A/N: Based on the twdwikia, King County is presumably in the same area as Fayette County. According to Google Maps, it takes around 35 minutes (depending on traffic at the time I looked at it) to get from Fayette to Atlanta on I-85, the same interstate Rick takes. Regardless, its only 23.6 miles and, with the empty road, it wouldn't take Rick and Annie very long to get to Atlanta.

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Annie looked out the window, staring at the endless vista that was the Georgia landscape. Beautiful, checker boarded farmland, rolling hills, blazing blue skies, drifting clouds. The highway, she remembered, was always clean and well maintained and typically empty but not that day. Probably not since the whole mess started. There was a huge sprawl of abandoned cars. It looked like the worlds biggest and most disorganized used car lot. Vehicle's spilled out onto the road and even into the surrounding fields. What worried her was the fact that there was nothing moving at all. Nothing to disturb the silence. Nothing. Except for her and her new companion, Rick Grimes, the man who miraculously woke up from a coma to a world gone to hell.

She looked over at him. Rick was keeping one eye on the gauge and the other on the highway. Not that it mattered, because they were literally the only car on the road. Hell, they were the only thing moving at all. She glanced over as he resumed calling out for help on his radio, noting that the needle on the gas gauge was dipping low. Rick was unusual, not what she expected of a cop. After a shower, Annie expected him to be spit-and-polish but he wasn't. Despite his clean-shaven appearance, he was as haggard and exhausted as she was. He shielded his eye against the sun and spotted a gas station. Giving up on the radio, he clicked it off and hung it back up. He pulled into the station quietly, weaving slowly among the cars until Rick stopped and cut the engine.

"I can't get any closer." It was true. The pumps were hemmed in tight. Rick and Annie stepped out, the latter pulling out her hunting knife. It was deeply, eerily quiet. The only sounds were the breeze, the faint droning of flies, and a scrawled sign flapping idly on string: "NO GAS".

Looking around warily, she told him, "We should go back to the car."

"Why? Without gas, it'll be useless soon enough anyway."

"That doesn't mean we can just walk around. It's not safe."

"Morgan said they're more active at night. We've got plenty of time before dark."

"Just because they go bump in the night doesn't mean they aren't around during the day," she argued pointedly. Rick started to walk away, awed by the quiet and sense of desolation that surrounded them. Annie rolled her eyes and reluctantly followed him. He noticed things, laundry here and there, hung on lines among the cars. Old campfires. Luggage strewn. Empty cans. A few tents. Sheets duct taped to the sides of cars to make lean-to shelters. "We should keep moving," she advised, looking around warily.

"The people who were here tried to stick out for a while," he realized. God only know what happened to them, he thought.

"Maybe they moved on," she replied softly, trying to give him some small amount of comfort. But no, not all. It registered to Rick then. There were bodies in the cars. Corpses slumped, heads leaning against windows. Hard to tell how many. Rick stopped.

"Jesus..." He couldn't believe it. People died waiting in their fucking cars, a realization that was hard to take. The silence, the desolation, the decay. "Let's go." He turned to leave but there was a sound, something new, a shuffling. Rick was drawn to it, straining to hear. There's noting for a moment but then he heard it again, a few rows over.

"We should go. Now," she whispered but Rick ignored her, dropping to his belly to look under the cars. He glimpsed a pair of bunny slippers a few rows over, pale and dirty ankles. A child, a little girl. The feet shuffled along, desultory. In the heat, the poor conditions, they'd be malnourished and dazed. The slippers came to a filthy teddy bear on the ground and he watched as a little hand reached down and picked it up before shuffling on. "Rick, we need to leave." Heart racing, Rick rose and weaved among the cars. He tried to catch sight of her, knowing he had to rescue her but not wanting to scare her. He came around a car, catching a brief glimpse as she moved out of sight. Annie stopped beside him but rolled her eyes as he took off again, following after him. He ran faster, desperate not to lose the child. He came around some more cars and saw her just up ahead.

"Little girl. Little girl," he called gently. The girl slowed and stopped as Annie stood beside him, Rick gesturing for her to be quiet. The little girl was filthy, badly matted hair, vulnerable. "I'm a policeman. Little girl. Don't be afraid, okay?"

"Rick—"

"Little girl?"

The girl turned, staring at him with deep, sunken eyes. Her flesh was drawn tight on her bones, lips torn away, leaving just a snarl of teeth. Annie grimaced at the sight of the child's braces, clots of decayed meat caught in the metal. She's dead, Rick realized. Not sick, not dressed up for Halloween. Dead. A hungry glare swam in her eyes, the closest thing the walkers ever got to an actual thought, and she moved toward them down the row of abandoned cars. Annie raised her knife but Rick just held out his arm, making her back up with him. He was horrified as he unsnapped his holster, hand on the butt of his service weapon. The girl broke into a shambling, snarling run and he pulled out his .357 Colt Python. The girl got closer and BLAM! The gunshot snapped her head back in a halo of dark, viscous fluid. The child was thrown back, a bunny slipper flying off, crumbling pathetically, her teddy bear bouncing and tumbling to a stop in the dirt. While Rick stood horrified at what he just had to do, Annie gazed around and, realizing Rick's mistake, quickly grasped his arm. The corpses in the cars, they were rousing at the sound of the gunshot. Their faces reared up, heads swiveled and eyes gleamed as they stared at Rick and Annie. There were too many.

"Shit," she muttered. A door creaked open, then another. A few are already crawling, slithering closer to them. Rick grabbed Annie's arm and hauled ass back to the cruiser, walkers appearing in the rows around them. The two jumped into the car, started the engine and backed out fast. A walker appeared at Rick's window, clawing at the glass but Rick accelerated away. Annie waited a beat before telling him, "Told you not to stop."

Rick looked at her, "Don't start." She couldn't help but laugh under her breath.

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"I was on my way to Atlanta," Annie spoke up suddenly. Rick looked over at her. "I heard about the refugee center and was on my way, but I got overrun. Then I got stuck. So I was scavenging, looking for supplies, a better house to crash in for a few days before I was ready to try and head out again. I was in this little mart getting food, what was left anyway, and heard something. Turned a corner and there was Morgan." Rick looked over at her from the wheel, realizing that she was finally telling him how the trio that had saved him had "found each other". "Once we realized we were both alive, we calmed down. Then the walkers showed up, out of nowhere, and we just ran back to Morgan's place. We were all gonna go to Atlanta together. He tell you about Jenny?" Rick nodded, remembering how Morgan confessed that they'd been headed to Atlanta well until Jenny got bit and too sick to travel. "I'd been with them ever since. I couldn't leave them, not after Jenny." Because she had been too scared to go alone, she reminded herself. Sighing, she looked him in the eye and added, "And then you showed up."

"Why'd you come with me?" he asked curiously, desperate.

Annie shrugged and answered, "You said you were going to Atlanta." She turned away from him and Rick nodded, understanding her logic. He was a means to an end. At least that's what he figured. "Besides," she continued, "it's not safe for anyone to be alone. Not anymore."

"You have family there?" Annie frowned, refusing to look at him.

"No. My friends, I figured they might go there."

"I'm sorry."

"What for? Did you jump start the apocalypse?" Rick chuckled shaking his head. "You've got nothing to be sorry for. But, if it makes you feel better, I'll make you a deal. When we get to the refugee camp, I'll help you find your family, then you help me find my friends."

"What about your family?" Annie sighed heavily.

"My brother lives in DC. Paul," she murmured affectionately. "He might still be alive, but I don't really have any way of knowing." The cruiser came up the road, sputtering and slowing down, jerking to a stop on fumes. Silence, just the engine ticking in the heat. Annie pulled at her hair, trying not to scream in frustration, as Rick got out. Following his lead, she reached in the back and slung her pack over her shoulder as he did the same with the duffel of weapons. Popping the truck, he pulled out a gas can and they started walking down the highway. "I can't believe you're still trying to find gas," she remarked after a long moment of silence with a shake of her head.

"You got a better idea?" he asked, adjusting the duffel that was slowly getting heavier.

"Yeah. Stop."

"I can't stop!" he snapped at her, whipping around. "I have to find—"

"No, I mean, stop." She pointed across the field and he looked. A farmhouse. Smirking, she patted his shoulder and started to cross the field, Rick following after her, shaking his head and smiling bemusedly. As they approached, he called up, stating he was a police officer and asking to borrow some gas. He motioned for Annie to wait as he moved to the front door, knocking on it. Nothing, it was dead quiet. She shrugged as they circled around the house, peering into windows. Annie found an empty kitchen. Rick found the family sprawled out in the parlor, dead, all of them shot in the head. Rick swallowed the bile that rose up and took a shaky breath. "You find something?" she asked, startling him. He hadn't heard her approach.

"Don't—!"

"Jesus Christ!" she gasped, looking at the scene. Scrawled in blood on the walls, above the dead family, it read: "God forgive us". She turned away, shaken, and Rick followed after her, rubbing her back soothingly. The two moved around the farm until they spotted a pickup truck near the barn. It was unlocked, but no keys. The two looked back at the house, nauseated at the idea of having to go in there and look.

"I can start this," Annie announced confidently, shrugging off her pack.

Rick reminded her, "No keys." Annie just smiled and shook her head.

"Don't need 'em."

"Really?" he returned sarcastically. Annie just nodded and walked around the front, popping the hood. "You didn't think to mention that before?" She tore her eyes away from inspecting the engine to give him a hard stare.

""Before"?" she echoed. "Do you mean back at that snarl of cars, the ones full of walkers? For starters," she began with little attitude, "we didn't have anything to siphon gas out of those cars." Rick nodded, conceding to her fair and obvious point. "For another, I told you we should've kept moving. I was right." Moving the bed of the truck, Annie muttered about hoping there was a toolbox. She let out a triumphant cheer when she found not only a toolbox but everything she needed inside it, too. Bringing it around the front, she pulled out the jumper cables and attached one from the positive battery terminal to the bright red coil wire on the right side. "Check the dash," she ordered. Rick stumbled back the driver's side and looked in.

"You're a car thief?" he exclaimed, whipping out of the truck bed to stare at her. Annie laughed under her breath, assuming that the dashboard had lit up like she wanted.

"I'm a mechanic," she corrected indignantly. "I work...worked at a shop, in Atlanta. This one time, someone stole my car. I was so pissed! I went to the cops but they couldn't do anything. Or wouldn't," she speculated. "I didn't see anything, couldn't give them a suspect; said they'd look but I ought to just get a new car and forget about." She shrugged, putting her attention back on the engine. She'd found the start solenoid, exactly where she'd hoped it'd be. "I told my boss, and he told the guys I worked with, and they helped me track it down." Smiling amusedly, she told him, "We found it parked in a scrap yard. Whoever stole it, sold it."

"What you do?" Rick wondered. Annie nodded and, grabbing a flathead screwdriver from the box.

"My boss, Joe, taught me how to steal it back." Smirking, she walked around Rick and hopped into the driver's seat. She placed the screwdriver in the top center of the steering column, pushing between it and the wheel and pushing the locking pin away from the wheel. It was rough but Annie figured Rick wouldn't hold it against her. From there, she saw the small wire atop the solenoid and the positive battery cable below. After removing the ignition switch wire from the solenoid, Annie shorted its positive post to the terminal where the ignition switch connected. Twelve volts were directly applied to the battery, activating the solenoid, and the starter cranked the car. "Easy!" she exclaimed, a proud smile on her face. Rick chuckled, shaking his head as she listened to the engine rumble.

"How much gas we got?"

"Enough. Hopefully," she told him, scooting over to the passenger seat, "we'll be able to refuel once we get there." Rick shook his head with a grin and hopped into the truck.

"Let's get going then." He slammed the door shut and smiled at Annie. She just laughed, drumming her hands on the dashboard in excitement. Things were starting to look up.

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"Holy shit," Annie murmured.

Rick slowly pulled the truck to a stop, gazing at the city grimly. Atlanta was before them. Skyscrapers loomed like silent tombstones. Several were just charred husks, having caught fire at some point and simply burned out of control until the fires died. Rick and Annie sat in the truck, the engine idling and almost out of gas. The lanes going into the city were completely empty, but the lanes heading out were choked with probably thousands of abandoned vehicles. There were many wrecks in evidence, doors hanging open, fenders crumpled, windshields smashed. Everybody tried to leave at once, some ran out of gas, some had accidents, and what they were looking at was the end result: an endless river of dead metal.

Rick pressed on the gas, and they drove slowly down the empty street. Windows were smashed, cars overturned, trash and debris everywhere. Even a helicopter and a tank sat mutely in the street, muzzle aimed at the sky. The corpse of a soldier was sprawled across the turret where he was killed and eaten, crows picking at his remains. It made Annie sick and turned away, covering her mouth with her hand. She took some small comfort when Rick reached over and gently squeezed her hand. There were other corpses, all eaten. They were slaughtered here, torn apart days or weeks ago. Walkers appeared here and there, peering out of broken windows, straggling out of doorways, emerging from abandoned city buses. They started to follow Rick and Annie in their truck, which Rick put a little more gas on to outdistance them.

"It's all right," he soothed, patting Annie's hand as her leg bounced nervously. "It's just a few. Nothing we can't outrun."

"Where the hell is everyone?" Annie pondered, staring around the desolate city. Atlanta was meant to be a safe zone, a refugee center, so where were all the people?

"We'll find 'em," Rick assured her, patting her thigh comfortingly. "We will." Annie nodded, unconvinced.

Suddenly, they heard a noise. It was a distant rumble that came and went teasingly. Rick eased on the break, stopping to listen carefully. Nothing. There was nothing but the soft rumbling of the engine. The two kept listening, holding their breath, wondering if they'd imagined it. But then it came back, that distant rumble. For a moment, the sound was distinct. A helicopter. A helicopter? A helicopter! Rick kicked the truck into gear, trying to track the sound as it echoed from various directions, bouncing off buildings. Both of them were craning in their seats and looking out the windows, desperate, until they finally saw it. It was fast and a fleeting glimpse between buildings. There and gone in an instant, but it was definitely a helicopter.

Rick punched on the gas, racing after the sound, veering around a corner at over 40 mph only to break hard in shock, cold fear slamming through him. The street was filled with walkers, not just some stragglers like before, but dozens and all their dead eyes were on them, hungry. Rick put the truck in reverse and sped out of the alley. The mass surged toward them, an animal frenzy. Rick steered the truck around the corner but the dead were surging from that direction, too. In their panic to escape, Rick lost control and slammed the bumper into the corner of a building. A walker slammed against Annie's window as Rick tried to restart the stalled truck, but Annie just pushed him towards his door.

"No time, move!" she yelled at him. Rick jumped out and waited for Annie and, the moment she was out, he reached to the bed of the truck where they'd stowed her pack and the duffel bag. Rick held the bag in one hand while the other gripped Annie's, keeping her with him as he tried to find a safe haven. She fumbled with the duffel, trying to grab her pack. When that failed, she tried to pull the shotgun that was half hanging out as she ran with Rick but a walker grabbed her. Annie screamed and kicked it away but lost her balance. Crashing into Rick, the two were thrown and landed hard on the pavement.

Rick tried to get to their bags, having lost them in his fall, but his companion grabbed him first, scrambling and pulling him back in terror across the pavement. The walkers were getting closer to them. All she could hear was the seething mass of the snarling dead that she refused to disappear into. The pair rushed and tried to get away and, just as the walkers lunged for them, they rolled under a nearby tank. Annie screamed in terror as a walker grabbed her ankle, holding onto Rick. While he pulled her, she kicked free and kept crawling but there was no escape. They were trapped by the tank treads on either side. A dark tunnel was what they were in now, the only escape at the back or front and both were swarmed with walkers. Rick pulled out his gun and Annie her trusty knife, their only weapons. Rick fired twice in front of him while Annie stabbed through the skulls of the dead coming up behind them. Rick fired three more times behind her, covering her face and ears against his chest. It wasn't doing any good though. The walkers were closing in on them, far outnumbering the bullets.

Rick looked down at Annie, panting, and knew in that horrible moment that they're both dead. He could see in her eyes that she knew it, too. She knew just as well as him that there was no way they'd get out of this alive. And they both knew that there was no chance in hell they'd let themselves get torn apart. Annie nodded as he put the gun to his head, a silent deal that he'd go first and she'd follow. Rick collapsed, rolling onto his back and pulling her with him, apologizing to his wife and son. Just as he was about to pull the trigger, Annie grabbed his hand and pointed above them. An open belly hatch. Hope renewed, he scrambled to his knees and pushed Annie in first before following, walkers snarling and clawing as he pulled his legs up and slammed the hatch in their faces and scrambled away.

The two sat there a moment, hearts pounding and minds racing. They leaned against the bulkhead, trying to catch their breath. Annie looked around, trying to find something that would help and spotted the dead soldier, slumped over. Rick was trying to take the gun off the corpse. She stared as the soldier turned his head and looked at them. Her breath broke out in quick pants, panicked, as they stared at each other. The soldier started to lean forward when BLAM! The last bullet in Rick's gun, stunningly loud in the steel confines, snapped the soldier's head back, leaving a halo of blood on the walls. The gunshot echoed and Rick cringed at the ringing in his ears. Fuck, big mistake. Annie's head pounded as she covers her ears, shaking her head, trying to make the feeling of being in a vacuum disappear.

Rick looked up and saw the upper turret hatch was open; if the walkers got in up there, they were dead. Groggy and dazed, he leaned over Annie and grabbed the dead soldier's sidearm, a NATO-approved 9mm Colt automatic. Pushing himself to his feet, unsteady, Rick started up the ladder toward the hatch. Eyes on that round hole of daylight above, dread filling him as he got closer. A face appeared and he thrust the Colt forward, firing. He barely heard the shot, just a muffle. The face disappeared, falling away, as Rick put his head through the hatch. He could see the bags lying there, weapons scattered amongst the walkers. Even worse, his walkie-talkie, the one he promised Morgan he'd turn on every morning at dawn, laid abandoned. Walkers swarmed the tank, climbing to get to him and he could hear them now, their grunts, snarls and moans. Reaching up, he pulled the hatch down just as dead hands appeared.

Once the hatch was locked, he slid back down and dropped heavily onto the floor. Annie was shaking like a leaf, terrified but trying to hide it as she smiled at him. He nodded at her, trying to catch his breath, really trying this time. They were safe, for the moment. Slowly, she crawled over to him and collapsed against him and he put his arm around her shoulder, hugging her as they leaned heavily on the bulkhead. Both were spent. The only good things about their current situation was that their hearing was returning; they could hear their own breathing in the silence of the tank. And the sounds just outside. A pensive silence fell over them as they glanced around, hopeless. They were alive but both knew the tank would very likely become their tomb. Listless, Rick raised the new Colt and ejected the mag to check it. A full load of rounds. Shoving the mag back in, he considered what to do, sitting there awhile, numb.

A soft crack of static. A voice.

"Hey, you. Dumbasses! Hey, you guys in the tank. You cozy in there?"

Rick turned his head, stunned, and Annie leaned forward in shock.

The radio!