Chapter 10 Escaping Atlanta

The group continues to run up the stairs for a couple more minutes, before reaching the roof. Most of them are breathing heavily, trying to regain their breath, John suffering no such symptoms, looks at the man standing on the ledge of the roof holding a rifle.

The man had very short hair almost buzzed, and he had a decent amount of muscle on him. The man's face has quite a few wrinkles indicating his age, if John had to guess he would say the man is in his mid-late 40's. Overall, he looked like the definition of a redneck.

Dixon turns towards them as they were making quite the bit of noise rushing up the stairs. Morales says, "Hey Dixon are you crazy"

Dixon says, "You ought to be nicer to a man with a gun". He then jumps off the ledge, back onto the roof with a grunt, saying, "Only common sense."

T-dog runs over and confronts him about how the shots are drawing even more walkers towards them, "You're bringing more of them down on our' ass man".

Dixon says, "Bad enough I got this taco bender on my ass all day. Now I got to take orders from you?! I don't think so bro, that'll be the day".

T-dog says, "That'll be the day? Hey, you got something you want to tell me", Morales tries to stop T-dog, but he doesn't listen, the man continues to try to mediate between Dixon, and T-dog.

Dixon, now Merle, says, "You want to know the day? I'll tell you the day, Mr. Yo, the day I take orders from a nigger. T-dog lunges at Merle, but is smacked in the face, with the butt of the rifle, knocking him straight to the floor. Rick goes forward to stop Merle, but is punched in the face.

Seeing the situation, John walked forward and confronted Merle, he let Merle swing on him, he then grabbed his arm when he missed, he turned and throws Merle over his shoulder straight to the ground. While Merle was trying to catch his breath, John roles him over on his stomach, then steps on his back.

Rick standing back up and seeing the situation is handled, throws John a set of handcuffs. John grabs both of Merle's arms, putting them on behind Merle's back. Rick then says to Merle, "Listen, there are no niggers or redneck white pieces of shit, only dark meat and white meat, it's us and the dead. We survive this by coming together, not apart."

Merle says, "Screw you man."

Rick responds, "I think you make a habit of missing the point. You ought to be nicer to a man with a gun, only common sense". Rick says this while holding a pistol to Merle's head, he checks Merle's pockets and finds some crack, he flicks merle's noise before throwing the drugs off the edge of the roof.

Rick then walks over to the ledge and leans on it, the others follow, and Andrea says, "It's like time square down there".

Morales asks T-dog, "How's the signal."

He responds, "Like Merle's brain, weak". Hearing this Merle gives T-dog 'the bird'

Morales says, "Keep trying."

Andrea says, "Why there's nothing they can do".

Rick looks at Morales and seeing this he explains, "We have a group of people outside the city. The refuge center, that's a pipe dream".

Rick moves on saying, "We need to find a way out of here."

Merle says, "Yeah, good luck with that. I heard these streets aren't safe.", he then flirts with Andrea, but she was disgusted.

They decide to come up with a plan, Rick suggests they go through the sewers, Morales tells Glen, "Go look in the alley for any manhole cover". Sadly, there weren't any, so the group was discouraged.

Suddenly Jacqui remembers something, telling the group, "Old buildings like these, built in the 1920's, often have drainage tunnels town to the sewers, in case of a flood."

Glen ask her, "How do know that?"

She replies, "It was my job, I worked the city's zoning office.", with the possibility of the plan working the go down the stairs, to the subbasement, to check for these drainage tunnels.

Reaching the subbasement, holding flashlights, they arrive in front of, a ladder leading down. They then talk about the tunnel, and Glen asks, "So who is going down?", everyone looks at Glen, but John walks towards the ladder, telling Rick and Andrea to go to the store front and the rest of the group to wait here for him. John starts sliding down.

Now inside the tunnel he walks for a while with his flashlight, he reaches a section that was blocked by steel bars. There was a walker on the other side of the bars eating a rat, the walker notices him and walks over to the bars. John grabs his military shovel, swinging it down on the walker's weak skull, shattering it, blood getting on his new shirt.

He thought, 'Son of a bitch. I just fucking changed'. Then he jogged back the way he came and tells the group what he had found, he says, "Even if we could cut through the bar. We don't know how many walkers are hidden throughout the sewer system. Also, it is a more confined space, making it harder to evade them if necessary".

On the roof, T-dog is still trying to contact their group, while arguing with Merle.

Meanwhile, in the store front Rick teaches Andrea, how to switch the safety off. Then she saw a neckless, it had a mermaid on it. Rick says to take it. While they were distracted, the walkers break through the first set of glass doors.

John's group comes into the store front right as it happens. They need to find another way to escape and quickly, they head back up to the roof, using a pair of binoculars, they see a construction site, just down the street.

Rick suggests that they try to get one of those trucks, he asks glen for help, in order to make it there and Glen says, "I could only help you before, because they were distracted".

Rick asks, "Can we create a distraction. There drawn by sound, right?"

Glen answers, "Right like dogs. They hear a sound they come."

Rick asks, "What else?"

Morales says, "They can hear you, see you, smell you. If they catch you, they'll eat you".

Hearing that the walkers can sense them by smell, comes up with a plan. They go down to the store front and grab gloves and gray trench coats, they all put them on, then Rick and John go to the alley and grab one of the walkers they killed, it seems two more walkers had crawled under the bus, so they move quickly.

Rick puts on a face shield and grabs a fire axe after breaking the glass it was behind. Using the axe, he starts to swing but stops, he drops the axe and searches the corpse, finding a wallet and he talks about the man. Then he thanks him for his sacrifice".

He picks the axe back up and swings repeatedly, making multiple squelching sounds, turning the stomach area into mush. He continues for a while before giving the axe to Morales, telling him to keep chopping, Glen looks like he is going to vomit at any second, John is just standing there with no expression, although slightly disturbed. They start to rub the guts on John, Glen, and Rick. While Glen was covered, after hearing Rick say, "Think about something else, Puppies and Kittens"

T-dog says, "Dead Puppies and Kittens.", Glen suddenly vomits. Rick tells them to be ready when they get back.

Now covered in walker guts and various other part, they walk out the door into the alleyway, each holding different weapons. Rick with the fire axe, John with his shovel, and Glen with a crowbar. They carefully walk down the alley towards the bus, trying to mimic the walker's way of movement, walking past the two walkers. The walkers had no reaction to them, so they carefully crawled under the bus, trying not to lose any of the guts the put on.

Meanwhile the rest of the group, still in the building, run up the stairs to the roof and start to look for them, even Merle while cuffed comes over and looks down with them. Morales tells T-dog to try to contact their group again, which he does promptly.

After crawling under the bus, they stand up and start to walk slowly towards the construction site. Suddenly there is some rumbling in the sky.

In the group outside the city, we see 2 men working on an old RV, one young and one old, they talk about it for a while, before a blonde girl comes over and says, "Where are they, they should have been back by now."

The old man says, "Worrying won't make it better". Then the men go back to fixing the RV.

Then we see Shane teaching Carl how to tie a knot, the boy looks to be around 11 years old. They are interrupted by the Radio, T-dogs voice coming through, although statically. T-dog says, Hello, base camp! Can anybody out there hear me?".

A group of people walk over to the radio, Dale says, "Reception is bad on this end, repeat."

T-dog replies, "Shane is that you? Were in deep shit. Were trapped in a department store".

Hearing this the whole group has a worried expression on their faces. Amy says, "We have to rescue them."

Shane says, "No we cannot risk the rest of the group, trying to save them. They are trapped, she's gone. You just have to deal with it."

Amy gets upset and says, "Those are our people, that's my sister, you son of a bitch.", then she storms off.

John, Glen, and Rick are still walking down the street surrounded by walkers, rumbling continues overhead, making them anxious. The rumbling gets louder, as it begins to pour suddenly, they are about 50 feet from the construction site, they keep calm and continue to act like walkers, after about 30 seconds the guts were cleaned by the rain, causing the walkers to notice them.

A walker charges at Rick but he swings his axe, slashing its head in two. John seeing their cover is blown starts to swing his shovel towards any walkers that get close to him while starting to make a run for the gate, the others quickly following behind. Seeing that they are still some distance away and there are 10 walkers in front of them, he pulls his pistol out and shoots accurately hitting them in the head, in succession.

The path now clears in front, they run to the gate and climb over leaving a group of walkers on the other side of the fence. They all take their trench coats off, Rick runs towards a moving truck and opens the door.

Glen runs over to a metal box on a wall labelled 'keys', quickly finding the keys to the truck and running to it. While rick and Glen were doing that, John shot 2 more walkers with his pistol before reloading another clip, he put the used one in his vest.

He puts his pistol back in its holster, before lifting his shotgun that he has yet to use, he aims and shooting 8 times, each bullet hitting a walker in the head, some shots even passing through one walker and hitting another because of the close proximity.

Seeing that the fence is about to fall, he runs to the truck and joins Rick and Glen. Rick then starts to drive in the opposite direction, busting through another gate, John takes this time that they are driving to reload 8 shotgun shells into his shotgun.

After driving for a while, they stop next to a Camaro, they get out and John breaks the window, causing the alarm to start blaring throughout the street. John then hotwires the car before shoving Glen inside. Glen seeing this and knowing the plan they made, drives of quickly down the road. He draws the walkers that are by the rolling doors of the store away, before Rick drives to the doors, backing up so they can get in quickly.

They were there waiting because Glen had contacted them with his radio, when the group heard the knocking, they quickly opened the rolling door and hopped in the back of the truck. Merle was there, although his hands were still cuffed behind his back.

They quickly drove off and left the city, while in the highway Glen in the red Camaro pulls up beside us, John flags Glen in order to stop him. They quickly stop and John jumps out the back of the truck. He goes toward the Camaro door opening it and popping the hood.

Closing the door, he opens the hood and pulls out the alarm, then he closes the lid and goes back towards the truck. Getting back in, they start to drive again, Rick follows the directions he is given and about 2 hours later they arrive at the groups camp.