We drive until we can't. The cars run out of gas, two days apart from one another. The last two days are miserable, all of us crammed into the van like clowns, so at first I'm almost relieved when we have to start walking. But I'd forgotten what thirsty work walking can be.

We haven't found any water anywhere, and we've been looking – looking for streams, houses, abandoned anythings. There's no damn water in Virginia. But I don't panic, none of us do. Can't afford it. Waste of time. Waste of energy. But still. You could understand why we might be tempted.

. . . . .

Every time my dad turns around to check out the walkers on our tail, I make myself stare straight at him. At first it's just in case he wants to meet my eyes, and then it's in hopes that he will, and then I'm daring him to. But he hasn't caught my gaze in an hour, even though he's turned around about twenty times. His eyes keep finding my boots. That's my father's way of checking on me now. He searches the ground to make sure my boots are on still on it. Guess he's just assuming it's still me, that I didn't keel over some time ago and got looted for my boots. It could happen. They're nice boots.

"Hey."

The lukewarm plastic of a beaten-up water bottle taps against my fingertips. I let Carl give it to me. It's only half-full. I unscrew the cap and take a tiny, tiny sip, as tiny as I can manage, and hold it in my mouth so I can drink it one drop at a time. That doesn't work very well – most of it soaks into my dry tongue before I can take my third tiny gulp. I hand the bottle back to Carl. He takes a sip just as small as mine and then shakes the water around the bottle a couple of times. I'm starting to hate the sound.

"Don't do that," I say. "Makes me thirsty."

He looks over his shoulder. We're close to the back of the group, with just Michonne, Abraham, and Sasha behind us, walking pretty close to each other but not really walking together. He's not looking at them. He's checking on our friendly walker pals, just like my dad. I don't know why they do. Me, I don't need to check. I can hear the walkers. Even if I couldn't, I'd know they were there. Like ants at a picnic. Flies on a corpse.

A rush of pain tears up my arm. My hand has been burning nonstop over the past couple of days, but it's a steady, predictable burn, except for every now and then, in moments like this one, when something inside my muscles goes a little more wrong and the fire races up my arm to let me know Hey, hey, you're in trouble. Where's the vodka? Where's anything? Aren't you going to do something about this? I don't mean to cradle my hand like a baby, but that's what I end up doing. Carl notices. "How bad is it?" he asks evenly.

"Hurts, but it's fine. Carol says it doesn't look like blood poisoning."

"I know."

"So don't worry."

He snorts. "Two of your fingers are gone and we don't have medicine."

"I did have medicine." In Atlanta, with the nice people who murdered Beth.

"And then you tried to shoot your bow and –" he stops.

"And I set myself back." I swallow. "Yeah. But my uncle cauterized his own wrist after he cut off his entire hand by himself. If he could handle that, I can handle this." I crack my right-hand knuckles against my hip. "Let me ask you somethin'."

"You mean Let me change the subject."

I smile in spite of myself, and in spite of him, but I ask my question anyway. "Do you think we should be going to DC?"

"You're having second thoughts now?"

"I'm telling you about them now."

"It makes sense. If there's anything left of the old world . . . it's gotta be there, right?"

What if I don't want to know if there's anything left of the old world? If there's nothing worth finding in DC, where the president lived and the government worked . . . I think that means everything with half a shot of making things how they used to be is dead and gone. Even new-and-improved Little Miss Sunshine Sydney might not be able to handle that blow.

"And I wanna get there if there is something," I say, and that's not a lie, "But there might not be, and I can deal with that –"

That could be a lie.

"– but what about the millions of bad things that could be there instead? Or the millions of bad things that could be there anyway?"

"What about the millions of bad things in Georgia?" Carl asks. "What could be worse than Georgia?"

When he says Georgia, he thinks about Beth dead in Dad's arms, and the Governor, and Lori split open, covered in blood in a dark room. I think about that, too, but I also think Home, and my heart aches.

"I think we need this," Carl says. "A change. DC is our best shot."

"For all of us?" I say.

"Yeah." But he heard an undertone in what I said, and he gives me a look now. I check ahead and behind us, make sure there's still a cushion between us and everybody else.

"I don't trust everyone here. I don't like that, but it's how it is."

He sighs. "Noah."

I frown. "No. Yes. I don't think he's a bad guy . . . but you're right, I don't trust him, I can't get a feel for if he can handle this, no matter what – no matter what Beth thought. I'm worried he might be too weak."

"You shouldn't trust him. I don't." He looks at my hand. I've been holding it to my chest all this time, but I drop it now.

"It's not about my fingers, Carl. It's about more than that."

He doesn't say anything.

"Maybe once I get to know him . . ." I say. "We should both get to know him, he's not going anywhere, and like I said, I don't think he's a bad guy . . ."

No answer.

I sigh. "Look, when I said I don't trust everyone, I was thinking of Eugene."

"He's definitely weak."

"What do we do with weak people?" Eugene's almost directly in front of us. His shoulders are low. He can't even look strong. "Do we protect them like they're ours, even if they could be the death of us?"

"We don't protect them like they're ours unless they are," Carl says."Us talking like this means he's not."

"But he's still with us. I don't understand what we're supposed to do with someone who sleeps next to us and eats with us and walks with us but isn't one of us. I don't understand what our responsibilities are."

"We put ourselves first. We put the people who matter first." He glances at me. I feel a shift coming. "Does Leah matter to you?"

There it is. I play with the trigger-release on my wrist.

"I just need to know," Carl presses, even though I know he doesn't mean to. "If I'm ever with her and something goes wrong . . . I need to know what you want me to do."

"Help her, if you can."

"Yeah, but – what if it's her or someone else? Her or . . . Rosita? Her or your dad? Her or me?"

"Always you. You don't – you're not responsible for saving anyone else, just you."

"But if I can, I'm going to."

"Don't risk your life for anyone."

"Sydney, that's all we do."

Yes, it pretty much is. But I don't want it to be. Not with him. I used to think Carl was weak, but not anymore. He's tough as nails, tough as hell. But I still have a deep, twisted urge to lock him in a box and keep him in my pocket so he can never get out and never get hurt, the way everyone else always does.

"The people who are most important to you are important to me, too." He ends the sentence in a way that makes me think he wants to go on, but he doesn't, so there's an empty space in the conversation. But I can imagine what he would say to fill it. I know what he's getting at.

Do you love her again, Sydney? Is she your mom again? Or is she just the cowardly alcoholic who abandoned you after a decade of being the most important person in your life?

Maybe those wouldn't have been his exact words.

"Carl, I just don't know," I whisper, fighting the urge to look to the woman in question. "I don't hate her like I used to. But that's all I can say for sure."

A moment passes. "Is she more important than Eugene?" he asks.

I take a breath. Shrug. "Yeah."

He nods. "That's a start."

A few minutes later, Dad breaks off from the group to go look for water. Sometimes it's water, sometimes it's hunting, sometimes it's just scouting in general, but he's great at finding reasons to run off into the woods. This time, Carol asks to come. Dad resists, but he doesn't tell her no. He'd tell me no if I asked. I know, because I have asked and he has said no. A few times. But at least he's taking Carol. At least there's someone he's okay with having around.

I don't know if he looks at my boots, because I'm too busy looking at his. He doesn't get my eyes again until he asks for them.

. . . . .

Rick finally decides to deal with our walker following a little while later, when we come to a stone bridge passing over a swampy dip in the ground. It's a good place, he has a good idea . . . I think we did it once in those long, cold months between the farm and the prison, when my group looked a lot different than this. But I'm not certain. We've dealt with too many walkers too many times in too many ways for anything but the most horrible of fights to stick out in my memory.

Dad and Carol are still gone. Rick keeps Glenn, Maggie, Michonne, Abraham, Leah, Rosita, and Sasha at the head of the bridge with him and sends the rest of us down to the end. The eight of them wait up there as the walkers near, split into two groups of three, one group on each side of the road.

I hold my breath as the first walker stumbles towards Rick and Rick walks forward to meet him, Glenn drifting behind him, ready to back him up. Michonne and Leah move with them, too, the four of them moving together perfectly and effortlessly, like water sloshing in a bottle.

Owen stands by me, stock still. He didn't appreciate being sidelined. He didn't argue, but he didn't appreciate it. His hand is on the hilt of his knife.

When Rick gets about four feet from that first walker, he starts retreating. He has the walker's attention now. The walker follows him, groping for Rick while he moves back. What does he look like to the walker? A little lamb just out of reach?

I jump when Rick slips a little – He didn't realize how close he'd gotten to the edge of the ravine. But he realizes now, comes to a solid halt and waits. The walker moves in. Rick grabs him and throws him into the ditch. I hear the rotting body slap against the ground. The first of many.

It keeps going like that. Abraham heads off the other side of the road, making use of his size and shoving two walkers into the pit at once. Michonne nearly comes face-to-face with a walker just to swoop out of its way as it lurches for her. It dives into the ravine so completely it almost looks intentional.

"It's working," I hear Gabriel murmur. He sounds amazed. He seems to get in a state of awe a lot, but I don't think he's in awe of Rick, or even for our group as a whole. It seems like he's in awe that he'll get to live another day – or minute, at least. Or maybe he's in awe of his God.

Thank you, Lord, for not allowing one more innocent human to be eaten alive . . . today. How great thou art.

I should have mentioned Gabriel to Carl earlier. He's as bad as Eugene. Maybe worse. Gabriel's own precious church condemned him . . . YOU'LL BURN FOR THIS.

"Something's wrong," Owen mutters, pulling me back to this moment, which I never should have left in the first place, and it takes a second but I see that he's right, there's been a . . . ripple. Interrupting the flow. I can't place exactly what it is, even as my heart starts to pound, but I can tell pretty quickly that it has something to do with Sasha. She goes up to a walker, but she doesn't trick it or guide it or push it to the side. She grabs it. And she doesn't let go. She's too far away from the ravine to throw the walker off the edge, and I don't think she's even trying to drag it there, she's just holding onto it, grappling with it for God knows what reason, and I see her brother, I see him like he's in front of me, like he and I are both in Georgia on a run and both of us are out of our minds but I have a reason to want to get back to the prison and maybe he doesn't, and maybe that's why he won't let go of the damn walker in the brush, no matter how much the rest of us scream . . .

"Let it go."

Tyreese is dead.

"What is she doin'?" says Owen. I put my hand on his arm. It's not for his sake.

Sasha stabs the walker, suddenly and viciously.

Every muscle I have loosens. I lean on Owen more than I should and straighten up and away from him when I can, which is soon. Sasha didn't let go, but she killed the walker. Everything's okay – except that she screwed up the flow and suddenly everything up there is chaos. Knives are drawn. Blades start flashing, but within a second they're too filthy to flash. That's the death of the plan. The smoothness and the control are gone. Now it's just another fight, more blood splatters, more gore flying through the air, sticking to pavement and clothes and skin and leaving stains, oh, the stains.

Owen tries to take off. I grab his arm. I couldn't stop him if he fought me, but he stops anyway. "They need help," he says, and I almost let him go, because I know he doesn't belong on this side of the bridge. But I don't let go.

"I promise they don't."

"You might be wrong," he says.

"You need to trust Rick."

"Like you always have?"

I tighten my grip as he tightens his jaw. "I trust him now," I say, and let him go. His feet stay planted.

Across the ravine, Rick's got a walker hanging onto him. He pulls and pulls, but the walker's latched on good. Things get too close. But then my Dad appears from nowhere. He pulls the thing off, pulls half of the skull off while he's at it. He's there now, Carol's there now, too, and with the two of them in the mix, things end fast. Though Sasha ends up on the ground. It's Michonne who puts her there. I don't know why, exactly, but she shoves Sasha down and away from the final walker and then chops its head off. That's the end.

Michonne points at Sasha, says something. Sasha climbs up. They both have their weapons drawn, but only Sasha holds her blade like she might still need it. They stare at each other. I don't think they say anything else. Sasha's the one who turns away first.

She should have just let the damn walker go.

My arms ache. I look down and laugh. At some point in the last minute, I pulled my bow off my shoulder and nocked an arrow.

. . . . .

Dad comes to me. Takes my shoulder, guides me a few yards away from everybody as the part of the group that was across the ravine meshes back in with the part over here. "How's your hand?" he asks. He pulls a water bottle from his pocket. It's mostly full, because of course he hasn't been drinking much at all, and it makes it hard to be mad – or, frustrated, at least – with him, but I still don't look right at him as I tell him it's fine and sip from the bottle.

"It hurt?"

"Not much."

"Drink more."

"I've been drinkin'."

"You're sweatin'."

"It's hot."

"Look at me."

And I should, because all I wanted was for him to want to look at me, right in my eyes like two humans are supposed to and damn sure like he and I are supposed to, but I'm distracted. There's a new knife clipped to his waistband. No, not new. Just not his. And I'm not sure if a month ago I would have recognized the knife on sight, but after Atlanta, I would know it anywhere.

"That's Beth's knife," I say.

Just like that, my father turns away from me. Half-turns, at least. So I can't see the knife. "Drink more water," he says, and heads over to Rick. Doesn't look back.

Beth's knife. When did he get it? He wasn't wearing it this morning, I would have noticed, I know I would have. Did Carol give it to him just today? I don't even know when she would have gotten it, but that's all that makes sense. But why? Why would Dad want Beth's knife, or why would Carol think he should have it?

They were out there together for a long time. Him and Beth and Leah. When I've thought about that before, I've wondered what could have happened with Dad and Leah. I grew up wondering, all the time, what was happening with them, because there was always something, and old habits die hard, I'm told. But it wasn't just Dad and Leah out there, Beth was with them. And with Dad angry at Leah, who was really still just LC at the time, Beth was the only friendly face he had, and with Dad thinking I was dead, thinking everyone was dead . . .

I press the heel of my palm to my forehead. It's hot. My skin, I mean. And damp, Dad was right, I'm sweating, and here comes a fresh wave of pain from my deformed hand.

Dad has Beth's knife. What does that mean?

They bonded. Of course they bonded, that's normal. That's expected.

But how much did they bond?

He hasn't been the same since Atlanta.

None of us have.

It's been different with him. He's lost people . . . but he hasn't been like this since –

Merle. I haven't seen him take a death this hard since Merle died. I thought the way he's been acting, I thought him being distant had to do with me, with – with me pointing the gun at myself in Atlanta, or not telling him about Len, or . . . doing whatever I did when I was all but gone in the days after the hospital, or just me being stupid or crazy or whatever, or him thinking that I was a lost cause – the point is, I thought it had to do with me. His daughter.

Maybe it didn't. Maybe he found someone else to get upset over.

And now she's dead and I'm here, and . . .

And you're not enough, Sydney. You have never been enough.

That's not true.

"That's not true . . ."

I'm jumping to conclusions. Because I saw a dead girl's knife.

She's not just a dead girl, you bitch, she was your friend and you loved her.

And maybe . . .

I take another sip of water. It doesn't do a damn thing for me, at least none that I notice, I don't even taste it, I don't feel it running down my throat. So I clench my left hand into a fist, and that I notice. I taste the pain. I feel it running up my arm, begging me to stop, but I can be so cruel when I have reason to be. And the pain is such a beautiful distraction from the storms and tangles in my head, because the storms and tangles are complicated, but pain is the simplest thing in the world. Simple, and all-consuming.