What Comes After • the walking dead ²

1 • What Comes After

After? What comes after? After the beginning of the apocalypse? After leaving home? After the CDC? After the highway and the farm? After everything? Everything that has happened, what comes after?

After... it's a question, Chase Mason had been asking himself for days, weeks, and months on end. After eight months of thinking about "what comes after" one would think Chase would have known by then, but he didn't.

Rick Grimes's so-called "group" had been doing the same thing all winter, going in circles. Going from one place to the next and the next. Round and round. What comes after that? What comes after going in loops? Always hoping to find something that wouldn't be there because it hasn't been the last two times?

After? It's such a simple question. One Chase doesn't have the answer to, but if he had to guess, he would assume it was this:

The old car screeched to a halt, jolting the youngest Mason out of his deep slumber. His emerald eyes sprang open, and he quickly looked around the cramped car. "Why are we stopped?" Was the boy's first question. Beside him, his older sister Alexandra Mason lifted her head.

Alexa was still (for lack of better words) Alexa. Her emerald eyes were as green as ever, still sparkling like always. Her long brown hair was pulled into its usual ponytail, and sitting on her broad shoulders was her iconic black shirt tucked into a pair of blue jeans that were tucked into her worn boots. And around her neck was Tristan's locket.

"We're scavenging, kiddo." Alexa said, then quickly added, "stay here," before she was out of the car and on the dry grass along with Carl, and Rick as they met up with Daryl and T-dog.

Pressing his ear against the dusty glass, Chase carefully listened to their conversation, or lack thereof. "It's just a quick run," Lori assured him from the passenger seat. Chase nodded, reluctantly peeling his forehead off the window as he watched his older sister and the others disappear behind a wall of trees.

The boy flopped back against his torn seat and sighed. Lori looked at him through the review mirror and shook her head.

Rick kicked the rickety door, forcing it to fly wide open. A makeshift wooden arrow carved by Alexa's own Bowie knife was the first to sink into the decaying flesh of one of the walkers in the hallway. The other was slain by a silent bullet to the brain by Rick Grimes himself.

With her compound bow held high, Alexa dipped into what would be the dining room alongside Carl Grimes– who quickly veered off into the kitchen. Alexa started into the pantry, looking high and low on the shelves for anything useful. Sighing when there wasn't a thing, her emerald green eyes caught on the door at the end of the thin hall.

Carefully, her fingers danced on the rusty knob before flinging the door open, only to be met by the glowing steel-blue eyes of Daryl Dixon. He too had his bow raised, poised to attack, but once he met the narrowed eyes of Alexa, he lowered his weapon. Alexa lowered her bow as well as she nodded at the man, who nodded back before they both went back the way they had come.

Alexa headed into the kitchen, the old wooden floorboards creaking under her worn boots. She nodded at Carl, who abandoned his task of looking through cupboards. Alexa inclined her head towards the next door and Carl nodded back as he raised his gun and pushed the door open.

Inside was a lone walker, decaying and dead but very much alive like all the others. Carl raised his gun at it, but Alexa was quick to release her arrow first. "Save your ammo, kid." She told him as she went to retrieve her arrow. "There isn't a lot of it these days."

Carl nodded before he and Alexa went back into the kitchen, where Rick was rummaging around. "I already looked," Carl said. Rick nodded just as the back door opened and in walked Glenn and Maggie. The two nodded and the Alexa and the Grimes's nodded back.

Together the group walked back into the main hall where Rick waved the rest of the waiting group inside. The group carefully filed into the house just as T-dog and Daryl came down from the upstairs, the latter already working on pulling the feathers out of an owl he had shot.

Chase and Alexa followed him into the living room along with the others. Over the winter, the group had gotten quick at setting up camp, and inside this farmhouse was no different. Carol and Beth swiftly made a bed out of sleeping bags for Lori, who moaned as she sat down.

Alexa's eye twitched as she watched the woman get pampered with a whole jar of peanut butter to herself and blankets for her legs and a pillow for her neck as she constantly let her hands rub her bump. Lori was always complaining about her situation and pestering Alexa and Hershel about her baby. Lori was the one thing driving Alexa to the brink of insanity.

Of course, Alexa understood she was pregnant, but still, she saw that as Lori's fault for getting into that situation in the first place. How stupid was she to get pregnant in a world where when people die they come back and try to kill? It seemed to be every day that Alexa was reminding herself to stay patient with the expecting mother.

As Alexa sank into the chair next to Daryl, he was quick to notice her glaring at Lori. He handed the girl the owl he had shot upstairs, hoping that plucking out its feathers would release some of her anger. Daryl was right, of course, seeing as the second Alexa got her hands on the small animal she practically ripped it in half, tearing out its brown and white feathers.

From across the room, Chase watched his sister with his big green eyes. Over the past months, the boy had become more and more of a watcher and less and less of a talker.

The silence was so thick, one could cut it with a knife, and it was only broken as Carl walked back into the room, two cans of dog food in his hands. Guess, there was something in that old kitchen after all. However, Rick was quick to take the can out of his son's hands and throw it into the empty fireplace.

The sudden sound made Alexa jump as she looked up from her owl and at Rick before looking at the half-opened can. Rick's actions sent one clear message; they weren't animals. The group was still humans, and they still had their humanity.

"Psst!" T-dog suddenly whisper-shouted as he inclined his head to the window. By now, the group knew the signal well and was quick to jump up and pack up. In a minute, the group was out the door, led by Alexa and Chase who were still the fastest out of them all.

Daryl and Glenn were out behind them, soon followed by Maggie, T, and Lori, who was slowing the rest of the group down. Everyone threw their belongings into their vehicles, and Maggie made a split-second decision to grab an axe that was propped up against the side of the house before she too was in a car.

Just like that, the group was on the road again, driving away, and all the while knowing the herd they had been running from all winter was bound to catch up with them sooner or later. It was only a matter of time.