Vroom!
"Hey, what's wrong? Why are we suddenly in a hurry?" Andrea raised her voice and grabbed tightly on the handle.
The same goes for Rosita and when she looked over Michael's shoulders. She saw that they were going at over eighty and still rising.
"You're going too fast. Say something!" Rosita yelled. She's obviously not comfortable with the current speed they're going from how she hastily put on her seatbelt.
"Just stay down. I think we've got company."
"What?!"
Michael warned them in a grim tone, and the two women finally stopped questioning him and immediately followed his orders. Andrea hastily pulled the lever for her seat and reclined it all the way back while Rosita just kept her body low and pulled off the safety on her Thompson SMG.
Andrea looked at Michael with some panic in her eyes. "If we're really in trouble. I just want you to know that this car is not bulletproof. So you better get us out of her in one piece cause I do not plan to die today."
Fortunately for them, after driving for miles and finally leaving the town's vicinity, nothing untoward happened so far. No attacks, much less other survivors suddenly chasing after them.
The car slowed down on the road side before coming to a complete halt.
Michael looked behind them through the rearview mirror before finally letting out a sigh of relief.
"What happened?" Rosita asked while turning on the safety of her rifle and taking off her seat belt. She looks stressed and weary due to heightened tension from earlier.
"The pharmacy was weirdly clean." Michael only said those words and didn't explain anything further. Since nothing happened thus far, it suddenly made him think that he was probably just being paranoid earlier.
"That's it? It's a small town. So people might have just overlooked this place and even if they knew this place existed, they might have just decided to ignore it since it's not worth the trouble." Andrea made a face like she couldn't believe what she just heard.
Michael glanced at her from the corner of his eyes while yawning. "Remember, nothing is too small or too big when you're sick or hungry. I've already travelled across two states and I've gone through even the most obscure community, and even those kinds of places weren't spared from the chaos this virus has caused. No sane survivor would leave a pharmacy full of things like that alone. Remember when we were still living on Hershel's farm? That family also had a pharmacy they constantly visited within the neighborhood. So it's better to be safe than sorry."
Being reminded of their stay in the Greene Family farm, Andrea also remembered that Glenn not once, but twice accompanied Maggie when they visited that said pharmacy.
"Finally remember it?" Michael slightly smiled.
"Yeah."
"It's fine. You'll learn as you go out more in the future. Just remember to always trust your gut feeling, even if sometimes it's not the right choice. It's better to live another day than die today. Living is better than dying after all." Michael responded while softly patting her hand that's on her thigh.
"Okay." Andrea replied earnestly.
Rosita was also quietly listening to him and took his words to heart.
'Now thinking back, his words reminded me about the troubles we encountered back then for failing to notice such a crucial but small detail.'
Inside a fortified town just several miles away from the Prison.
"Did you finally find out what those two had been up to?"
A man bearing a charming and charismatic air is busy pouring himself a glass of whiskey with his back turned to Caesar, who's standing near the door.
The man is clean-shaven, with neatly-combed dark hair. Sporting a dark collared shirt and a pair of trousers. He has this air around him that projects authority and stability. Which is obviously working since Caesar looks tense standing with him in the room.
It's the man called "The Governor" by the people living inside this fortified town.
"I didn't, but Marco happened to overhear them the other day talking about another group of survivors. This is not just a random group, but it seems they are people they're familiar with since Merle mentioned about a brother." Caesar responded while accepting the glass of whiskey offered by The Governor.
The Governor turned around and sat down on the armchair. He stared at his glass of whiskey, twirling it before looking up and to Caesar.
"Hmmm.. I knew there was something weird about those two when they met each other. Continue to keep a close watch on those two. Keep me posted on any changes. There's bound to be a surprise from them soon." He smiled before taking a sip of his whiskey and smiling after.
"Alright." Caesar replied solemnly before making an exit.
Philip looked ahead, and he had this curious smile on his face.
"I wonder what surprises you two will give me soon. I'm already looking forward to it."
Meanwhile, at the southern wall of the community.
The two men in question are together again, working as lookouts for the wall.
"I wonder if that kid reported our conversation we had the other day." Merle said while taking a hit of his cigarette.
Shane kept walking back and forth along the walkway just behind the wall. He wasn't only watching the outside of the wall, but also the people inside. "He obviously did. I noticed that there's two more people watching us."
Shrugging his shoulders, Merles threw the cigarette butt over the wall and in a voice that only the two of them could hear, he asked. "Why did we even bother doing it? Wouldn't it be better to keep it a secret?"
Shane sighed with a helpless expression and replied. "To lower their guard, you fool. We've been moving together a lot since I arrived here. It's obvious they already have some suspicions towards us. Have you not noticed that Shumpert guy has been a little arrogant lately? He was so submissive to me before after I gave him that beating. I'm sure the two of us are already marked as an unstable factor of this community. So it's better to let them in on our secret to avoid trouble. We don't know what they will do to us if we keep doing suspicious things and they can't get any information on it. Now, we can do more things now that we're in the open and they'll just let us do it."
Merles stared for a moment before feeling amazed but didn't forget to also take a jab at him. "Wow, that's some mind games you got there. I kinda got the reason now why those people started to not like you not long after I'm gone. You play too much with the mind."