to calm Carl down, after their close encounter with a few walkers, upstairs and I thought I'd give them a few minutes more before I started hurrying them to pack up.

My phone buzzed in my pocket, letting me know that I had a missed call. For a brief second, I let myself wonder how I could have missed the call, and how the person called in the first place since the phone lines had gone down about an hour ago, but then I shook it off and decided to listen to the message.

You have one new message. Message one left at 11:48 am.

"Sweetie, it's your mother. Your father and I just wanted to call to let you know that those things are outside the house. We barricaded the doors as best we could, but we don't want to risk getting ripped apart like those people on the news. We hope you keep fighting. You're young, and strong, and brave...you're built for a world like this. You can survive...whatever this is, but your father and I can't. Your dad's heart problems would probably kill him before those monsters could, and I'm too weak to run for my life. So this is our goodbye, sweetheart. We want you to know that we love you, and we're proud of you, and that this is our choice. Goodbye, my darling girl. Stay strong for us."

This is the end of your messages. Press 1 to repeat the message. Press 2 to delete. Press 3 to save the message-

I choked back the sobs, and wiped away the tears, caused by my mom's message. She and Dad were gone. Just like my brother. I was the last Winters left. For a brief moment, I was angry. Why didn't they even try to fight? Why couldn't they have tried? Once the anger dissipated, I realized how stupid that was. My mom was right. My dad's heart was too weak to survive the stress that would come with living in this new world, and my mom's own health issues meant she couldn't handle all the running that would ensue. They had made a hard choice, but it was their choice and there was nothing I could do about it now.

They were already gone.

I sat down on a stone bench just in front of the house, and dropped my head into my hands. Seconds later, Rick joined me, his body showing the same signs of defeat that I'm sure mine was. The slumped shoulders, the tired, almost empty gaze, and that was just a small part of it.

"This is not what you were expecting to wake up to, was it?" I asked, and Rick just shook his head. "All this needless death and nobody knows what even started it. It's all just fucked up."

I glanced at Rick, and saw he was staring at me, or rather staring at something past me. I followed his gaze and saw the station wagon parked just beyond an old, weather tree swing. Rick got up to check it out, but I stayed where I was. If it had gas before the couple inside had killed themselves, then it definitely did not now. Someone would have scavenged that already. I watched Rick open up the door and check inside, but he soon slammed the door shut.

"No keys." He called, and I rose to my feet and walked towards him.

"They probably had them inside." I mused, and then we both heard something that gave us both back a little hope.

A horse's nicker.

We turned our heads, and, just at the side of the house in a small paddock, there stood two light bay American mustangs. Rick and I looked at each other and then at the two horses. We might just make it to Atlanta after all.

"Remember when your dad raised horses? You still remember how to ride them?" Rick questioned, as we both walked towards the skittish beasts. I couldn't blame them. They'd been abandoned by their owners, and they were lucky to still be alive. Walkers could have gotten them by now.

"I grew up with horses, Grimes. I know how to train them, feed them, clean them...you don't forget. It's like riding a bike." I grinned at him, grabbing some of the tack that we would need to saddle the two animals.

We approached the two horses, reins in hand, and the stallions skittered back slightly, clearly wary of the two unfamiliar presences.

"Easy, now. Easy," Rick said, in a smooth voice, the same one he used when talking to a victim of crime, or when I was upset. It was almost comforting to hear it. "We're not gonna hurt you. Nothing like that."

Rick reached out to the closest horse, as I edged nearer to the darker bay stallion, a soft smile playing on my lips as wide dark brown eyes eyed me curiously.

"More like a proposal." I added, raising a hand to run it down the horse's white nose. He nudged my hand when I went to take it away, encouraging me to continue with my affections. He was a beautiful horse.

"Atlanta's just down the road a ways. It's safe there. Food, shelter, people. Other horses too, I bet. How's that sound?" Rick asked the two beasts, before he circled the reins around his horse's neck, as I did the same.

"There we go. Good boy. Now, come with us," I said, leading my horse out of the paddock, with Rick following me. "Come on. It's okay. Come on, boy."

It didn't take all that long to remember how to saddle a horse again, despite having not done it since my teens. As soon as Rick was seated in his saddle, and I had passed him his two bags, and I had pulled my backpack on and had climbed into my own saddle, we set off.

"Just go easy, okay? I haven't done this for years," Rick said, as we pushed the two horses into a walk. I turned towards him, and he glanced at me, a smile on his face. A smile that dropped as he noticed the shit-eating grin that basically spelled trouble for him. "No, don't you even think about it, Thea!"

I ignored him as I moved my horse, Philip as I had decided to call him, closer to Rick's and smacked it on the rear, spurring it to suddenly gallop forward. Rick tried to rein it in, but the creature was not having any of it. It continued to gallop, probably glad for the freedom to run, so I pushed Philip to move at the same speed, catching them up quickly. Rick glared at me as he tried to regain control, and I laughed at his scowl, enjoying myself for the first time in a while.

"Just like old times, huh?" I questioned, when we finally slowed down, not wanting to wear the horses out before we made it to Atlanta.

"You being a pain in my ass? Yeah, exactly like old times." Rick remarked, and I laughed at him.

"You love it, don't try and deny it. Without me, you only had Shane, and I'm certain that watching him fondle Marcie Goldman's breasts, while you sat all alone, wondering about the awesome best friend you never knew, throughout our sophomore year would have been a real blast." I teased him, reining my horse in a bit as we moved further along the highway.

"You're right. That would have been awful. At least with you, there was a funny commentary that ended up pissing him off to the point that he chased you around the school parking lot." Rick chuckled and I grinned, remembering that day. I kept mimicking Marcie as she moaned breathlessly as Shane pinned her to the side of his truck as they made out and he went to town on the two air bags she called breasts. Marcie's dad was the only plastic surgeon in King County, and he managed to make quite a living on all the bored, rich housewives. Marcie was his youngest patient, getting breast implants at the age of 16. Rick and I used to laugh at her, because she ended up looking like a live-action Barbie doll, especially with her big blonde hair and blue eyes. For some reason, Shane found her attractive, even though he had a preference for brunettes.

I was about to open my mouth to reply when my eyes zeroed in on the pile up of abandoned cars on the road heading out of the city. Rick seemed to have noticed the same thing, as the light-heartedness of our previous conversation evaporated and a thick tension seeped into the both of us.

Moving my eyes away from what looked like a terrible crash, I saw empty cars that seemed to just stretch on for miles. For a moment, I wondered what had happened to all these people, wondering why they were all leaving the city instead of heading in.

Dread filled me up, head to toe, and I turned my gaze to Rick.

"I don't like this. Maybe we should turn back." My eyes flickered between my best friend and the city landscape, not liking the silence and the bad omen that was the traffic pile-up out of the city. My gut was telling me that this was a bad idea. My gut was telling me that the city couldn't have been safe if all those people were trying to get out of the Atlanta. My gut had a 97% success rate.

"You sent them to Atlanta, T. My son is in that city somewhere, I know it. You still with me?" Rick questioned, his blue eyes burning into mine, pleading with me to hang onto the hope that his son and wife- ex-wife – were safe and well holed up in the city somewhere.

"I'm with you. Always have been, always will be. Whatever happens." I declared, repeating my words from earlier, my eyes holding his to let him know just how sincere the declaration was.

I flew across the world to sit at his bedside after he'd been shot. I had stayed behind in King County to defend the hospital, even after it was contaminated. I never left King County because I couldn't leave him, dead or alive. I was pretty certain that I was about to walk into a complete clusterfuck, but had no choice but to venture into said clusterfuck because Rick was. I think my actions prove that my words were sincere.

Rick nodded at me, finding something in my eyes or in my words that satisfied him, and he pushed his horse on, leaving me to follow him into the unknown.

✪☮✪☮✪

Rick and I finally made it into the city, and it was a ghost town.

The streets were empty, litter blowing listlessly in the soft breeze, cars stationary in the road. Rick and I would exchange nervous glances, as we moved through the Atlanta streets, because it was just so quiet. There weren't any signs of life, or otherwise.

As we moved further into the city, the density of cars, trucks, vans, bikes, and even a helicopter or two, increased. There were burnt out shells of cars, beaten up and practically totaled. The military helicopter that had been left and abandoned had me worried more than anything. What if the army had been overrun here, just like in King County? Did the survivor's camp still exist? Did Lori and Carl even make it here? Everything was just so uncertain, and I wasn't comfortable with that. I liked things to be clear cut and defined, which is another reason that I left King County. Things with Rick were so blurred and undefined, so I cut and ran.

Which is exactly what I wanted to do right now.

We had just passed a burnt out bus when I heard the first tell-tale signs of the undead. Growling. We had woken a couple up within the bus, which startled the horses.

"Whoa! Steady." Rick said, as we calmed the two stallions down.

"There's just a few. Nothing we can't outrun." I murmured to Philip, as we both pushed the horses into a trot to get away from the three walkers we could see, taking a left down another street.

I felt my heart sink again. This street was littered with abandoned military vehicles. A few LAV's, a tank, all abandoned. The tank even had a dead fellow soldier lying face down on top of it. His face was messed up beyond belief, and the back of his head displayed an entry wound from a small caliber weapon. He had been put down after being infected, and now he was dinner for a couple of crows.

I stopped beside him a second, mumbling a prayer for a fallen comrade, while Rick moved on ahead. I was just about to join him when he pushed his mustang into a canter, hurtling off down the street, calling to me to follow.

I made to follow him when he pulled tight on his reins, coming to a sudden stop. That's when I heard the groans coming from behind me. I turned my head and spied the twenty or so walkers stumbling quickly towards me, and then the mass of dead that were on Rick's tail.

There was a small window that I could escape in, as there were less walkers coming towards me, then there were following Rick, and there was a small gap that I could push through. Yet I knew that Rick wouldn't make it through the same opening.

I took a deep breath, before I turned back towards my friend as he cantered towards me. The walkers circled us then, and started to tug on our legs, on the horse, on anything they could reach. I tried kicking them off, keeping myself away from their teeth, but eventually, they managed to pull us down.

Rick hit the ground first, and I followed soon enough, both of us wriggling away as they took down our horses. I felt so much guilt as I heard the Philip and his friend struggling to get free as the dead tore them open. Tears dripped down my cheeks as I pushed myself up onto my feet, kicking a walker in the chest and sending it flailing into a few that were shuffling towards me.

I spun around, looking for a way out, before I spied the tank. While part of me was thinking not another fucking tank, the more logical part of me was weeping with pure joy. The tank would keep those assholes out and we'd be safe.

"Rick! The tank!" I instructed, knowing there was no way we would make it through the crowds that were converging towards the fresh meat that had unwittingly stumbled into their trap.

I rushed towards it, seeing Rick crawling underneath, and launched myself on top. I was almost to the hatch when I felt a bony, but strong, hand grip my ankle. Hearing shots from underneath the tank, I knew that, since we were screwed anyway, there would be no harm firing a shot of my own. I ripped my Glock from its holster and turned just in time to shoot the walker, who was about to bite into my leg, through the eye. The dead female dropped like a rock, and I shook her hand off my leg, and resumed my climb.

I dropped into the tank, and looked around, seeing that Rick wasn't inside. I crawled to the floor hatch, seeing that it was already open, and saw Rick with his gun to his head.

"Rick! Up here!" I called to him, and he quickly scrambled up.

As soon as he was in, I closed the hatch, and shuffled back to rest against the wall, my head falling into my hands as the cold realization sunk in.

We were probably not going to make it out of this.

"You okay?" I questioned, seeing Rick push himself back, away from the hatch, as we listened to the thumps of the walkers trying to get in. They wouldn't be able to. I had survived three days in a tank back in King County when the hospital had gotten overrun. They wouldn't make a dent on it.

"Oh God. Oh God." Rick mumbled, obviously in shock as to how quickly things had fallen apart.

"You dropped the bag of guns, I lost my shotgun out there somewhere and I've only got two pistols. How many rounds have you got left?" I asked, my voice as soft as I could possibly make it. He was freaking out and, while my heart was racing at about a hundred miles per hour, I was calmer. Possibly for already having gone through something like this once before. At times, fighting in Afghanistan had been just been one clusterfuck after the other, wrapped in another clusterfuck and tied with a neat little bow.

Rick didn't answer me, only started to search the body next to him for weapons or ammo. He found a Beretta, and managed to yank it out of its holster, only to look up and see the soldier staring at him with a hungry expression.

I moved to grab my knife, but Rick had already placed his Colt underneath the undead soldier's chin and pulled the trigger.

Pain ripped through my ears as the ringing caused by Rick's bullet in a confined metal area blasted into them. I squeezed my eyes closed, and brought both my hands to my ears, breathing in slowly. I knew the routine by now. In war zones, things are being exploded next to you all the time, so repercussion ringing is something you get used to. It still hurts like a bitch, but you learn how to deal with it more effectively.

Rick, however, did not know how to deal with it, so he climbed up the upper hatch to get out into the open. He wasn't going to leave the tank, I knew that, but I still panicked a bit until he sealed us in.

The ringing became slightly more bearable after a couple more seconds, and a few more deep breaths. Rick dropped down next to me, cradling his head, as the walkers pounded their fists against the upper hatch. I shuffled closer to him, leaning into him, trying to find some comfort in what seemed like a truly hopeless time. Rick checked the ammo in the Beretta, finding it to be full, before he wrapped his arm around my shoulders and tugged me closer.

"It's not really an appropriate time to say this," I started, causing Rick to turn his head towards me, our noses brushing at our close proximity. It would probably be a good time to tell him how I feel, how I've always felt about him, but as soon as I opened my mouth only five words come out. "But I told you so."

Rick seems to deflate for a second, like he was expecting something different, before he squeezed me, knowing that I was only making jokes because I was scared.

I was. I was terrified. I was stuck in another tank, surrounded by more walkers than I had ever seen in one place, our bag of guns was lost somewhere outside, and I felt defeated. I felt like we had come all this way for nothing. I felt angry. Rick didn't deserve this. He deserved to wake up in his hospital bed in a fully functioning hospital surrounded by his family and friends. He didn't deserve to wake up in an apocalypse, to lose his son and ex-wife, and to end up dying in a tank in an abandoned city.

The whole thing was hopeless, right from the start. We were just too dumb to see it.

"I'm so sorry that I dragged you into this." Rick muttered, and I just dropped my head onto his shoulder, trying desperately not to cry. Nobody needed that right now.

"Nowhere I'd rather be," I choked out, before adding, "Except maybe the Caribbean."

Rick chuckled pathetically at my attempt to lighten the mood. That's when we heard it. Or rather him.

Our salvation came at the other end of a crackling radio.

"Hey, you two," Both of us turned slowly turned our heads towards the CB, as a quiet voice spoke softly to us. "Dumbasses. Yeah, you two in the tank. You cosy in there?"

✪☮✪☮✪

A/N:

Hey Guys! 

I'm three for three on the updates so far! This chapter sees us reach Atlanta and sees the introduction of my fave, the too good for this world, Glenn.

Hope you enjoy it!

SALStratton.