So my wonderful hubby took me to a concert for St. Patty's day! It was so sweet! We had to leave my baby at my sister's for the night (it's the first time he's been away from us at night) but he had fun! My sister and her husband spoil him haha
TragicCure: thanks!
SaraLostInes: I'm glad!
Azalia Fox Knightling: I don't think this counts as updating soon :/ I'll do better I promise!
SleepyHeather: yeah, I think that's why I ended up killing everyone. I like OCs too much for my own good haha
ShiveringTree: Thank you!
Davee: yeah, that's Carlin's blind spot. Don't worry, though! Daryl will be back!
Alina Maxwell: thanks so much!
Valerie Mackin: I've never read City of Ember... is it good? I'm always looking for suggestions for new books XD
WhisperInTheRain: yay! thanks!
SharonH: thank you
The moment of truth came when it was fully light the following morning, which didn't happen until about eight or nine o'clock because it was the heart of winter. Then Kiri peeled the now crunchy piece of paper off the vent and tried to make out what it said while the others crowded around her eagerly. Even though it was dry now, the ink had run so badly when it was wet that it was nearly impossible to make anything out.
"This word is don't," Ryan said, furrowing his brows in concentration. "And there's the word going."
"This here is just a bunch of letters." Kiri pointed to a small section of barely discernible letters. "C - D - C."
Nary slammed her palm against the steering wheel in frustration. "There isn't a word that has those letters next to each other! This is just garbage!"
Her twin frowned. "What if it's not part of a word, but a word all on it's own? What if they're talking about the CDC?"
"The what?" Carlin demanded, hardly daring to hope.
"The Center for Disease Control," Nary explained, suddenly not looking quite as angry. "It's in Atlanta. Shouldn't be far from here, actually."
Carlin's heart was pounding again. "So you think they went there? To this CDC place?"
Kiri nodded. "It's a damn good idea. If anybody's coming up with a vaccine to this mess - one that works, that is - they'll be doing it at the CDC. It's got to be well-fortified and it's probably well-armed. If Shane is in charge, there's a good shot that's where they went."
There was a long pause while everyone let this new information sink in.
Then Betsy, in her innocent little girl voice, said, "Is that where we're going then?"
The older girls exchanged a look. "Yep." And Nary put the Explorer into drive and they were off again.
Following the road map they had been using for months now, Carlin carefully plotted the way from the outskirts of Atlanta to the CDC. It was slow going because of the snow on the highways, and they reached their destination right at dusk.
Or, they reached what had once been their destination. Carlin couldn't imagine what the CDC had looked like before, but there was nothing there now except an enormous pile of charred rubble. It looked like an explosion had taken place there, though how or for what reason they could only guess.
They sat helplessly in the Explorer about thirty yards back from the disaster site, watching as the sun sank below the western horizon. This had been their last lead. Despite herself, Carlin felt tears stinging her eyes.
Kiri, ever-perceptive, saw this and reached out a quick hand to take Carlin's. "Don't worry. They're safe," she promised. "They had all those vehicles, right? They're all gone, and that means that, even if the Atlanta survivors were here when this place blew up, they got out safely."
"But we're never going to find them." Carlin's tone was bitter, helpless. She wished they had never gone to Indiana. She knew that was an ungrateful thought, but it was there all the same. "We have no idea where they've gone."
Kiri frowned, trying to think logically. "Well, it's pretty doubtful that they headed back the way they came from," she said slowly. "So I'm sure they headed further west. We can try that too. We may come across them."
"Maybe," Carlin said doubtfully, but it was all the plan they had. It was either keep moving or get eaten. So Nary turned the Explorer back onto the road and they were off on another wild goose chase.
The road leading northwest from the CDC was, like all the others now, lined with abandoned cars and piled high with snow. The going was slow, even with the Explorer in four-wheel drive.
Nary and Carlin spoke little as the days wound on, passing signs for unfamiliar Georgia towns that were, like all the others, deserted now. Kiri, sitting in the back between the two really little kids, sang children's songs and tried to keep them entertained with the battered toys they had salvaged from the warehouse camp. Sometimes she even read aloud from their storybooks, but those tales grew old and fast. To their credit, Grant and Betsy behaved very well. They never complained about having to ride in the car for so long, even though they were so young. Ryan talked a lot, mostly boasting about things he'd done back in high school before the outbreak. Lauren, like Nary and Carlin, spoke very little. The older girls were really starting to worry about her.
They crossed the state border nearly two weeks later, passing a rusted sign that welcomed them to Tennessee. They had only been in the state for a day when they came across an RV, plowing down the highway from the opposite direction.
"People!" Betsy cheered from beside Kiri.
"Live ones, at least," Ryan added grimly.
Kiri, an arm draped around Grant and Betsy's shoulders, peered anxiously at the RV. "What do you think?" she asked Carlin and her sister. "Should we stop?"
Carlin put her face up close to the windshield, trying to peer through the falling snow. "They're slowing too," she noted. "We better decide soon if we're going to bypass them."
"If we didn't have the kids, I'd say we stop," Nary said, frowning. Dusk was falling so, even with the headlights on, it was starting to get hard to see anything. "But I don't know if I'd risk it with them..."
Kiri frowned. "We've got plenty of guns. We ought to at least see who they are. I can stay here with the kids."
Carlin and Nary looked at each other in the steadily-growing gloom, frowning. Then they reached for their weapons (an 8 millimeter each, Carlin's baseball bat, and Nary's sturdy metal hoe) and let themselves out of the car.
The RV had rolled to a stop about thirty yards from them, the bright lights of its high beams nearly blinding. Then the engine cut off, though the lights remained, and the door opened. The girls held up their guns, ready, waiting.
"Don't shoot, I'm coming out," a masculine voice called.
"Just move slowly," Carlin barked, and she and Nary didn't lower their weapons.
The man who emerged was maybe twenty-three or twenty-four, dressed in faded jeans, heavy work boots, and a gray sweatshirt. He carried a rifle in his hand, but it was down by his side. "Don't shoot," he repeated.
"Put your gun down," Nary called.
"Put your gun down," the man returned. "Why should I trust ya'll if you don't trust me?"
Carlin lowered her semi-automatic a few inches. "I guess we'll just have to go on faith here," she suggested.
Nary didn't seem to like it, but she stowed her gun in the holster at her hip. When he saw them put their guns away, the man seemed to relax a bit. "The name's Vic," he introduced himself. "My friends and I are headed to Florida; we heard the infection's not as bad there. Where are ya'll headed?"
"Nowhere in particular," Nary answered, frowning. "And what you heard about Florida is shit. We went there first."
There was a long pause. "Well damn. Now I don't know what we're going to do."
"Welcome to our world," Nary answered, giving a small smile. Carlin frowned. She recognized that flirtatious undertone in her friend's voice. They had just met this guy and already Nary was moving in.
The man named Vic shivered. "Ya'll want to come in out of the cold?"
Nary looked like she was ready to agree, but Carlin stepped in smoothly. "How many people are you traveling with?"
"There are four of us," Vic answered. "We were roommates back at the University of Wisconsin."
"All guys?" Carlin demanded.
He nodded. "Yeah, but we're all pretty trustworthy guys. I'm sure you're pretty wary of people - we are too - but we're some of the good guys."
Carlin didn't answer, just pursed her lips. Vic had misunderstood her question. He thought she was worried about their safety, but that wasn't the problem. She knew that she and Nary could hold their own against these guys. No, the problem was Nary. The more men she was around, the sluttier she seemed to become. Carlin didn't hold it against her as a person; Nary was a big girl and could make her own decisions in life. But in a situation like this, where every encounter could be their last, it was a little inopportune.
But there wasn't much she could do other than follow Vic and Nary up the steps into the RV, which was pleasantly warm and well-lit. It was long and narrow. There was a bedroom at the back with a door and a bathroom with a shower, a small kitchen with a table that could turn into a bed and a bunk above the driving console.
Three young men were sitting at the table, each with a bottle of beer in hand. They looked up as their friend entered with the two girls.
"These are Pete, Wesley, and Luke," Vic introduced his friends. "Guys, these are the girls driving that Explorer..." he trailed off, realizing that they had never told him their names.
"I'm Channary," Nary introduced herself in that overly-friendly, flirtatious way she had. "But you can call me Nary. This is Carlin. We were roommates at the University of Maine."
This started an eager conversation about college. They discussed what they had been studying and what they had wanted to do. The boys scooted over to make room at the table, and Nary didn't hesitate to squeeze in with them.
"I was a Recording Industry major," Nary was explaining expansively. "I wanted to go into music production and-"
Carlin interrupted smoothly. "Uh, Nary? What about the others?"
"There are more of you?" Luke, who was tall and blond and quite ripped, asked eagerly.
Nary nodded disinterestedly. "Yeah, my sister and my cousins and some others. Carlin, why don't you go get them?"
Carlin didn't really want to leave Nary alone with all those strange guys, but Nary was firm. So Carlin pulled her jacket more tightly about her and made the short trek between the RV and the Explorer, her trusty bat in hand.
Kiri was waiting expectantly when she returned, shivering in the dark with the kids. "What's going on?" she demanded as soon as Carlin pulled open the door.
"Nary made some new friends," Carlin sighed. "There are a bunch of college guys on the RV, whose plans are about as concrete as ours."
"College guys?" Kiri repeated. "Great."
"Yeah," Carlin agreed. "So our chances of getting out of here anytime soon are zilch. Not until Nary gets laid."
Betsy tugged on the sleeve of Kiri's jacket, stretched taut over her rotund belly. "What's that mean?" she asked in her innocent little voice.
"Nothing, baby," Kiri answered soothingly. "Just some grownup talk." From the backseat, Ryan snorted derisively. Kiri ignored him and turned back to Carlin. "So what are we going to do?"
"I guess go hang out in the RV for a while," Carlin shrugged. "It's warm in there, and better we use their gas than ours. They have real beds and a real table and a real stove and a real refrigerator. It's better to wait this out over there than here."
Kiri glanced at the kids. "Think it's safe? For them, I mean."
"I think so," Carlin answered. "The guys seem okay, I guess. They're probably starving for human interaction, like we are. And anyway, we've got plenty of guns and we outnumber them, if Lauren and Ryan are armed. I think it's safe enough."
Carlin still didn't like it, but they all clambered out of the Explorer. Lauren and Ryan had their guns handy, scanning the horizon for anything that moved. Kiri took Grant's hand and Carlin lifted Betsy onto her hip and they all traipsed through the snow, at least a foot deep, and let themselves into the RV.
Vic stopped and stared at the newcomers. He was at the refrigerator, getting a beer for Nary. "Oh," he said. "I didn't know you had kids with you."
"This is my twin sister, Kiri," Nary said dismissively, already at ease with the strangers. Their eyes lingered on her pregnant belly but said nothing. "Those are our cousins, Lauren and Grant. And that's Ryan, and that's Betsy. They were with us at the last survivor camp we were at."
"Survivor camp?" repeated the one named Wesley. "You've been at a survivor camp?"
Kiri shrugged out of her coat and bent to help Betsy with hers. "Yeah, we've been with two now. The last one was in Indiana. It...ended badly. We're some of the only ones who got out." She glanced briefly at Lauren, who was glowering at the floor and refusing to take off her coat.
"You must have been through a rough time," said the one called Pete, getting up and offering Kiri his seat. He must have decided that she was worth the attention even if she was nearly seven months pregnant. "Do you want anything to drink?"
It was Luke who brought Carlin a beer, but she politely refused it. Nary was already well on her way to being drunk, and even Kiri was blossoming under the flattering attention. At least one of them needed to stay alert for the kids.
The kids seemed to like the newcomers. Ryan liked them because they handed him a beer right off and even Kiri didn't try to take it away from him, conceding that things like the legal drinking age probably didn't matter anymore. Wesley turned out to be great with kids, entertaining Grant and Betsy. They all tried to invite Lauren into their conversation, but her answers to their questions were short and clipped, and in the end they gave up trying.
It had been dark for several hours already when they decided to start winding things down. Lauren and Betsy were tucked into the bunk above the driving console, with real blankets and real pillows. Wesley and Pete flipped the kitchen table over and made up the bed there, which was given to Ryan and Grant. The bed in the back was big enough for four people, taking over almost the entire room, so it was there that the twins retired with Vic and Pete. Carlin didn't want to think about what was going on behind the closed door, even if she knew there was a partition.
That left Carlin, Luke, and Wesley to find space on the floor of the RV. The girls had brought all their gear over from the Explorer and set up their mattress pads and blowup mattresses and sleeping bags. It was a lot more comfortable than sleeping sitting up in the SUV.
"So where are you from?" Luke asked after they had taken turns changing into nightclothes in the tiny bathroom. Already the younger kids were asleep, though Lauren and Ryan were more than likely still awake.
"Scotland," came the exasperated reply. She knew it wasn't their fault that they didn't know where she was from, but she was getting tired of explaining it. "I was here on an exchange program when the outbreak started."
Luke seemed interested, overly so. His face lit up like a kid's on Christmas morning. "Oh really? What part?"
"Skye," came the tired answer, and apparently the tone in her voice was enough to quiet him down for at least a little bit. She fell into an uneasy sleep, her dreams filled with rough-and-tumble crossbow-wielding maniacs.
Man, I really don't like Nary. I really created a very unlikeable character. Ah well.
So I've been watching season 2 on Sundays (I make daddy distract the munchkin so I can watch undistracted haha I'm such a good mom!) and I don't think I like it so much after the hiatus. I guess I was expecting it to follow the comic a bit, but it doesn't really at all. They're killing off characters I wasn't expecting and not killing off others. I guess I got too attached to the comic :/
And is it just me, or is there something between Carol and Daryl? Is that just me? I really hope that's just me that's picking up those vibes, because that is NOT COOL with me. Just sayin.
