The group, each with their own thoughts, drove along the highway. Barren farmland and abandoned houses on both sides receded rapidly into the distance.
About twenty minutes later, the desolate small town appeared at the edge of their vision.
The streets were empty. Maggie parked the car in front of an old bar.
Pushing the door open, a blast of stale musty air mixed with the scent of alcohol hit them.
The light inside the bar was dim, with only a solitary figure sitting in the corner.
Hershel was sitting there, with half a bottle of whiskey and an empty glass in front of him. He looked much older than he had yesterday, radiating a deep sense of despondency.
Hearing the commotion at the door, Hershel slowly turned his head.
When he saw Maggie, a flash of surprise and panic crossed his clouded eyes: "Maggie? How did you...? You shouldn't be here. It's dangerous!"
When his gaze swept to Louis following behind, his eyes filled with even more irritation: "Why did you bring the child too?!"
"We need you to come back, Hershel." Rick stepped forward, his tone gentle but firm. "Shawn and Beth are very worried about you; everyone is waiting for you."
"Go back? Back where?"
Hershel gave a self-deprecating laugh as he poured himself another drink, his hands shaking slightly. "Back to that farm full of lies and death?"
"I don't want to go back yet." He shook his head stubbornly, staring blankly at his glass. "Don't worry about me, Rick. I just... I just need a little time."
"What do you need time for?" Maggie questioned, her eyes rimmed with red.
"To accept reality."
Hershel closed his eyes in pain. "I lied to myself for too long. I thought that as long as I persisted, as long as I had faith, I could turn everything back to the way it was."
"But yesterday... only yesterday did I understand that this world has truly changed."
"I need a little time to accept this new, godforsaken world."
Seeing that the conversation was going well enough, Louis didn't interject. Instead, he slipped into the back, hoping to see if he could find anything useful.
Muttering to himself, he rummaged through the shelves. Aside from some expired potato chips and a few bottles of hard liquor, there weren't any special supplies here.
Just as Louis was feeling a bit disappointed and about to turn back, the faint sound of a car engine suddenly reached his ears.
This made him immediately abandon his scavenging and run quickly back to the bar's main hall.
"Shh—"
Louis made a silencing gesture toward the three who were still arguing, lowering his voice in an urgent and serious tone: "Stop arguing! People are coming outside!"
Rick and Maggie instantly stopped talking, their expressions shifting as they instinctively reached for their weapons.
"Walkers?" Rick asked with his mouth, making no sound.
Louis shook his head and pointed outside: "It's a car. From the sound of it, it should be parked right at the door."
"Don't move yet." Rick pressed down on Maggie's hand, signaling for Louis to hide in the back first.
Once Louis's figure vanished into the darkness, he turned around, pretending to lean casually against the bar. He still held the glass tightly, but his thumb was already resting on the pistol at his waist.
A second later, the bar's door was pushed open.
Blinding sunlight shot through the crack of the door into the dim interior. Two men with guns on their backs, looking somewhat thuggish, walked in one after the other.
Leading them was a lean man with a mess of curly hair, his eyes glinting with a sense of shrewdness and slipperiness.
Following behind him was a stout, obese man with a face full of rough features, looking even more crude.
"Yo, looks like this place is pretty lively?"
The curly-haired man scanned the bar, a playful smile hanging on his lips.
The fat man followed closely. When his gaze swept across the bar and landed on Maggie, his eyes instantly fixed on her.
He let out a frivolous whistle on the spot, his expression becoming lewd: "A woman? God... I almost forgot what women looked like. It's been a long time since I've had one."
"Click!"
Before he could finish his foul language, Maggie had already raised her gun, aiming it right between the fat man's eyebrows.
"Whoa! Whoa! Calm down, beautiful!"
Seeing this, the curly-haired man immediately raised his hands, stepping in front of the fat man with an apologetic smile plastered on his face: "No offense intended, really! My friend's brain isn't quite right; he doesn't know how to talk."
To show his sincerity, the curly-haired man slowly pulled his pistol from his waist, placing it on a table in front of him with an exaggerated movement, then pushed it further away.
"See, we mean no harm. Just travelers passing through, looking for a drink of water."
Rick and Maggie exchanged a look. Rick nodded slightly, and only then did Maggie slowly lower her muzzle, though her finger remained tight on the trigger, not daring to relax in the slightest.
"That's more like it. We're all survivors; there's no need to make things so tense."
"It's really not easy in this world."
The curly-haired man took a sip of liquor and began to probe as if making small talk. "We came all the way from Philadelphia and saw plenty of nasty things."
"I heard there was a distorted religious group around here called 'The Believers'?"
"Those lunatics were persecuting innocent survivors everywhere, talking about some 'judgment'."
The curly-haired man clicked his tongue twice. "We almost ran into them. Looking at you guys... you probably haven't met them yet, right?"
"Haven't seen them," Rick replied briefly.
"Is that so?" The curly-haired man smiled meaningfully. "Then you're really lucky."
"Because that group of Believers was wiped out overnight, not a trace left. Now that those lunatics are gone from the area, maybe you can find a good place to go."
"Oh?" Rick asked. "How do you know that?"
"Eh, just heard it from people nearby." He shifted the conversation, leaning forward to stare at Rick: "So, what are your plans? Keep wandering?"
"We're going to Fort Benning." Rick threw out the excuse he had prepared long ago.
"Fort Benning?" The curly-haired man scoffed and shook his head. "Forget it, that place has already fallen."
He vividly recounted some stories he'd heard from deserters, describing how the military had collapsed.
Then, observing the reactions of Rick and the others, his gaze gradually sharpened.
"But then again..."
The curly-haired man narrowed his eyes, his gaze passing through the window to land on the car parked outside. "You guys don't look like you live here."
"You have another hiding place, don't you?"
Rick smiled and asked back, "What makes you say that?"
"The car." The curly-haired man pointed outside. "That car at the door looks like yours. It's very clean, very new, and the back seat isn't piled with luggage and trash."
"People on the road don't have time to wash their cars, nor do they have time to keep them so tidy," he said with certainty.
"We came to scout," Hershel, who had been silent, spoke up, his voice steady. "And to have a couple of drinks, that's all."
"Scouting? That's a good thing."
"So, where are you camped? A nearby neighborhood? Or did you find some secluded trailer park?"
He scrutinized the trio's clothing, especially Hershel's shirt, which was old but still neat, and Maggie's face, which didn't look particularly haggard.
A suspicion took shape in his mind.
"Or rather..." The curly-haired man's eyes flickered as he slowly spat out a word, "Is it a farm?"