No Tomorrow

.

*

"How do you do it?"

"Hm?"

Lori stroked her swollen belly before she gestured over my shoulder with a finger to the woods where a few of the men had vanished off a few minutes ago, we ran for maybe five hours before we came to a stop and people wanted to find some food and a possible stream to refill the water supply; Hershel was pressing us to find a place to hole up with for a few weeks because Lori was almost to full term size with her baby.

"Make it look so easy, the relationship that you have with those two I mean."

I chuckled and ran a hand through my hair that was now down to the top of my ass, I wanted to cut it short like Jay had done his a month ago but I never remembered to when we had the means.

"I don't know if I'd call that easy per-say, but it kinda just does whatever it wants. Are you excited for the baby?"

She smiled and rested her hand on the top of her swollen belly and just stared at it until I saw a tear roll down one of her cheeks.

"You could say that, sure."

"I can take over watching her."

Beth sided up to the open door and Hershel wasn't far from her so I just raised my hands halfway into the air and walked away, ears tuned in for footsteps in the woods; when I reached the end of our cars I heard a few sticks snapping and sighed with relief. I tried my hardest to make sure that I was involved with everything they did but most of the time they made me stay behind to protect everyone else; try as he might, even though Jay said he was ok with mine and Daryl's engagement he hadn't said a single word to me since. I was worried that he was going to leave us once we found a place to settle down but I had to admit that I had the same urges.

"Well, I think we found the best place to settle down."

Rick was smiling when everyone walked through the woods and I ignored him to launch myself into Daryl's arms, my feet were lifted up off the ground as Daryl wrapped his arms around my waist and hugged me.

"I love you."

Daryl put me back down on the ground and nudged me as Rick spread his hands wide into the air to draw everyone's attention.

"We found the b e s t place, there's just a teeny problem...we have to clear the place out. I know that we're all tired and we need a lot of sleep but if we push on just a little more...we could rest for a l o n g time."

No one complained, but Daryl was hesitant to look at me and the sudden energy change in the air was enough to raise the hair on both of my arms.

"....er.....when you say clear it out....just w h a t did you find?"

*

"You've got to be shitting me."

A large prison was on the other side of the inner gate and sure enough the main yard had a few dozen walkers around and even more up near the concrete inner yards, Rick was smiling and holding two industrial connector chains together but I wasn't the only one giving him a look now. The place w o u l d be lovely but there was just so many of the damn things everywhere.

"It's p e r f e c t, look at the potential!"

I cleared my throat.

"Em....just how do you propose we clear this place? Gun fire will just draw more of them in won't it?"

This made him drop the smile when he looked at me and someone to my left, the message was pretty clear in his eyes.

"Ah..."

"Would you mind? Most of us can draw them along the fence and pop them with hand held tools- no gunfire. I know that we're all dog tired but if we clear out this yard today we'll get to rest a bit. I need to get in and shut that main gate up there but I need your guys' help."

I felt a burning hand touch my shoulder and knew that it was Jay, no one else felt warm to me but him.

"We're in, open the gates."

Lori opened the gate and Jay tore in first before I followed suit and he tackled two of them that were dressed in blue jumpers and smashed their heads together with a quick flex of his biceps, a look of pure joy was etched onto his face before I even took down my first one; I crushed its rotting head between my hands and kicked its body away with enough force that it sailed through the air with a sickening squelch and hit the fence beyond. Jay smiled and growled for joy, his hair was starting to brush his shoulders now and I hated to admit that he was handsome- when he wasn't being an asshole anyway. The way his hair flopped over his eyes reminded me of how sweet his face used to be..

"Head in the game, Belle.''

Jay came flying through the air and knocked me to the grass just as four of them fell down the hill that I was just standing on, our eyes met and he stopped breathing until he shook his head and rolled off of me; he helped pull me to my feet before he put our backs together and braced himself against me. My arms came up like a boxer's and I shifted all of my weight to my right foot in case I chose to kick out with my left.

"Let's worry about having fun after these bastards are dealt with, you ready?"

The sheer number of the walking dead in the yard wanted to overwhelm me but I shook my head before those thoughts got too bad.

"Always."