AN: Okay, just so that people are aware, I have no idea what there is really in the southern states, since I'm not actually from the US myself. So if I screw something up, please just try to bear with me!
"Turn that shit off, would you? I'm trying to sleep…" Lilly complains, shifting in her seat to get into a more comfortable position. In response, Jane simply turns the volume up a little bit louder. "Seriously! Knock it off already!"
"Come on, lighten up, would ya?" Jane shakes her head, smirking at me into the rear-view mirror. Jane sure does enjoy tormenting Lilly – probably because she almost always manages to get a reaction out of her. "And how could you say no to Nirvana?"
"Who's Nirvana?"
"Get out of the car!" Jane orders in a mock disbelieving tone. "You can't tell me that you've never heard of them! They were rock stars – "
"Punks," Lilly corrects, getting an eye roll from Jane as she continues to talk to me about this band that I don't really care for that much. Jane found the CD for it in one of the glove compartments, and she's been cranking tunes for at least an hour now. They were around quite a bit before I was born, so it's not really much of a surprise that I have no idea what she's babbling on about.
It's nice to hear people enjoying themselves for a change, though.
"Meh, before your time I guess," Jane concludes as the truck goes silent again, except for the music of course.
You know, on occasion I'll ask myself how it is that I managed to get here. Driving along the highway in western Alabama; travelling with two women who I never would've met if the apocalypse didn't happen, and heading to Texas in search of some sort of refuge. It's kind of crazy to think about, don't you think?
Christa always used to go on with me about how we should keep moving north – up to Wellington and away from the cities. Kenny was the same way too, and maybe in some sense they were right. Maybe this is all just a massive waste of time; that there's no refuge anywhere, and that thinking such a place exists is just survivor's hope kicking in.
I guess we'll never know unless we try.
"We're running low on gas," Jane points out suddenly, tapping the dashboard lightly with her finger. "Any chance that you two know where we could find a gas station around somewhere?"
"You won't need one," Lilly yawns, stretching her arms up and getting the kinks out of her neck. "Pull over when we see some cars."
"What are you gonna do?" I ask, playing with some loose strings on my poncho as Jane does as she commands.
"We need a tube," she explains, rooting around up front but grimacing when she comes up empty-handed. "Damn… Jane, are there any tubes in the trunk that you noticed?"
"There's a garden hose, but I don't know how much help that's gonna be."
"It'll have to do then. Pull up to that cement truck over there," Lilly commands, unbuckling her seatbelt and hopping out to open the trunk. "This thing takes diesel, right?"
…..
"Eww! That's gonna taste awful!" I cringe, watching as Lilly cuts the garden hose with Jane's knife and sticks it into the… you know, the hole where you put the gas into your car.
"You don't drink it, silly," Lilly chuckles, shaking her head at my childlike behaviour. "You suck it up like a straw, and you block off one part of the hose so that it stays inside. Then you just take it and put the gas into our truck."
"It's called siphoning, I think," Jane tells me, cutting off another two pieces of the hose and handing one of them to me. "We might as well learn this stuff now, Clem. Better to get it out of the way early on."
I hear Lilly slurp up the gas as her fingers squeeze the hose tightly, before she takes the hose and sticks it into our truck's gas hole.
"This is called a fill spout," Lilly explains as I hold the hose in my hand like a foreign object. "We'll take turns, Jane can go next. Then Clem, then me, and we'll keep going until it's all filled up. But we need to get back on the road soon – we were making good time."
"Clem's gonna drive us for a little while," she informs us with a smirk as I widen my eyes in nervousness.
"Jane, what the heck?!"
"Come on, Clem," she encourages, siphoning her gas and placing it into the fill spout. "It's not so bad once you get the hang of it. Besides, it's not as if there are any people out on the road."
"Gee, thanks for the vote of confidence," I reply sarcastically, placing my section of hose into the cement truck's fill spout. Okay, just like a straw, and… Blech! Bleah! Oh god, that's so disgusting!
"I think it went up my nose!" I complain, spitting and sputtering out onto the dirt as Jane and Lilly laugh at me. "Yuck… This isn't funny, guys! Am I gonna die?!"
"You're fine," Lilly chuckles, handing me a water bottle as she goes back to siphoning. "It'll taste like ass for a little while, so wash it out with some water. Don't use it all, though – we don't have a lot of those left."
"Yeah, and that pond water wasn't exactly satisfying," Jane comments, wrinkling her nose at the memory. "Next time, I'm picking the water spots. I don't want to get hepatitis or some shit."
"That's what you're worried about? Seriously?" Lilly scoffs as she dumps her gas into our truck. "Ugh, whatever. A few more of these and we should be good for a little while."
After I'm completely certain that any residue of diesel has been removed from my mouth, I wipe my lips off with my sleeve and lean against the truck until they both finish what they're doing. Jane tosses the keys my way as I gulp and start to get butterflies in my stomach.
"Isn't the limit sixteen?" I question as I sit in the front seat; my feet just barely able to make it to the pedals.
"That's what I was thinking…" I hear Lilly murmur from the back, but Jane brushes her off and tells me to put my seatbelt on.
"Okay, before we do anything," she says to me seriously, pointing out to both windows, "these are your side mirrors. You use them to see what's behind you, obviously, but in this case you probably won't need to use them as much. The only thing you'll be seeing are run-down cars or walkers."
"Great…" I remark sarcastically, gripping the leather steering wheel in my tiny hands.
"This is your rear-view mirror," she explains, telling me to adjust it so that I can see out the back. "Next, this is the gear shift over here. This truck's got P, D, N and R – that's park, drive, neutral and reverse. So before you do a thing, twist the key in the ignition."
"Can you speed this up, Jane?"
"Do you want her to crash?" Jane asks bitterly before turning back towards me. "Just take your time. So, twist the key… that's it, and now put your foot on the brake pedal."
"Which one is that?"
"Left one," Jane says swiftly, as I do what I'm instructed. "Good, now hold your foot down on there, and now twist the clutch into the drive position. That's "D", remember?"
"Okay…" I say uncertainly, doing as she instructs as moving it to the correct position. The truck doesn't budge an inch. "Nothing's happening! Did I do something wrong?"
"Take your foot off the brake," I hear Lilly call to me, so I do so but panic as the car starts to move on its own.
"I didn't use the gas, though!" I say; my knuckles turning white from clutching the steering wheel so tightly. Lilly, of all people, puts a comforting hand on my shoulder and tells me to just relax as I try to keep us from falling off the road.
"Come on, Clem! You're driving as slow as my grandma!" Jane jokes as I reluctantly step on the gas pedal. Once I get to a good, steady pace, I grin as we start to gain some momentum.
"I'm doing it! I'm actually driving!" I cheer happily, getting a nod from Jane as she sits back in the seat and closes her eyes. Instantly, I shove her on the arm in protest. "Don't fall asleep! I can't do this myself!"
"But you're doing it right now," she comments, placing my hand back on the steering wheel and resting her head on the door. "Just keep going straight – it's pretty easy to do. We don't turn off this road until we get to Mississippi. If you're having trouble, lemme know. Or let Miss Bossy Pants back there help you out, if you're feeling gutsy enough."
"You're just a barrel of laughs, aren't you?" Lilly retorts, giving me a thumbs up from the back seat. "You're doing well, Clem. Just keep going straight ahead. I'll take over in a bit."
As I continue trying to not get us caught in a ditch or something, I sigh in relief at how much easier this is than I thought it would be. I totally had no self-confidence with this, as I recall how panicked I became after Jane forced me to drive back up north; trying to get us away from walkers. The circumstances were much different, sure, but that moment kind of scarred me. I crashed the truck right into a walker back then, and I thought for sure that my driving would forever remain as terrible as it was back then.
But this has really helped my cause, I'll admit.
Jane's already passed out like a light beside me, but Lilly's sitting in the back with her palms placed on her forehead; looking pretty worn-down.
"What's wrong, Lilly?" I ask her, looking in the rear-view mirror concernedly.
"What isn't wrong these days, Clem?" she answers, looking at me with hollowed-out, tired eyes. "I'm just tired of having to carry a gun around constantly; tired of losing people."
Steadying my hands, I just barely avoid a parked car before swerving back into the middle of the highway; relief settling in as I try to multitask.
"The best thing you can do for the people you've lost," I tell her quietly, careful not to awaken Jane, "is to keep living your life. They'd want you to be happy."
"I wish it were that simple, Clementine. I really do," she sighs, leaning her head back against the seat. "But look around you! Things are worse than ever, and it's kind of hard to be cheerful when your friends are dead and you have to constantly look over your shoulder."
"Lee used to tell me that things would get better – that I'd make it better…"
"Do you really believe that?"
Not taking my eyes off the road, I frown and sigh heavily as I see a woman getting eaten alive in a nearby farmer's field a little bit away from us. There's no way for us to help her even if we tried, so I try my best not to look as Lilly shakes her head at the grizzly scene.
"…no…" I respond quietly and truthfully as my grip on the steering wheel tightens. "Maybe at one point I did, but… that was before everyone died. Before I saw my parents standing there as a pair of walkers, and I couldn't tear my eyes away even as Lee was dying right beside me. That was before I showed up at some cabin in the woods with a bunch of people that took me in, and then they all died shortly afterwards. That was before I shot Kenny right in the chest and tried to convince myself that it was the right thing to do."
Lilly watches me in silence from the back seat; flabbergasted and probably a little bit terrified that I've been through so much in just two years. I never really told her any of that except for a little bit about Kenny, so it's probably a lot to take in.
She's had it bad, yeah. But so has everyone else…
"But there's nothing I can do about it now," I explain wisely as the road becomes a little bit bumpier. "Nothing I can do except – HOLY CRAP!"
I slam on the brakes as Lilly collides into the front seat and Jane bangs her head roughly on the dashboard painfully. My heart races as my eyes trace the animals in front of me… but what the heck are they doing in Alabama?
"Oww, Jesus…" Jane rubs her forehead tenderly as she scrunches up her face. "Talk about a rude wake-up call… Clem, if you're trying to kill me, can you at least give me a heads-up next time?"
"Sorry, but put your seat belt on next time! Anyways, look there!" I tell her in wonder, pointing to some rather large animals staring back at us like deer in the headlights. "Why are there lions and tigers out here?"
"Oh my," Jane jokes lamely, completely neglecting the bears part. But yeah, I'm not kidding – there's a pack of four lions resting on the side of the road, while a tiger sadly tries to wake up another Bengal tiger that's most likely dead. It's difficult to tell what killed it, but I'd imagine it either got hit, attacked by a walker or starved to death. These beasts look really skinny.
"Hang on a sec, where are we right now?" Lilly questions, pulling out a map of Alabama from the pouch behind Jane's seat. After scanning it for a while, she shakes her head in disbelief. "We're just a little ways past Birmingham."
"So? What does that have to do with anything?" Jane asks, seeming kind of nervous about these creatures even though we're in the comfort and relative safety of the truck.
"So, Jane, it means that these guys must've somehow escaped from the Birmingham Zoo," she explains, bringing the map forward and pointing the zoo out to us. "See? They probably got out when the food started drying up."
"Wait a minute, so you're telling me there could be more of these guys?" Jane squeaks, pressing the lock button on all of our doors as she looks on in fright. I can't help but laugh at how frightened she's getting.
"This is rich… you're telling me that you can kill walkers like it's your day job, but you're afraid of a few big cats?" I ask with a smirk, chuckling even more as she glares at me with indignity. "Come on, Jane! I think they're pretty cute actually!"
"Yeah, I guess they are," Lilly agrees, which surprises me remembering the tone of our earlier conversation just moments ago. If this isn't a sign of hope, then I don't know what is.
"They're not so cute when you stick your finger through the fence at the zoo…" Jane mutters, frowning at the lions as they look towards us with indifference.
Looking towards Lilly, she shakes her head and rubs her hand over her face in disbelief.
"You didn't…"
"I did," Jane admits, rolling her eyes as she recalls the memory. "I must've been eight or nine at the time, but I went to the zoo with my family one day, and me being the bad kid I was wanted to try and pet the lion. I stuck my hand through the fence, and then one of the lions came up and scratched my finger until it bled. I've hated these things ever since."
"Why is it that you always have the best stories?" I laugh; my body shaking with giggles as I place my face over the steering wheel.
However, my amusement is cut short when I start to hear the all-too-familiar groaning sound that we've all become unfortunately accustomed to.
Walkers – three of them have come onto the road and walked over to the lions to try and eat them I suppose. Now this is unusual, since you don't often see walkers trying to eat anything other than living humans.
But I guess it's already unusual enough that there are random lions and tigers roaming about on the highway though, isn't it?
You can hear the lions growling as the tiger looks on at them menacingly; waiting for one of the walkers to try and eat its dead friend. Thankfully it seems that only humans come back to life afterwards, otherwise we'd be in even bigger trouble. But anyways, two of the walkers advance on a lion as the rest of the pride goes in to attack.
Claws are thrown about as the lions roar, and the third walker is tackled by the tiger as it tries to have a go at the dead one. Slashing and ripping of flesh can be seen and heard as the walkers get absolutely torn to bits; their bodies getting ripped open as black ooze spills onto the road and mats the cats' fur in dark liquid. Things get even more terrifying as the lions rip the head off of two of the walkers before clawing at their faces viciously, while the tiger rips the third walker limb from limb. They don't stop attacking until they're completely dead; leaving nothing remaining except for torn body parts, ripped clothing and diseased blood. You can't even tell that they were walkers anymore.
Lilly, Jane and I stay silent as our mouths hang open and our eyes are twisted in fear and trauma. You could literally hear a pin drop from how quiet it is in the truck. This would actually look really hilarious if not for what we just witnessed, but obviously nobody's laughing right now.
"Those animals just got considerably less cute…" Lilly breaks the silence quietly.
"Agreed…" I say to her, turning the truck back on and driving past the animals as quickly as possible.
I think that I'm gonna be sick…