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[ season three, episode one ]
Times had changed.
The group ── now considered a family ── had been out on the road for seven months. No location had been made a permanent place of residency for more than two weeks; storage units, rundown cabins by the side of the road, their cars. Anything that provided shelter; something that supplied them with the tight amount of warmth and the obvious requirement of a roof over their heads.
But nothing was ever good enough.
It wasn't safe.
Walkers dominated the earth. Time passed, and the population of undead swelled uncontrollably. They surpassed the amount of humans left upon the conquered lands, terrorising plots of land and newly inhabitable colonies. Inescapable. Truly, the walkers were inescapable. And in all honesty, the group were starting to grow inescapably tired of the constant running.
Everywhere they went. Walkers.
It was inevitable.
They stuck to the same areas, never steering further than thirty or so miles from their previous settlement. Knowing there was someplace safe enough for Lori to give birth when the time came was their main priority. Hershel was their head advisor, and he said making a run for the coast ── a plan T-Dog brought to light many months ago ── was never going to happen until Lori's baby was born. Familiarity was a requirement, and nobody had ever been to the coast. They didn't know what to expect.
Until then, they explored.
A cottage hidden in the woods was their next point of interest. Small, dilapidated, and empty. It hadn't yet been ransacked by human hands, which was certainly a start. That meant supplies. And with supplies came one more day of survival ── one more day without going to bed so hungry that it felt like their ribcage was caving in.
The doors thudded open.
Rick was leading the small squad of soldiers into the house. Behind him, Daryl, T-Dog and Marley Whitman thundered in, weapons drawn.
They all branched off to do their own thing, but kept within distant sight of each other.
Marley rushed upstairs with her machete gripped in hand ── emergency pistol tucked into the waistband at the back of her jeans. It wasn't her gun to keep, but Daryl had been incessant on allowing her to hold on to it ever since the Greene farm was overrun by the dead. He told her she needed something other than a bladed weapon, something both close and long range, even if her aim was in absolute shambles.
