Chapter Text
Gwen's head pounds as Jessie shakes her awake. They've been making their way, painfully slowly in Gwen's opinion, through the Georgian state in hopes to reach Atlanta. Hiding out in cars and scavenging for scraps of food for what seems like months but in reality, could be no more than three or so weeks.
"Gwen. Gwen, I think I hear something, voices." Jessie says, with a hopeful glint in her eye, when Gwen doesn't immediately rouse herself, Jessie huffs in frustration, "Oi, Gwen! I said I can hear voices."
Gwen groans and covers her eyes with her arms sighing, "Well, you should probably get that checked out. That's definitely not normal."
The brunette rolls her eyes, "I'm being serious. You're meant to be the morbid one, shouldn't you be a little more concerned?"
"Hey, I'm being serious too, you should really talk to someone about that," Gwen says, smiling and sitting up in the small car they'd stowed away in for the night, "but not me!" She jokes, pointing to her sister.
"-a graveyard. I don't know how I feel about this." A far away but distinguishably feminine voice rings out and snatches Gwen's attention. Worry overtakes her slightly as she sees a small woman and an even smaller little girl come into view of their car.
"Shit." Gwen whisper-shouts as she pulls Jessie down below eye level.
"See! I told you I heard voices. We should go out there, right?" Jessie says, already reaching for the door handle before Gwen's hand pulls her back.
"Hey, wait, we don't know what these people are about. Strangers are as dangerous as the dead nowadays."
"They've got kids with them, Gwen! I hardly think they're axe murderers," Seeing Gwen's mouth open to protest, Jessie tries to reason with the inevitable argument she's about to make, "It doesn't matter if we show ourselves, they're searching the cars. Any minute now, one of them is gonna look in this one and find us."
Knowing Jessie is right, Gwen stays quiet and nervously lets out a shaky breath as she reaches for the handle of the car and steps out.
The woman she'd seen has her back facing Gwen as she fully leaves the car and Jessie follows suit, the little girl, however, catches sight of them and panic covers her face.
"Mom! Mom!" She tugs on, who is clearly, her mother's shirt. Gwen tries to shoot the girl what she thinks is a reassuring smile, "Mom," the kid whispers this time, like that will somehow hide her from these strangers, "there are people here."
With that her mother spins around and as her eyes immediately lock on the two filthy girls, pulling unappealing grins, she's already crying out to her group, "Rick! People. There are people here!" She says, echoing her daughters' words.
A chorus of confused questions follow as more people shoot into view, all their faces dropping at the sight of the teenagers, who are still just standing there, feeling exposed.
A man comes forward, presumably Rick, he's in a police uniform and even though the time is completely inappropriate, Jessie can't help but notice he's quite the looker.
"Um, hello, we come in peace." Jessie says with a nervous chuckle, looking around at the crowd of people that have now gathered.
The look of concern on the surrounding people's faces only increases at this.
"What's are you girls doing out here? Where are your people?" The (rather attractive) officer asks them as he steps forward with caution.
Jessie pulls a face as Gwen answers, "There's no one else. It's only us. We're making our way to Atlanta. Is that where you're heading?" Gwen's nerves skyrocket as the new faces stare down at them.
A new man pipes up, not as friendly as the former, "What you doing hiding out in cars? You watching us?" Hostility laces his voice.
It's Gwen's turn to pull a face, "Watching you? What-no! Didn't you hear? I said we're on our way to Atlanta, this road takes us that way, am I right?"
The newer man looks the girls up and down, "You should get a move on then, you're burning day light."
The officer turns and whispers something to the man that Gwen can't make out, but he doesn't look too happy. A beautiful woman with long brown hair talks next, "Atlanta's overrun. We've just come from there."
"Overrun- are you sure? We heard the broad casts about a refugee camp? A safe place for people?" Jessie asks and the lady shakes her head.
Gwen's thoughts spin at 100 miles an hour. Atlanta's gone down? That was their plan, their only plan, to get to a safe place and put this behind them as best they could.
Before she can even really process it, the officer is speaking again, "Have you got a place to go? People to go to?"
Gwen thought it was a rather stupid question because if they had a place and people, why on earth would they be out here? Jessie just shakes her head, "The people we were with, we got separated a few weeks ago. Atlanta and getting there has been our only goal."
The man stays silent for a while, "What're your names? How old are you both?"
Jessie answers for them both in true older sister fashion, "I'm Jessie, this is Gwen. I'm 19, she's 16."
Nobody says anything again for a while, but Gwen can see the cogs turning in his eyes, "You're welcome to join us, we've not got much, but it's something."
"I think this is something we should discuss first." The unfriendly man spoke, eyeing the girls.
"Yeah, we don't know these people. They might not be safe." The woman they first startled said, pulling her daughter into herself.
"Shane, they're just girls, out here by themselves. They're somebody's children."
The man now known as Shane shook his head, "Nobody is just anybody, nowadays. This is something we need to discuss as a group."
The people surrounding them didn't look too keen on Shane's behaviour, the beautiful woman stood back with her son, shaking her head.
A man Gwen hadn't noticed before, with a big build, dark skin and kind eyes smiles at her as Shane and Rick speak in hushed voices before turning back, "Is joining us something you would like? There is always safety in numbers and as I hope you can tell, we're good peoples."
The sisters share a look and agree with no words needing to be spoken, Jessie turns back to the man, "Suppose that doesn't sound too bad."
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Gwen later learnt that the man with kind eyes name is T-dog, whom she already was very fond of and a younger Korean man, named Glenn had already cracked more jokes than she thought humanly possible. She liked him too. Jessie had walked off with the woman, Carol, whom Gwen could tell her sister had taken too.
After the initial excitement and nerves of taking in new people died down a bit, the group dispersed, people got to work scavenging and working on the broken-down RV. Jessie shot her sister a smile and wondered off with Carol and her daughter, Sophia, as Gwen started searching alongside a very blunt, rather dirty man, Daryl.
"So, how bad is it, in Atlanta?" Gwen asks as she rummages through the boot of a car whilst Daryl raids a truck nearby.
He grunts, a negative grunt as far as Gwen could tell. "Pretty bad. Why? You got people there or something like that?"
"Something like that. When it all when down, my baby sister was staying with our aunt and uncle in the city. Hoping maybe she'd still be there or something." Gwen could feel tears welling, she'd known it was a pipe dream from the first time Jessie had mentioned it, but still.
She pulls herself together so the man wouldn't see her cry, he didn't seem like the comforting type, "What are your plans? Where are you heading now?"
"We're trying for Fort Benning, but I don't know about it." Daryl answers as he pulls out a knife he'd uncovered, he held it out to Gwen, "Saw you didn't have anything on you, you'll need it. 'Sides I already got one of my own."
Gwen smiles at him, "Thank you. You know you're nicer than you look." The man just grunts in response, "How about you? You got family? Siblings?"
She must have hit a nerve as an icy look comes over the man's face, "Man, can't you just be quiet, it'll go faster."
Just as Gwen's formulating a response to his rude switch up, she hears Rick racing towards them, "Lori, get down, under the cars, now!"
And that's when she sees what she'd missed before, a whole herd of walkers heading right for them. her eyes immediately search for Jessie, who looks back at her before quickly leaving Sophia and Carol's sides and dashing towards her, shoving them under a truck together when she reaches the frozen girl.
As they roll under the car, Gwen sees T-dog ducking behind a car door and slicing his arm on a piece of metal before dashing off out of view. Breathing heavily, the sisters pull close to each other as shuffling feet and the moans of the dead surround them.
A few cars away from the pair Sophia and Carl can be seen by themselves. Jessie's chest hurts, filled with sudden guilt for leaving their sides. As if Gwen can sense this, she holds her sister's hands even tighter, almost as tight as she's holding her breath waiting for it to be over.
After what feels like hours, silence falls as the crowd of walkers march on, unaware. Still, Gwen holds her breath, surely, they'd been to lucky.
That's when she sees movement, not from a walker but the car Sophia was hidden under as she began to shuffle her way out, back to her mother. Before her head was even fully out, a lone walker catches site of the young girl, scaring her back under and crawling out the other side. And before anyone can really register, she's running, taking off into the surrounding woods, two walkers and Rick on her tail.
Gwen hears Jessie gasp and whimper from beside her and the two slowly emerge from under their car, others following as Carol sprints to the forest's edge, held back by Lori.
The group sits in silence, except for Carol's cries, until Rick's return, alone. Gwen could see the guilt in her sister's eyes and the blame on Rick in Carol's.
Rick, Daryl, Shane and Glenn head out soon after to follow Sophia's tracks, almost begged by Jessie to join them but she was refused, saying she'd be safer with the group.
So, Jessie sat down, beside a still crying Carol and did her best to comfort the grieving mother as Gwen headed off in search of T-dog.
The man she was looking for sat on the steps of the RV, blood spilling out of his arm at an alarming rate. To say it was a cut would be an understatement.
"You know how to rap that up?" Gwen asks, to which all the man had the energy to do was shake his head, "I can do it if you like, I'm good with things that like." She smiles a soft, sad smile at the man, which he returns.
"Thanks, doll." Gwen's eyebrows shoot up and she smiles again, genuine this time.
"Doll? I can tell we're gonna be best buds, we're already on a nickname basis and we just met 3 hours ago."
"I'm guessing Gwen is short for Gwendolyn? Right? Hence, doll." The man grins through his obvious pain.
"Okay, I'll allow that."
"Well, thank you, ma'am."
"You'll thank me more later, let me go grab my first aid box."
After speeding back to the hood of the car Jessie and Gwen had dumped their stuff in previously and grabbing what the girl assumed she'd need, she sat herself and T-dog down at the table inside the RV.
Sighing, she pulls out her kit and got the work, silently. Mopping up the pool of blood as best she can and disinfecting the surrounding area, she's too hyper fixated on the work at hand to hear T-dogs question the first time he asks it.
"Sorry, what did you say?"
The man smiles, "I was just wondering how two young girls had been wandering round on their own for weeks with no weapons to defend themselves but a shit ton of disinfectant wipes and Twinkie bars. And yes, I have seen those and will be stealing regularly."
Gwen couldn't help but laugh, it was silly she supposes, "Well, girls gotta have some priorities. I chose Twinkies 100% of the time."
They could hear Carol and the others concerned conversations, signalling Glenn and Shane's return, talking of Rick and Daryl's continued search for the girl.
"Sorry, I can't really do much else." The girl finishes, wrapping up the length of his arm in bandages.
"Thanks. Where'd you learn to do all this anyway? I could barely use a plaster when I was your age, hell, I can hardly do it now."
Gwen stays silent for a moment. She didn't want to talk about why she knew how to treat wounds. Why she knew how to craft makeshift slinks, why she knew how to move dislocated limbs back in place and could perfectly cover a bruised eye with minimal concealer.
"Oh, you know, just picked things up here and there. I would have liked to be a nurse, I think, before all this." Disbelief clouds the man's face, but he pretends to believe her.