Chapter Text
Everybody looks at me weirdly. I guess that’s what I get for trying to blow myself to ashes publicly.
Rick had the idea to bring everybody back into the city of Atlanta, to see if the asylum for the old would give us some safe haven.
Turns out, they were executed a while back, given the state of the bodies. The place was totally ransacked.
I’m so tired of people. Really. They were just old people and adults trying to keep them safe.
We don’t have the fuel to keep going in circles, or to look for another place to spend the night in, so I’m left with the first night watch at the top of the stairs on the top floor as the others are finishing their dinner ration.
I’m tired. Physically and emotionally tired. Though since I know I won’t be able to sleep, here I am. Watching. Waiting for something to happen if it happens.
I hear some footsteps coming towards me slowly after a while. I wait until Rick’s a good three paces from me before turning around to face him.
“Hey.” He says with a raspy voice before he gets slightly closer. I nod in his direction and watch him look around for a moment as he rests his forearm on the banister beside us. “I, uh, want to ask you something.” When he notices my eyebrows twitch, he shakes his head, very slightly. “I don’t want to make you feel uncomfortable, it’s just… if you were planning to stay, then why fill up a bag with supplies?
I turn to look over at the room the group is in, hoping for him to understand what I am trying to say without saying it.
When I turn my head back, he’s looking at the room with a weird expression before nodding softly and looking down.
“Oh.” He lets out and puts his thumb against his forehead before looking up at me again. “We appreciate it.”
I nod at him and turn to look down the stairs to see if that makes him go away. But it doesn’t. Instead, he speaks up again.
“Did you… did you hear what Jenner told me in the end?”
It takes me a moment to reconnect my brain to what he’s asking. When I do, I turn back and truthfully shake my head. When he nods back and looks away with a weird, shaken expression, I frown and try to make him look at me by moving a little.
Something’s clearly wrong.
“It’s nothing.” He says the second he realizes I’m looking at him. “I mean… it’s just mere talk from a crazy man, it’s not important.”
Uh…
“Dad?”
Carl calls out, making Rick glance at the room the rest of the group is in before giving me one last look.
“I’ll come to take your place in a couple of hours.”
He says before walking back into the room.
Okay? I have no idea what Jenner told him to make him act like this, but it had to be something big.
Now the question is: how concerned should I be about it?
♦ ♦ ♦
We’re on the road at first light. We had to leave a couple of vehicles behind to be able to get enough gas on the RV, Carol’s car, and Little Dixon’s bike.
Now, given the CDC didn’t work, the goal is Fort Benning. More than a hundred miles away.
We won’t be able to get there with the fuel we have, so either these people start getting used to the idea of going on foot, or the Universe has to spare them by giving them a place where they can get loads of fuel.
Or bicycles. Those work too.
Long as we don’t find a big walker herd, I’m fine going on foot. It wouldn’t be the first time.
Glenn is taking a nap on the bed beside me while I look out the window, sitting down on the tiny couch beside the bed while Shane and Andrea are sitting on the couch next to the kitchen and T-Dog is co-piloting Dale.
It’s been a long ride. A really, really long ride. My neck is starting to bother me again.
After a while, T-Dog starts coming over. I guess Glenn’s nap time is over, so I gently nudge him with my knee and he sort of jolts awake to look around.
He grunts, rubbing his eyes with his fingers before nodding and straightening up.
“Coming.”
He says and takes a minute before he can get up and swap places with T-Dog, who waves at me cautiously and lays down.
The fact that the group is acting like they’re stepping on eggshells around me is really starting to bother me.
I look over at the window again and barely pay attention to Shane and Andrea who suddenly start talking about guns as he cleans his.
When I do start paying attention, it’s when I hear Dale cursing, which makes T-Dog and me get up and move forward to see what it is now.
A bunch of abandoned cars are blocking the path. Little Dixon turns back on his motorcycle and nods when Dale asks if there’s a way through before moving back, probably to tell Rick behind us.
When he comes back, he starts to zigzag around the cars, slowly so Dale doesn’t lose him, or the not-so-obvious path.
“Maybe we should go back,” Glenn says, consulting the map in his hands. “There’s an interstate bypass that…”
Dale shakes his head.
“We don’t have enough fuel.”
He says before something on the front of the RV clanks and the engine starts sputtering.
Dale lets out an annoyed grunt before angrily turning the engine off.
He gets out of the RV, followed by Shane, Glenn, and me a moment later.
“I said it, didn’t I? A thousand times, dead in the water.”
He says, moving towards the problem.
I look around. We were clearly going to have to stop either way since there’s no way we will be able to get through this mess.
What the hell happened here? There are a couple of bodies inside some of the cars. What? Did they just wait in there until they died or something?
“Problem, Dale?”
Dale starts whining again, looking at the problem with the RV before he has the brains to actually look around. He stops talking.
“Okay, that was dumb.”
He confesses.
“If we can’t find a radiator hose here…”
Shane starts saying. Little Dixon finishes his phrase for him, going over a car that has the trunk wide open.
“There’s a bunch of stuff we can find.”
“Maybe I can get more fuel from these cars to start.”
T-Dog says, moving behind me.
“Maybe get some water too.”
Carol suggests.
“Food.” Glenn chimes in, moving to be on my side. “Dalilah’s bag won’t last forever.”
No, it won’t.
“This is a graveyard.”
Dead silence accompanies Lori’s statement.
This could basically be a goldmine for the group. Could you… be a little more objective?
“I don’t know how I feel about this.”
So, no stuff for you then?
“Come on, people. Look around, gather what you can.”
I take one of my sage knives out, just in case, and move away from the rest of the group to start looking for stuff on the cars farther away. When I find no threats, I sheathe my sage knife and start looking.
I find an empty basket in one of the cars, so I use that to start filling it with any useful stuff. Mostly, it’s clothes and the like rather than more interesting stuff, but I suppose the group is going to need them.
I sigh when I try to open the third car but find all of the doors locked, so I take out the tools I need from my pockets before I start working, hearing Carl and Sophia walk slowly towards me.
When I finally manage to force the lock, I open the car door, forcing a whoa out of Carl.
I turn to him. And he’s about to say something to me before his mother calls out.
“Always within my sight, okay?”
Carl nods and immediately, Lori sticks her head inside a car’s trunk.
So… how is Carl supposed to stay in your line of sight when you do… that?
“You too, Sophia.”
I hear Carol say, making the girl nod back. She’s smart enough to not do what Lori just did.
Carl immediately returns his attention to me and walks closer.
“Can you teach me how to do that?”
I take a second before I nod, closing this door before moving to the other one. Carl follows me and I crouch, handing him the tools.
I don’t know how, but I manage to lead him through it without saying a word, having to take his hand to correct his angles a couple of times before the lock clicks.
I let him open the car door, amazed with himself while Sophia claps on the other side of the car, watching.
“Woah.”
He lets out, with a big smile before he looks up at me. I nod in his direction. He’s a quick study.
“Dalilah, Carl!” I jerk my head towards Rick, whose voice tone is urgent and desperate. I watch him move his hand down. “Under the cars. Sophia, get down.”
He doesn’t have to tell me twice. I’m already closing the car door as quietly as possible before moving Carl down.
The car is high enough so I can put myself above Carl’s body, propping myself up with my hands and knees, leaving the tools hastily in my pocket. I turn my head to look at Sophia, who’s a car from us. With a hand wave, I tell her to move further to the side because she’s too out in the open.
She adjusts perfectly by the time we start hearing walkers growling. As they come closer, I look around and notice Rick below the car that’s a few yards beside Carl and me and watch back to see Lori and Carol below a truck big enough for the both of them.
Lori is forced to cover Carol’s mouth. Because she’s already crying for her daughter.
Carl shakes below me and grips my wrist roughly as the walkers start to get past us, jolting every time one of them slams against the cars too loudly, but otherwise, he stays rather calm while looking toward his dad.
It takes a long while for all the walkers to go past us, enough for my arms to start shaking a little from the effort, enough to force me on my elbows.
Walkers finally go away from the zone we’re in, slowly making their way up the highway, but it would be wise to stay like we are for another five minutes or so. Maybe even ten. Not only for stragglers but also to avoid making noise.
I glance at Rick and notice he doesn’t seem too keen on moving just yet. And it’s good because I can hear two stragglers getting closer.
One of them snarls a second before I hear Sophia scream.
Son of a bitch.
I jerk my head towards her to see her scoot back to where she was as the walker leans to try and get to her as she sobs. When it realizes it can’t like that, it moves to the ground faster than I expected and tries to get her that way.
I can’t move. Not if it means putting the kid I have below me at risk too.
So, helpless, I watch how Sophia scoots to the other side of the car until she’s able to get up, dodge the railings of the highway, and run towards the forest.
Both walkers follow her. And a few seconds later, so does Rick, smartly leaving his large gun behind.
I move next and help Carl out of the car while looking all around us to make sure the herd is far away and to make sure there are no more stragglers.
“There’s two walkers after my baby!”
Carol cries, already on the edge of the railing, forcing Lori to cover her mouth again to not alert the herd back while the rest of the group comes by.
I look around, noticing Andrea is covered in blood that’s not hers and noticing both Little Dixon and T-Dog are missing before I move to jump the railings.
“Dalilah!”
I ignore Shane’s whisper-yell and slide down the small hill before taking out both sage knives and running into the forest.
Rick doesn’t strike me as a tracker and even if he is, there are two walkers he has to fight while keeping a terrified little girl safe.
And if there are more walkers in the forest, they’re both dead.
I run and stop for a moment, feeling a stinging pain on my cheek because I ran into a branch with thorns before trying to catch my breath, looking down at the dirt.
I am forced to follow my own steps back until I find the tracks I’m looking for. Sadly, Sophia’s are pretty much messed up thanks to the walkers. Rick’s trails are too, but I still follow them, as fast as I can.
At a certain point, Rick’s tracks move to the side, for some reason, but I decide to still follow Sophia’s and the walkers’ until I find the tracks that let me know Rick managed to get to her before they did.
Afterwards, I find the tracks between Rick and the walkers divide. But given Rick clearly has Sophia, I decide to follow the walkers to wherever it is they’re going.
That was my plan until a walker growls beside me.
I turn, knives at the ready, and see a walker. Its foot is trapped in a bear trap and half of its arm has been chewed off.
I feel something coming up behind me all of a sudden and I spin on my toes at the right time to avoid getting bit by another walker.
If we hadn’t gone to the CDC prior to this, I would’ve actually thought they had this planned.
I grunt, trying to push the thing off, but fucker is fat. It has enough strength to pin me against a tree, closer to the walker trapped in the bear trap.
Motherfucker.
I try not to panic because I really don’t want to die like this and find a way to force him to trip backwards. I turn at the right time to dive my left sage knife through the trapped walker’s skull because it was moving closer and, by the time that thing drops, I’m already killing the fat one.
I sit down on the dirt, trying to catch my breath while I look around, making sure I’m alone and trying to find the tracks again.
Great. Where the hell am I?