Disclaimer: I do not own The Walking Dead or any plotlines or characters from the TV show or graphic novels.

. . . . .

The world ended. Jacqui, who's dead now, once said The world seems to have come to an end - I can hear her saying that, clear as a bell. The world ended, all because dead people started walking around trying to eat everything that moves, including people. Now there are no schools or hospitals or cell phones or the President, not anymore. All of the things that used to be a given, they're gone.

And me? Me, Sydney Rose Dixon, I lost my mother and my grandparents and my uncle and my friend Tyler and almost everyone else I ever loved or even liked a little. I lost both of my houses. The .22 rifle my dad taught me to shoot with. All of my clothes and books and movies and everything. I lost my great little throwing knife and I lost the one picture I had of my mom.

I'm just saying – I lost a lot.

And now, just when I was starting to think I was kind of running out of stuff I could lose, my dad's truck is being taken from me, too.

That's where I am now. In his truck. The passenger side, where I've always ridden. It's my spot.

The others – our group's smaller than ever, with just me and my dad, the Grimes family, Sophia and Carol, Dale, Andrea, Glenn, T-Dog, and Shane – they're all outside, weaving around, busy as bees, talking in serious tones because that's just how people talk these days. We're in front of an empty nursing home we stayed in last night, the place my dad and some others came across when they were searching for my uncle (who Rick Grimes handcuffed to a roof, but that's another story that I really don't want to get into), only back then the place had people. Old people and the young people who were protecting them. But when we came back to it yesterday, looking for shelter after the CDC exploded, the nursing home had been raided and all of the people there had been shot in the head. Murdered. Their bodies left for the walkers.

I don't want to think about that. Bad enough we had to spend the night in there. I slept with my head on Dad's leg and it was still hard.

Anyway, not the point.

What I was getting at is that the people outside of the truck – my dad included – they're all working in the sun, helping, even the other kids. Most of the group is organizing and moving what little stuff we have left – what little stuff that didn't get blown up – between the vehicles, and my dad and T-Dog are finishing up sucking the fuel out of the ones we're leaving behind . . . meaning Shane's jeep, T-Dog's church van, and my dad's truck. My dad's truck. My truck.

And right now – and even though I should be helping – I sit in here. Because I have to say goodbye. I breathe out, long and slow, and try to figure out how to say it. I really don't want to.

I never thought too much about this truck, if I'm being honest. It was just there. A fact of life. I never considered all it had to do with, but it's coming to me now . . . This truck, it's a moving, living part of my weekends with Dad. The weekends I loved, perfect days when I didn't have to be a lawyer's well-mannered daughter but I didn't have to watch out for walkers, either. This truck is part of tracking a deer through the woods, part of shooting bottles off a fence in the middle of nowhere. This truck smells like sweat and dirt and the cigarettes my dad never has anymore. My dad, my dad used to let me sit on his lap and steer this truck down backroads, and I was good at it. This truck drove me to and from Dad's place. It was my hello and it was my goodbye.

Now it's just a goodbye. One more goodbye. One more piece of my old life going down the drain.

A shadow comes over me. My dad's familiar arms, dirty and scarred, cross over the window sill. My goodbye's about to be cut short, I guess. I keep my eyes down, and before he can speak I go ahead and say, "I know we have to leave it," because I don't want him to tell me why again. I know why – fuel. Survival.

It's still hard.

Dad sighs. I feel it in my hair. Neither of us talks for a second, but then he reaches an arm in and opens the glove box. I watch him fiddle around for a while, shoving aside crumpled papers and a Skoal can before he draws out his old wallet, made of brown leather and beat up as anything. "Had to make sure to grab this."

Somehow I find a little smile, because I'm tough about hard stuff. "Whatcha gonna buy?"

"Ain't like I ever had much money to spend." He opens the wallet up and tosses it in my lap. "But a man needs a picture of his best girl, don't he?"

I'm the only picture in his wallet. I have been for as long as I can remember, though it's always my school picture and he changes it out every time I go up a grade. But school pictures hadn't been taken yet when the walkers came, and so the photo my dad has is my year-old fourth-grade picture. That was the first Picture Day I had my ears pierced, and Mom let me wear her favorite diamond earrings and the necklace to match. She made me sign a letter swearing to bring everything back in good shape. The diamonds . . . They're beautiful, even just captured in a picture, but they don't look as good on me as they did on her.

My mother. I can see her in my head, still . . . But how long will that last?

"I lost my picture of Mom. It was in my bag back in the CDC." My voice is small. I meet my dad's eyes, and very quietly – but controlled, I'm not about to cry – I ask, "What if I forget what she looks like?"

For a moment, we just look at each other. We do that a lot, my dad and I, just look and not talk. He and Mom used to do it, too. Now, though, now he's looking at the wallet. He glances back at me, but then his eyes go to the wallet again and this time so does his hand and he picks the wallet up. His fingers go to a slot I don't think I've ever noticed and he pulls out a blank piece of paper I don't think I've ever seen. He hands it to me. "Here."

The paper's thick and folded into fourths. I unfold it and then inhale.

It's the three of us. We're outside somewhere, under a clear sky, on a long stretch of very green grass dotted with dandelions. I'm in the left half of the picture, just a toddler, young enough that I'd let Mom put a bow in my hair, and I'm watching something the photo doesn't show. To the right, on the other side of a quilt I recognize from my Nana's house, my dad sits in one of those metal folding chairs, and he has his arms wrapped around her, around Mom, she's on his lap, and she's gorgeous. Her hair's been hot-iron curled, she's in cut-off jeans I can't remember her ever wearing, and she's grinning and watching me, and she has an arm around Dad's neck, and Dad, he looks happy. They both look so happy. It's weird but I love it.

"When was this?" I ask Dad in an almost-whisper. My hand's trembling, making the picture shake, so I have to rest it on my knee.

"Fourth of July. You'da been a few months shy of two."

"So you were still married?"

"Yep." He snaps his wallet closed. "You keep that. Girl should have a picture of her mom."

I swallow. "Thanks."

He nods once. A moment passes. Then he taps my arm with the back of his hand. "C'mon. Time to head out."

I make myself take my eyes from the picture. "Can I ride with you?" With the truck gone, my dad's going to be riding my uncle's motorcycle from here on out. That makes the whole thing a little better – just a little – because I do love to ride the motorcycle, can't say otherwise.

But my dad's shaking his head. "No. Long trip, we don't know what we might run into. You're gonna ride in the RV."

I'm disappointed but I don't argue. Never helps, with Dad, and he hates it when I do it. I take in the picture one more time – my mom – and then carefully fold it back up, right along the older creases. My dad opens the door for me and I hop out, tucking the photo deep into my back pocket. I notice Dad's wearing the vest I love, the leather one with the wings on the back. I also notice that his eyes go over the truck, and that his hand may linger on the handle for a bit too long, but that's as close as he gets to looking sad. My dad, he's real strong. He doesn't make a show of being upset about things. I'm trying to get as good as he is about that.

He slams the door. We step away and Dad's hand runs down the back of my head once, and he tells me to be good. Then he goes off to the motorcycle, waiting and ready, crossbow already hooked on back.

And me, I steal just one second to look around. Carl and his parents, Lori and Rick (our new leader, I think, and I didn't want to like him at first, but now I think maybe he might be alright), are riding with Sophia and her mom, Carol, in Carol's Cherokee. Looks like they're all ready to go, Sophia's climbing in right now, clutching that doll Eliza Morales gave to her days ago. Sophia's twelve but doesn't really act her age. My eyes catch on Carl next, and he catches me looking – wait, I'm catching him looking – and I turn away immediately, pressing my lips together. Carl and I, we were almost-friends early on, but these days we don't get along very well. He doesn't understand me. I don't care.

I check out the RV now. Shane's standing at the end, holding his shotgun, like he always seems to be. Andrea's walking to the door, frowning, as usual. Andrea . . . She wanted to stay behind in the CDC. Not like me, because I didn't really want to stay behind –

I crack my fingers, chew my knuckle. Don't want to think about that. Not even supposed to, my dad said to forget it.

Anyway, Dale and Glenn are by the door, too. Now so's T-Dog. I hear the motorcycle revving up. We're really all ready. Ready to go, ready to leave Atlanta.

I look at the sky and I think of Merle and wonder if he's still somewhere in the city. But if my dad doesn't want to hang around and look for him, I guess the odds must be slim. I wonder if he's dead and then push that thought away because it's just so bad. I'd like for my dad to talk more about Merle and what he thinks about all that, but I'm not gonna press him, not anytime soon. He's got enough on his mind.

I look up at the nursing home behind me. I don't think my dad believes in heaven, which kind of bothers me, but my mom did. My dad's right on a lot of things, but so was my mom, and so I think I'll think that she's right this time, and I imagine now that all of the dead people inside of there, inside of that sad nursing home, are in heaven. What can it hurt to at least imagine?

And finally, I look at my dad's truck, one last time. Dirty and banged up and lonely and part of so much of me. My throat swells, but I scowl and tell myself to stop it, and I straighten up and turn on my heel and march right up and into the RV, before anyone else. No crying. I've been crying too much lately, and that's got to stop. I'm stopping it.

Besides, there's no reason to cry. We're going to Fort Benning. We're going to Fort Benning, and things are going to be okay there. We're going to be safe there, and my dad and I are going to find some woods and go hunting and I'll get a new .22 and he'll get a new truck and maybe someday we'll meet up with Merle again and everything's going to be good.

Yeah.