AN: Here we go, another little chapter.
I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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"Sophia, that's far enough," Carol warned.
Sophia was barely at the passenger side door of the station wagon while Carol was going through the trunk, but it felt like she was a million miles away. Everything was unpredictable these days and Carol had heard enough that she didn't pretend not to know why Daryl, Merle, and Alice were so jumpy about the need to keep moving.
They believed that the Walkers somehow followed them…using however many senses that they might have…and that they, by extension, followed each other using some kind of Walker reasoning, and thus they ended up travelling in packs.
And it had proved pretty accurate thus far. Every time, once she'd paid attention to it, that they encountered the dead bodies, they seemed to be walking in small packs at the very least. It was rare, though it did happen once in a while, to see one all by itself and simply wandering along. She figured at this point, whether wrong or right, that the ones walking along were trying to catch up to the others, but they would soon enough bunch.
Lori and Rick didn't seem nearly as concerned about the Walkers or anything else as Carol was, or she assumed Rick wasn't since Lori clearly wasn't, but Carol was almost to the point of being paranoid.
When she corrected Sophia for the fourth time about how far away she could venture in the pile of cars, she heard Lori hum at her from the trunk of the car trapped in beside the one she was searching. They were going after food, water, clothes, anything that might be of any use to the group while the others worked on moving cars, fixing the RV, getting fuel from what was out there, and considering trading out a few of the vehicles they had for others that were caught up in the traffic on the roadway.
"She's fine," Lori said, keeping her voice low. "I can see Carl from here. They're not going to get into any trouble."
Lori sighed and looked around.
"Out here? There's nothing to get into, really," Lori said.
Carol looked around, but didn't tell Sophia that she could go wherever she wanted. Lori might have told Carl to "stay close", but Carol intended on enforcing what she commanded. Carl was going between three or four cars around them and she lost sight of him several times in the matter of a few moments…Carol was keeping her eyes on Sophia unless she knew she was with someone reliable.
"It's not the getting into things I'm worried about," Carol mumbled. "It wouldn't matter if they destroyed everything out here, but it's the Walkers that worry me."
Lori nodded slightly, reminded it seemed of the threat, and looked around uncomfortably before she called Carl back and commanded once again that he "stay close" to where they were packing bags with anything that was really even remotely salvageable.
Carol started going through a suitcase that she found in the back of the car. She tried to convince herself not to think of the items there as items that had belonged to anyone. She tried not to think of them as things that were almost a testament to lives that had almost surely been lost…to people who might, if they were lucky, simply be dead, but who were probably roaming about and eating the flesh of others.
She tried to think of it like shopping or like going through bags of discarded goods that someone didn't want or need anymore. She tried to only think about whether or not the things there were of any use at all to her and her travelling companions while they were on this epic road trip that seemed to have no real determinable destination.
She was admiring a few of the pieces of clothing found in the bag, clothing that she was considering keeping for herself, when she heard a hum from the side. She turned quickly but found that it was merely Alice, walking by with a duffel bag slung on her shoulder.
"That would be some hot shit on you," Alice commented with a wink.
Carol smiled at her and felt her cheeks burn warm the way they always did when she was complimented…no matter the manner in which the compliment was delivered.
"I'm the drug collection agency," Alice said. "If you come across anything…over the counter, Tylenol, random bags of pills…pick it up for me?"
Carol nodded and glanced at Lori who was nodding too.
"What's in the bag?" Lori asked.
Alice looked at the duffel thrown over her shoulder almost as though she'd never seen it before and then she hummed again.
"Not too much," she admitted. "I've been through about ten or fifteen of these cars. I hit glove boxes, under seats, side pockets…the small bags and purses. I'm hitting every damn place that most people would think to stash drugs, but I'm coming up next to empty. I guess suitcases are the next stop."
Almost on command, Carol's hand hit a plastic bag that contained some variety of pills, all of them ziplocked together. She held it out to Alice.
"Any of this any good?" Carol asked.
Alice held the bag up and looked at it for a moment and then added it to the duffel.
"It's all good," she commented. "I'm not turning my nose up at anything. That shirt too," Alice said, pointing to the shirt that Carol was holding in her hand. She hadn't even looked at it yet. "Brings out your eyes," Alice added. "I'm off, but put to the side whatever you think I might want."
And without waiting for another word, she slipped off from them and headed on down the line of piled up, bumper to bumper cars in search of the dose of Dayquil that might somehow save a life.
As time went on, though, and they started moving down the line to look through some of the other cars, surrounded on both sides by people that were working, at one end, on the RV, and on the other with pushing cars out of the way that refused to be cranked, Carol started to relax a little. She didn't doubt that the Walkers were out there, but they seemed not to be nearby or not to be paying them any attention.
And as luck would have it, the moment she let her guard down was the moment that she should have had it the highest.
At first Carol wasn't aware of what was happening around her. She was caught up in conversation with Lori while they packed bags they'd emptied out of their original content with the items that they thought the group should keep and put them in the middle of the highway so that they'd be easy to gather up when it was time to throw them in the back of cars and trucks and move on. Carl and Sophia were just one car over and were playing some kind of travel game that they'd found in one of the cars, all of the pieces spread out generously over the hood of the vehicle.
When she became aware of what was happening, it was because she heard a hissing noise that sounded oddly out of place in their surrounding and then she slowly realized that the other sounds…those of her companions doing varying types of work toward preparing for their departure…had stopped.
She looked around in time to see that there were Walkers making their way through the cars, weaving in and out between the metal bodies.
But not just Walkers.
There was a sea of Walkers that seemed to be spilling out of the nearby wooded area like water droplets out of bucket. She couldn't imagine where they'd all come from or how they had gone this long without being seen by any of them. There were at least fifty and maybe there were even more.
And Carol panicked because they simply weren't prepared for this. She didn't even have a way to protect herself or Sophia. She feared she couldn't get to the girl before the creatures did. And, even if she did reach Sophia before they did, she wasn't sure exactly what she was going to be able to do to save her daughter if not simply throw herself to the things in hopes that, while they were tearing her flesh from her bones, someone else might save the girl.
Carol ran at Sophia and Carl, both of them still unaware of what was coming for them, but Lori caught her and pulled her down hard to the pavement. Carol slammed down on her hands and knees, the pebbles and asphalt biting into her skin. And Lori tugged her toward the car, her hand planted firmly over Carol's mouth.
Lori hissed at the kids who had just become aware, with the sound of Carol hitting the pavement hard, that there was something going on.
"Get down!" Lori hissed. "Under the car. Get down. Don't make a sound."
Carol wasn't sure how she ended up under the car, Lori holding her in a tight hug with a hand placed firmly over her mouth. She'd never let her eyes leave the children and Sophia and Carl slid under the vehicle they'd been playing at. She'd never used her eyes to get her under there, but somehow she'd ended up covered by the automobile body.
From where she lie, Carol could hear the occasional whine from Sophia. The girl was terrified, and rightly so. Carol was sure that she might die from the speed at which her own heart was pumping in her chest. Carl kept an arm over Sophia in much the same manner that Lori kept her arm over Carol. Carol held her eyes on Sophia the whole time, wishing that she could get to her, but knowing that if she were to come out from under the car now…as they watched shoes and boots scrape and shuffle by them on the highway…that she would only cause more trouble and risk drawing more attention from the Walkers.
They had likely only remained trapped in their current positions for a matter of fifteen minutes at most. It was long enough that the hard asphalt "bed" that they had made it almost unbearable not to move, but Carol knew that they hadn't been under there as long as her body and her mind wanted her to believe.
Her body was tired of the position, but her mind was in another place entirely. She wanted to get out from under the car and get to Sophia. That couldn't happen, though, until they were sure that the herd or pack, or whatever a gaggle of Walkers was to be called, had cleared the area enough so that they wouldn't be inclined to smell or hear them and turn back.
Carol glanced around, Lori's had gone for the moment, and searched out any signs of life coming from elsewhere. It almost seemed that she and Lori and the two children were the only people left…but if she craned her neck hard enough, she could see that Rick was under another vehicle nearby. She assumed that the others had all taken similar types of refuge.
When Rick eased ever so slightly out from under the car that was sheltering him, Carol and Lori both moved slightly, enough to be able to see his gestures. And when he gave what they both took to be some kind of sign of "all clear", both of them started the process of sliding out from under the car they were under, getting out seeming much more difficult to Carol than taking the position had seemed. The children, seeing that it was apparently clear to move, started to slide out as well…and they were naturally quicker at it than the adults were, the time spent cramped and lying on asphalt not as hard on their young bodies.
What happened next was something of a fog for Carol and really would be every time she tried to recall it in her life.
Suddenly, as she was edging her way on her arms and legs, ignoring the bite of the rocks, she was snatched back in a sudden drag from Lori and found the woman's hand even more tightly clasped over her mouth than it had been before. It took her a moment to process what was happening, but as she did, she realized that they were not out of the woods and that there were at least a few more Walkers ambling nearby.
Carol's eyes shot to the children, both of whom had taken refuge again, almost instantly, under the car, and she caught the look of terror on Sophia's face. The children, having made it farther out from under their cover than anyone else, had drawn the attention of the Walkers that were still in the area.
Carol tried to call out, to catch the attention of the Walkers that were apparently smart enough to try to look under the car for the children now, but her call was muffled by Lori's hand. One of the Walkers twitched a head in her direction, obviously able to hear something of her cry, but was far more interested in Carl and Sophia.
Both of the children were shuffling from side to side, trying to avoid the swinging hands of the Walkers that had figured out, and it was clear to Carol that they had, that they were under the car and could be reached with some kind of efforts on their part.
Carol cried out against Lori's hand again when she saw one of the Walkers swipe at the children and she saw Sophia, apparently frightened into believing, and probably very reasonably so, that she couldn't remain safe in her current location, slide out from under the car and run from the Walker that immediately started to chase her, his friend coming after him.
Sophia went over the guardrail and toward the woods before Carol could get out from under the car. She cried out, even as Lori grabbed at her, hands going around her throat and body to hold her back.
"Those monsters are after my baby!" Carol called, flailing against the woman.
And before anyone else could respond or even really know what had happened, Rick slipped over the guardrail and followed the trial that Sophia and her Walker companions had made into the woods.
And Carol fell into a soft and silent prayer that, since he was only moments behind the Walkers that were pursuing Sophia, her daughter would be safely in her arms again before hardly any more time had passed.
And when she was back…Carol was going to be sure not to let her go again.