Everything about this is wrong.

The four of us, we shouldn't be in this car. This car was only for if the church turned out to be a bad idea, and it hasn't, not yet. The four of us shouldn't have even left the church tonight. But we did. And I don't understand, really, why any of us chose to do that. All I know is that we've ended up on a strange road in a strange car with what-were-taillights busted out by my dad. That the shape way ahead of us, with the white cross on the rear window that you can see if you squint, is guiding us somewhere dangerous. That I feel uncomfortable with every single other person in this car. And that Beth may be alive, and my dad is desperate to find her.

. . . . .

I followed Dad through the woods for a while, so much better at it than I had been two years before. I'm not a clumsy kid these. I'm a survivor, and in those woods I survived, survived the walkers infesting all of the space around me and survived my dad's overdeveloped senses. I know darkness, I know shadows. I can copy them very easily now.

Dad reached the road, reached the car. I don't think he even tracked, really, God knows it's hard in the dark, and Dad didn't even have a flashlight. I think he just knew they would both be there, at that car, the escape car. I think I should have known, too.

I was too far behind him to hear what he said right when he broke out onto the road, but by the time I crept up to the forest's edge, I could hear him fine.

"You even know how to drive?"

A chuckle. "Pretty well, actually."

That was, of course, Owen.

"Yeah? Know how to live out there on your own?"

"Guess I'll find out."

"You shouldn't go." Carol.

"You were the one who told me I could come."

That hit me hard. And it must have hit Dad hard, too – not only was Carol leaving, but she had been the one to get the ball rolling. Not Owen.

"Because I knew you were leaving anyway," said Carol, and, softer, "And nobody should be out there on their own."

"You know, I said something like that to Sydney once. Told her she wouldn't survive a day on her own, after she ended up in that house with a group of dicks and no one but little ole me to protect her. She wanted to go, but I told her that."

This is when I crept forward even farther, settled myself between two trees, where I could see Owen clear as day. He was leaning against the back of the car. "Hindsight twenty-twenty," he said, bobbing his head to the side and back, "I'd say she'd make it to at least three days. Bet I can crack four."

"You think this is a joke?" Dad.

Owen shook his head. "Hell no. But just because it ain't a joke, don't mean it ain't funny."

"Look," Dad said, not mean at all, "Come back with us. We'll sit down with Rick. Maybe Leah, she knows you. Maybe Sydney –"

"Sydney isn't about to come to my defense, I can tell you that much."

"Yeah? Wanna tell me why not?"

"Nah, ask her yourself." At that moment, his eyes pierced through the brush and sank into my own. "Hey, Sydney? Your dad wants you."

I closed my eyes, then stepped out from the forest.

I don't think I need to go into too much detail about Dad's reaction.

When he was through the worst of it, I told Owen, "You don't know whether I'd come to your defense or not."

"Oh, the hell I don't."

"I never told you to go."

"You would have."

"Maybe! I don't know! I know that I'm just about the last person in the world who would wanna exile someone!"

Right away, I hated myself for saying that, for letting me say that. Dad and Carol, they probably just thought it was me being better than I actually am, or trying to be. But Owen, he knew exactly what pulled those words from my gut, and his eyes said that better than any words could have.

"Come back," I said. "Let's talk."

I don't know how he would have answered, probably never will, because that's when the other car came by. It didn't blow directly past us. It was on a road ahead of us a ways, a road that intersected ours, and we all hunkered down by the car without discussion but then, once the car had passed, Dad ran up to look after it. Then he came back, used his crossbow to bash out the taillights, and told us all to get in the car.

Those were the people who had taken Beth, he said.

And that, that's how I came to be in a car moving closer and closer towards the unknown and farther and farther from Carl and everything he's with. In a car with Dad, who hides things from me and who I hide things from, and Carol, who seems to want nothing to do with me now, and Owen, who killed someone because he's a bad person.

The tires hiss along the road. The headlights are off. We are as invisible out here on the asphalt as I was out there in the woods. But out here, I'm protected by three other warm bodies and a steel shelter on wheels, and out there, it was just me and my bow. But I feel more exposed now than I did then.

The adrenaline that pumped us all up when the car went by, when dad rushed us in here, is starting to settle. I don't like this time, the in-between time. I want to be up or down. Not sinking.

Mostly, I want to be in the church with Carl, filling my belly because I almost never have trouble doing that with Carl around. I want to feel his warm skin, the beat of his heart. I want to hear our family laughing like it never gets to do and I want to accept that it's a good night, for once.

But I'm here. Here, when Carol asks, "So it was just you and Beth after?"

And when Dad answers, "No. Leah was there, too."

At the mention of my mother's name, Owen's head rolls towards me. He's sunk low in his seat, like he's on a boring road trip with his family. I don't give him the satisfaction of looking back at him.

Carol asks, "You two save her? Beth, I mean?"

"She's tough. She saved herself."

I start nibbling a knuckle.

"We were out there for a while . . . We got cornered, she got out in fronta me, 'n . . . I don't know, she's gone. And now a car's pullin' out with a white cross on the window."

"Just like that one."

"Yep."

The car bumps over something, like we hit an animal. Probably wasn't an animal.

I slide up closer to the front, hold the back of Dad's seat. Look out through the windshield. There's the car, the mysterious car with the Beth-stealers. Beth. The night Owen and I snuck away from his group and my dad to find my people, we came across the remains of a corpse with blonde hair. I thought it might have been Beth. I can remember that feeling. How it gripped me, so hard I knew just a little more pressure would shatter something crucial inside of me. And the relief I had when I realized the hair was too dark to be hers . . . That's how you know you love someone. When you smile over a body because it's not theirs.

But this is all so fast.

"Rick'll wonder where we went," I say. "They all will." What I mostly mean is, Carl's going to be scared.

"We'll get back before they can worry too much," says Dad. What he mostly means is, Carl can wait.

I rub the rose hanging from my neck with my thumb and middle finger. Carl's waited for me too much already.

"We can end this quick, just run 'em off the road," says Carol, and I like that idea.

Dad doesn't. "Nah. Tank's runnin' low, but we're good for a bit."

"If they're holding her somewhere, we can get it out of the driver."

"Yeah, but if he don't talk, we're back to square one."

But Dad, you've made people talk before.

"Right now," Dad says, "We've got the advantage . . . Syd, slide back. Buckle up."

I slide back, but I don't buckle up. No one else has. Owen yawns.

"We'll see who they are," Dad says, "If they're a group, see what they can do . . . Then we'll do what we gotta do to get her back."

Owen shifts. That's enough to set off an alert in my head.

"Damn, Daryl. If you're running this hard after some girl you only met a couple years ago, you musta been absolutely rabid tryin' to find Sydney."

I swing my head towards Owen so fast it cracks. My adrenaline spikes up again, and Owen, he doesn't blink, only looks at me like . . . like Let's just see how he answers. Let's just see if he lies.

Like, You know he will.

Dad takes too long to answer, just a little too long, but it could be that I'm paranoid and he was just thinking more important thoughts. "Not somethin' I wanna talk about."

"Got it," Owen says. His eyes stay on mine. I keep staring at him with my worst stare, my worst glare, the one that my mother said I got from Dad and that Dad said I got from my mother. It doesn't faze him. He doesn't back down.

I just go back to ignoring him, crossing my arms, getting as far from him as I can in this all-too-small backseat.

"They're heading north," says Carol. "I-85."

I don't know what that means until the time when I look out the window and see a sea of dead cars. I mean a sea. And I know right away where we are but I look ahead anyway, because hey, I've been wrong before.

But there are the buildings, tall, tall, tall, and looking A-OK in the dark, stretching up like they could go on forever if they wanted to.

We've come back to Atlanta.