Chapter One: What Lies Ahead (pt1)
Spending the night in a ransacked nursing home with an infant was more than a little nerve-wracking. Marie had felt hyper-aware of every coo, grunt, whimper or cry from her youngest charge. Shane had eyed Iolani more than once as if he were the most destructive time bomb in the history of humanity… the first time the baby had woken up -letting out a warning cry only two hours after everyone finally went to sleep- Shane had jumped up with his shotgun and begun pacing in front of the door. Then again, Marie had reacted quickly as well.
-It was a good thing too. Merle and Daryl had looked just about ready to throttle the former deputy if he opened his mouth and actually said what he was thinking.-
She'd soothed the youngest Māhoe before quickly changing his soiled diaper while Glenn made up another bottle. Iolani had quickly fallen back to sleep afterward, though the majority of the adults that had woken up with the fussy infant had more trouble falling back to sleep… not that Marie wasn't pretty sure that the Dixon brothers had taken turns sleeping anyway.
Either way, the entire group woke up at first light.
Last night, when all the guys had gone out into the hallway, they'd decided that not all the cars they had brought with them would be a part of the new convoy line. T-Dog's church van, Shane's jeep, and the Dixons' truck were being left behind.
Merle had outright and very vocally refused to leave his bike, so he was now the one leading them out of the city at the front. Daryl had seemed a bit put out that he'd had to leave his truck behind but he'd been mollified when Marie and her brother offered to let him be in charge of driving her van -the Peletier women were sharing their car with the Grimes family- since he chafed with inaction.
It'd been surprisingly easy to get back to the cars. It seemed that the lack of noise following the gunshots from the afternoon before had made all the biters in the area lose interest after they finished with the bodies in the courtyard.
-Sometimes Marie hated how desensitized she was becoming to death. To the idea that undead cannibals eating human bodies were 'okay.' She consoled herself with the thought that it could be worse… after all, Marie could be terrified and useless instead.-
While the group siphoned out the remaining gas from the abandoned cars in the garage as well as a few others in their vicinity to fill up the tanks, the Dixon brothers had done a quick sweep through the Vatps garage for supplies. The boys had come back with armfuls of car parts, tools, and apparently cans of spray paint -Merle had taken one look at her confused expression, smirked at her with a wink and cheeky "You'll see, china doll." that did nothing to quell her curiosity - that they locked up in the trailer.
Once everyone was situated, the line of cars started heading off in the direction of Fort Benning.
Marie still wasn't happy that the military base was their set destination. Neither was her brother, nor the Dixons- though it looked like Merle had some sort of plan brewing in his head that he wasn't ready to share just yet. She wasn't too worried about it, he'd fess up sooner or later. Anyway, as the saying goes... there was strength in numbers, so they weren't willing to part from the main group just yet. Not without a good reason.
Especially not with three young children all under the age of ten under their care… it wasn't like Marie actually knew how to shoot a gun yet either. Something that Daryl promised they'd rectify real soon. Merle wanted her and Glenn to be proficient with guns -from shooting to cleaning them- before anything else, he wanted them to know when the situation called for a person to use one versus not- especially when it'd soon be difficult or near impossible to replenish ammo.
For now, though, Marie was sitting in the back of the van with the kids since Glenn was in the passenger seat with his laptop and a map on his lap. Ailani and Leilani were fast asleep on the beds, so it was shaping up to be a quiet drive so far. The girls had not slept well the previous night, they weren't used to sleeping on the ground... not that Marie had slept well either, or anyone else for that matter.
The Dixon brothers had handed the Rhee siblings a couple of maps and told them to keep an eye out for any possible facilities that could work as a base when the others realized that Fort Benning was a bust. Glenn had taken one -disdainful- look at the paper maps before grabbing his computer and USB drives before looking for a place with the virtual maps he'd downloaded.
Daryl had muttered under his breath -to her ever growing amusement- that Glenn was a weirdo-techno-freak allergic to paper. While Iolani was awake, he was content- chilling in the car seat for a little while, Marie had decided that it was a good time as any to sort through the duffle bag of MRE's they'd gotten from the CDC. They'd been on the road for over an hour and a half now, mostly because they'd had to change their routes every once in a while because of blocked roads.
The van slowed down under her feet.
"Why're we stopping?" she asked in a soft tone without really moving.
Daryl grunted, "Huge traffic snarl up ahead. Looks like a purtty bad accident happened 'ere."
"I don't think we can go back..." Glenn mumbled, "I mean there's an interstate bypass a mile or two back that we could take, but-"
"We can' spare th' fuel.'' Daryl finished for him, "Looks like Merle's gonna try an' lead us through this mess."
The van started moving again, the younger Dixon carefully following behind Dale's RV through the abandoned and occasionally overturned cars. Marie tried not to look out the window and instead focused on her task when the Sprinter suddenly stopped.
Daryl sighed as he turned the van off, "Looks like smoke."
"Dale's RV must've broke down again." her brother snorted under his breath as the passengers of the RV in front of them started pouring out, "I'm starting to think we should have left his RV behind in the city. T-Dog's van would've been a better investment."
"You an' me both, Chinaman." Daryl grunted as he got out and closed the door behind him.
Glenn shot her a tired smile, "I'm gonna go check it out, you coming?"
Marie let out a small sigh as she stood up and stretched her limbs, "Yeah, why not, I'm coming out through there... Ion just fell asleep too and I don't want the sliding door waking him." Marie grabbed her recurve bow and arrows before climbing into the front of the van and over the passenger's seat where her brother had abandoned his laptop and hopped out of the car. Glenn shut the door behind them as they converged to the front of Dale's RV where everyone was milling around.
"Problem, Dale?" Shane questioned. Daryl was moving through the abandoned cars curiously as Merle kicked the stand out for his bike and got off.
Dale sighed, "Just a small matter of being stuck in the middle of nowhere with no hope of- Okay, that was dumb." the man stated as he seemingly realized where they were and watched Daryl begin rifling through the trunk of an abandoned car.
"If you can't find a radiator hose here..." Shane trailed off.
"There's a whole bunch a stuff we can fin'." Daryl added as he pulled out a bag of chips and started munching on them.
T-Dog moved closer to one of the cars, "I can siphon more fuel from these cars for a start."
"Maybe some water." Carol piped up.
"Or food." her brother agreed. Marie nodded, she'd spotted a bottle with formula on the window... maybe there were more baby things inside that she could repurpose for Iolani. She moved closer to the car Daryl was rummaging through, shooting the man a grateful smile when he offered her a chip. -God, Marie had missed potato chips… junk food in general, really.-
"This is a graveyard." Lori suddenly spoke up, making everyone freeze, "I don't know how I feel about this."
"They don't need this stuff anymore," Marie spoke up, even if Lori maybe had the smallest degree of a point and the idea of disturbing a graveyard of abandoned cars made her skin crawl a bit, "We do."
With that everyone tried to ignore the macabre words Lori had spoken. This was survival of the fittest, after all, they couldn't afford to disregard supplies just because of where they were coming from... not if they all wanted to stay alive and healthy. A small triumphant grin stretched across her face as she unearthed an unopened can of baby formula. It was enough to make her heebie-jeebies dissipate and excitement set into her bones instead.
"Come on y'all. Just look around, gather what you can." Shane encouraged them as the group began to disperse.
Daryl nudged her shoulder, "Nice, look." he handed her an opened bag of diapers, "Can Ion use these?"
She shot him a tiny smile, "They're a bit too big, but he will be soon. Thanks."
He grunted, "Don' stray too far fr'm th' Sprinter."
"I won't." she promised -balancing everything in her arms was a bit difficult- as Marie started to bring her finds back to the van.
Glenn shot her a pitiful look as she walked by, he had been roped into helping Dale with his RV so that the old man could take watch on top of the vehicle... Marie rolled her eyes, her big brother needed to stop letting himself be steamrolled by the older man and stand up for himself a little bit. She opened the passenger door of the van and climbed inside so that she could leave their new things on the pullout bed. All of the Māhoe children were still fast asleep, making a smile bloom on her face.
Marie quietly hopped out of the van, shutting the door behind her, and started advancing on the abandoned car next to hers. After all, the kids might be asleep right now but that didn't mean that one of them couldn't suddenly wake up and start looking for her.
She couldn't help but wonder about the abandoned vehicles. Whoever the cars had belonged to, the owners had left pretty much every door or trunk open. As if all of them had no choice but to grab whatever they could and just run. Marie absently wondered if the couple of wrecks she'd spotted had drawn over a huge crowd of the walkers to their location, forcing them all to run for their lives. Marie shook her head.
This was no time to dwell on something that she would never know the answer to. The car she'd been rummaging through didn't have too many things she considered worth keeping. Though the batteries, flashlights, and shortwave walkie-talkies she'd found in the front were definitely a nice find. Maybe the trunk would reveal something a lot more useful... Marie dumped the items she found into a backpack she'd emptied out in the front seat before grabbing her recurve bow from where it had been leaning against her leg.
It was quiet. She took a quick peek around her surroundings.
Dale's expression was hard as he peered through his binoculars, his mouth firmly set into a frown as he stared at something on the horizon. Marie only stiffened when she noticed that Rick was looking through the scope of his rifle in the same direction before cocking his weapon. She stopped what she was doing and carefully opened the passenger door of the Sprinter and got inside.
If what Rick was looking at was a walker... well, geeks rarely traveled alone, and Marie needed to be where her children were if the worst came to pass.
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(Hello everyone! ~~~I'm BACK~~~ I know that a lot of you have been eagerly waiting for April to arrive... here we are! I just wanted to let you all know that I'm going to try and update regularly, but... I have some things going on in my life right now that are both time-consuming and *unfortunately* not avoidable.
My goal is to update on Saturdays, every two weeks, or at the very least one chapter monthly. A lot of this fic is still unwritten, I was *not* able to get ahead on writing at all because of real-life... but I do have some things cooking up.
I'm currently looking for an additional beta reader [I need more help you guys], if anyone is interested please send me a message! [Obviously... beta readers get to read my chapters ahead so... *wink, wink* come brainstorm with me. LOL.]
Thank you all for your patience and for sticking with me during this journey, and I hope you all enjoyed the first chapter~ Happy Reading!)
