NOTE: I am dreadfully sorry for the long wait. I have been really dragging my feet with this story. I will try to avoid this in the future.
Chapter Six:
Rip and Tear (2014)
"Yeah, I understand that, it's just…" Hot Pie said, trailing off as he spoke with Arya. "…I just don't see anyone else in charge besides him."
Currently, it was night out, and Arya and Hot Pie were outside the RV, discussing various things. Eventually, the topic of discussion had shifted to Gendry, and Arya had let it be known to Hot Pie that she didn't think Gendry had a plan. Hot Pie seemed to partly agree and partly disagree.
"I'm not saying he should step down, I'm just saying he doesn't have an idea of where we're going," Arya explained. "We've just been running to nowhere for years now."
In the sky above them, a low growl of thunder made itself known. It'd been continuously raining heavily for a few days, and Arya was now beginning to think that it would cease soon. She hoped that this would be the case.
Hot Pie paused for a moment to think about Arya's words. "Yeah, yeah, you're right. That… that really is what we've been doing, just moving without stopping somewhere. I mean the closest we had was White Harbor, but we got kicked out when those people you were with died. If we stayed, it would have just been a week."
"Was it just a week?" Arya asked, trying to remember herself. It had been so long since she was at White Harbor that she'd let it slip from her mind regarding the details of Wyman Manderly's deal with her group.
"Hey, I'm just happy to be getting to a new town soon," Hot Pie said. "We've been staying out in the woods ever since that disaster in Oldstones."
Arya frowned when she thought of that event. Oldstones did indeed have lots of supplies to be scavenged and many cars of which to siphon gas out of, but there were many instances in which people were nearly bitten. Before they left, Lommy had decided to use one of his experimental bombs on a rusted out car. Much to his delight, it worked, but the loud noise had drawn out many wights, and several people were almost killed.
Arya nodded. As she spoke again, she felt a drop of rain hit her right cheek. "I agree with you."
Hot Pie looked up as Arya answered. Apparently, he'd been hit by the rain, too. "The rain's here."
"Let's get inside the RV, then," Arya said. She entered the RV, and Hot Pie followed. Hot Pie closed the door behind himself.
Inside, the first thing Arya heard was "Don't forget to tighten it."
She looked over to the source of the noise, and she saw Lommy sitting in the back with Elmar and Edric. Lommy had several of his homemade explosives sitting before him (including two Molotov cocktails), and he was currently working on constructing a third Molotov cocktail.
"I won't," Lommy said.
Arya trusted he wouldn't accidentally cause the RV to catch fire and subsequently explode in the middle of the night. Arya ignored them and walked over to the front of the RV. Gendry was sitting in the front seat, and Nymeria was asleep between them. Arya plopped down into the chair next to Gendry's own seat.
"We're going into Fairmarket tomorrow, right?" Arya asked, catching Gendry's attention.
Gendry shook his head. "Day after tomorrow. We're going hunting and fishing tomorrow."
"Alright, fine," Arya said before she shifted into a comfortable position and closed her eyes, trying to get some sleep. She hoped that Lommy would shut up for a while so she could actually fall sleep.
The next day, Gendry drove for a short while before he stopped the RV and parked it a short distance outside of the entrance of the ravaged town of Fairmarket. Even from a distance, Arya could see that Fairmarket was ripped to shreds, with several burned-out buildings with the glass of the front windows shattered. When Gendry stopped the RV, he ordered everyone out.
"Alright, we're going into Fairmarket tomorrow. Today, we're going to hunt and fish."
"Who's doing what?" Edric asked.
"Arya and I are going hunting with Hot Pie and Lommy. Nymeria's coming with us, too. The rest of you are fishing. We're very close to a river, so the others I didn't list are going to fish for the day."
Arya frowned. While she would like spending time with Gendry, Hot Pie, and Lommy, she was upset that Weasel would be with Elmar. She was fine with Edric being in Weasel's presence, but not Elmar. The latter hadn't let up regarding harassing Weasel, and Arya was past her breaking point with it. Arya watched as Weasel, Elmar, and Edric all simultaneously hurried over to the RV to open the storage compartment to get their hands on the buckets and spears the group used for fishing. They had to move aside some of Lommy's explosive equipment in the process, but they still found what they were looking for in the end.
After Weasel's smaller group retrieved their supplies for fishing, the others gathered what they needed. Weasel, Elmar, and Edric went north to the close river, and Arya, Gendry, Hot Pie, Lommy, and Nymeria all went into the woods south of the beaten-up street.
"How much meat do we have?" Hot Pie asked. He was carrying a large bag, where everyone had been placing the game they hunted into.
"Not as much as I hoped," Arya said, eyeing the contents of the bag with everyone else sans Nymeria. Inside were eight rabbits, two squirrels, and three birds.
"Then what are we going to do?" Hot Pie asked, looking over at Gendry.
"We keep looking," Gendry said, turning to advance deeper into the woods. Arya and the others followed. All the while, Arya began to carefully look around for any other animals they could hunt for food. Nymeria was with them as well, and the dog walked over to the bag to sniff at it.
They kept going for about sixteen minutes, and they all simultaneously stopped as a large buck stepped out from behind a number of trees. The creature briefly paused to sniff the grass before it before it flipped its ears and kept moving, seemingly ignoring the others beside it. Arya, Gendry, Hot Pie, and Lommy were all silent before Lommy whispered to the others.
"Should we go for it?"
Before any human could answer, Nymeria did. She snarled, growled, then began barking at the buck. The buck looked over at the group and stood ramrod still as it now noticed the group of five. Nymeria barked a few more times, then charged at the buck. The buck immediately turned and ran, and Arya, Gendry, Hot Pie, and Lommy began hollering in unison as they chased after Nymeria, whom was in the process of chasing the buck.
They continued to run for a while. Arya could see Nymeria off in the distance, and she watched as the dog managed to catch up to the buck and successfully bring it down. Nymeria, growling, leapt from the ground and dug her claws and teeth into the back of the big buck. The buck fell, and the four humans who were in the process of chasing it finally managed to catch up.
Gendry and Arya carried the remains of the buck back to the RV. Hot Pie, Lommy, and Nymeria followed.
Night came. Arya found herself sitting around a fire made outside the RV with the others. She had been chewing the (now cooked) meat from the buck run down by Nymeria. It was rare for something as large as a buck to be spotted by anyone anymore. Arya couldn't remember the last time she saw one before the specimen from a few hours earlier. Weasel was on Arya's right, and Nymeria was to her left. Across from her, Gendry swallowed a piece of meat before he began to speak.
"We'll be heading into Fairmarket tomorrow morning," he announced. "We should discuss scavenging and how we'll go about looking for food and anything else we can use."
"Are we splitting up to look for stuff again?" Elmar asked after swallowing a bit of cooked buck meat.
Gendry shook his head. Arya raised an eyebrow as Gendry began to elaborate. "We'll be moving together as one big group. Better to stick together."
Arya was not sure if anyone else noticed this, but she got a look at Edric's face when Gendry explained his strategy for the following day of scavenging Fairmarket. Edric's face communicated to Arya that he thought Gendry's idea was completely stupid and that it was also incredibly dangerous.
Gendry, are you being serious? Arya thought.
Arya liked Gendry and all, but this was one of many different times where she wondered if he actually knew what he was doing. She had been thinking about this for the many years they'd been on the road, and she was aware that Hot Pie felt the same way as her. She was now beginning to think that Edric felt similarly. Arya also felt as if eventually, something was going to give away. Gendry would make a mistake, or something else would happen that would shatter his hold over the group if not weaken it permanently.
Arya would hate to see this happen. If it did happen, she expected that everyone (with the exception of perhaps a few) would leave. Hot Pie and Lommy might stick with Gendry if the group were to fracture, and Weasel and Nymeria would definitely stay with Arya, but the latter didn't know about anyone else.
However, Arya tried to reason with herself that the group wouldn't fracture. At the same time, Arya didn't want to fool herself into thinking that the group couldn't break apart.
After dinner, Arya escorted Weasel into the RV, and Nymeria eagerly followed after the both of them. Every night, Weasel slept on one of two beds in the RV, and this night was no exception. As Weasel crawled into bed, Arya watched.
"Have you taken care of everything?" Arya asked. "Like have you taken care of everything you need to do before bed?"
Weasel nodded before her head hit the pillow. "Yeah, yeah."
Arya gently patted Weasel on the head. "Alright, goodnight, Weasel–"
Arya was cut off when Weasel suddenly lunged forward and hugged Arya tightly. Arya, surprised but still appreciating the affectionate gesture, returned Weasel's hug. Normally, Arya did not like things such as this, but she was always willing to make an exception for little Weasel. The two of them had grown very close to one another over the years, and Arya knew that Weasel fully trusted and loved her.
Weasel was incredibly close to her, nearly family. It made Arya think about whether or not her blood family were still out there somewhere. Eddard, Catelyn, and Robb were all gone. However, there was a chance that everyone else was still out there somewhere. Arya had a faint hope she'd find them someday.
When the day came, Gendry led everyone into the ravaged town of Fairmarket. Everyone was armed, and Arya walked behind Gendry. Weasel was to her left, and Nymeria was to her right. As planned, all of them walked in a big cluster. Aside from the sounds of scuffling feet, Nymeria panting, and a cough every now and then, everyone was quiet. Lommy was the one to break the silence.
"We've got company."
Sure enough, before the group were two wights mindlessly shambling around the decimated streets of Fairmarket. One was next to a flipped, burned-out car, and the other was close behind. Arya could see that they were approaching an X-shaped intersection at the time. Arya and Gendry approached the wights, and with a swing of her machete, Arya put down one wight while Gendry used his sledgehammer to collapse the skull of the other.
With the threat taken care of, the group continued towards the intersection. Arya began feeling better; it seemed like they had everything covered and that no one would die. Upon reaching the center of the intersection, Arya noticed a tall, brick building nearby. She looked upward, and her eyes widened. Standing behind a dirty window watching them was, unmistakably, Jaqen.
"Arya?" Hot Pie said, taking her eyes away from the window to look at Hot Pie. The latter continued speaking. "You see something?"
"It's nothing, Hot Pie. Don't worry about it."
With that taken care of, Arya looked back up to the window as the group stopped when Gendry did. Jaqen was gone.
Wait… what? Arya thought. Where'd he go–
"WIGHTS!"
Hot Pie's cry caught everyone's attention. Arya looked to where Hot Pie was pointing, and she saw a massive hoard of wights approaching them from the location of the RV. There must have been at least eighty-five of them, all growling and headed right for the lot of them.
"There are more– WE'RE SURROUNDED!" Elmar shouted.
Arya looked around. Coming from every street, there were more wights, effectively boxing them into the center of the intersection. The wights coming from the direction where the RV was were much more close, but the others were still a distance away.
"Gendry, what do we do?" Edric asked.
Gendry looked towards the direction of the RV. "We need to get back to the RV. Fight our way through."
Everyone, still clustered together, eyed the rotting wave of the dead approaching them all. Nymeria began growling. Arya felt a rush of intense willingness to live to see another day shoot through her. Finally, someone–Arya wasn't sure who–emitted a war cry, which prompted everyone else to scream at the wights (bark in Nymeria's case) and charge forward. Within seconds, the living clashed on the dead, and Arya rammed her machete through the empty eye socket of one wight in the front row as Nymeria took down the one next to it, crushing its exposed brain in her teeth. Nearby, Lommy rammed one end of his spear through the skull of a wight, then another, then another.
Nearby, Gendry swung his sledgehammer a few times, taking out three wights and crippling another. Hot Pie, who was near Arya, swung his metal pipe at a wight and knocked it over. He proceeded to beat its brains in with the pipe. However, two wights grabbed for him, and Arya noticed. She ran towards the wights about to bite a chunk out of Hot Pie and severed the rotted arm of one that was about to grab her fat friend before putting the same machete through its temple. The second wight Arya pushed back by running her machete into its gut and running it backwards, yanking it upward and back as she made it fall, sending a spray of blood flying at her as the creature's gray and black, rotted intestines spilled out onto the street. The smell nearly made her gag.
"THEY'RE NOT FALLING BACK!" Elmar screamed as he cracked the head of one with the metal bat in his possession.
"NO DUH!" Arya shouted back as she sliced into the neck of a wight, taking its head clean off. The head, still making biting motions, rolled over to Weasel, who stuck her dagger into the side of it, killing it. At this point, the group had cut through a number of the wights, but they were still vastly outnumbered.
Arya heard two loud pops as Edric pulled out a pistol and put down a few wights. Next to him, Gendry crippled a wight and then mashed its head into red, gray, and black pulp with his sledgehammer with several frantic, hard swings downward. By this point, Edric, Elmar, Gendry, and Lommy were to the far left while the others were to the far right. Weasel began to scream as a wight grabbed her hair, desperately swinging her dagger at it to get it to go away. Arya heard her cries, but was busy grappling with a wight of her own. Nymeria charged over to Weasel and tackled the wight from behind, biting into its head and savagely shaking it around in her mouth.
"THAT'S IT, YOU GOTTA DO SOMETHING!" Lommy shouted. At his waist, three bottles intended to be used as Molotov cocktails were tied there. Also present at his waist was a makeshift bomb he had constructed out of an empty milk jug and other materials, which he'd named "Auk". He grabbed one of the bottles, lit the cloth, then threw it ahead of them. There was a large burst of flame, and several of the wights in the center began to catch fire. Lommy began yelling again. "GOTTA THIN THE HERD!"
Though Arya was a distance away from the burning flesh of the rotting wights, she could still smell it. She coughed and threw up in her mouth a little due to the strong, horrid smell. At her left, Hot Pie hollered and whacked a wight across the face with his pipe, splintering a number of teeth and bursting its nose like old fruit thrown against a solid wall. As he ran forward to finish the job, Nymeria tore at the leg of a wight before Weasel leapt forward and drove her dagger into its brain through a gash present in the forehead.
By this point, Arya and Gendry's groups were separated, wights in between the both of them. At this point, Arya began to hack away at the undead more fiercely and quickly, hoping that none of them were going to get boxed in and surrounded. Arya heard more gunshots nearby, and she watched as Lommy threw a second Molotov cocktail into the swarm of wights. This time, three more wights caught on fire than before. Nobody had been bitten or killed yet, but they were seemingly losing.
After Gendry broke open the skull of a wight before him with his sledgehammer to expose its brain, Arya rammed her machete through the mouth of a wight in front of her and then yanked it out. Hot Pie hit another wight upside the head with his pipe, and it dislodged a rotted eye. Weasel ran her dagger through a wight's knee before stabbing it in the face. Nymeria savaged a wight's forearm, dragging it backwards. Elmar broke the jaw of a wight advancing towards him. Edric used his last bullet on a wight about to bite a chunk out of Gendry's arm. Lommy continually speared wights at random; some of these wights died while others were disemboweled and lost limbs or digits.
"There are too many!" Hot Pie cried. Arya felt like this was true; for every wight they killed, two more arrived. The original plan of sticking together had unfortunately started to fail. It made her wonder when the other wights from behind would start to gain on them if they weren't there already. One wight whose hands had decayed to the point where the tips of the fingers were exposed bone reached Arya next, taking a swipe at her face. Part of her face, her right cheek, was grazed by the claw-like bone, and she started to bleed. Nymeria, noticing this, rushed to her master's aid and tore into the wight's throat before taking on the skull. Nearby, Weasel repeatedly drove her dagger into the back of a wight's head.
"I SEE AN OPENING!" Gendry shouted. "EDRIC, ELMAR, YOU TWO GO!"
"ARE YOU SURE?!" Edric shouted back.
"YES!" Gendry shouted as he swung at a wight and collapsed its skull. "NOW GO!"
"GO!" Gendry shouted as Elmar and Edric began to run to the RV, which Arya could make out in the distance. "GO! GO! GO! GO! GO! GO! GO! GO! GO! GO! GO!"
Upon hearing Gendry's shouting, Elmar and Edric began to run through the wights to get to the RV. Arya lost track of the two of them as they disappeared into the sea of the dead. As Gendry and Lommy continued to fight their way back to the RV, Arya, Hot Pie, Weasel, and Nymeria were getting backed into an old, now abandoned department store.
At this point, the four of them were backed against the front doors of the store. As the wights began to pile in towards them, Arya was almost certain they would die that day. However, they didn't. Behind them, the doors opened, and Arya and the others turned to see Jaqen–albeit smeared in gore–standing there.
"A man suggests a girl and her friends come inside if they wish to live."
They went inside. Jaqen shut the door and pushed a shelf over, barricading it successfully.
Jaqen led them into a back room of the department store. Arya and Hot Pie recognized Jaqen, but Arya had to explain to Weasel who he was. Weasel, always distrustful of strangers, at least managed to warm up to Jaqen after seeing that Arya and Hot Pie trusted him.
"Where are we going?" Hot Pie asked as the group of five continued to move through the store.
"A man noticed your plight, and he has a solution."
Arya couldn't believe Jaqen was still alive. She was certain that the wight swarm back in Winterfell had caused him, Rorge, and Biter to all die. It also opened up many questions. How did Jaqen show up in this department store without being seen? How did he get out of Winterfell? Did Rorge and Biter escape as well? Were they here with him? Curious, she decided to ask.
"Jaqen, how did you make it out of Winterfell when the wight horde was coming in?"
Jaqen was quiet for a moment, but he answered as he opened the door to a back room. "A man is full of surprises."
Jaqen held the door open for Arya and her companions, and they stepped into the room. A small lamp was atop a desk, and it was lit, revealing the other contents of the room. A bloodied ax was resting in the corner, its rusted handle leaning against the wall. Nearby was a stack of five dead wights. All of them had large wounds in their heads where Jaqen had obviously driven the ax into their skulls. Hot Pie stopped and noticed them.
"What are those for?"
Jaqen walked over to the ax and picked it up as he began to explain. Arya heard a loud explosion come from the outside street. She immediately knew that it was Auk going off. "A man will demonstrate." He looked over at Hot Pie. "A fat boy will come forward."
Jaqen pulled the top corpse off of the pile and began to swing into it with his ax. Everyone watched as he drove his weapon into it several more times. When he was finished, Jaqen leaned the ax against the adjacent desk and began to dig into the corpse with his hands, pulling out bits of intestine and liver and probably stomach. He held them out for Hot Pie to take.
"What… do you want me to do with…"
"A fat boy must cover himself," Jaqen explained. "A man has learned that one may mask their own smell by covering themselves in their insides. One may avoid detection in this manner."
The group proceeded to take turns covering themselves in wight guts and blood. They went in the order of Hot Pie, Arya, Weasel, and then Nymeria. Weasel needed some assistance in covering herself, and Nymeria needed to be covered by her three companions because she couldn't do it herself. In total, they had to cut open three of the wights on the pile. The smell was unbelievable, but Arya managed.
When they were done, they stepped out of the back room and into the main part of the store. Arya got a look out of one of the dirty front windows and saw that the street was swarming with wights. She did not see Gendry or Lommy out there. Jaqen followed close behind, and Arya and her companions turned to look at him when he addressed them.
"A girl and her friends can walk through, though a man must advise you to move slowly to avoid detection."
Arya nodded once. "Thank you, Jaqen."
As they turned to exit through the door they came through, Arya and Hot Pie proceeded to move the barricade away. It took some effort, but they managed to complete their task. As Arya reached for the door handle, she tightly gripped her machete in the other. She hoped Jaqen's idea would work. She also hoped that none of them would get bitten, hoped that Nymeria wouldn't growl or bark and thus attract unwanted attention from the wights, and hoped that none of the wights would catch on.
When applying the gore to her face, Jaqen warned her to avoid smearing any of the blood onto her open wounds on her cheek. Arya knew that wights were attracted to fresh blood among other things, so she figured that out of everyone in the group, she was the biggest liability aside from probably Nymeria. Her wound had crusted over by then, but she figured that it would open up again if she rubbed it even a little.
Before they stepped outside, Arya took one last look back at everyone. They were eagerly watching her. Jaqen was gone. Arya opened the door, and they went out. Arya, tightly gripping her machete in one hand, held Weasel's hand with the other. Hot Pie and Nymeria made up the rear, and they noticed that while some of the wights turned their heads to look and see what caused the noise of the door creaking open, but they ignored Arya's group altogether.
"It works!" Hot Pie whispered.
Slowly, they moved through the swarm towards the RV. While the wights went one way, the four trying to move through them went the other. All the while, Weasel did not loosen her grip on Arya's hand, and Arya herself felt a hint of nervousness every time a wight looked her way. Much to her surprise, Nymeria did not bark or growl.
Moving through the swarm, Arya saw the remains of Lommy's bomb, Auk. Ash and burned asphalt were present among the remains of the explosion, and the corpses of seven wights surrounded it. Nearby, there were more burned corpses of wights, evidently the result of Lommy using his final Molotov cocktail. At this point, Arya could see movement around the RV. It's them!
When they were getting close, they made a break for it and began screaming for someone to notice them, not caring if the wights detected them. Gendry and Lommy staggered out of the RV, and they ran over to greet their friends. Edric and Elmar appeared as well, and they approached.
Arya was the first to see Elmar staggering towards the front of the RV a short while later. He moved like he was sick. Curious, Arya approached him to see what he was doing. Getting close, Arya watched as Elmar began gagging as he placed his left hand to the front of the RV to support himself. From behind him, Arya could see that Elmar was coughing up blood and bile.
"Elmar?" Arya said, feeling as if she knew what was going on. She did not notice it when she and the others escaped the herd of wights, but now she saw a bloody red spot on his upper right arm. Elmar stuck his head up and, shaking, turned to face Arya.
Arya's eyes widened when she saw that Elmar's skin was turning gray, and his eyes were in the process of changing to the pale blue possessed by the wights. Realizing what was happening, Arya screamed for help.
"GENDRY! LOMMY!"
Gendry and Lommy burst from the door of the RV, and they immediately noticed what was going on when they got a look at Elmar. Lommy was armed, Gendry and Arya weren't.
"What… Gendry…" Elmar mumbled.
"Lommy, put him down!" Gendry ordered.
Elmar took a step towards Gendry and mumbled something Arya couldn't understand.
"What?!" Lommy said, looking appalled. "That's a person! He's not a wight yet!"
"BUT HE WILL BE!" Gendry shouted. "You remember Yoren? How FAST he turned?!"
The commotion drew Hot Pie, Weasel, and Edric from where they were inside the RV. Arya was too distracted by Gendry and Lommy to notice Elmar charge at her when the latter turned. She only noticed when Elmar tackled her to the ground, snarling and snapping at her face with his teeth. Arya screamed and tried to push him off of herself, but to no avail.
Immediately, Gendry ran over, hoisted Elmar off of Arya, and choke slammed him to the asphalt. The undead Elmar did not hesitate in clawing at Gendry's arm. Lommy then ran over. Everyone was shouting. Lommy rammed one end of his spear into Elmar's head, and he went limp.
Everyone was silent for a moment. Finally, Edric was the one to break the silence.
"HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?!"
"Let's look," Gendry said, proceeding to drag Elmar's body over to the RV. He leaned him up against it and began to inspect the body for bites. Arya walked over and watched as everyone else crowded around Gendry and Elmar and did the same thing.
After a brief while, Gendry rolled up Elmar's shirt sleeve and noticed a deep bite on his right arm, the same place where Arya had seen the red mark. Gendry then backed up a bit and took a deep breath.
"Alright," Gendry said, "alright, let's bury him."
It took a number of hours, but Gendry, Arya, and Lommy dug a hole in the nearby woods to bury Elmar. They brought his body over there and lowered him in. Gendry, Arya, and Lommy took turns shoveling dirt over Elmar's remains as Weasel, Hot Pie, Edric, and Nymeria all watched the event in silence.
As the dirt covered half of Elmar's body, Edric began to deeply inhale in and out. Arya watched him, and she saw in his eyes that he looked hurt and angry. When they finished shoveling, Edric's breathing was now very loud. Gendry was the first to address it.
"Are you okay?"
Edric hatefully stared at Gendry, then charged at him, shouting. Edric swung at Gendry, who quickly moved out of the way.
"What are you doing–" Gendry said, but was cut off when Edric swung again, connecting as he successfully whacked Gendry in the face.
Gendry, now looking very enraged himself, grabbed Edric's wrist as he tried to punch him again, then swung himself, hitting Edric in the gut hard enough to make him vomit all over Elmar's grave. When the vomit was gone, Gendry approached and whacked him in the right cheek. Realizing what was going on, Arya and Lommy got in between Gendry and Edric and began shouting them down from killing each other.
"WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM?!" Gendry shouted.
"YOU'RE THE REASON HE'S DEAD!" Edric screamed back.
A screaming match between the two followed, and it ended with Edric walking backwards while shouting at Gendry, though the volume of his voice had lowered quite a bit since he began yelling.
"You told us to run because you don't have a plan! You just drag us along to every town so we can find next to nothing and just scrape to get by! Maybe you should step down and let Arya take over. She'd be MUCH better than YOU ANY DAY!"
He turned to walk back to the RV.
Sitting in the front seat next to Gendry, Arya flipped through the road atlas to see if she could find an alternate route out of Fairmarket rather than going straight through like what Gendry had originally planned. Gendry had decided that due to the mass of wights in there, they needed to find another way out. After some time, Arya found an alternate road to take to go southeast, though they needed to go through two streets in Fairmarket to get there.
Puling into the town, Gendry slowly drove through the street where the group had fought for their lives during the previous day. Arya was pleased to see that there were barely any wights around. Gendry turned right to head down a different street when he reached the intersection, and he began to leave Fairmarket. A few wights shambled around, but they did not advance towards the RV.
Edric was sitting in the far back of the RV, not talking to anyone. Hot Pie, a half-eaten bag of chips in his hand, watched as Lommy constructed a new Molotov cocktail at a table. On the floor, Weasel played with Nymeria. Up front, Gendry drove as Arya sat in silence and observed the streets of Fairmarket.
As Gendry drove, Arya wondered if there was anyone living in Fairmarket. She supposed that Jaqen may very well have been the ravaged town's sole occupant now, but part of her also thought that he was only passing through for the time being.
Arya began to wonder if there was once a sizable community at Fairmarket, but she did not see any sign of life anywhere. Almost all of the towns they'd been to had been raided or overrun, and Fairmarket was no exception.
And then she saw it. Written on a brick wall in black spray paint was a message that made Arya feel unsettled. It made her realize that Fairmarket likely had actually been raided in the past.
BEWARE THE BRAVE COMPANIONS