Survival Guide: To Surviving the Living Dead 101

Rule #32

Not Everyone's Bad

Not everyone you run into is bad. Some people are good but put up a front in order to protect themselves. Remember the kid that we ran into at the breeze way? He took all of our weapons. Yeah, well, he's an example of that. But first let me tell you what happened in that damn van.

We were surrounded by walkers. They were coming from both directions. I was digging into my pocket on my thigh trying to get the clip I had in there. As soon as I took the empty one out and clicked the new one in I started to shoot. Daryl looked back at me and I shrugged. "Last one." Him and Carol swung the back doors open and we climbed inside. The problem with that though was we were trapped. And the weight of the hoard was starting to tip the van. "What the hell are we going to do?" I asked.

Carol got into the passenger seat and buckled herself in. Daryl jumped into the driver's seat. "Come here." I looked at him in confusion. "Ain't got all damn day!" He grabbed me and pulled me towards him. I didn't know how this was going to work but I wedged myself in between him and the steering wheel. He grabbed the seat belt and we buckled ourselves in. "Brace yourselves!" We all braced ourselves just as the van fell over the edge of the bridge. My stomach dropped and I slammed my eyes closed. The van bounced on its wheels a little before we started to hear loud thuds on the roof. The walkers were walking off the edge after the van. When it stopped we quickly got out and made our way back to the city.

We sat in a back alley. We had to get over to Grady Memorial Hospital. "There's only three blocks from here to Grady," Carol said. "We need to find a place nearby, scope out, see what we see," Daryl said. We got up and made our way into a building that was just across from the hospital. Daryl took a machete from a walker that was lying on the floor and killed it. We had found a bag with chips in it and stayed by a window that faced Grady.

I had sat in a chair that was stacked on top of a couple other chairs. I didn't feel like pulling them apart. I had one leg thrown over the armrest, a bag of chips in my hand. Carol sat on the window seal and Daryl stood in front of the window. I was lucky that the airbag didn't go off when we crashed. But I was a little sore from the seat belt locking up. "You said I wasn't like how I was before? How was I?" Daryl asked Carol. There had been a fight between them before we got robbed by that kid. He had taken a book about abuse and Carol was trying to tell him he wasn't the same person he was when we were at the quarry.

"It's like you were a kid. Now you're a man," she told him. "What about you?" He asked. She brushed the crumbs off of her hands before she answered. I just stayed quiet and let them talk. Everyone has changed since the beginning. It's hard to believe it's only been a little over two years since the outbreak happened. Since the dead started to take over and eat the living. And we've been through so much in just that short period of time. We've lost a lot of people since then too. And to be honest it doesn't feel like it's been that long. It still feels like yesterday that total chaos broke out.

"Me and Sophia stayed at that shelter for a day and a half before I went running back to Ed. I went home, I got beat up, life went on, and I just kept praying for something to happen. But I didn't do anything. Not a damn thing. Who I was with him… she got burned away. And I was happy about that. I mean not happy but… and at the prison I got to be who I always thought I should be, thought I should've been. Then she got burned away. Everything now just…consumes you."

It was silent for a little while before Daryl looked at her. "Well, hey…we ain't ashes." Shit that was kind of deep. Our old selves got burned away but yet we're not ashes. It's like a Phoenix, they burn to ash when it's their time to go but then a new one is born from those ashes. So it's like our old selves might be ashes but a new version was born from them. The people we are at this very moment…were not ashes. We're people just trying to survive. We have to learn to adapt and by doing that we sometimes have to change who we are. I mean we're still ourselves but a better version I guess.

We got up when we heard a noise that sounded like a door opening. It echoed through the building. We grabbed our things and made our way towards it. Walking through the halls we could hear more thudding and a walker snarling. When we walked around a corner we found a walker pinned to the wall. It had an arrow through the throat. A very familiar looking arrow. "Is that yours?" Carol asked. Daryl grumbled a yeah then sliced the machete through the walkers head and pulled the arrow out. Further down the hall we could hear automatic gunfire.

When Carol and I walked around another corner there was the kid struggling with a walker. He pushed it towards Carol and I took off after the kid while Daryl helped her. "Hey! Get back here you little fucker!" I yelled after him. He had a limp when he would run. He had to have a major injury. "Fucking hell why so they always run?!" Inslowed down when I saw him struggling with a bookcase. "Looks a little heavy," I said. He turned his head to look at me and started to try and move it faster then Daryl came and slammed him against it.

The bookcase fell on top of the kid and he just picked up a carton of cigarettes and the rest of our weapons. "Why're you following us?" Daryl asked. The kid said he thought we were following him which Daryl didn't believe. He was ready to just leave him there. A walker was trying to get through the door. Carol and I were able to convince him to help the kid.

And lucky for us that we did because he knew Beth and where she was. He was telling us about the hospital and what went on in there. He was willing to help us. On the way out of the building Carol got hit by a car. And the people driving that car were people that were from the hospital. Daryl tried to go after them but we had to convince him not to. The kid that we now know as Noah told us they would take care of her. After finding a vehicle that would run we headed back to the church so we could tell the others and make a plan to get both Beth and Carol back.