RICK GRIMES.

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biography.

Rick grew up in Georgia, somewhere near Atlanta. As a child, he shared a close relationship with his father whom he described as a 'profound' man who instilled a strong moral code onto him. His mother often told him the story of "The Stone in the Road", which encouraged him to never give up in the face of adversity. He also became inspired by the old tales of his grandfather, whom served during the Second World War. One night, when Rick was seven years old, he discovered his father badly injured in a fire in their crops, initially believing his father was a monster; however, his father saved him, telling him to not be afraid. After his father eventually died, Rick's mother revealed that he was the one to light the fire and burn their crops to save the farm, telling Rick that, although his father's actions were wrong, he nonetheless saved his family.

Rick grew up alongside his closest friend Shane Walsh, where the two developed a strong bond together to the point where the pair came to regard each other as 'brothers'. In high school, Rick acted as the more disciplined of the pair and thus experienced very few short-lived relationships with girls, in contrast to Shane whom had many conquests. Academically, Rick and Shane studied at Georgia Central University together, with Rick graduating with a Bachelor's degree in Criminal Justice. Afterwards, they were both employed as deputies stationed at the King County Sheriff's Department, with Shane assigned as his partner.

As a young adult, Rick later met a woman named Lori, where the two eventually fell in love with each other and became married. Together they had a son named Carl. The trio lived together as a typical family in a single-story house located in King County, Georgia, where Shane became a close friend of the family. Rick took memorable walks with his 3-year-old son around a local farm, where Carl became grateful for the safety and happiness his father provided him.

Over time however, Rick and Lori's marriage became increasingly strained due to Rick constantly distancing himself from her, as he generally hesitated to express his feeling regarding their marital issues and thus Rick instead opted to absorb himself through his work. This nature led to various cracks in their relationship, which resulted in harsh words directed from Lori, who once questioned whether Rick cared about his family in the presence of their son.

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At some point before the outbreak, while out on patrol, Rick and Shane gets a call over their police radio that a high-speed pursuit is in progress involving two armed suspects, and in their car, they rush to the scene. When they arrive, they lay down a spike strip and meet up with their co-workers, Lambert Kendal and Leon Basset. As they all wait for the car, Leon muses about their chances of getting on a police chase reality show. Rick tells him to focus, and worry about having a round in his gun chamber and the safety off. Leon sheepishly checks his gun while Shane suggests that it would be "kinda cool gettin' on one of them shows."

At that moment, the car approaches, pursued by two more cruisers containing the Linden County Sheriff's Department officers. The car, with the suspects inside, speeds over the spike strip, shredding the tires. The driver loses control of the wheel and the vehicle flips off the road, rolling several times before coming to a rough stop upside down in a field. The officers descend on the vehicle. As Rick carefully approaches the overturned car, a man emerges from the vehicle and immediately starts shooting at the officers. Rick yells at him to drop his pistol, but the man shoots directly at Rick and hits him in the chest. Shane shoots the gunman, killing him as Rick falls to the ground. A second man emerges from the vehicle brandishing a shotgun, but is also shot to death. "I'm alright!" Rick shouts, the gunman having shot his Kevlar bulletproof vest. Shane approaches Rick as he pulls himself off the ground.

Meanwhile, a third gunman unnoticed by everyone crawls out of the car and through the grass. The man fires his gun and hits Rick in the side, where his vest does not protect him. He falls to the ground bleeding as Shane shoots and kills the third man before rushing to Rick's aid. He begs for Rick to stay with him, barking at Leon to call an ambulance, but Rick remains motionless.

A while later, Shane delivers flowers to Rick in the hospital, but Rick isn't fully conscious while Shane starts talking to him. Two weeks later, Rick awakens and responds to Shane's presence. He discovers that Shane is no longer there. The flowers have wilted and died, the beeping of the machines have stopped as has the clock; the room is empty. Weak, dehydrated and alone, Rick pulls himself out of bed, flops onto the floor and calls out for a nurse to help, but no one comes. After getting no response, he takes a moment, then opens the door and notices a gurney is blocking the entrance to his room. He pushes it aside and continues walking in the dark and disheveled hallway.

He goes to the nurse's station and tries the phone, but it's dead. He finds a set of matches while also looking for anything else worth taking from behind the desk. Suddenly, a flickering light draws his attention, and through a doorway, Rick sees the ravaged body of a nurse missing most of her skin. His eyes can't believe what he's seeing and he backs away, confused and afraid. Continuing further down the hallway, he sees that the walls are covered in blood with numerous bullet holes. A double door leading into the cafeteria has been chained shut, a message scrawled across in black paint: "DON'T OPEN/DEAD INSIDE." A woman's hands, her fingernails dirty and broken, reach through the cracks and fiddle with the padlock and chains, moaning and groaning as more fingers start to reach through the cracks growling. Terrified, Rick stumbles backwards.

He tries the elevator but it's dead, so he exits through a heavy door into a dark stairwell that reeks of rotting flesh. He chokes on the smell as he lumbers down the stairs, lighting matches until he finds the exit. A door opens to the back of the hospital into the loading bay. When Rick's eyes adjust to the bright sunlight, he sees hundreds of decayed, fly-covered bodies wrapped in sheets and arranged in rows and piles. He leaves the hospital and stumbles up a hill. There's a military helicopter, sandbags, and other signs of a military cordon, but everything has been abandoned.

He wanders down the road in his hospital gown, spotting an overturned bicycle in a park. As he reaches for it, the badly decayed body of a mutilated woman, her legs and lips missing, turns and reaches for him, pathetically moaning and growling in. Startled, Rick falls off the bicycle but regains himself a moment later, mounts the bike, and hastily rides away.

Rick bikes over to his home to find the front door open and the house deserted. Sobbing on the floor, he calls out for Lori and Carl, questioning if any of this is real or if he's dreaming. He heads back outside the house and sits on the steps. He spots a a man stumbling down the road and waves his hand to try and get his attention. As he is doing this, a young boy creeps up from behind and hits him with a shovel. "Carl, I found you," Rick mutters. "Daddy I got this sumbitch! I'm gonna smack him dead!" the boy screams. The boy's father, Morgan Jones, approaches the stumbling man Rick was waving to and shoots him in the head. He then proceeds to walk towards Rick and points a revolver in his face. "What's that bandage for? You tell me, or I will kill you," Morgan asks him, cocking the gun at his face. Before he can answer, Rick passes out.

Later that night, Rick wakes up with his arms and legs tied to a bed. The young boy, Duane, stands guard with a baseball bat. "Did you get bit?" Morgan asks Rick stiffly, having changed his bandages. "Just shot, as far as I know," Rick says. Morgan checks his forehead and says if he had "the fever" it would have killed him by now, so he sets him free of the bedposts with a switchblade, but not before telling him that if he tries anything, he will not hesitate to kill him. He then offers him a seat at their dinner table.

Rick recognizes the home that they are in as his neighbors', Fred and Cindy Drake's house. Morgan tells Rick not to look out the window because they will see the light. He then begins to explain the story of the outbreak and the following days to a confused and disoriented Rick. As Morgan muses that he shouldn't have shot his rifle earlier, as it has filled the streets with those things, Rick accuses Morgan of shooting a man in cold blood, to which Morgan corrects him, saying it was a walker. He adds that they get more active after dark sometimes. Morgan proceeds to explain to Rick that the man he shot would have tried to eat them. He also explains that their bites will kill you and turn you into one of them.

After dinner, the trio talks about Rick's son, and Rick shares that the reason he was shot is because he's a deputy. Suddenly, a car alarm starts to go off outside and the trio turns off the lights. Rick and Morgan peer out to the street through heavy covered windows and boarded up doors. The street is filled with walkers, drawn by the noise of the alarm. When a woman wearing a nightgown appears and walks up to the front door of the house, Duane runs away crying. Morgan comforts his son while Rick stares at the woman through the peephole at the front door. The woman looks around and tries to turn the door handle. "She died in the other room on that bed. I should have put her down. I just didn't have it in me. She's the mother of my child." Morgan confesses with sorrow.

The next morning, Rick walks outside in a face shield, carrying a baseball bat. He approaches a solitary walker still around and swings the bat repeatedly at his head, beating it down until it stops moving. He quickly becomes fatigued from his still-healing gunshot wound. Back at the house, Rick tells Morgan he thinks his wife and son are still alive. He explains he found empty drawers in the bedrooms and the family pictures and photo albums were gone. Duane suggests to Rick that they could be in Atlanta. Morgan explains that the government was telling people to head to a refugee center there with military protection and food, before the broadcasts stopped. He also explains that the C.D.C. is rumored to be working on a cure.

Rick, Morgan and Duane head to the King County Sheriff's Department, where they luxuriate in hot showers thanks to a separate propane heating system. Afterward, Rick packs a duffel bag with guns and changes into his sheriff's uniform and hat. He hands Morgan a rifle and some ammunition. They head outside and start loading the weapons into the trunk of his cruiser. Rick prepares to set off for Atlanta, while Morgan says he'll follow in a few days, once Duane has learned to shoot. Rick hands Morgan a walkie-talkie and he tells him to turn it on every day at dawn to make contact. Before leaving, Morgan gives Rick a warning: "They may not seem like much one at a time. But in a group, all riled up and hungry? Man, you watch your ass." However, the farewell is interrupted when Rick spots a reanimated Leon who claws at the chain link fence separating them. Rick admits he didn't think much of the young officer, but he won't leave him like this. He shoots him in the forehead with his revolver, putting him down. Then, he and Morgan drive away from the sheriff's department in opposite directions.

Rick returns to the park where he found the legless walker. He follows a blood trail for quite a distance to find her again crawling helplessly. She reaches for him futilely. "I'm sorry this happened to you," Rick says, shooting her in the head with his revolver and putting her out of her misery.

Later, en route to Atlanta on Highway 85, Rick sends out a broadcast on his cruiser's CB radio. In a camp outside the city, a group of survivors receives the transmission. A young blonde girl, Amy, runs to the CB, but can't get a reply. Shane, Lori, and Carl are among the survivors, however, they don't recognize Rick's voice over the garbled transmission. By the time Shane takes over the CB controls and introduces himself, Rick has left the emergency broadcast channel.

On the road, Rick's cruiser runs out of fuel, so he abandons his car on the highway and heads out on foot with a gas can and the duffel bag full of guns, making sure to grab the family photo he keeps above his rear-view mirror and stashing it in his jacket pocket. He approaches a farmhouse looking for gas. He peeks in the window where he makes the grisly discovery that a couple had committed suicide. Rick tries to locate the keys of the pick-up truck parked in their driveway, but finds a horse on their property instead. He saddles up and rides the rest of the way to Atlanta with the bag of guns slung across his shoulder.

Arriving in Atlanta, he realizes it's nothing like Morgan described. Hundreds of cars trying to leave the city have burned out on the other side of the freeway. The road into the city is completely deserted. He continues to ride into the city, devastated that he has no other leads on where his wife and son are located. He trots the streets on horseback, finding an overrun military blockade with more burned out vehicles. A few walkers along the way take notice of him, so he and the horse speed up. He looks back to see many more emerging from buses and alleys.

Suddenly, Rick catches the reflection of a helicopter passing by through a skyscraper. He speeds up the horse to try and follow it but unknowingly leads himself into a horde of hundreds of walkers. He fails to escape and topples off to the floor as the walkers start to devour the horse. While the walkers are distracted, he manages to scramble underneath an abandoned tank. Walkers take notice of him and start to reach under and grab him from both ends of the tank. He shoots several of them, but more and more keep coming. In desperation, he places the gun to his head. "Lori, Carl, I'm sorry," he states. As he is about to pull the trigger, he sees an open hatch on the floor of the tank and crawls inside just before the walkers can get to him.

As he sits in the tank catching his breath, he takes the gun of a zombified soldier and continues to search through his uniform for anything of use. The movement awakens him and as he turns to bite Rick, he panics and shoots him in the head. A deafening echo reverberates inside the enclosed space of the tank. Dazed and disoriented, he makes his way to the top of the tank where the top hatch is open. He lifts his head out of the hatch to stop the ringing in his ears. He spots the bag of guns that he dropped, but there are too many walkers. They begin to take notice of him and climb the tank to get to him. Rick then closes the hatch, sealing himself inside.

Rick, unsure of what to do next, holds the soldier's Beretta pistol to his forehead, sweating. Suddenly, the tank's radio crackles. "Hey. Hey you, dumbass. You in the tank. Cozy in there?" a voice says. Rick looks up and slowly lowers the gun from his forehead. Speaking with the voice at the other end, Rick is eventually helped escape the tank, and meets up with a young man named Glenn, who leads him back to part of his own group, who are holed up in a store. As there is a horde of walkers surrounding the building, they try to come up with a plan of how to get out of the city and back to their camp safely when muffled gunshots are heard from the roof. The others realize it's one of their fellow survivors, Merle, and they all head up to the roof to see what's going on. Finding Merle wasting bullets and attracting more walkers by shooting at them from above, T-Dog chastises him, prompting Merle to scoff at him and call him a racial slur, which sets off a fight between the two. As Merle gains the upper hand and presses a gun to T-Dog's head, Rick intervenes by walking up from behind and hitting him with the blunt end of his rifle, handcuffing him to a pipe. 

They eventually discover that walkers will not detect them if they smear themselves with the "smell of the dead" (e.g. walker guts and blood), and uses this advantage as part of their plan to get a vehicle that can carry all of them and escape the city. Though as the group piles in, catching their breath as they drive away from the city, they look around at one another and a guilt-ridden T-Dog admits to the others he dropped the key to Merle's handcuffs, leaving Merle trapped on the roof, still handcuffed to a pipe.

When the van arrives at the camp, the group embraces with their families while Rick hesitantly stays in the car for a few moments. He later emerges and recognizes Shane. The two trade stunned glances as Carl spots Rick and runs into his open arms. Lori stares at Rick, at first not believing her own eyes, but she soon tearfully embraces her husband and son. While embracing his family, Rick shares a warm smile with Shane.

In the days following, Rick learns that Shane has been keeping the group safe and alive, and that Shane was the one who saved Lori and Carl, as well as Rick, as he was the one to barricade the door to Rick's room in the hospital, keeping walkers from entering and finding him. What happens from here will be dependent on each individual thread, but by default I will mostly follow the canon events up until the timeline our threads take place unless plotted otherwise.

abilities.

connections.

universes.