It's a stroke of luck. Serendipity, really. Lottie has never believed in luck though, or coincidence. What was meant to be was simply meant to be and that was that. Why the zombie apocalypse was meant to be…she's pretty sure she'll never know...what she does know, however, is that she's surviving it so far and there's a little girl who might not be if she doesn't get her ass in gear.

She just stopped at the stream to get some water, she had been out for nearly two days and it was taking its toll on her in the form of…well in the form of worsening her "pre-existing conditions". The little girl was standing beneath a mossy mass of earth hanging over the side of the stream and for a moment Lottie was pretty sure the girl was one of the undead and when she realized she was alive, Lottie was pretty sure she was…something else. But a real zombie came up to the stream only seconds later, the little girl let out a cry of shock and fear and Lottie was on it before she had entirely made up her mind about the girl.

Her name is Sophia. Thank Lottie for saving her. She wants her mom. Is Lottie going to hurt her? They were on a road. Yes, they were travelling in a group, there's a lot of people... and.. can Lottie help her get back to her mama?

Lottie stares her down, unsure about the child standing in front of her but then nods her head. Her eyes soften at the sight of Sophia's smile. How could she ever have thought about saying no? About not helping her? She smiles down in return at her new counterpart and sighs, it wasn't as though she had any plans, right? She nearly laughs out loud at the thought but settles for a bigger grin and kicking at the zombie she'd killed a moment earlier.

They begin walking towards where Lottie knows the highway is, hoping the group will be there waiting, maybe looking for Sophia.

"What's yer name?" Sophia's shy voice and strong accent makes Lottie grin in spite of herself.

"Loretta. Mostly people call me Lottie though." Or they would if there were any people left, she thinks.

Lottie's accent is different and Sophia seems perplexed, her brows furrowed as she walks.

Lottie watches her carefully. It takes every ounce of willpower Lottie has not to reach out and touch the girl; she knows how creepy that comes off, how she shouldn't even need to do it in the first place. She's been taking her pills almost every day for a few weeks now but since she ran out of water and her throat grew dry she's forgone them.

Biting her lip, she makes up her mind - she'd rather not go up to a potentially populated road without knowing for sure. Lottie goes for it at one moment when Sophia is turned away from her, looking into the forest, but then the girl looks back and her eyes go wide at Lottie's hand being so near to her and she retracts the hand immediately. They walk together in comfortable silence for another minute or so, with Sophia glancing at her every few seconds.

"Why…" Sophia starts suddenly and then quickly looks away, shyly, before continuing, "Why do ya talk like that?" Lottie stares down at her with wide eyes, a small smile fighting to take control of her lips before answering simply, "Why do you talk like that?" Sophia blushes and Lottie nearly laughs when she hears leaves rustling somewhere behind them.

She freezes. She looks at Sophia. Sophia hasn't seemed to notice. Lottie squeezes her eyes shut. Oh god, please, no. Just stop. Just for ten minutes so I can get this girl to her family if she even has one. Please. Please just go away.

She listens and doesn't hear any more rustling and she doesn't turn to look. They walk in pleasant silence with Sophia leading them what she thinks is the way for nearly two more minutes when the rustling happens again. Twigs snap. Lottie checks Sophia's face and it's pleasant, ignorant. It screams "There's nothing wrong." Lottie squeezes her eyes shut again, willing the noise to stop when a loud –click!- can be heard and pain goes shooting through her right leg. Her eyes open wide and her right leg fails to support her, buckles and burns with pain. She stumbles and barely keeps her balance, she's relying entirely on her left leg now.

"God damnit! What the hell you think you're doin'?" a voice growls from somewhere not too far behind her and Sophia does hear that, does acknowledge it by turning around and Lottie stoops down to check her leg out just as another object goes whizzing by, inches above her head.

"!" Sophia yells and goes running towards the two men that are apparently fucking shooting at them. Lottie turns back, grimacing while clutching at her leg. She wonders if she should have grabbed Sophia but she has to think the girl wouldn't have ran towards the shooters if she didn't know them.

"Daryl, she's alive! Don't shoot, she's alive!" A new voice commands.

"I see that!" is the irritated retort.

Lottie looks at these new strangers a little dizzily, she's still bent over clutching onto the back of her right leg feeling at what she now realizes is the tail of a plastic arrow sticking out of the back of her knee. Sophia is now hugging the leg of one of the men, she definitely knows them then, must be a part of her group.

The man Sophia is clutching onto is thin, not very muscular but toned. He has short hair, and he's surprisingly near clean shaven which brings civility to his calm but in control type of face. He has a holster for his gun and is wearing a tan shirt that fits him well, clearly an old uniform of some sort. "Cop" her mind supplies and then she frowns, realizing suddenly that he's been saying something to her while she was scrutinizing his appearance. She stares up at him, squinting a little.

"Are you okay?" He repeats, slower and drawn out in his southern drawl.

Lottie gives a very small nod, her lips mashed tightly together in a line. Her leg is burning.

"You bit?" The other man growls at her as he takes a step closer, looking her up and down. She pulls away from him as much as she can without stepping back. This man is definitely rougher looking. He's dirty, no, filthy. 5 o clock shadow, carrying a massive crossbow, "he shot you in the leg" her mind adds to the list and she ignores that one, he's wearing a rugged vest over a (wife beater? What is that?) something, and filthy pants, his Southern accent is even stronger than Sophia's. "Backwoods Bastard" her mind supplies again before she finally shakes her head and stutters out a "No, no I'm not."

He eyes her like she's lying and she raises an eyebrow back at him before blurting out, "I'm not lying! I haven't been bitten... I HAVE, however, just been shot."

The cop seems to think this is new information because he glances at the arrow jutting out of the back of her leg before lifting Sophia into his arms with an apologetic expression on his face.

"It was an accident, miss," he starts, since apparently his less polite friend isn't going to apologize, "I'm Sheriff Rick Grimes. This here is Daryl, and well, you met Sophia. You can come back to where our group is stationed on the highway and we'll get your leg fixed up."

She stares at him for a long time. Wary, unsure. She never did touch Sophia. She has no proof of anything at all, this could be nothing. All these people, this whole situation...she could be wasting her time and energy on nothing. The only things she knows for a fact is that she has an arrow through her leg. She sighs and looks away. She can feel their eyes burning into the side of her face so she looks back to Rick and begins shaking her head.

"We just found plenty of water too, you could use some, I'm sure. How about it? Come on, it's the least we can do for you finding Sophia."

Lottie huffs out a little sigh and rolls her eyes skyward.

"Alright. Okay, I'll go." She agrees quietly, giving a little smile and nod at them. Sophia cheers and says something that sounds like "Mama will love you!" as they start walking towards the highway but Lottie isn't paying much attention, her head is clouded with the information she's managed to pick up about these people so far, her thoughts on them, the situation, and...other things.

She's limping along slowly behind them, finding it difficult to walk without bending her right knee, and trying to ignore the pointed looks that "Daryl" keeps giving her out of the corner of his narrowed eyes. She doesn't realize that he's glancing at her like that because she's been staring off into space directly at him until he growls out a dramatic "Why you lookin' at me like that?"

She opens her mouth a little, but doesn't know what to say so she shuts it again, turning it downwards into a frown as well. She looks at the ground instead after that, thinking that she's always been odd and being one of the humans left at the end of the world doesn't particularly make her any less so. If anything, she's sure it makes her seem all the stranger.

But she's not prepared to start feeling self-conscious or guilty about the opinions of people who may not even be real so she bites her bottom lip, forcing herself to take the chance. She reaches out her left hand, pawing gently at Daryl's right arm, the one holding the crossbow. He jerks back his arm immediately, hitting her in the face with his crossbow as he does so and she falls to the forest floor in a heap, uttering a quiet, "Fuck" as she goes.

She's holding onto the spot where he hit her, her forehead, with her mouth open in pain but not making any actual noise. She squints up at the men who have stopped walking to look back at her. Daryl is glaring at her like he wants to leave her to be eaten by the undead but she can't help herself, she actually smiles up at him because she's just pleased to know he's real. He's a real person.

She vaguely hears Rick asking what the hell happened and sort of tunes out Daryl mumbling a short, irritated explanation as she uses a nearby tree to claw her way back up to her feet. She can see the highway now with how close they are and she begins walking towards it. Daryl and Rick quickly catch up and pass her slow limp and soon she can hear a desperate cry of "Sophia!" and a motherly looking woman comes running down the hill from the road and quickly clutches Sophia to her as soon as Rick's set her down. It's a flurry of kissing noises and crying and "Mama!" and "Sophia!" that gradually changes into "You found her!" as soon as they've migrated up to the actual roadside.

Lottie takes a look around. Counting bodies, observing faces.

Everyone's more curious about her than Sophia, it seems, it's almost irritating in a way. She begins feeling anxious, claustrophobic, pressured, even panicked by all the eyes suddenly on her after not being in a human presence for over…how long? A month? Two? Somewhere in her brain is the exact number of days but she refuses to search for it.

"Now, hold on," she hears Rick saying and she brings her attention back to what's happening, "She's hurt right now and I just want to get her fixed up before we start questioning her and everyone starts crowding her, ok?" Lottie is immediately grateful at his crowd control but she hears a scoff come from somewhere that she identifies as Daryl. Her eyebrows furrow and she shoots him a small pout and he stares at her like she's grown a second head in return. Rick leads her over to an RV and is about to help her inside when she shakes her head. Rick raises his eyebrows at her.

"I appreciate it but I'm fairly sure I can fix it up on my own, I just um, need to find somewhere to sit down, is all." Rick looks bewildered and to her left Daryl looks almost put off.

"Well! I was beginning to think you couldn't say more than a few words at a time!" Rick laughs out but Daryl is just squinting at her.

Lottie stares back until he asks, "Why you talk like that?" Her jaw drops open a little at his bluntness. She blinks a few times and looks to the ground instead, shouldering the large backpack she's carrying, trying to think of how to answer that before shaking her head and turning her attention back to Rick.

"Uh, I think I'll just set up over there somewhere, patch myself up and then I'll be on my way, alright?" She says, gesturing to the few vehicles near the side of the highway they had come from.

Rick licks his lips and kind of frowns but then just nods his head and says, "I'll check on you in a few."

She makes her way to the back of a truck near the edge and opens up the tailgate. She takes her backpack off and tosses it haphazardly into the bed of the truck before struggling onto the tailgate herself. Lottie takes a deep breath before finally taking a look at the affected limb.

Right leg, shot through the back of the knee, just above where her boot ends, arrow, plastic, sturdy, used for hunting. She frowns, considers the weapon, the range from which he likely shot her. She sighs. She's lucky it doesn't feel like it broke any of her bones but it's going to be a bitch to get out. Surprise, surprise.

Cut it out? She wonders for just a moment. No...Cut through too many nerves, permanent damage to her tendons and ligament. There probably is already going to be permanent damage. Pulling it out is the best way. Lottie huffs out a breath. She's a bit lost on how she's going to pull it out though. It's in a rather awkward spot and she can't exactly stand while she pulls it out.

"Fucking Christ, when will I get a break?" She mumbles to herself and leaves her legs to dangle over the tailgate while she lets the rest of her body slam back into the truck bed with a thud.

She closes her eyes and places one sweater sleeve clad arm over her face until she hears a "You dead?"

She opens her right eye and peers through her yellow bangs to see Daryl looking over the edge of the truck bed, staring at her.

How curious. Lottie give a small smile at him.

"Not yet. I just...I…" she licks her lips and sits up to try to be eye to eye with him. Sitting in the bed of the truck makes it so they're about even.

"I'm having some trouble." She admits.

He squints at her again and she's beginning to wonder if his eyes are permanently narrowed like he's suspicious of even the air around him.

"What kinda trouble?" he asks, eyes still narrowed like she's about to pull a gun on him. As if to show she's not, she pulls her handgun out of the fanny pack like bag that's tied to her left thigh and makes a show of setting it away from her, by her backpack. He watches her as she does so.

"I can't get your little arrow out." She says quietly, looking up at him slightly. He snorts at that and comes around to the tail gate to look at her leg.

"Ain't no 'little arrow', lady." He mutters and she grins in spite of herself. So he does have some sense of humor to him.

"I'm Lottie." She says softly and he glances up at her, looking sort of surprised. She's sort of surprised too honestly. She hadn't really intended to tell anyone in this group her name since she didn't intend to stay. She had told Sophia mostly because she thought conversation would help relax the girl and make her more comfortable. Maybe it was the fact that he was so curious? Maybe even sort of interesting? No. Her mind replies in the voice that doesn't really belong to her but she's grown very used to, especially these days. You did it because you know he's not one of your schizophrenic hallucinations.