I've only got one more Season One character to go after this. Please read and review.

Rick was going to get them all killed. That's what no one else understood.

Shane knew he had his problems. He wasn't very smart. (He had just barely passed the IQ test to become a policeman.) He had a temper. He could be a little impulsive.

He had another, more embarrassing problem, too. His shirt was constantly coming off. He could have sworn that something was happening to his clothes when they were being washed because all of the seams and buttons on his shirts were constantly breaking. He knew Carol spent a long time on the laundry, and she had problems enough. He didn't want to hurt her feelings by telling her that if she was trying to make his shirts fall off on purpose she couldn't have done a worse job. And also, did she not know that you didn't need a seam ripper to clean things?

But even with his stupidity, anger issues and tear-away wardrobe, compared to Rick, Shane had it all under control. Rick, on the other hand, was an albacore around the necks of the people who knew him.

Don't get him wrong, he loved Rick like a brother. But for years he had cleaned up after Rick, and when it finally seemed like Shane was done with that, the world had gone crazy. But still, it was better than watching out for Rick. Walkers didn't pretend to be police officers and turn a day in traffic school into a high-speed chase. Walkers didn't have creepy pale little sons who liked to set fire to things.

He couldn't believe how fast the group made him their leader. Didn't any of them realize that the name Rick used, Officer Friendly, was not a real person? But no, something about Rick's green eyes and calm sincerity made them think that he had all the answers.

Some of this was Rick's typical dumb luck, but some of it must have that the group just didn't want to know.

In the dumb luck department, the group hadn't seen Rick accidentally send a fully equipped armored truck to the bottom of the quarry. The group also hadn't seen Rick throw in Daryl's motorcycle keys after the truck to see if this would somehow make the truck come back. Only Shane had been around for that.

On the "just didn't want to know" side, the group also hadn't noticed something about Rick that Shane thought would have registered quickly on them. Hadn't they noticed that after Rick showed up, people started dying? The human toll was staggering. When Rick first got back, he had already killed Merle (or at least it sounded like Merle was as good as dead), but within a day, 40 percent of their camp was dead. Now that he thought of it, that was around Rick's kill rate prior to the dead coming to life.

But none of that would matter to the group. They just loved Rick. The others had never rallied around Shane like that. It seemed like most of them disliked him. It would have been worse if they knew that Shane and Lori had been having sex. Thank God they had been discreet.

Lori.

Shane shook his head. God, he was stuck with her, wasn't he? He had hooked up with her one night and before he knew it, he was supposed to be her life partner. That would have been OK, but for two things. The first is that he was having trouble keeping up with her. The woman wanted sex constantly. The second is that he wasn't really that attracted to her. He was going to have to break into a pharmacy and get some more Viagra soon. He had already run out of the two bottles they had gotten on last week's supply run.

He consoled himself that by staying with Lori, he could keep an eye on Carl, who worried him. Lori had to be the most negligent parent he had ever seen, and Carl was capable of doing a lot of damage in a short period of time.

He felt a moment of sadness. Since the beginning, he had harbored a secret crush on someone in the camp. He found Carol's delicate features, petite frame and big blue eyes very appealing. And boy, there was just something about watching her soapy arms and hands as she did laundry that really did it for him. However, she was married, and Shane was not one to intentionally break up a marriage.

That just wasn't going to happen, and he needed to accept it. And maybe Lori would grow on him. There was something about the way she looked at him recently, with her eyes wide open, never blinking. He almost couldn't look away when she did that.

He dropped to the ground for another 100 pushups. If he burned his stress by exercising, maybe he could avoid the feeling that it would be better if Rick were dead. That kind of thinking wouldn't help anyone. And besides, he could honestly say that he was in the best shape of his life. If only his friends in Weight Watchers could see him now.