"THEY'RE GONNA FEEL PRETTY STUPID WHEN THEY FIND OUT."
***
"No offense, but at the first look y'all look like the freakin' death squad."
Max was still leaning with her back against the side of the train car as she spoke to the group. Her voice cracked from lack of use and she did her best to appear more relaxed around the group. Her knee was still bent at an awkward angle and the woman – Maggie – leaned down on her knees to put pressure on the painful parts of it. The man beside her let out a small chuckle.
He and the youngest one – Glenn and Tara – were the only other two from the group that came near her. The others stood away, some of them oriented towards the door and some of them watching over Max. She'd be stupid to try anything with that many eyes on her, was their presumed logic. The logic was correct. Tara sent her several looks of sympathy which she returned with a small nod and an involuntary, not-so-subtle grimace.
"Yeah, sorry about that." Glenn said. He gulped and exchanged quick eye contact with Maggie. "It's been a rough couple of days." Maggie looked deliberately away from him, and Max felt the room around her tense. Everyone shook their heads subtly, as if trying to physically rid their brains of the horrors they'd witnessed.
Max nodded solemnly in understanding. She'd had a pretty shit couple of days herself.
"Alright," Maggie said from in front of her. In the low light Max could see her lips purse. She rocked back on her heels and looked Max in the eyes, debating whether to help the girl or not. Her eyes eventually settled on yes. "It's only dislocated, and I can move it back in." Max nodded, and Maggie moved to position herself near Max's side to correct her knee. But the redhead's gruff voice stopped her again.
"Wait a damn minute," He said, walking closer to the group. His bright red mustache was the most distinctive feature on his face. His footsteps were significantly heavier than the others, and the sound echoed loudly around the room. "We don't even know this girl, and we're helping her? For all we know she could be one of them!"
"Do you really think they would have chucked me in here like some piece of shit if I was one of them?" Max stared right back up at the redhead, annoyance apparent on her face as she grimaced at him.
"Abraham, she's right." Tara defended beside her. She gestured to Max's knee injury, which she assumed looked as bad as it felt. "I mean, look at her! She looks like she's been hit a couple times with a truck! No offense." Max winced at the implication.
"None taken." She said quietly, exchanging short but meaningful eye contact with the short-haired girl.
"She's right." Glenn spoke up, putting himself in between Abraham and Max in an attempt to diffuse the situation. He took a step closer to the tall man and put an open hand near his chest. "Besides, that's still who we are. Right? It has to be." He looked around the room in encouragement, and everyone around him nodded. Some of them reluctantly, but Glenn stared them down until every single one did. Even the man in the background, who Max could see looked scared shitless nodded along.
He was a leader. Max knew the type. The guys that didn't know they had it in them until all of a sudden, they did. The apocalypse seemed to churn men like that out like one-cent candy at a carnival. Looking satisfied, Glenn turned back around to face Max, Tara, and Maggie.
"So, let's fix her up," He gestured toward Maggie, an almost-smile ghosting his face. It was gone as quickly as it came and replaced with a look of determination. He wiped the sweat off of his upper lip with the back of his bruised hand. "And figure out a way to get the hell out of here."
***
Fixing her knee hurt a lot worse than actually injuring it did, funnily enough. Maggie enlisted the help of two others, Sasha and Bob. Sasha was a soldier, and Bob seemed like the opposite. Max hoped they didn't die today – they seemed good for each other.
No matter how much the relocation of her kneecap hurt, Max didn't scream or cry out. She didn't know these people. But she knew how this worked. She was the odd one out and that meant that if she wanted to stay, she needed to prove her worth to the group. She was strong, and she was going to show them that.
"If you're weak, you die. But just because ya die – it don't mean you're weak."
Tara was concerned for the girl that looked about her age. Her short red hair was sticking to her forehead and no matter how much she gritted her teeth and tried to mask her pain, Tara assumed that it probably hurt just to breathe.
Tara had certainly never seen anything like the scar on her face. It looked fairly new and formed a relatively thick (as knife wounds go) line. It spanned roughly from her left temple to the bottom of her left cheek bone.
Tara was also willing to bet that if breathing hurt, talking hurt like a bitch.
"So, where y'all from?" The girl asked, shifting her red-haired bangs out of her eyes with her still-shaking fingers. From her spot on the floor, she could see that she'd been introduced to everyone in the room except for a short woman with incredibly long hair who was standing protectively in front of the more heavy-set man with a strange-looking mullet. What decade were they in, the 70s? No one responded to her question, and Max let out a sigh before continuing.
"Well," Max started. "I'm pretty sure the only one from 'round here is Maggie. 'Least, she's the only one that sounds like it." Maggie almost flinched at the implication, like thinking of home caused her pain. Max sent her a sympathetic glance. She knew the feeling.
"Yeah," It was Glenn who finally responded after a few moments of awkward silence. "Some of us are from Atlanta area. The others-," He faltered for a moment, seemingly coming to the realization that he didn't know where some of the people he'd spent significant time with were from. "I don't even know." Max nodded along with him.
"Well I'm from Roberta." Max said, smiling sadly. A very clear image of a little white house with dark green shutters imprinted itself on the back of her eyelids. "From what I can tell, it's only a few miles away from where we are now." Maggie squinted her eyes at the young girl, seemingly deep in thought.
Roberta, where did she know that from?
"You got a group?" Sasha asked from the corner adjacent to Max's. She watched the woman closely as she gritted her teeth and continued, despite the new wave of pain originating from her knee that crashed over her body. She was trying to seem strong and damn, it was working. Max shook her head in response, and the group exchanged silent eye contact.
"No." She said, quietly. "Just me." The group around her grew quiet, and she felt Tara's soft hand on her shoulder in sympathy. She recoiled slightly at her touch and leaned her head on to the back wall of the room to cover for her reaction.
"No matter what you think, you 'aint safe."
She wasn't safe. She closed her eyes and clenched her fists, feeling the crescents of her nails dig harshly into her palms. The pain was familiar, and seemed to ground Max to the situation laid out in front of her.
"Don't ever let 'em trick you into thinking you are when you're not. That's how they get you."
Josh was right. She wasn't safe.
But, they hadn't killed her yet. There was something to be said for that.
***
After what felt like an entire day of waiting, something was finally happening. There were voices outside. The others in the train car heard them as well, confirming that the sounds didn't originate in Max's head. Tara made her way over to Max and held out her hand for the other girl to take. Max looked up at her in surprise but saw only sincerity in Tara's eyes.
Wincing at the pain in her knee, Max gripped her hand and used it to pull herself into a standing position. She stood shakily, putting pressure on her throbbing leg to find that, fortunately, it didn't hurt that much when she walked. It certainly felt better than it had mere hours before, and she had this group of strangers to thank for that.
Max made her way to the side of the train car and rested her ear against the cool metal. For the second time in less than a day, she could hear footsteps and muffled voices. She let out a shaky breath as they came closer to the wall her ear was pressed against.
Fear crept its way into the room, no matter how much the inhabitants of it tried to push away the feeling.
The group stood behind her, holding their breaths. They wore questioning expressions on their faces. Max turned towards them and shrugged her shoulders. She didn't know what was going on any more than they did.
The door of the train car creaked open, and Max and Tara were quickly pushed to the back of the train car. The group stood in front of them, their fists raised and their hands near whatever they had for small, makeshift weapons. If they had to go down, they sure as hell were going down fighting.
Their faces were obscured by the darkness, but Max could hear their labored breaths. They were afraid of the unknown – of what was about to happen.
And then a man stepped in through the door.
He wore a cool-looking jacket that reminded Max oddly of Joshua. The cuts that littered his face almost looked like some sort of painting, if the various splatters of blood were the paint and his rough skin was the canvas. His jaw was clenched, and he turned around quickly to face the door with an angry expression on his face. Another death squad-looking man.
The next man to come through looked like a redneck, plain and simple. Max knew the type, and this guy looked even more pissed than the first guy, if that was possible. He was very obviously directing his anger to his fists, which were caked in dirt and blood as they clenched so hard they were almost sheet white. He wore a sleeveless vest with angel wings on the back on top of a normal-looking (minus the knife slashes) shirt.
The next person to come in was a tall, Black woman. She looked pissed too, but the emotion between her and them wasn't even close to comparable. Something told Max that if you received the look the people on the outside were getting from this woman, you weren't going to make it out alive. She wore a belt, which Max immediately spotted as useful when taken apart.
The group at the door was still looking, they were still waiting.
At last, the last member of their small party (dare she say, family) entered the train car. It was a young boy, probably about twelve or thirteen. Although he looked just as angry as the adults he came in with, Max could see the fear in his eyes. It matched well with the stain of blood across his chin that was clearly not his own. It was always so much harder for children to hide their emotions.
That was usually why they died.
The three others looked considerably more relieved when the young boy made it into the train car unharmed (or at least alive). The first man put his arm around the boy's shoulder and pulled him softly into his chest.
Max had a feeling these people were tough. But when the door closed behind them, that was when she knew. They didn't flinch, they didn't stop, they didn't sit down. They stood, still staring at the stupid, unmoving door, as if willing it to crumble in front of them.
They knew they weren't safe.
Glenn stepped forward. Suddenly, Max heard Maggie's sigh of disbelief and the small sob that accompanied it. She knew these people.
"Rick?" Glenn asked, stepping forward into the light so he could be seen by the members of the new group.
"You're here." The man called Rick responded. He didn't smile, but his eyes seemed almost hopeful. "You're here." He said it again as if he was confirming that this was real. Glenn nodded back to confirm even further that it was.
The new group sized up the people behind the people they so obviously knew. Max knew that Abraham's group hadn't known Glenn and Maggie's for long and deduced that Rick and his buddies didn't know Abraham's group either.
Rick looked around the room, his eyes shifting from person to person before landing on Tara. His expression was hard to read when his eyes met hers. He looked almost angry, and Tara guilty. But one look from Glenn, and Rick accepted whatever it was the two had between them.
"They're our friends." Maggie explained, looking back to send a nod specifically to Max and Tara. Max sent a small smile back at the woman, knowing that she did absolutely nothing to deserve that title. Still, it had been a long time since she heard anything like that, and it felt strangely good. "They helped save us."
"Yeah," The redneck responded, stepping forward and revealing his prominent black eye in the light. "Now they're friends of ours."
"For however long that'll be." Abraham said, and Max felt herself nod along with him. A small smirk made its way onto her face, but it was gone before it reached her eyes.
She knew she shouldn't trust these people. But they were survivors, just like her. That much was clear.
"No." Rick said, capturing the attention of the room. If you had dropped a pin, although Max was pretty sure those weren't important anymore, you would have been able to hear it hit the floor of the train car at that moment.
Rick moved back over to the door of the train car and pressed his eye against it to look out of the opening as best as he could. Everyone in the room watched him look out into the courtyard for a moment, the light illuminating his blood-speckled face. Max almost thought he was going to start hitting the thing, or yell at whoever was out there to let them out.
Instead, Rick turned to the group and smiled. Max was jarred for a moment, but then she understood. This group – this family, was torn apart. Maybe it was by themselves, maybe by dead ones, maybe by some external force. But they were broken, they were scattered both literally and figuratively.
But then these people, people that fully intended on causing them harm brought them all together. They did it completely unintentionally – that was the best part.
Now, they'd all be damned if they got separated from their family again. Max felt a ghost of a smile grace her lips. Something told her this was going to end with a fight.
"They're gonna feel pretty stupid when they find out," Rick said. He paused for a moment, as if waiting for someone to question what he was talking about.
"Find out what?" Abraham asked, stepping forward to meet his eyes.
Then, Rick Grimes turned to them, a sinister and determined smile on his face and said the words that would forever change the lives of the human-eating bastards outside of the train car and many of the people inside the train car:
"They're fucking with the wrong people."
Max was about to learn how right he was.