A/N: Sorry for the long wait on this one (well, longer than I had planned it to be), I've two dentist appointments and jury duty this week, so I haven't had a lot of spare time to write.

Jamie was really worried. He didn't know for sure, but he was fairly confident that he had been leading them the wrong way. He was disoriented to begin with, but having his one man supply of food spread out to two people was draining both of them. For about the fifth time, he had to stop and assess where the sun was. It turned out he was right. They were going the wrong way. He was in the process of getting them oriented the right way (or the closest he could get to it) when Sophia spoke up.

"Thanks for saving me. I don't know if I said that."

"Of course," he replied nonchalantly, "I wasn't gonna just leave you alone out there. How'd you get separated from your group anyhow?"

She continued walking closely behind him with her head down and her doll clutched to her chest. "There were two walkers chasing me and someone from my group, Rick Grimes, was trying to get them away from me. We got separated, and there were a lot of them. I just kept running until you found me."

He took in everything she said for a moment. "Walkers huh? Is that what you call them?" he asked. She nodded in response. "So Rick couldn't take two walkers? I'm guessing your group hasn't had to deal with a lot of them?"

She shook her head. "We have. Rick was a Sheriff. He's good at that stuff. He said he couldn't shoot them though, because it would bring more. And he didn't have a weapon like you do... Have you had to deal with a lot of them?"

Jamie hesitated, picking his words carefully. "Too many. I was in Savannah when all of this started. I lived there. I couldn't count how many there were. Most of the time we had to stick to the rooftops because there were just... so many on the street... thousands. Eventually it got so bad I had to leave. That's when I found you."

She nodded without a word.

"Anyways," he continued, "tell me about your group."

She talked for at least half an hour. About the group, the people they lost, the places they'd been. Jamie let her talk. It was interesting to him, and it seemed almost a little cathartic for her.

Not long after she had said almost everything there was to be said about her group, they stumbled upon an interstate. Both sides had miles of abandoned traffic, all heading the same way: out of the city.

"Hey, Sophia, I think this is I-85. Does any of this look familiar to you?"

She clutched her doll tighter, saying "I-I don't know, it all looks the same."

He nodded. "Yeah, I was afraid of that." He though for a moment, trying to come up with a plan. "Here's what I'm thinking. There's no way we went north in those woods. No matter which way we went, it couldn't have been north, and we still ended up here. So we're probably south of where you got lost. Since we were walking for a pretty long time, we're probably really far south. If we start heading north, we'll eventually come to where your group got split up at. With any luck, they'll still be there waiting for you."

"What if they aren't waiting for me?" she asked with genuine fear in her voice.

"I doubt they'd have given up this quickly," he replied, "but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it."

After roughly two hours of walking the interstate, they were both dead tired. The heat was bearing down on them, and they felt like they were making no progress. Sophia hadn't recognized anything yet. She had mentioned an RV that they should keep a lookout for, but other than that they didn't have much to go on.

"Recognize anything yet?"

"Not yet."

They had been having that same conversation for an hour, but it was at least keeping them sane.

Jamie noticed a vehicle a fair bit taller than others off in the distance, but couldn't get a good look at it. "Hold up a sec." He took his backpack off, grabbing the canteen and handing to Sophia, who gladly accepted it. He grabbed a pair of binoculars while she was drinking the water to confirm his suspicions. Sure enough, there was definitely an RV down the road.

"Do you see something?" Sophia asked, handing him the canteen.

He traded her the binoculars and asked, "Is that the RV?"

She took a moment to find it and exclaimed, "That's it!"

"Then let's get moving!" he replied excitedly.

With the end in sight, they picked up their pace. They made it to the RV in only a few short minutes. Sophia ran to the side door, shouting "Mom!" and quickly opening it. What she found inside was heartbreaking to her. There was nobody. "I guess they couldn't fix it." She said as she stepped out on the vehicle, disheartened.

"Hey." Jamie called for her attention, pointing to a car. It had a message on the front hood, reading:

SOPHIA STAY HERE
WE WILL COME EVERY
DAY

There was a fair amount of food on the hood as well.

"They're still here!" She said with a renewed joy.

"I told you they would be," he replied, grabbing a jar of peanut butter as he sat on the hood. "Now how about we dig into this peanut butter? I don't know about you but I'm starving.

They had been waiting for at least an hour. There was still daylight, but the sun was starting to set. Jamie was considering the possibility that they had already come for the day. They would have to sleep in the car for a night, or maybe the RV, but they had plenty of food so it couldn't be that bad. He was worried that the next day would come and there'd still be no sign of anyone.

Two days, he decided. They would stay tomorrow and the next day, but if they hadn't seen anyone by then they would move on to Fort Benning. The food would only last so long, and if the group had already left, it wouldn't do the two of them any good to get any further behind.

"Jamie!" There was panic in her voice. He turned to look at her, and saw she was pointing north up the road. "Walkers!"

He once again pulled out his binoculars, this time to see what they were dealing with. What he saw on the other end vaguely reminded him of Savannah. There were at least a hundred heading their way.

"Shit."

He opened up his backpack and pulled out a black marker. He then handed the backpack to Sophia with the instructions "Put all of the food in my pack, we've got to get out of here!"

She quickly began doing as he said, while he ran to the back of the car and started scribbling a message on the back windshield.

SOPHIA SAFE
HERD COMING
- J

He capped the marker and threw it into his now full backpack before putting it on. As soon as it was on her started jogging but quickly realized Sophia wasn't following him. He looked back and saw her still just staring at the scene in front of her. The herd, the car, the RV.

He ran back to her and grabbed her hand, shouting "Come on!" and nearly dragging her to safety. It didn't take long though, before she started keeping up by herself.