"Oh come on! We didn't have any problems heading out, but why are we encountering even more problems heading back?!"
Andrea raised her voice in frustration while looking at the roadblock ahead of them.
It was another walker herd.
"Why do these bastards keep popping out from everywhere?"
She was feeling extremely frustrated. They were just barely halfway through their journey when they had once again stumbled onto a walker herd heading west!
Even Michael is surprised at this occurrence. He knows that encountering walker herds in the series is even somewhat of a rare sight since they stay in one place for a very long time. The only time they'd move is if there's something or someone that intentionally disturbs them.
'Could this be related to me?' Michael couldn't help but have that kind of thought when watching the herd slowly trudged ahead of them. The appearance of this herd made him realize that he had been encountering a lot of walker herds lately, starting from when he left the Greene Family farm until now.
His encounters with them had been quite consistent since, and never once failed in causing him trouble.
"Should we look for another route? There's a lot of roads to go around them. Going west might be better." Rosita ignored the other woman at the side and looked to ask Michael. The herd is heading west and she figured that it would be better for them to take the roads ahead of the herd before they are blocked off from passing through.
Michael did not immediately respond to her and contemplated for a couple of moments. "Let's try going east this time. Let's hope this herd before us is not as big as the one from before."
"But if we head east, there's a slight chance that we might encounter that herd from another day again." Andrea interjected right away when she heard his words and offered her thoughts on it.
"Then we better hope that we don't cause that would be a pain in the as*." Michael responded in a casual tone. He figured that the chance of encountering the same herd might be lesser than encountering a new one, he hopes.
"And if we do?" Rosita felt a little annoyed that Michael ignored her opinion since she thought her idea was at least a little safer than his plan.
"Then we'd be in a fickle situation since we don't have a rough guess on how big these herds are unless we climb up to something tall to look. If we do encounter them then we'd be trapped and stuck around these parts for a day or two at most, and I would rather have that situation for us than going west and dealing with more survivors in the other states. It's not only walkers we need to worry about, you know. People too, and they are a much bigger threat than the walking undead." Michael responded and also gave Rosita an answer to why he did not listen to her suggestion, and it at least cooled her resentment towards him.
Intrigued by his words, Andrea looked at him with curiosity in her eyes. "Did you meet a lot of survivors like us when you left?"
Michael slowly backed up the vehicle and drove back to where they recently drove from. "Yeah, there were several, some were good and some were bad. Mostly the latter though, I guess people quickly realized that they can now freely release their dark, hidden desires without getting the law breathing down their necks."
"People have always been animals in human skins. In fact, most animals have more morality in them than humans will ever be. Humans had always disguised their cruel acts under the excuse that we're the more superior species compared to the other inhabitants on this planet." Rosita echoed Michael's with her own opinion on the subject.
Andrea and Michael became silent, especially the latter since what Rosita said hit him hard. As someone who once had the opportunity to step foot in the world of the elites in his previous life. He had witnessed things that a child of God should not be doing, the brutality, the debauchery, the deceitful smiles on their innocent faces and any bad thing a person should not be doing, they did them all..
He had seen them all first hand and it still disgust him whenever he remembers that kind of memory.
'It was during that time that I discovered that all those conspiracy theories going around were true.' Michael remembered something from before and it gave him a shiver.
"Does that mean our group lucked out because we never had those kinds of problems?" Andrea asked as she sat in the space behind Michael.
Rosita shook her head and replied. "It's not that your group lucked out, but because you have a few very capable individuals in your group. And with someone like Michael in the mix, I doubt a small survivor group would pose a threat to the community."
Andrea looked at her and raised an eyebrow. "So, we indeed lucked out?"
Speechless, Rosita stared straight at the road in silence for a moment before responding. "I guess you all did."
As someone who's experience on the road is just around the City of Atlanta, Andrea feels incredibly curious about their adventures. "So you two…have you encountered cannibals before?"
"Yep." Michael answered curtly.
Rosita replied with a shrug. "I did."
"Do they look any different than us? Are there any distinctions we can spot to differentiate them from us?" Andrea asked since her knowledge about them only came from movies she had seen before.
Rosita slightly tilted her head and thought for a moment. "Huh, I don't think they look any different from us. Maybe a little crazy in the head?"
Not sure about her description of them, Rosita turned to Michael. "Right?"
"Yeah, they act a little crazy. Especially in front of food. If you have a hard time determining what kind of a person is, then just look into their eyes and you'll see if they still see you as a person or food. It's that emotion behind one's eyes when they're in front of their favorite food. It's not easy to hide it." Michael had already gotten used to killing people, but the sight of people consuming or just the thought that there's people out there eating their own kind still gives him the heebie jeebies.
Andrea imagined herself meeting cannibals and getting eaten unknowingly. She shivered and out of concern, she told them. "We need to become more strict on letting in new members into the community. Since we don't know if they had eaten human flesh before or not."
"That's why I instructed T-Dawg and the others to no longer accept people for the time being. Since it should be around this time that there'd be scarcity in regards to food." Michael replied. Though he knows that food should still be abundant in the cities, the danger it poses to get them is also significant since it's not really the walkers that people should look out for, but the same human such as themselves.
The vehicle slowly slowed down to stop and Michael stuck his body out of the window and tried to feel something in the air.
"It's big and it's near." Michael crawled his way back inside and told them.
"Yeah, I can hear them even from here." Rosita replied with a grave expression. They've already driven far from the initial road they took, but they can still hear the moans of the herd not far from them.
Andrea pointed at the mile marker by the road. "We've driven at least three miles and by estimate, this herd should be the largest herd we've encountered so far. Not including that one in Florida. We also don't know if this herd only stretches this far."
"We kept getting delayed. It's like the world is against us going back." Rosita suddenly said those words from out of nowhere, and it slightly startled Michael that he turned his head towards her while driving.
"What?" Rosita saw Michael looking at her with an expression she couldn't understand, so she snapped at him.
"Nothing."
'It's relieving knowing that I'm not the only one who finally realizes the weirdness of this journey back.'