Survival

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters from the CBS show Jericho. All OFCs are mine though. I do not earn anything from writing these stories, in fact the only thing you might get if you sue me would be my four troublesome kids and they are only worth something to me.

Timeline : 200x1129 Bombs 60

Warnings : Mild language and imagery.

Summary: At the moment I'm not sure how long this is going to go for or really what is going to happen. All I know is that I didn't want to tempt fate by either doing an H/J story or God forbid an E/J one. So I decided to bring in a totally different character, who will meet Jake and who knows what will happen… I do know that I'm paying Emily back for her disregard of Roger in this though! But that's just me; I'm an evil girl ;)

This is Alternate Universe with Alternate Characters, although I might touch on the canon version sometimes just to ground myself with the time line. I'm terrible at forgetting what I write!

Feedback : Yes please! The more the better!

Chapter one

One foot after the other…Drag… Put down….Drag again…. The girl's feet had no feeling anymore, and they were fast getting even less feeling remaining.

She shifted the weight of the slight 6 yr old girl on her hip up a little, just to take the weight off her hipbone for a few seconds. Even though the little girl barely weighed more than a sack of potatoes, such a long time carrying her was still tiresome.

They had been walking… Walking over fields, roads, farms and muddy ditches for weeks now… The girl was scared that they were never going to stop walking, and if they did, it would end with her collapsing onto the ground and never getting up again. She couldn't do that. Her kids needed her more than anything else and she wouldn't leave them without a mother.

Her foot slipped a little on the rough gravel of the dirt road and she nearly lost her balance. She would certainly have lost it and fallen if it weren't for the equally shaky man walking next to her who quickly grabbed her elbow to steady her. The girl looked over at him, thanking God silently that he was on the same flight as she was that fateful day; otherwise she would never have gotten this far.

Her best friend and her eldest daughter's namesake Jessica was on the same flight too, they were heading to Wichita to visit a mutual friend there. Jessica was a third year medical student at one of the best universities in Missouri, so she had been an invaluable help along this long hard road.

"Thank you, Roger." She spoke in a near whisper; her throat was as dry as it could possibly be. No water for nearly 4 days would do that to any person, she was sure. She looked at her 3 yr old son, who was being carried by Roger. His eyes were closed yet again and he had no color in his face. Praying for a miracle, the girl reached over with what little strength she had and pressed a tiny kiss to his little hand. This was not what she had in mind when she flew over to the USA to see her friends in St Louis and Wichita.

The voice next to her, rough and gravelly, shook her out of her reverie.

"You ok Riss? Hopefully it's not long now till we get there. " Roger spoke in what he hoped was a slightly upbeat voice, even though he didn't have much faith himself, he knew that he had to keep up the morale of everyone else, not just this young mother.

Riss spoke with what seemed like the last of her energy.

"Yeah, I guess I'm ok. There isn't much I can be other than okay at the moment is there?" Riss gave Roger a look of pure fatigue coupled with a little upward curve of the corner of her mouth. It was all the reassurance she could manage at the time and as far as she was concerned was the most she could manage ever again with the way she felt at the moment.

She looked down to her left and saw her eldest daughter plodding along beside her. The 9 year old looked just as bad as Riss felt, and yet again, she felt guilty for letting them get into this situation. If they had've all just stayed back in Australia and not come on this harebrained trip to escape from the real world, they might not be in this position now. Her musings were quite common on this exhausting walk though, and Riss knew deep inside herself that she had to blaming herself for this, otherwise she would just give up here and now.

"Ok, rest time again folks." Roger spoke with as much authority as he could muster up. He had been leading this group of people halfway across Kansas for nearly 9 weeks now, and he knew that in these last few days frequent resting was the only thing that was keeping everyone going. Since they had hit the last town about 4 days ago they had finished the water that they had found in the corner milk bar there, the last of it being given to the three children that were with them, the youngest one of these cuddled up against his chest, the boy's breath coming in wheezy little intervals.

Riss sighed and found her legs just giving way from underneath her. Emily curled up in her mother's lap in the catatonic state that she had been in for the last 24 hours and Riss hugged her close, wishing that they were somewhere that she could just sleep. Rest had been a very rare thing over the last 8 weeks or so. Every time she closed her eyes, even though she knew that she needed the rest, all Riss could see was that huge mushroom cloud rising up from the horizon, so easily noticeable even from their high altitude on the plane.

Riss sat there, the tears and fears for her friends who were all over the USA rising once again. She had used the internet to meet new people for the better part of the last 10 years and the friends that she had made were true ones. Always Riss had dreamed of making this trip over to the places that they lived, to see them, meet with them and to cement the friendships that were formed so strongly in emails and forum posts.

Now her stomach dropped again just thinking of her other best friend Misty that she had left safe and sound in St Louis so many weeks ago, with her husband and kids. The tears rose unbidden in the back of her eyes, and yet again her throat choked up at the thought that she might never see Misty again. The news that they had heard from the other refugees at the Nebraska camp wasn't good for Misty and her family. They reported that as far as they knew St Louis had been one of the cities wiped out by the nuclear explosions that had gone off all over the USA.

Riss took a deep shaky breath. Almost immediately after that she felt Roger moving closer to her. He knew how emotional she could be by now, after weeks of travel with her, and if the truth be known he was more than accepting of her emotional instability. Which was a huge ask of anyone in her book. Previously people had not quite been as accepting, and it wasn't something Riss forgot in a hurry.

"Heya girl, gotta keep your spirits up ya know." Roger slung a comforting arm over Riss's shoulders and squeezed reassuringly. He balanced her son on his chest and reached over to her chin with his other hand, raising her face up to meet his gaze.

"We are going to be in Jericho soon, it won't be long. "

Riss looked up at him through the few tears that had escaped her eyes. She knew Roger's fiancé was in Jericho, and the way he made it sound, it was like heaven just thinking about it. She noticed the half smile on Roger's face, seemed like now days the only smiles he gave were ones to try and keep her spirits up. And for that she would be eternally grateful.

Another 10 minutes passed and finally the group started back to their feet again and milled around waiting to start back on the eternally continuing journey towards what they hoped would be their salvation and survival. Jessica Williams came up towards the front of the group with her arms outstretched towards Riss.

"Hey honey, just came to check out how you and the kids were doing. Can I have a look at Emily?" Jessica didn't wait for a reply; she just took Emily from her arms as if she could sense that Riss didn't have the energy anymore to hand her over to anyone.

Checking her pulse and her temperature and finding it stable, Jessica handed Emily back and then moved on to check Dominic where he was still resting against Roger. She wasn't happy with Dominic's temperature. It had slowly risen for the last 24 hours and was getting higher much faster than she would like.

She checked her namesake Jessica out quickly in between, liking the fact that the little girl was looking like she was coping fairly well with the conditions she was under.

Pulling Roger aside she spoke quietly to him, not wanting Riss to hear them.

"Roger, how much longer do you think we have before we get to Jericho? I'm not too happy about the way Emily is looking, and Dominic has quite the wheeze going in his chest, and his temperature is still going up. I don't want to risk losing him before we get there." Jessica looked over at Roger with a worried look on her face waiting for a response.

He thought for a minute before answering her.

"Well judging by what I remember of this road, there is a sign maybe 2 miles away that is the outskirts of Jericho. As soon as we get to that we only have a little way to go, and we will be in the town centre."

Roger stopped and thought about what he had just said. In his head he was picturing the town of Jericho, and seeing Emily there waiting for him. Roger had missed her so much over these last weeks, and it didn't matter how busy he was trying to survive, the thought of Em and her welcoming smile always sent him into a daydream. But in all this, he had to wonder whether the town was still there. All the rumors and the refugees he had spoken to said it was, but who knew if they were right.

This time it was Jessica that snapped him out of the daydream.

"Roger!" Jessica had spoken for the fourth time to him; she had to raise her voice as much as she could to get his attention.

Jessica spoke again now she was sure he was listening.

"I said ok then, we should get moving. I need to get these kids some food and some water, not to mention the rest of us." Jessica hugged Riss and moved back to the end of the long line of people milling around, where she was walking with some of the older men and women.

They had already lost three elderly people on this hellish walk halfway across the state. One was a great grandmother of 3 that was headed to Wichita to see her relatives for a wedding, one was an older man that had a heart attack, or so Jessica suspected by the pain he had suffered in his side before he passed, and the third one was a single lady in her late 70s who had travelled the world for the whole of her life, heard about Wichita and decided to settle down there with her pen friend she had met years ago.

Jessica mused over all of this as she went to the back of the line and they started moving again. She knew more about these people in 8 weeks than some people knew about their friends in a whole lifetime. It was important to share things to keep everyone going along the way while they were walking through what she imagined a warzone would look like.

There had been road gangs along the way, that was how the last lady had died, shot by a single bullet from a couple of scruffy looking teenagers who had run off after Riss had stabbed one of them in the back of the neck with the pocket knife she had picked up along the way.

Jessica still applauded her for her guts in doing that, but in other ways she wished Riss wasn't so foolhardy. She had yelled to Riss to stop when she had crept silently up on the teen as he stood over the dying old lady laughing and going through her pockets, but Riss was on him too quick for her to stop her in time.

The boy had fled with a huge wound in the back of his neck, complaining about women being such bitches. Jessica allowed herself a slight laugh at the way the two cowardly boys had fled after realizing that a group of their size wasn't just going to let them walk away without harm.

As far as she knew Riss still had the knife in her jeans pocket, and for that at the moment she was grateful.

The other road gangs they had met along the way were more interested in the cars they were pillaging and the dead bodies they were ripping the clothes off, than a rag tag bunch of what looked like convicts walking across the countryside.

Jessica shook herself from her thoughts just in time to see the sign Roger had promised coming up on their left hand side. She breathed a sigh of relief at the fact that they might, just might survive this nightmare yet.

Riss and Roger exchanged glances and a tiny hopeful smile as the chatter in the exhausted group grew louder and louder. It was the most that this mismatched group had talked since they first started walking somewhere on the other side of the state border.

Riss leaned over to Dominic still resting in Rogers arms and kissed him softly on the cheek.

"Hang in there little man, mummy is still here. Not long now, we might just make it."

With renewed hope, still shuffling one foot in front of the other, her and Roger kept a slow lead going on the band of people that they led towards the one hope that they had left.

To Be Continued.