Alicia POV

I was startled from my thoughts when Octavia called out from the doorway, wrapping her dagger against the doorway to produce a heavy thud that would catch our attention.

'Come on, lets hit the road before we lose any more daylight.'

I grasped my rucksack tightly in hand before abandoning the couch, crossing the room to where the girl was waiting impatiently in the doorway.

'Murphy, I swear if you don't get your ass moving right now-'

'Alright, Alright! I'm coming already,' Murphy grumbled, hoisting his own backpack over one shoulder as he emerged from the bedroom, tucking a gun into the waistband of his trousers as he settled a dark glare on the leather clad girl.

Elyza, Bellamy and Atom had left around an hour ago now and we were finally about to set off for the base in which the rest of their group were residing.

The knife gifted to me by Elyza was held firmly in place at my hip, and with a bag containing an assortment of food, beverages and supplies, I was ready for whatever encounters were up ahead. I could only hope for an uneventful journey, but that was rarely the case these days.

We pooled out into the drive way and we walked in silence for a time, concentrating on the surroundings and on the lookout for the undead. I had no clue how long it would take to get to our destination, but the wreck of cars surrounding us provided us with few other options but to walk.

After a few hours on the road, we stopped for a short break on the seemingly endless highway. I perched on the hood of one of the many cars and took a brief swig of water as I looked on down the stretch of deserted road.

Murphy kept himself busy rifling through the nearest vehicles for supplies, whilst Octavia took up position at my side, pulling herself up onto the hood so her legs could hang freely.

'How long has it been since you spoke to your family?'

It was a sudden question, directed without warning but I was beginning to admire that about the girl. There were no false pretenses, false pity or babying over the subject, merely honest curiosity and open discussion.

'Months now.'

It felt like a lifetime ago that I had been separated from my family and it was getting harder to keep track of time with every passing week.

'What if you can't contact them with the radio?'

Again, it was a probing question that I didn't necessarily want to contemplate but one that had to be considered all the same.

'I don't know,' I replied honestly. After coming so far and going through so much it would be crushing if it had all been for nothing. The only certainty in the future was that Elyza would be there by my side through it all, though right now I couldn't even say for sure when we would see each other next.

'Elyza thinks a lot of you, she may seem brusque and mocking at times, but it's obvious that she cares. When she left us it was like a part of her was missing, but now I think you've helped to heal her.'

It was only a passing comment, a thought on Octavia's mind that had been spoken for the world to witness, but it brought a familiar sensation to my chest at the thought of the blonde girl who I had come to understand all to well over the last few months.

She had an infuriating way of knowing just how to wind me up with the right comment, but she had also showed me that nothing was impossible in this new world, that we could survive and together even the undead couldn't keep us from happiness.

The chasm I had felt within me after being separated from my family would never truly disappear, but it was always more bearable with Elyza in my life.

We had both been broken, torn down by the darkness this new age brought with it, but together we had fought to see past the pain and anguish to be where we were today. I couldn't have imagined how events may have unfolded had I not met Elyza on that fateful day, and it was not a future that I wanted without her in my life.

'That feeling, the one that you can't quite shake no matter how hard you try,' Octavia began, having observed the stream of emotion flowing through my expression over the last minute. 'That is hard to come by and you should tell her whilst you have the chance, what better time than in the middle of an apocalypse.'

Octavia grinned briefly and pushed herself off the car with the palms of her hands before striding over to where Murphy was half hanging out of a vehicle, rummaging through yet another glove box.

I was too stunned by her keen observation to make any move to follow her, finding myself frozen in place as I considered her advice. Focusing on my family had been at the forefront of my mind for so long that I had pushed any other distractions far away, but I was beginning to question the sensibility of this.

Murphy's harsh laugh brought my attention over to my new acquaintances where Octavia was clearly ribbing him with some teasing comment or another as he proudly held something aloft in one hand as he fended the girl off with the other.

A distant gunshot startled us all from the moment and my head whipped around to locate where the sound originated from but it was impossible to tell as the crash echoed over the landscape.

Octavia's expression instantly fell into seriousness and I took a quick jog over to where they were standing stiffly.

'Come on, let's keep moving,' she insisted, ushering us into a forward momentum along the highway, my thoughts with whatever unlucky individual had to fire the weapon.

It was a stark reminder that we were not back in the relative safety of the group yet and had some ground yet to cover before nightfall.

Many hours of walking later, with my legs beginning to burn from the exertion, Murphy announced that we were almost back at the neighborhood where the base was situated.

'Welcome to El Encanto,' he said wryly guiding us away from the main road and into a smaller subsection of the residential area.

I could imagine that it had been quite the charming neighborhood in its time, but with the onslaught of the apocalypse it was now more of a nightmare scenario; with blood smears on the ground marking the elimination of a multitude of the dead, with the weather worn buildings half falling apart after many months of neglect.

'It certainly wasn't quite this bad when we left,' Octavia noted in a hushed voice, freeing the sword from its sheath across her back as we continued carefully through the neighborhood.

It wasn't reassuring to hear, and I rested my hand on the hilt of my dagger in preparation.

We came to a stop outside one of the houses, one that at first I didn't register to be the base in question due to its particularly run down appearance, but the shocked expression on Octavia's face made it pretty clear that something was wrong.

'Well shit,' Murphy uttered, letting out a low whistle as we observed the house.

The small white fence that had surrounded the property was smashed into segments and tinted with a worrying amount of blood. Every window, except one on the top floor, was shattered from the outside, and it did nothing to settle our worries to see the front door smashed off its hinges and left abandoned in two separate pieces on the ground.

Octavia took the lead and entered the property, wrapping her weapon against the door to draw out any walkers that may have invaded in their absence. It was seemingly abandoned, with the inside of the building appearing just as trashed as the exterior.

The glass from the shattered windows was scattered all over the floor, the tables and chairs having been tipped unceremoniously and ripped into pieces. Strange markings were etched over the walls, those that weren't spattered with blood or scorch marks.

Shock rippled through me as I imagined the horrifying events that must have taken place here and hoped that the lack of bodies meant that the occupants had survived the ordeal.

My secondary thought was that we had no way of locating the group now that they had fled the base, and with them had gone the precious radio.

'What the hell are we going to do now?' I breathed, eyes wide as I took in the wreckage.

I jumped when a loud crash sounded from behind me and Octavia and I both spun to glare at Murphy who was poised to kick the broken remnants of the table again but sighed heavily instead and relaxed his leg.

'Well it looks like the team is disbanded. I nominate myself leader of this newly founded survival group and vote that we go kick some ass.'

Octavia ignored the man, who was in fact only half joking, and strode up to one of the walls covered in repetitive etchings.

'This place is beat to hell, let's just go already,' Murphy grumbled impatiently, clearly annoyed to have spent so long trudging to this destination, only for it to be abandoned.

'Not so fast Murphy, do you remember the weekly meetings that we held between the more adept members of the group?'

Murphy rolled his eyes and lent against the door frame, adopting a bored expression as he procured a response.

'I remember being incredibly useful and going to kick some undead butt instead of using a talking stick to ramble on about how unfair life is. Why do you ask?'

'Because those meetings are about to tell us exactly where we're going next.'

I flicked my gaze back and forth between the two as I struggled to follow what they were talking about. Murphy snorted at the prospect, not seeing how such dull conversations could ever help the now.

Octavia took a step closer to the wall and pointed at the nearest markings.

'Those are Roman numerals and that says ETRV.'

Now that she said it, the markings did seem to make some sense but to the untrained eye they merely appeared as random scratches.

'I'm no simpleton but how does 66 ETRV tell us anything useful?' Murphy argued.

Octavia smiled at his ignorance, more than happy to fill him in on their plan.

'We had a number of locations on hand in preparation for an emergency. ICE as it were. Seeing as you didn't go to any of the meetings you wouldn't know that those markings tell us exactly where everyone has relocated to.'

That was the best news that I could have hoped for, we would now be able to find their group and the radio. Bellamy would also understand the code left on the wall which meant that he and Elyza wouldn't be far behind.

'So where are we going next?' I asked, sensing that Murphy wasn't about to make himself look any worse by inquiring.

'How do you feel about camping sites?'

Thanks for reading, more chapters will be up soon so hope you enjoyed it and let me know what you thought in the comments :D