hello friends, this chapter took a lot longer than i expected. between college and some mental stuff, this did not come out when i wanted. and then i decided to rewrite the entire middle of the plot and had to start rewriting chapters six-through nine, but here we are
six weeks (+1 day) after finding glenn
(one year since the fall of the prison)
We didn't waste any time packing.
The whole house moved in frantic, tense silence. Things were shoved into backs and thrown into vehicles. Beth and I helped the kids clear out anything they owned or wanted to bring with them, and they helped me gather up all of Judith's belongings. We stuffed things in whatever we could find: duffels, backpacks, suitcases. We found tote bags in the kitchen, and when we ran out of everything else, we dumped out bins of office supplies and toys to fill with our stuff instead.
The only time I stopped to breathe was when Beth rested her hands on my shoulders and forced me to take a pause and collect myself. She didn't say anything, but I understood, forcing myself to take a few deep breaths before I continued packing.
We were done in under an hour, even if the house looked torn apart in our wake. The cupboards hung open, and everything we didn't need had been tossed around to make sure we weren't forgetting anything. Somebody had dropped a half-empty can on the kitchen floor, and someone else had knocked over a decorative candle display. It had shattered on the hardwood, spilling broken glass and rounded pebbles all over the living room. Mika had nearly stepped in it, still only in her socks, but Tyreese managed to stop her just in time.
Jay caught me just as we were getting into the car, pushing a rifle into my hands. I already had my Glock tucked into the back of my pants, so I was thrown for a moment until I realized it was one of the rifles we'd found in the gun safe.
"Michael didn't take them?" I asked, and he shook his head.
"They were under my bed," he admitted, looking almost sheepish behind the serious look in his eyes. At any other time, I probably would have teased him, but I wasn't in any mood to be joking around.
Through the flurry that we had packed in, we hadn't created any solid plans. Once the final loads had been thrown into the car, we all gathered back in the front room of the house.
"Where do we go from here?" Alice asked. "If he's coming back and he doesn't find us, he might look."
"He might not," Tyreese suggested, but there wasn't much confidence in it. "I mean, he took most of our stuff. Maybe he doesn't see any worth in coming back."
"I don't know if we should risk it," she replied. "He took most of our guns and a shit ton of ammo. That means that this group would be better armed than we are, at the very least. We have no idea if they outnumber us."
"But if we just up and run into new territory, who knows what we're heading into?"
"Look, we know these aren't good people," Glenn said. "If they were, why didn't he say something? Why didn't he bring us to meet them?"
"Glenn's right," Sylvia agreed. "We have to assume that these are bad people with bad intentions, and act however we have to in order to make sure we're safe."
Jay glanced up at her. "So where do we go?"
Voices began to bleed into each other as everybody started to chime in, trying to make their opinions heard.
"How far is safe—"
"We should stay in Georgia, at least—"
"Maybe we shouldn't go too far—"
"Not go too far?" Abbott repeated, his gruff voice rising and cutting through the din . "The hell are you talking about? One second, y'all are up in arms about packing up and moving in an instant, but now you're saying 'let's not go too far'? You motherfu-"
"Language," Beth warned, her grip on Luke's shoulder tightening. Abbott scoffed.
"Oh, grow up, girly," he spat.
He leaned forward, too far forward, until he was close to Beth's face. I stepped in front of Beth at the same time Glenn moved in between them, placing a placating hand on the other man's chest. Abbott backed up, smacking Glenn's arm off of him.
"I'm sick of this," he said, bitter. "The group of you, you keep dragging us all over Georgia and looking for your people. Your people this, your people that. Now, it was one thing when we didn't have shit elsewhere to be. A little stupid, maybe, but something else.
"Abbott," Sylvia warned, but he flung a hand in her direction, dismissive. Glenn was still standing in front of him, and Abbott sneered at him before turning his gaze on the rest of us. My palm was still resting on Beth's stomach from where I'd gotten in front of her earlier. As Abbott continued, my fingers tightened into a fist, her shirt balled up between them. The hand she wasn't holding onto Luke with came to rest on the center of my back, and I felt her gripping onto my jacket.
"But now y'all are acting like the sky is about to fall in on us, and you don't wanna go far because you're still chasing your people," he said. "Your people. You've had us sitting here with our thumbs up our asses for months, and it's become pretty clear that you still ain't picked us out as your people. Now, I'm starting to think that if you ain't my people, those dickheads sure ain't, so why am I still busting my ass for them? Why am I putting myself, my niece, my people on the line for yours?"
"That's enough," Jaime interrupted, coming up to Abbott's side.
Abbott snarled. "It ain't-"
"It is," Jaime stated, voice firm. "You want to be mad, be mad. Be as angry as you want. But not now."
He leaned in, face inches from Abbott's ear. "And not in front of the kids," he said, in a low voice barely loud enough to hear.
The two of them had a wordless standoff for a moment, before Abbott turned on his heel and stalked away, slamming the front door open on his way out to the cars. Nobody spoke for several, long moments after her left, staring at each other with the weight of what Abbott had said resting on our shoulders.
Jaime was the one to finally break the silence. "Look," he stated. "For today, let's just go an hour and a half or so. That should be enough to keep us in the clear, at least for today. If we decide we need to go further, we can discuss it and then keep driving tomorrow."
Everybody mumbled some sort of agreement and began to trickle out to the cars. Beth released her grip on my sweatshirt as I withdrew my hand from her stomach. Luke had to shake her for a moment to get her to let him go, and I glanced back over my shoulder to find Mika and Judith. The two of them were still on the couch, Judith in the older girl's lap. Mika passed her into my arms when I made my way over, and I shepharded her and Luke out to the car.
They didn't protest as we loaded up. Even Mika, who always asked to ride with Cheyenne whenever we went somewhere, climbed into the truck without being asked to. After what had just happened, and the strange division I suddenly felt from those who hadn't come from the prison, I think it was pretty clear we would all be riding together.
Michael stealing one of our cars left us at a bit of a disadvantage. We still had enough space to fit everybody, but it was more of a concern that the remainder of the prison group was seven people, including Judith. Our truck only sat six, and after the altercation we'd just witnessed, we were all a little loathe to separate.
Glenn solved the issue for us by offering to ride in the bed, leaving Tyreese to drive while Beth and I rode shotgun in the bench seat. I still had my own pistol, so I offered him the rifle Jay had handed to me earlier.
"In case you need it," I said. The 'in case we're followed' went unspoken.
The drive itself was dull, if a little tense. Tyreese started the car and followed after the car in front of him without a word, while the kids were silent in the backseat. They'd both seemed shaken from when Abbott had taken a go at us, and they hadn't spoken much since. Judith had been quiet for a bit afterwards, probably from the tension and the raised voices, but the weight of the moment was too above her to truly grasp. As a result, she had gone back to her normal self by the time we'd gotten in the truck. Luke played with her, a little half heartedly, but she didn't seem to take any offense.
The quiet, for me, only added to the tension. By twenty minutes in, I was already feeling antsy for something to do. For a while, I played with the dial on the car radio, skimming to see if there was any sign of life on any channel. When I found nothing but static doing that, I changed gears. I flipped through the CD holder once or twice, but I didn't have any heart for it. Instead, I left the Elvis disc inside the stereo and stashed the book back where it came from.
Once my leg started bouncing, Beth gave me a look, and I glanced down to see her hand pressed against mine. I stared at for a moment, but I started to feel warm the longer I did, so I tore my gaze away and focused it back on the road. After a moment, though, I splayed my fingers and she tangled them with hers, squeezing. It was comforting, in a strange way, and I felt myself relax back into my seat.
We drove for a long time, following Jaime as he took strange paths and odd turns with no real rhyme or reason. I suppose that was the point, after all. If there was no discernable pattern to where we were going, it would be that much harder to find us. In theory, at least. Regardless, we didn't see a single sign of human life the entire way, following us or otherwise.
By the time we came to a stop, we were pretty far from where we'd started. Beth had done her best to keep track on the map, in case we had to go back at some point. She'd shrugged when I asked her what we would have to go back for, telling me it was better to be safe than to be sorry.
We didn't bother unpacking anything we wouldn't need for the night. Jaime suggested it, telling us it was better to leave the cars packed and loaded in case we needed to make a run for it. He didn't say it, but I suspected it was less about leaving and more about in case the group decided Georgia wasn't worth staying in.
At this point, I wasn't even sure how to feel anymore. We'd been here for months. I hadn't really been counting days, but I kept a vague sense of time, as well as tracking the changing of the seasons. It had been somewhere around a year since the prison fell. Since Tyreese and Mika had found us, the only other person from our former group that we'd encountered was Glenn. This far out from the attack, we didn't even know who was still alive; we just had a list of the dead. Rick and Bob, Lizzie and Molly. Considering the position we were in, I wasn't sure if staying was worth it anymore. Whether or not Michael actually presented a threat to us, was it really worth it to risk it?
The sound of a car door closing snapped me out of my head. Unfortunately, it also startled Judith awake. She'd fallen asleep halfway through the drive, likely due to the fact that we'd gotten her up so early and suddenly this morning. When the noise woke her for the second time today, she didn't react well, opening her eyes with a low whine. Within moments, that whine rose into a wail, and I hurried to climb out of the truck to grab her.
She stopped crying a few moments after I grabbed her, quieting down and setting in on my hip. Still, the noise attracted a few geeks that must have been lingering in the trees nearby. Jaime and Glenn made quick work of them, bashing in their heads with the butts of their rifles. I angled my body so that Judith wouldn't see, but she still seemed to hear the noise of it, pushing her face into my chest.
I didn't protest when the others decided to check out the house without asking me to help. After all, I was still shaken from the encounter with Abbott earlier. Staying close to Judith always helped me stay calm and centered. Going inside would mean leaving her behind, and I was glad to stay in the yard if it meant Judy and the kids would still be with me. Luke and Molly played one of those strange clapping games the girl had been into lately, while Cheyenne lingered a few feet off to the side.
I couldn't really blame her, even if it made me sad. Considering she had just watched her uncle scream at the rest of us only two hours later, it wasn't fair to fault her for feeling uncomfortable. She was only just a kid, after all.
As we waited for the others to clear the house, Beth grabbed my attention and pulled me aside, away from the kids. They didn't seem to notice, all three of them seemingly lost in their own head.
Beth dropped her voice before she spoke. "Did you- did you ever feel like he was watching you?"
I turned to look at her. Her normally bright eyes seemed dim. After a moment, I realized she looked scared.
"What do you mean?"
"He was always… staring," she explained. "It felt like every time we were in the same room, he was always watching us."
"Like… us? In a creepy way?"
My stomach turned just saying it, but she shook her head. "Not… like that," she corrected. "Like… like he was studying. Like he was trying to learn something about us, things he wanted to remember. All of us."
A shiver went down my spine, as if the air around us had dropped in temperature. Her eyes still looked nervous, and the longer we held eye contact, the more antsy I felt.
"What do you think it means?" I asked.
"I don't know."
Whatever conversation might have come next was cut short by the rest of the group declaring the house was safe. Grabbing whatever we needed for the night, Beth and I stepped inside with the kids right behind us. Cheyenne seemed to trail after them, silent as a church mouse and refusing to make eye contact with the rest of us.
As we settled in, the house was quiet. We were never a loud bunch, but tonight, it seemed almost silent. There was no conversation to be had, or jokes to be traded. Everybody seemed to keep to themselves, or at least, people they felt comfortable with. Beth and I traded Judith back and forth, watched her toddle around and try to get Mika and Luke's attention so that they'd play with her. They did, even if the energy wasn't quite there.
It felt wrong. We'd been traveling together for months. We'd had each other's backs, we'd bonded. Alice and I would sing along to the same CDs on runs until it annoyed everybody else. Jay and I played Monopoly with the kids, and Smith had taught me how to beat everybody else at Gin. I knew Jaime's favorite soda (the blue Mountain Dew) and he knew my favorite snack (the BBQ potato chips). Christine had given Beth and I our first drinks, awful shots from a bottle of peach schnapps she found in an old bar.
Still, after what Abbott had said, they weren't looking at us the same. Sylvia's gaze seemed harder, more guarded. The smiles Jaime offered me were tight-lipped, a little forced. Even Jay acted different, meeting my eyes for a few seconds before looking away, guilt lingering on the edges of his face.
The kids were feeling it, too. Luke withdrew into my side, glancing up at me before every move he made, the same way he had in the weeks after we'd left the prison. I clung to Judith like she was a lifeline, enough so that she was beginning to grow sick of me.
Mika took a worse hit on the both of them, having gone up to Cheyenne and asked her if she wanted to play. The other girl had only frowned, glancing down at the ground.
"I don't know," Cheyenne replied. "My uncle… my uncle is pretty mad at you guys. I don't know if I can."
"Oh," Mika whispered, quiet. "Okay."
"I'm sorry."
I turned away, heaving Judith up off the couch and into my arms. She babbled something to me, only half intelligible despite her growing vocabulary, and I nodded along like I understood. After a few moments, Mika walked past me with her head down. I called out to her, but she only gave me a sad look as she passed, heading up the stairs without a word.
I had a horrible feeling that, whether it would be an attack or some internal dispute, something was about to tear it all apart.
a quick note: i have seen a lot of buzz that might be dying/going down. i will be saving/backuping all my old works (and hopefully rewriting a few) and reposting most things to a new account. if you want to stay updated and see these stories in case of an crash, please go follow me there at goldenagecricket!