Disclaimer: I own absolutely nothing from The Walking Dead, television show or comic book series. All characters belong to the amazing creators of the series.
Summary: Carol Peletier and her daughter Sophia are trying to survive when the world begins to change and the dead are attacking the living. She finds herself without gas and stranded when a stranger offers her and her daughter an escape. AU/ZA/Caryl.
Blind Faith
Chapter 1
"Mama!" Sophia Peletier burst into her mother's bedroom on a balmy Thursday morning. She had a ring of toothpaste suds around her mouth and her toothbrush in hand. "Mama, wake up!"
Carol shot up in bed, her daughter's frantic cries startling her out of a dreamless sleep. Squinting in to the dim early morning light, Carol reached out, putting her hands on her daughter's shoulders.
"Sophia? What is it sweetie? What's wrong?"
"Mama, the news. Come see the news." Sophia grabbed her mother's hand and started to tug on her, urging her out of bed. Carol followed her daughter down the hall to her room, where she had a little TV on her dresser that she was allowed to watch as she got ready for school.
"Go finish getting ready for school, baby," Carol urged, peering at the TV screen as a report spoke in frantic tones.
"But, mama…"
"Go on," Carol urged. Sophia sighed and hurried into her bathroom, poking her head out every few moments to get an earful of what the reporter was saying.
"…the CDC is urging people to stay inside. If you must go to work, take every precaution. Wear protective masks and gloves to reduce the risk for spreading germs. We are still not certain how this fever is spread, whether it is airborne or otherwise. Schools all throughout the country are shutting down as this epidemic spreads. All air travel is being delayed until more answers are provided. So far, hospitals throughout the country have reported a record breaking thirty thousand deaths from this fever."
"Oh my God," Carol gasped, covering her hand with her mouth. "Oh my God."
"Mama?" Sophia asked, walking back into the room, wiping her mouth off with a towel. "What's happening?"
"I don't know, sweetheart, but…let me call the neighbors. Maybe they've heard something." Carol hurried down the hall, and Sophia was right on her heels. She grabbed the phone and put it up to her ear, expecting to hear a dial tone, but it was silent. She tried dialing, and all she heard were a series of beeps. The lines were down.
She moved to the window and looked out to see neighbors frantically packing things into their cars as a line of headlights spread from their street all the way down to the intersection.
"Sophia, baby, go pack your overnight bag. A couple of changes of clothes, your toothbrush…"
"Mama, I'm scared." Sophia was twelve, but a very young twelve.
"Don't be scared, sweetheart. I'm here. Just go pack. Meet me downstairs in five minutes, ok?" Sophia nodded and hurried to her room. Carol quickly grabbed her cell phone off the charger and tried dialing the Grimes' number with no luck. She even attempted 911, and even that was a dead end.
"Mama! Mama!" Carol gasped and rushed down the hall to Sophia's room to find Sophia trembling and clutching one of her dolls as she stood in front of the television. "The dead people…" She was hyperventilating by the time Carol reached her and put her arms around her daughter, turning her from the sight on the television.
"…reanimating and violently attacking the living. We're getting the first glimpse of a corpse moving and turning on people in a county morgue. We're….yes…" The woman squinted and held her hand to her ear, concentrating on what was being told to her through her earpiece. "Yes, I'm being told there are multiple reports coming from all around the country that the dead are returning to life and biting…yes…biting the living." Carol's hand reached out and flicked off Sophia's television set.
"I don't want to leave, Mama," Sophia cried. "Let's stay."
"We can't," Carol cried, her own eyes wide with fear. "We have to go, Soph. Grab your things. We have to go."
Carol packed as much as she could into the trunk of her small Honda. She grabbed a case of bottled water out of the kitchen as well as all the food she could fit alongside the bags she and Sophia had packed. She grabbed her most cherished photos of her parents and of her daughter, and she packed them all in the car, praying that this was all a bad dream and that she would see this place again. This beautiful home she'd bought after her divorce, a place she could raise her little girl and make a new life for herself. This friendly town where Sophia had made new friends after switching schools after her mother won sole custody. The neighbors Carol had come to really appreciate and rely on in hard times. She couldn't really be leaving it all behind, could she?
She sighed and stood next to the car, watching as the congested traffic slowly drifted by her place, horns honking, people shouting, her quiet little neighborhood becoming something out of a horror movie. She pocketed her cell phone, hoping it might come in handy somewhere, somehow, and she slid into the driver's seat.
"Put your belt on, Soph," Carol murmured. Sophia did as she was told, rolled up her window and locked her door. "Put your earphones in, ok?"
"Why?"
"Just do as I say, alright? Listen to it as loud as you want. Just close your eyes and try to sleep. We'll be driving for a while."
"Where are we going?"
"I don't know yet, baby. I don't know." She smoothed back Sophia's hair, and Sophia dug her iPod out of her pocket and put her earphones in. She gave her mother one more worried glance before turning on her music and closing her eyes.
Carol turned the radio on low and listened through static as multiple reports came through about corpses coming back to life, about them biting people, about those people falling ill with the same symptoms the corpses died of. Carol felt her stomach sink with each horrifying word she heard. Bombs were going off in big cities. Napalm was being dropped. The dead were coming back to life and killing the living, and it was becoming a violent circle of death.
She tried not to cry as the hours went on and the news became worse. One by one, the stations went silent, and by the time the sun set that night, there were no more reports. No more voices. Just static.
"Mama, I'm hungry."
"Me too, sweetheart. We'll find a place. We need gas, and we'll stop and eat." Sophia put her iPod away and looked out the window.
"Where's the other cars?"
"The interstate was congested, so I took a state road." She peered around, noticing that most businesses along the way had their lights out. The needle was dragging dangerously close to E, and there was one gas station about a half-mile up with the lights on, and surprisingly there were few cars stopped.
"Alright, Soph, we're stopping here. You stay in the car, you hear me? I get out, you lock the doors. You understand?"
"Yeah," she said nervously. "I understand."
She pulled in at the station, edging up to the pump. There was a pickup truck at the pump ahead of hers with a motorcycle in the back.
"Don't stop here, lady," a man called, driving off. "The prick running the station's chargin' ten dollars a gallon. Leave it to these dumb hicks to go greedy the second the world turns to shit." The man drove off, and Carol got out of the car, shutting it behind her. She heard the lock click and hurried up to the door where a man stood beating on the glass.
"Fuckin' asshole!" he yelled.
"Hey!" Carol shouted, stepping up next to him. "What's goin' on?"
"He ain't turnin' the pump on 'til he gets ten bucks a gallon. Piece of shit," he grumbled, spitting on the door. The man on the other side of the glass just grinned a shit-eating grin and held up a pistol, running his hand along the silver barrel.
"Look Mister, I've got a little girl out here, and we're just tryin' to make it," Carol pleaded.
"Twenty bucks a gallon. Price just went up."
"God damn it!" Daryl kicked the door, and the sound reverberated, making Carol's shoulders jump.
"Daryl Dixon, your shitbag brother still owes me for that bad dust he sold me. You pay triple." Carol gritted her teeth, and she banged on the window.
"Please!" she cried.
"Forget it, lady," Daryl muttered.
"I can't," she cried out. "I got my little girl, and we're outta gas." Daryl looked back at the car to see the frightened girl in the passenger's seat. He turned back to the window and banged his fist against the glass. He leaned his head forward and grunted, finally settling for kicking his booted foot against the glass, leaving a slight crack.
"Dixon, you do that one more time, I'll blow your fuckin' head off!" the man warned. Daryl pushed off from the glass and turned back toward his truck.
"C'mon," he murmured to Carol.
"What?"
"You can ride with me."
"Are…are you sure?" She looked worriedly toward Sophia, uncertain if she should trust this stranger.
"I got half a tank. We can make it up the road a ways, maybe find another place where somebody don't know who my worthless brother is."
"Mister, are you sure? We've got a lot of stuff, and…"
"Throw it in the back. Hurry up. I ain't got all day." Carol thought only for a moment before deciding that given the current state of things, catching a ride as far away from this place as possible was probably the best thing for her and her daughter.
"Sophia, honey, come on," Carol called. Sophia climbed out of the car, and she hurried around to help Carol get their bags.
"Mama, who's he?"
"He's a nice man who's going to get us out of here, alright?"
"Alright," Sophia said with wide, worried eyes. Together, Sophia and Carol transferred their belongings and supplies into the back of Daryl Dixon's pickup truck, edging the items in around his motorcycle. Daryl started the pickup and revved the engine, glaring at the man inside the gas station. Sophia scooted into the truck first, sliding into the center of the bench seat. Carol glanced at Daryl as she climbed in the passenger's side and closed the door. Daryl took off down the road, and the three of them road in silence, wondering when the hell they were going to wake up from this nightmare.
