AN: Here we go, another chapter here.
There's an Author's Note, at the bottom, about the future events of the story for anyone who's interested.
I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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They had managed to find a pickup truck that, with a little coaxing, would finally come to life. The other vehicles they'd tried and failed to get running, offered up a fair amount of gas that they siphoned into every little container they could scavenge on the highway and they'd piled those containers in the back of the truck.
Gas. Food. Water. That was the order of things. With gas they could move forward to find whatever they needed. Food could be found in numerous ways, but was still harder to come by than water. Almost everything else in life had become something they knew how to do without when they needed to live without it. Everything else was simply a bonus.
Having found a somewhat comfortable place to leave them, Michonne stayed behind with Carl and Judith. Her presence meant the children were as safe as they could be and it meant that all hands were free to scavenge. And that's what they were doing. Part of them went to look for any doctor's office or clinic the small town might have to offer. Part of them went to look for any guns or ammo that might be available—with fingers crossed that even the smallest towns in Georgia would have guns available somewhere—and the other part of them went in search of food and any other miscellaneous goods they could gather.
Carol wouldn't say that they'd exactly struck it rich, but they'd found a fair amount of supplies. The main store in town appeared to be one of those little standard supply stores for small towns that were neither here nor there. It had aisles dedicated to everything from cereal and snacks to screwdrivers and basic hardware. Though it had been somewhat picked over, it still had a good array of almost anything that they might need.
And it had enough that they had already sent Daryl to get another vehicle running to carry as much as possible with them.
"We'll have to drive for a while," Rick said, sliding another box of supplies into the already overflowing truck bed. "Maybe all the way to Richmond. We can't carry all this and we can't leave it behind."
"If we're talking about problems to have," Carol said, "that's one problem I don't mind dealing with. There's a good bit here. There's a month's worth of formula for Judith. Rice cereal. Even some treats for her. Aspirin and bandages, too. Even tampons for anyone who's still eating enough to get a period."
Rick looked around them and surveyed the landscape of the town. It wasn't terribly overrun. From where they were standing, Carol could count three Walkers. None of them, at the moment, were paying her and Rick any attention, but when they did notice them, they wouldn't be much of a problem to deal with. They'd seen far more Walkers on the highway that morning than they'd seen since they hit the town.
"We found a fair amount," Rick said. "If we can carry it all? We don't have to leave any of it behind? It'll get us somewhere. But it'll only get us so far." There was some irritation in his voice that simply shouldn't accompany having found the greatest amount of supplies that they'd found in a while.
Carol closed the back of the pickup to allow them to continue packing without worry that anything would fall out. The loud clang of the closing tailgate drew the attention of the three Walkers just as she knew it would. She pulled her knife out and held it, waiting for the three to reach them instead of expending any of her energy going after the things herself. Rick saw them starting to move too, because he pulled his own knife in preparation.
"So far," Carol said in response to his previous statement. "That's the story these days, Rick. It only gets us so far. But so far gets us to somewhere else where we find something else that gets us so far again. But every 'so far' keeps us moving."
"It would be nice to find a place that isn't so picked over," Rick said. "It would be nice to not be so happy about what are basically scraps."
"They're scraps because a lot of people have been through here, but they're the best scraps we've seen in a long time," Carol said. "We can either be pissed about the fact that it's not as much as we want, or we can be happy with what we've got. We're not that far from Richmond. Driving? We'll make it in no time. Two days if we don't get stopped by wrecks or Walkers. This place is close enough to be a run point for a group out of Richmond. Maybe all the missing supplies is proof there are people around and—maybe? Those people are Noah's people. I got the one in the middle."
Carol stepped forward, satisfied to have let the Walkers do most of the work in closing the distance between them, and sunk her knife into the head of the first Walker that she could reach. Rick didn't say anything and, instead, he stepped forward to take out the second. The third reached out for Rick and he pushed it back, preparing it so that he could easily put it down, and Carol stepped forward to sink her knife into its head before he could do it.
She didn't miss the smile and the half-bleated laugh that he gave her in response.
"Thanks," Rick said.
"Any time," Carol responded, not bothering to hide her own smile. "Where do you suppose Daryl is? I hope he found something. Do you think we should look for him?"
"I think Daryl's OK," Rick said. "But I'm a little worried about Glenn and Maggie. They've been gone longer than I thought they would be."
"I'm not worried about them," Carol said. "Knowing the two of them? They found a little privacy and...forgot about the time. I just hope they don't forget about the supplies."
"I don't know how much more we'll get on this truck if Daryl doesn't make it back with something," Rick said. "We should hold off loading anything else until we see what he finds."
"We can always come back for it," Carol said. "Unload the truck. Come back for another load."
"And how long do we stay here?" Rick asked her, a little bite to his tone. "How long do we stay here to use what we've got? Because if we don't have more vehicles, we can't take it with us."
"So we stay here until we have to leave," Carol said. "Or we take it back and we keep looking for cars and trucks that we can load down. We have to make a decision, though, one way or another. That's what we do, right? We make decisions and we try to make the best decision that we can."
"And it sounds like you've already made one," Rick said. "So tell me what it is. What do we do from here?" Carol stared at him and finally just shook her head at him. He was frustrated. Of course he was. They all were frustrated. Nothing about their lives right now made any of them want to absolutely jump for joy. It was far from perfect. It wasn't even as good as it had once been. But at least they were all adapting. At least they were all learning to survive.
Life wasn't perfect, but they were surviving. And survival could at least leave a little hope for something more to come.
"Don't shake your head at me, Carol," Rick said. "We talked about this. We discussed it. You said you were going to help me. You said you were—you were going to talk to me. You were going to tell me what you thought and you were going to help me make—help me make the decisions that were going to get us through this."
"Except I can't talk to you when you're like this," Carol said. "No one can, Rick. You're on the defense from the moment the conversation starts. Nothing gets through to you. You're like a brick wall when you're like this—and that's why other people have to make the decisions. At least then, something gets done."
For a split second, Carol didn't know what was going to happen. Rick's face was drawn up in his normal look of irritation when he got like this and the expression only intensified. But then, it slowly melted away some and he shook his head at her and walked away. He walked all the way to the other end of the truck, stood there looking at the ground like he was inspecting the tires, and then he came back visibly calmer. He put his hand on the closed tailgate of the truck and nodded his head at her.
"You're right," he said. "You're right. I asked you for help and—I've got to be willing to accept it. I've got to be—I've got to be willing to take it."
Carol felt her body relax. The release she felt in her muscles was the first indication to her that she'd been as tense as she was.
"You don't have to take it," Carol said. "I'm not saying that you have to take it. I'm not saying I even have the best advice. But—if you're going to ask me for my opinion? If you're going to ask me to talk to everyone else and hear their opinions? Share them with you? You've at least got to be willing to listen, Rick."
"I'm listening," Rick said. "So? What do we do?"
Carol shrugged her shoulders. She didn't have any more answers than Rick did. Gone were the days of relying on something like a magic eight ball and she didn't have a crystal ball with which to see the future.
She was running on instinct. They were all running on instinct.
"We're hungry," Carol said. "And thirsty. And tired. We take whatever we can find. All of it. We find whatever vehicles we can to take it with us. We stay for two days. We take whatever we can get running in two days. If we can't find enough to take it with us? We live like kings for two days and go through what we can of the stuff we'd leave behind. We're not that far from Richmond. At least—if we take a couple of days and we rest and we eat well? We'll get there with a little more strength. We find Noah's family. We see if the neighborhood has everything to offer that he says it does. Security. Safety." Carol sighed. "We try to settle. Because if we don't find somewhere to settle? This is as good as it gets. We keep moving. We keep scavenging and living off what we find until we run out again. Unless we find somewhere to—live? Everything is only going to get us so far."
Rick regarded her for a moment and then he nodded.
"We stay two days," Rick said. "Take everything we can with us. Gather all the gas we can. Hopefully it's enough to get us to Richmond."
"It'll get us closer than we are," Carol said. "That much we know for certain."
Carol turned her head when she heard a sound. It was the sound of a vehicle approaching and, not wanting to be too naïve, she put her hand on her gun to be prepared to defend herself—and Rick too, for what it was worth—against the approach of anyone that they might not know. It didn't come to that, though, because as the truck neared Daryl stuck a hand out the window and waved at them. He drove up, close enough that he'd have hit one of them if they'd stepped out in front of him, and killed the engine.
"Runnin' good," Daryl said. "Got held up. Mini-herd on the highway. Waited for 'em to pass, but we'll see them again on the way back. Saw Glenn and Maggie on their way. They got a van."
Carol couldn't help the smile that spread across her face at the thought of it. She looked at Rick, rolling her eyes in his direction, and he was looking at her with a hint of smile on his own lips.
"Did you see Rosita?" Carol asked Daryl. "Tara?"
Daryl shook his head.
"No, but I reckon they'll be along shortly," Daryl said. "Saw a sign for a pawn shop. That's probably where they're headed. They aren't back by the time we get loaded up? I'll check it out while you wait here for them. In case they come back."
"Good job," Rick said, reaching and banging his hand gently on the fender of the truck that was nearest him. "Get out. Let's get loaded up. There's a lot more we can get now that we've got the space. We're staying a couple of days. Scavenging for gas. We'll try not to stop again until Richmond."
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AN: So I'm still planning out the rest of this story (it's a little longer than I thought it would be), but I have a lot of it already mapped out. I just wanted to touch base and let you know that I will be following some events of the show, but I'll be doing it with my own twists. That being said, one of the greatest twists, perhaps, is going to be in the development of the characters. I don't intend to go entirely OOC (though some might argue that I always do), but I don't intend to follow the way that the show treats certain characters. In particular, though I believe that all the characters already have a great deal of baggage to deal with, I don't intend to simply emotionally torture them. And I don't intend to send them all to their darkest places as often as possible and for as long as possible. By not doing that, however, I recognize that it's going to alter their behavior a little from how they might be currently behaving on the show. If this bothers you, then I'm sorry and I invite you to stop reading. If it doesn't, then I thank you for coming along with me and I hope you enjoy the trip!