I own nothing but by OC.

Chapter 12: What Lies Ahead

"I think the plan to switch to fewer cars so we'll have more gas to go around is a good idea, but I'm against using any major highways." Sam stated flatly with her arms crossed.

"Why not?" Shane asked, clearly annoyed. "It's the most direct and fastest way to get to Fort Benning." He said, pointing at the route he had highlighted on the map.

"He's right. We'll be crossing a hundred miles of hostile territory. We don't want to spend anymore time out there than we have to." Rick said a bit more patiently. "We don't have the gas for it."

"You're forgetting that I've already crossed way more than that alone and on foot. I've seen a lot in between. I know what I'm talking about." Sam reminded them. "And I'm telling you, the highway is not the way to go. Didn't you see what the other side was like on our way into the city? Those cars were parked bumper to bumper. What if it we get to a section like that?"

"I can ride ahead on my bike, make sure there's a way through." Daryl suggested. "No offense, Sam, but it took you a whole month to travel what should've taken only a few hours of nonstop driving by car. I don't want to be stuck wanderin' the desert for forty years."

"I would've gotten here a lot faster if I wasn't laid up with Lyme disease for a few weeks." She mumbled, frowning slightly in annoyance. Why didn't anybody ever listen to her around here?

"Lyme disease?" Rick asked. "How did you manage that?"

"Probably caught it from a tick on a deer I caught." She replied, shrugging. "I was just lucky My mom had thought to clean out our medicine cabinet before we left. We never throw anything out. I had just enough doxycycline left over to treat myself."

"Left over from what?" Daryl asked giving her a strange look.

"From when my brother had it." She replied, wondering why he was looking at her like that. What? Her family went hunting every season. One of them was bound to catch it sooner or later.

"Anyway, it's settled. We're taking the highway." Rick said, rolling up the map.

…

Since they were leaving behind Daryl's truck, Shane's jeep, and T-Dog's van, after siphoning all the gas out of their tanks, that left Daryl with just his motorcycle, and he didn't want any passengers, so Sam, T-Dog, Shane, and Andrea all ended up in the RV with Dale and Glenn. Carol's Cherokee was full with Rick behind the wheel, Lori in the passenger's seat, and Carol and the two kids in the back.

It was kind of awkward in the RV during those first couple hours on the road. Nobody really felt like talking. After all, they had just lost Jacqui the day before, and Andrea was very obviously upset with Dale for making her leave instead of letting her commit suicide as well. Finally, T-Dog had enough.

"I've been wondering…" He said, breaking the heavy silence. He glanced at Sam, who was sitting next to him on the back bench. She had been trying to pass the time by reading one of Dale's books. "Did you really walk all the way from Louisiana to Georgia?"

"Yep. Why?" She asked, glancing up at him.

"No way." He said, finding it all too hard to believe, even though he had overheard her say it himself, while she was arguing with Shane and Rick about their route earlier. "You'd have been ripped to shreds if you really stayed out in the open for that long with so many geeks roaming around."

"Well, okay. I had a horse for part of the way after I found it wandering around an abandoned farm, but most of it was on foot." She admitted, shrugging off his skepticism. "I just used some basic hunting tricks, like using scent and sound to confuse your prey, and applied it to avoiding them. As long as you can keep one from noticing you, you don't usually have to worry about being ganged up on. It's when that first one notices you that you know you're in trouble. They're like piranhas that way. They don't really care about you until first blood is drawn, and then they suddenly realize you're there, and they all want a piece of you. I think it helped that I took the scenic route. I mostly kept to the back roads and undeveloped areas like state parks and the countryside. As long as I avoided the main roads and heavily populated areas, I rarely even caught so much as a glimpse of a zombie, I mean walker. The fewer the people, the fewer the walkers. Whenever I passed into a different state, I would stop at one of the more remote welcoming centers and see what natural sights they had that might be worth seeing. It was actually pretty peaceful… but it's gotten a lot worse recently. And I was starting to get tired of being alone."

"Wait, let me get this straight." T-Dog said, holding up a hand. "The whole world's going to hell, and you just decide to take yourself a nice little vacation?" He asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Why not? If this is really the end of the world, I figured I might as well see as much of it as possible while I still can, right?" Sam replied frankly, raising an eyebrow back.

"You're one of those 'glass half full' types, aren't you?" T-Dog asked, smiling, as he shook his head. This girl was crazy, but at least it was a good kind of crazy.

"Actually, I think I'm more the type that doesn't care whether it's 'half full' or 'half empty'. People should just be grateful that there is something in their glass and enjoy it." She explained casually, shrugging.

T-Dog nodded. Okay, he hadn't quite thought about it that way before, but he guessed she might be right about that with the kind of world they were living in now.

"You know, Rick had a horse too when we first met him." He told her. "He rode into the city with that gun of his and just started poppin' of rounds like he thought he was John Wayne or somethin'."

"Oh, really?" She said, perking up. That sounded like it might be a story worth hearing. "Do tell."

And so, for the next hour, T-Dog regaled her with the tale of how he and the others first met Rick, and she finally learned how Glenn had saved his life with he was 'just and idiot in a tank'.

Meanwhile, Shane and Andrea were seated at the table in the kitchen area, having their own conversation.

"Looks complicated." Andrea said as she watched Shane clean one many pieces of the gun he had taken apart.

"The trick is getting all these pieces back together the same way." He said with a laugh. "I could clean yours, show you how." He offered. He reached down and picked up when she didn't object. "Oh, yeah." He said as he held up and examined it. "It's a sweet piece."

"It was a gift from my father." She replied. "He gave it to me just before Amy and I took off on our road trip. He said two girls on their own should be able to defend themselves."

"Smart man, your father." Shane said. "Look, it's a—it's a limited capacity, see? Only holds seven rounds."

"Oh, Jeez." Dale said, getting everyone's attention. "Aw, no." The RV's brakes squealed slightly as they came to a slow stop, bring the rest of their three vehicle caravan to a halt.

"What is it? What's wrong?" Sam asked as they all stood up and moved to the front, trying to see what was going on.

"Do you ever get tired of being right?" Shane asked her, glancing back over his shoulder, before moving so she could see for herself. There was an overturned semi in front of them, and the highway looked like a parking lot for the next couple of miles.

Glenn sighed and glanced down at the map in his hands, looking for an alternate route, just in case.

"You see a way through?" Dale asked Daryl when he circled back on his motorcycle to check on them. Daryl glanced back at the road. He nodded his head, indicating Dale should follow, before turning back around and heading into the sea of cars, making sure not to get too far out of sight while showing them the way through.

"Uh, maybe we should just go back." Glenn said. "There's an interstate bypass—"

"We can't spare the fuel." Dale reminded him. They were just going to have to keep going and hope Daryl would be able to find a way for them to all get out in one piece.

"Jeez." Glenn breathed as he looked at all the cars they passed. More than just a few still had some of their passengers inside, and nearly all of them seemed to still have their former owners' belongings packed inside.

"They must have been too afraid to leave their cars." Sam commented. "They couldn't move their cars, and they let their fear paralyze them and trapped themselves inside. They probably died from dehydration and hyperthermia. It'd be like an oven inside those cars once the AC went." Surviving without water wasn't like surviving without food. In hot conditions with no water, dehydration can set in within an hour. A baby locked in a hot car or someone who has physically overexerted themselves in the heat without replacing fluids could actually die in a period of several hours.

"Can we get through here?" Glenn asked, while they all tried not to think about what would happen if they got stuck too, when suddenly there was a terrible screeching sound and a huge plume of steam erupted from the front of the RV.

Daryl stopped and looked back when he heard the noise.

"Please tell me that isn't what I think it is…" Sam asked, squeezing her eyes shut as she willed herself to wrong this time.

"Mm." Dale grimaced as he braked, bringing them to another stop. It was that damn hose again…

"I said it. Didn't I say it?" Dale said as they all climbed out of the RV to take a look at the problem. "A thousand times. Dead in the water."

"Problem Dale?" Rick asked as he and everyone in their car came over to see what was wrong and why they had stopped.

"Oh, just a small matter of being stuck in the middle of nowhere with no hope of—" Dale began, falling short, when he realized Daryl and Sam were already rooting through the back of an open car for supplies. "Okay, that was dumb." He said when Daryl pulled out a knock-off Lunchable.

"Can't find a radiator hose here." Shane said.

"There's a whole bunch of stuff you can find." Daryl said.

"It's like an open flea market." Sam added, picking up a first aid kit.

"I can siphon more fuel from these cars for a start." T-Dog said, joining team bright-side.

"Maybe some water." Carol suggested.

"Or food." Glenn added.

"Hey, kids. Found some M&Ms." Sam said, tossing the bag over to Carl, who grinned as he caught it and showed it to Sophia. They were a little squishy, but it was the first chocolate they had seen in ages.

"This is a graveyard." Lori said, raining on everyone's parade. They all stopped looked around. She was right, in a sense. "I don't know how I feel about this."

"Now isn't a time to be picky." Sam said after a moment's pause. "Don't worry so much about the dead. It's not like they can take it with them. They don't need any of this stuff, but we do."

"What if it was you?" Lori asked. "Would you want a stranger rooting through your stuff and just taking it without permission?"

"I don't think I'd mind if it was a life or death situation, which this is." Sam replied calmly. "After all, I'm a registered organ donor. If I can donate my organs after I don't need them anymore, why should I care if someone takes a random pack of candy or a bottle of water here and there? Don't think of it as grave robbing, but as politely and respectfully taking our share of a universal inheritance left behind for the remaining survivors." She said, smoothly glossing over the ugly situation. If they didn't at least find some water, they might die out here.

"All right." Shane said, walking off to get the red gas tanks and hose with T-Dog so they could start siphoning fuel. "All right, here we go. Come on y'all. Look around. Gather what you can."

"You take some sort of fancy public speaking course at that college you went to?" Daryl asked Sam quietly while everyone got to work on salvaging supplies from the cars.

"Nope. Just grew up in a family full of people who always had to have the last word." She replied, flashing him a sunny smile before leaving to join Carol and Sophia. Daryl smirked and shook his head as he walked off to help T-Dog break open the fuel door of a car.

Carol opened up a suitcase in an open hatchback and pulled out a bright red shirt. She held up to herself to see how it would fit, admiring the smooth texture of the fabric and the pretty color. She began to feel a self-conscious when she realized Lori was staring at her.

"Ed never let me wear nice things like this." Carol explained as Sam walked up. Sam furrowed her brow slightly in confusion, glancing between the two older women, wondering why Carol sounded like she was apologizing. "We'll need clothes." Carol said, putting the shirt back in before taking the whole suitcase.

"That's a good idea." Sam said. "All I have is three outfits, and I'm getting sick of wearing camo."

"Then why did you pack it?" Lori asked a little more tersely than necessary.

"Because it's part of my hunting gear. I was packing for survival, not fashion week in Paris." Sam retorted smartly. Carol allowed herself a small smile at that.

"Carl." Lori said, turning to her son. "Always within my sight, okay." She told him, pretending she hadn't just been out-sassed. Carl nodded.

"You, too, Sophia." Carol said.

"Hey, Carl, Sophia. What do think?" Sam asked as she held up a pretty white cotton laced tunic that just so happened to be in her size. Carl shook his head.

"You'll look like a girl." He told her.

"I am a girl." Sam said, scoffing at his cheekiness, as she gave him a light, playful smack on the head.

"Lori, under the cars!" They heard Rick whisper-yell as he quietly ran up from behind.

"Carl, Sophia, Sam, get down now." He whispered, gesturing down at the ground.

"Come, guys. Under the cars." Sam whispered, making sure they did as he said While Lori ran to get Carol. She didn't know what was going on, but Rick had looked pretty freaked, so it'd probably be better to just do as he said instead of wasting time asking questions. Sam ended up with Carl under one car, with Sophia under another. Lori and Carol and Rick were hiding under cars a little further forward, but they could all still see each other from where they were.

"What is it?" Sam mouthed silently at Rick as he finished pulling his rifle under the car with him.

"Walkers?" He mouthed back.

Sam bit her lip. There must be a lot of them if they were hiding under cars instead of just shooting them. She hoped Daryl and the others were okay.

Carol let out an involuntary whimper when the first row of walkers' feet came into view, so Lori had to clamp a hand over her mouth and hold her tight while they waited it out together.

Sam scooted over so Carl could inch further underneath the car with her. She glanced over at Sophia and held a finger to her lips, silently telling the girl to keep quiet, while Rick did the same for Carl. Sophia looked like she was on the verge of tears, but she hugged her doll close and did her best to brave as wave after wave of walkers shuffled past them.

…

Daryl was already pretty far up ahead of the rest of the group when he realized how quiet it had suddenly become. He could no longer hear the scattered chatter of the others in the background. He turned to see what was up. His eyes widened slightly when he saw the dense wall of walkers headed straight for him. He quickly ducked behind a car. He hadn't seen the others, so they must have already taken cover somewhere. He glanced around the edge of the car again, just to be sure. He was right, most of the others were already out of sight, except T-Dog. That dumbass must've cut himself somethin' awful, because he could just make out a thin trail of red forming on the ground behind him as he ran. T-Dog was doing a pretty good job evading them, considering, but he losing a lot of blood. Daryl knew he couldn't keep it up forever. It was only a matter of time before one of the walkers noticed. Daryl carefully crept back towards T-Dog, holding a screwdriver in one hand and his crossbow in the other. He stealthily stole from one car to another, exposing himself as little as possible to prevent the walkers from seeing him. He saw T-Dog disappear behind an overturned car just when a walker in overalls turned and started advancing purposefully towards the big black man. Daryl snuck up behind the overturned car. He leaned out from behind it and saw that the walker was almost on T-Dog. Quickly and quietly, Daryl rushed forward, setting his crossbow down on the hood of another car so he could slide his arm under the walker's neck, where it couldn't get at him with its nasty teeth, and held it in place while he shoved the screwdriver up into the base of its skull, grunting as they both fell to the ground. He pulled the screwdriver back out of its brain and glanced up at T-Dog. Yeah, the man was in bad shape. The whole right side of his shirt was stained red with blood from his bleeding arm.

"Shh." Daryl said, holding a finger to his lips. T-Dog looked scared and surprised to see him, but he did as he said and kept quiet while Daryl grabbed his ankle and dragged him so that he was laid out on his back. Daryl grabbed the walker he had just killed and positioned it on top of T-Dog so that it covered him up as much as possible to help hide him and mask his scent. Then Daryl opened the door of the car T-Dog had been leaning up against and pulled the dead driver out of his seat. Daryl laid back on the ground near T-Dog with his own decoy on top of him just as more walkers came into view. This had better work. This dead bastard on top of him smelled worse than a rotten squirrel in the sun on a hot summer's day. Once they were gone, and it felt like several minutes had passed without any signs of another walker coming, Daryl shove his decoy away, glad to be rid of it, and pushed T-Dog's off of him. Daryl yanked the other man up into a sitting position and tied the red rag hanging from his back pocket nice and tight around the wound. The pressure should help keep the bleeding down until they could find him a proper bandage.

…

Rick glanced over at his son and Sam, who were under the next car over, and smiled. They had made it. Just when it looked like the storm had passed and they could all breathe a sigh of relief, the worst happened.

"Aah!" Sophia cried out. Sam and Carl immediately turned their heads to see what was wrong. Poor Sophia had poked her head out from under her car too early and caught the attention of a straggler. "Aahhh!" She began to scream and cry as she scooted away to avoid it. Carl tried to move to help Sophia, but Sam wouldn't let him. She held him in place with a hand over his mouth in case he tried to yell at her for stopping him, but if he went out now, then both kids would be in trouble, and that would make it even harder for them help Sophia if their combined noise attracted some of the walkers that had already passed, too. Sam glanced at Carol. It looked like she was trying to get to her daughter, but Lori was keeping a firm grip on her. She glanced at Rick next. He motioned for her to stay put, grateful to her for keeping Carl safe. He glanced at his wife and Carol and gave them a nod, before he began quietly sliding himself out from under his car. He was going to help Sophia. Sophia ended up having to crawl out from under her car and panicked when she saw that there were actually two of them. She yelped as she climbed under the guard rail on the side of the road and started running down hill and into the woods below. Rick wasted no time going after her and her attackers. Lori immediately rolled out from under the car and ran to check on son.

"He's okay." Sam said quietly as she and Carl crawled out once they were sure no more walkers were coming from the back. Now they just had to keep it down so the walkers ahead wouldn't turn back around and come after them.

"Oh, thank you." Lori said softly, hugging him close.

"Lori. Sam." Carol sobbed as she shakily climbed out from under the car and got to her feet, running over to the guard rail. "There's two walkers after my baby."

"Shh. Shh." Lori hushed her, holding her back before she could run off into the woods.

Carol sobbed, holding her hands against her mouth to muffle the sound.

"Shh. Don't worry." Sam told Carl, noticing the deep concern on his face, keeping her voice low. "Sophia has your dad looking out for her. He'll save her."

Carl smiled slightly and nodded. Sam was right. If anyone could save Sophia, it was his dad.