Author's Note: I'm back! And I'm sorry it has been forever since I've uploaded a new chapter to this story. I had actually been going through a tough time, but fuck it. I'm back and I'm updating. Bi-weekly. This starts a little after Jason comes back from the car crash; we still have that little girl, Amy, that Jason and Andrea found in the abandoned house while on their quest to find Sophia, and shit is leading upwards. We know how this goes.
Review this, guys. I'm seriously in a writer's block, but I want to keep writing this! I need inspiration! I love you all!
-Laania

Disclosure: Blah, blah, blah... I don't own The Walking Dead... Blah, blah, blah.

Chapter Thirteen

"It's good to have you back, though, man." Rick smiled and pulled me into a hug and I returned it without a fight.

"It's good to be back!" I smiled and then looked at Andrea who only stood there with her hand against her mouth. I smiled at her before rubbing my hand through my hair. "Now, I know you're not going to say you weren't sad that I was gone, huh?"

I closed my eyes and laughed again, only to feel Andrea's body slam into mine, her lips pressed against my own lips and her arms wrapped around my neck. I opened my eyes immediately and then fell into her kiss, returning it back with a passion I tried hiding for so long from her. I held her body in my arms, letting my tongue dance with hers in a dance that was only for us.

"Get a room, y'all nasty asses." Daryl grunted as he began to walk away but, all I could do was graciously flip him off.

Andrea pulled away and slapped me across the face, stunning everyone who had now just gotten to me. "Don't you ever go off like that again! You stupid, idiotic, mindless... Dim-witted..."

I pressed my lips against Andrea's again, feeling the cooling rush of her freshly brushed teeth. I pulled away a bit just to get a look at her. "Shut up." I smiled and kissed her again.

I couldn't remember the last time I was breathing so heavily, crying so hard, and shaking from so much anger. I couldn't remember the last time I slammed my fists into a wall that could crumble down on me at any second. I couldn't remember the last time I saw red, the last time I gripped onto the rail of a stairwell and watched the villains stalk hungrily up the curling steps.

That was the first time I had ever killed something.

…

"Hailey!" I screamed from the stairwell, my sweaty hands gripping onto the rail in front of me and watching the hoard of undead men, women, and children stalk up the stairs with a slow fumbling, their hunger the only thing keeping them going. The bone-chilling moans and garbled yells that came out of their ripped throats and their dangling jaws.

I heard Hailey crying above all of the cacophony of the undead musical just two floors below me. I spun my head around and looked out of the door of the stairwell; my heart was beating so hard it made my vision pulse with the contraction of the vital organ.

The smokey interior of the high-rise apartment clouded the detail of the wallpaper and the ceiling fixtures. I coughed hard before I pulled my shirt above my mouth, hoping to keep as much smoke out of my lungs as possible. It didn't help; I was coughing up a lung almost every two minutes.

I finally couldn't stand being in the stairwell anymore and ran out, pulling the door close. It didn't help that it opened from the other side and swung towards me. But I pressed my back against it and waited for the sound of those creatures to get closer. The high-rises metal-frame work began to creak and threatened to collapse on itself, to collapse on Hailey and myself.

"Fuck!" I shouted, the smoke clouding up again in the hallway of the high-rise.

That was only a portion of why I kept the fire escapes door open, to let the smoke out enough to give Hailey some breathing room. The other part – the greatest part – was being squeezed to death in my other hand. The round matte and rough texture of the grenade was held tight in my palm. The pin had already been pulled out, but it was the lever that I kept a grip on so that I could do what I had planned on just a few moments ago.

That poor Army grunt...

I shook my head before finally feeling the first push of the hunger-driven creature throw itself against the door, fresh food just on the other side holding it closed. I strained against the massive pressure on the other side, sinking down against the door to get enough of a grip with the carpet against my shitty rubber shoes as much as possible.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck!" I shouted, hearing Hailey scream even louder.

My head kept slamming back against the door as the beating of the door from the other side continued on like a sick drum solo. I looked at the door of the apartment Hailey was in. Ms. Baldric.

I shook my head and stood up fully, my shoulder pushing against the door to keep the creatures out, but their little fingers were able to burst through, my strength waning as I continued pushing. At that moment, I released just a small section of the door, able for a few of their arms and their heads to push out.

Their blackened teeth chomped at the air angrily, wanting all of the freshness that was me. The rotten flesh that hung on their faces were peeled back as they tried to press their way through between the gap of the wall and the door.

I gripped onto the grenade tighter; I was so scared that just the pressure I was gripping it at would make it explode. I sucked in a deep breath and cried out, tears rushing down my face. This could either work or it would fail. Never had I wanted to just give up, to just throw in the towel. But Hailey was here and I wasn't going to give up on her. My body had become so tired from holding back the beasts that there was no way that I would be able to do this for much longer.

I screamed and released the lever, throwing the grenade into the fire escape, and hitting the carpet as fast as I could.

The slam of the fire exit door hit so hard against the wall that it must have ripped off a hinge. But the swarm that flooded the hallway of the high rise apartment and filled it with toppling creatures that clawed at the air, stepping over their own kind, and even killing some of their own.

I ran into the apartment of Ms. Baldric so fast that I thought I would miss it and be caught within the creatures' flood.

"GET DOWN!" I screamed before I latched onto Hailey who sat in a chair at the front door and dropped the both of us to the floor, my body squeezing hers until the inevitable blast sounded and shook the apartment so hard that it blew out half of the wall by the door.

Debris, dry wall, asbestos, and concrete rained on us all. Ms. Baldric screamed from the kitchen; her arm wrapped with a bloody cooking towel from the bite of one of those things.

Hailey screamed underneath me; either from the explosion and the powerful sonic blast it created, or from the crushing weight of her father on top of her.

Insulation caught fire, smoke rising in the apartment that began to suffocate us all. Chunks of concrete littered my back, hitting me with their weight in my shoulders, smaller back and the bottom of my neck.

It felt like Hell, but the moaning and the screams of the undead stopped outside, though the sound of the building crumbling underneath us was more than apparent.

"Ms. Baldric! Are you still alive?" I shouted at the old rich woman who was no more than thirty feet away from me.

I heard her cough and I took that as good news.

I pushed myself up off of Hailey, the debris falling off of my back and legs as I moved and rolled off of her. "Hailey, you okay?"

She nodded and grabbed onto her ears;they must have been ringing from the sound of the explosion.

I walked through the living room and coughed, holding back the vomit that had been wanting to come up for quite some time. I grabbed a heavy and luxurious chair and looked at the large plate glass windows of the old woman's apartment.

"Jason! What are you doing?" She cried out, her good arm extending out for either me or her expensive chair.

I gave not one shit and I hurled the large chair at the thick glass. It burst in a glory of high-pitched screams; the wind up in the Atlanta sky immediately took out the smoke from the apartment and the gusty winds took papers and light objects and flung them up into the apartment, then taking them out into the great mess that was considered outside.

I looked at Hailey and watched her hair fly wildly around her face. Her eyes were filled with shock and I knew that there was absolutely nothing I could do at that moment to make her feel better.

That was when I looked over at Ms. Baldric, the old woman who had grabbed Hailey from her apartment and brought my daughter into her own. But that was when she was bit by one of those demented creatures. The blood trail leading from the hallway outside the door traveled into the kitchen, where she had stayed.

The old woman was dead. It must have been a heart attack.

The adrenaline in my body began to slow and the realization of everything began to catch up to me, and I sighed with the feeling of disappointment, and began filling myself with it.

"Hailey, come on." I said, walking over to her and picking her up.

She stood up and reached her arms up, knowing the routine of being carried. She gripped onto my shirt, her tiny hands pulling the rough fabric against my neck.

I put her head against my shoulder as we passed Ms. Baldric, but what was the point? Hailey had already seen the older woman get bit and watch as the blood trail behind her. She had already seen on of those monsters, but I still had hope that she would be okay, that she would be safe, and that death was just a passing thing. This would be cleaned up, surely it would be. It had to be.

…

I sipped a cup of shitty instant coffee and watched the sun begin to rise against the backdrop of trees of the farm. The cries of the prisoner Daryl was "interrogating" were softened in the cold weather and didn't carry as much. The wind blew a nice cold breeze against the house; but that would be quickly taken away by the sun coming up. It would warm you if you stood in it, but once in a shadow, you'd cool down. Damn, that would feel good.

It had been two days since the accident and my dislocating hip was healing quickly. Herschel and Patricia popped it back into place as Shane, Rick, and T-Dog held me down from kicking or punching an unnecessary individual. It was a fucked up day; Herschel had to pull the leg out of place and then realign it ever so carefully and ever so fucking slowly. Then he pushed it in. That was when I screamed like a bitch and Shane made note of that out loud for Rick and T-Dog to chuckle at.

"Good morning." I heard her whisper behind me.

I turned my head to see her golden blonde hair pulled up into a wavy bun on top of her head. "Good morning to you, too." I smiled, taking another sip of the coffee.

Andrea was dressed in a thick sweater she must have found somewhere or something Maggie must have let her borrow. "I guess Shane and Rick are taking Randall out today."

I nodded, letting out a long breath; the steam rising from my hot mouth and into the cool autumn morning. "Yep. And good riddance. From what Glenn was telling me, he and his crew are fairly well armed and that's not something I want to let go."

"The Exclusionary Rule." Andrea muttered under her breath, looking down at her own cup of coffee.

"What?"

Andrea sighed and put her hand on her hip as she leaned against the house. "The Exclusionary Rule. It's where if police find something without a search warrant and want to indict you on it, they can't. They found it illegally."

I stared at her with an eyebrow raised and the cup of coffee back at my lips. "Okay?"

Andrea smiled and then shook her head. "There's a part of the Exclusionary Rule," she started, her dulling blue eyes gazing out over the rolling farm. "A man had killed a little girl, his lawyer had told police that, under no circumstances, are they allowed to talk to him, question him, so on and so forth. Well, the police – knowing he was a devout Christian – decided to talk to each other, maybe get him to give some information."

She stopped, looked at me, and then chuckled.

I nodded for her to continue.

"So, the two cops are talking to each other when one of them says to the other, 'don't you think that poor little girl is out there freezing? With all of this snow on the ground, we probably won't find her for another five months, at the least. Don't you think she deserves a Christian burial?' and then the man, the guy sitting arrested in the back of the car, just blurts out, 'she's buried over there'."

Andrea smiled to herself and then took a sip of coffee. "You see, whether or not the guy would have said something or not, the officers still would have found the body. It's inevitable. That's the other part of the Exclusionary Rule. So, it's inevitable that Randall dies; he's going to die eventually."

I chuckled before shaking my head and taking a sip of the coffee. "That was a hell of a story for just an agreement."

"Jason!"

Andrea and I turned around and watched as Shane ran over to us.

"What's up, brother?" I stood up straight, looking directly at him in his long shirt and worn jacket.

"Rick and I are taking Randall out somewhere and leaving him. Just wanted to let you know you, Dixon, and T-Dog are in charge." Shane rested his hands on his hips.

"Well, what about me? I'm sure I could help around here? Go on watch for Dale?" Andrea asked and suggested, her eyebrow rising with an attitude towards him.

"Yeah, sure." Shane chuckled at her. "Oh, and uh, make sure that that little girl Amy y'all found gets out and does something. She's creeping Lori and Carl out."

I perked at the remark. "What's going on with Amy? I thought she was getting better."

Andrea put her hand on my shoulder. "I think she's dying. She's fighting something that she caught a long time before we even came along."

I moved away from her a tad, not liking the physical touch of Andrea for some reason. "What, like leukemia?"

Shane shrugged without saying another word and then took off for the garden shed where Dixon held Randall in interrogation.

"She's dying?" I asked, looking down at Andrea.

"She must've been on medications before the breakout. But now, there's no way for her to get those kinds of drugs. And if there were still some available, there'd be no way of telling where and what stood in our way." Andrea walked off to the inside of the house.

I stood there for a moment, shocked. The little girl we had found, she was dying. And we had no way of knowing when her last day would be.

Love it? Hate it? Kill it with fire? Talk to me, people. I need to get back into the swing of Jason and Hailey. I definitely wanted to give some background on how Jason saved Hailey in Atlanta. Maybe a few more flashbacks of the first couple of months?
Lol, anyways... REVIEW. Please. I need it. I love you all!

-Laania