After burying the women, the group resumed their journey.
The atmosphere inside the Humvee was quieter than usual.
No one spoke.
The only sounds were the rumble of the engine and the faint scratching of the priest's pen as he wrote relentlessly in his notebook.
Carol glanced at Max.
He sat in his usual spot, staring out the window, his expression as calm as ever.
That worried her more than if he had cried.
Killing those women couldn't have been easy. No matter what they had asked for, no matter how much they had suffered, he was still the one who ended their lives.
And he had done it without showing a trace of emotion.
Carol remembered Mary and her son.
She remembered the same cold expression on Max's face afterward.
At first, she had thought he simply didn't care.
Now she wasn't so sure.
One thing she had learned about Max was that he was exceptionally good at hiding what he felt.
Too good.
Her eyes narrowed slightly.
There was something else bothering her.
Max had known.
Not just about the trap in the tunnel, but also about the women hidden behind the wall.
She was certain of it.
But how?
For a brief moment, she wondered if he had known those people before today.
The thought vanished almost as quickly as it appeared.
No. That didn't make sense.
Still, the question lingered.
Daryl drove in silence, focused on the road.
Maggie stared out the opposite window.
Neither of them said anything, but Carol could tell they were thinking the same thing.
No one asked.
The events in the tunnel were still too fresh.
No one wanted to think about them more than they already had.
His father had once described him as innocent, cheerful, and sometimes a little naive.
Looking at the boy sitting before her now, Carol could hardly believe they were talking about the same person.
Could someone really change that much in only a few years?
Then she remembered everything Max had gone through.
Her chest tightened.
Just like her, he had been forced to change.
Max's father—John—had been one of the few people who helped her when she needed it most.
He had stood between her and her abusive husband without hesitation and shared in the grief of a loss that had broken them both in different ways.
When Carol finally found her daughter, the truth shattered whatever was left of her hope.
Accepting that reality had taken everything she had.
And yet, in a strange way, she had been grateful. Because at least the uncertainty was over.
At least she knew.
At the time, John had been the greatest support she had.
Even after hope had nearly disappeared, he had refused to stop searching for his son.
That stubborn determination had stayed with her long after they went their separate ways.
It had given her the strength to keep moving when she wanted to give up.
For three weeks, Carol had lived in a nightmare of uncertainty, not knowing whether her daughter was alive or dead. The not knowing had been its own kind of torment.
She couldn't imagine enduring what John had endured.
More than three years had passed, and he still hadn't found his son.
Carol looked at Max quietly.
The resemblance wasn't in his face.
It was in the burden he carried.
Without saying a word, she reached over and wrapped her arms around him in a tight hug.
Max stopped looking out at the scenery and turned to Carol, confused by the sudden hug.
"Why are you hugging me?" he asked.
The quiet atmosphere broke as the question drew everyone's attention toward them.
"It looks like you need it, so I'm doing it. Do you want me to stop?" Carol said with a small smile.
Max looked at her, still confused, unsure of what to say. After a brief hesitation, he turned back to the window and continued watching the scenery without pushing her away.
Carol hugged him tightly one last time, then let go, smiling as she looked at his back with a motherly warmth in her eyes.
After seeing Max's reaction, she understood one thing for sure: he needed love and affection too, just like everyone else.
He had closed himself off after his mother's death. Maybe if she gave him her full support, even small progress in helping him open up would make her happy.
"Carol, we're here."
Maggie pulled her out of her thoughts. Carol quickly looked at her and gave a small nod.
She looked ahead and saw the city outline clearly in the distance merciful there was a massive line of abandoned rusted car leaving the city. After traveling for a few hours, they had finally reached their destination.
Now the real test would begin.
---
The city had been burned to the ground, leaving behind nothing but its skeletal remains. Nature was slowly reclaiming it, and the once lively, bustling metropolis had become a ghost town.
Thousands of bodies still littered the streets. Swarms of flies buzzed everywhere, and the stench was so overwhelming that it was difficult to breathe.
Even inside the Humvee, they could still smell it.
Everyone quickly pulled their masks over their mouths and noses.
As they drove through the city, they scanned the ruined buildings vigilantly while keeping an eye out for danger. Walkers roamed the streets aimlessly, wandering between abandoned vehicles and crumbling structures.
"Thank God there aren't many walkers around here. they must have wandered off," Maggie said with a relieved smile.
In the entire city, she had seen only a hundred or so walkers wandering the streets.
"it's not like the first time we came here," Carol said, a hint of fear creeping into her voice as she remembered her first trip to Atlanta.
"What happened when you arrived here?" Max said with curiosity which surprised everyone. this was the first time they saw Max interested at conversation.
"you maybe don't know but and we barely stepped foot into the city before hundreds of thousands of runners were on us," Daryl said.
He still remembered everything they had gone through to reach Atlanta.
But more than that, he remembered what it had taken to escape.
They had searched for shelter and found nothing but corpses, runners, and chaos.
The helicopters had dropped bombs on both the undead and the living, showing no concern for who was caught in the blasts.
Even now, the memory of it made his stomach turn.
"Luckily, there aren't many walkers, and we haven't seen any runners so far. I don't think we need to wear those disgusting clothes."
Maggie pointed at the shit and bloodstained outfits hanging inside the Humvee.
"I wasn't gonna wear them either way. It was your idea," Daryl said, keeping his eyes on the road.
"Don't give me that bullshit. When I grabbed five of them, you didn't stop me," Maggie replied, frowning at him.
"Why would I give you shit. when you already picked out five?" Daryl chuckled to himself.
Maggie didn't find it funny.
"Okay, let's focus on the task. Where's the subway station again?"
Maggie looked down at the map.
"Take a left from here," she said, pointing to the route.
"The Humvee is loud. Are you both sure it's a good idea to drive it through the city?" Carol asked, concern evident in her voice.
"The walkers are far away, and even if a few get attracted by the noise, we can handle them," Daryl said confidently.
Still, his eyes continued scanning the road ahead. As far as he could see, there were only a handful of walkers, so he didn't see any problem with moving forward.
Just as they were about to continue, Max spoke calmly.
"You know, it's a good idea to look up too."
Hearing Max's suggestion, nobody questioned him. They all glanced at the buildings around them.
They saw nothing.
Confused, they turned back to Max.
Even if they couldn't see anything, one thing they had learned after spending time with him was that he never said things without a reason.
"What are you talking about?" Carol asked. "We don't see anything. Can you tell us why we should be looking up?"
Instead of answering immediately, Max leaned forward and pointed toward a distant skyscraper.
Everyone tried to follow where he was pointing, but it was too far away to make out any details.
The priest, who had been idly writing in his notebook, suddenly grabbed a pair of binoculars and handed them to Carol.
"What the fuck is that?" carol said in disbelief at what she was seeing.
Maggie quickly took the binoculars from her and looked through them.
"What is it?" Daryl asked.
Maggie didn't answer. Instead, she silently handed him the binoculars.
After looking through them himself, Daryl finally understood.
Thousands of walkers crowded the rooftops.
They didn't just stand there.
They moved wrong.
Some dragged themselves across the concrete on broken limbs, using each other as leverage, pulling and climbing in uneven, jerking waves. Others clustered at the edges of buildings, swaying as if the rooftops themselves were breathing.
A few were halfway down the walls, stuck between climbing and falling, their bodies scraping against brick and glass with slow, wet friction.
But what truly froze them in place were the fused ones.
At first, it looked like clusters of bodies pressed too tightly together.
Then they moved.
And it became clear they weren't separate anymore.
They were welded together skin, bone, and muscle merged into one mass that still tried to function as multiple people.
One of them climbed using what looked like eight arms, but the limbs didn't belong to a single body. They pulled in different directions, as if each arm still remembered a different owner.
Another mass had three heads fused side by side. One mouth opened a second too late, the sound coming out delayed and distorted, overlapping with the others like broken echoes.
Some didn't even look stable. Pieces shifted as they moved, arms slipping out of place, torsos bending at impossible angles, yet they kept going, driven by the same mindless pull toward movement.
It wasn't just infection anymore.
It was accumulation.
A pile of bodies that refused to stop becoming more.
The sight alone made the rooftops feel wrong, like the city itself had started to rot upward instead of down.
Daryl lowered the binoculars slowly.
He looked at Maggie.
"I think I'm ready to wear that shit."