Chapter 12: Relax Blondie

("Hey, You alive in there?") The man's voice asks

Rick looks at me and then turns to the radio. I signal him to pick it up and answer back with a nod. He crawls forward and picks up the radio

"Hello. Hello?"

("There you are. You had me wondering")

"Where are you? Outside? Can you see me right now?" Rick asks

("Yeah I see you. You're in the tank, surrounded by Walkers. That's the bad news")

"There's good news?"

("No"). Terrible joke

"Listen, whoever you are. I don't mind telling you that we're a little concerned in here" Rick replies

I had fully accepted that I was a part of this world but now that I was in the middle of it and to see my existence start to change the story and dialogue was still trippy.

("Oh man. You guys should see it from over here. You'd be having a major freak out")

"Got any advice for us?"

("I'd say, make a run for it")

"That's it? Make a run for it?"

("My way's not as dumb as it sounds. Most of the geeks are on top of the tank since they saw you go in that way. The left side of the tank have portable barriers pushed up against it so there aren't many geeks on that side. Those tanks should have a bottom hatch. I suggest you crawl out under the tank, push the barriers aside and run but how you do that, I have no clue")

I was wondering how they'd work around Mary not being here but this was just stupid. I know my choice made this situation 100x harder than it should've been but fuck that, I'd rather sacrifice all the survivors here than hurt Mary.

("You got ammo?")

"Not much, I count 15 rounds in the Beretta, 5 in the colt and 13 in my partner's Glock" Rick says as he ejects the magazine, inspects it then reloads it

Rick's not as flustered as he was in the show. My presence might have helped him calm down a fair bit. I already grabbed the grenade off the shelf next to the soldier's body and showed it to Rick

("Make it count. Get out of the tank and go up the street on the right side. You'll see an alley there, maybe 50 yards away. Be there.")

I start preparing and I do one more sweep of the tank and everything else is either useless or too heavy to carry, by normal standards. I hoped he'd become smarter because of my influence but his actions made me start to doubt my decision to choose him

"Hey, what's your name?". Stupid question given the circumstances

("Have you been listening?! You're running out of time!")

"Right" He turns it off and looks at me "So, what's the plan, Matty?"

"We create a distraction that'll give us a bit more breathing room. Open the bottom hatch"

Rick is confused but obliges and opens the hatch. I look down and see that it's relatively empty so I pull the pin on the grenade and throw it towards the other end of the street, through the Walker's legs. I then instruct Rick to close the hatch after I got back in.

"So what now?" Rick asks

"Now we wait." I answer

A few seconds later, we heard a loud explosion beside the tank. I guess my throw must've rolled it near a car that still had fuel. I look at Rick and signal him to wait. After about 5 minutes, I tell him to open the hatch

"Now, no matter what you do, don't stop running. We'll clear anything in our way"

We crawl out from under the tank and the explosion had attracted more Walkers then I thought it would but that just meant it was safer for us now. We both get up and run up the street. Rick with one hand on his stomach is hitting every Walker in the head, with deadly precision. I admit I might've looked down on him too much because his actions were moronic but he had real skills.

We get there and we see an Asian teenager with a backpack standing at the alley, waving us down. I had watched the show years ago and I couldn't for the life of me, remember his name but I knew he was a good person from the show

"You guys are crazy!" He screams

"Don't look at me. It was his plan" Rick points at me

"It got the job done, didn't it?" I retort

"Let's just get out of here." He sighs

We run over to the ladder and start climbing. Only after we reach the first platform do we then see Walkers coming into the alley. The distraction worked better than we hoped

"You guys are both insane. You trying to tell the whole city we're here with that firework show?" He asks

"Wasn't our intention" Rick replies

"Well whatever, you're both still dumbasses" He adds

"That's Matt and I'm Rick. Thanks for the assist" Rick extends his hand

The teen looks at me and I give him a scout's salute. He shakes his head and also extends his hand towards Rick

"Glenn. You're welcome." Says the teen

While we added each other as friends on FB irl, the Walkers had gotten to the bottom of the ladder and looked like they were about to start climbing. Glenn goes to the next set of ladders and looks up, grabbing it

"Bright side, it'll be the fall that kills us. I'm a glass half full type of person" Glenn says

"I like him" I tell Rick with a grin before following Glenn up

Rick just shakes his head, looking back down one more time before following after us. Once we reach the top, we start jumping between buildings with Rick asking question, Glenn answering and me listening while following them quietly. Glenn's been calling them geeks this entire time. I don't know his reasoning behind it but It was confusing. We get to roof hatch when Rick asks the main question that's been on his mind this whole time

"Why'd you stick your neck out for us back there?" Rick asks

"Call it foolish, naïve hope. If I'm ever that far up Shit's Creek, someone might do the same for me. I guess that makes me crazier than you" He sighs before jumping into a building through a ceiling hatch

We jog through the building and go through a door that leads to the back of the building. We go down the fire escape and Glenn pulls out his radio and starts giving his report about us and everything. We get to the bottom of an alleyway when we see two Walkers notice us and start moving towards us. Before they can do anything, the opposite building's door opens up and two big figures decked in hockey gear come out and start beating the shit out of the Walkers.

"Let's go. Come on!" Glenn says

We run past them and into the building when I hear one of the figures call the other 'Morales' and tell him that it's time to go. The door locks behind us and a blonde haired lady pushes Rick angrily against the table and holds a gun to his head

While he was being pushed, I grab Rick's colt out of his holster and unholster my gun as well. Before Rick hits the table, my gun was already aimed at the Blonde's head while the other was aimed at everyone else in the room, in case anyone started feeling heroic.

"Now blondie, I know you might be upset but I don't appreciate you threatening my friend" I say politely but my facial expression was anything but polite

Everyone in the room is telling the blonde, Andrea, to put her gun down and she finally does, unwillingly. I lower my gun as well and hand Rick back his partner. He nods appreciatively and holsters his gun.

"We're dead.....we are all dead" Andrea says

"I don't understand" Rick replies

One of the figures named Morales, who turned out to be male latino, had stripped out of his hockey gear and started explaining to us

"Look, we came into the city to scavenge supplies. You know what the key to scavenging is? Surviving. Do you know what the key to Surviving is? Sneaking in and out, Tip toeing. Not shooting up the street like a cowboy"

"Every geeks from miles around heard you popping off rounds and that explosion didn't help" says the other dude, who happened to be black.

"You guys just rang the dinner bell" Andrea adds.

The Walkers were at the front door, hitting against the doors which didn't look like it would last long. We were in a clothing mart and there was enough materials around to create a makeshift barrier around the entrances to buy us a few more minutes but these guys were too busy freaking out to use their heads.

"What were you doing out there anyway" Andrea asks

"I was trying to flag down a helicopter" Rick answers

"Helicopter? Man that's crap. there ain't no damn helicopter" the black guy says

"It was just a hallucination, you were imagining things. It happens" Says the black lady

"We saw it. Right, Matty?" Rick says looking at me

I nod at him and the others seem to accept it a bit more. Maybe it's my looks or my charisma stat is too high? I am just that convincing? Bullshit. It was probably my little stunt earlier that made them take me more seriously and I could see a bit of fear in their eyes when they looked at me.

"Hey T-Dog. Try that CB. Can you contact the others?" Morales asks to the black guy

"The refugee center?" Rick asks

"Yeah the refugee center. They got biscuits waiting at the oven for us" Black lady says

"Got no signal. Maybe on the roof?" T-Dog answers

The sound of a gun being shot resounds outside the building and the source of the sound seems to be coming from above. Everyone looks up and I see different reactions on everyone's faces from annoyance to anger but there seem to be an underlying sense of fear prevalent on every one of them.

"Oh no. Was that Dixon?" Andrea says, anxiously

Everybody moves out the door and up the stairs, complaining every step of the way. I was the only one amused and slightly excited because I was about to meet the most controversial character I had chosen to add to my team